ABSTRACT
On 16 November 1553, the House of Commons petitioned QueenMary to marry within the realm. In her reply she made it clear thatshe was determined to stand by her decision to marry Philip of Spain rather than Edward Courtenay, heir to the earldom of Devon and a great-grandson of Edward IV, but who had been a prisoner in the Tower of London since childhood and hardly surprisingly had left a reputation for being a weak and unstable man. A conspiracy was then formed by a group of gentry who aimed to persuade Elizabeth to marry Courtenay. The intention was to put her on the throne in Mary’s place. With sufficient support among the nobility and at Court a political coup might have achieved this. When it was obvious that the Privy Council had accepted Mary’s decision, plans were made at the end of the year for a national and popular rising. The leading conspirators were William Thomas, former clerk of the council to Edward VI, Sir James Croft, Sir Peter Carew and Sir Thomas Wyatt. The three knights had served Henry VIII in his French campaigns in the 1540s. Wyatt had been a member of the English council in France and Croft had been Lord Deputy of Ireland in 1551-52. Carew, having acted for Somerset against the western rebels in 1549, had sat in Edward VI’s parliament as knight of the shire for Devon in 1553. He was also closely connected to the Courtenays by both blood and service, and was the most likely go-between between the imprisoned Earl of Devon and the plans which were now made: his part in leading the whole conspiracy has almost certainly been underestimated (Cooper, 2003: 163-4, 166).
