On the 30th January 1554, Thomas Wyatt the Younger, son of poet and diplomat Sir Thomas Wyatt, and his fellow rebels besieged Cooling Castle, near Rochester in Kent, as part of Wyatt's Rebellion.
Cooling Castle was the home of George Brooke, 9th Baron Cobham, who was actually Wyatt's maternal uncle. Cobham had withdrawn to his castle after the Crown's forces, under the leadership of Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, had mutinied and dispersed. According to C S Knighton's Oxford Dictionary of National Biography article on Cobham, Cobham claimed that he had fought valiantly against the rebels for seven hours before surrendering to them, but Knighton points out that his resistance was actually a "pretence" and Cobham joined the rebels willingly. Things were looking good for Wyatt and his men, who then marched on to London.
Read more about Wyatt's Rebellion...
Picture: Gatehouse of Cooling Castle, Kent, Luke McKernan, Wikipedia.
These people take an army to attack London and Kent, attacking castles and aiming to force Mary to agree to whatever their terms or she will be replaced and Killed and they don’t expect to be executed? Wyatt has the ckeek to claim he was not plotting to kill Mary or replace her with Elizabeth. So what was he doing, inviting her for a picnic? Yea, right, he had already more or less stated that as Mary would not marry his choice and what he claimed was the popular choice, although that is challengable, that she had to go. Leading armed soldiers against his annointed sovereign was treason and he could expect no mercy. His intentions were not friendly and this was no protest. It was armed insurrection aimed at regime change. Thomas Wyatt got his just deserts, plus he endangered Elizabeth as well as Mary. I also believe it was personal, as his father was an old love of Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth’s mother.