Charnwood Forest is also associated in history with two unfortunate
women. Elizabeth Widvile was the wife of Sir John Grey of Groby, who
lost his life and estate in serving the House of Lancaster, leaving
Elizabeth with two sons; for their sake she sought an interview with
King Edward IV. to ask him to show them favor. Smitten by her charms,
Edward made her his queen, but he was soon driven into exile in France,
and afterwards died, while her father and brother perished in a popular
tumult. Her daughter married King Henry VII., a jealous son-in-law, who
confined Elizabeth in the monastery of Bermondsey, where she died.
Bradgate passed into the hands of her elder son by Sir John Grey of
Groby, and his grandson was the father of the second queen to which it
gave birth, whose name is better known than that of Elizabeth
Widvile--the unfortunate "ten-days' queen," Lady Jane Grey. She lived
the greater part of her short life at Bradgate, in the house whose ruins
still stand to preserve her memory. We are told by the quaint historian
Fuller that "she had the innocency of childhood, the beauty of youth,
the solidity of middle, the gravity of old age, and all at eighteen--the
birth of a princess, the learning of a clerk, the life of a saint, and
the death of a malefactor for her parents' offences." These parents
worried her into accepting the crown--they played for high stakes and
lost--and her father and father-in-law, her husband and herself, all
perished on the scaffold. We are told that this unfortunate lady still
haunts Bradgate House, and on the last night of the dying year a phantom
carriage, drawn by four gray horses, glides around the ruins with her
headless body. The old oaks have a gnarled and stunted appearance,
tradition ascribing it to the woodsmen having lopped off all the leading
shoots when their mistress perished. The remains of the house at present
are principally the broken shells of two towers, with portions of the
enclosing walls, partly covered with ivy.