"Seventeen--and knew eight languages--in music
Peerless--her needle perfect, and her learning
Beyond the Churchmen; yet so meek, so modest,
So wife-like humble to the trivial boy
Mismatched with her for policy! I have heard
She would not take a last farewell of him;
She feared it might unman him for his end.
She could not be unmanned--no, nor outwoman'd.
Seventeen--a rose of grace!
Girl never breathed to rival such a rose;
Rose never blew that equalled such a bud."
--TENNYSON.
When the hapless daughter of Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, offered
up her fair young life upon the scaffold at Tower Hill she was still
in her "teens"--with the simplicity and freshness of girlhood upon
her. There is a tender and pathetic beauty about the tragic tale which
no repetition can wholly dim or wear off.
The reader needs not to be told that she was the eldest daughter of
Henry Grey, third Marquis of Dorset. She was allied with royal blood,
her mother being Frances the eldest daughter of Charles Brandon, Duke
of Suffolk, and Mary Tudor, second daughter of Henry VII. She came
also of royal stock on the father's side.
It is a curious fact that the date of the birth of this lady is not
exactly known; but, according to Fuller, it took place in 1536, at
her father's stately mansion, of Bradgate, near Leicester. She was the
eldest of three daughters, Jane, Katherine and Mary. At a very early
age her budding gifts gave abundant promise of a fair womanhood; so
serene her temper and so remarkable her love of knowledge. She was
fortunate in living at a time when the education of women was as
comprehensive and exact as that of men; and her father provided her
with two learned tutors in his two chaplains, Thomas Harding and John
Aylmer. To the latter she seems to have been more particularly given
in charge; and the teacher being as zealous as the pupil was diligent,
Lady Jane soon gained a thorough acquaintance with Latin and Greek,
and also some degree of proficiency in Hebrew, Arabic, Chaldaic,
French and Italian.
These grave and serious studies were relieved by a cultivation of the
graces. Her voice was melodious, and she sang with much skill and
expression; she also played on various musical instruments. Her
needle-work and embroidery excited the admiration of her
contemporaries; she acquired a knowledge of the medical properties of
herbs; dainty dishes, preserves, and "sweet waters" she concocted with
dexterous hand; her calligraphy was a marvel of ease and elegance; in
this last-named art she was instructed by the erudite Roger Ascham,
who was one of its most famous professors.
Thus it happened that even in her early girlhood she surpassed in
general scholarship her equals in age. But her tutors did not forget
the spiritual side of her education, and she was well grounded in the
dogmas of the Church as well as in the truths and lessons embodied in
the life and teaching of her Lord.
After the death of Henry VIII. Lady Jane went to reside with the
widowed Queen, Katherine Parr, at Chelsea; and when that lady married
Lord Seymour of Dudley, she accompanied them to Hanworth, in
Middlesex, a palace which Henry VIII. had bestowed upon Queen
Katherine in dower. The Queen did not long survive her second
nuptials, but died at Dudley Castle, September 5, 1548, in the
thirty-sixth year of her age. Lady Jane acted as chief mourner at the
funeral.
It was soon after this event that Lady Jane addressed the following
letter to the Lord High Admiral. As the composition of a girl of
twelve it shows no ordinary promise:--
_October 1, 1548._
My duty to your lordship, in most humble wise remembered, with
no less thanks for the gentle letters which I received from you.
Thinking myself so much bound to your lordship for your great
goodness towards me from time to time, that I cannot by any
means be able to recompense the least part thereof, I purposed
to write a few rude lines unto your lordship, rather as a token
to show how much worthier I think your lordship's goodness than
to give worthy thanks for the same; and these my letters shall
be to testify unto you that, like as you have become towards me
a loving and kind father, so I shall be always most ready to
obey your godly monitions and good instructions, as becometh one
upon whom you have heaped so many benefits. And thus, fearing
lest I should trouble your lordship too much, I must humbly take
my leave of your good lordship.
Your humble servant during my life,
JANE GREY.
It is not impossible that at Bradgate Lady Jane may have regretted the
indulgent ease and splendid hospitality of Dudley Castle. Her parents
acted upon the maxim that to spare the rod is to spoil the child; and
notwithstanding her amiability and honourable diligence, subjected her
to a very severe discipline. She was rigorously punished for the
slightest defect in her behaviour or the most trivial failure in her
studies. Her parents taught her to fear, rather than to love, them;
and insisted upon reverence, rather than affection, as the duty of
children. It is no wonder, therefore, that from the austere brow and
unsympathetic voice she turned with ever-increasing delight towards
that secret spirit of knowledge which has only smiles for its
votaries.
In the pages of the wise she met with divine words of encouragement
and consolation; they soothed her sorrows, they taught her the heroism
of endurance, they lifted her into that serene realm where dwelt the
Immortals--the glorious minds of old. "Thus," says she, "my book hath
been so much my pleasure, and bringeth daily to me more and more
pleasure, that in respect of it all other pleasures in very deed be
but trifles and troubles unto me."
From an interesting passage in Roger Ascham's "Schoolmaster," we can
form some idea of the melancholy girlhood of this daughter of a royal
race. Ascham visited Bradgate in the summer of 1550 on his way to
London. He found, on his arrival, the stately mansion deserted; the
Lord and Lady, with all their household, were hunting merrily in the
park to the music of horn and hound. Making his way through the
deserted chambers, he came at length upon a secluded apartment, where
the fair Lady Jane was calmly studying the pages of Plato's immortal
"Phaedon" in the original Greek. Surprised and delighted by a spectacle
so unusual, the worthy scholar, after the usual salutations, inquired
why she had not accompanied the gay lords and ladies in the park, to
enjoy the pastime of the chase.
"I wis," she replied, smiling, "all their sport in the park is but a
shadow to that pleasure that I find in Plato. Alas! good folk, they
never felt what true pleasure meant."
"And how came you, madam," quoth he, "to this deep knowledge of
pleasure? And what did chiefly allure you unto it, seeing not many
women, but very few men, have attained thereunto?"
"I will tell you," quoth she, "and tell you a truth which, perchance,
ye will marvel at. One of the greatest benefits that ever God gave me
is that He sent me so sharp and severe parents and so gentle a
schoolmaster. For when I am in presence either of father or mother,
whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand, or go, eat, drink, be merry
or sad, be sewing, playing, dancing or doing anything else, I must do
it, as it were, in such weight, measure and number, even so perfectly
as God made the world, or else I am so sharply taunted, so cruelly
threatened, yea, presently, sometimes with pinches, nips and bobs, and
other ways which I will not name for the honour I bear them, so
without reason misordered, that I think myself in hell till time come
that I must go to Mr. Aylmer; who teacheth me so gently, so
pleasantly, with such fair allurements to learning, that I think all
the time nothing whiles I am with him. And when I am called from him,
I fall on weeping, because, whatever I do else but learning is full of
grief, trouble, fear and whole misliking unto me."
Ascham did not see her again after this memorable interview. "I
remember this talk gladly," he wrote, "both because it is so worthy of
memory and because also it was the last talk that ever I had and the
last time that ever I saw that noble and worthy lady."
In his letters to his learned friends, however, he frequently
commented on the sweetness of her character and the depth of her
erudition. He spoke of Lady Mildred Cooke and the Lady Jane Grey as
the two most learned women in England; and summed up his praises of
the latter in the remark that "however illustrious she was by her
fortune and royal extraction, this bore no proportion to the
accomplishments of her mind, adorned with the doctrine of Plato and
the eloquence of Demosthenes."
Her illustrious rank, her piety and her erudition necessarily made the
Lady Jane an object of special interest to the leaders of the Reformed
Church in England and on the continent. The learned Martin Bruce, whom
Edward VI. had appointed to the chair of divinity at the University of
Cambridge, watched over her with prayerful anxiety. Bullinger, a
minister of Zurich, corresponded with her frequently, encouraging her
in the practice of every virtue. Under the direction and counsel of
these and other divines she pursued her theological studies with great
success, so as to be able to defend and maintain the creed she had
adopted, and give abundant reason for the faith that was in her.
The Marquis of Dorset, in October, 1551, was raised to the dukedom of
Suffolk; and on the same day the subtle and ambitious intriguer, John
Dudley, Earl of Warwick, who was to exercise so malignant an influence
on his daughter's destiny, was created Duke of Northumberland.
The Lady Jane was then removed to the metropolis, residing with her
family at her father's town house, in Suffolk Place. She necessarily
shared in the festivities of the court; but she would seem to have
been distinguished always by a remarkable plainness of apparel; in
this obeying the impulse of her simplicity of taste, supported and
confirmed by the advice of Bullinger and Aylmer.
On one occasion the Princess Mary presented her with a sumptuous robe,
which she was desired to wear in recognition of the donor's
generosity. "Nay," she replied, "that were a shame, to follow my Lady
Mary, who leaveth God's word, and leave my Lady Elizabeth who
followeth God's word." A speech which the Lady Mary doubtless
remembered.
Early in 1553, men clearly saw that the life and reign of Edward VI.
were drawing to an abrupt termination. His legitimate successor was
his elder sister Mary; but her morose temper and bigoted attachment to
the old Church had filled the minds of the Reformers with anxiety. Her
unpopularity, and the dangers to the Reformed Church to be apprehended
from her accession, led Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, to conceive an
audacious design. He resolved to raise his son to the throne. But for
this purpose it was necessary to ally him to the blood-royal, and he
therefore planned a marriage between his young son, Lord Guilford
Dudley, and Lady Jane Grey.
There were such elements of fitness in the match that on neither side
was any obstruction thrown; and in June 1553 the bridal ceremony took
place at the Duke of Northumberland's palace in the Strand. The Duke
then obtained from King Edward, by an appeal to his zeal for the
Church, letters-patent excluding Mary and Elizabeth from the
succession and declaring Lady Jane Grey heir to the throne.
A few days afterwards the young king died; and on the evening of the
9th of July, the Duke of Northumberland, accompanied by the Marquis of
Northampton, the Earls of Arundel, Huntingdon and Pembroke, appeared
before the young bride in her quiet chamber at Northumberland House,
and urged her acceptance of a crown which was fated to become, for
her, a crown of thorns.
"How I was beside myself," she afterwards wrote, "how I was beside
myself, stupefied and troubled, I will leave it to those lords who
were present to testify, who saw me overcome by sudden and unexpected
grief, fall on the ground, weeping very bitterly; and then declaring
to them my insufficiency, I greatly bewailed myself for the death of
so noble a Prince, and at the same time turned myself to God, humbly
praying and beseeching Him that if what was given to me was _rightly
and lawfully_ mine, His divine Majesty would grant _me_ such grace and
spirit that I might govern it to His glory and service and to the
advantage of this realm."
Her prudent reluctance, however, was overruled. History records the
brief twelve days' pageant of her reign.
On the 19th of July her opponent, Mary entered London in triumph.
"Great was the rejoicing," says a contemporary; so great that the like
of it had never been seen by any living. The number of caps that were
flung into the air at the proclamation could not be told. The Earl of
Pembroke cast among the crowd a liberal largess. Bonfires blazed in
every street; and what with shouting and crying of the people, and
ringing of bells, there could no one man hear what another said.
Lady Jane was at first confined in the house of one Partridge, a
warder of the Tower. Thence, after she and her husband had been tried
for high treason and found guilty, they were removed to the Tower.
During her captivity she occasionally amused herself with the graceful
pursuits of her earlier and happier years, engraving on the walls of
her prison, with a pin, some Latin distich, which turned into English
read:
"Believe not, man, in care's despite,
That thou from others' ills art free
The _cross_ that now _I_ suffer might
To-morrow haply fall on _thee_"
"Endless all malice, if our God is nigh:
Fruitless all pains, if He His help deny,
Patient I pass these gloomy hours away,
And wait the morning of eternal day."
Her execution was fixed for the 12th of February 1554. On the night
preceding she wrote a few sentences of advice to her sister on the
blank leaf of a New Testament. To her father she addressed the
following beautiful letter, in which filial reverence softens and
subdues the exhortations of a dying saint:
The Lord comfort Your Grace, and that in His Word, wherein all
creatures only are to be comforted; and though it hath pleased
God to take away two of your children, yet think not, I most
humbly beseech Your Grace, that you have lost them; but trust
that we, by leaving this mortal life, have won an immortal life.
And I, for my part, as I have honoured Your Grace in this life,
will pray for you in another life.--Your Grace's humble
daughter,