1549-1551
Lady Jane Grey at home--Visit from Roger Ascham--The German
divines--Position of Lady Jane in the theological world.
Whilst these events had been taking place Jane Grey had been once more
relegated to the care of her parents, to whose house she had been
removed upon the imprisonment of her guardian, the Admiral, in January,
1549. To the helpless and passive plaything of worldly and political
exigencies, the change from Seymour Place and Hanworth, where she had
lived under Seymour’s roof, to the quiet of her father’s Leicestershire
home, must have been great.
Nor was the difference in the moral atmosphere less marked. Handsome,
unprincipled, gay, magnificent, one imagines that the Admiral, in
spite of the faults to which she was probably not blind, must have
been an imposing personage in the eyes of his little charge; and
self-interest--the interest of a man who did not guess that the future
held nothing for him but a grave--as well as natural kindliness towards
a child dependent upon him, will have led him to play the part of her
“half-father” in a manner to win her affection. Was she not destined,
should his schemes prosper, to fill the place of Queen Consort? or,
failing that, might it not be well to turn into earnest the “merry”
possibility he had mentioned to Parry, and, if Elizabeth was denied
him, to make her cousin his wife? In any case, so long as she lived
in his house, Jane was a guest of importance, of royal blood, to be
treated with consideration, cared for, and flattered.
But now the ill-assorted house-mates had parted. Seymour had taken
his way to the Tower, as a stage towards the scaffold; and Jane had
returned--gladly or sorrowfully, who can tell?--to the shelter of the
parental roof, and to the care of a father and mother determined upon
neutralising by their conduct any ill-effects produced by her two years
of emancipation from their control. Once more she was an insignificant
member of her father’s family, the eldest of his three children,
subjected to the strictest discipline and, whatever the future might
bring forth, of little consequence in the present.
It is possible that Lord Dorset’s fears, expressed at the time when
he was attempting to regain possession of his daughter, had been in
part realised; and that Jane, “for lack of a bridle,” had “taken too
much the head,” and conceived an unduly high opinion of herself--it
would indeed have been a natural outcome of the position she held both
in her guardian’s house and, as will be seen, in the estimation of
divines. If this was the case, her mother and he were to do their best
to “address her mind to humility, soberness, and obedience.” The means
taken to carry out their intentions were harsh.
Of the year following upon Jane’s return to Bradgate little is known;
but in the summer of 1550, a picturesque and vivid sketch is afforded
by Roger Ascham of the child of thirteen[105] upon whom so many hopes
centred and so many expectations were built. In the description given
in his _Schoolmaster_[106] of the visit paid by the great scholar to
Bradgate, light is thrown alike upon the system of training pursued by
Lord Dorset, upon the character of his daughter, and upon the spirit
she displayed in conforming to the manner of life enforced upon her.
Ascham, in his capacity of tutor to her cousin Elizabeth, had known
Jane intimately at Court--so he states in a letter to Sturm, another
of the academic brotherhood--and had already received learned letters
from her. Before starting on a diplomatic mission to Germany in the
summer of 1550, he had visited some friends in Yorkshire, and on his
way south turned aside to renew his acquaintance with Lady Jane, and to
pay his respects to her father, who stood high in the estimation of the
religious party to which Ascham belonged. To this visit we owe one of
the most distinct glimpses of the girl that we possess.
By a fortunate chance he found “that most noble Lady Jane Grey, to whom
I was exceeding much beholden,” alone. Lord and Lady Dorset, with all
their household, were hunting in the park, and Jane, in the seclusion
of her chamber, was engaged in studying the _Phaedo_ of Plato, “with as
much delight as some gentlemen would read a merry tale in Boccaccio,”
when Ascham presented himself to her.
The conversation between the scholar and the student places Lady
Jane’s small staid figure in clear relief. Notwithstanding Plato’s
_Phaedo_, notwithstanding, too, the sun outside, the sounds of horns,
the baying of hounds, and all the other allurements she had proved
able to resist, there is something very human and unsaintly in her
fashion of unburthening herself to a congenial spirit concerning the
wrongs sustained at the parental hands. To Ascham, with whom she had
been so well acquainted under different circumstances, she opened her
mind freely when, “after salutation and duty done,” he inquired how it
befell that she had left the pastimes going forward in the Park.
[Illustration:
After an engraving.
LADY JANE GREY.]
“I wis,” she answered smiling--the smile, surely, of conscious and
complacent superiority--“all their sport in the Park is but a shadow
to the pleasure that I find in Plato. Alas, good folk, they never felt
what true pleasure meant.”
“And how came you, Madame,” asked Ascham, “to this deep knowledge of
pleasure, and what did chiefly allure you to it, seeing not many women,
but very few men, have attained thereto?”
Jane, nothing loath to satisfy her guest’s curiosity, did so at length.
“I will tell you,” she answered, “and tell you a truth, which perchance
you 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 measure disordered, that I think myself in hell, till time come
that I must go to Mr. Elmer, 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 away from him I fall
on weeping, because, whatever I do else but learning is full of grief,
trouble, fear, and whole misliking unto me. And thus my book hath been
so much my pleasure, and bringeth daily to me more pleasure and more,
that in respect of it all other pleasures in very deed be but trifles
and troubles to me.”[107]
Jane’s recital of her wrongs, if correctly reported--and Ascham says
he remembers the conversation gladly, both because it was so worthy of
memory, and because it was the last time he ever saw that noble and
worthy lady--proves that her command of the vernacular was equal to
her proficiency in the dead languages, and that she cherished a very
natural resentment for the treatment to which she was subjected. There
is something irresistibly provocative of laughter in the thought of
the two scholars, old and young, and of the lofty compassion displayed
by the chidden child towards the frivolous tastes and amusements of
the parents to whom she doubtless outwardly accorded the exaggerated
respect and reverence demanded by custom. Few would grudge the
satisfaction derived from a sympathetic listener to the girl whose
pleasures were to be so few and days for enjoying them so short.
When Ascham took leave he had received a promise from Jane to write to
him in Greek, provided that he would challenge her by a letter from
Germany. And so they parted, to meet no more.
It may be that Lady Jane’s sense of the harshness and severity of her
treatment at home was accentuated by the tone adopted with regard to
her by many of the leading Protestant divines. To these men--men to
whom Mary was Jezebel, Gardiner that lying and subtle Cerberus,[108]
and by whom persons holding theological views at variance with their
own were freely and unreservedly handed over to the devil--Jane was
not only wise, learned, and saintly beyond her years, but to her they
turned their eyes, hoping for a future when, at the King’s side, she
might prove the efficient protectress and patroness of the reformed
Church. Her name was a household word amongst them, and whilst it can
have been scarcely possible that she was indifferent to the incense
offered by those to whom she had been instructed to look up, it may
have rendered the system of repression adopted by her parents more
unendurable than might otherwise have been the case.
Bradgate was a centre of strong and militant Protestantism. In
conjunction with Warwick, the Marquis of Dorset was regarded by the
German school of theologians as one of the “two most shining lights
of the Church;”[109] and the many letters sent from England to Henry
Bullinger at Zurich--some of them dated from Bradgate itself--abound
in allusions to the family, and throw a useful light upon this part
of Lady Jane’s life. In these epistles her father’s name recurs again
and again, always in terms of extravagant eulogy, and as that of a
munificent patron of needy divines. Thus he had bestowed a pension at
first sight upon Ulmis, a young disciple of Bullinger’s, doubling it
some months later; and his grateful _protégé_, striving to make what
return is possible, impresses upon the foreign master the advisability
of dedicating one of his works to the generous Marquis, anxiously
sending him, when his request has been granted, the full title to be
used in so doing. “He told me, indeed,” he adds, “that he had the title
of Prince, but that he would not wish to be so styled by you, so you
must judge for yourself whether to keep it back or not.”[110] Bullinger
is likewise urged to present a copy of one of his books to the
Marquis’s daughter, “and, take my word for it, you will never repent
having done so.” A most learned and courteous letter would thereby be
elicited from her. She had already translated into Greek a good part
of Bullinger’s treatise on marriage, put by Ulmis himself into Latin,
and had given it to her father as a New Year’s gift.[111] In May, 1551,
another letter records that two days had been very agreeably passed at
Bradgate with Jane, my Lord’s daughter, and those excellent and holy
persons Aylmer, her tutor, and Haddon, chaplain to the Marquis. “For
my own part, I do not think there ever lived any one more deserving of
respect than this young lady, if you regard her family; more learned,
if you consider her age; or more happy, if you consider both. A report
has prevailed, and has begun to be talked of by persons of consequence,
that this most noble virgin is to be betrothed and given in marriage
to the King’s majesty. Oh, if that event should take place, how happy
would be the union, and how beneficial to the church!”[112]
A letter despatched by Ulmis on the same day to another of his brethren
in the faith, Conrad Pellican, craves his advice on behalf of Lady Jane
with regard to the best means of acquiring Hebrew, a language she was
anxious to study. She had written to consult Bullinger on the subject,
but Bullinger was a busy man, and all the world knew how perfect was
Pellican’s acquaintance with the subject. Pellican may argue that he
might seem lacking in modesty should he address a young lady, the
daughter of a nobleman, unknown to him personally. But he is besought
by Ulmis to entertain no fears of the kind, and his correspondent will
bear all the blame if he ever repents of the deed, or if Lady Jane
does not most willingly acknowledge his courtesy. “In truth,” he adds,
“I do not think that amongst the English nobility for many ages past
there has arisen a single individual who, to the highest excellences
of talent and judgment, has united so much diligence and assiduity in
the cultivation of every liberal pursuit.... It is incredible how far
she has advanced already, and to what perfection she will advance in a
few years; for I well know that she will complete what she has begun,
unless perhaps she be diverted from her pursuits by some calamity of
the times.... If you write a letter to her, take care, I pray you, that
it be first delivered to me.”[113]
The letter is dated from the house of the daughter of the Marquis.
Her mother, it is true, seems to have been at home, though Dorset was
in Scotland; but it is a curious fact that the grand-daughter of Henry
VII., through whom Jane’s royal blood was transmitted to her, appears
to have been by common consent tacitly passed over, as a person of no
consequence in comparison with her daughter.[114]
Quite a budget of letters were entrusted to the courier who left
Bradgate on May 29, and was the bearer of the missives addressed by
Ulmis to his master and his friend. Both John Aylmer, tutor to Lord
Dorset’s children and afterwards Bishop of London, and Haddon, the
Marquis’s chaplain, had taken the opportunity of writing to Bullinger,
doubtless stimulated to the effort by his young disciple.
The preceptor who compared so favourably in Lady Jane’s eyes with her
parents, was a young Norfolk man, of about twenty-nine, and singularly
well learned in the Latin and Greek tongues.[115] On James Haddon,
Bishop Hooper, writing from prison when, three years later, the friends
of the Reformation had fallen on evil days, pronounced a eulogy in
a letter to Bullinger. Master James Haddon, he said, was not only a
friend and very dear brother in Christ, but one he had always esteemed
on account of his singular erudition and virtue. “I do not think,” he
added, “that I have ever been acquainted with any one in England who is
endued either with more sincere piety towards God or more removed from
all desire of those perishing objects desired by foolish mortals.”[116]
From Bishop Hooper the panegyric is evidence that Haddon belonged
to the extreme party in theological matters, in which Aylmer was
probably in full accord with him. On this particular day in May both
these devoted and conscientious men were sending letters to the great
director of souls in Zurich, that of Haddon being written to a man to
whom he was personally unknown, and with the sole object of opening a
correspondence and offering a tribute of respect.
Aylmer’s case was a different one. Though also a stranger, he wrote at
some length, chiefly in the character of the preceptor entrusted with
Lady Jane’s education, making due acknowledgments for the letters and
advice which had been of so much use in keeping his patron and his
patron’s family in the right path, and begging Bullinger to continue
these good offices towards the pupil, just fourteen, concerning whom
it is strange to find the young man entertaining certain fears and
misgivings.
“At that age,” he observes, “as the comic poet tells us, all people are
inclined to follow their own ways, and, by the attractiveness of the
objects and the corruptions of nature, are more easily carried headlong
in pleasure ... than induced to follow those studies that are attended
with the praise of virtue.” The time teemed with many disorders;
discreet physicians must therefore be sought, and to tender minds there
should not be wanting the counsel of the aged nor the authority of
grave and influential men. Aylmer accordingly entreats that Bullinger
will minister, by letter and advice, to the improvement of his charge.
An epistle from Jane, dated July 1551, shows that the German theologian
responded at once to the appeal, since in it she acknowledges the
receipt of a most eloquent and weighty letter, and mentioning the loss
she had sustained in the death of Bucer, who appears to have taken
his part in her theological training, congratulates herself upon the
possession of a friend so learned as Bullinger, so pious a divine,
and so intrepid a champion of true religion. Bereaved of the “pious
Bucer ... who unweariedly did not cease, day and night, and to the
utmost of his ability, to supply me with all necessary instructions
and directions for my conduct in life, and who by his excellent advice
promoted and encouraged my progress and advancement in all virtue,
godliness, and learning,” she proceeds to beg Bullinger to fill the
vacant place, and to spur her on if she should loiter and be disposed
to delay. By this means she will enjoy the same advantages granted
to those women to whom St. Jerome imparted instruction, or to the
elect lady to whom the epistle of St. John was addressed, or to the
mother of Severus, taught by Origen. As Bullinger could be deemed
inferior to none of these teachers, she entreats him to manifest a
like kindness.[117] It is plain that Lady Jane, in addressing this
“brightest ornament and support of the whole Church,” is determined not
to be outdone in the art of pious flattery; and in her correspondence
with men who both as scholars and divines held a foremost place in the
estimation of those by whom she was surrounded, she indemnified herself
for the mortifications inflicted upon her at home.
The reformers, for their part, were keeping an anxious watch upon the
course of events in England; and to strengthen and maintain their
influence over one who might have a prominent part to play in future
years was of the first importance. A letter from Ascham, who was still
abroad, dated some months later, supplies yet another example of the
incense offered to the child of fourteen, and of fulsome adulation
by which an older head might have been turned. Nothing, he told her,
in his travels, had raised in him greater admiration than had been
caused when, on his visit to Bradgate, he had found one so young and
lovely--so divine a maid--engaged in the study of Plato whilst friends
and relations were enjoying field sports. Let her proceed thus,
to the honour of her country, the delight of her parents, her own
glory, the praise of her preceptor, the comfort of her relations and
acquaintances, and the admiration of all. O happy Aylmer, to have a
like scholar!
[Illustration:
From a photo by W. Mansell & Co. after a painting by G. Fliccius in
the National Portrait Gallery.
ARCHBISHOP CRANMER.]
It would be easy to multiply quotations which indicate the place
accorded to Lord Dorset’s daughter in the estimation of the leaders
of the extreme party of Protestantism, in whose eyes Cranmer was
regarded as a possible trimmer. Allowing to him “right views,” Hooper,
in writing to Bullinger, adds: “we desire nothing more for him than
a firm and manly spirit.”[118] “Contrary to general expectation,”
Traheron writes, the Archbishop had most openly, firmly, and learnedly
maintained the opinion of the German divine upon the Eucharist;
and Ulmis, alluding to him in terms of praise, repeats that he had
unexpectedly given a correct judgment on this point. Even the youngest
of the German theologians felt himself competent to weigh in the
balances the head of Protestant England.
Protestant England was itself keeping a wary eye upon its Primate.
“The Archbishop of Canterbury,” wrote Hooper to Bullinger, “to tell
the truth, neither took much note of your letter nor of your learned
present. But now, as I hope, Master Bullinger and Canterbury entertain
the same opinion.” “The people ... that many-headed monster,” he
wrote again, “is still wincing, partly through ignorance, and partly
persuaded by the inveiglements of the Bishops and the malice and
impiety of the mass-priests.”[119]