BIRTH AND EDUCATION
Lady Jane Grey was born at Bradgate Old Manor[10] in October 1537, most
probably in the first days of the month, for Prince Edward, her cousin,
came into the world on the 12th,[11] St. Edward’s Eve, and three days
later Henry, Marquess of Dorset, attended the royal christening, which
he would scarcely have done if his own wife, a member of the royal
family, had not been safely delivered. His presence in London can be
traced in the State Papers from the date of Prince Edward’s birth until
the first week in November. Lady Jane’s christening took place, as was
then the custom, within forty-eight hours of her birth, in the parish
church, with all the ancient rites. Some writers state that the babe
was carried to the font by her grandmother, the Dowager Marchioness;
but this good lady, as we have already seen, was unable at the time to
leave her sick household at Croydon. She sent her new granddaughter a
rich bowl with a chiselled cover. It was the custom at that time, when
a baptism took place, for the whole family, godfathers and godmothers
and guests, to walk in procession from the mansion to the church. As
is still the case in Catholic countries, the number of sponsors in
pre-Reformation times was unlimited. All these worthy people brought
gifts of more or less value, according to the nearness of their kinship
and the length of their purses. The Marquess, if he was present, would
certainly have worn his robes of state and “carried the salt.” At
the church door the christening company was met by the clergy, and
after a short prayer the child was named.[12] The officiating priest
on this occasion was either Mr. Harding, then chaplain at Bradgate,
or else Mr. Cook, Rector of the parish. After being named, the child
was carried to the font, which stood in the middle of the church
under an extinguisher-like canopy, richly carved and painted, which
pulled up and down, so as to keep the holy water clean. In those days
the back of the head and the heels of the infant were immersed in
the water,[13] the present ceremony of sprinkling having only been
introduced into this country from Geneva by the Reformers during
Elizabeth’s reign. The infant was also anointed with chrism on the
back and breast, a very ancient ceremony, the abolition of which
caused considerable controversy and some persecution in the reign of
Henry VIII. This anointing, or unction, which was performed within
the sacred edifice, was followed by the presentation of the gifts of
the various sponsors.[14] Abundant hospitality in the shape of sweet
wafers, comfits, spiced wine, or hippocras was dispensed in the porch,
not only to the invited company, but to the promiscuous village crowd
that elected to attend the function; and at last the procession, with
the infant wrapped in a sort of shawl of rich brocade, returned to the
mansion, where a dinner was served to the guests and to the members of
the household.
The life of an English child in olden times, especially in the upper
classes, was by no means the ideal existence it has now become. A
careful study of contemporary records proves that the barbarous
and filthy system of swathing or “swaddling” an infant was almost
universally practised. We may take it for granted that the baby
Jane Grey was swathed or “swaddled” according to the prevailing
English fashion, from her armpits to her knees, and was thus able at
all events to move her tiny hands and feet, a privilege denied her
infant contemporaries on the Continent. So late as 1684, Madame de
Maintenon, writing to Madame de Présné, who had just been delivered
of a son, beseeches her to “adopt the English method of allowing her
infant’s limbs free play,” and stigmatises the French custom of “tight
swaddling” as “abominably dirty and unhealthy.”
The Lady Frances certainly did not nurse her own baby; it would have
been considered most indecent for a woman of her rank to suckle her
offspring. A foster-mother was engaged, and it is likely enough that
the good woman who supplied little Jane Grey with the sustenance
nature had intended her to derive from her parent, was that Mrs. Ellen
who, seventeen years later, attended her beloved foster-child on the
scaffold.
In her eighteenth month the child was weaned, and this was attended
by some considerable ceremony. In the morning Mass was said in the
presence of the whole family, including the foster-mother and the
child, who was blessed with holy water. This finished, the company
returned in procession to the hall and forthwith sat down to a copious
banquet.
The archives of Sudeley Castle contain an interesting description of
an aristocratic nursery in the first half of the sixteenth century.
Queen Katherine Parr, having married Admiral Lord Thomas Seymour, lived
at Sudeley, where she died in September 1548, after giving birth to a
child, for whom was provided an apartment very elaborately furnished
with tapestry, and containing everything a modern infant of the highest
rank could possibly want, all in silver or pewter, and, moreover, a
“chair of state” hung with cloth of gold.
The Lady Frances’s nursery was, no doubt, fitted up quite as
luxuriously as that prepared for the infant of Queen Katherine Parr;
but no inventory of its contents has been handed down to us. Nearly
all the toys commonly used in England at this period were made either
in France or Holland, and closely resembled those grotesque playthings
which were our grandparents’ delight: wooden dolls with roughly painted
heads and jointed limbs, hobby horses, hoops, and even toy soldiers
mounted on movable slides. Jane must have had an abundance of these
nursery treasures, besides an oaken cradle with rockers and also a
sort of little perambulator, wherein she might be carried to take the
air in the park and gardens. She had a complete household, consisting
of Mrs. Ellen, two under-nurses, a governess, two waiting women, and
two footmen. Sometimes, but very rarely, the voice of nature may
have prompted her mother and father to play with her and enjoy those
exquisite moments of purest love common alike to prince and peasant.
Her babyhood may have been fairly happy, but when that ended, the stern
training which prevailed in every aristocratic family of the period
began in all its severity: long prayers, tedious lessons, and that
terrible “cramming” system which as often as not engendered premature
physical decline and even imbecility. The tiny princess, from her
third year upwards, was dressed like a little old lady, in miniature
reproduction of her mother, coif and all complete, an exceedingly
irksome garb for so very small a child. Even when full-grown, Jane,
like her sister Katherine, was of very diminutive stature; and their
youngest sister, Mary, was an actual dwarf, “not bigger, when over
thirty, than a child of ten.”
The greater part of the Lady Jane’s[15] infancy was spent at Bradgate
with her little sisters--Katherine, two years her junior; and Mary,
six years younger than herself. A Mrs. Ashly, sister or sister-in-law
to the Mrs. Ashly, or Astley, who acted in the same capacity to
Princess Elizabeth, was appointed to attend as governess upon Jane and
her sisters; but of this lady little is known, whereas Elizabeth’s
governess is, of course, frequently mentioned as a woman of great
importance. It was evidently not until the Lady Jane had been named
in Henry VIII’s will as a possible successor to his throne that any
particular attention was paid to her instruction, and then only for
purely political purposes. Her two sisters received but an ordinary
education, and Jane herself must have been between nine and ten years
of age when she was handed over to Queen Katherine Parr to begin her
more important studies. No doubt the Dorsets secretly intended their
eldest daughter to become Edward VI’s consort and to rule the kingdom
through her, and her education therefore became a matter of great
importance to them, as they wished her to be thoroughly equipped to
hold the high station they desired her to occupy. In religion she
was to be exceedingly Protestant, but in social matters her training
was most varied, including music and classical and modern languages,
even Hebrew and, if we may credit some of her enthusiastic eulogists,
Chaldee!!
The royal birth of the Marchioness of Dorset and the great wealth of
her lord placed their family in a very exceptional position in the
county. Here, as also in London, they maintained semi-regal state. No
one could compete with them, and although they received much company,
especially at Christmas time, they rarely mixed with their neighbours,
and when they did so condescend, they were invariably received with
all the ceremony due to royalty. When, for instance, the Marquess of
Dorset and his lady visited Leicester, they were entertained with great
ceremony. In the archives of that city for 1540 there is a charge of
“two shillings and sixpence for strawberries and wine for my Lady
Marchioness’s Grace, for Mistress Mayoress and her sisters.” Also,
on the occasion of another visit, “Four shillings” were paid “to the
pothicary for making a gallon of Ippocras,[16] that was given to my
Lady’s Grace, Mistress Mayoress and her sisters, and to the wives of
the Aldermen of Leicester, who gave the said ladies, moreover, wafers,
apples, pears, and walnuts at the same time.” From another record, of
the city of Lincoln, we learn that the Dorset family when on its way
to London frequently put up at the White Hall Inn for the night, their
expenses being paid by the town. There is also an entry specifying the
expenses for entertaining the Lady Jane Grey when on her way to London
and on her return journeys through Leicester to Bradgate in 1548 and
1551.
There was much in the stately mode of life led by our great aristocracy
in the sixteenth century which has not even now passed altogether out
of fashion. At certain seasons of the year, it appears, the family
resided in the main building of the mansion and kept up a state almost
equal in magnificence to that of a royal Court. A great number of
servants--as many as eighty or a hundred--were maintained, and these,
being very ignorant, often formed a rather disorderly crew. They
received very small wages; but as they wore brilliant liveries, and
served as an escort to their masters when they went abroad, they made a
highly picturesque appearance. Few people, even in the upper circles of
society, could read or write with ease; and as there were no newspapers
and scarcely any books, no correspondence, and but few visits to fill
up leisure time, the men’s sports were mainly those of the field, so
that large hunting and hawking parties were the general order of the
day. The ladies were frequently invited to share these pursuits; and
the Lady Frances was well known in Leicestershire in her day as a great
huntress and a skilful archeress.
Hospitality, if barbaric, was none the less sumptuous. Tablecloths
and napkins were already in use, and “damask” was pretty generally to
be seen in the houses of the wealthy; while the plate belonging to
the great nobility was not only very costly, but exceedingly artistic
in design. Then as now, it was the custom to pass the winter months
in the country and the summer in London. During the hunting season
Bradgate was thrown open to a throng of guests, and since the mistress
of the house was niece to the reigning sovereign, many of these were of
princely rank, including Princess Mary, who was on very friendly terms
with her cousin Frances and her children. It is not at all unlikely
that when the family gathered in the great hall of an evening, dances,
masques, and other pastimes of a more boisterous kind, described as
“romps and jigs,” were indulged in. On occasion, players were summoned
from London, and displayed their skill in representing those rough and
unformed plays which delighted our ancestors until the more shapely
Elizabethan drama came into being.[17]
People rose and retired to rest earlier in Tudor days than we do
now, especially in summer, when breakfast was served as early as six
o’clock, dinner at ten, and supper at five. Tea and coffee were as
yet undiscovered, and light home-brewed ale was the usual breakfast
beverage. Such very young ladies as Lady Jane Grey would be served at
this meal with a cup of hot milk and sometimes with a sort of mead, or
barley water, heated and spiced. During Lent breakfast consisted of
bread, with salt fish, ling, turbot and eels, fresh whitings, sprats,
beer and wine. At other seasons there were chines of beef, roast
breast of mutton or boiled mutton, butter, cooked eggs, custard, pies,
jellies, etc., as well as chickens, ducks, swan, geese, and game.[18]
Dinner came at noon, and it was customary in large country houses to
close the gates while the whole establishment sat down, according
to rank, in the great hall. Sometimes a slight alteration was made,
two tables being set in the dining-room, at the first of which sat
the lord and his family, with such titled guests as they might be
entertaining, while the second was occupied by “knights and honourable
gentlemen.” In such a case the tables in the great hall were generally
three, the first for the steward, comptroller, secretary, master of
the house, master of the fish-ponds, the tutor--if one was attached
to the family--and such gentlemen as happened to be under the degree
of a knight. In a very large household it frequently happened that as
many as a hundred and fifty or two hundred people would sit down to eat
at one and the same time, but in most castles, halls, and manors the
ladies of the family, excepting on state occasions, ate apart from the
men, a separate table being laid for them, and for the chaplain, in
the ladies’ chamber, while two others were laid in the housekeeper’s
room for the ladies’ women. The Lady Frances usually partook of her
dinner in solitary state, waited upon by young gentlewomen and, when
they were old enough to do so, by her two elder daughters, who stood on
either side of her until she had finished, when they in their turn sat
down and were served by gentlewomen. In their infancy, the children,
attended by their nurses and gentlemen and women, dined with the
housekeeper in her chamber.
All meals were somewhat disorderly, for, forks not being in general
use, it was the custom for the gentlemen to pick the daintiest scraps
out of the common dish with the tips of their fingers, and place them
gallantly upon the platters of the ladies seated nearest them. It was
considered ill-bred to lick one’s fingers after this act of courtesy.
Proper behaviour was to wipe them daintily upon a sort of napkin or
serviette, sometimes, as in Japan, made of tissue paper.
Grace was said both before and after meals, and as most large houses
had several chaplains and a choir for the service of the chapel,
it was usual for one of the priests, accompanied by three or four
of the choristers wearing their surplices, to enter the hall and
solemnly chant the _Benedicite_ or Grace, which until Edward VI’s time
invariably concluded with a petition for the release of the souls in
Purgatory. It was considered impolite to talk during a repast unless
addressed by the master or mistress of the feast. The chaplain was
employed to read aloud either the Gospel of the day or a chapter from
that enlivening work _The Martyrology_. Occasionally a minstrel was
invited to sing an interesting ballad or tell a story; otherwise the
clinking of the knives was the only sound heard during meals, which,
however copious, were invariably dispatched with the utmost speed.
In proportion to the amount of meat very little bread was consumed.
“The English bolt their food in dead silence,” remarked the Venetian
Ambassador Giustiniani, “and, bread being dear, eat very sparingly
of it. They throw their chicken bones under the table when they have
sucked them clean.”
When supper, a meal which corresponds with our late dinner, was over,
evening prayers were said, and soon afterwards, on ordinary occasions,
everybody retired to rest. It should be remembered that artificial
light was exceedingly costly and inadequate, as indeed it remained
until the beginning of the later half of the nineteenth century. Many
who are still in the prime of life can remember the rush tallow dips
made and used in old-fashioned country houses and farms in their
childhood. In the sixteenth century these were the only lights to be
had, except oil lamps and wax candles imported at immense expense from
France and Italy, and only kindled on high days and holidays.[19] Resin
torches were burnt in the great hall; but many complained of the stench
and smoke, so that an early departure to bed was not only wise but
necessary.
It may perhaps be concluded that we who live at the beginning of the
twentieth century would have found life in an English manor in Tudor
days insufferably dull and monotonous. Yet there were compensations.
Outdoor exercises were many and various. There was the tennis-court,
bowls and quoits were much in vogue, and our forefathers practised
many other excellent sports, some of which we might well revive. There
was hawking, then in the zenith of its popularity; hunting, archery,
slinging, mase or “prisoner’s bars,” wrestling, tennis, of which game
Henry VIII was exceedingly fond; fivestool ball, football, and golf.
Cricket does not seem to have been known, at all events under its
present name; but there were a score or so of other popular games
and sports, some of which, such as duck-hunting, dog-fighting, and
cock-fighting, were exceedingly barbarous. The cruel sport of trying
on horseback to pull off the greased head of a living duck or goose
suspended by the legs from a cross beam was exceedingly popular at
this time.[20] Edward VI, in his _Journal_, mentions it in an entry
dated 4th June 1550: “Sir Robert Dudley, third surviving son of the
Earl of Warwick, was married this day to Sir John Robsart’s daughter,
after which marriage there were certain gentlemen on horseback that did
strive who should first carry away a goose’s head that was hanged alive
on two cross-posts.” Can we imagine the whole Court of England, King
included, assisting at this childish and cruel spectacle?
The Marquess of Dorset and his family did not spend the whole year at
Bradgate; political and social duties brought them a great deal to
London, especially in the early spring and summer months. In London
they inhabited a mansion at Westminster, not far from Whitehall Palace.
The town residence of the Marquess of Dorset was not, as usually
stated, situated in Grey’s Inn. At no time did his branch of the family
of Grey possess property in or near the Inn which bears their name;
it belonged from a remote period to the house of Grey de Wilton, who
sold it, in Edward IV’s time, to the Carthusians of Sheen, from whom
it was confiscated at the Dissolution and subsequently granted by the
Crown for the purpose which it still serves. Thus Grey’s Inn did not
fall to Lady Frances, although she was presented by her uncle the King
with nearly all the other property owned by the Carthusians in and
around London. It has also been said that the Marquess of Dorset had
a house in Salisbury Place, Fleet Street, but this is another popular
error. This property passed to the _Earls_ of Dorset in 1611 and is
connected, not with Lady Jane and her family, but with many worthies
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Henry, Marquess of Dorset,
had his town residence on the Thames above Whitehall,[21] precisely
where stood, until quite recently, Dorset Place--the name by which the
house was known in Lady Jane’s time. After the execution of Suffolk
it was seized by the Crown and eventually, in the last days of the
sixteenth century, cut up into three separate houses, one of which was
inhabited by John Locke the philosopher, who died in it. By a curious
coincidence, Locke had previously lived at Salisbury Square. Dorset
Place must have been a very large house; we know from contemporary
evidence that it had a fine garden and a broad terrace overlooking the
Thames. Here Lady Jane Grey certainly lived for a good many months
of her life, and here she formed the acquaintance of the Reformers
Bullinger and Ulmer, or ab Ulmis. She may also have lived for a time in
yet another house owned by the Marquess, near the Temple, of which no
trace now exists.
The Dorsets were in the habit, especially in the winter season, of
paying country visits to their numerous relatives--to Princess Mary
at Newhall; to the Lady Frances’ stepmother, Katherine, Duchess of
Suffolk, at Wollaton; to Dorset’s sister, the Lady Audley, at Walden;
to his orphan wards and cousins the Willoughbys, at Tylsey; and to Lady
Jane’s paternal grandmother, the Dowager Marchioness of Dorset, either
at her house at Croydon or at Tylsey, where at one time she presided
over the household of the young Willoughbys.
The entertainment of such important personages must often have been a
doubtful pleasure to hosts of limited means, for they never stirred
abroad without a numerous escort of male and female servants and a
guard of thirty or forty retainers mounted on horseback and armed
to the teeth. Carriages were but little used as yet, and people of
quality had to journey from place to place on horseback, the elderly
ladies being provided with the quaintest but most inconvenient and
perilous of side saddles, while the young girls and children rode
pillion either in front of or behind their nearest male relatives or
some trusty yeoman. In cold or damp weather the ladies and children
and their female attendants travelled in a huge and very heavy covered
vehicle[22] not unlike a Turkish _araba_ or a modern omnibus in shape.
This was furnished with leathern curtains and lined with mattresses and
cushions, and could often contain as many as twelve persons, six on
either seat facing each other. To protect themselves from the cold the
ladies wore cloaks and vizors, or “safeguards.”[23] The first genuine
statute for repairing roads dates only from 1668. Before that the roads
were, like those of modern Turkey, universally execrable, and over them
this ponderous vehicle, with its enormous wheels, moved at a snail’s
pace: it is not surprising that most people preferred the hackney,
even in winter time. Yet in spite of all its inconveniences, this
old-world fashion of travel was not without charm, especially in genial
weather, when the passage of a lordly cavalcade added much to the life
of our highways and verdant lanes and lent to the ever lovely English
landscape a picturesqueness and a gaiety which modern civilisation
can never hope to restore. On the other hand, delicate folk must have
dreaded these excursions, and it is not surprising to learn that on
one occasion, in 1550, after a ten hours’ ride in very bad weather to
Newhall, on a visit to Princess Mary, the Lady Jane was taken very ill,
and kept her room for many days.
The Dissolution of the monasteries and the general troubles of the
Church had no doubt greatly attenuated the quaintness of English life
on the high roads by the time Jane had attained girlhood. No longer did
the Lord Abbot or Prior, with his princely train of ecclesiastics on
their gaily caparisoned horses and mules, pass through the leafy lanes
on their way to pay visits of duty or ceremony. Lady Jane can never
have seen the Abbot of Leicester, for instance, he who attended the
death-bed of Wolsey, go forth with all his monks to pay his respects
to the Prior of the rich house of Ulverston, for both abbeys were
suppressed before she was a year old. She was not familiar with the
begging friars, with their sacks and their jokes; and the pardoner, the
palmer, and the pilgrim had also faded into the near past long before
she began to toddle on the green slopes of Bradgate. Still she must
have often witnessed the procession on Corpus Christi, when her own
native village was enlivened by garlands of flowers and on every house
front hung a linen sheet decked with bunches of bright flowers. She may
even have walked with the rest of the children of high and low degree
in the annual procession of Our Lady on Assumption Day, for throughout
the reign of Henry VIII this festival was observed.
The roads were still full of colour in the summer months, with packmen
and peddlers, troops of armed men--not unfrequently dragging along
between them some poor wretch, tied by the wrists, to his fiery doom
at Leicester or London--with travelling caravans, with itinerant
mountebanks and jugglers, and occasionally with a troop of showmen
hastening to exhibit dancing bears or learned dogs and pigs at some
neighbouring village fair.
The suppression of the monasteries had a disastrous effect on
travelling in Henry VIII’s time, comparable only to what would happen
nowadays if all the first-class hotels in the country were suddenly
closed. The Marquess and Marchioness of Dorset, as they journeyed
with their children from Bradgate to London, must have heartily
regretted the hospitality they had enjoyed in their own young days at
many a lordly abbey and wealthy priory now laid in ruins. The inns
were picturesque enough, but none too luxurious; still the beds were
generally comfortable, and the cooking, according to the taste of the
day, was excellent. Conti, an Italian traveller who visited England
some few years after Henry VIII’s death, was much struck by the
cleanliness of the parlours and the softness of the feather beds he met
with in our country hostelries. The fare, too, he found abundant, and
the wines, “sack,” and beers often of superlative quality--facts to
which Shakespeare has not failed to allude. The innkeepers were great
gainers by the Dissolution, for such rich travellers as did not care to
trouble their peers looked to them for board and lodging now that they
were no longer able to put up at a religious house. We may be sure that
the Dorsets and their people were familiar and welcome guests at all
the chief inns along the roads they travelled.
Aylmer, who became Bishop of London in Elizabeth’s time, is usually
described as Lady Jane’s earliest tutor. This is a patent error,
for Aylmer, who was born in 1521, would have been far too young, in
Jane’s infancy, to be appointed tutor to the children of the Marquess
of Dorset. It is more likely that Dr. Harding, who was chaplain at
Bradgate when Jane was born, had the honour of teaching his patron’s
daughters their alphabet. He was reputed a learned man, and posed
at one time as a staunch Protestant; but he resembled his employers
in having a chameleon-like facility for changing the colour of his
opinions according to the state of the religious barometer in regal
quarters. Under Henry VIII he was a schismatic and a firm believer
in transubstantiation and in the wisdom of invoking saints; when
Edward came to the throne he turned _quasi_-Calvinist. Very early in
Mary’s reign he became, much to the unspeakable horror of Lady Jane,
a penitent Papist. Aylmer, a far more estimable man and a greater
scholar, appeared on the scene at Bradgate as tutor after the accession
of King Edward, when Jane was in her twelfth year and ripe to receive
his learned instruction in theology and classic lore.