A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Grey, Lady Jane
GREY, LADY JANE,
Was an illustrious personage of the blood-royal of England by both parents; her grandmother on her father's side, Henry Grey, Marquis of Dorset, being queen-consort to Edward the Fourth; and her grandmother on her mother's. Lady Frances Brandon, being daughter to Henry the Seventh, and queen-dowager of France. Lady Jane was born in 1537, at Bradgate, her father's seat in Leicestershire, and very early gave astonishing proofs of her talents. She was considered superior to Edward the Sixth, who was about the same age, and was thought a prodigy. She embroidered and wrote beautifully, played admirably on various instruments, and accompanied them with a voice exquisitely sweet and well cultivated. These, however, were only inferior ornaments in her character; and, far from priding herself upon them, from her parents' severity in exacting them, they became a source of grief rather than pleasure.
Her father had himself an inclination to letters, and was a great patron of the learned. He had two chaplains, Harding and Aylmer, both men of distinguished learning, whom he employed as tutors to his daughter; and under whose instructions she made such proficiency as amazed them both. Her own language she spoke and wrote with the utmost accuracy; and she not only understood the French, Italian, Latin, and Greek, but spoke and wrote them with the greatest freedom. She was also versed in Hebrew, Chaldee, and Arabic; and all this while a mere child. She had a sedateness of temper, a quickness of apprehension, and a solidity of judgment, that enabled her to understand the sciences; so that she thought, spoke, and reasoned, upon subjects of the greatest importance, in a manner that surprised all. To these endowments were added the loveliest graces of woman, mildness, humility, and modesty. Her natural fondness for literature was much increased by the severity of her parents in the feminine part of her education; for, by the gentleness of her tutor, Aylmer, in the fulfilment of his duties, he won her to love what he taught. Her alliance to the crown, and the great esteem in which the Marquis of Dorset, her father, was held by both Henry the Eighth and Edward the Sixth, unavoidably brought her sometimes to court; and she received many marks of Edward's favour. Yet she generally continued in the country at Bradgate.
It was there that the famous Roger Ascham was on a visit in August, 1550; and all the rest of the family being out hunting, he went to the apartment of the Lady Jane, and found her reading Plato's Phaedon, in the original Greek. Astonished at this, he asked her why she lost such pastime as there must needs be in the park; at which she answered, smiling, "I wist 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."
In 1553, Lady Jane was married to Lord Guildford Dudley; and shortly afterwards reluctantly accepted the crown, which the intrigues of her father and father-in-law had placed on her head. But ascending the throne was only a step on her way to the scaffold. Nine days only did she wear the crown; the nation acknowledged the right of Mary, eldest daughter of Henry the Eighth; and the Lady Jane and her husband were sent to the Tower. They had committed a crime against the state, in accepting the sovereignty which by birth belonged to Mary; but as she had suffered no loss, and the offenders were so young, and had been persuaded by others, it was hoped their lives would be spared. But the boon of mercy was not for them; and in February, 1665, they were brought to the block.
Although the queen, seeming to desire the salvation of her victims, sent the most learned and subtle priests to exhort the Lady Jane to a change of faith, she defended her opinions with ability and resolution; and her part in this conference is highly commended by Bishop Burnet, and other ecclesiastical historians. She wrote several letters in her confinement, one to her sister, in Greek, exhorting her to maintain, in every trial, that fortitude and perseverance of which she trusted to give her the example. Another one was addressed to her father's chaplain, Dr. Harding, who had apostatized from his religion, imploring him to prefer his conscience to his safety. She also wrote four epistles in Latin, two of them the night before her execution, on the blank leaves of her Greek Testament.
She refused to consent to her husband's entreaties for a last interview, alleging that the tenderness of their parting would overcome their fortitude, and that they should soon meet where no disappointment, misfortune, or death could disturb them. As she beheld from her window her husband led to execution, having given him a token of her remembrance, she calmly awaited her own fate. On her way to the scaffold, she was met by the cart that bore the lifeless body of Lord Guildford; this forced from her some tears, that were quickly dried by the report of his courage and constancy.
Sir John Gage, constable of the Tower, entreated her to give him some token of remembrance, and she presented him with her tablets, in which she had just written three sentences in Greek, Latin, and English, suggested by seeing the dead body of her husband; importing that he, whom human laws had condemned, would be saved by Divine mercy; and that if her own fault deserved punishment, it would, she trusted, be extenuated by her youth and inexperience. At the scaffold, without breathing a complaint against the severity of her punishment, she attested her innocence of intentional wrong; her crime, she said, had not been ambition, but a want of firmness in resisting the instances of those whom she had been accustomed to revere and obey. She concluded her remarks with a solemn profession of her faith, and devoutly repeated a psalm in English.
The executioner knelt to implore her forgiveness, which she granted readily, adding, "I pray you despatch me quickly." Then kneeling, and saying, "Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit," she meekly submitted to her fate. She was hardly seventeen at the time of her death.