Proceeding up the stairs she seated herself, and being pressed by the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Thomas Brydges, to rise, she answered:
"Better sit here than on a worse place: for God knoweth and not I, whither you will bring me."
She lived to be Queen of England, and the mercy which was shown to her she refused to many a poor wretch, whose bones Elizabeth allowed to be gnawed clean and bare in the "Rat's Dungeon."
One more scene of horror.
LADY JANE GREY ON THE SCAFFOLD.
As Lady Jane Gray passed out of the Tower by the postern gate to Tower Hill, she beheld the headless corpse of her husband (who had just been decapitated) carried out on a cart to be buried in the Tower chapel of St. Peter-ad-Vincula.
"All, Guilford, Guilford," said she, "the ante-past is not so bitter that thou hast tasted, and which I soon shall taste, as to make my flesh tremble; it is nothing compared to the feast of which we shall this day partake in Heaven."
Then she passed on to the scaffold.
When on the scaffold she turned to the crowd and said:
"And now good people all, while I am yet alive, I pray of you to assist me with your prayers."