Lady Jane Grey and Her Times

by Ida A. Taylor

To us, who read the laconic entry in the light thrown upon it by future events, it marks the beginning of the end—not only the end of the King’s short life, but the beginning of the drama in which many other actors were to be involved and were to meet their doom. As yet none of the anxious watchers suspected that death had set his broad arrow upon the lad; and in the summer he had so far recovered as to be sending a blithe account to Barnaby Fitzpatrick, then in France, of a progress he had made in the country, and its attendant enjoyments. Whilst his old playfellow had been occupied in killing his enemies, and sore skirmishing and divers assaults, the King had been killing wild beasts, having pleasant journeys and good fare, viewing fair countries, and seeking rather to fortify his own than to spoil another man’s[129]—so he wrote gaily to Fitzpatrick.

Meantime his illness, with the dissolution of Parliament consequent upon it, had probably emptied London; the Suffolk family, with others, returning to their country home. In July Lady Jane was on a visit to her cousin, the Princess Mary, at Newhall; when, once more, an indiscreet speech—a scoff, on this occasion, directed against the outward tokens of that Catholic faith to which Mary was so vehemently loyal—may, repeated to her hostess, have served to irritate her towards the offender against the rules of courtesy and good taste. Under other circumstances, it might have been passed over by the older woman with a smile; but subjected to annoyance and petty persecution by reason of her religion and saddened and embittered by illness and misfortune, the trifling instance of ill-manners on the part of a malapert child of fifteen may have had its share in accentuating a latent antagonism.

In the course of the previous year a controversy had reached its height which had been more or less imminent since the statute enjoining the use of the new Prayer-book had been passed, a work said to have afforded the King—then eleven years of age—“great comfort and quietness of mind.” From that time forward—the decree had become law in 1549—there had been trouble in the royal family, as might be expected when opinion on vital points of religion, the burning question of the day, was widely and violently divergent, and friends and advisers were ever at hand to fan the flame of discord in their own interest or that of their party.

No one could be blind to the fact that the ardent Catholicism of the Princess Mary, next in succession to the throne, constituted a standing menace to the future of religion as recently by law established, and to the durability of the work hastily carried through in creating a new Church on a new basis. Furthermore it was considered that her present attitude of open and determined opposition to the decree passed by Parliament was a cause of scandal in the realm. It was certainly one of annoyance to the King and Council.

Cranmer would probably have liked to keep the peace. An honest man, but no fanatic and holding moderate views, he might have been inclined, having got what he personally wanted, to adopt a policy of conciliation. Affairs had gone well with him; his friends were in power; and, if he failed to inspire the foreign divines and their English disciples with entire trust, it was admitted in 1550 by John Stumpius, of that school, that things had been put upon a right footing. “There is,” he added, “the greatest hope as to religion, for the Archbishop of Canterbury has lately married a wife.”[130]

Matters being thus comfortably arranged, Cranmer, if he had had his way, might have preferred to leave them alone. But what could one man do in the interests of peace, when Churchmen and laity were alike clamouring for war, when the King’s Council were against the concession of any one point at issue, and the King himself had composed, before he was twelve years old, and “sans l’aide de personne vivant,” a treatise directed against the supremacy of the Pope? To the honour of the King’s counsellors, few victims had suffered the supreme penalty during his reign on account of their religious opinions;[131] but Gardiner and Bonner, as well as Bishops Day and Heath, were in prison, and if the lives of the adherents of the ancient faith were spared, no other mitigation of punishment or indulgence was to be expected by them.

Under pressure from the Emperor the principal offender had been at first granted permission to continue the practice of her religion. But when peace with France rendered a rupture with Charles a less formidable contingency than before, it was decided that renewed efforts should be made to compel the Princess Mary to bow to the fiat of King and Council. Love of God and affection for his sister forbade her brother, he declared, to tolerate her obstinacy longer, the intimation being accompanied by an offer of teachers who should instruct her ignorance and refute her errors.

Mary was a match for both King and Council. In an interview with the Lords she told them that her soul was God’s, and that neither would she change her faith nor dissemble her opinions; the Council replying by a chilling intimation that her faith was her own affair, but that she must obey like a subject, not rule like a sovereign. The Princess, however, had a card to play unsuspected by her adversaries. The dispute had taken place on August 18. On the 19th the Council was unpleasantly surprised by a strong measure on the part of the imperial ambassador, in the shape of a declaration of war in case his master’s cousin was not permitted the exercise of her religion.

The Council were in a difficulty. War with the Emperor, at that moment, and without space for preparation, would have been attended with grave inconvenience. On the other hand Edward’s tender conscience had outrun that of his ministers, and had become so difficult to deal with that all the persuasions of the Primate and two other Bishops were needed to convince the boy, honest and zealous in his intolerance, that “to suffer or wink at [sin] for a time might be borne, so all haste possible was used.”

A temporising answer was therefore returned to the imperial ambassador, “all haste possible” being made in removing English stores from Flanders, so that, in case of a rupture, they might not fall into Charles’s hands. This accomplished, fresh and stringent measures were taken to compel the Princess’s obedience; her chief chaplain was committed to the Tower, charged with having celebrated Mass in his mistress’s house, and three of the principal officers of her household were sent to join him there as a punishment for declining to use coercion to prevent a recurrence of the offence.