“Having heard which things,” pursues Lady Jane in her apology, “with infinite grief of spirit, I call to witness those lords who were present that I was so stunned and stupefied that, overcome by sudden and unexpected sorrow, they saw me fall to the ground, weeping very bitterly. And afterwards, declaring to them my insufficiency, I lamented much the death of so noble a prince; and at the same time turned to God, humbly praying and beseeching Him that, if what was given me was in truth and legitimately mine, He would grant me grace and power to govern to His glory and service, and for the good of this realm.”[161]
There is, as Dr. Lingard points out, nothing unnatural in this description of what had occurred; whereas the grandiloquent language attributed to her by some historians is most unlikely to have been used at a moment both of grief and excitement. According to these authorities, not only did she defend Mary’s right, and denounce those who had conspired against it, but delivered a lengthy oration upon the fickleness of fortune. “If she enrich any, it is but to make them the subject of her sport; if she raise others, it is but to pleasure herself with their ruins. What she adored yesterday, to-day is her pastime. And if I now permit her to adorn and crown me, I must to-morrow suffer her to crush and tear me to pieces”—proceeding to cite Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn as examples of those who had, to their own undoing, worn a crown. “If you love me sincerely and in good earnest,” she is made to say, “you will rather wish me a secure and quiet fortune, though mean, than an exalted condition exposed to the wind, and followed by some dismal fall.”
Poor little plaything of the fortune she is represented as anathematising, the designs of those who were striving to exalt her were due to nothing less than a sincere love. Any other puppet would have answered their purpose equally well, so that the excuse of royal blood was in her veins. But Jane, willing or unwilling, was to be made use of for their ends, and it was vain for her to protest.
On the following day, July 10, the Queen-designate was brought, following the ancient custom of Kings on their accession, to the Tower; reaching it at three o’clock, to be received at the gate by Northumberland, and formally presented with the keys in the presence of a great crowd who looked on at the proceedings in sinister silence and gave no sign of rejoicing or cordiality.
Shortly after, the Marquis of Winchester, in his capacity of Treasurer, brought the crown jewels, with the crown itself, “asking me,” wrote Jane, “to put it on my head, to try whether it fitted me or not. Who knows well that, with many excuses, I refused. He not the less insisted that I should boldly take it, and that another should be made that my husband might be crowned with me, which I certainly heard unwillingly, and with infinite grief and displeasure.”[162]
The idea that young Guilford Dudley, with no royal blood to make his claim colourable, was intended to share her dignity appears to have roused his wife, somewhat strangely, to hot indignation. She at least was a Tudor on her mother’s side; but what was Dudley, that he should aspire so high? Had she loved her boy-husband she might have taken a different view of his pretensions; but there is nothing to show that she regarded him with any special affection, and she was disposed to use her authority after a fashion neither he nor his father would tolerate.
At first Guilford, taken by surprise, appeared inclined to yield the point, and in a conversation between the two, when Winchester had withdrawn, he agreed that, were he to be made King, it should be only by Act of Parliament. Thereupon, losing no time in setting the matter on a right footing, Jane sent for the Earls of Arundel and Pembroke, and informed them that, if she were to be Queen, she would be willing to make her husband Duke; “but to make him King I would not consent.”
Though Arundel and Pembroke were probably quite at one with her on the question, that she should show signs of exercising an independent judgment was naturally exasperating to those to whom it was due that she was placed in her present position; and when the Duchess of Northumberland became aware of what was going forward she not only treated Lady Jane, according to her own account, very ill, but stirred up Guilford to do the like; the boy, primed by his mother, declaring that he would in no wise be Duke, but King, and, holding sulkily aloof from his wife that night, so that she was compelled, “as a woman, and loving my husband,” to send the Earls of Arundel and Pembroke to bring him to her, otherwise he would have left in the morning, at his mother’s bidding, for Sion. “Thus,” ends the poor child, “I was in truth deceived by the Duke and Council, and badly treated by my husband and his mother.”
The discussion was premature. Boy and girl were all too soon to learn that it was not to be a question of crowns for either so much as of heads to wear them. Whilst the wrangle had been carried on in the Tower, the first step had been taken towards bringing the disputants to the scaffold. The death of the King had been made public, together with the provisions of his will, and Jane had been proclaimed Queen in two or three parts of the City.
“The tenth day of the same month,” runs the entry in the Grey Friar’s Chronicle, “after seven o’clock at night, was made a proclamation in Cheap by three heralds and one trumpet ... for Jane, the Duke of Suffolk’s daughter, to be Queen of England. But few or none said ‘God save her.’”