That afternoon had been fixed for the christening of a child born to Underhyll—nicknamed, on account of his religious zeal, the Hot-Gospeller—on duty as a Gentleman Pensioner at the Tower. The baby was highly favoured, since the Duke of Suffolk and the Earl of Pembroke were to be his sponsors by proxy and Lady Jane had signified her intention of acting as godmother, calling the infant Guilford, after her husband.
Lady Throckmorton, wife to Sir Nicholas, in attendance on Jane,[176] had been chosen to represent her mistress at the ceremony; and, on quitting the Tower for that purpose, had waited on the Queen and received her usual orders, according to royal etiquette. Upon her return, the baptism over, she found all—like a transformation scene at the theatre—changed. The canopy of state had been removed from Lady Jane’s apartment, and Lady Jane herself, divested of her sovereignty, was practically a prisoner.[177]
During the absence of the Lady-in-waiting, Suffolk, his part on Cheapside played, had returned to the Tower, to set matters there on their new footing. Informing his daughter, as one imagines with the roughness of a man smarting under defeat, that since her cousin had been elected Queen by the Council, and had been proclaimed, it was time she should do her honour, he removed the insignia of royalty. The rank she had possessed not being her own she must make a virtue of necessity, and bow to that fortune of which she had been the sport and victim.
Rising to the occasion, Jane, as might be expected, made fitting reply. The words now spoken by her father were, she answered, more becoming and praiseworthy than those he had uttered on putting her in possession of the crown; proceeding to moralise the matter after a fashion that can only be attributed to the imaginative faculties of the narrator of the scene. This done she, more naturally, withdrew into her private apartments with her mother and other ladies and gave way, in spite of her firmness, to “infinite sorrow.”[178] A further scene narrated by the Italian, Florio, on the authority of the Duke of Suffolk’s chaplain—“as her father’s learned and pious preacher told me”—represents her as confronted with some at least of the men who had betrayed her, and as reproaching them bitterly with their duplicity. Without vouching for the accuracy of the speech reported, touches are discernible in it—evidences of a very human wrath, indignation, and scorn—unlikely to have been invented by men whose habit it was to describe the speaker as the living embodiment of meekness and patience, and it may be that the evangelist’s account is founded on fact.
“Therefore, O Lords of the Council,” she is made to say, “there is found in men of illustrious blood, and as much esteemed by the world as you, double dealing, deceit, fickleness, and ruin to the innocent. Which of you can boast with truth that I besought him to make me a Queen? Where are the gifts I promised or gave on this account? Did ye not of your own accord drag me from my literary studies, and, depriving me of liberty, place me in this rank? Alas! double-faced men, how well I see, though late, to what end ye set me in this royal dignity! How will ye escape the infamy following upon such deeds?” How were broken promises, violated oaths, to be coloured and disguised? Who would trust them for the future? “But be of good cheer, with the same measure it shall be meted to you again.”
With this prophecy of retribution to follow she ended. “For a good space she was silent; and they departed, full of shame, leaving her well guarded.”[179]
Her attendants were not long in availing themselves of the permission accorded them to go where they pleased. The service of Lady Jane was, from an honour, become a perilous duty; and they went to their own homes, leaving their nine-days’ mistress “burdened with thought and woe.” The following morning she too quitted the Tower, returning to Sion House. It was no more than ten days since she had been brought from it in royal state.