CHAPTER XXIII
1554 Lady Jane and her husband doomed—Her dispute with Feckenham—Gardiner’s sermon—Farewell messages—Last hours—Guilford Dudley’s execution—Lady Jane’s death.
Those anxious days when the fortunes of England and its Queen appeared once more to hang in the balance had sealed the fate of the prisoners in the Tower. They must die. Mary had been warned that the clemency shown to her little cousin was unwise; she had struggled against the counsellors who had striven to convince her that the usurper, so long as she lived, was a menace to the peace of the realm, and the stability of her government. Their warnings had been justified, and Jane must pay the penalty.
What was to be done was to be done quickly. It was perhaps feared that, with leisure to reconsider the matter, the Queen would even now retract her consent to deliver up the victim; nor was there any excuse for delay. The boy and girl already lay under sentence of death; it was only necessary to carry it into effect. So far as this life was concerned Lady Jane’s doom was fixed.
It remained to take thought for her soul. With death staring them in the face, many had been lately found willing to conform their faith to the Queen’s. Why should it not be so with the Queen’s cousin? To compass this object Mary’s chaplain, Dr. Feckenham, the new Dean of St. Paul’s, was sent to plead with the captive, and to strive to reconcile her with God and the Church before she went hence.
The ambassador was well chosen. Learned and devout, he had been bred a Benedictine, and had, under Henry VIII., suffered imprisonment on account of his faith; until Sir Philip Hoby, in his own words, “borrowed him of the Tower.” Since then it had been his habit to hold disputations, “earnest yet modest,” according to Fuller, in defence of his religion, and was honoured by Mary and Elizabeth alike. This was the man to whom was entrusted the difficult task of convincing Lady Jane of her errors. It was scarcely to be anticipated that he would succeed, but he seems to have performed the thankless duty laid upon him with gentleness and good feeling.
Arrived at the Tower—his whilom place of captivity—Feckenham, after some preliminary courtesies, disclosed the object of his visit, adding certain persuasive arguments, to which the prisoner made reply that he had delayed too long, and time was over-short to allow her to give attention to these matters. The answer, in whatever sense it was meant, was sufficiently ambiguous to afford a sanguine and anxious man grounds for hope that, with leisure for discussion, he might win a favourable hearing; considering his proposed convert “in very good dispositions,” he went to seek the Queen; and, describing his interview, had no difficulty in inducing her to grant a three-days’ reprieve. Friday, February 9, had been at first appointed for the execution, and when—for reasons undisclosed to the public—it was deferred until the following Monday, the change may have given rise in some quarters to expectations unwarranted by the event. There were those determined to hold Mary to her purpose.
On Sunday, the 11th, Gardiner preached before the Queen, dealing first with the doctrine of free will; secondly, with the institution of Lent; thirdly, with the necessity of good works; and fourthly, with Protestant errors. After which he came to the practical question in all men’s minds. He asked a boon of the Queen’s Highness—that, like as she had beforetime extended her mercy, particularly and privately, so through her lenity and gentleness much conspiracy and open rebellion were grown, according to the proverb, nimia familiaritas parit contemptum, which he brought in for the purpose that she would now be merciful to the body of the Commonwealth and conservation thereof, which could not be unless the rotten and hurtful members thereof were cut off and consumed. “And thus he ended soon after, whereby all the audience did gather there should shortly follow sharp and cruel execution.”[214]
Whether or not Gardiner’s discourse was directed against a tendency to waver in her intention on the part of his mistress, it was proved that there was nothing in that direction to be apprehended. Meantime, armed with the boon he had obtained, Feckenham had returned to the Tower, to beg the captive to make use of the reprieve for the salvation of her soul.
Lady Jane’s reply was not encouraging. She had not, she told him, intended her words to be repeated to the Queen; she had already abandoned worldly things, had no thought of fear, and was prepared to meet death patiently in whatsoever form might please the Queen. To the flesh it was indeed painful, but her soul was joyful at quitting this darkness, and rising, as by God’s mercy she hoped to rise, to eternal light.[215]
It was not to be expected that the priest, a good man, full of zeal for his religion and of solicitude for the dying culprit, would consent to relinquish, without an effort, the attempt to utilise the respite he had been granted. Of what followed accounts vary, according to the theological proclivities of the narrator of the scene, an early pamphlet asserting that Feckenham, finding himself, in reasoning, “in all holy gifts so short of [Lady Jane’s] excellence that he acknowledged himself fitter to be her disciple than teacher, thereupon humbly besought her to deliver unto him some brief sum of her faith which he might hereafter keep, and as a faithful witness publish to the world; to which she willingly condescended, and bade him boldly question her in what points of religion soever it pleased him.”[216]