Lady Jane Grey and Her Times

by Ida A. Taylor

The attitude ascribed to Queen Mary’s chaplain would seem more likely to be due to imagination than to fact. It appears, however, that a species of “catechising argument” did in truth take place in the presence of witnesses, an account of which was set down in writing, and received Lady Jane’s signature. The only result of the discussion was the strengthening rather than shaking of her convictions; and though it was not until she stood upon the scaffold that the last farewells of the disputants were taken, Feckenham must soon have been aware that his efforts would be made in vain. It may be hoped that to the imagination of the chronicler is again to be ascribed the manner of the parting of the two on this first occasion, when, feeling himself to be worsted in argument, Feckenham is said to have “grown into a little choler,” and used language unsuitable to his gravity, received with smiles and patience by the cause of his irritation. It is further stated that to a final speech of her visitor, to the effect that he was sorry for her obstinacy, and was certain that they would meet no more, Lady Jane, not altogether with the meekness attributed to her, retorted that his words were indeed most true, since, unless he should repent, he was in a sad and desperate case, and she prayed God that, as He had given him His great gift of utterance, He might open his heart to His truth.[217]

So the days passed, and the fatal one was at hand. On Saturday, February 10, the Duke of Suffolk, with his brother, Lord John Grey, had been brought prisoners to the Tower; but it does not appear that any meeting took place between father and daughter, and Lady Jane’s leave-taking was made in writing; sentences of farewell being inscribed by her and her husband in a manual of prayers belonging, as is conjectured, to the Lieutenant of the Tower, and used by her on the scaffold. In this volume three sentences were written.

“Your loving and obedient son,” wrote Guilford, “wisheth unto your Grace long life in this world, with as much joy and comfort as ever I wished to myself, and in the world to come joy everlasting.

G. Duddeley.”

Jane’s farewell followed:

“The Lord comfort your Grace, and that in His word wherein all creatures only are to be comforted. And though it has pleased God to take away two of your children, yet think not, I most humbly beseech your Grace, that you have lost them, but trust that we, by leaving this mortal life, have won an immortal life. And I, for my part, as I have honoured your Grace in this life, will pray for you in another life.

“Your Grace’s humble daughter,
“Jane Duddeley.”

The same book bears another inscription addressed to the Lieutenant of the Tower, Bridges, apparently at his own request.

“Forasmuch as you have desired,” Jane wrote, “so simple a woman to write in so worthy a book, good Master Lieutenant, therefore I shall as a friend desire you, and as a Christian require you, to call upon God to incline your heart to His laws, to quicken you in His way, and not to take the word of truth utterly out of your mouth. Live still to die, that by death you may purchase eternal life, and remember the end of Methuselah, who, as we read in the Scriptures, was the longest liver that was of a man, died at the last; for as the preacher saith, there is a time to be born and a time to die, and the day of death is better than the day of our birth. Yours, as the Lord knoweth, as a friend,

“Jane Duddeley.”

Such an admonition to the Lieutenant, written when death was very near, is characteristic. It was ever Lady Jane’s custom to use her pen, and the habit clung to her. Tradition asserts that three sentences, the one in Greek, the other in Latin, and the third in English, were written by her in yet another book; and though it has been argued that she would have been in no condition to compose epigrams in the dead languages at a moment when death was staring her in the face, there is nothing improbable in the story, unsupported as it is by evidence. As a man lives, he dies; and Jane had been a scholar and a moralist from her cradle.

“If justice dwells in my body”—thus the sentences are said to have run—“my soul will receive it from the mercy of God.—Death will pay the penalty of my fault, but my soul will be justified before the Face of God.—If my fault merited chastisement, my youth, at least, and my imprudence, deserved excuse. God and posterity will show me grace.”

A letter of exhortation addressed to her sister Katherine likewise remains, another proof of her desire to impress upon others the lessons life had taught her. Having been reading, the night before her death, in “a fair New Testament in Greek,” she found, on closing it, some few leaves of clean paper, unwritten, at the end of the volume, and made use of them to convey her final farewell to the sister she was leaving behind, giving it in charge to her servant as a token of love and remembrance. As might have been expected, with the thought of the morrow before her, death was the recurrent burden of her theme. “Live still to die,” she told little Katherine, as she had told the Lieutenant of the Tower, “and that by death you may purchase eternal life; and trust not that the tenderness of your age shall lengthen your life ... for as soon will the Lord be glorified in the young as in the old.... Once more let me entreat thee to learn to die.... Desire with St. Paul to be dissolved and to be with Christ, with whom even in death there is life.... As touching my death, rejoice as I do ... that I shall be delivered of this corruption and put on incorruption; for I am assured that I shall, for losing of a mortal life, win one that is immortal, joyful, and everlasting.”