Another composition is extant, said to belong to this last period, and showing the writer, it may be, in a more pathetic light than that thrown upon her by disputes with controversialists, or exhortations to those she left behind. This is a prayer, exhibiting not so much the premature woman as the child—a child, it is true, facing death with steadfast faith and resignation, but nevertheless frightened, unhappy, “unquieted with troubles, wrapped in cares, overwhelmed with miseries, vexed with temptations ... craving Thy mercy and help, without the which so little hope of deliverance is left that I may utterly despair of my liberty.”[218]
Of liberty it was, in truth, time to despair. It is said that for two hours on this last night two bishops, with other divines, made a vain attempt to accomplish the conversion that Feckenham had failed to effect[218]; after which we may hope that, worn out and exhausted, the prisoner forgot her troubles in sleep. And so the night passed away.
In another part of the great fortress young Guilford Dudley was also preparing for the end. It is said[219] that, “desiring to give his wife the last kisses and embraces,” he begged for an interview, but that she refused the request—not disallowed by Mary—replying that, could sight have given souls comfort, she would have been very willing; that since it would only increase the misery of each, and bring greater grief, it would be best to put off their meeting, since soon they would see each other in another place and live joined for ever by an indissoluble tie. If the story is true, there is something a little inhuman—or perhaps only belonging to the coldness of a child—in the wisdom which, at that moment, could weigh and balance the disadvantages of a leave-taking and refuse it. It is not, however, out of character.
It had been at first intended that the two should suffer together on Tower Hill. Fearing the effect upon the populace, the order was cancelled, and it was decided that, whilst Guilford’s execution should take place as originally arranged, Lady Jane should meet her death within the precincts of the Tower itself. As the lad, led to his doom, passed below her window, the two looked upon each other for the last time. Young Dudley met the end bravely. Taking Sir Anthony Browne, John Throckmorton and others by the hand, he asked their prayers; then, attended by no priest or minister, he knelt to pray, “holding up his eyes and hands to God many times,” before the executioner did his work and he went to join the father who was responsible for his fate, “bewailed with lamentable tears” even by those of the spectators who till that day had never seen him.[220]
A ghastly incident, variously recorded, followed. His body thrown into a cart, and his head wrapped in a cloth, he was brought into the Tower chapel, where Lady Jane, having probably left her apartments on her way to her own place of execution, encountered the cart and those in charge of it, seeing the husband who had passed beneath her window a few minutes earlier living, taken from it a corpse—a sight to her, says the chronicler, no less than death. It “a little startled her,” observes another narrator, “and many tears were seen to descend and fall upon her cheeks, which her silence and great heart soon dried.”[221] According to a third account, she addressed the dead.
“Oh, Guilford, Guilford,” she is made to exclaim, “the antepast that you have tasted and I shall soon taste, is not so bitter as to make my flesh tremble; for all this is nothing to the feast that you and I shall partake this day in Paradise.”
It had been ten o’clock when Guilford had left his prison. By the time that the first act of the tragedy was over, a scaffold had been erected upon the green over against the White Tower, and led by the Lieutenant, the chief victim was brought forth, “her countenance nothing abashed, neither her eyes moisted with tears,”[222] as she moved onwards, a book in her hand—the same she gave afterwards to Sir John Bridges—from which she prayed all the way until the scaffold was reached. With her were her two gentlewomen, Elizabeth Tylney and Eleyn, who both “wonderfully wept” as they accompanied their mistress; and Feckenham was also present, her kindly opponent, perhaps even now hoping against hope that success might crown his efforts. As the two stood together at the place of execution, she took him by the hand, and, embracing him, bade him leave her—desiring, it may be, to spare him the sight of what was to follow. Might God our Lord, she said, give him all his desires; she was grateful for his company, although it had given her more disquiet than, now, the fear of death.[223]
Like most of her fellow-sufferers she had come prepared with a speech. That her sentence was lawful she admitted, but reasserted the absence on her part of any desire for her elevation to the throne, “touching the procurement and desire thereof by me or my half, I do wash my hands in innocency before God and the face of you, good Christian people, this day,” and therewith she wrung her hands, in which she had her book; proceeding to make confession of the faith in which she died, owning that she had neglected the word of God, and loved herself and the world, and thereby merited her punishment. “And yet I thank God that He hath thus given me time and respite to repent. And now, good people, while I am alive, I pray you to assist me with your prayers.”
After this, kneeling down, she turned to Feckenham, who had not availed himself of her suggestion that he should leave her.
“Shall I say this psalm?” she asked him; and on his assenting repeated the Miserere in English, before, rising again, she prepared for the end, giving her book to Bridges, brother to the Lieutenant, who stood by, and her gloves and handkerchief to one of her ladies. With her own hands she untied her gown, rejecting the aid of the executioner, and, turning to her maids for assistance, removed her “frose paast”—probably some kind of head-dress—let down her hair, throwing it over her eyes, and knit a “fair handkerchief” about them.