The daughter-in-law of the Duke of Northumberland was Lady Jane Grey, who was the granddaughter by her mother’s side of Mary, queen-dowager of France, and sister of Henry VIII. Upon the death of young Edward, the Duke of Northumberland appeared before the gentle Lady Jane,—who was occupied in reading Plato in Greek,—and bowing his haughty knee in the presence of his daughter-in-law, he exclaimed:—
“The king, your cousin and our sovereign lord, has surrendered his soul to God; but before his death, and in order to preserve the kingdom from the infection of Popery, he resolved to set aside his sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, declared illegitimate by an act of Parliament, and he has commanded us to proclaim your Grace as queen and sovereign to succeed him.”
Thereupon the poor, unwilling Lady Jane Grey was proclaimed queen, but dearly did she buy her ten days of sovereign power. Mary was speedily brought to London and declared queen, and for this innocent offence the gentle Lady Jane Grey afterwards met death upon the scaffold.
The reign of Mary was made infamously illustrious by the execution of Lady Jane Grey and many others, and the burning at the stake of the bishops Ridley, Latimer, Cranmer, and many other religious martyrs. So sanguinary was the reign of this queen that she is known in history as Bloody Mary.
LADY JANE GREY
Painting by L. De Heere, National Portrait Gallery, London.
Poor Catharine of Aragon! It were surely sad enough to have borne the many sorrows of her afflicted life, without having her only surviving child stamped with such a name of infamy. Mary was the first queen-regnant of England. The queens of England are classified as queen-regnant, queen-consort, or queen-dowager. The first alone reigns in her own right as sole sovereign of the realm. Of the forty queens of England beginning with Matilda, wife of William the Conqueror, who was the first crowned consort, and ending with Victoria, the present queen of England, five were queens-regnant and thirty-five queens-consort.
Elizabeth Tudor, the daughter of Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn, was born in 1533, on the seventh of September. On the tenth of the same month, the royal babe of three days was christened with great pomp and ceremony.
The walls between Greenwich Palace and the Convent of the Grey Friars were hung with tapestry, and the way strewn with green rushes. The baptismal font was of silver; it was placed in the middle of the church, raised three steps high, the steps being covered with fine cloth, surmounted by a square canopy of crimson satin fringed with gold, enclosed by a rail covered with red ray, and guarded by several gentlemen with aprons and towels about their necks. Between the choir and body of the church a closet was erected with a pan of fire in it, that the child might be dismantled for the ceremony without taking cold. When all these things were ready, the child was brought into the hall of the palace, and the procession proceeded to the Grey Friars’ church. The citizens led the way, two and two; then followed gentlemen, esquires, and chaplains; after them the aldermen, then the mayor by himself, then the privy council in robes, then the gentlemen of the king’s chapel in copes, then barons, earls; then the Earl of Essex, bearing the gilt covered basin; after him the Marquis of Exeter with a taper of virgin wax, followed by the Earl of Dorset bearing the salt, and the Lady Mary of Norfolk, bearing the chrism, which was very rich with pearls and precious stones; lastly, came the Dowager-Duchess of Norfolk, bearing in her arms the royal infant, wrapped in a mantle of purple velvet, having a long train furred with ermine, which was borne by the Countess of Kent, assisted by the Earls of Wiltshire and Derby.