[256] The Grey Friars Chronicle says that the bells continued to ring “all night till the next day to None.”
[257] So complete was the popular desertion of Jane’s cause—if so, indeed, it may be called, seeing that there had never been any great enthusiasm for her—that Foxe was able to remark that “God so turned the hearts of the people to her [Mary], and against the Council [who represented Jane], that she overcame them without bloodshed, notwithstanding there was made great expedition against her both by sea and land” (Foxe, Acts and Monuments, vol. vi. p. 388). Jane herself was not disliked, but there would seem to have been little popular goodwill towards the Councillors and especially Northumberland; we have already recorded that the French Ambassador said that toutes ces choses [Mary’s success] sont advenues, plus pour la grande hayne qu’on porte à icelluy duc, que pour l’amitié qu’on a à ladicte royne [Mary].
[258] It is a curious fact that Cranmer was not arrested immediately on the fall of Jane. On 8th August he officiated at a Communion Service at the funeral of Edward VI at Westminster. He seems to have been eventually arrested on quite another charge than the one in the indictment. A certain Dr. Thornden, Bishop of Dover, having said Mass in Canterbury Cathedral, Cranmer published a manifesto against him, and incidentally stated that the rumour that he was willing to celebrate Mass before the Queen was untrue. This document being read in Cheapside, the Archbishop was brought before the Council on 8th September 1553 for “disseminating seditious bills,” and committed to the Tower. Having being tried at the same time as Jane Grey, he remained a prisoner in the Tower until 8th March 1554, when he went to Oxford for the celebrated theological disputation which ended in his fiery doom.
[259] See Machyn, p. 38.
[260] Dr. Nicholas suggested that this Partridge was Queen Mary’s goldsmith, who bore the same name, and seems to have been living in the Tower about this time.
[261] The site of the Royal Garden in the Tower is now covered by modern buildings, military stores, etc., of no particular interest. The “hill within the Tower” may be another term for the Green, for Stowe, in speaking of the prisoners who knelt on the Green to invoke Queen Mary’s pardon at her first entry into the Tower, terms that ominous spot “the hill.” It is strange indeed if Lady Jane took her exercise on the place where she afterwards died!
[262] This lady was a close connection of the Howards, and probably a grand-niece of Agnes, Duchess of Norfolk, by birth a Tylney.
[263] A recent writer on the life of Lady Jane Grey states, but gives no authority, that she was released from the Tower immediately after her deposition, and retired to Sion House: but there is no contemporary evidence whatever in substantiation of this statement.
[264] This William Paulet, Lord St. John, Marquis of Winchester, was in many ways an extraordinary creature. After the attainder and execution of Sir Thomas More, he was granted the beautiful mansion of Chelsea, and Edward VI, when Paulet was created Marquis of Winchester in 1551, gave him in fee both that property and all other possessions in Chelsea and Kensington forfeited by More. Next we hear of him as Great-Master of the Household to Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth. In the fourth year of Edward VI’s reign he was made Lord Treasurer of England, in which capacity he appealed to Lady Jane for the jewels left in her charge at her accession. His religious changes were remarkable; in Edward’s time he was a bitter anti-Papist; in Mary’s, an enthusiastic Catholic; and under Elizabeth we find him a staunch supporter of the Church by law established. Asked how it was he managed to avoid a downfall amidst so many changes, he is said to have answered: “By being a willow and not an oak!” He died in 1572 in his ninety-seventh year, having lived to see over a hundred persons descend from him; and is buried in Chelsea parish church, where he had attended Mass in Henry VIII’s time; an “evangelical” service under Edward VI; Mass again in Mary’s day; and the English Morning Prayer in Elizabeth’s!
[265] British Museum, Harleian Collection, No. 523, 46.