CHAPTER XX
THE SUPREME HOUR!
To Dr. Feckenham Mary assigned the melancholy task of announcing her hopeless position to Jane Grey. This duty he performed on 8th February, the day before that originally fixed for the execution, at the same time exhorting her to prepare for death. The little victim of great iniquity is said to have learnt her doom with Christian resignation and princely dignity. She did not fall into a consternation as when her accession to the throne was announced to her at Sion, but listened, dry-eyed, to the worthy prelate’s awful words. The call to another world was more welcome, doubtless, to her weary spirit than had been that other summons to an earthly throne. Her life, she told Feckenham, had long been a living death, and the sooner it ended the better—“I am ready to receive death patiently,” she said, “and in whatever manner it may please the Queen to appoint. True, my flesh shudders, as is natural to frail humanity, at what I have to go through, but I fervently hope the spirit will spring rejoicingly into the presence of the Eternal God, Who will receive it.” She pleaded for her husband; “he was innocent,” she said, “and had only obeyed his father in all things.” Finally, she expressed her desire to see a minister of her own religion, and prayed that during her last hours she might not be troubled by the presence of any Roman Catholic priest or prelate, since “she had no time for that.” Mary, however, was resolved that no minister of the Reformed religion should visit her cousin, but she had made a judicious choice in sending Dr. Feckenham, a liberal-minded man of the gentlest manners,[295] to minister spiritual consolation to her. Though the numerous pictures representing the tragic scene of Jane’s death generally depict Feckenham as a dignified old man with a long white beard, he was in reality a short, stout, “comfortable-looking” elderly gentleman, with a close-shaven red face, and twinkling eyes. A devout Catholic, he desired, no doubt, to convert his illustrious prisoner to his own faith, and even Pollino, who must have been well acquainted with all that the Catholic party had to say on the subject, says that Lady Jane and Feckenham held long conversations on the subject of the Eucharist, one on which Lady Jane held distinctly Protestant views: but there is no evidence that, as some historians allege, she ever engaged in a discussion on matters of faith and doctrines with Feckenham in a hall of the Tower set apart for that purpose, and in the presence of an assembly of learned Catholic prelates and theologians. We may be sure that any controversy between Lady Jane Grey and Dr. Feckenham, either in the last week of her life or at any other time, took place in the privacy of her own apartment. Florio, the Protestant Italian historian, who has written a life of Lady Jane Grey—concocted out of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and other similar works,—prints at the end of his book a dialogue between Lady Jane and Feckenham on the subject of Transubstantiation, and this conversation is also given in Harris Nicholas’s Literary Remains of Lady Jane Grey. This is most likely a report dictated by some one to whom Jane communicated the substance of what passed between herself and the Benedictine. Dr. Feckenham has left his own account of what took place, and admits that in the course of several lengthy conversations with Jane on matters of dogma, by means of which he had hoped to convert her to Catholicism, he had been deeply impressed by her gentleness, her dignity, and her evident sincerity.
Feckenham obtained the respite of three days, generally given in such cases, and the execution was postponed until Monday, 12th February. On his informing Jane of what he had done, she is said to have replied, “Alas, sir! I did not intend what I said to be reported to the Queen, nor would I have you think me covetous for a moment’s longer life; for I am only solicitous for a better life in Eternity, and will gladly suffer death, since it is her Majesty’s pleasure.” Feckenham, it appears, had misunderstood the phrase, “she had no time for that,” as meaning that Jane might be disposed to listen to his religious teaching if allowed more time for its consideration; and had therefore requested the respite granted by the Council. But she proved no more amenable to the worthy priest’s arguments on the last day than on the first.
Lord Guildford Dudley, unlike his stoical wife, received his sentence with a flood of tears. Of all the victims of this terrible tragedy, he was, in truth, the most inoffensive. The poor lad had done no harm, except to obey the instructions of his father and mother—especially in respect to his foolish attempt at Brussels, which was probably the real cause of his condemnation—and there was nothing, now that his father was removed, to be gained by putting him to death. Except by his marriage, he was not connected with the royal family; he was therefore not in the line of succession, and his liberation would not have involved the slightest danger to Queen Mary or her throne. His execution may be described as a useless murder, even a darker stain on Mary Tudor and her advisers—the Emperor Charles V, his agent Simon Renard, and the Council—than that of Lady Jane Grey, who certainly might have been used again, in the near future, as the tool of some unscrupulous statesman. Mary, as we have said, was herself perfectly willing, almost to the last, to spare both Guildford and his wife, but their chance of pardon was ruined by the Duke of Suffolk’s abortive rebellion. Had he obeyed Mary’s orders, put himself at the head of her troops, remained loyal, and defeated the rising in the Midlands, as Huntingdon eventually did, his children’s lives would doubtless have been spared by the grateful sovereign.
The original order, as we have seen, was that Jane and Guildford should perish together on Tower Hill. Harris Nicholas seems to think the plan was abandoned because the Council dreaded the effect of the prisoners’ youth and innocence on the populace. This view has been adopted by other writers, but the real motive of the change was a matter of political etiquette. Lady Jane was of the Blood Royal, and therefore entitled to be executed within the precincts of the Tower, on the Green where the two Queens of Henry VIII and the old Plantagenet Princess, Margaret of Salisbury, had been beheaded. Guildford, on the other hand, on the paternal side of even plebeian origin, could only be decapitated without the Tower.
On the evening of the day originally fixed for the execution (Friday, 9th February), Jane wrote the following letter to her father, in which she herself holds him responsible, through his rashness, for her death:—
“Father,—Although it hath pleased God to hasten my death by you, by whom my life should rather have been lengthened, yet can I patiently take it, that I yield God more hearty thanks for shortening my woeful days, than if all the world had been given into my possession, with life lengthened at my own will. And albeit I am well assured of your impatient dolours, redoubled many ways, both in bewailing your own woe, and especially, as I am informed, my woeful estate; yet, my dear father, if I may without offence rejoice in my own mishap, herein I may account myself blessed, that washing my hands with the innocence of my fact, my guiltless blood may cry before the Lord, ‘Mercy to the innocent.’ And yet, though I must needs acknowledge that being constrained, and, as you know well enough, continually assayed; yet, in taking [the Crown] upon me, I seemed to consent, and therein grievously offended the Queen and her laws, yet do I assuredly trust, that this my offence towards God is so much the less, in that being in so royal estate as I was, my enforced honour never mixed with mine innocent heart. And thus, good father, I have opened unto you the state in which I presently stand, my death at hand, although to you it may seem woeful, yet to me there is nothing that can be more welcome than from this vale of misery to aspire to that heavenly throne of all joy and pleasure, with Christ our Saviour: in whose steadfast faith (if it be lawful for the daughter so to write to the father), the Lord that hitherto hath strengthened you, so continue to keep you, that at last we may meet in heaven with the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.—I am, Your obedient Daughter till death,
Jane Dudley”
Jane probably spent Sunday (10th February) in prayer and meditation; or perhaps as an unwilling listener to Feckenham’s exhortations. The next day Gardiner, preaching before the Queen, then at Whitehall, blamed her for what he considered her leniency. He “axed a boon of the Queen’s Highness, that like as she had before extended her mercy particularly and privately, so through her lenity and gentleness much conspiracy and open rebellion was grown, according to the proverb nimia familiaritas parit contemptum; which he brought then 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.”[296]
Some communication seems to have reached Jane from her ruined home on this Sunday, for in consequence of the transports of grief into which her sister, Lady Katherine, was plunged, she wrote that evening the following beautiful letter, on the blank pages at the end of her Greek Testament:—