Historic Girlhoods, Part One

by Rupert Sargent Holland

Edward turned around. A few paces behind him a tall man, clad all in black, with long black moustaches and eyes that blazed with anger, had come to a stand. Now he turned to a man with a halberd who stood at his heel. "Drive that rogue away, and scatter the crowd!" he ordered. In a trice pedler and bystanders were on the wing.

The man in black stepped up to the four children. "So your Majesty would roam the streets at will?" said he. "And did your Majesty deign to consider what would happen to this country had one of these scamps taken you at your word and fallen foul of you?"

"I wanted a little holiday, good my lord," pleaded the boy. "'Twas only for an hour."

"And one such hour might have changed the history of England," said the other, who was John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, the most powerful man in the land and guardian of the King. He looked at the others. "And what a shame to draw the Lady Jane Grey into the streets! I should have thought you at least had known better, Guildford."

The fair-haired youth flinched before his father's frown. "'Twas only for a glimpse outside the gardens, your Grace," said he.

"Enough!" commanded the Duke sternly. "We will return to Westminster now. I would ask your Majesty to be so good as to walk with me."

Whereupon he offered his arm to the boy king, and led the little procession back to the gate of the garden by as short a way as he could. But even so word had got about that the boy who was bargaining with the pedler was none other than King Edward, and that the long-bearded man was the Duke of Northumberland. Therefore every one stared from the safe vantage of windows and doors, but was careful to keep out of the way, for the Duke was known to be a man of sudden and bitter wrath.

The garden-gate closed behind the five of them, and the hour of freedom was ended. Edward, looking more like a prisoner than a monarch, was led off to the small room called his cabinet to sign papers and listen to long reports. One of her mother's maids came in search of the Lady Jane, and carried her away to the apartments of the Duchess of Suffolk, where the girl was lectured by her mother the Duchess, and then set to studying a book of sermons.

It was not a happy time for royal children. The boy king, Edward VI, was kept penned in his palace of Westminster and ruled with a rod of iron by the stern Duke; his two half-sisters, the Princess Mary and the Princess Elizabeth, were both kept well guarded in the country and rarely allowed to see their friends; and his cousin, the Lady Jane Grey, who was next in line of succession to the throne, was hardly freer than these other royal children. They were all really only pawns in a great game of chess that was being played by the great noblemen of England, and no one seemed to care in the least whether they were happy or not.

The Lady Jane did not stay long at Westminster Palace. A few days after her outing with the three boys her father and mother took her back with them to their country home. Such a trip was made slowly and with much ceremony. The Duchess, her daughter, and their ladies-in-waiting rode in great lumbering coaches, or chariots, while the Duke and his gentlemen, who often numbered as many as a hundred, rode as a guard of honor. If the weather was fine the journey was pleasant, the cavalcade stopping at noon to picnic under the trees by the road, and arriving at night at some quaint inn, to be welcomed by a cheery host and hostess, leaping wood-fires, glistening pewter, and the fragrance of a great variety of roasted meats. But when the weather was bad and the wheels of the chariots sunk so deep in the mire that the horses could hardly pull them out again, and the snow fell or the wind whistled about the mounted cavaliers, then travel through "merry England" was not so happy an affair, and men and women were glad enough to reach their homes.