Historic Girlhoods, Part One

by Rupert Sargent Holland

The Lady Jane had been trained to absolute obedience by a mother who seemed made of iron. She was forced to study in her own room on days when the rest of the household were out-of-doors hunting or hawking, and was set tasks translating from the Latin or Greek instead of playing in the garden. Once the famous scholar Roger Ascham came to the Duke of Suffolk's home at Bradgate Hall. He met the Duke and his wife with all their friends riding through the park on the way to the hunt. He asked where he would find the Lady Jane, and was told she was in her closet reading. He went into the house and found her seated at a window studying one of the works of the Greek writer Plato. Much surprised Ascham asked her why she gave up the sport of hunting for the sake of study.

The Lady Jane smiled, and answered quite seriously, "I think all their sport in the park is but a shadow to that pleasure I find in Plato. Alas! good folk, they never felt what true pleasure means."

Just two years after Lady Jane had watched the three boys shooting arrows at Westminster she was married to one of them, the tall Guildford Dudley. He was the son of the great Duke of Northumberland, who was already planning to put his son and his son's wife on the English throne after the death of the delicate Edward VI. The wedding was very magnificent, and every one predicted that the little lady and her nineteen-year old husband would be very happy.

Edward, the boy king, died barely six weeks later, when he had not quite reached his sixteenth birthday. Then great events happened to Lady Jane. The Duke of Northumberland and many other lords and ladies went to the house where she was staying and told her that the King had disinherited both his sister the Princess Mary and his sister the Princess Elizabeth, and had ordered that Jane Grey should succeed to the crown.

Then her own father and mother and, after them, all the lords and ladies knelt before her and kissed her hand and called her Queen Jane. She was too surprised at first to make any reply, but a little later she told them all she did not wish to be Queen. They answered that it was not a matter of her choice, but was her destiny. Reserved and obedient as ever, the girl bent her head and allowed her parents to proclaim her Queen.

On July 10, 1553, Lady Jane went from Richmond to the Palace of Westminster in London, where she was dressed in the great robes of state. Then she proceeded by barge down the river Thames to the Tower of London, which was then both a palace and a prison. As she landed and entered the Tower grounds the people hailed her as Queen. Her gown was of green and gold and covered with jewels, and her young husband walked beside her under a canopy, dazzlingly arrayed in a court suit of white and gold.

This quiet little Princess only reigned as Queen of England for nine days. Most of the country rose in arms on behalf of Mary Tudor, Edward VI's oldest sister, and the Duke of Northumberland's army was soon defeated and he was taken prisoner. Jane had no wish to be Queen; she, like the others, thought that Mary was the one entitled to rule. When her father came to her on July nineteenth and told her that her friends had been beaten and that she was no longer the Queen she was really glad. She had been sitting alone in her chair of state in the council chamber when he came to her. He looked at her, deserted by all her court, and his eyes filled with tears. "Come down from that, my child," said he. "That is no place for you." Jane rose and he took her in his arms. As they stood there together they heard borne to them on the summer air loud rejoicing voices crying, "Long live good Queen Mary!"

Lady Jane looked up at her father. "Can I go home?" she asked. He bent his head, but did not answer. He did not know what was in store for them.

In spite of its glitter and magnificence that was a cruel age in England. The Church was split into two parts and each hated the other and did its best to destroy it when it had the power. It was the same with the great nobles. One followed another in ruling the state and each had little mercy for a fallen leader. The great Duke of Northumberland had lost, and now his enemies sent him to the scaffold as he had earlier sent his own rivals.

The new Queen Mary, though she was later to be known as Bloody Mary, did not wish harm to befall Jane Grey. Jane and her husband were kept in the Tower as prisoners and in time might have been freed had not some new rebels in the country taken arms against Queen Mary and threatened to drive her from the throne. Then the statesmen decided that such a rival as Jane Grey was too dangerous, and she was ordered to be tried for treason. She was found guilty, as were her father and her husband Guildford Dudley, and they were all ordered to be beheaded on Tower Hill. There on February 12, 1554, when she was only seventeen, Lady Jane was beheaded for having tried to make herself Queen. As a matter of fact she had never wanted to be Queen, nor acted except as her parents ordered.