III.
LADY JANE GREY.
Henry Grey was the Marquis of Dorset, and married Frances Brandon, the daughter of the Duke of Suffolk and his beautiful wife, Mary, the sister of Henry VIII. This Mary was for three months Queen of France; and when Louis XII. left her a widow, she was again married, almost immediately, to Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. Their child Frances was the mother of Lady Jane Grey, who was born in 1537. There were two other little girls younger than Lady Jane, Katherine and Mary.
All the three children were treated with very great severity, which was not unusual at that time. Lady Jane, perhaps because she was the eldest girl, was expected to be quite perfect in her manners, movements, and in all that she said; to use her own striking expression, to do everything "Even so perfectly as God made the world."
Her parents enforced obedience by threatening and taunting her; and also by literal pinching and nipping, besides still more severe and revolting bodily punishments, which worried and fretted the gentle, noble child, almost past endurance.
However, probably partly owing to all this torture, Lady Jane derived her pleasures from far higher sources than her years warranted.
Her tutor, Mr. Elmer, unlike her parents, was extremely gentle and kind; and when with him the child became perfectly free and happy, learning her lessons with great patience, care, and interest, and enjoying that true cultivation of mind, which is the result of all study that is rendered attractive.