The carved escutcheon of this Earl, quartered as above, with crescent for difference, and encircled by the Garter, was found among the ruins of the Cluniac Priory of St. Mary Magdalene at Barnstaple, and is now preserved in a modern residence built on the site. The knot and crescent are found on the churches of Axminster, Ottery St. Mary, and Seaton, and will be further referred to.
We do not hear much more of the Marchioness, but she evidently stood very high in the Court of Henry VIII., for in September, 1533, at the christening of the Princess, afterward Queen Elizabeth, daughter of Queen Anne Boleyn, at Greenwich, Hall relates that "the old Marchioness of Dorset, widow," was one of the child's god-mothers, and in the grand procession the Marquis her son, bore the Salt, and she afterward made the infant-princess "a present of three gilt bowls pounced with a cover."
By her will, dated 6 March, 1528-9, 19 Henry VIII., she "bequeathed her body to be buried in the Chapel of Astley, in the tomb where her husband the late Lord Marquis lay, and a thousand masses to be said for her soul. That a goodly tomb should be made in the Chapel of Astley over the Lord Marquis her husband, and another for herself, and two priests daily to sing in the said Chapel of Astley by the space of eighty years, to pray for the soul of the said Lord Marquis and her own soul."
The exact date of her death does not appear to have been ascertained, but probably before, or by 1530, when she would have been about seventy years old.
With the death of Cicely Bonville—last of her name and race—the main personal interest of our little narrative ceases, and it is not intended, in bringing our story to its conclusion, to give a long detailed account of the two next succeeding generations of the Greys, which belongs rather to national history.
Thomas Grey, eldest son of Thomas Grey, first Marquis of Dorset, and Cicely Bonville, was summoned to Parliament in 1509, as Lord Ferrers of Groby, and in 1511, as the second Marquis of Dorset. He married first Eleanor, daughter of Oliver, Lord St. John, by whom he had no issue, and secondly Margaret, daughter of Sir Robert Wotton of Bocton in Kent, by whom he had Henry, his successor;—John, ancestor of the Earls of Stamford;—Elizabeth, married to Thomas, Lord Audley of Walden, K.G., Lord Chancellor to Henry VIII., who sat as High Steward at the trial of Henry Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter, and who died in 1544;—Catherine, to Henry Fitzalan, eighteenth and last Earl of Arundel of that family, Lord High Steward to Queen Elizabeth, and K.G., who died 1579;—and Anne, to Henry Willoughby of Wollaton, Nottinghamshire.
He appears to have enjoyed the favour and confidence of that dangerously uncertain despot Henry VIII., and in 1512 was constituted Commander-in-Chief of the expedition sent into Spain, designed as an augmentation of the forces of the Emperor Ferdinand in the invasion of Guienne, and with him were associated the second Lord Willoughby de Broke and other noblemen. In 1514, he was with Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, in France at the jousts of St. Denis, and acquired considerable renown; as afterward at the meeting of Henry and Francis in 1521 on the Field of the Cloth of Gold. He was one of the lords who signed the celebrated letter to Pope Clement touching the king's divorce, and subscribed to the articles of impeachment against Cardinal Wolsey. Altogether a pliant and observant courtier probably, who carefully noted, studied, and complied with the errant phases of his grim master's will, the only safe way of getting on with him, and keeping his head on his shoulders, but, of course, requiring the aid of a not too-exacting conscience.
He made his will 1530, "ordered his body to be buried at Astley, near his father, and his executors to make and build a Chapel at Astley, according to the will of his father, with a goodly tomb over his father and mother, and where he himself resolved to be buried." Together with further bequests "to found an alms house for thirteen poor men, who were to have twelve pence a week, and a livery of black cotton yearly at a cost of four shillings, and three honest priests to pray for his soul, &c."
Relating to the burial of this nobleman, we append the following, given as a quotation by Burke,—
"The Collegiate church of Astley, founded by Thomas third Lord Astley, whose heiress-general married the ancestor of this Marquis, a most rare and beautiful piece of workmanship, having fallen down, a new chancel was erected by the parishioners. When on opening the vault where the body of the Marquis was laid, a large and long coffin of wood was found, which at the curious desire of some, being burst open, the body which had lain there for seventy-eight years, appeared perfect in every respect, neither perished nor hardened, but the flesh, in colour, proportion, and softness, alike to any corpse newly interred. The body was about five feet eight inches in length, the face broad and the hair yellow. All which seemed to be well preserved from the strong embalming thereof."