CHAPTER XXIII 1554 Lady Jane and her husband doomed--Her dispute with Feckenham--Gardiner's sermon--Farewell messages--Last hours--Guilford Dudley's execution--Lady Jane's death.

Those anxious days when the fortunes of England and its Queen appeared once more to hang in the balance had sealed the fate of the prisoners in the Tower. They must die. Mary had been warned that the clemency shown to her little cousin was unwise; she had struggled against the counsellors who had striven to convince her that the usurper, so long as she lived, was a menace to the peace of the realm, and the stability of her government. Their warnings had been justified, and Jane must pay the penalty.

What was to be done was to be done quickly. It was perhaps feared that, with leisure to reconsider the matter, the Queen would even now retract her consent to deliver up the victim; nor was there any excuse for delay. The boy and girl already lay under sentence of death; it was only necessary to carry it into effect. So far as this life was concerned Lady Jane’s doom was fixed. It remained to take thought for her soul. With death staring them in the face, many had been lately found willing to conform their faith to the Queen’s. Why should it not be so with the Queen’s cousin? To compass this object Mary’s chaplain, Dr. Feckenham, the new Dean of St. Paul’s, was sent to plead with the captive, and to strive to reconcile her with God and the Church before she went hence.

The ambassador was well chosen. Learned and devout, he had been bred a Benedictine, and had, under Henry VIII., suffered imprisonment on account of his faith; until Sir Philip Hoby, in his own words, “borrowed him of the Tower.” Since then it had been his habit to hold disputations, “earnest yet modest,” according to Fuller, in defence of his religion, and was honoured by Mary and Elizabeth alike. This was the man to whom was entrusted the difficult task of convincing Lady Jane of her errors. It was scarcely to be anticipated that he would succeed, but he seems to have performed the thankless duty laid upon him with gentleness and good feeling.

Arrived at the Tower—his whilom place of captivity—Feckenham, after some preliminary courtesies, disclosed the object of his visit, adding certain persuasive arguments, to which the prisoner made reply that he had delayed too long, and time was over-short to allow her to give attention to these matters. The answer, in whatever sense it was meant, was sufficiently ambiguous to afford a sanguine and anxious man grounds for hope that, with leisure for discussion, he might win a favourable hearing; considering his proposed convert “in very good dispositions,” he went to seek the Queen; and, describing his interview, had no difficulty in inducing her to grant a three-days’ reprieve. Friday, February 9, had been at first appointed for the execution, and when—for reasons undisclosed to the public—it was deferred until the following Monday, the change may have given rise in some quarters to expectations unwarranted by the event. There were those determined to hold Mary to her purpose.

On Sunday, the 11th, Gardiner preached before the Queen, dealing first with the doctrine of free will; secondly, with the institution of Lent; thirdly, with the necessity of good works; and fourthly, with Protestant errors. After which he came to the practical question in all men’s minds. He asked a boon of the Queen’s Highness—that, like as she had beforetime extended her mercy, particularly and privately, so through her lenity and gentleness much conspiracy and open rebellion were grown, according to the proverb, nimia familiaritas parit contemptum, which he brought 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. “And thus he ended soon after, whereby all the audience did gather there should shortly follow sharp and cruel execution.”214

Whether or not Gardiner’s discourse was directed against a tendency to waver in her intention on the part of his mistress, it was proved that there was nothing in that direction to be apprehended. Meantime, armed with the boon he had obtained, Feckenham had returned to the Tower, to beg the captive to make use of the reprieve for the salvation of her soul.

Lady Jane’s reply was not encouraging. She had not, she told him, intended her words to be repeated to the Queen; she had already abandoned worldly things, had no thought of fear, and was prepared to meet death patiently in whatsoever form might please the Queen. To the flesh it was indeed painful, but her soul was joyful at quitting this darkness, and rising, as by God’s mercy she hoped to rise, to eternal light.215

It was not to be expected that the priest, a good man, full of zeal for his religion and of solicitude for the dying culprit, would consent to relinquish, without an effort, the attempt to utilise the respite he had been granted. Of what followed accounts vary, according to the theological proclivities of the narrator of the scene, an early pamphlet asserting that Feckenham, finding himself, in reasoning, “in all holy gifts so short of [Lady Jane’s] excellence that he acknowledged himself fitter to be her disciple than teacher, thereupon humbly besought her to deliver unto him some brief sum of her faith which he might hereafter keep, and as a faithful witness publish to the world; to which she willingly condescended, and bade him boldly question her in what points of religion soever it pleased him.”216

The attitude ascribed to Queen Mary’s chaplain would seem more likely to be due to imagination than to fact. It appears, however, that a species of “catechising argument” did in truth take place in the presence of witnesses, an account of which was set down in writing, and received Lady Jane’s signature. The only result of the discussion was the strengthening rather than shaking of her convictions; and though it was not until she stood upon the scaffold that the last farewells of the disputants were taken, Feckenham must soon have been aware that his efforts would be made in vain. It may be hoped that to the imagination of the chronicler is again to be ascribed the manner of the parting of the two on this first occasion, when, feeling himself to be worsted in argument, Feckenham is said to have “grown into a little choler,” and used language unsuitable to his gravity, received with smiles and patience by the cause of his irritation. It is further stated that to a final speech of her visitor, to the effect that he was sorry for her obstinacy, and was certain that they would meet no more, Lady Jane, not altogether with the meekness attributed to her, retorted that his words were indeed most true, since, unless he should repent, he was in a sad and desperate case, and she prayed God that, as He had given him His great gift of utterance, He might open his heart to His truth.217

So the days passed, and the fatal one was at hand. On Saturday, February 10, the Duke of Suffolk, with his brother, Lord John Grey, had been brought prisoners to the Tower; but it does not appear that any meeting took place between father and daughter, and Lady Jane’s leave-taking was made in writing; sentences of farewell being inscribed by her and her husband in a manual of prayers belonging, as is conjectured, to the Lieutenant of the Tower, and used by her on the scaffold. In this volume three sentences were written.

“Your loving and obedient son,” wrote Guilford, “wisheth unto your Grace long life in this world, with as much joy and comfort as ever I wished to myself, and in the world to come joy everlasting.

G. Duddeley.”

Jane’s farewell followed:

“The Lord comfort your Grace, and that in His word wherein all creatures only are to be comforted. And though it has pleased God to take away two of your children, yet think not, I most humbly beseech your Grace, that you have lost them, but trust that we, by leaving this mortal life, have won an immortal life. And I, for my part, as I have honoured your Grace in this life, will pray for you in another life.

“Your Grace’s humble daughter,
“Jane Duddeley.”

The same book bears another inscription addressed to the Lieutenant of the Tower, Bridges, apparently at his own request.

“Forasmuch as you have desired,” Jane wrote, “so simple a woman to write in so worthy a book, good Master Lieutenant, therefore I shall as a friend desire you, and as a Christian require you, to call upon God to incline your heart to His laws, to quicken you in His way, and not to take the word of truth utterly out of your mouth. Live still to die, that by death you may purchase eternal life, and remember the end of Methuselah, who, as we read in the Scriptures, was the longest liver that was of a man, died at the last; for as the preacher saith, there is a time to be born and a time to die, and the day of death is better than the day of our birth. Yours, as the Lord knoweth, as a friend,

“Jane Duddeley.”

Such an admonition to the Lieutenant, written when death was very near, is characteristic. It was ever Lady Jane’s custom to use her pen, and the habit clung to her. Tradition asserts that three sentences, the one in Greek, the other in Latin, and the third in English, were written by her in yet another book; and though it has been argued that she would have been in no condition to compose epigrams in the dead languages at a moment when death was staring her in the face, there is nothing improbable in the story, unsupported as it is by evidence. As a man lives, he dies; and Jane had been a scholar and a moralist from her cradle.

“If justice dwells in my body”—thus the sentences are said to have run—“my soul will receive it from the mercy of God.—Death will pay the penalty of my fault, but my soul will be justified before the Face of God.—If my fault merited chastisement, my youth, at least, and my imprudence, deserved excuse. God and posterity will show me grace.” A letter of exhortation addressed to her sister Katherine likewise remains, another proof of her desire to impress upon others the lessons life had taught her. Having been reading, the night before her death, in “a fair New Testament in Greek,” she found, on closing it, some few leaves of clean paper, unwritten, at the end of the volume, and made use of them to convey her final farewell to the sister she was leaving behind, giving it in charge to her servant as a token of love and remembrance. As might have been expected, with the thought of the morrow before her, death was the recurrent burden of her theme. “Live still to die,” she told little Katherine, as she had told the Lieutenant of the Tower, “and that by death you may purchase eternal life; and trust not that the tenderness of your age shall lengthen your life ... for as soon will the Lord be glorified in the young as in the old.... Once more let me entreat thee to learn to die.... Desire with St. Paul to be dissolved and to be with Christ, with whom even in death there is life.... As touching my death, rejoice as I do ... that I shall be delivered of this corruption and put on incorruption; for I am assured that I shall, for losing of a mortal life, win one that is immortal, joyful, and everlasting.”

Another composition is extant, said to belong to this last period, and showing the writer, it may be, in a more pathetic light than that thrown upon her by disputes with controversialists, or exhortations to those she left behind. This is a prayer, exhibiting not so much the premature woman as the child—a child, it is true, facing death with steadfast faith and resignation, but nevertheless frightened, unhappy, “unquieted with troubles, wrapped in cares, overwhelmed with miseries, vexed with temptations ... craving Thy mercy and help, without the which so little hope of deliverance is left that I may utterly despair of my liberty.”218

Of liberty it was, in truth, time to despair. It is said that for two hours on this last night two bishops, with other divines, made a vain attempt to accomplish the conversion that Feckenham had failed to effect218; after which we may hope that, worn out and exhausted, the prisoner forgot her troubles in sleep. And so the night passed away.

In another part of the great fortress young Guilford Dudley was also preparing for the end. It is said219 that, “desiring to give his wife the last kisses and embraces,” he begged for an interview, but that she refused the request—not disallowed by Mary—replying that, could sight have given souls comfort, she would have been very willing; that since it would only increase the misery of each, and bring greater grief, it would be best to put off their meeting, since soon they would see each other in another place and live joined for ever by an indissoluble tie. If the story is true, there is something a little inhuman—or perhaps only belonging to the coldness of a child—in the wisdom which, at that moment, could weigh and balance the disadvantages of a leave-taking and refuse it. It is not, however, out of character.

It had been at first intended that the two should suffer together on Tower Hill. Fearing the effect upon the populace, the order was cancelled, and it was decided that, whilst Guilford’s execution should take place as originally arranged, Lady Jane should meet her death within the precincts of the Tower itself. As the lad, led to his doom, passed below her window, the two looked upon each other for the last time. Young Dudley met the end bravely. Taking Sir Anthony Browne, John Throckmorton and others by the hand, he asked their prayers; then, attended by no priest or minister, he knelt to pray, “holding up his eyes and hands to God many times,” before the executioner did his work and he went to join the father who was responsible for his fate, “bewailed with lamentable tears” even by those of the spectators who till that day had never seen him.220

A ghastly incident, variously recorded, followed. His body thrown into a cart, and his head wrapped in a cloth, he was brought into the Tower chapel, where Lady Jane, having probably left her apartments on her way to her own place of execution, encountered the cart and those in charge of it, seeing the husband who had passed beneath her window a few minutes earlier living, taken from it a corpse—a sight to her, says the chronicler, no less than death. It “a little startled her,” observes another narrator, “and many tears were seen to descend and fall upon her cheeks, which her silence and great heart soon dried.”221 According to a third account, she addressed the dead.

“Oh, Guilford, Guilford,” she is made to exclaim, “the antepast that you have tasted and I shall soon taste, is not so bitter as to make my flesh tremble; for all this is nothing to the feast that you and I shall partake this day in Paradise.”

It had been ten o’clock when Guilford had left his prison. By the time that the first act of the tragedy was over, a scaffold had been erected upon the green over against the White Tower, and led by the Lieutenant, the chief victim was brought forth, “her countenance nothing abashed, neither her eyes moisted with tears,”222 as she moved onwards, a book in her hand—the same she gave afterwards to Sir John Bridges—from which she prayed all the way until the scaffold was reached. With her were her two gentlewomen, Elizabeth Tylney and Eleyn, who both “wonderfully wept” as they accompanied their mistress; and Feckenham was also present, her kindly opponent, perhaps even now hoping against hope that success might crown his efforts. As the two stood together at the place of execution, she took him by the hand, and, embracing him, bade him leave her—desiring, it may be, to spare him the sight of what was to follow. Might God our Lord, she said, give him all his desires; she was grateful for his company, although it had given her more disquiet than, now, the fear of death.223

Like most of her fellow-sufferers she had come prepared with a speech. That her sentence was lawful she admitted, but reasserted the absence on her part of any desire for her elevation to the throne, “touching the procurement and desire thereof by me or my half, I do wash my hands in innocency before God and the face of you, good Christian people, this day,” and therewith she wrung her hands, in which she had her book; proceeding to make confession of the faith in which she died, owning that she had neglected the word of God, and loved herself and the world, and thereby merited her punishment. “And yet I thank God that He hath thus given me time and respite to repent. And now, good people, while I am alive, I pray you to assist me with your prayers.”

After this, kneeling down, she turned to Feckenham, who had not availed himself of her suggestion that he should leave her.

“Shall I say this psalm?” she asked him; and on his assenting repeated the Miserere in English, before, rising again, she prepared for the end, giving her book to Bridges, brother to the Lieutenant, who stood by, and her gloves and handkerchief to one of her ladies. With her own hands she untied her gown, rejecting the aid of the executioner, and, turning to her maids for assistance, removed her “frose paast”—probably some kind of head-dress—let down her hair, throwing it over her eyes, and knit a “fair handkerchief” about them.

After kneeling for her forgiveness, the executioner directed her to take her place on the straw.

“Then she said,

“‘I pray you despatch me quickly.’

“Then she kneeled down, saying,

“‘Will you take it off before I lay me down?’

“And the hangman answered her,

“‘No, madame.’”

The handkerchief was bound about her eyes, blinding her.

“What shall I do?” she said, feeling for the block. “Where is it?”

Then, as some one standing near guided her, she laid down her head, and saying, “Lord, into Thy hands I commend my spirit,” met the blow of the executioner.

Thus died Lady Jane Grey, most guiltless of traitors; who, to quote Fuller’s panegyric, possessed, at sixteen, the innocency of childhood, the beauty of youth, the solidity of middle, and the gravity of old, age; who had had the birth of a princess, the learning of a clerk, the life of a saint, and the death of a malefactor.

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