[In the following essay, Bainton provides an overview of Grey's brief life, education, and Protestant faith, supported throughout by excerpts from her letters that reveal the strength of her religious convictions.]

Lady Jane, England's nine day queen, made a deeper impact on her countrymen by her death than by her reign. She was virtually canonized by the Protestants, who portrayed her as comely, charming, devout, learned, demure and gentle. They called her in the words of the prophet Isaiah “a lamb that is led to the slaughter,”¹ but did not add the verse “like a sheep that before its shearers is dumb, so she opened not her mouth.” That assuredly she did not do. Writing at the age of fourteen to the Swiss theologian Bullinger, she depreciated herself in the approved humanist style, saying that to laud his excellence she lacked the eloquence of Demosthenes and Cicero.² She need not have been so disparaging, for, confronted by the torrential flow of her periods, they would have doffed their headgear.

Because of royal lineage Jane was given the education of a princess. She was the granddaughter of Mary Tudor, the sister of Henry VIII and of Charles Brandon, that duke of Suffolk, commissioned by Henry to remove Catherine. Jane's mother was the daughter of this couple. Her father became the next duke of Suffolk. These parents were of the domineering sort and the mother looked like a termagant.³ Out of ambition the parents imposed on their daughter a stiff educational regime, which actually she loved. In her early teens she became proficient in Latin, Greek, French and Italian and corresponded with Bullinger as to the best way of learning Hebrew. Her tutor, Aylmer, was an engaging enthusiast. Another great educator, Roger Ascham, has given a charming account of Jane at her studies. About to go abroad, he tells us, he came to take

leave of that noble Lady Jane Grey, to whom I was exceeding much beholden. Her parents, the duke and the duchess, with all the household, gentlemen and gentlewomen, were hunting in the park. I found her in her chamber, reading Phaedon Platonis [the Phaedo of Plato] in Greek, and that with as much delight, as some gentlemen would read a merry tale in Boccace. After salutation and duty done, with some other talk, I asked her, why she would leese such pastime in the park. Smiling she answered me, “I wisse, al their sport in the park is but a shadow to that plesure that I find in Plato. Alas! good folk, they never felt what true plesure meant.”

“And how came you, madam,” quoth I, “to this deep knowledge of plesure, and what did chiefly allure you unto it, seeing not many women, but very few men, have attained thereunto?”

“I will tell you,” quoth she, “and tell you a troth, which perchance ye will marvel at. One of the greatest benefits that ever God gave me is, that he sent me so sharp and severe parents and so gentle a schoolmaster: for when I am in presence either of father or mother, whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand or go, eat, drink, be merry or sad, be sewing, playing, dancing, or doing any thing else, I must do it as it were in such weight, measure and number, even so perfectly as God made the world; or else I am so sharply taunted, so cruelly threatened, yea presently sometimes with pinches, nipps, and bobbs, and other ways, (which I will not name for the honour I bear them) so without mesure misordered, that I think myself in hell, till time come that I must go to Mr. Aylmer, who teacheth me so gently, so pleasantly, with such fair allurements to learning, that I think all the time nothing whiles I am with him. And when I am called from him, I fall on weeping, because whatsoever I do else but learning, is full of grief, trouble, fear, and wholly misliking to me. And thus my book hath been so much my plesure and more, that in respect of it, al other plesures in very deed be but trifles and troubles unto me.”⁴

Jane's intense Protestant convictions may very probably have been imbibed from Aylmer, who was an eminent divine and also from Martin Butzer, to whom she confessed herself much indebted. He was a refugee from Strasbourg teaching at Cambridge. He it was, said she, who “led me forward in all probity, piety and sound learning.”⁵ Jane was for a time in the household of Catherine Parr, who might temper but would not quench her ardor. The degree of Jane's Protestantism is evidenced by an occurrence, when, with her parents, she was the guest of the Princess Mary, who in defiance of the law had mass said in her private chapel during the reign of her brother Edward. Jane, in company with Lady Wharton, was out for a walk when they passed by the chapel. Lady Wharton curtsied. Jane asked why. Was the Lady Mary in the chapel? “No. I curtsied to Him that made us all” [that is the host reserved upon the altar]. “And how,” asked Jane, “can He that made us all be there seeing that the baker made Him?” This being reported to the Lady Mary she misliked Jane thereafter.⁶

When the Protestant chaplain to her father turned Catholic on the accession of Mary, Jane sent him a remonstrance replete with the imagery of the Apocalypse and reverberations of Demosthenes. Here are some excerpts:

So oft as I call to mind the dreadful and fearful saying of God, That “he that layeth hold upon the plough, and looketh back, is not meet for the kingdom of heaven” and, on the other side, the comfortable words of our Saviour Christ to all those that, forsaking themselves, do follow him, I cannot but marvel at thee, and lament thy case, who seemed sometime to be the lively member of Christ, but now the deformed imp [the word then meant simply a child] of the devil; sometime the bountiful temple of God, but now the stinking and filthy kennel of Satan; sometime the unspotted spouse of Christ, but now the unshamefaced paramour of anti-Christ; sometime my faithful brother, but now a stranger and apostate; sometime a stout Christian soldier, but now a cowardly runaway. Yea, when I consider these things, I cannot but speak to thee, and cry out upon thee, thou seed of Satan and not of Judah, whom the devil hath deceived, the world hath beguiled, and the desire of life subverted, and made thee an infidel.

Wherefore hast thou taken the testament of the Lord in thy mouth? … Wherefore hast thou instructed others to be strong in Christ, when thou thyself does now so shamefully shrink, and so horribly abuse the Testament and law of the Lord? … Why dost thou now show thyself most weak, when indeed thou oughtest to be most strong? The strength of a fort is unknown before the assault, but thou yieldest thy hold before any battery be made.

O wretched and unhappy man, what art thou, but dust and ashes? and wilt thou resist thy Maker that fashioned thee and framed thee? … Wilt thou refuse the true God, and worship the invention of man, the golden calf, the whore of Babylon, the Romish religion, the abominable idol, the most wicked mass? Wilt thou torment again, rend and tear the most precious body of our Saviour Christ, with thy bodily and fleshly teeth? Wilt thou take upon thee to offer up any sacrifice unto God for our sins, considering that Christ offered up himself, as Paul saith, upon the cross, a lively sacrifice once for all? … And wilt thou honour a detestable idol invented by Romish popes, and the abominable college of crafty cardinals? Christ offered himself up once for all, and wilt thou offer him up again daily at thy pleasure?

But thou wilt say, thou doest it for a good intent. Oh sink of sin! O child of perdition! Dost thou dream therein of a good intent, where thy conscience beareth thee witness of God's threatened wrath against thee? … Wilt thou for a good intent pluck Christ out of heaven, and make his death void? …

But thou wilt say, “I will not break unity.” What? not the unity of Satan and his members? not the unity of darkness, the agreement of Antichrist and his adherents? Nay, thou deceivest thyself with a fond imagination of such a unity as is among the enemies of Christ. Were not the false prophets in a unity? … The agreement of ill men is not a unity but a conspiracy.

Thou hast heard some threatening, some cursings, and some admonitions, out of the Scripture, to those that love themselves above Christ. … Well, if these terrible and thundering threatenings cannot stir thee to cleave unto Christ, and forsake the world, yet let the sweet consolations and promises of Scripture … encourage thee to take faster hold on Christ. … Return, return again into Christ's war. … Throw down yourself with the fear of his threatened vengeance … and comfort yourself with the mercy, blood, and promise of him that is ready to turn unto you, whensoever you turn unto him. Disdain not to come with the lost son. … Be not ashamed to come home again with Mary, and weep bitterly with Peter, not only with shedding the tears of your bodily eyes, but also pouring out the streams of your heart—to wash away, out of the sight of God, the filth and mire of your offensive fall. Be not ashamed to say with the publican, “Lord be merciful to me a sinner.”⁷

Ascham was very right when he said that Jane was happier reading about the martyrdom of Socrates than rejoicing in her descent from kings and queens, for from this arose her own martyrdom. During the minority of Edward VI, the government at the end of his reign was in the hands of the duke of Northumberland, who realized, when the sixteen-year-old king was obviously dying, that when he was gone the power would pass to Mary or Elizabeth unless their succession were annulled. In consequence he induced Edward to change the succession in favor of Jane, already married to the duke's own son, Guilford, who presumably would be king. On the king's death high dignitaries came and made obeisance to Jane. She wept, swooned, and protested that if one should scruple to steal a shilling how much more to usurp a crown.⁸

Northumberland informed her that by a previous act Mary and Elizabeth had been declared illegitimate and Edward had conferred upon her the succession. Young Guilford belabored Jane with entreaties and caresses, saying that she should make him to be king. That she flatly refused. A duke he might be, a king never. His parents were infuriated and forbade him to sleep with her. Her parents interposed their authority. Here was a conflict between obedience to father and mother and to the laws of the realm, because the change in succession lacked parliamentary authorization. Jane yielded to her parents and trembling allowed the crown to be placed upon her head. She was sixteen.⁹

Mary, with the utmost intrepidity, rallied forces against the duke. Jane, exercising her royal authority, commanded him to leave London and head his troops in the field. But what was then needed was not a general but a demagogue. He obeyed the authority he had created, though perceiving that to leave the capitol would be his undoing. It was. He and his cohorts, Jane's father and husband, and Jane herself were arraigned for treason and given the sentence of death. Judge Morgan, who pronounced the sentence on Jane, went mad, raving that she be taken from his sight.¹⁰

But judicial sentence did not mean execution in case of executive clemency. Mary did not pardon Northumberland, but she released Jane's father. She and her husband were neither pardoned nor executed but kept in custody. Mary was moved to refrain from extremities by Jane's letter in which she freely confessed that she had committed a crime in accepting from those deemed wise by all the realm, a crown which was not theirs to bestow.

My crime is great and I confess it to be so, nevertheless, I am accounted more guilty than in truth I am. For although I took upon me that of which I was unworthy, yet no one can say that I ever sought to obtain it for myself, nor ever solaced myself therein, nor accepted of it willingly.

Then follows an account of the pressures to which she was made subject. “Thus, in truth, was I deceived by the duke and the council, and ill treated by my husband and his mother.”¹¹

Mary kept Jane and Guilford in the Tower. They might well in time have been released had not Jane's father, pardoned and released, then joined in Wyatt's conspiracy to dethrone Mary. The queen and the council now believed that there would be no tranquility in England so long as Jane and her husband were alive. Dates were set for the executions of the duke of Suffolk, his son, and Jane.

A short respite was granted out of concern for Jane's soul. Mary sent her own confessor, Fecknam, an able and kindly Catholic theologian, to bring her back to the church outside of which there is no salvation. He began to talk with Jane of this and that and gradually led into the subject of religion. Discussion centered on the Eucharist. Jane countered the orthodox Catholic interpretation by the usual Protestant rejoinders. When Christ said “This is my body,” he no more intended to be taken literally than when he called himself a vine and a door. Besides, when those words were pronounced, he was standing right there in his living body and how could he have said that the bread and wine were that body? Fecknam's appeal to tradition left her unmoved. He took his leave with sorrow, “For I am sure that we two shall never meet.” She agreed, being persuaded that in the beyond he would be in less attractive quarters.¹²

Jane wrote to her father, whose second revolt was the occasion not only of his death but of her own:

Father, although it hath pleased God to hasten my death by you, by whom my life should rather have been lengthened, yet I can so patiently take it, as I yield God more hearty thanks for shortening my woeful days, than if all the world had been given unto my possession. … And yet, I must needs acknowledge that I grievously offended the queen and her laws: yet I do assuredly trust that this my offence towards God is so much the less (in that being in so royal estate as I was) mine enforced honour blended never with mine innocent heart. And thus, good father, I have opened unto you the state wherein I at present stand; whose death at hand, although to you perhaps it may seem right woeful, to me there is nothing that can be more welcome, than from this vale of misery to aspire to that heavenly throne of all joy and pleasure with Christ our Saviour. In whose steadfast faith (if it may be lawful for the daughter so to write to the father) [She admonishes him not to recant] the Lord that hitherto hath strengthened you, so continue you, that at the last we may meet in heaven with the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

To her sister she wrote:

I have here sent you, good sister Catherine, a book, which although it be not outwardly trimmed with gold, yet inwardly it is worth more than precious stones. It is the book, dear sister, of the law of the Lord. … Rejoice in Christ, as I do. Follow the steps of your Master Christ, and take up your cross. Lay your sins on his back, and always embrace him. And as touching my death, rejoice as I do, good sister, 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 an immortal life.

A prayer of Lady Jane as the end approached, is recorded. It consists in part of verses from the 77th Psalm:

O merciful God, consider my misery, best known unto thee. Suffer me not to be tempted above my power, but either be thou a deliverer unto me out of this great misery, or else give me grace, patiently to bear thy heavy hand and sharp correction. … Let it therefore, likewise seem good to thy fatherly goodness, to deliver me, sorrowful wretch (for whom thy Son Christ shed his precious blood on the cross) out of this miserable captivity and bondage, wherein I am now. How long wilt thou be absent? Forever? O Lord, hast thou forgotten to be gracious, and hast thou shut up thy lovingkindness in displeasure? Wilt thou be no more entreated? Is thy mercy clean gone for ever, and thy promise come utterly to an end for evermore? Why dost thou make so long tarrying? Shall I despair of thy mercy, O God? Far be that from me. I am thy workmanship, created in Christ Jesus.

Give me grace, therefore, to tarry thy leisure, and patiently to bear thy works, assuredly knowing, that as thou canst, so thou wilt deliver me when it shall please thee, nothing doubting or mistrusting thy goodness towards me; for thou knowest better what is good for me than I do. Therefore do with me in all things what thou wilt, and plague me what way thou wilt. … Only, in the meantime, arm me, I beseech thee, with thy armour, that I may stand fast … praying always with all manner of prayer and supplication, that I may refer myself wholly to thy will, abiding thy pleasure, and comforting myself in those troubles that it shall please thee to send me; seeing such troubles be profitable for me, and seeing I am assuredly persuaded that it cannot be but well, all that thou doest. Hear me, O merciful Father! for his sake, whom thou wouldest should be a sacrifice for my sins, to whom with thee and the Holy Ghost, be all honour and glory. Amen.

As the hour approached for her and for her husband, he requested that he might see her. She replied that their grief would thereby be the more increased and shortly they would meet in the beyond. She stood at the window and watched as he passed. As the cart returned with his severed body she cried out, “O Guilford! Guilford!”¹³ When her turn came, beside her stood Fecknam, the queen's chaplain. She spoke briefly to the crowd asserting that she washed her hands in innocency of unlawful intent. She turned to the chaplain and asked whether she should recite the fifty-first psalm. He answered “Yea,” and held her hand as she repeated to the end: “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness.” She thanked the chaplain that he had delivered her from terror, embraced him and mounted the scaffold.¹⁴

Notes

1. Michelangelo Florio, Historia de la Vita e la Morte de l'Illustriss. Signora Giovanna Graia (1607). Although the publication is late, Florio was personally acquainted with Jane's father and with Wyatt, 51. Reference to the lamb, 61.

2. British Reformers, III, Writings of Edward VI and others (Philadelphia, n.d.), 299.

3. See the painting reproduced by Hester Chapman, Lady Jane Grey (Boston, 1962), facing p. 48.

4. John Strype, Life of Bishop Aylmer, 3-4, from Ascham's Schoolmaster, fol. II b.

5. Jane to Bullinger in British Reformers, III, 295.

6. Ralph Holinshed, Chronicles (London, 1808), 23.

7. Foxe VI, 418-422 and British Reformers, III, 34-41.

8. British Reformers, II, 280.

9. M. l'Abbé de Vertot, Ambassades de Messieurs de Noailles en Angleterre (1763). I, 211.

10. Foxe, VI, 283.

11. British Reformers, III, 300-304 translated from Girolamo Pollini, Historia Ecclestiastica della Rivoluzione d'Inghilterra (Rome, 1594).

12. This and the following documents are in Foxe, VI, 315-324 and British Reformers, III, 304-316.

13. Ibid., 131 note 1.

14. Fecknam's presence attested by Foxe. The embrace related by Raviglio G. Rosso. Historia delle cose occorse nel regno d'Inghilterra. (Venice, 1558), 58, and borrowed from him by Pollini.

Bibliography

The best study of Lady Jane is that of Hester W. Chapman, Lady Jane Grey (Boston, 1962). She relies rather unduly on the late work of the Catholic historian Pollini, mentioned below, though he alone preserves a letter from Lady Jane to Mary.

The official acts of the reign are in Public Documents, ed. J. C. Nichols (Camden Society Publications, 1850).

Foxe refers to John Foxe, Acts and Monuments (reprint, 1965).