Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/382

368 Jane permission to have an interview with her husband, but she declined the favour as too trying, saying she should meet him within a few hours in heaven. The queen also sent to her her own chaplain, Dr. Feckenham, the Dean of St. Paul's, to offer her religious consolation; but Lady Jane, knowing that there could be neither consolation nor use in discussing their differing creeds, told him her time was too short for controversy. She added that she was prepared to receive patiently her death in any manner it would please the queen to appoint; that it was true her flesh shuddered, as was natural to frail mortality, but her spirit would spring rejoicing into the eternal light, where she hoped the angels of God would receive it. She saw her husband go to execution from the window of the lodging in Master Partridge's house, and beheld the headless trunk borne back to be buried in the chapel. Lord Guildford Dudley was executed on Tower Hill in sight of a vast concourse, but a scaffold was erected for her in the Tower green. Immediately after his corpse had passed she was led forth by the Lieutenant of the Tower, and appeared to go to her fate without any discomposing fear, but in a serious frame, not a tear dimming her eye, though her gentlewomen, Elizabeth Tilney and Mistress Helen, were weeping greatly. She continued engaged in prayer, which she read from a book, till she came to the scaffold; there she made a short speech to the spectators, declaring that she deserved her punishment for allowing herself to be made the instrument of the ambition of others. "That device, however," she said, "was never of my seeking, but by the counsel of those who appeared to have better understanding of such things than I. As for the procurement or desire of such dignity by me, I wash my hands thereof before God and all you Christian people this day." She caused her gentlewomen to disrobe her, bandaged her own eyes with a handkerchief, and laying her head on the block, at one stroke it was severed from the body. "Such," says Bishop Goodwin, "was the end of Jane Grey, a lady renowned for the greatness of her birth, but far more for her virtues and excellency of art; who, swayed by the ambition of her father-in-law and imperious mother, took on her that fatal title of queen: and being presently hurried from a kingdom to a scaffold, suffered for the faults of others, having overcome all the frowns of adverse fortune by constancy and innocence." It should not be forgotten that this amiable young woman, the victim of hard and ruthless politicians, was only sixteen years of age.

But this conspiracy had approached the queen much more nearly than in the person of Wyatt or the friends of Lady Jane Grey. It was discovered by intercepted letters of Wyatt, of Noailles, the French ambassador, and by one supposed to have been written by Elizabeth herself to the French king, that she was deeply implicated, and that the design of marrying her and Courtenay and placing them on the throne was well known, and apparently quite agreeable to her.

The refusal of Elizabeth to join her sister at the outbreak of the insurrection, and the flight of Courtenay at the moment of Wyatt's entry of London, excited suspicion, and this suspicion was soon converted into something very like fact by the three despatches of Noailles, written in cipher, and dated January 26th, 28th, and 30th. These despatches detailed the steps taken in her favour. Besides these there were two notes sent by Wyatt to Elizabeth, the first advising her to remove to Donnington, the next informing her of his successful entry into Southwark. Then came what appeared clearly a letter of Elizabeth to the King of France. The Duke of Suffolk's confession was again corroborative of these details, namely, that the object of the insurrection was to depose Mary and place Elizabeth on the throne. William Thomas supported this, adding that it was intended to put the queen immediately to death. Croft confessed that he had solicited Elizabeth to return to Donnington; Lord Russell said he had conveyed letters from Wyatt to Elizabeth, and another witness deposed to his knowledge of a correspondence betwixt Courtenay and Carew respecting Courtenay's marriage with the princess.

With all these startling facts in her possession, Mary wrote to Elizabeth with an air of unsuspicious kindness, requesting her to come to her from Ashridge, informing her that malicious and ill-disposed persons accused her of favouring the late insurrection; but appearing not to believe it, and giving as a reason for her wishing her to be nearer, that the times were so unsettled that she would be in greater security with her. Elizabeth pleaded illness for not complying; but the queen sent Hastings, Southwell, and Cornwallis, members of Council, whom she received in her bed, and complained of being afflicted with a severe and dangerous malady. Mary, well acquainted with the deep dissimulation of her sister's character, then sent three of her own physicians, accompanied by Lord William Howard; and the physicians having given their opinion that she was quite able to travel, she was obliged to accompany them by short stages, borne in a litter. She appeared pale and bloated. It was said that she was unrecoverably poisoned; but in a week she was quite well, and demanded an audience of the queen; but Mary had so much evidence in her hands of Elizabeth's proceedings, that she sent her word that it was necessary first to prove her innocence.

Courtenay had been arrested on the 12th of February, at the house of the Earl of Essex, and committed to the Tower. Mary was averse to send her sister there, and asked each of the lords of the Council in rotation to admit Elizabeth to their houses, and to take charge of her. All without exception declined the dangerous office; she was, therefore, compelled to sign the warrant for her committal, and she was conducted to the Tower by the Earl of Sussex and another nobleman on the 18th of March. Even whilst performing this duty, it appears that Elizabeth had influence enough with these noblemen to make them dilatory in the execution of their office, to the great anger of the queen, who upbraided them with their remissness, telling them they dared not have done such a thing in her father's time, and wishing that "he were alive for a month." Elizabeth on entering the Tower was dreadfully afraid that she was doomed to leave it as so many princes and nobles had done, without a head. She inquired whether Lady Jane's scaffold were removed, and was greatly relieved to hear that it was. But what alarmed Elizabeth still more, was that the Constable of the Tower was discharged from his office, and Sir Henry Bedingfield, a zealous Romanist, appointed in his place.