Page:The Queens of England.djvu/385

 LADY JANE GREY. 345 freshness of her teens Lady Jane Grey had reached a perfec- tion of womanhood, which the solemn circumstances of her early death stamped with an immortality of admiration, and made her a model to her sex at once noble, beautiful, and worthy of imitation, from the purity with which she lived, and the greatness with which she died. Lady Jane was not only of a high, but an ancient lineage. She was descended from Rollo, chamberlain to Robert, Duke of Normandy, who is said to have obtained from that prince the castle of Croy, in Picardy : hence the name corrupted into Grey. From this root spring the numerous branches of the Grey family ; the Greys of Groby, of Wilton, and Ruthyn. We may, however, shorten the long genealogy, and descend at once to the individual who first attracted much notice from the historian. This was John de Grey, the son and heir of Lord Grey of Groby, who married Elizabeth Woodville, daughter of Sir Richard Woodville, created Earl of Rivers, on Elizabeth, in her widowhood, marrying Edward the Fourth. The family of the Greys now rose into sudden notice and im- portance. No queen who ever sat on the throne of England so zealously and perseveringly advanced all her relatives to the utmost possible pitch of worldly rank and greatness, both by using the favor of the monarch, and by matching them with the members of great aristocratic houses. Elizabeth's first husband, John de Grey, was slain at the battle of St. Alban's ; and, as recorded in her life, it was in the act of soliciting the king to restore the confiscated property of her two sons, Thomas and Richard, that she made such an im- pression on the susceptible heart of Edward, as led to her advancement to the throne. The eldest son, Thomas, became, by succession to his father's title Lord Grey of Groby, and was created by his father-in-law, Edward the Fourth, in 14.71, Earl of Huntingdon; but he afterwards resigned this title, and was created Marquis of Dorset in 1475. His son and heir, Henry Grey, was not only Marquis of Dorset, but Baron of Ferrers, Groby, Astley, Bonville, and Harrington. He may be considered, in point of rank, as one of the most powerful noblemen of his time. In the first year of the reign of his kinsman, Edward the Sixth, he was constituted lord high constable of that monarch's coronation, and elected knight of the garter. In 1550, the fourth year of that reign, he was appointed justice itinerant of all the king's forests ; and, in the next year, warder of the east, west, and middle marshes to-