Page:The Queens of England.djvu/396

 354 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. of burdening her weak conscience with a yoke that did not belong to it ; that she understood the infamy of those who had permitted the violation of right to gain a scepter; that it were to mock God and deride justice, to scruple at the stealing of a shilling, and not at the usurpation of a crown. And she added, with a full sense of the real jeopardy of the enterprise, "If I now permit Fortune to adorn and crown me, I must tomorrow suffer her to crush and tear me to pieces." Such we may receive as the honest and deliberate resolve of Lady Jane ; but what was the chance of resistance to the over- bearing will of Dudley in a girl of seventeen, whom he had taken care to have wholly in his power. The council, the judges, and the lord chancellor had not been able to maintain their opposition against him, and vain, therefore, was the struggle of this wise and virtuous, but politically weak and unassisted maiden. She could only weep and protest. She stood alone in her righteous resolve. She was a lamb amongst wolves. Her parents, her own immediate relatives, her hus- band were all united in the alluring but fatal conspiracy against her. They were all impatient to lift themselves to royalty in her name. "Lord Guildford," Mr. Howard remarks, "dazzled by so brilliant a destiny, was prevailed on to add the accents of love to the wiles of ambition, and beyond this, female forti- tude could not be expected to go." And Sir Harris Nicolas adus. that "A motive to her acquiescence more powerful than any that have been hitherto attributed to her, is to be found in the reflection which must have occurred to her of the im- minent danger in which those nearest to her heart were placed, and which nothing but her possession of royalty could avert. The failure of a treasonable plot never fails to produce the destruction of those who created it, and she might expect that the hour which saw Mary secure on the throne, would be the last of the existence of her father and the father of her husband. This dreadful truth naturally induced her to adopt the only step which could possibly secure their safety. Her character thus appears in a new and more lovely light : we see her thus consenting to incur the utmost personal peril, by adopting a course contrary to the dictates of her conscience, in the desper- ate hope of preserving her family." Her consent thus extorted, she was the next day conveyed by Dudley, her father-in-law, with great state to the Tower, and immediately afterwards proclaimed Queen of England. The result justified the fears of both Lady Jane and the