THE COURT AND LADY'S MAGAZINE, MONTHLY CRITIC AND MUSEUM. A Family Journal OF ORIGINAL TALES, REVIEWS OF LITERATURE, THE FINE ARTS, MUSIC, DRAMA, FASHIONS, &c., &c. UNDER THE DISTINGUISHED PATRONAGE OF HER ROYAL HIGHNESS THE DUCHESS OF KENT. MEMOIR OF LADY JANE GRAY, (de facto) QUEEN of england. Embellished with a Full-length authentic coloured Portrait, after Vander Werff. "Jane, the queen" (as that lovely, virtuous yet ill-starred princess is designated in her regal acts) reigned in England for the space of only ten days. This sway of the " gentle Jane" over our country formed the first actual precedent of Englishmen submitting to the rule of a female monarch—a precedent of infinite value to her ungracious successor. Lady Jane Gray exercised sovereign power over the kingdom of England; she was placed by its counsellors of state at the head of the nation-was invested in the palaces of the Tudors and Plantagenets with the attributes of royalty: nay, more, she was without opposition proclaimed queen regnant in that metropolis which had rejected with scorn the feminine domination of her great ancestress Maude heiress of Henry the First-whom they had chased with violence from their gates. Yes, Jane was acknowledged sovereign by the civic authorities of that London which had then, for the first time, quietly acquiesced in the elevation of a female to the supreme sovereignty. If, then, we consider the extreme unwillingness of the fierce peers of England during the middle ages to submit to the sceptre sway, when it had (to use the expression of the great Alfred) "fallen to the distaff side," no wonder that we reckon the ten days' queenship of the unfortunate Jane as a notable precedent in the annals of England's history, and a virtual abrogation of the Salic law in England. Ten days' royalty! Alas, how deeply fraught with tragic interest is the historic page recording the events of that brief period, and how immeasurable the results proceeding therefrom. Love, beauty, religious constancy, genius and learning were 81 seen in early womanhood intermingling their glorious halo with the dark shadowings of deposition, imprisonment and violent death upon the scaffold. What Greek drama, though invested with the mysterious pall of inexorable destiny, ever presented an heroine so pitiable in her fate as this hapless lady, whom the crafty devices of her family and kindred forced upon the throne as the first queen-regnant of England. In the most sequestered part of Leicestershire, backed by rude eminences, and skirted by lowly and romantic valleys, stands Bradgate, the birth-place and abode of this virtuous princess, born it is supposed in the year 1537. The approach to Bradgate from the village of Cropston is striking. On the left stands a group of venerable trees, at the extremity of which rise the remains of the once magnificent mansion of the Grays of Groby. On the right is a hill, known by the name of "The Coppice," covered with slate, but so intermixed with fern and forest flowers as to form a beautiful contrast to the deep shades of the surrounding woods. To add to the loveliness of the scene, a winding trout-stream finds its way from rock to rock, washing the walls of Bradgate until it reaches the fertile meadows of Swithland. In the distance, situate upon a hill, is a tower, called by the country people Old John, commanding a magnificent view of the adjoining country, including the distant castles of Nottingham and Belvoir. 66 Bradgate itself is thus described by old Fuller. "This fair, large, and beautiful palace" he says, 'was erected in the early part of the reign of Henry VIII., by Thomas Gray, second Marquis of Dorset. It is built principally of red brick of a square form, with a turret at either corner. It was the favourite residence of the Dorset family, more especially of Henry, the father of the Lady Jane, of whom it has been observed, that he loved to live in his own way, and that he kept up the magnificence of nobility rather at his residence in the country than at court.' With the exception of the chapel and kitchen, the princely mansion has now become a ruin, but a tower still stands which tradition points out as the birth-place of the Lady Jane. Traces of the tilt-yard are visible, with the garden walls and a noble terrace whereon Jane often walked and sported in her childhood, and the rose and lily still spring in favourable nooks of that wilderness, once the Pleasance, or pleasure garden of Bradgate. Near the brook is a beautiful group of old chestnut trees. This was thy home then, gentle Jane, This thy green solitude;-and here At evening from thy gleaming pane Thine eye oft watched the dappled deer, The deer yet browseth;-where art thou? The father of Lady Jane was descended from the eldest son of Elizabeth Wydeville* (by her first husband, Lord Gray, of Groby), her mother from the same queen, by her royal children, of the house of Plantagenet. Henry, Marquis of Dorset, was the son of Thomas Gray, second marquis. Though rich and powerful he was considered rather deficient in intellect: he married first the daughter of William, Earl of Arundel, and was divorced from her through some caprice of his own-a circumstance which made the legitimacy of his children afterwards contested. Rich as he was, he would scarcely have received the hand of the Lady Frances Brandon, niece to Henry VIII, had he not been contracted to her during the life-time of her two brothers. The deaths of all the heirs male of the Duke of Suffolk, rendered the Lady Frances a great heiress. Dorset was on this account created Duke of Suffolk, in the year 1551-2. The Marquis of Dorset and Frances Brandon were the parents of two daughters besides Jane; these were Katherine, about a year younger, and Mary, who was * This portrait will be given shortly. crooked and somewhat imbecile. The extreme severity of the parents of the Lady Jane would have embittered her childhood and cast a gloom over her angelic temper had she not, fortunately, been blessed with a pious and mild philosopher for her tutor. She was educated by the learned and virtuous Aylmer, who, from the evidence of her own words, was a resident at Bradgate, though more than one learned man assisted him in his interesting office-the Lady Jane having received instruction occasionally from Bucer, and Roger Ascham so celebrated as the tutor of her cousin, afterwards queen Elizabeth. The example of Margaret, countess of Richmond, mother of Henry VII, and great grandmother of Frances Brandon, had rendered learning fashionable at the English court and especially among her own descendants. Lady Jane united the accomplishments of modern times with the deep learning of the sixteenth century, played on several instruments, and was a linguist of singular attainments; for not only did she possess a knowledge of Latin, Greek, French and Italian in an extraordinary degree for her tender years, but she was acquainted with Arabic, Chaldaic and Hebrew. Instead of skill in drawing she cultivated the art of painting with the needle, and at Zurich is still to be seen, together with the original MSS. of her Latin letters to the reformer Bullinger, a toilet, beautifully embroidered by her own hands which had been presented by her to her learned correspondent. Jane passed, as we have said, the greater part of her early youth at Bradgate, yet she was not an unfrequent visitor at the court of Katherine Parr, who strongly confirmed in her mind the early principles of Reformation and publicly attended this queen. The following is the earliest notice of the Lady Jane, as connected with public life, which the page of history at present furnishes. It is mentioned by Speed, after the well-known crisis when Katherine won the heart of her tyrant lord in her favour against the snares laid by Gardiner to take away her life, that the queen though greatly indisposed, on the first evening of her recovery, went to pay her duty to her grim tyrant who was confined by lameness to his chamber, and that Lady Jane Gray, then nine years of age, bore the candles before Queen Katherine Parr. Upon the death of her great uncle (Henry VIII.) the prospects of the Lady Jane were evidently changed, in consequence of Henry's last will, in which he had apparently used his best endeavour to disinherit the children of his eldest sister, Margaret, queen of James IV, of Scotland (amongst whom was even Margaret Douglas his favourite niece) and place the line of his niece Frances Brandon on the throne in reversionary succession after his own children. From this time the home of Lady Jane, as a virgin of the royal blood of England, was with Katherine Parr, the widowed queen of England, with whom she seems to have lived as a ward, both during the short widowhood and subsequent marriage of that queen with Thomas Seymour. The Lady Jane, during the life of Katherine Parr, was destined by Seymour as a bride to Edward VI., thus traversing the designs of his brother, the Protector Somerset, who was wooing the infant queen of Scots for his young sovereign, at the point of the sword. Lady Jane was with Katherine Parr, at Sudley, when she died, and walked as chiefmourner at her funeral. Her death altered the position of Lady Jane, and Seymour seems to have meditated reserving her as a dernier resort, in the event of his not succeeding in his ambitious views of gaining the hand of the Princess Elizabeth, as there is no doubt but that he purposed appropriating her to himself as a wife; and his changed intention of promoting the marriage of Jane and Edward, Seymour announced to her in terms couched in the coarseness peculiar to that era and his own profligate character. Sir Nicholas Harris Nicolas records a curious transaction at this time between the father of the Lady Jane and Lord Thomas Seymour, who it appears gave Dorset 500l. for the privilege of retaining the young lady at his castle. If we view the circumstance unconnected with wardship, this was a most extraordinary proceeding, but the purchase of a wardship was not uncommon in the ages preceding the sixteenth century; we are much inclined to believe that as the heirs male of Mary Tudor (grandmother to the Lady Jane) were certainly dead at that time, the Lady Jane was a ward of the crown as a coheiress of some appanage pertaining to the * By whom was built Somerset House. royal demesnes; that the widow of Henry VIII. had succeeded on his death to that wardship, and that Thomas Lord Seymour, as the widower of the queen dowager, had some rights over the royal ward, which rights he bolstered up by the purchased authority of the father. This is the only reasonable explanation we can offer regarding a so mysterious yet authentic record. Be it as it may, it seems passing strange that the father of Jane should on any terms leave his young daughter without female guardianship in the hands of a profligate like the Lord of Sudley. The arrest of Seymour and his illegal execution a short time after the demise of his wife, broke up every plan he might have formed in regard to Jane, who returned once more to Bradgate, her birthplace; and here it was that Roger Ascham paid her that visit which he describes in his Schoolmaster: "Before I went into Germanie, I came to Bradgate to take my leave of that noble Lady Jane Gray, to whom I was exceeding much beholding. Her parents, the duke and duchess with all the household gentlemen and gentlewomen were hunting in the park. I found her in her chamber, reading the Phædo of Plato in Greek, and that with as much delight as some gentlemen would read a merry tale in Boccacio. After salutation and duty done, with some other talk, I asked her why she would lose such pastime in the park?' "I wis all their sport in the park is but a shadow to that pleasure that I find in Plato. Alas! good folk, they never knew what true pleasure meant.' "And how came you, madam,' quoth I, 'to arrive at this deep knowledge of pleasure? and what did chiefly allure you unto it, seeing not many women and but few men have attained thereto?' 666 "I will tell you,' quoth she, ' and tell you a truth, which perchance ye will marvel at. One of the greatest benefits that ever God gave me is that he sent so sharp and severe parents and so gentle a schoolmaster. For when I am in presence of either father or mother, whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand, or go; eat, drink, be merry or sad; be sewing, dancing, playing, or anything 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, often sometimes with pinches, nips, bobs and other ways, which I will not name for the honour I bear them, so without measure is all 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 the time nothing that I am with him. And when I am called from him I fall weeping, because whatever I do else but learning, is full of grief, trouble, fear and whole misliking unto me, and thus my books have been so much pleasure to me that in respect to them all other pleasures in very deed have been but trifles and troubles to me." In the December following, (anno 1550) Ascham had an interview at court with the Lady Jane. The nature of that meeting may be judged of from the enthusiastic manner in which he writes to his dear friend, Sturmius, respecting her: he there again alludes to his visit to Bradgate. He declares with rapture, that she speaks and writes Greek admirably. "O Jupiter and all ye gods!" says he, "I found the divine virgin diligently studying the divine Phaedo of the divine Plato in the original Greek." Happier certainly in this respect than in being descended, both on the father's and mother's side, from kings and queens. He then makes mention of the Greek epistle, which she had promised to write to his friend, Sturmius, in order to give him proof positive of the truth of what he had advanced of her attainments in that language. The correspondence of the Lady Jane, before the time of her marriage, with Henry Bullinger, a man of letters, between the years 1550 and 1553, was also carried on in Latin. The most interesting portion of their contents will be found in the following personal notations (changed into modern English) of herself and her father, of whom it will be observed she makes mention as the friend and companion of her studies: "From the little volume of pure and unsophisticated religion which you lately sent my |