My Story: Lady Jane Grey (My Royal Story) (16 page)

I feel as if I am holding my breath, my nerves are strung to breaking point and my head has begun to throb. Outside, yeoman warders run to and fro, and Nurse says that the great Tower guns have been trained on Southwark. Wyatt is attempting to fight his way into the city across London Bridge. A few hours ago I saw Mistress Partridge rush back into the house and heard her lock and bolt the door. I swear she has not stepped outside since.

I can hear shouts and gunfire. The smell of smoke from across the river seeps into the house. Rebels have burnt Bishop Gardiner’s palace in Southwark. It is perilously close to our house, Suffolk Place, but I can only rejoice. If only he had gone up with it. The Bishop hates all Protestants and I feel sure will do his utmost to persuade the Queen to carry out the sentence that still hangs over my head.

The rebels draw ever closer. Even within these thick walls, I hear the noise of battle. I feel a desperate hope rise within me. Rumour had it that Wyatt had retreated but it was only to wheel his men round to enter the city from the west. I spend much time on my knees in prayer.

I am to die. Oh God, why am I to be punished for others’ wrongdoing! Wyatt’s rebellion has failed, and I am to die. But what did the rebellion have to do with me? Wyatt did not write to me, he did not proclaim me queen.

In the chamber next to mine, I can hear stifled weeping. But I cannot shed a single tear. An hour ago Sir John brought me the news. Seeing the distress on his face I immediately feared the worst. But I steeled myself. I would face whatever he said, calmly.

“Madam,” he said, “it is my sad duty to inform you that the Queen’s Majesty has ordered your execution. You must prepare to die.”

“When?” I asked, amazed that my voice was so steady.

“Friday,” he replied. I heard my women burst out wailing behind me. The Queen has been merciful, I heard him say. I am to be beheaded, within the Tower walls, on Tower Green. My husband is to share my fate. He will be executed on Tower Hill, earlier the same morning. His voice sounded in my ears as if he was a long way away.

After he had gone, I went into my chamber and sat down at the table, Guildford’s prayer book open in front of me. For a long time I stared at it unseeing. God has never ceased to test me and now he has set me the greatest test of all. To face death courageously. Can I do that? I feel as if I have always known that this would be my fate and am thankful I have had time to prepare myself. How many have that blessing? May God grant my poor husband that same comfort.

Soon I will be at peace and leave life’s harsh struggles to others. Oh Mother, you tried to break my spirit, but you never succeeded. And I am glad, for if you had, how could I face my fate so calmly?

Wyatt and many of his followers are being marched into the Tower. As the prisoners passed by my window, I saw the warders shove and push them with their pikes. The prisoners looked tired and frightened – as well they might. “Traitors,” muttered my nurse when I told her. “Traitors all.” She put her apron to her eyes and began to weep. She blames them for my fate.

My father will soon join them here. Is that why I am to die? Because my father, so recently pardoned by the Queen, joined the rebels? Oh Father, Father, what made you join such a hopeless cause? Did the news that the Queen is to marry Catholic Philip of Spain push him to this one last desperate act? I was told that he was captured a few days ago, sniffed out by a dog from the hollow tree trunk where he lay hidden, disguised as a servant. It is shaming, if true.

Sir John has brought me a gift and message from Guildford. As he put the gift into my hands I saw that it was the little prayer book I had given Guildford in the garden. “He wishes to return to you something that belongs to you,” Sir John said gently. I tried not to cry as I put the book Guildford had given me into the Lieutenant’s hands.

“Then give this to my husband,” I said. “It belongs to him and will bring him some comfort, I hope.” The Lieutenant gave me his word. Guildford wished to see me, he told me then and to embrace me one last time. What a pang his words gave me, but I wrenched it away and told Sir John as steadily as I could that I could not meet him.

“If we see each other now,” I said, “it will only increase our pain and make it harder for us to let go of this life. Soon we will be together for all time. But I will look for him at the window on the morning. Tell him that,” I said anxiously. “Tell him that I will watch for him and be with him in spirit to the very end.” I heard a break in Sir John’s voice as he gave me his solemn promise to convey my message to Guildford, word for word as I had given it to him.

I am sitting by the window. It is growing dark but I have read the words in front of me so many times now that I do not need to see them. I did not find it at first, the message Guildford wrote in my prayer book, but today it fell open at a page that I have not looked at since the Lieutenant brought it to me. I stared at the words astonished – there in the margin was a most humble and dutiful message of greeting to my father. I try not to see despair in the untidily scrawled words. Instead I dwell on what he writes. He wishes Father long life, he says, such as he wished to himself. What hope can he have of that now? The Queen will not spare Father a second time. I will add my own message to his, but not now. Tears blur my eyes so that I can hardly see. I must wipe them away and put my journal down. Nurse is at the door. I have a visitor. From the expression on her face I am not sure it is a welcome one.

My visitor has just left. Even now I can hardly believe who I have been talking to. At first, when Nurse told me who my visitor was, I felt angry. The Queen had sent her confessor to me! She hopes that I will recant and save my soul. How could she think I would give up my faith now! Dr Feckenham, though, is a kindly man and I kept my temper when he greeted me and explained the reason for his visit. No one could look less like a monk than this round-faced jolly-looking fellow and I believed him when he said he was sorry for my situation. I answered that he should not grieve for me. I long for this life to be over, I said, and all th
ese long months in prison have given me ample time to prepare for it. I have no fears for my soul. He told me that he had come to free me from the superstitions in which I had been brought up. I told him he will never have enough time for that b
ut that I would welcome another day to prepare myself.

The Queen has graciously granted me three more days of life. I never asked for that, I said to Dr Feckenham when he returned. If the Queen still hopes that I will recant, her hope is a vain one! I was angry but Dr Feckenham explained gently that he was merely carrying out the Queen’s wishes. He looked tired and I was sorry and I told my women to leave us alone. We sat down together and talked long into the night. The poor man looked haggard and weary when he got up to go at last. He had not managed to change my mind. Nor will he, but he says he will return.

Three times now Dr Feckenham has visited me. But each time he has found me as firm in my faith as ever. When he got up to go this evening he sighed. “I cannot turn aside such a strongly held faith. I fear that we will never meet again.”

“No,” I said, “unless God opens your heart to the true faith.” At my words he shook his head sorrowfully but then, as he was leaving, he hesitated and asked if he could accompany me to the scaffold. To my surprise I heard myself say that I would be pleased if he did. We may be far apart in our views, but I have grown to like and respect this man.

I am weary. Soon I will lay down my pen for the last time. But first I have some letters to write – one to my sister Katherine, which I will write in my Greek testament and a farewell message to my father, which will join Guildford’s greeting to him in my prayer book. Sir John has promised to show my father our messages, and then the prayer book is Sir John’s to keep. He asked me if I would write a message in it for him too and I have promised to do so. Now it grows late and I must begin my letter to Katherine. My poor sister has had to give up her young husband and I grieve for her. I am afraid for her, too. My testament, I will tell her, will help show her how to live and I hope teach her how to die. For none of us knows how or when death will come for us, and I would she was as prepared as I am.

It grows late. Elizabeth has brought me another candle to write by. As she put it down on the table I could see that her eyes were heavy, as if she could barely keep them open. “What is the time?” I asked her.

“It is past midnight,” she said reluctantly. I bade her seek some rest. “I will rest if you will,” she told me.

I shook my head. “Elizabeth, I have no need of it. I will soon have all the rest I need.” She began to weep and I told her to dry her eyes. “Do not weep for me,” I said, comforting her. “I will soon be at peace.”

“If only there was something I could do for you,” she burst out.

“You have been my loyal friend,” I told her. “If I ask anyone for help, it will be you.” She and my nurse have promised to accompany me in the morning. I asked her if she would deliver my Greek testament to my sister. “There is a message in it for her,” I said. She promised and we were silent for a while. And then I remembered my journal. I was afraid that it would be found and read. So I told her about it.

She was astonished. “You have kept it secret all this time!”

I nodded, remembering the day I had begun it – so many years ago. I was a child of nine then. But I am trying not to think of the past so I said quickly, “I give it to you. Will you take it away for me and keep it safe?”

“I will,” she promised. “I will never open it, but I will keep it always.”

We smiled at each other through our tears and then I asked quickly if she would leave me. She has gone now, but I can hear her and my nurse moving about in the next room as they prepare my chamber for the night. In my mind’s eye I see Nurse shake out my nightgown and – as it is a cold night – I know that she will slide a warming pan in between the sheets. I will lay down my pen now and go into my chamber, bid them goodnight and say my prayers.

Outside now I can hear birds begin to sing. The darkness is beginning to lift. A new day is dawning.

Lady Jane Grey was born into turbulent times. In 1517, twenty years before her birth, a man called Martin Luther, angered at what he saw as abuses by the Catholic church, nailed his “protest” (the “95 Theses”) to the door of a church in Wittenberg in Germany. After this, “Protestantism”, as it was to become known, began to spread across Europe. In England the movement was slow to take hold. England’s King, Henry VIII, did not approve of the attempts to reform the church, and had in fact been given the title “Defender of the Faith” by the Pope (the head of the Catholic church). But then he fell in love with Anne Boleyn. Henry was already married, to a Spanish princess, Katherine of Aragon. Katherine only had one surviving child, a daughter, Mary, and Henry was desperate for a son. (In those days people did not think that women were capable of ruling a country.) To marry Anne, Henry had to seek special permission from the Pope. But the Pope refused to grant Henry a divorce. So Henry made himself head of the church in England and married Anne anyway. This started a movement towards reform of the church in England that was to become known as the Reformation. Monasteries were dissolved and their lands and property became the property of the King. But Henry was still at heart a Catholic and it was not until after he died and his young son Edward became king that the Protestant religion really took hold in England. Out went the Mass and Confession, in came services and a prayer book in English that everyone could understand.

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Jane Grey’s father, Henry Grey, Marquess of Dorset, was among the staunch Protestants who surrounded the young king. At the heart of the reforming circle was the Lord Protector, the King’s uncle, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset. Though Henry had appointed a council of ministers to rule the kingdom until his son was old enough to rule for himself, Somerset was the real ruler of the country. A devout Protestant himself, he made sure that the young king was brought up as a Protestant too. But not everyone approved. Princess Mary, who under the terms of her father’s will would become the next monarch if Edward died without an heir, made no secret of her Catholicism and – even when ordered to do so – refused to give up hearing the Mass. There were many others who strongly opposed the reforms. In 1536 in Henry’s reign there had been a rebellion against the Reformation – the Pilgrimage of Grace. Now fresh rebellions and riots flared up across the country. (Though people had other grievances too. The enclosure of common lands by wealthy landowners had added to the plight of the poor in an era of high rents and rising prices.)

Jane Grey, meanwhile, was growing up. A clever and studious girl she had a claim to the throne through her mother, Frances, the daughter of King Henry’s younger sister, Mary. It was to prove a cursed inheritance. When Edward, still a boy, fell gravely ill, the minds of the Protestants turned to his successor, Princess Mary. They feared that if Mary became queen, their reforms would be rolled back, and England would become a Catholic country again. Even worse, Mary, still unmarried, might marry a foreign prince. King Edward shared their fears. Tearing up his father’s will, he made a new one, which he called “My device for the succession”. At a stroke both Mary and her younger sister, Elizabeth, were disinherited. In their place, their cousin Jane Grey was to be queen. With Jane – a devout Protestant – on the throne, the Protestant religion would be safe. Even better, England would not fall into the hands of a foreign power as by now Jane was safely married to another English Protestant, Lord Guildford Dudley, the youngest son of the powerful Duke of Northumberland.

When Edward died, reactions to Jane’s accession were mixed. Who was this girl? people asked. What right did she have to be queen? Many believed that the Duke of Northumberland had even poisoned the King and married his son to Jane to get his hands on the throne. Northumberland, a Protestant, was a clever and able man, but feared and distrusted by ordinary folk. He had brought about the fall of the Duke of Somerset through a trumped-up plot, and the execution of the man people had loved as “the good duke” angered them. When Mary declared that she was the rightful queen, many people agreed with her. Was she not King Harry’s daughter? Never mind that she was a Catholic and had yet to marry. They refused to join the army sent to capture her and flocked instead to her standard. As support for Jane dwindled, the members of her Council panicked and scurried away to declare Mary the rightful queen. A mere ten days since she had been proclaimed queen, Jane found herself a prisoner and Mary rode in triumph through the streets of London.

Mary kept Jane and her young husband imprisoned in the Tower of London, but she spared the lives of many who had supported her, including Jane’s own father. But Northumberland, who had led Jane’s army against Mary and who many blamed for putting Jane on the throne, was captured and executed. Jane and Guildford also stood trial for treason and were condemned to death. But Mary was reluctant to carry out the sentences. Then came the news that Mary intended to marry a Catholic prince – Philip of Spain. It was the Protestants’ worst fear. They could stomach the Catholic queen, even one who was busily undoing all their reforms, but a Catholic prince ruling beside Mary in England? Never! Though they were assured that Philip would have no real power, it was not enough for some. A man called Sir Thomas Wyatt led a rebellion against Mary. It failed, and though he had declared his intention to put Mary’s younger sister Elizabeth, not Jane, on the throne, a few days later, Jane made the short walk to Tower Green, where she was executed. Guildford also lost his head, as did Jane’s father. Rashly he had joined the rebellion and not even he could have been surprised that he was tried and executed for treason. The Protestant cause must have seemed lost, but though Jane’s reign was so brief, a mere footnote between the reigns of Edward and Mary, Jane was not forgotten. The courage and dignity shown on the scaffold by a girl not yet seventeen, her keeping to her faith to the end, must have given heart to the English Protestants who faced an uncertain and frightening future during what for them would be the long dark years of Mary’s reign.

True or false?

With one stroke of the axe, Jane Grey was turned into a Protestant martyr. All sorts of stories grew up around her: the teenage martyr, the devout Protestant, the reluctant queen, the bullied girl. But how true are the stories? In recent times, historians have begun to question many firmly held beliefs about Jane Grey. Was Jane treated as harshly by her parents as has been claimed? Tudor children were certainly brought up very strictly, by our standards, and Jane may have been brought up more strictly than most. Her parents had high hopes for their clever daughter and Thomas Seymour had encouraged them to think that she might marry King Edward one day. Under Henry’s will, Jane already had a claim to the throne. Were they preparing her for that role? Did they dream that one day their daughter would be queen in her own right? Maybe…

Hard evidence for the harsh way it is claimed Jane was treated seems to rest principally on a document the scholar Roger Ascham wrote called “The Schoolmaster”. It recalls a conversation he had with Jane, while visiting the Greys at Bradgate, in which Jane confessed how harshly she was treated by her parents and how it was only at her studies with her tutor Dr Aylmer that she found any happiness. It was written many years after Jane’s death, however, principally to illustrate the benefits to children of a kindly education. And it seems that Ascham also wrote Jane a letter soon after this visit in which he told her how her parents delighted in her progress. Could the truth be that Jane was stubborn, even rebellious and liked her own way – like many other teenagers? Did she find it hard to be as dutiful and obedient as her parents wished? Or was she truly treated more harshly than other girls at the time?

Was Jane bullied into marrying Guildford Dudley? Girls in Tudor times had little choice who they married, though parents did usually try to find a husband acceptable to them, and apparently Jane’s mother later claimed she had had misgivings about the match. Northumberland pressed for the match, but it was not initially suggested either by him or by Jane’s parents.

What did Jane feel about Guildford? They were married for only a few months before they were separated by their imprisonment in the Tower and Jane spent much of her early married life at home, as was often the custom then. In the letter she wrote to Mary begging forgiveness for usurping the throne, Jane claimed that she loved Guildford, though it seems that she also despaired of the influence his mother had over him. Jane seems to have had no warm feelings for either of Guildford’s parents. In her letter to Mary, she wrote that she had been deceived by them and even by her husband and ill-treated by his mother. Later, in the Tower, when she learnt that on the eve of execution Northumberland had abandoned his Protestant faith for Catholicism, Jane’s dislike turned to anger and contempt. And it was Northumberland she blamed for bringing her and her family down, and for putting her on the throne in the first place.

Northumberland has often been portrayed as a villain, the man who controlled the young King Edward, who forced him to change his will in favour of Jane Grey, who he had conveniently married to his son a few months earlier, who had concocted an assassination attempt in order to bring down the Duke of Somerset and who bullied and intimidated everyone who knew him.

How true is this? It seems that Edward had great faith in the Duke, though contemporary records suggest that many people did fear and distrust him. Able and a great general, Northumberland was also capable of great ruthlessness, as was shown in his putting down of the rebellion in Norfolk.

But did Northumberland persuade Edward to change his will, or were he and the other members of the Council merely carrying out the King’s wishes when they proclaimed Jane queen? He did not initiate the plan to marry his son to Jane Grey, however much he welcomed it. And when he left to defend Jane’s crown, he told her Council that they owed Jane loyalty. Jane, he reminded them, had never sought to be queen.

Most of the people mentioned in the story did exist. While Jane was imprisoned in the Tower, she had three women and a manservant to look after her. One of them, Elizabeth Tilney, Jane may well have met while she was part of Katherine Parr’s household and it is certain that she was with Jane at the end of Jane’s life. Another, Mistress Jacob, was also a real person. Jane did have a manservant or a page but I know nothing about him. Mistress Ellen also existed – she was the other of the two women who escorted Jane to Tower Green. But was she also her nurse? Some accounts say that she was, others that this was someone else.

Did Jane and Guildford meet in the Tower garden? When did Guildford write the touching and dutiful message to Jane’s father, which can still be read in Jane’s prayer book today. No one knows for sure. My account is imagined. It is just one of the many mysteries there still are about Jane Grey’s short life and that will probably never be answered.

Young King Edward did keep a chronicle, though only occasionally can we sense in it what the boy king might have been like. There is no record that Jane ever kept a diary. Here and there in her writings one catches glimpses of the girl, though much of what survives has been translated, and the formal style makes it hard to guess the writer’s true feelings. All I can hope is that what I have written does some justice to the girl, whose extraordinary courage, determination and honesty cannot be denied.