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Passage Realised

In the danger of this rebellion [of Sir Thomas Wyatt], the Queen [Mary Tudor] showed herself to be a woman of courage and spirit. She disdained to retreat to any place of safety, and went down to the Guildhall [in London], sceptre in hand, and made a gallant speech to the Lord Mayor and citizens. But on the day after Wyat's defeat, she did the most cruel act, even of her cruel reign, in signing the warrant for the execution of Lady Jane Grey.

They tried to persuade Lady Jane to accept the unreformed religion [i. e., Roman Catholicism]; but she steadily refused. On the morning when she was to die, she saw from her window the bleeding and headless body of her husband [Sir Guildford Dudley, one of the counsellors of the Protestant "Boy King," Edward VI] brought back in a cart from the scaffold on Tower Hill [outside the Tower of London] where he had laid down his life. But, as she had declined to see him before his execution, lest she should be overpowered and not make a good end, so, she even now showed a constancy and calmness that will never be forgotten. She came up to the scaffold with a firm step and a quiet face, and addressed the bystanders in a steady voice. They were not numerous; for she was too young, too innocent and fair, to be murdered before the people on Tower Hill, as her husband had just been; so, the place of her execution was within the Tower itself. She said that she had done an unlawful act in taking what was Queen Mary's right; but that she had done so with no bad intent, and that she died a humble Christian. She begged the executioner to despatch her quickly, and she asked him, "Will you take my head off before I lay me down?" He answered, "No, Madam," and then she was very quiet while they bandaged her eyes. Being blinded, and unable to see the block on which she was to lay her young head, she was seen to feel about for it with her hands, and was heard to say, confused, "O what shall I do! Where is it?" Then they guided her to the right place, and the executioner struck off her head. You know too well, now, what dreadful deeds the executioner did in England, through many, many years, and how his axe descended on the hateful block through the necks of some of the bravest, wisest, and best in the land. But it never struck so cruel and so vile a blow as this. [Chapter 30, "England Under Queen Mary, From the Year 1553 to 1558"]

Commentary

The question as to why, to secure Mary Tudor's succession, Lady Jane Grey had to die is of little concern to Charles Dickens. Although just sixteen or seventeen (Dickens takes the lower estimate), Lady Jane was a sincere Protestant and avid reader, and, like Dickens himself, something of a linguist — all reason enough for Dickens to admire and identify with her.

Sometimes referred to as "The Nine Days' Queen," Lady Jane Grey was the choice of fifteen-year-old King Edward VI as monarch, despite the fact that she was merely his cousin, and that her claim to the throne as a grand-daughter of Henry VII was inferior to that of either Princess Elizabeth or Princess Mary. Undoubtedly the fact that Lord Guildford Dudley's father, John, the Duke of Northumberland, was the chief minister explains why Edward, dying in June 1553, designated her his successor, for the nomination would make the Duke's son effectively King of England, for Lady Jane had married Lord Guildford that past 25 May, when she was probably just seventeen. Before the Privy Council turned against her on 19 July to side with Mary Tudor, Lady Jane was in effect the Queen of England from 10 July to that date. As monarch-designate, Lady Jane took up residence in the royal apartments of the Tower of London, but became a prisoner there just ten days later. Although convicted of high treason in November at the instigation of Mary's ministers, Lady Jane was not executed immediately, and might have been able to return to her quiet world of books and language study had Sir Thomas Wyatt not rebelled against Mary I when she announced her plans to marry King Philip II of Spain. The failure of Wyatt's rebellion in February 1554 seems to have precipitated Lady Jane's execution on the 12th of that month. Even though she was apparently in no way directly involved the plot, her brother, Lord John Grey of Wilton, and Lord Thomas Grey (Henry Grey's brother) were among the ringleaders, and the intention of the rebels seems to have been to place her on the throne to safeguard estates granted them under the brief reign of the young Protestant king. After her private execution inside the walls of the Tower, Lady Jane was buried between two other "headless" queens, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, in the Church of St. Peter-in-Vincula, London. During Elizabeth I's reign, she came to be regarded as something of a Protestant martyr.

Knowing that his child audience would hardly be interested in the power-brokering of rapacious nobles, Dickens places the blame for the death of the blameless Lady Jane squarely on the shoulders of the Catholic monarch who burned to death so many devout Protestants in her determination to restore the "unreformed faith." Dickens, narrating these instructive historical tales for the benefit of his progeny and afterwards dictating them to his sister-in-law, Georgina Hogarth, had an audience of seven children in mind, ranging from thirteen-year-old Charles, Jr. (for whom it was originally designed in 1843) to three-year-old Sydney, and including two girls: twelve-year-old Mary and eleven-year-old Kate. Thus, Dickens and Stone provide several female role models in the course of the eight illustrations: Queen Philippa (wife of Edward III), Joan of Arc, and Lady Jane Grey. These three are hardly active, dynamic, and powerful: indeed, among the three, only Queen Philippa is actually doing something, and the success of her humanitarian action (interceding with her stern husband on behalf of the six hapless citizens of Calais) is entirely dependent upon male authority. Dickens's heroines in A Child's History of England for the most part are passive — the chief exception being the "commanding and dignified" Elizabeth I. Indeed, the most active female figure in the Renaissance history of the country up to this point, Mary Tudor, Dickens denigrates at the time of her ascension as "thirty-seven years of age, short and thin, wrinkled in the face, and very unhealthy" — only grudgingly does he celebrate her strength of purpose as he demonizes her as the author of the "dreadful bonfires" in which Archbishops Ridley and Latimer, followed by a great many other devout Protestants, perished. The moral of the subtext for Dickens's daughters must have been clear: be comely and subservient to your husband's will, and avoid meddling in men's affairs, particularly politics. In the face of adversity, remain calm and constant.

The slender, graceful Lady Jane Grey whom Marcus Stone depicts wears a simple black dress (leave gorgeous colours for the likes of Mary Tudor, the picture implies), and appears to be praying as she earnestly contemplates the passage of her husband's corpse (severed head in a bag beside the body on a bloody bed of straw). In the background, a single lady-in-waiting, studying her young mistress, supports herself in grief by leaning on a sideboard. Since Lady Jane had two such attendants (her nurse, Mrs. Ellen, and a Mrs. Tylney), Stone has chosen to conflate the two, and place the lone figure well in the darkened background to emphasize the stoic courage of Lady Jane Grey at the window. Beside her Stone has propped a large book, presumably a Bible, which suggests not merely her studiousness but her devotion as a good Protestant to the printed Word of God. The position of her head and her profile exactly parallel those of Joan of Arc in an earlier illustration, implying that she, like Joan, had a simple, unspoiled nature and an earnest desire to do good.

References

Avery, Gillian, ed. Charles Dickens: "A Holiday Romance" and Other Writings for Children with All the Original Illustrations. Everyman edition. London: J. M. Dent, 1995.

Cohen, Jane Rabb. Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio State U. P., 1980.

Dickens, Charles. A Child's History of England in Works. Centenary Edition. 36 vols. London: Chapman and Hall; New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1910-12.

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Last modified 21 March 2013