Heroines That Every Child Should Know: Tales for Young People of the World's Heroines of All Ages
History
Heroines That Every Child Should Know: Tales for Young People of the World's Heroines of All Ages
Women heroes
The Lord comfort Your Grace, and that in His Word, wherein all
creatures only are to be comforted; and though it hath pleased
God to take away two of your children, yet think not, I most
humbly beseech Your Grace, that you have lost them; but trust
that we, by leaving this mortal life, have won an immortal life.
And I, for my part, as I have honoured Your Grace in this life,
will pray for you in another life.--Your Grace's humble
daughter,
JANE DUDLEY.
The stern Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir John Brydges, had been
vanquished by the gentle graces of his prisoner and he sought from her
some memorial in writing. In a manual of manuscript prayers she wrote
a few sentences of farewell:
Forasmuch as you have desired so simple a woman to write in so
worthy a book, good Master Lieutenant, therefore I shall, as a
friend, desire you, and as a Christian require you, to call upon
God to incline your heart to His laws, to quicken you in His
way, and not to take the word of truth utterly out of your
mouth. Live still to die, that by death you may purchase eternal
life, and remember how Methuselah, who, as we read in the
Scriptures, was the longest liver that was of a man, died at the
last; for, as the Preacher saith, there is a time to be born and
a time to die; and the day of death is better than the day of
our birth.--Yours, as the Lord knoweth, as a friend,
JANE DUDLEY.
Mary and her advisers had originally intended that both Lady Jane and
her husband should be executed together on Tower Hill; but reflection
convinced them that the spectacle of so comely and youthful a pair
suffering for what was rather the crime of others than their own,
might powerfully awaken the sympathies of the multitude, and produce a
revulsion of feeling. It was ordered, therefore, that Lady Jane should
suffer within the precincts of the Tower.
The fatal morning came. The young husband--still a bridegroom and a
lover--had obtained permission to bid her a last farewell; but she
refused to see him, apprehensive that so bitter a parting might
overwhelm them, and deprive them of the courage needful to face death
with calmness. She sent him, however, many loving messages, reminding
him how brief would be their separation, and how quickly they would
meet in a brighter and better world.
In going to his death on Tower Hill, he passed beneath the window of
her cell; so that they had an opportunity of exchanging a farewell
look. He behaved on the scaffold with calm intrepidity. After spending
a brief space in silent devotion, he requested the prayers of the
spectators, and, laying his head upon the block, gave the fatal
signal. At one blow his head was severed from his body.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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