The Chautauquan, Vol. 05, April 1885Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
Philosophy
The Chautauquan, Vol. 05, April 1885
Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
Chautauqua Institution -- Periodicals; Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle -- Periodicals
“Within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps death his court; and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp;
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchise, be fear’d and kill with looks;
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life
Were brass impregnable; and humor’d thus,
Comes at the last, and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall—and farewell, king!”
Wakefield Tower is very ancient, having been built in the time of William
Rufus, in 1087.
On the opposite side of the inner ward looms up the gloomy and famous
Bowyer Tower, so named from its having been the residence of the Master
Provider of the King’s Bows. In a dungeon-like room of this tower,
“false, fleeting, perjured Clarence,” younger brother of Edward IV., was
drowned in a butt of Malmsey. Together with the detestable Gloucester,
he stabbed the young son of Henry VI. in the field at Tewkesbury, but
retribution was swift. He soon incurred the displeasure and jealousy of
his royal brother, and perished in this wretched manner.
“O Brackenbury, I have done these things
That now give evidence against my soul—
For Edward’s sake, and see, how he requites me.”
But a short distance from the Bowyer is the Brick Tower, which acquires
a mournful interest from the fact that tradition has assigned this as
the prison of the martyr of ambition, the lovely Lady Jane Grey. Fuller
says of her that at eighteen she possessed the innocence of childhood,
the sedateness of age, the learning of a clerk, and the life of a saint.
Gentle, modest and retiring, fond of her studies and books, little
dreamed she of her short-lived honor and cruel fate. Forced upon the
throne by the insatiable ambition of Northumberland, she ruled for ten
days. It is asserted that Mary wished to spare her cousin’s life, but
that Wyatt’s rebellion so alarmed her that she determined to make an
example of Lady Jane and her boy husband, Guildford Dudley.
Not only her piety, grace and beauty excite our admiration, but also her
sublime heroism, which caused her to refuse to bid her young lover and
husband farewell, lest the parting should unman him. Dudley was executed
on Tower Hill, and the same day the lofty spirit of his wife joined his.
“Now boast thee, death; in thy possession lies
A lass, unparallel’d.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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