Modern writers have not hesitated to accuse Mary of cruelty and vindictiveness in causing the death of two persons who, although usurpers, were but tools in masterful and unscrupulous hands. This opinion does not appear to have been shared by her contemporaries, who threw the blame generally, not on the Queen, but on the Duke of Suffolk, “who would have died more pitied for his weakness, if his practices had not brought his daughter to her end”.[413] They argued, that to lay claim to a throne is a matter of so deep an import, that even in deploring the necessity of executing the Lady Jane and her husband, “their death being not easily consented to, not even by the Queen herself,” they could not help exculpating Mary, who adopted the measure for State reasons and not from personal animosity.[414] It is strange that, with so great a personal reputation for clemency, in the midst of a ferocious age, Mary should have come to be regarded as an example of unparalleled cruelty, by all subsequent generations. When we remember that during nearly the whole of Elizabeth’s reign, the rack, the thumbscrew and the terrible instrument known as “the Scavenger’s Daughter” were never at rest, and that under Mary, contrary to the custom of every court of justice in Europe, torture was seldom applied to an accused person, the unfairness with which she has been treated by historians is unmistakeably apparent. Contemporaneous annalists, such as Holinshed and Stow, are guiltless of the injustice; Foxe was the first of Mary’s libellers, and Strype, who wrote at the end of the seventeenth century, was not only biassed by Foxe, but was embittered by the mass of calumny heaped upon her memory by Anabaptists and Iconoclasts. The Bishop of Winchester, preaching before her on the 11th February, “axed a boon of the Queen’s highness, that like as she had before time extended her mercy particularly and privately, so through her lenity and gentleness much conspiracy and open rebellion was grown, according to the proverb _nimia familiaritas parit contemptum_; which he brought then in for the purpose that she would now be merciful to the body of the commonwealth, and conservation thereof, which could not be, unless the rotten and hurtful members thereof were cut off and consumed”.[415] The next day, Lady Jane Grey and Lord Guildford Dudley were beheaded, he on Tower Hill, in presence of the people, she within the Tower precincts, in consideration of her royal descent. Mary had sent them permission to take leave of each other, but Jane declined the favour, saying that they would meet soon in heaven. Before laying her head on the block, she acknowledged in a few words her guilt in having consented to her father-in-law’s treason, although she had not been one of the original conspirators.