It is strange to picture three such strangely different women as Queen Mary, Elizabeth Tudor, and Lady Jane Grey, together within the walls of the fortress at this time. The first a Queen, who has left behind her a more hateful memory than many far worse women among monarchs; the second, then but a powerless and semi-captive princess, whose future fame as a sovereign and ruler might well excite the envy of the mightiest potentate, but who, as a woman, lacked all that is best and most admirable in her sex; and the third, an uncrowned girl-queen of but seventeen summers, whose fate has called forth the love and pity of thousands, and whose brief life and death are the brightest and saddest in all history. Mary’s coronation was marked by all the wonted splendour and elaborate ceremonial of such functions at such a period, and Holinshed has recorded that her head was so weighed down by her jewelled crown that “she was faine to bear up her head with her hand.” A month later the State trials commenced. On the 13th of November a remarkable procession passed through the Tower Gate, and wended its way through the streets of the City to the Guildhall. Preceded by the axe, borne by the Gentleman Chief Warder, first came Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, followed by Lord Guildford Dudley and Lady Jane Grey, attended by two of her ladies. Lady Jane wore a dress of black from head to foot which is thus described by the chronicler Machyn:—“A black gown of clothe, turned downe, the cappe lyned with fese velvett, and edged about with the same; in a French hoode, all black, with a black habilment; a black velvet boke before her, and another boke in her hande open.” This account does not give a very clear idea of Lady Jane’s costume, but the curious reader, if he visits the National Portrait Gallery, will find a little full-face portrait of Lady Jane Grey as she then appeared, in which she is represented in this very dress, which she wore at her execution as well as during the trial. The trial was held before the Lord Mayor of London, Thomas White, by special commission, the Duke of Norfolk presiding as High Steward. All the prisoners who pleaded guilty were attached for high treason, “for assumption of the Royal authority by Lady Jane, for levying war against the Queen, and conspiring to set up another in her room,” and Lady Jane was sentenced “to be burned alive on Tower Hill or beheaded as the Queen pleases,” the verdict being afterwards confirmed by Act of Parliament.[12] After sentence had been pronounced the prisoners were taken back on foot to the Tower.