245

HISTORICAL SUMMARY.

The conspiracy against the government of William the Third, and to effect the restoration of his exiled father-in-law, James the Second, for which Lord Preston and his friend, Mr. Ashton, were condemned to death, took place in 1692.

Sir John Dalyrymple relates the anecdote of the courageous child of Lord Preston, in his Memoirs. Ashton was put to death, but the presence of mind of the young lady saved Lord Preston's life.

Her name was Catherine, and not Lucy. Her brother Edward dying young, she, with her two sisters, became her father's co-heiresses; at seventeen she married a gallant young nobleman, the son of Lord Widdrington, with whom she led a most happy life. Her memory is still greatly respected for her virtues and talents, in Lancashire, her native county.

246

LIFE OF LADY JANE GREY.

INTRODUCTION.

of

THIS young lady, at 12 years of age, understood eight languages, was nine days Queen of England, and was beheaded in the Tower in the 17th year her age, being at that time the most aimable and accomplished woman in Europe.

She is the most perfect model of a meritorious young creature of the female sex, to be found in history: her example therefore is the fittest possible to be held up to the fairest half of the rising generation. Her story is tragical: it is adapted on that account to interest the affection, and to soften the heart. In addition to these advantages it has one further recommendation: it may serve the juvenile reader as a specimen of the history of England; when they come hereafter to the year 1553, they will say, here we shall meet with our old favourite, whose worth and calamitous fortune we can never forget! The life of lady Jane Grey is connected with those great great objects, the Reformation, and the Revival of Learning; and this small fragment of the history of nations, will excite the ingenuous mind to wish to search further into that grand magazine of instruction.

LADY JANE GREY, the subject of this history, was a princess of the blood-royal of England. King

Henry VII, who defeated Richard III. in the battle of Bosworth Field, and put an end to the Wars of York and Lancaster, and left behind him three children, Henry VIII, who succeeded him; Margaret, who was married to the king of Scotland, and was grandmother of the unfortunate and beautiful Mary queen of Scots; and Mary, who was married first to the king of France, and, after his death, to Charles Brandon duke of Suffolk in England. Of this marriage the issue was two daughters, Frances, espoused to Henry Grey marquis of Dorset, and Eleanor, married to Henry Clifford earl of Cumberland. Lady Jane Grey was the daughter of Henry marquis of Dorset, and Frances his wife.

The history of lady Jane Grey is worthy to be written, and to be read, because she was a person of uncommon understanding and goodness. She was not however fortunate in her parents. They but were desirous she should be accomplished, they did not know the best way of going about it. Yet, as they were persons of high rank and riches, they could be at no loss to procure her instructors and masters.

She was born in the year 1537, at Broadgate, her father's family-seat in Leicestershire, and appears to have spent the principal part of her early years in retirement at this place, though occasionally she passed a short time in visits to her cousins, who were afterward, king Edward VI, queen Mary, and queen Elizabeth.

The period in which she lived has generally been

called the Revival of Learning. Not that there were not learned men who lived, and wise books that were written, in England and other countries, in the ages immediately before; but that, just at this time, the books of many Greek authors were brought to light, which had long been neglected, and the study of the Greek language became a sort of fashion. King Edward VI. and queen Elizabeth were Greek scholars: many ladies, as well as gentlemen, of high rank, applied themselves to this study; and Sir Anthony Cooke, Sir John Cheke, Roger Ascham, and other masters who were most skilful in teaching it, were every where received with the greatest distinction, and classed among the first ornaments of their country.

When lady Jane was between nine and ten years of age, her great uncle, king Henry VIII, died, and her little cousin, Edward VI, a few months younger than herself, was proclaimed King of England. You may think that his courtiers and ministers did not at first trouble him much about matters of government, and that they only thought of trying to make him lead a private life in his own palaces agreeably. Two of his companions were his sisters, Mary and Elizabeth. But Mary was more than twenty years older than her brother, was of a reserved and disagreeable temper, and, having been brought up in a different religion, this laid a foundation of ill-humour between them. Elizabeth had only four years the start of the young king, was distinguished for her talents and literary turn, and every body loved and admired her. Edward VI.

was very fond of her company, and gave her the good-humoured nick-name of his lady temper. It is a little difficult to know what Edward VI. meant by this name. Was it given in allusion to the sagacity she possessed beyond her years, and the prudence and propriety which, as they marked all her actions in the sad period of her adversity, may be supposed to have discovered themselves even now? Or, is it possible, as Elizabeth when queen of England, though she was the most extraordinary and deep-judging of her sex, showed herself occasionally a woman of very violent passions, that she teased her poor brother thus early with the quickness of her resentments, and the tartness of her replies? Lady Jane Grey made a third in this agreeable society, and, as she was almost exactly of the king's age, he found in her a more equal associate than in his sister Elizabeth. This aimable trio pursued the same studies, read in the same books, and contracted an early friendship for each other.

Lady Jane Grey, before she was twelve years old, was mistress of eight different languages. She wrote and spoke the English tongue with elegance and accuracy. French, Italian, Latin, and even Greek, she possessed to a perfection as if they were native to her; and she had made some progress in Hebrew, Chaldee and Arabic. Yet she did not, like some learned ladies I have heard of, in pursuit of these extraordinary acquisitions, fall into any neglect of those more useful and ornamental arts, which are peculiarly to be desired in the female