Under the weight of her disorder, which was very trying to nature, she appeared to feel no inward depression or discouragement of mind. A willingness to die, and an entire resignation to the will of God, accompanied her to the closing scene; in the near approach of which she declared, that "she experienced the joys of a good conscience, and the power of religion giving her supports, which even the last agonies could not shake."

Thus died this most excellent princess; and, no doubt, passed from an earthly to a heavenly crown, "a crown of glory that shall never fade away."

12. LADY JANE GREY.

"Though unseen by human eye,
My Redeemer's hand is nigh;

He has poured salvation's light

Far within the vale of night."-KLOPSTOCK.

THIS excellent personage was descended from the royal line of England, by both her parents. She was carefully educated in the principles of the Reformation. Besides the solid endowments of piety and virtue, she possessed the most engaging disposition, and the most accomplished parts. Being of an equal age with King Edward VI., she received her education with him, and seemed even to possess a greater facility in acquiring every part of manly and classical literature. She attained a knowledge of the Roman and Greek languages, as well as of several modern tongues, passed most of her time in application to learning, and expressed a great indifference for the occupations and amusements usual with persons of her sex and station. Roger Ascham, tutor to the princess Elizabeth, having at one time paid her a visit, found her employed in reading Plato, while the rest of the family were engaged in a party of hunting in the

park; and upon his admiring the singularity of her choice, she told him, that "she received more pleasure from that author, than others could reap from all their sports and gayety."

This amiable lady fell an innocent victim to the wild ambition of the duke of Northumberland, who having effected a marriage between her and his son, Lord Guildford Dudley, raised her to the throne of England, in defiance of the rights of the princesses Mary and Elizabeth. At the time of her marriage, she was but eighteen years of age, and her husband was also very young.

Her heart, replete with the love of literature and serious studies, and with tenderness towards her husband, who was deserving of her affection, had never opened itself to the flattering allurements of ambition; and the information of her advancement to the throne, was by no means agreeable to her. She even refused to accept the crown, pleaded the superior right of the two princesses, expressed her dread of the consequences attending an enterprise so dangerous, not to say so criminal, and desired to remain in that private station in which she was born. Overcome at last by the entreaties, rather than by the reasons, of her father and father-inlaw, and, above. all, of her husband, she submitted to their will, and was prevailed on to relinquish her own judgment. But her elevation was of very short continuance. The nation declared for Queen Mary; and Lady Jane Grey, after wearing the vain pageantry of a crown during ten days, returned to a private life, with much more satisfaction than she could have felt when royalty was tendered to her.

Queen Mary, who appears to have been incapable of generosity or clemency, determined to remove every person from whom the least danger could be apprehended. Warning was, therefore, given to Lady Jane to prepare for death; a doom which she had expected,

and which the innocence of her life, as well as the misfortunes to which she had been exposed, rendered no unwelcome news to her.

The queen's bigoted zeal, under colour of tender mercy to the prisoner's soul, induced her to send priests, who molested her with perpetual disputation; and even a reprieve of three days was granted her, in hopes that she would be persuaded, during that time, to pay, by a timely conversion to Popery, some regard to her eternal welfare. Lady Jane had presence of mind, in those melancholy circumstances, not only to defend her religion by solid arguments, but also to write a letter to her sister, in the Greek language, in which she exhorted her to maintain, in every fortune, a like steady perse

verance.

On the day of her execution, her husband, Lord Guildford, desired permission to see her; but she refused her consent, and sent him word, that the tenderness of their parting would overcome the fortitude of both, and would too much unbend their minds from that constancy which their approaching end required. Their separation, she said, would be only for a moment; and they would soon rejoin each other in a scene where their affections would be forever united, and where death, disappointments, and misfortunes, could no longer have access to them, or disturb their eternal felicity.

It had been intended to execute the Lady Jane and her husband on the same scaffold, at Tower-hill; but the council dreading the compassion of the people for their youth, beauty, innocence, and noble birth, changed their orders, and gave directions that they should be beheaded within the verge of the Tower. She saw her husband led to execution; and, having given him from the window some token of her remembrance, waited with tranquillity till her own appointed hour should bring her to a like fate. She even saw his headless body carried

back in a cart, and found herself more confirmed by the reports which she heard of the constancy of his end, than shaken by so tender and melancholy a spectacle. Sir John Gage, constable of the Tower, when he led her to execution, desired her to bestow on him some small present, which he might keep as a perpetual memorial of her. She gave him her table-book, on which she had just written three sentences, on seeing her husband's dead body; one in Greek, another in Latin, a third in English. The purport of them was, that human justice was against his body, but that Divine Mercy would be favourable to his soul; that if her fault deserved punishment, her youth, at least, and her imprudence, were worthy of excuse; and that God and posterity, she trusted, would show her favour.

On the scaffold, she made a speech to the bystanders, in which the mildness of her disposition led her to take the blame entirely on herself, without uttering one complaint against the severity with which she had been treated. She said, that her offence was, not that she had laid her hand upon the crown, but that she had not rejected it with sufficient constancy; that she had erred less through ambition, than through reverence to her parents, whom she had been taught to respect and obey; that she willingly received death, as the only satisfaction which she could now make to the injured state; and though her infringement of the laws had been constrained, she would show, by her voluntary submission to their sentence, that she was desirous to atone for that disobedience into which too much filial piety had betrayed her; that she had justly deserved this punishment, for being made the instrument, though the unwilling instrument, of the ambition of others; and that the story of her life, she hoped, might at least be useful, by proving that innocence of intention excuses not actions that any way tend to the destruction of the common

wealth. After uttering these words, she caused herself to be disrobed by her women, and with a steady, serene countenance, submitted herself to the executioner.

13. JANE, QUEEN OF NAVARRE.

THIS excellent queen was the daughter of Henry II., king of Navarre, and of Margaret of Orleans, sister to Francis I., king of France. She was born in the year 1528.

From her childhood, she was carefully educated in the Protestant religion, to which she steadfastly adhered all her days. Bishop Burnet says of her,-"That she both received the Reformation, and brought her subjects to it; that she not only reformed her court, but the whole principality, to such a degree that the golden age seemed to have returned under her, or, rather, Christianity appeared again with its primitive purity and lustre."

This illustrious queen, being invited to attend the nuptials of her son and the king of France's sister, fell a sacrifice to the cruel machinations of the French court against the Protestant religion. The religious fortitude and genuine piety with which she was endued did not, however, desert her in this great conflict and at the approach of death.

To some that were about her, near the conclusion of her time, she said, "I receive all this as from the hand of God, my most merciful Father; nor have I, during my extremity, feared to die, much less murmured against God for inflicting this chastisement upon meknowing that whatsoever he does with me he so orders it, that, in the end, it shall turn to my everlasting good."

When she saw her ladies and women weeping about