Jane's intellectual and spiritual life
- her life till May 1553 -
I will tell you, and tell you a troth, which perchance ye will meruell at. One of the greatest benefites, that euer God gaue me, is, that he sent me so sharpe and seuere Parentes, and so ientle a scholemaster. For when I am in presence either of father or mother, whether I speake, kepe silence, sit, stand, or go, eate, drinke, be merie, or sad, be sowyng, plaiyng, dauncing, or doing anie thing els, I must do it, as it were, in soch weight, mesure, and number, euen so perfitelie, as God made the world, or else I am so sharplie taunted, so cruellie threatened, yea presentlie some tymes, with pinches, nippes, and bobbes, and other waies, which I will not name, for the honor I beare them, so without measure misordered, that I thinke my selfe in hell, till tyme cum, that I must go to M. Elmer, who teacheth me so ientlie, so pleasantlie, with soch faire allurementes to learning, that I thinke all the tyme nothing, whiles I am with him. And when I am called from him, I fall on weeping, because, what soeuer I do els, but learning, is ful of grief, trouble, feare, and whole misliking vnto me: And thus my booke, hath bene so moch my pleasure, & bringeth dayly to me more pleasure & more, that in respect of it, all other pleasures, in very deede, be but trifles and troubles vnto me.
Lady Jane to Roger Ascham
In the winter of 1553, when Lady Jane had been living at home for a year,
Roger Ascham's tutorship of the Princess Elizabeth came to an end,
and he was sent to the Low Countries as secretary to Sir Richard
Morrison, Edward VI's Ambassador to Charles V. Ascham was thirty-five,
and his book Toxophilus had made his name in Protestant and intellectual
circles. Among his many friends were Haddon, now the Dorsets' chaplain,
and Aylmer, their daughters' new tutor. Before leaving England, Ascham
accepted an invitation to stay at Bradgate.
Riding across the park , he observed that the Dorsets and their household
were out hunting. In need of rest after his journey, he went on to the house
and asked if anyone was at home. Only my Lady Jane was within doors, he was
told; and he was ushered into her room.
Then followed one of the most famous conversations in English history, recorded
by Ascham in the vivid, informal style which made his work popular. He recalled
his conversation with Lady Jane Grey in The Scholemaster (The Schoolmaster):
"Before I went into Germanie, I came to Brodegate in Lecetershire, to take my leaue of that noble Ladie Iane Grey, to whom I was exceding moch beholdinge. Hir parentes, the Duke and Duches, with all the houshould, Gentlemen and Gentlewomen, were huntinge in the Parke: I founde her, in her Chamber, readinge Phadon Platonis in Greeke, and that with as moch delite, as som ientleman wold read a merie tale in Bocase. After salutation, and dewtie done, with som other taulke, I asked hir, whie she wold leese soch pastime in the Parke? smiling she answered me: I wisse, all their sporte in the Parke is but a shadoe to that pleasure, that I find in Plato: Alas good folke, they neuer felt, what trewe pleasure ment. And howe came you Madame, quoth I, to this deepe knowledge of pleasure, and what did chieflie allure you vnto it: seinge, not many women, but verie fewe men haue atteined thereunto. I will tell you, quoth she, and tell you a troth, which perchance ye will meruell at. One of the greatest benefites, that euer God gaue me, is, that he sent me so sharpe and seuere Parentes, and so ientle a scholemaster. For when I am in presence either of father or mother, whether I speake, kepe silence, sit, stand, or go, eate, drinke, be merie, or sad, be sowyng, plaiyng, dauncing, or doing anie thing els, I must do it, as it were, in soch weight, mesure, and number, euen so perfitelie, as God made the world, or else I am so sharplie taunted, so cruellie threatened, yea presentlie some tymes, with pinches, nippes, and bobbes, and other waies, which I will not name, for the honor I beare them, so without measure misordered, that I thinke my selfe in hell, till tyme cum, that I must go to M. Elmer, who teacheth me so ientlie, so pleasantlie, with soch faire allurementes to learning, that I thinke all the tyme nothing, whiles I am with him. And when I am called from him, I fall on weeping, because, what soeuer I do els, but learning, is ful of grief, trouble, feare, and whole misliking vnto me: And thus my booke, hath bene so moch my pleasure, & bringeth dayly to me more pleasure & more, that in respect of it, all other pleasures, in very deede, be but trifles and troubles vnto me. I remember this talke gladly, both bicause it is so worthy of memorie, & bicause also, it was the last talke that euer I had, and the last tyme, that euer I saw that noble and worthie Ladie. "
Ascham also described Jane Grey in his letter of 1550:
"Yet I cannot pass over two English women, nor would I wish, my dear Sturmius, to pass over anything if you are thinking about friends to be borne in mind in England, than which nothing is more desirable to me. One is Jane Grey, daughter of the noble marquis of Dorset. Since she had Mary, queen of France as grandmother she was related very closely to our King Edward. She is fifteen years of age. At court I was very friendly with her, and she wrote learned letters to me: Last summer when I was visiting my friends in Yorkshire and was summoned from them by letters from John Cheke that I should come to court, I broke my journey on the way at Leicester where Jane Grey was residing with her father. I was straightway shown into her chamber: I found the noble young lady reading (By Jupiter!) in Greek, Plato's Phaedo, and with such understanding as to win my highest admiration. She so speaks and writes Greek that one would hardly credit it. She has a tutor John Aylmer, one well versed in both tongues, and most dear to me for his humanity, wisdom, habits, pure religion, and many other bonds of the truest friendship. As I left she promised to write to me in Greek provided I would send her my letters written from the Emperor's court. I am awaiting daily a Greek letter from her: when it comes I will send it on to you immediately."
For four hundred years Lady Jane's celebrated attack on her parents has been
used as an example of the harshness shown by sixteenth-century parents toward
their children. What had she done - or not done - to arouse this brutaslity?
In that age, young people of both sexes and all classes were flogged and
knocked about, either for neglecting their lessons, or for disobedience,
or for lapses of manner. Lady Jane could never have been guilty of laziness:
by her own and her tutors' showing, her lessons absorbed her. She had been
carefully trained at home and by Queen Katherine Parr in the social graces,
and her piety demanded submission to her elders. Her vehement condemnation
of her parents makes it clear that she was a burden to them, one they so
bitterly resented as to be unable to let the smallest deviatin pass without
turning upon her in an access of irritation. Apart from the fact that the
plans for her marriage with the King were held up, in what other ways did
she remind them, if only tacitly, that their ambitions were frustrated and
their schemes destroyed? The answer seems to lie in Dorset's letter to the
Admiral, written the year before ascham's visit to Bradgate. "She
should...take too much her head...I seek the addressing of her mind to humility,
soberness and obedience." Was he now seeking it in vain?
Three years later, Jane's refusal to give in over matters of principle showed
an endemic resistance to pressure: and this resistance, not unnaturally regarded
by her parents as obstinate and undiutiful, was already making itself felt.
Lady Jane gave Ascham a horrible picture of her home life. Yet her contribution
to those ugly scenes must be considered: The Dorsets were great gamblers,
and all the members of the household followed their example. Haddon and Aylmer
protested in vain. And the quarrel continued as long as they remained under
the Marquess' roof. Lady Jane, who modelled her conduct on her tutor's, must
have allied herself with him against her parents.
Although Jane had been brought up in a sporting, games-playing family, all
her tastes lay in the opposite direction. Reading, writing, music, were her
passion. It may be that her withdrawal from outdoor pursuits, emphasized
by the force of her personality and her powers of self-expression, was neither
forgiven nor forgotten. Her way of life, admirable in the eyes of Roger Ascham
and his friends, was not only antipathetic to the Dorsets, but in itself
an act of defiance.
As her parents disliked and abused her, Jane avoided them and shut herself
up with her books. As their annoyance increased, so did her determination,
and her dependence on the learning and the culture which they had provided
because it was customary and, in a more worldly sense, beneficial.
That a girl of the mid-16th-century should be fascinated by philosophic inquiry,
and especially by that branch dealing with the spiritual life, was very natural.
Lady Jane's generation and type were not interested in narrative, or in
personalities. Analysis, speculation (particularly on theological lines)
and comparison of the classical with the Christian theories about survival
after death and the way to salvation were, to her, more absorbing than any
relation of fact. They led into the basis of her whole existence in this
world and the next. She studied her faith - first through the Bible and then
through the works of the fathers.
The standards and tastes of Lady Jane and her equals, derived from such thinkers
and humanists as Erasmus and Sir Thomas More, had led them
to a culture never yer equalled in the history of mankind, that of ancient
Greece and Italy. The teachers patronized by the Tudors and the Dorsets had
the gift of making learning exciting to young people. they followed Thomas
Elyot's precept, that children should not "be enforced by violence
to learn...but sweetly allured thereto with praises and pretty gifts".
Through Ascham, Aylmer and Haddon, Lady Jane began to correspond with Bucer, Zeingli, Ulmis and other German Calvinist and Zwinglian ministers, some of whom had lectured at Cambridge and were now her father's pensioners. Their first letters were to Dorset. But somehow, he was always occupied, or away. And so his eldest daughter took his place. It was still hoped by all these men that Jane's marriage with the King would be brought about and so they wrote to her as to a future Queen, in ecstatic admiration. She replied deprecating her intellectual unworthiness, but in the same strain. The Zürich Letters, as they came to be called, describe a mutual admiration society revolving around a lonely girl, whose principal outlet was this heady yet esoteric interchange.
To come soon: Excerpts from Jane's correspondence with the continental reformers.
Meanwhile, the disputes about gambling had caused an uproar. The Dorsets
were so annoyed about Haddon's interference with their pleasure that he had
to give in. Haddon told Bullinger: "I bear with this out of compulsion...and
deal tenderly with them."
This part of the correspondence reveals an important aspect of Jane's character.
She was of the stuff of which the Puritan martyr is made: self-examinating,
fanatical, bitterly courageous, and utterly incapable of the art of compromise
in which the Tudors specialized. Jane, intellectually the most brilliant
of an extraordinary dynasty, never developed the kind of sensitivity to the
feelings of others which leads to a change of fronts. This disability was
enhanced, if it had not been actually created, by the combination of her
parents' dislike and her tutors' adulation. Alternately abused and toadied,
caring only for the things of the mind, she developed a capacity for
self-isolation highly uncharacteristic of her day, with the merciless intolerance
which was its most unpleasant expression.
By the time her days of study were over and she was forced to re-enter the world in which she had already failed, she was guided by a single ideal - the triumph of Protestantism over the old faith - and aware of one political factor, that she might one day become Queen of England. She was a Tudor first, a Grey afterwards, and a Protestant all the time.
More to come soon
To Biography part 5