would seem that Mary had no desire to
carry out the sentence: Cranmer she reserved for a more cruel death than
that of beheading--he was to be burned as a heretic. The other three,
two boys and a girl, it would be dangerous to execute on account of the
popular sympathy their death would awaken. They were therefore sent back
to the Tower. Probably it was intended that Lady Jane, at least, should
pass the rest of her life in honourable captivity, as happened later on
to Arabella Stuart. But the rebellion of Wyatt showed that her name
could still be used as a cry in favour of a Protestant succession. It
was therefore resolved to put both husband and wife to death. What
further harm the young Lord Guilford Dudley could do is not apparent.
Even then the Queen's advisers shrank from exhibiting on Tower Hill the
spectacle of a young and beautiful girl, taken forth to be beheaded
because certain hot-headed partizans had used her name. She was executed
therefore within the verge of the Tower itself, on the so-called
'Green.'

'The Green' is a place where no grass will grow--it used to be said--on
account of the blood that had been shed upon it. Among the sufferers
here was Hastings, executed by order of King Richard: Anne Boleyn:
Katharine Howard: and Lady Jane Grey. A stone marks the spot on which
the scaffold was set up.

It was on the morning of the 12th of February that Lady Jane Grey was
put to death. She was then confined in the 'Brick' Tower, the residence
of the Master of the Ordnance. From her window she saw the headless body
of her husband brought back from Tower Hill in a cart. She looked upon
it without shrinking. 'Oh! Guilford,' she said, 'the antipast is not so
bitter after thou hast tasted, and which I shall soon taste, as to make
my flesh tremble: it is nothing compared to the feast of which we shall
partake this day in Heaven.' So she went forth with her two gentlewomen,
Elizabeth Tylney and Mistress Helen, but she shed no tears. When she was
on the scaffold she spoke to the officers of the Tower and the soldiers
that stood around. No man or woman, however wise and dignified, could
speak more clearly and with greater dignity than this girl of sixteen.
They had been trying to make her a Catholic. Therefore, she made
confession of the Protestant Faith: 'Good Christian people, bear witness
that I die a true Christian woman and that I do look to be saved by no
other means but only by the mercy of God, in the blood