d though the rebels and malecontents seemed chiefly to rest their
hopes on the lady Elizabeth and the earl of Devonshire, the queen,
incapable of generosity or clemency, determined to remove every person
from whom the least danger could be apprehended. Warning was given the
lady Jane to prepare for death; a doom which she had long expected, and
which the innocence of her life, as well as the misfortunes to which she
had been exposed, rendered nowise unwelcome to her. The queen's zeal,
under color of tender mercy to the prisoner's soul, induced her to
send divines, who harassed her with perpetual disputation; and even
a reprieve for three days was granted her, in hopes that she would be
persuaded during that time to pay, by a timely conversion, some regard
to her eternal welfare. The lady Jane had presence of mind, in those
melancholy circumstances, not only to defend her religion by all the
topics then in use, but also to write a letter to her sister[v] in the
Greek language; in which, besides sending her a copy of the Scriptures
in that tongue, she exhorted her to maintain, in every fortune, a like
steady perseverance.

* Depeches de Noailles, vol. ii. p. 273, 288.

** Depeches de Noailles, vol. iii. p. 273.

*** Godwin, p. 343. Burnet, vol. ii. p. 273. Fox, vol. ii.
p. 99, 105. Strype's Mem. vol. iii. p. 85.

**** Depeches de Noailles, vol. iii. p. 226.

v Fox vol. iii. p. 35. Heylin, p. 166.

On the day of her execution, her husband, Lord Guildford, desired
permission to see her; but she refused her consent, and informed him
by a message, 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 of them: 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, disappointment, and misfortunes, could no
longer have access to them, or disturb their eternal felicity.[*]

It had been intended to execute the lady Jane and Lord Guildford
together 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 she should
be beheaded within the verge of the Tower. She saw her husband led
to execution; and having given him from the window som