e evinced in
their ill fate.

* * * * *

DURHAM HOUSE, STRAND:

MARRIAGE OF LADY JANE GREY.

(_For the Mirror._)

Why did ye me dysseyve,
With faynyng fantzye agenst all equitie and right,
The regall powers onjustly to receyve,
To serve your tornes, I do right well perceyve;
For I was your instrument to worke your purpose by;
All was but falshed to bleere withall myn eye.

_Cavendish's Metrical Visions._

The short but eventful period between the death of the last Henry, and
the succession of his bigoted and intolerant daughter Mary, presents a
wide and fertile field for the inquiring mind both of the historian and
philosopher. The interest attached to the memory of the beauteous but
unfortunate Lady Jane Grey, renders the slightest event of her life
acceptable to every lover of English history; while her youth and
intellectual acquirements, her brief reign of nine days, and finally her
expiation for her _innocent_ crime on the scaffold, combine to rouse the
feelings and excite the sympathy of every sensitive heart.

The marriage of lady Jane Grey, which may be regarded as the principal
cause of her sufferings, was brought about by the ambitious Earl of
Northumberland, a nobleman, the most powerful and wealthy at that
period, in the kingdom. By the marriage of Lord Guilford Dudley with the
Lady Jane, he formed the daring project of placing the crown of England
on the head of his son, in order to consolidate that preeminence, which,
during the reign of the youthful Edward, he had so craftily attained to,
and which he foresaw, would, on the accession of Mary, from whom he had
little to expect, either on the side of friendship or protection, be
wrested from him. By the will of Henry VIII., as well also as by an Act
of Parliament, the ladies Mary and Elizabeth had been pronounced as
heirs to the crown; this claim, however, he hoped to overrule, as the
statutes passed by Henry, in the twenty-eighth year of his reign,
declaring their illegitimacy, had never been repealed. By the will of
Henry, the lady Jane had also been placed next in succession after the
Princess Elizabeth, in total exclusion of the Scottish line, the
offspring of his sister Margaret, who had married James IV. of Scotland.

The day on which this important event took place is not exactly known;
but it is generally supposed to have been towards the close of the mon