Execution
Well, whatever Mary originally planned for Jane, she executed her on 12th February 1554. Her hand was forced by Thomas Wyatt the Younger’s rebellion in January that year. Learning that Mary planned to marry the fiercely-Catholic Prince Philip of Spain, Wyatt organized a rebellion against the alliance. Having first-hand experience of the Spanish Inquisition meant that Wyatt had a deep-seated hatred of the Spanish, and feared that the Inquisition would arrive in England as a result. The rebellion failed, and unfortunately Sir Henry Grey himself had been involved in its organization, which all but sealed poor Jane’s fate.
We perhaps know more about Jane’s execution than any other part of her short and tragic life. Public sympathy for the exploited teenager was high, and we have a contemporary account of her last moments. This sympathy may mean, of course, that the description of her death is inaccurate, but let us examine it nevertheless. Led to a scaffold erected outside the White Tower, past the cadaver of her freshly-executed husband, according to a Tudor chronicle, Jane was clad ‘in the same gown wherin she was arrayned, hir countenance nothing abashed, neither her eyes enything moysted with teares’.
Upon the scaffold, Jane is said to have given the following heroic speech: ‘good people, I am come hether to die, and by a lawe I am condemned to the same. The facte, in dede, against the quene’s highnesse was unlawfull, and the consenting thereunto by me: but touching the procurement and desyre therof by me or on my halfe, I doo wash my handes thereof in innocencie, before God, and the face of you, good Christian people, this day… I pray you all, good Christian people, to beare me witnesse that I dye a true Christian woman’.
Before beheading her, the executioner is said to have asked Lady Jane for forgiveness, after which she made the pitiful request, ‘I pray you dispatch me quickly’. Tying a handkerchief around her eyes, she braced herself for death. ‘One of the standers-by guyding her thereunto, she layde her heade down upon the block, and stretched forth her body and said: “Lorde, into thy hands I commende my spirite!” And so she ended.’ Jane and Dudley were buried together in the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula on Tower Green in an unmarked grave. Her father was executed 11 days later.