his declaration, it is absolutely impossible for me to serve his Majesty any longer in this commission. I beg leave to tell your lordships, that though I myself did submit in that particular, yet I will never be any ways instrumental in punishing those my brethren that did not: For as I call God to witness, that what I did was merely on a principle of conscience, so I am fully satisfied, that their forbearance was upon the same principle. I have no reason to think otherwise of the whole body of the clergy, who upon all occasions have signalized their loyalty to the crown, and their zealous affection to his present majesty's person, in the worst of times. Now, my lords, the safety of the Church of England seeming to be exceedingly concerned in this prosecution, I must declare I cannot, with a safe conscience, sit as judge in this cause, upon so many pious and excellent men, with whom (if it be God's will) it rather becomes me to suffer, than to be in the least accessary to their sufferings. I therefore earnestly request your lordships to intercede with his Majesty, that I may be graciously dis missed any further attendance at the board; and to assure him, that I am still ready to sacrifice whatever I have to his service, but my conscience and religion.

Setting forth the reasons of her Claim, and her Right to the

Crown.

[From the first Edition, in three Folio Sheets.]

WHOEVER reads the latter part of the life of Henry the Eighth, will soon be convinced, that he left the succession of the crown sq disputable, that it could only be owing to the hand of Providence, that the nation had not, for ever after, been distracted with contrary claims,

His divorces from Catharine of Arragon and Ann Bullen; the acts of parliament confirming those divorces; other subsequent acts, which seemed to repeal what the first had ordained; the power given to the King to appoint his successors, and to place them in what order he pleased; and his last will itself so embroiled the affair of the succession, that it was left full of obscurity and contradiction. For, as the makers of these new laws were not swayed with justice and equity, and calculated, merely to gratify the ambition and schemes of a prince, who would have taken vengeance on those that should act in opposition to his directions, it was not possible to act in such emergencies according to the ancient laws and customs of the realm.

He, after cohabiting with Catharine of Arragon eighteen years, and having several children by her, obliged the Archbishop of Canterbury to pronounce him divorced from her, and his marriage with her to be null and void; but not before he had contracted a second marriage with Ann Bullen, of which he also grew weary; and, accusing his second queen of adultery, he ordered her to be beheaded, after he had been also publickly divorced from her. His next step was to obtain an act of parliament (1536) to confirm both these divorces, and to declare Mary and Elisabeth, the children of these two marriages, illegitimate, and incapable of succeding to the Crown, without his special will and appointment. But in an act, made in 1544, Mary and Elisabeth were declared successively to inherit the Crown after Edward, still allowing the King to impose conditions on these two princesses, without which they could have no right to succeed. And Henry made his last will and testament in the same manner; by which, preferring Edward to be his immediate successor, he left it as his opinion that his daughters were illegitimate.

Thus far the succession was much disturbed; but what still conduced to embroil it more, was the not mentioning, in his will, the issue of Margaret Queen of Scotland, Henry's eldest sister, and placing the Children of his younger sister, Mary, Queen Dowager of France, and Duchess of Suffolk, next to his daughter Elisabeth. And, To compleat this confusion of claims to the Crown, Edward the Sixth confirmed the act, which declared Mary and Elisabeth illegitimate; abrogated, by his own authority, the act which gave his Father power to settle the succession, and by his own will, excluded Mary, Elisabeth, and the Queen of Scotland from the throne, and conveighed the Crown to Jane Grey, by the importunity and ambition of the Duke of Northumberland, who was known to hold Edward's council in subjection; and therefore whatever methods were taken before, or after the young King's death, to secure and settle Jane on the Throne, and the drawing up and publishing the following proclamation must be looked upon as the act and deed of the said duke, and not to be ascribed to the council. This was the state of affairs, when Edward the Sixth was removed by death; and, by this short recapitulation, it may easily be perceived, what a door of divisions and civil wars was opened by Henry the

Eighth and his successor. For, according to their acts and wills, and letters patents, Mary, Elisabeth, the Queen of Scotland, and Jane Grey, four princesses, could claim the Crown after Edward's death, and each of these princesses could find in these very acts, &c. arguments to oppose the claim of her competitors. Yet only Jane, who, though by far the youngest, was not less endowed with the gifts of nature, and preferable to all her adversaries in the endowments of her mind, and least tainted with the ambitious desire of a crown, was forced by the importunity of her relations to accept of it, and thereby fell a sacrifice to their ambition; as it is excellently well related by Dr. Heylin, in these words, in his history of the Reformation:

* She was eldest daughter of Henry Lord Grey, Duke of Suffolk. Her mother was the Lady Frances, daughter, and, in fine, one of the coheirs of Charles Brandon, the late Duke of Suffolk, by Mary his wife, Queen Dowager to Lewis the Twelfth of France, and youngest daughter of King Henry the Seventh, She seemed to

have been born with those attractions, which seat a sovereignty in the face of most beautiful persons; yet was her mind endued with more excellent charms, than the attractions of her face; modest and mild of disposition, courteous of carriage, and of such affable deportment, as might intitle her to the name of Queen of Hearts, before she was designed for queen over any subjects. These her native and obliging graces, were accompanied with some more profitable ones, of her own acquiring; which set an higher value on them, and much increased the same, both in worth and lustre. Having attained unto that age, in which other young ladies used to apply themselves to the sports and exercises of their sex, she wholly gave her mind to good arts and sciences; much furthered in that pursuit by the loving care of Mr. Elmer, under whose charge she came to such a large proficiency, that she spake the Latin and Greek tongues with as sweet a fluency, as if they had been natural and native to her; exactly skilled in the liberal sciences, and perfectly well studied in both kinds of philosophy.' Take here a story out of Mr. Ascham's Schoolm. Page 11. in his own words: One example, whether love or fear doth work more in a child, for vertue or learning, I will gladly report; which may be heard with some pleasure, and followed with more profit. Before I went into Germany, I came to Broadgate in Leicestershire, to take my leave of that noble lady, Jane Grey, to whom I was exceeding much beholding, Her parents, the Duke and the Duchess, with all the houshold, gentlemen and gentlewomen, were hunting in the Park; I found her in her chamber, reading Phadon Platonis in Greek, and that with as much delight as some gentlemen would read a merry tale in Boccace. After salutation, and duty done, with some other talk, I asked her, why she would lose such pastime in the Park? Smiling, she answered me, I know, all their sport in the Park is but a shadow to that I find in Plato: Alas! good folk, they never felt what truc pleasure meant. And how came you, madam, quoth I, to this deep knowledge, and what did

chiefly allure you unto it, seeing not many women, but very few men have attained thereunto? I will tell you, saith she, and tell you a truth, which perchance you will marvel at. One of the greatest benefits that ever God gave me, is, that he sent me so sharp and severe parents, and so gentle a schoolmaster. For, when I am in presence either of father or mother, whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand, or go; eat, drink, be merry, or sad; be sowing, playing, dancing, or doing any thing else, I must do it, as it were, in such weight, measure, and number, even so perfectly, as God made the world; or else I am so sharply taunted, so cruelly threatened, yea presently sometimes, with pinches, nips, and bobs, and other ways (which I will not name, for the honour I bear them) so without measure misordered, that I think myself in hell, till the time come, that I must go to Mr. Elmer: who teacheth me so gently, so pleasantly, with such fair allurements to learning, that I think all the time nothing, whilst I am with him. And when I am called from him, I fall to weeping, because whatsoever I do else, but learning, is full of grief, trouble, fear, and whole misliking unto me. And thus my book hath been so much my pleasure, and bringeth daily to me more pleasure and more, that, in respect of it, all other pleasures, in very deed, be but trifles and troubles unto me. I remember this talk gladly, both because it is so worthy of memory, and because also it was the last talk that ever I had, and the last time that ever I saw that noble and worthy lady? Thus far Mr. Ascham.

By this eminent proficiency in all parts of learning, and an agreeableness in disposition, she became very dear to the young King Edward; to whom Fox not only makes her equal, but doth acknowledge her also to be his superior, in those noble studies. And for an ornament superadded to her other perfections, she was most zealously affected to the true Protestant religion, then by law established; which she embraced, not out of any outward compliance with the present current of the times, but because her own most excellent judgment had been fully satisfied in the truth and purity thereof. All which did so endear her to the king, that he took great delight in her conversation.

Thus lived she in these sweet contentments, till she came unto the years of marriage; when she, that never found in herself the least spark of ambition, was made the most unhappy instrument of another man's. The proud and aspiring Duke of Northumberland treats with the Duke of Suffolk, about a marriage between the Lord Guilford Dudley, his fourth son, and the Lady Jane. The marriage is concluded, and, by Northumberland's policy, the crown is transferred from King Edward to his cousin the Lady Jane, his two sisters, the Lady Mary and Lady Elisabeth, being passed by. Memorable is the speech she made to the two dukes, when they owned her for queen, to this effect: 'That the laws of the kingdom, and natural right, standing for the king's sisters *, she would beware of burthening her weak conscience with a yoke, which did belong to them: That she understood the

• Mary and Elisabeth,

Be

infamy of those, who had permitted the violation of right, to gain a scepter: That it was to mock God, and deride justice, to scruple at the stealing of a shilling, and not at the usurpation of a crown. sides (said she) I am not so young, nor so little read in the guiles of fortune, to suffer myself to be taken by them. If she inrich any, it is but to make them the subject of her spoil: If she raise others, it is but to pleasure herself with their ruins. What she adored but yesterday, is to-day her pastime. And, if I now permit her to adorn and crown me, I must to-morrow suffer her to crush and tear me in pieces, &c. But the ambition of the two dukes was too strong and violent to be kept down by any such prudent considerations; so. that, being wearied at last with their importunities, and overcome by the intreaties of her husband, whom she dearly loved, she submitted unto that necessity which she could not vanquish, yielding her head with more unwillingness to the ravishing glories of a crown, than afterwards she did to the stroke of the ax.

Accordingly the Duke of Northumberland declared, in his report to the council, that this good Lady Jane was so far from aspiring to the crown, as to be rather made to accept of it, by enticement and force. And,

The Duke had no sooner obtained Lady Jane's consent, but it was resolved that the council should move with her into the Tower of London, and that she should be proclaimed in the manner following: A proclamation, which, for its substance, antiquity, curiosity, and scarceness, well deserves the attention of the reader, and to be preserved, in this miscellany, from the injuries of time.

JANE, by the grace of God, Queen of England, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, and of the Church of England, and also of Ireland, under Christ, in Earth the supreme Head. To all our most loving, faithful, and obedient subjects, and to every of them greeting. Whereas our most dear cousin, Edward the Sixth, late King of England, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, and in Earth the supreme Head, under Christ, of the Church of England and Ireland, by his letters patent, signed with his own hand, and sealed with his great seal of England, bearing date the twenty-first day of June, in the seventh year of his reign, in the presence of the most part of his nobles, his counsellors, judges, and divers other grave and sage personages, for the profit and surety of the whole realm thereto assenting, and subscribing their names to the same, hath by the same his letters patents recited, that forasmuch as the imperial crown of this realm, by an act made in the thirty-fifth year of the late king of worthy memory, King Henry the Eighth, our progenitor and great uncler was, for lack of issue of his body lawfully begotten, and for lack of issue of the body of our said late cousin, King Edward the Sixth, by the same act limited, and appointed to remain to the Lady Mary, by the name of the Lady Mary, his eldest daughter, and to the heirs of her body lawfully begotten, and, for default of such issue, the remainder thereof to the Lady Elisabeth, by the name of the Lady Elisabeth, his second daughter, and to the heirs of her body lawfully begotten, with such conditions as should be limited and appointed