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All this belongs to the history of the country. Yet we cannot pass over the execution of Lady Jane Grey. It is the most melancholy of all the many tragedies which belong to the Tower during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Perhaps it seemed necessary at the time, in order to prevent other risings like that of Wyatt, in the same way that it had seemed necessary to Henry VII. that the young Earl of Warwick should be removed; and later to Elizabeth that Mary Queen of Scots should no longer be an occasion of conspiracy. At the same time it is wonderful that it should have been thought even possible to bring to the scaffold this girl of sixteen who had been made to play a part. The story of her execution and of her noble words, told with simple directness by Holinshed, cannot be read without tears:—

“By this time was there a scaffold made upon the greene over against the White Tower, for the ladie Jane to die upon, who being nothing at all abashed, neither with feare of hir owne death, which then approched, neither with the sight of the dead carcasse of hir husband when he was brought into the chapell, came forth, the lieutenant leading hir, with countenance nothing abashed, nor hir eies anything moistened with teares, with a booke in hir hand, wherein she praied untill she came to the said scaffold. Whereon when she was mounted, this noble yoong lady as she was indued with singular gifts both of learning and knowledge so was she as patient and mild as anie lambe at hir execution, and a little before hir death uttered these words:—