THE LAST DAYS OF LADY JANE GREY
[GREY, Jane, Lady.]
‘The last days of Lady Jane Grey’.
[c. 1870?].
Manuscript on paper, 8vo, ff. [2], comprising title and one further page of text; title with block-and-axe device and motto 'she "being dead yet speaketh"'; loosely inserted pencil drawing of a block and axe, and a bifolium comprising manuscript facsimiles of signatures of Jane Grey ('Jane the Quene') and Mary I ('Marye the Quene') within black mourning borders (see below).
A manuscript extract, unfinished or incomplete, on the trial of Lady Jane Grey, Queen of England from 10 to 19 July 1553.
The title-page promises ‘The Trial, the Prison and the Execution’, but only one page of manuscript, adjoined to the title-page, is present here, describing Jane Grey’s trial: ‘Lady Jane appeared before her judges in all her wonted loveliness: her fortitude and composure never forsook her … of their native bloom her cheeks were never robbed, nor did her voice seem once to falter: on the beauteous traitress every eye was fixed’, etc. The text is taken from John Whitcomb Bayley’s History and Antiquities of the Tower of London (latest edition 1830). The two signatures were probably copied from published facsimiles of documents (not in Whitcomb Bayley), the signature of Jane Grey being identical to that of the Petyt letter in the Inner Temple Library; the signature of Mary I is less obviously recognisable, being much more widely used. The drawings of the axe and block are suitably melancholic though charming.
