The Nine Days' Queen, Lady Jane Grey, and Her Times. Richard Davey
who had just been delivered of a son, beseeches her to “adopt the English method of allowing her infant’s limbs free play,” and stigmatises the French custom of “tight swaddling” as “abominably dirty and unhealthy.”
The Lady Frances certainly did not nurse her own baby; it would have been considered most indecent for a woman of her rank to suckle her offspring. A foster-mother was engaged, and it is likely enough that the good woman who supplied little Jane Grey with the sustenance nature had intended her to derive from her parent, was that Mrs. Ellen who, seventeen years later, attended her beloved foster-child on the scaffold.
In her eighteenth month the child was weaned, and this was attended by some considerable ceremony. In the morning Mass was said in the presence of the whole family, including the foster-mother and the child, who was blessed with holy water. This finished, the company returned in procession to the hall and forthwith sat down to a copious banquet.
The archives of Sudeley Castle contain an interesting description of an aristocratic nursery in the first half of the sixteenth century. Queen Katherine Parr, having married Admiral Lord Thomas Seymour, lived at Sudeley, where she died in September 1548, after giving birth to a child, for whom was provided an apartment very elaborately furnished with tapestry, and containing everything a modern infant of the highest rank could possibly want, all in silver or pewter, and, moreover, a “chair of state” hung with cloth of gold.
The Lady Frances’s nursery was, no doubt, fitted up quite as luxuriously as that prepared for the infant of Queen Katherine Parr; but no inventory of its contents has been handed down to us. Nearly all the toys commonly used in England at this period were made either in France or Holland, and closely resembled those grotesque playthings which were our grandparents’ delight: wooden dolls with roughly painted heads and jointed limbs, hobby horses, hoops, and even toy soldiers mounted on movable slides. Jane must have had an abundance of these nursery treasures, besides an oaken cradle with rockers and also a sort of little perambulator, wherein she might be carried to take the air in the park and gardens. She had a complete household, consisting of Mrs. Ellen, two under-nurses, a governess, two waiting women, and two footmen. Sometimes, but very rarely, the voice of nature may have prompted her mother and father to play with her and enjoy those exquisite moments of purest love common alike to prince and peasant. Her babyhood may have been fairly happy, but when that ended, the stern training which prevailed in every aristocratic family of the period began in all its severity: long prayers, tedious lessons, and that terrible “cramming” system which as often as not engendered premature physical decline and even imbecility. The tiny princess, from her third year upwards, was dressed like a little old lady, in miniature reproduction of her mother, coif and all complete, an exceedingly irksome garb for so very small a child. Even when full-grown, Jane, like her sister Katherine, was of very diminutive stature; and their youngest sister, Mary, was an actual dwarf, “not bigger, when over thirty, than a child of ten.”
The greater part of the Lady Jane’s15 infancy was spent at Bradgate with her little sisters—Katherine, two years her junior; and Mary, six years younger than herself. A Mrs. Ashly, sister or sister-in-law to the Mrs. Ashly, or Astley, who acted in the same capacity to Princess Elizabeth, was appointed to attend as governess upon Jane and her sisters; but of this lady little is known, whereas Elizabeth’s governess is, of course, frequently mentioned as a woman of great importance. It was evidently not until the Lady Jane had been named in Henry VIII’s will as a possible successor to his throne that any particular attention was paid to her instruction, and then only for purely political purposes. Her two sisters received but an ordinary education, and Jane herself must have been between nine and ten years of age when she was handed over to Queen Katherine Parr to begin her more important studies. No doubt the Dorsets secretly intended their eldest daughter to become Edward VI’s consort and to rule the kingdom through her, and her education therefore became a matter of great importance to them, as they wished her to be thoroughly equipped to hold the high station they desired her to occupy. In religion she was to be exceedingly Protestant, but in social matters her training was most varied, including music and classical and modern languages, even Hebrew and, if we may credit some of her enthusiastic eulogists, Chaldee!!
The royal birth of the Marchioness of Dorset and the great wealth of her lord placed their family in a very exceptional position in the county. Here, as also in London, they maintained semi-regal state. No one could compete with them, and although they received much company, especially at Christmas time, they rarely mixed with their neighbours, and when they did so condescend, they were invariably received with all the ceremony due to royalty. When, for instance, the Marquess of Dorset and his lady visited Leicester, they were entertained with great ceremony. In the archives of that city for 1540 there is a charge of “two shillings and sixpence for strawberries and wine for my Lady Marchioness’s Grace, for Mistress Mayoress and her sisters.” Also, on the occasion of another visit, “Four shillings” were paid “to the pothicary for making a gallon of Ippocras,16 that was given to my Lady’s Grace, Mistress Mayoress and her sisters, and to the wives of the Aldermen of Leicester, who gave the said ladies, moreover, wafers, apples, pears, and walnuts at the same time.” From another record, of the city of Lincoln, we learn that the Dorset family when on its way to London frequently put up at the White Hall Inn for the night, their expenses being paid by the town. There is also an entry specifying the expenses for entertaining the Lady Jane Grey when on her way to London and on her return journeys through Leicester to Bradgate in 1548 and 1551.
There was much in the stately mode of life led by our great aristocracy in the sixteenth century which has not even now passed altogether out of fashion. At certain seasons of the year, it appears, the family resided in the main building of the mansion and kept up a state almost equal in magnificence to that of a royal Court. A great number of servants—as many as eighty or a hundred—were maintained, and these, being very ignorant, often formed a rather disorderly crew. They received very small wages; but as they wore brilliant liveries, and served as an escort to their masters when they went abroad, they made a highly picturesque appearance. Few people, even in the upper circles of society, could read or write with ease; and as there were no newspapers and scarcely any books, no correspondence, and but few visits to fill up leisure time, the men’s sports were mainly those of the field, so that large hunting and hawking parties were the general order of the day. The ladies were frequently invited to share these pursuits; and the Lady Frances was well known in Leicestershire in her day as a great huntress and a skilful archeress.
Hospitality, if barbaric, was none the less sumptuous. Tablecloths and napkins were already in use, and “damask” was pretty generally to be seen in the houses of the wealthy; while the plate belonging to the great nobility was not only very costly, but exceedingly artistic in design. Then as now, it was the custom to pass the winter months in the country and the summer in London. During the hunting season Bradgate was thrown open to a throng of guests, and since the mistress of the house was niece to the reigning sovereign, many of these were of princely rank, including Princess Mary, who was on very friendly terms with her cousin Frances and her children. It is not at all unlikely that when the family gathered in the great hall of an evening, dances, masques, and other pastimes of a more boisterous kind, described as “romps and jigs,” were indulged in. On occasion, players were summoned from London, and displayed their skill in representing those rough and unformed plays which delighted our ancestors until the more shapely Elizabethan drama came into being.17
People rose and retired to rest earlier in Tudor days than we do now, especially in summer, when breakfast was served as early as six o’clock, dinner at ten, and supper at five. Tea and coffee were as yet undiscovered, and light home-brewed ale was the usual breakfast beverage. Such very young ladies as Lady Jane Grey would be served at this meal with a cup of hot milk and sometimes with a sort of mead, or barley water, heated and spiced. During Lent breakfast consisted of bread, with salt fish, ling, turbot and eels, fresh whitings, sprats, beer and wine. At other seasons there were chines of beef, roast breast of mutton or boiled mutton, butter, cooked eggs, custard, pies, jellies, etc., as well as chickens, ducks, swan, geese, and game.18 Dinner came at noon, and it was customary in large country houses to close the gates while the whole establishment sat down, according to rank, in the great hall. Sometimes a slight alteration was made, two tables being set in the dining-room, at the first of which sat the lord and his family,