Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/403

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
OF CELEBRATED WOMEN.
389

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, to-day is her pastime; and if I now permit her to adorn and crown me, I must to-morrow suffer her to crush and tear m.e to pieces. My liberty is better than the chain you proffer me, with what precious stones soever it be adorned, or of what gold soever framed. I will not exchange m.y place for honourable and precious jealousies, for magnificent and glorious fetters; and if you love me sincerely, and in good earnest, you v/ill rather wish me a secure and quiet fortune, though mean, than an exalted condition, exposed to the wind, and followed by some dismal fall."

However, she was at length prevailed upon by her father, mother, and Northumberland, but above all, by the earnest desires of her husband, whom she tenderly loved, to yield to their request; with a heavy heart suffering herself to be conveyed to the Tower, where she entered with all the state of a queen, attended by the principal nobility, and her train supported by the duchess of Suffolk, her mother, in whom, if in any of this line, the right of succession remained. About six o'clock in the afternoon, she was proclaimed with all due solemnities in the city: the same day she also assumed the regal title, and proceeded afterwards to exercise acts of sovereignty. But the preparations made by Mary to recover her right, with the general coldness and neglect observed in the Lady Jane's cause, induced the two dukes, after a few days of mock grandeur, to drop their ambitious views, and feign submission to Mary. Upon this sudden turn, the duke, her father, came, and in the gentlest terms required her to lay aside the state of a queen, and content herself with the condition of a sub-

ject.