nking mind must have been shocked at the vengeance taken on
Guildford Dudley,--a youth too insignificant, it might be thought, to
call forth the animadversion of the most apprehensive government, and
guilty of nothing but having accepted, in obedience to his father's
pleasure, the hand of Jane Grey. But the fate of this distinguished lady
herself was calculated to awaken stronger feelings. The fortitude, the
piety, the genuine humility and contrition evinced by her in the last
scene of an unsullied life, furnished the best evidence of her
guiltlessness even of a wish to resume the sceptre which paternal
authority had once forced on her reluctant grasp; and few could witness
the piteous spectacle of her violent and untimely end, without a thrill
of indignant horror, and secret imprecations against the barbarity of
her unnatural kinswoman.

The earl of Devonshire was still detained in the Tower on Wyat's
information, as was pretended, and on other indications of guilt, all of
which were proved in the end equally fallacious: and at the time of
Elizabeth's removal hither this state-prison was thronged with captives
of minor importance implicated in the designs of Wyat. These were
assiduously plied on one hand with offers of liberty and reward, and
subjected on the other to the most rigorous treatment, the closest
interrogatories, and one of them even to the rack, in the hope of
eliciting from them some evidence which might reconcile to Mary's
conscience, or color to the nation, the death or perpetual imprisonment
of a sister whom she feared and hated.

To have brought her to criminate herself would have been better still;
and no pains were spared for this purpose. A few days after her
committal, Gardiner and other privy-councillors came to examine her
respecting the conversation which she had held with sir James Croft
touching her removal to Donnington Castle. She said, after some
recollection, that she had indeed such a place, but that she never
occupied it in her life, and she did not remember that any one had moved
her so to do. Then, "to enforce the matter," they brought forth sir
James Croft, and Gardiner demanded what she had to say to that man? She
answered that she had little to say to him or to the rest that were in
the Tower. "But, my lords," said she, "you do examine every mean
prisoner of me, wherein methinks you do me great injury. If they have
done evil and offended the queen's majesty, let them answer to it