THE COURAGE OF LADY JANE GREY MARK EARNGEY
Head of Church History, Moore Theological College COURAGE TO KNOW CHRIST Jane was born into the evangelical Grey family. However, she was also born into turbulent times. In 1534, Henry VIII brought about his great ecclesiastical Brexit, but by 1547 he was dead, and his son Edward VI was enthroned. In the same year, Jane Grey went to live with Henry’s widow, Katherine Parr. Being a long-time evangelical married to a traditionalist king (whose beliefs could almost be described as non-papal Catholicism), Parr had learned the art of holding fast to the teaching of Scripture despite challenging circumstances. Thus, from a young age, Lady Jane was connected by kith and kin to courageous Christians.
INTRODUCTION The story of Lady Jane Grey (1537-1554) is one of the great Tudor tales. It is a story about how a seventeenyear-old rose to become Queen of England, and how twelve days later, an axe severed her head from her body in the Tower of London. If courage can be defined as a firmness of mind in the face of danger, then at its heart, it is a story about courage. But it is a story about a particular kind of courage. You see, this courage was more earthy than the legendary courage of King Arthur. It was more noble than the courage cultivated from the then fashionable Isocrates, Orationes. It was more humble than the then recently recovered courageous histories of the Greeks and Romans. It was a courage grounded upon the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let me tell her story in miniature, focused upon her courage to know Christ, serve Christ, and proclaim Christ.
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FIG HT T HE GOOD FIGHT
Jane Grey’s deep desire to know Christ may be seen in her dedication to learning. In fact, she was not only among the five percent of women who were literate in her day, but she was also one of the most prodigious. She was trained by some of the great evangelical minds, and dedicated herself to the study of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. Indeed, she was so determined to know Christ that she struck up a distance tutoring arrangement with the premier reformer of her day, Zürich’s Heinrich Bullinger: When I consider my age, sex, moderate attainments in literature, and I may add, my infancy, I am deterred from writing; but when I consider the eminence of your virtues, the celebrity of your character, and the magnitude of your favours towards me, the first consideration yields to the last. Her courageous correspondence with Bullinger for language tutoring paid off, and we can observe Lady Jane’s love for the Bible throughout the rest of her short life. For instance, just before her death, she passed her Greek New Testament onto her sister, with an exhortatory note which included the following: I have here sent you, my dear sister Katherine, a book, which although it be not outwardly trimmed with gold, or the curious embroidery of the artfulest needles, yet inwardly it is more worth than all the precious mines which the vast world can boast of: it is the book, my only best, and best loved sister, of the law of the Lord.
