SOURCE: Bainton, Roland H. “Lady Jane Grey.” In Women of the Reformation In France and England, pp. 181-90. Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1973.

In the following essay, Bainton provides an overview of Grey's brief life, education, and Protestant faith, supported throughout by excerpts from her letters that reveal the strength of her religious convictions.

Lady Jane, England's nine day queen, made a deeper impact on her countrymen by her death than by her reign. She was virtually canonized by the Protestants, who portrayed her as comely, charming, devout, learned, demure and gentle. They called her in the words of the prophet Isaiah “a lamb that is led to the slaughter,”¹ but did not add the verse “like a sheep that before its shearers is dumb, so she opened not her mouth.” That assuredly she did not do. Writing at the age of fourteen to the Swiss theologian Bullinger, she...