Note 248 — Chapter XVII · THE NINE DAYS’ REIGN

From the use of the expression (adopted in The Chronicle of Queen Jane and Queen Mary), “the keys were carried up,” it has been suggested that Lady Jane was lodged in the White Tower itself, which was not the case. Queen Jane proceeded immediately after her arrival at the Tower to the palatial apartments usually inhabited by royalty when in residence there. These chambers—in which Elizabeth of York breathed her last; where Anne Boleyn spent the night before her coronation and later, by an irony of fate, that before her execution; where, afterwards, Katherine Howard also awaited her doom; where, in a word, most of our Kings and Queens had “ruffled it wi’ the best” or trembled at their coming fate—were removed in the seventeenth century. They were contiguous to the White Tower—indeed, the door communicating between the two blocks of buildings is still visible—and it is more than probable that Queen Jane used the chapel and the Council Chamber in the said White Tower; but she certainly never inhabited the tower during her brief Queenship. Later, as we shall presently see, she was removed to the quadrangle opposite St. Peter’s Church, to the apartments which had been vacated by the Duchess of Somerset, in Partridge’s House.