Today in 1554 Lady Jane Grey and her husband Lord Guildford Dudley were executed at the Tower of London.

I’ve always had a soft spot for Jane and once upon a time a trip into London wasn’t complete without a trip into The National Gallery to see Stubb’s picture of Whistlejacket and Delaroche’s “The Execution of Lady Jane Grey”.

Aged 16 at the time of her death she faced it with dignity. As permission was sought to bury her at the church of St Peter-ad-Vincula which had recently become Catholic again her body lay exposed and unattended for nearly four hours on the blood spattered straw.

Her message to John Brydges, lieutenant of the Tower of London, was :

“Live still to die, that by death you may purchase eternal life…. As the preacher sayeth, there is a time to be born and a time to die; and the day of death is better than the day of our birth.”

Today Kelly Taylor, who has been given less than a year to live, says the refusal to increase her morphine dose to sedate her into unconsciousness condemns her to live in pain and breaches the ban on “inhuman or degrading treatment” in the European convention on human rights.

Enough is enough, pleads dying woman-News-UK-Health-TimesOnline

“I’m not depressed and I’ve never been depressed. I am a happy person. But my illness is now at the point where I don’t want to deal with it any more. In the next year I will deteriorate and that deterioration will become quite undignified. I want to avoid that”

Jane had no choice over her death, Kelly is seeking the freedom to choose the time of hers. Both strike me as amazing people faced with terrible decisions.