Lady Jane Grey), also known as Lady Jane Dudley or The Nine Days' Queen, was an English noblewoman
and de facto monarch of England from 10 July until 19 July 1553.
The great-granddaughter of Henry VII through his younger daughter Mary, Jane was a first
cousin once removed of Edward VI. In May 1553, she was married to Lord Guildford Dudley,
a younger son of Edward's chief minister, John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. When
the 15-year-old king lay dying in June 1553, he nominated Jane as successor to the Crown
in his will, thus subverting the claims of his half-sisters Mary and Elizabeth under
the Third Succession Act. Jane was imprisoned in the Tower of London when the Privy Council
decided to change sides and proclaim Mary as queen on 19 July 1553. Jane was convicted
of high treason in November 1553, which carried a sentence of death, although her life was
initially spared. Wyatt's rebellion of January and February 1554 against Queen Mary I's plans
to marry Philip of Spain led to the execution of both Jane and her husband.
Lady Jane Grey had an excellent humanist education and a reputation as one of the most learned
young women of her day. A committed Protestant, she was posthumously regarded as not only
a political victim but also a martyr.
Early life and education
Lady Jane Grey was the eldest daughter of Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Suffolk, and his wife,
Lady Frances Brandon. The traditional view is that she was born at Bradgate Park in Leicestershire
in October 1537, while more recent research indicates that she was born somewhat earlier,
possibly in London, in late 1536 or in the spring of 1537. Lady Frances was the daughter
of Mary Tudor, Queen of France, the younger sister of Henry VIII. Jane had two younger
sisters, Lady Catherine Grey and Lady Mary Grey; through their mother, the three sisters
were great-granddaughters of Henry VII, grandnieces of Henry VIII, and first cousins once removed
of Edward VI. Jane received a first-rate humanist education, studying Latin, Greek and Hebrew
with John Aylmer, and Italian with Michelangelo Florio. Through the influence of her father
and her tutors, she became a committed Protestant and also corresponded with the Zürich reformer
Heinrich Bullinger. Jane preferred book studies to hunting parties
and regarded her strict upbringing, which was well-meant and typical of the time, as
harsh. To the visiting scholar Roger Ascham, who found her reading Plato, she is said to
have complained:
For when I am in the presence either of father or mother, whether I speak, keep silence,
sit, stand or go, eat, drink, be merry or sad, be sewing, playing, dancing, or doing
anything else, I must do it as it were in such weight, measure and number, even so perfectly
as God made the world; or else I am so sharply taunted, so cruelly threatened, yea presently
sometimes with pinches, nips and bobs and other ways ... that I think myself in hell.
In early February 1547, Jane was sent to live in the household of Thomas Seymour, who soon
married Henry VIII's widow, Catherine Parr. Jane lived with the couple until the death
of Queen Catherine in childbirth in September 1548.
Contracts for marriage Jane acted as chief mourner at Catherine Parr's
funeral, and Thomas Seymour showed continued interest in her, and she was again in his
household for about two months when he was arrested at the end of 1548. Seymour's brother,
the Lord Protector, Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, felt threatened by Thomas' popularity
with the young King Edward. Among other things, Thomas Seymour was charged with proposing
Jane as a royal bride. In the course of Thomas Seymour's following
attainder and execution, Jane's father was lucky to stay largely out of trouble. After
his fourth interrogation by the Council, he proposed his daughter Jane as a bride for
the Protector's eldest son, Lord Hertford. Nothing came of this, however, and Jane's
next engagement, in the spring of 1553, was to Lord Guildford Dudley, a younger son of
John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland. Her prospective father-in-law was then the most
powerful man in the country. On 25 May 1553, the couple were married at Durham House in
a triple wedding, in which Jane's sister Catherine was matched with the heir of the Earl of Pembroke,
Lord Herbert; and another Katherine, Lord Guildford's sister, with Henry Hastings, the
Earl of Huntingdon's heir. Claim to the throne and accession
The Third Succession Act of 1544 restored Henry VIII's daughters Mary and Elizabeth
to the line of succession, although the law regarded them as illegitimate. Furthermore,
this Act authorised Henry VIII to alter the succession by his will. Henry's will reinforced
the succession of his three children, and then declared that, should none of them leave
heirs, the throne would pass to heirs of his younger sister, Mary Tudor, which included
Jane. Henry's will excluded the descendants of his elder sister Margaret Tudor, owing
in part to Henry's desire to keep the English throne out of the hands of the Scots monarchs,
and in part to a previous Act of Parliament of 1431 that barred foreign-born persons,
including royalty, from inheriting property in England.
When the 15-year-old Edward VI lay dying in the early summer of 1553, his Catholic half-sister
Mary was still the heiress presumptive to the throne. However, Edward, in a draft will
composed earlier in 1553, had first restricted the succession to male descendants of Frances
Brandon and her daughters, before he named his Protestant cousin Jane Grey as his successor
on his deathbed, perhaps under the persuasion of Northumberland. Edward VI personally supervised
the copying of his will which was finally issued as letters patent on 21 June and signed
by 102 notables, among them the whole Privy Council, peers, bishops, judges, and London
aldermen. Edward also announced to have his "declaration" passed in parliament in September,
and the necessary writs were prepared. The King died on 6 July 1553. On 9 July Jane
was informed that she was now queen, and according to her own later claims, accepted the crown
only with reluctance. The next day, she was officially proclaimed Queen of England after
she had taken up secure residence in the Tower of London, where English monarchs customarily
resided from the time of accession until coronation. Jane refused to name her husband Dudley as
king by letters patent and deferred to Parliament. She offered to make him Duke of Clarence instead.
Northumberland faced a number of key tasks to consolidate his power after Edward's death.
Most importantly, he had to isolate and, ideally, capture Lady Mary to prevent her from gathering
support. As soon as Mary was sure of King Edward's demise, she left her residence at
Hunsdon and set out to East Anglia, where she began to rally her supporters. Northumberland
set out from London with troops on 14 July; in his absence the Privy Council switched
their allegiance from Jane to Mary, and proclaimed her queen in London on 19 July among great
jubilation of the populace. Jane was imprisoned in the Tower's Gentleman Gaoler's apartments,
her husband in the Beauchamp Tower. The new queen entered London in a triumphal procession
on 3 August, and the Duke of Northumberland was executed on 22 August 1553. In September,
Parliament declared Mary the rightful queen and denounced and revoked Jane's proclamation
as that of a usurper. Trial and execution
Jane and Lord Guildford Dudley were both charged with high treason, together with two of Dudley's
brothers and the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer. Their trial, by a special
commission, took place on 13 November 1553, at the Guildhall in the City of London. The
commission was chaired by Sir Thomas White, Lord Mayor of London, and Thomas Howard, 3rd
Duke of Norfolk. Other members included Edward Stanley, 3rd Earl of Derby and John Bourchier,
2nd Earl of Bath. As was to be expected, all defendants were found guilty and sentenced
to death. Jane was found guilty of having signed a number of documents as "Jane the
Queen;" her sentence was to "be burned alive on Tower Hill or beheaded as the Queen pleases".
However, the imperial ambassador reported to Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, that her
life was to be spared. The Protestant rebellion of Thomas Wyatt the
Younger in January 1554 sealed Jane's fate, although she had nothing to do with it. Wyatt's
rebellion was a revolt precipitated by Queen Mary's planned marriage to the future Philip
II of Spain. Jane's father, the Duke of Suffolk, and his two brothers joined the rebellion,
which caused the government to go through with the verdict against Jane and Guildford.
Their execution was first scheduled for 9 February 1554, but was then postponed for
three days so that Jane should get a chance to be converted to the Catholic faith. Mary
sent her chaplain John Feckenham to Jane, who was initially not pleased about this.
Though she would not give in to his efforts "to save her soul", she became friends with
him and allowed him to accompany her to the scaffold.
On the morning of 12 February 1554, the authorities took Guildford from his rooms at the Tower
of London to the public execution place at Tower Hill, where he was beheaded. A horse
and cart brought his remains back to the Tower, past the rooms where Jane was staying. Seeing
her husband's corpse return, Jane is reported to have exclaimed: "Oh, Guildford, Guildford."
She was then taken out to Tower Green, inside the Tower, to be beheaded.
According to the account of her execution given in the anonymous Chronicle of Queen
Jane and of Two Years of Queen Mary, which formed the basis for Raphael Holinshed's depiction,
Jane gave a speech upon ascending the scaffold:
Good people, I am come hither to die, and by a law I am condemned to the same. The fact,
indeed, against the Queen's highness was unlawful, and the consenting thereunto by me: but touching
the procurement and desire thereof by me or on my behalf, I do wash my hands thereof in
innocency, before God, and the face of you, good Christian people, this day.
She then recited Psalm 51 in English, and handed her gloves and handkerchief to her
maid. The executioner asked her forgiveness, which she granted him, pleading: "I pray you
dispatch me quickly." Referring to her head, she asked, "Will you take it off before I
lay me down?", and the axeman answered: "No, madam." She then blindfolded herself. Jane
then failed to find the block with her hands, and cried, "What shall I do? Where is it?"
Probably Sir Thomas Brydges, the Deputy Lieutenant of the Tower, helped her find her way. With
her head on the block, Jane spoke the last words of Jesus as recounted by Luke: "Lord,
into thy hands I commend my spirit!" Jane and Guildford are buried in the Chapel
of St Peter ad Vincula on the north side of Tower Green. Jane's father, Duke of Suffolk,
was executed 11 days after Jane, on 23 February 1554. Her mother, the Duchess of Suffolk,
married her Master of the Horse and chamberlain, Adrian Stokes in March 1555. She was fully
pardoned by Mary and allowed to live at Court with her two surviving daughters. She died
in 1559. Legacy
"The traitor-heroine of the Reformation", as historian Albert Pollard called her, was
only 16 or 17 years old at the time of her execution. During and in the aftermath of
the Marian persecutions, Jane became viewed as a Protestant martyr for centuries, featuring
prominently in the several editions of the Book of Martyrs by John Foxe. The tale of
Lady Jane grew to legendary proportions in popular culture, producing a flood of romantic
biographies, novels, plays, paintings, and films, one of which was the 1986 production
Lady Jane, starring Helena Bonham Carter. Ancestry
References
Bibliography Alford, Stephen. Kingship and Politics in
the Reign of Edward VI. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-03971-0
Ascham, Roger. Mayor, John E. B., ed. The Scholemaster. London: Bell
and Daldy. OCLC 251212421. Bellamy, John. The Tudor Law of Treason. Toronto:
Routlegde, Kegan & Paul. ISBN 0-7100-8729-2 de Lisle, Leanda. The Sisters Who Would Be
Queen: Mary, Katherine and Lady Jane Grey. A Tudor Tragedy. New York: Ballantine Books.
ISBN 978-0-345-49135-0. Ives, Eric. Lady Jane Grey: A Tudor Mystery.
Malden MA; Oxford UK: Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-4051-9413-6. Loades, David. John Dudley Duke of Northumberland
1504–1553. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-820193-1 External links
Media related to Lady Jane Grey at Wikimedia Commons
Edwards, J. Stephan. "Somegreymatter.com". Works by or about Lady Jane Grey in libraries