Lady Jane Grey

• 1. Introduction

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  Lady Jane Grey ruled as Queen of England and Ireland for nine days in July 1553 before her own Privy Council turned against her and proclaimed her cousin Mary queen instead. On the 12th of February 1554, Jane was beheaded at the Tower of London for high treason. She was sixteen or seventeen years old. History gave her a tidy nickname, the Nine Days Queen, but the real sequence of events was far messier. Jane had several cousins with a claim to the throne, and she was not even the intended heir until a dying king rewrote his will at the last possible moment. The council that crowned her also unmade her, switching allegiance to Mary within days. So how did a teenage girl end up next in line for the English crown, why did a king who barely knew her choose her over his own sisters, and how did the plan that put her on the throne collapse so quickly that most of England barely had time to notice she had reigned at all?

• 2. A Scholar's Cage

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  Jane's parents were Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Suffolk, and Frances Brandon. By the traditional account she was born at Bradgate House in Leicestershire around October 1537, though more recent research suggests she was born somewhat earlier, possibly in London before May 1537. She had two younger sisters, Katherine and Mary. On her father's side, the family descended from Thomas Grey, 2nd Marquess of Dorset, and his second wife Margaret Wotton, and further back from Elizabeth Woodville, queen to Edward IV, through her first marriage to Sir John Grey of Groby.

  John Aylmer tutored Jane in Latin and Greek from an early age and later added Hebrew, while Michelangelo Florio taught her Italian. She loved writing letters in Latin and Greek throughout her life. Her father and her tutors steered her toward a committed Protestant faith, and she corresponded with the Zurich reformer Heinrich Bullinger. Contemporaries considered her one of the most learned young women of her day.

  The visiting scholar Roger Ascham once found Jane at home reading Plato while everyone else was out hunting. She told him her parents held her to such strict standards, even in how she sat, spoke, or stayed silent, that any small fault brought sharp reprimands and worse. By her own account, it left her feeling as though she were, in her words, 'in hell.' She preferred her books to hunting parties and thought her upbringing needlessly harsh, though such discipline was ordinary for a girl of her rank.

  Around February 1547, Jane was sent to live in the household of Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley, an uncle of Edward VI who soon married Henry VIII's widow, Catherine Parr. She lived with the couple at Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire, attending Catherine until Catherine died in childbirth in September 1548. Jane, about eleven years old, served as chief mourner at the funeral. After Seymour's arrest for treason, she returned to Bradgate and continued her studies.

  Seymour's arrest closed one chapter of Jane's education, but not his ambitions for her future. Even after Catherine's death, the Baron kept angling to keep his young ward within reach of the throne.

• 3. Contracts for Marriage

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  Thomas Seymour kept Jane in his household for about two months after Catherine Parr's death, before his own arrest at the end of 1548. His brother, Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector, felt threatened by Thomas's popularity with the young King Edward. Among the charges against Thomas Seymour was that he had proposed marrying Jane to the king himself.

  Henry Grey, Jane's father, stayed largely out of trouble as Seymour's case unraveled into an attainder and execution. After his fourth interrogation by the Privy Council, he floated a different match: his daughter Jane wed to the Protector's eldest son, Lord Hertford. That plan came to nothing, and Jane remained unengaged until the 25th of May 1553, when she was promised to Lord Guildford Dudley, a younger son of John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland.

  Northumberland had served as Lord President of the Privy Council since late 1549 and was, by 1553, the most powerful man in the country. On the 25th of May, Jane and Guildford married at Durham House as part of a triple wedding. In the same ceremony, Jane's sister Katherine married Lord Herbert, heir to the Earl of Pembroke, and Guildford's sister, also named Katherine, married Henry Hastings, heir to the Earl of Huntingdon.

  Within weeks, the marriage that had bound three families together would matter for reasons none of the wedding guests could have predicted.

• 4. Blood and Succession

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  Henry VIII had three children: Mary, raised Catholic; Elizabeth; and Edward, born to Henry's third wife, Jane Seymour, who died in 1537 from complications of the birth. Henry annulled his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, Mary's mother, in 1533, and had Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth's mother, beheaded in 1536. He then rewrote the Act of Succession twice to declare both daughters illegitimate. Formal reconciliation with them came only in 1543, urged by his sixth wife, Catherine Parr, and the Act of 1544 restored the sisters to the succession while still branding them illegitimate. That same Act let Henry alter the succession by his own will.

  Henry's will confirmed his three children as heirs, then turned to the descendants of his younger sister Mary if none of them left children of their own. That branch included Jane. For reasons that remain unclear, Henry excluded his own niece, Jane's mother Frances Brandon, from the succession, and he also passed over the descendants of his elder sister Margaret, who had married into the Scottish royal family.

  Edward VI fell ill in February 1553, recovered briefly, then relapsed in May. By early June his doctors told Northumberland and other noblemen close to him that he had only weeks left to live. His Catholic half-sister Mary was, at that point, still his heir presumptive.

  Edward had drafted a document earlier in 1553 called 'My devise for the Succession.' It first limited the crown to future male descendants of Jane's mother and her daughters, then, probably in June, named his Protestant cousin, 'Lady Jane and her heirs male,' outright. Northumberland guided the plan; he feared Mary would move against him and his family if she took power. Mary had already defied the Edwardian government once, keeping the Latin mass in her private chapels after the 1549 Act of Uniformity banned it, and she had appealed to her cousin Emperor Charles V, who threatened military intervention if England kept pressuring her over religion. Advisors warned Edward that disinheriting Mary meant disinheriting Elizabeth too, since he could not legally remove only one sister. Northumberland pushed him to exclude both anyway.

  Edward could not use Salic law to find a male heir. The only possible candidate was the Scotsman Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, just six or seven years old and Catholic. The Plantagenet claimants, Edward Courtenay and Reginald Pole, were also Catholic, and Courtenay had spent years imprisoned in the Tower. That left the branch of Henry's younger sister Mary, Dowager Queen of France and Duchess of Suffolk, which had no living male descendants. The oldest woman of childbearing age in that line was Mary's thirty-five-year-old daughter, Frances Grey. If Frances herself could not bear a son, her eldest daughter Jane could, since Jane was young, healthy, and Protestant.

  Edward personally oversaw the copying of his will, which was issued as letters patent on the 21st of June and signed by 102 notables, including the entire Privy Council, peers, bishops, judges, and London's aldermen. He also planned to have the declaration formally passed by parliament in September, and the necessary writs were already being prepared.

  Edward would not live to see that September session. Within weeks he was dead, and word of what his will meant for her had not yet reached Jane, who was living quietly outside London.

• 5. Nine Days Queen

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  Edward VI died at about nine o'clock in the evening on the 6th of July 1553, though the news was kept quiet for four days. Jane, staying in Chelsea at the time, remained unaware of the council's decision. She later testified that around the 19th of June she had received a vague first warning of Edward's choice but had not taken it seriously.

  On the afternoon of the 9th of July, Jane received an unexpected summons to Syon House, Northumberland's unfinished palace. After a long wait, she was met by her father-in-law Dudley, along with Francis Hastings, William Herbert, William Parr, and Henry Fitzalan. They told her that Edward was dead and that, under his will, she was to take the crown. She was initially reluctant, and only agreed after her parents and parents-in-law pressed her, while Guildford, she recalled, added 'prayers and caresses.'

  Jane was officially proclaimed Queen of England, France and Ireland on the 10th of July, and that same day she and Guildford made their ceremonial entry into the Tower of London, the traditional residence of English monarchs between accession and coronation. Once inside, Guildford began demanding to be made King Consort. Jane offered instead to make him Duke of Clarence; Guildford said he did not want a dukedom, he wanted to be king outright. When the Duchess of Northumberland, Guildford's mother, heard of the quarrel, she was furious. She ordered her son to stop sleeping with his wife and come home, but Jane insisted he stay at her side in the Tower.

  Outside the Tower walls, a rival claim to the crown was already gathering strength in the countryside.

• 6. Mary's Rebellion

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  Mary had been the largest landowner in East Anglia since 1547, when she inherited 32 estates across Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex after her father's death; that land came with a loyal base of local nobility and commoners. At the end of June 1553, she moved from her estate at Newhall to Hunsdon House. On the 4th of July, two days before Edward's death, she left for her estates around Kenninghall in Norfolk, apparently wary that a summons to visit her dying brother was a trap.

  On the evening of the 7th of July, at the Manor of Euston Hall near Thetford, messengers reached Mary with word that Edward had died the day before. After confirming the news, she returned to Kenninghall and began summoning support. By the 12th of July her forces had gathered at Framlingham Castle in Suffolk, nearly twenty thousand strong, drawing both Catholics hoping to restore the old faith and Protestants who joined for other reasons, including the Protestant community of Coventry.

  Northumberland set out from London on the 14th of July with 1,500 troops to confront Mary himself, taking his sons John, Earl of Warwick, and Lord Ambrose with him. By the 19th, converging reports of Mary's army size, and the arrival of Royal Navy artillery on her side, convinced him the campaign was hopeless. Stranded in Cambridge, he surrendered and proclaimed Mary queen in the marketplace, raising his cap and, as one account put it, laughing 'to try to hide the tears that fell down his pain-filled cheeks.'

  In London that same week, the coup came from within Jane's own council. While Northumberland was away chasing Mary, the Earl of Arundel and William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke, led the Privy Council in switching sides, meeting at Pembroke's residence, Baynard's Castle, on the 19th of July to end Jane's claim and proclaim Mary queen. Jane's own father, commanding the Tower garrison, learned of the switch and proclaimed Mary himself on nearby Tower Hill. Hours earlier that same day, Jane had stood as godmother at a courtier's christening and asked that the baby be named Guildford, not yet knowing her husband's name was about to become a danger rather than an honor.

• 7. Trial and Scaffold

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  On the 18th of August, Northumberland, his sons, John Gates, and other officials involved in Jane's accession were tried for high treason and found guilty. After sentencing, Northumberland converted back to Catholicism and confessed to Bishop Gardiner. Despite that, and his wife's pleas to the Queen, he was beheaded on Tower Hill on the 22nd of August, a month after Mary took the throne. Jane herself, referred to by the court as Jane Dudley, wife of Guildford, was tried alongside her husband, two of his brothers, and Archbishop Thomas Cranmer on the 13th of November 1553 at Guildhall in London. All were found guilty; Jane's guilt rested partly on documents she had signed 'Jane the Quene.' Her sentence was to be burned alive on Tower Hill or beheaded, at the Queen's pleasure, since burning was the traditional English punishment for treason committed by women.

  Mary initially spared Jane's life, treating her and Guildford as pawns of Northumberland's scheme rather than willing plotters. That changed in January 1554, when Wyatt's Rebellion broke out against Mary's plan to marry Philip of Spain, a match unpopular even among some of her own privy councillors. Jane's father, Henry Grey, and two of Guildford's brothers joined the uprising. The rebels had no plan to restore Jane to the throne, but the government revived her suspended death sentence anyway, treating her as a standing danger to Mary's rule.

  Mary signed the execution order on the 19th of January and initially scheduled it for the 9th of February, later postponed three days to give Jane a chance to convert to Catholicism. Jane asked for a Protestant minister but was sent the Catholic chaplain John Feckenham instead. Though he failed to convert her, the two debated theology and became close, and Jane allowed him to walk with her to the scaffold. The day before the execution, Guildford asked for one last meeting; Jane refused, saying it would only add to their pain and that they would meet again 'shortly elsewhere.'

  On the morning of the 12th of February 1554, Guildford was executed first on Tower Hill. Watching from her window, Jane cried out, 'Oh, Guildford, Guildford!' She was then taken to Tower Green inside the Tower itself. On the scaffold she said she had consented to the unlawful act against the Queen but washed her hands of ever desiring it, then recited Psalm 51 in English. She asked the executioner to 'dispatch me quickly,' blindfolded herself, and, unable to find the block, cried out, 'What shall I do? Where is it?' Someone, probably Thomas Brydges, the Deputy Lieutenant of the Tower, guided her hands to it. Her last words were those of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke: 'Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit.'

  Jane and Guildford were buried at the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula, with no memorial stone marking the grave. Her father, the Duke of Suffolk, was executed eleven days later, on the 23rd of February 1554.

• 8. Afterlives

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  Five months after Jane's death, the Scottish reformer John Knox described her and Guildford as 'innocents... such as by just laws and faithful witnesses can never be proved to have offended by themselves.' A decade later, the chronicler Grafton wrote that even those who had never met Guildford before his execution 'did with lamentable tears bewail his death.' Protestants came to regard Jane as a martyr, and she appeared on several pages of John Foxe's Book of Martyrs.

  The dowager Duchess of Northumberland spent 1554 travelling to Spain with her son-in-law Henry Sidney to plead with the new co-ruler, King Philip, for her surviving children. By that autumn, Guildford's remaining brothers and sisters had been released from the Tower. Jane's mother, Frances, kept good relations with Mary, remarried her Master of the Horse, Adrian Stokes, in March 1555, and died in 1559.

  For centuries, the plan to alter the succession was treated as Northumberland's alone. Since the 1970s, historians including Diarmaid MacCulloch and David Starkey have argued Edward himself drove the scheme, MacCulloch pointing to the young king's 'teenage dreams of founding an evangelical realm of Christ' and Starkey concluding that 'the driving will was his.'

  American poet Lydia Sigourney published a poem about Jane in 1836, and in 1911 the historian Albert Pollard called her 'the traitor-heroine of the Reformation.' Novelists have returned to her story since, including Alison Weir in her 2006 debut Innocent Traitor and Philippa Gregory in 2017's The Last Tudor. Three films have carried her story to the screen, from a 1923 silent film, through 1936's Tudor Rose, to Trevor Nunn's 1986 film Lady Jane, starring Helena Bonham Carter as the teenage queen at its center.