The Execution of Lady Jane Grey by Paul Delaroche, 1833 in the National Portrait Gallery.
You may have heard about the queen of the thousand days in reference to Anne Boleyn’s short reign from 1533 to 1536 but you may not know about another ill-fated queen that came not too long after Anne whose reign lasted only nine days and ended just like hers did.
During the first years of Henry VIII’s surprising accession to the throne, one of the first things he did was marrying one of his sisters off to the aging king of France, Louis XII, while still a teenager. Mary, who was rather smart besides being beautiful, made his brother promise her that to get her to agree to the match but with no intentions to follow through whatsoever.
Luckily for Mary, the chance to be free came quickly when her husband passed away only a few months after the wedding and Henry VIII unknowingly sent her a new husband to fetch her. The King made his best friend, Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk, travel across the channel to bring his sister back unaware that there had been previous attraction between the two, and so Mary, weary of her brother’s antics, decided to wing it and marry without royal consent before returning to England so that she couldn’t be forced to be toyed with again.
The monarch was pretty much upset with the pair but after they paid the price for their ‘treachery’, everything went back to normal and they started their family.
One of their children was Frances, named after either King Francis I of France or St. Francis of Assisi, who was born on 16 July 1517 in Hatfield, Hertfordshire. She was brought up by her mother mostly in Westhorpe, Suffolk until she wedded Henry Grey, Marquess of Dorset at sixteen years old, and moved to the Tudor Court with her new family.
After two little boys who sadly didn’t survive, Frances gave birth to three daughters: Jane, Katherine and Mary. Jane was born at some point over the second half of the year 1537, though the exact date remains unknown. She was educated by John Aylmer and Michelangelo Florio, who instructed her in Latin, Greek, Italian and Hebrew. Her upbringing was most definitely Protestant, even sending letters to the Zürich reformer Heinrich Bullinger, which would eventually lead her to the scaffold. She was an intelligent bookworm who was easier to find sitting somewhere reading Plato than hunting or doing any kind of sports. She received a strict upbringing fitting the family she was born into and sometimes it was difficult for her to handle it. Jane is reported to have said at some point:
“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 (which I will not name for the honour I bear them) ... that I think myself in hell.”
There’s no way to know for sure what was the reality of these statements, or if Jane was too soft for the rough world she lived in, but the truth is no one else reported anything similar to that apart from her.
When she turned ten, not unlike other noble children at the time, Jane was sent to Thomas Seymour’s household to continue her studies and learn etiquette and protocol. Thomas was 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley, the husband to Henry VIII’s sixth wife, Katherine Parr, and brother to his second wife, Jane Seymour and, consequently, uncle to King Edward VI. Jane lived with him and Katherine at Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire as her attendant, until Katherine unfortunately died giving birth to a baby girl in September 1548. Jane, aged around eleven at the time, acted as chief mourner during the funeral. Thomas would be charged with treason (amongst other things, it’s said he wanted to marry Jane to Edward) and Jane would then go back to Bradgate, her family home.
Her father decided to present her at Court in 1551, possibly looking into profitable matches for her, and that he found when he accomplished a triple wedding, no less, in 1553 which included two out of three of his daughters. The couples were: Jane’s sister Katherine and Henry Herbet who was the heir to the earldom of Pembroke; Jane herself and Lord Guildford Dudley whose sister, Katherine Dudley, would marry Henry Hastings, the heir to the earldom of Huntingdon.
By that time, Henry VIII had been dead for six years and his son Edward had occupied the throne seamlessly, continuing his father’s efforts in religious reforms. Jane’s father-in-law, John Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland, was regent to the underaged monarch who was easily swayed by him. That’s not hard to understand since the young boy found himself on the throne with no father or mother and surrounded by selfish people who looked only to rise on the social scale. At the beginning of 1553, Edward started to show signs of illness and John was adamant that Mary Tudor couldn’t succeed him as Queen because she would undo all their work and bring England back to Catholicism and Rome. Mary, who was the first daughter of the late Henry VIII, was expected to be her youngest brother’s heir if he died with no male issue as it was apparent he would. Her mother’s marriage to the King had been deemed null due to her first marriage to Arthur Tudor, making Mary a bastard. Still, Henry had left an Act of Succession that named her heir after Edward if he had no sons to succeed him. Elizabeth Tudor, Anne Boleyn’s daughter, was next in line if Mary was to die childless as well, even though she too was declared illegitimate. And while Elizabeth was Protestant, John and Edward couldn’t suppress Mary’s claim without bypassing hers altogether, so they were left with the task of finding an heir that wouldn’t destroy their legacy. That’s how Lady Jane Grey came into the picture.
Edward VI, getting worse by the minute, created a Succession device that disinherited both of his sisters and named John’s daughter-in-law and her male children as successors. This new document was signed by 102 notables, including the whole Privy Council, peers, bishops, judges, and London aldermen. All of them would turn their backs on Jane Grey and rally around Mary Tudor not too long after.
King Edward VI ended up passing away on 6th July 1553, but it was not announced until four days later, in an attempt to prevent Mary from causing any trouble and put Jane on the throne. She was informed on 9th July of her new role as Queen of England, which she reluctantly accepted. The following day, after taking up residence within the Tower of London as tradition dictated, she was crowned Queen of England, Ireland and France but refused to crown her husband Guildford alongside her. All the while Mary was in East Anglia gaining support to her cause. Amongst her supporters one could find the Catholics who were eager to see their country return to their truest faith and many others who didn’t share her beliefs but acknowledged her rights as the true heir.
On 12th July, Mary gathered an army of twenty thousand at Framlingham Castle, Suffolk, to confront John Dudley. On the 19th, the Council had declared in Mary’s favour. She made her triumphant entrance into London on 3th August, surrounded by her people’s love, which must’ve been a bittersweet feeling. After so many years being shadow-banned by her father and brother, she finally touched the light, acclaimed by her subjects but without her mother there to witness it all and with a hard choice to make regarding her teenage relative Jane. This time she was a traitor. On 19th July 1553, Jane was imprisoned in the Tower's Gentleman Gaoler's apartments, and Guildford was imprisoned in the Bell Tower, closely followed by his brother Robert, the future love interest of Mary’s sister Elizabeth. John Dudley was sent to the scaffold and his sons remained under custody as traitors. Before his death, John Dudley returned to Catholicism, even attending Mass, something Jane didn’t appreciate as a fervent Protestant follower.
On 13th November 1553, at Guildhall, Jane Grey was charged with treason. Her husband Guildford and two of his brothers were accused of treason also as well as the former archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer. During her short days as Queen, Jane had signed a few papers as "Jane the Quene" evidencing to everyone she was complacent with the usurping of Mary’s throne. The sentence was either beheading or to be burned alive, to be disclosed at Mary’s preference. Once again mimicking Anne Boleyn’s fate, not only did Jane step in the Tower of London both as Queen and prisoner, but she also was shown mercy by her ruler being given a much rapid death by beheading. She tried to reach out to Mary in a letter asking for forgiveness, stating that she was “a wife who loved her husband”. Mary was pretty much set on forgiving both her and Guildford, as she understood that they were more likely innocents that had been used by John.
Then the Wyatt Rebellion happened and things went downhill with the speed and virulence of a wildfire.
In January 1554, Jane's father, along with Robert and Henry Dudley, Guildford's brothers, joined the rebellion against Mary’s plans to marry the catholic King Philip II of Spain that wanted to put Jane back on the throne. The rebellion was suppressed and Jane’s life fatally sentenced. The Privy council advised the Queen to get rid of Jane and Guildford, as she would always be a safe haven to Protestant people and as such, a risk to her rule. With a heavy heart Mary signed off Jane’s death warrant on 19th January 1554. The pair was supposed to die on 9th February but the date was postponed to give her the chance to repent and return to Catholicism, which she didn’t. Guildford asked for a last reunion with his wife but she refused, saying that doing so “would only ... increase their misery and pain, it was better to put it off ... as they would meet shortly elsewhere, and live bound by indissoluble ties."
She hadn’t even turned seventeen years old.
On the morning of 12th February 1554 at Tower Hill, Guildford was publicly executed. Jane saw her husband’s remains carried by a horse and a cart and was saddened by grief, exclaiming: "Oh, Guildford, Guildford." After that she was taken to Tower Green, where her beheading took place privately. Her speech was reported to be this:
“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.”
Which, once again, bears some resemblance to the one given by Anne Boleyn shortly before a sword sent her to the afterlife. The executioner, as was custom, asked for her forgiveness. She gave it to him, answering: "I pray you dispatch me quickly."
Then she asked if he would chop her head off before she could lay down on the pile, in a heart wrenching gesture of fear, reminding everyone who reads that she was only a teenager facing a horrible ending. After being blindfolded and more than likely plagued by anxiety and despair, she was unable to find the block on which she ought to put her head down and asked in desperation where it was. She was carefully led to it, where she prayed one last time: “Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit!”
She was laid to rest with Guildford at St Peter ad Vincula at Tower Green, with no memorial stone or marking to signal their grave. Her father would also die less than two weeks later and her mother would go on to wed Mary’s Master of the Horse and chamberlain, Adrian Stokes, in March 1555, forming a friendly bond with her.
Lady Jane Grey has transcended time and space and has prevailed as a Protestant martyr, her life story embellished and tainted, making her somewhat of a legend even to us. She was a victim of circumstances, a pawn in her father in law’s ambitions and an involuntary player within the Tudor Court politic games.
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