Lady Jane Grey, 1537?-1554
Deny the world, defy the devil, despise the flesh, and delight yourself only in the Lord.
Lady Jane Grey
Better to die fighting for freedom then be a prisoner all the days of your life.
Bob Marley
Sometimes you have to pick the gun up to put the Gun down.
Malcom X
You can kill a revolutionary but you can never kill the revolution.
Fred Hampton
The most heroic word in all languages is revolution.
Eugene V. Debs
Lady Jane Grey was queen for nine days after the Death of Edward VI in 1553, and is seen as the innocent victim of power hungry Tudor courtiers. Tudor and Stuart historian Leanda De Lisle says this of her and her sisters, “Dynastic politics, religious propaganda and sexual prejudice have buried the stories of the three Grey sisters in legend and obscurity. The eldest, Lady Jane Grey, is mythologized, even fetishized, as an icon of helpless innocence, destroyed by the ambitious of others. The people and events in her life are all distorted to fit this image, but Jane was much more than the victim she is portrayed as being, and the efforts of courtiers and religious factions to seize control of the succession did not end with her death.” (Leanda De Lisle. The Sisters Who Would Be Queen: The Tragedy of Mary, Katherine & Lady Jane Grey. London: Harper Press. 2008. xxvii) De Lisle describes the mindset of the time, mid Tudor England in between the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, which was under the idea of the Great Chain of Being. The concept was:
God, the Prime Mover, brought peace and order to the darkness of the void as the cosmos was born. Everything, spirit or substance, was given its place according to its worth and nearness to God. Above the rock, which enjoyed mere exitance, were plants, for they enjoyed the privilege of life. Each plant had its appointed rank. Trees were higher than moss, and oak the noblest of trees. Superior to the greatest tree were animals, which had appetite as well as life. Above the animals, mankind, whom God had blessed with immortal souls, and they too had degrees, according to the dues of their birth. This was the Great Chain of Being, which the Tudor universe was ordered, and at its top, under God, Stood Henry VIII.
(Ibid. xxv)
This idea was back Biblically, in Paul’s letter to the Romans, Chapter 13, where he states that to disobey the powers placed above you, was to revolt against God. Henry VIII upset this balance when he overturned the very conservative England to he divorced his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, and married Anne Boleyn, separated the nation from Rome and joined the Protestant Reformation. He had made himself head of the new Church of England and would go through four more wives and produce three legitimate children (Mary, Elizabeth, and Edward) and at least one illegiamte son. (Henry Fitzroy) Henry might be best described by paraphrasing Alice Roosevelt Longworth’s quote about her father Theodore Roosevelt, that Henry wanted to be, “the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding and the baby at every christening.” Henry’s youngest sister, Mary, married his best friend, Charles Brandon and she bore four children, two boys ( Henry: 1516-1522; Henry 1st Earl of Lincoln: 1523-1534) and two daughters, Frances (1517-1559, the mother of Lady Jane) and Eleanor Brandon (1519-1547: married to Henry Clifford). The death of her two brothers, gave Frances, and later her daughter Jane, a spot in the succession to the throne. This was confirmed by Henry’s Third Act of Succession in 1534, which was passed by Parliament, that restored both Mary and Elizabeth to the succession, behind Edward but did not erase the declaration of their illegitimacy. It excluded the line from Henry’s sister Margaret, who was married to James IV of Scotland, the 1536 Act, Henry VIII was authorized to dispose of the Crown by letters patent or by will. Henry saw this as a formality, as he saw the crown as his personal property and he could dispose of it as he willed, his son Edward also saw the crown this way.
Lady Jane, like so many in history, especially Tudor history, may be like the way Churchill described Russia, a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. While myths and history may be seen as complete opposites, they are both narratives, that is to say, arrangements of events into unified stories, which can then be recounted. But myth is a narrative of origins, taking place in a primordial time, a time other than that of everyday reality; history is a narrative of recent events, extending progressively to include events that are further in the past but that are, nonetheless, situated in human time. Brian Dippie gave an account of myth in his book, Custer’s Last Stand, where he said:
In using the term “myth” here, I mean to elicit its richest connotations. For Americans, the word implies everything from the hero tales of preliterate cultures to the ideological fallacies held by advanced societies, and, in its plainest sense, refers to a notion based more on tradition or convivence than on fact; a received idea.
Henry Nash Smith, in his provocative study of the West in the American mind, Virgin Land, employed “myth” and “symbol” to designate “larger or smaller units of the same kind of thing, namely an intellectual connection that fuses concept and emotion into an image.” Myths exist only in our minds. They are, in effect, the fusion of what we see with what we want to see, the end product being that reality upon which we act, what we believe we see. In cultural terms, they are ingrained beliefs shared by the whole society. As Smith defines it, myth is essentially static, although capable of inspiring action. Myth also, and more familiarly, involve movement. As another scholar has written “a myth is a story, a narrative, a plot, an explanatory account; it may be historically true, legendary, or invented; but, for the believer, it is ‘truer than truth’ and therefore highly impervious to refutation by a show of facts to the contrary.” In short, it “conveys a poetic truth more majestic and significant than mere fact.” Such are the meanings commonly associated with myth. For my purposes, the word embraces the whole concept of Custer’s Last Stand, a static image within a frame of story. The frame can be altered to meet changing conditions, but the image is immutable.
(Brian W. Dippie. Custer’s Last Stand: The Anatomy of an American Myth. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press. 1976. 2)
Historian David Loades says that images of many in this period, such as John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, may show more about the evolution of English history than it does of the people themselves. (David Loades. John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. 1504-1553. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1996. 286) In her 1962 book, Lady Jane Grey, Hester Chapman, (1899-1976) who wrote several books on the Tudors and the Stuarts, says of the young woman, “Seldom criticized, always pitied and never censured, she has become the prototype of the persecuted heroine, the supreme example of a political pawn, an intellectual phenomenon and a blameless martyr. She was all these: but she was something more.” (Hester W. Chapman. Lady Jane Grey: October 1537-February 1554. London: Pan Books. 1962. Forward) Philip Sidney, in his 1900 account of her wrote, “She was never the poor, weak, forlorn maiden – a lamb amongst wolves – that certain authors would have us believe. She had a will of her own, opinions of her own, and, what is more, a temper of her own, to fall back on in the hour of need.” (Philip Sidney. Jane The Quene. London: Swan Sonnenschein and Co. Lim.: 1900. reproduced by Cornell University Library in 1997. 109) Faith Cook in her 2004 book, Lady Jane Grey, says this of Jane, “Many accounts have appeared over the years; some present her in terms of stirring heroism, others as a sweet innocent victim and more recently as an unfortunate but misguided religious prig.” (Faith Cook. Lady Jane Grey: Nine Day Queen of England. Welwyn Garden City: United Kingdom: EP BOOKS. 2004. Loc 48) One incident shows how differently she has been portrayed through time, it occurred in the summer of 1552, when the Grey family was visiting Princess Mary at Newhall Boreham in Essex.
As Jane and one of Mary’s companions, Lady Anne Wharton, were passing the the open door of the chapel, and on the altar was the Host, a wafer of bread that had been consecrated for Mass. While passing the open door, Lady Wharton curtseyed to the Host. Jane noticed this and asked, “Why do you do so? Is the Lady Mary in the chapel?”
Lady Wharton responded, “No, Madam, I make my curtsey to Him that made us all.”
Lady Jane came back,” Why, how can He be there that made us all, and the baker made him?”
Both Cook and Chapman report that this remark, considered extremely offensive to a Catholic, was told to Lady Mary, who “had been very fond of her little cousin. Now she recoiled. “Thereafter,” gleefully records a Protestant contemporary, “the Lady Mary did never love the Lady Jane, but esteemed her as the rest of that Christian Profession.” (Chapman. 59) Of the exchange, Philip Sidney says, “The child who told Mary’s attendant that the Host was only baker’s bread was not timid little girl, inclined to hide her light under a bushel. She was in truth, ab initio, old beyond her years.” (Sidney. 109) Leanda De Lisle says, “Lady Wharton reported her exchange with Jane to Mary, who is said by the martyrologist John Foxe, to have ‘never loved her after.’ There is not evidence of that, and Mary later showed fondness for the younger Grey sisters, particularly the affectionate and easy-going Katherine. But the princess had good reason to be concerned that Jane had insulted her religious beliefs in her own house.” (De Lisle. 76) Cook responds to the exchange by commenting that” Not only does such a remark reveal a quick-thinking mind, it also shows that under Jane’s quiet outward demeanor was a young person of fearless disposition who was prepared to stand by her convictions even if it cost her the friendship of one who had shown her kindness.” (Cook. loc 1194-1204) Marion biographer H. F. M. Prescott, (1896-1972) in her book, Mary Tudor, The Spanish Tudor (1938), gives an opposing description of Jane saying that she possessed a high spirit that, “showed itself on occasion in a schoolgirl’s pertness or in downright bad manners.” (H. F. M. Prescott. Mary Tudor: The Spanish Tudor. London: Phoenix. 1988. 212) Chapman sums up the exchange and in defense of Jane argues:
According to modern standards, Lady Jane’s behavior to the Princess Mary was bigoted, pert and fanatical. In her own day, and for at least a hundred and fifty years after it, her remarks about the host and about Mary’s present were quoted as proofs of her high principals and clearness of mind. Contemporary Protestants considered she was right not only in her opinions, but in so expressing them, no matter how blasphemous they might seem to those of the opposite persuasion.
(Chapman. 61)
Cook says of Jane that “Her convictions were strong and noble, but there was also a rigidity and single-minded zeal about the way in which she followed a course of action she felt to be right – regardless of the feelings of others.” (Cook. loc 1099) Nicola Tallis in her book, Crown of Blood, says of Jane, “At thirteen, Jane’s devotion to reform was already profound, and would grow ever more zealous as she matured.” (Nicola Tallis. Crown of Blood: The Deadly Inheritance of Lady Jane Grey. New York: Pegasus Books. 2016. 94) Tallis goes on to argue that from what is know of Jane’s character this story has some basis in fact, despite some probable exaggeration by Foxe, but Mary’s reaction of never loving Jane again is almost certainly a gross exaggeration. The 1552 Prayer Book would enforce Jane’s ideas, as show that her and Edward VI were very much of the same character.
While the birth date of Edward VI was well recorded, October 12, 1537, that of Lady Jane is not, which was not usual for girls born in that period. Tradition has her being being the same month as Edward in 1537, (Chapman. 6) and Hester Chapman says of the birth, “although the Dorsets were disappointed at not having son, they had important plans of Jane.” (Ibid) Leanda De Lisle argues her birth date was earlier in the year, perhaps in May. she cites a letter by her tutor John Aylmer describing her as just turning fourteen on 29 May 1551. She also details a letter written by John of Ulm April of 1550 that suggest she was born in 1536, but she asserts he was not sure of her age. of this De lisle says, “The letter is more useful in supporting the May timing. Michael Angelo Florio also claimed later Jane was seventeen when she died, but he was writing after her death, while Aylmer was under the same roof as Jane when he wrote the later noting her age.” (DeLisle. 319 320, Notes) There was rumors that a marriage between the two might come about, but, “references in Edward’s diary contradict this view. His mind was set, either on a continental alliance or on his father’s plan of contracting him to the five year old Queen of Scots; in any case, he desired, in his own phrase, ‘a well stuffed and jeweled’ bride.” (Chapman 25) He mentions the progress of the proposal to Elizabeth of France, daughter of Henry II of France, who later married Philip II. But in reading his chronicle one must remember that the document was read by others and Edward at times may have been writing as he believed a king should record things. He only mentions Jane once, on 4th November 1551, Edward entertained Mary of Guise at the Palace of Westminster, and mentions Jane was there with her father. (W. K. Jordan. ed. The Chronicle and Political Papers of King Edward VI. Ithaca, New York: The Folger Library by Cornell University Press. 1966. 93) The pair were the same age and both were well educated, but not together as that would not have been done in the sixteenth century.
Both had very similar characters and beliefs, and at about the same age would have known each other. Chapman tells of their relationship:
As these two fair, slight, composed children got to know one another, ceremony never relaxed. When Jane entered her cousin’s presence, whether publicly or otherwise, she curtsied three times and knelt when he addressed her. If the settled down for a talk or a game of cards, she waited for his permission to sit, and then did so on a cushion or stool. When he dismissed her she knelt again to kiss his hand, walked backwards from the room and curtsied at the door, which was opened by his pages. Two or more ladies attended her at the whole interview, standing in the background or waiting in the antechamber for as long as His Majesty chose to remain with their mistress.
(Chapman. 25-26)
De Lisle also describes Edward and Jane at court:
Sudeley (Thomas Seymour) had often noticed Jane Grey about the court. she appeared rather small, but her dark brows and eyes, which were ‘sparkling and reddish brown in color,’ suggested a lively spirit. He now began to watch her with closer interest, observing her playing and talking with the new King. An audience with Edward was always a formal affair, but as Jane Grey’s cousin, Jane Dormer recalled, it was still possible to spend many happy hours with him, “either in reading, playing or dancing.” Edward was universally considered “a marvelous, sweet child, of very mild and generous condition,” and Dormer recalled how he would call her “my Jane,” and, when she lost at cards, he would comfort her: “Now Jane, your king is gone, I should be good enough for you.”
(De Lisle. 28)
The idea of marriage to Edward was in the minds of Thomas Seymour and her parents, as well as several leading Protestants, but most likely never considered by Edward. Had the young king lived, might he changed his mind, hard to say, he was keen on a politically advataous marriage or one financially advantages, as were most nobles of the time. There are no existing communications between the two, and no recordings of their personal conversations, what their relationship was is unknown. Jane under the line of succession was the logical choice to succeed Edward after he excluded his sisters, and he knew they were equally committed to the reformation church, but outside of that, nobody knows how the young couple felt about each other.
Jane is seen as a pawn in the plans of her parents, Thomas Seymour and John Dudley, and by modern standards it seems so, but by the standards of the sixteenth century, it was normal for a daughter of nobility. Jane was the granddaughter of Henry VIII’s favorite sister Mary and her husband Charles Brandon, who may have been closer to Henry than anyone else. It was through her mother, Frances (1517-1559) who was the second child and eldest daughter of King Henry VIII’s younger sister. Frances Grey’s posthumous reputation for being insensitive or cruel is largely based on Roger Ascham’s account, recorded in his book, The Schoolmaster, years later in an effort to show that students performed better when they were treated kindly. here Ascham recounts a conversation he had with Lady Jane when he visited her parents at Bradgate Park. As he spoke with Jane he marveled at her enjoyment and understanding of Plato’s Phaedo, and the description of the death of Socrates. He asked her why she was not out in the park with the others, and Jane replied that, “all their sport in the park is but a shadow to that pleasure I find in Plato! Alas! Good folk, they never felt what true pleasure meant.” De Lisle says, “Ascham, oblivious to the authentic voice of the teenage-know-it-all, was delighted to find a young woman with such love of philosophy, and he wondered might have drawn her to it ‘seeing not many woman [and] very few men, have attained thereunto.'” Ascham was delighted to find one who enjoyed Plato and read it “with as much delight as gentlemen read a merry tale of Boccaccio.” (De Lisle. 68, Boccaccio was an Italian writer whose tales inspired Chaucer) Jane used this to launch into an attack on what she believed was the wrongs she had suffered under her parents rule. her famous response, as recorded by Ascham, was:
I will tell you, and tell you a truth which perchance ye will marvel at. One of the greatest benefits that God ever gave me is that he sent me so sharpe and sever parents and so gentle a schoolmaster. For when I am in the presence of either 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 sharply taunted, so cruelly threatened, yea, presently sometimes with pinches, nips and barbs, and other ways, (which I shall not name, for the honour I bear them), so without measure misorderd, I think myself in hell, till time come I must go to Mr. Aylmer, who teaches me so gently, so pleasantly, with such fair allurements to learning, that I all the time nothing whilst I am with him. And when I am called from him, I fall on weeping, because whatever I do else but learning is full of grief, trouble, fear and wholly misliking unto me. And thus my book hath been so much my pleasure, and brings daily to me more pleasure and more that in respect of it, all other pleasurers, in very deed, be but trifles and troubles unto me.
(Ibid. 68-69)
This passage has been used , or more accurately misused, to prove that Jane’s parents, especially Frances, were cruel in contrast with the kindness of Aylmer. Philip Sidney describes Jane and her home life “It was beautiful Bradgate that she passed the greater portion of her short and sorrowful career. Of a sweet and amiable disposition, as handsome as she was both pious and amiable disposition, as handsome as she was both pious and clever, she failed nevertheless, from her earliest days to win the good-will of her father and mother. Strict as the rules to which parents used at that epoch to lay down for the guidelines of their children, the domestic discipline to which the Lady Jane was subjected was as cruel as it was absurd.” (Sidney. 2) Ascham in a letter just a few months later gives a more accurate idea of his feelings, he saw Jane as a remarkable young lady he admired greatly. He hoped that her sister Katherine, who was ten at the time, would follow in her footsteps. “He had nothing but good words for both of her parents, who, he noted, delighted in her achievements. Dorset had invested in Jane all the hopes a noblemen normally placed in a son, and in the sixteenth century that inevitably meant rigorous, even harsh, educational regime.” (Ibid. 70) Plato was well heeded when he taught that children were born for their country, not themselves, and this was especially true for those who were born for high positions. Jane underwent the standard lot of the élite children and young adults who were destined by the Great Chain of Being to rule the nation. Chapman explains, “In that age, young people of both sexes and all classes were flogged and knocked about, either for neglecting their lessons, or for disobedience, or for lapses of manners.” (Chapman. 36) Eric Ives says of this ,” Jane herself must have known this and that prompts a question about her own attitude. If strictness was to be expected from responsible mother and father, why complain? Does the fact she expressed her resentment so forcefully mean she was being expected to reach exceptional standards – possibly to justify marriage with Edward? Was it just teenage exaggeration? Or had she begun to kick against parental discipline? A number of scholars have taken the latter view, seeing her as ‘a stubborn, unusually bright, articulated and opinionated adolescent,’ ‘a stubborn, acerbic, even arrogant young woman.’ (Eric Ives. Lady Jane Grey: A Tudor Mystery. London: Blackwell Publishing. 2011. 53) Ives agrees that many of these are placing twenty first century values to the sixteenth century, but many of her contemporary teachers expressed worries over her vulnerability to temptations. Alison Plowden chimes in by stating that recent biographers have pushed back on the image of Jane as the meek and mild gentle girl, an image created mainly by Victorians for the edification of school children. She says of Jane, “At thirteen the real Jane Grey was a stubborn, unusually bright, articulate and opinionated adolescent, who apparently did not hesitate to inform sympathetic visitors that she found her parents’ company heelish and whose youthful self-righteousness must often have profoundly irritated her father and mother. (Alison Plowden. Lady Jane Grey: Nine Days Queen. The Mill, Brimscombe Port Stroud, Gloucestershire: The History Press. 2004. loc 1128-1138)The image of Frances as the archetype of female wickedness and Jane as the eroticized figure of female helplessness and the abused child-woman of the myths that Jane came to represent, became central to he myth of Jane Gray that would define the mythology of the young woman from John Foxe on. “The scene in Trevor Nunn’s 1985 film, Lady Jane, in which Frances slaughters a deer on white snow, is inspired by it and established her early on in the film as a ruthless destroyer of innocence: a wicked Queen to Jane’s Snow White.” (De Lisle. 69)
The casting of Lady Jane as a martyr and innocent began early, in Elizabethan ballads Jane’s story is a tale of innocence betrayed. In one ballad Lady Jane, in denouncing her executioner Queen Mary I, declares “For Popery I hate as death / and Christ my saviour love.” In John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs she is not just an innocent but a Protestant Martyr as well. Perhaps the greatest Elizabethan tribute came from Thomas Chaloner’s in his 1579 work, Elegy, where she is peerless in her learning and beauty, comparable only with Socrates for her courage and quiet resignation in the face of death, he even suggests she was pregnant, which no record supports. These praises were easy for the dead Jane, as her sisters, Katherine and Mary both suffered sever persecution under Elizabeth I. In the 1607 Sir Thomas Wyatt by John Webster and Thomas Dekker Jane is portrayed as a tragic lover, and may be based on earlier works. John Banks, a Restoration playwright, in his Innocent Usurper: or, the Death of Lady Jane Grey, with a strong anti-Catholic strain, Jane only accepts the crown when Guilford Dudley threatens suicide if she does not. In the Hanoverian period she takes on the role of political heroine as well as martyr, scholar and tragic lover, putting down her Plato and taking up the crown only to save English Protestantism. In 1715 Nicholas Rowe’s play, Lady Jane Grey: A Tragedy in Five Acts, empathizes the pathos of Jane’s fate, and it was not only in fiction that jane was idolized, Gilbert Burnet in his History of the Reformation, (vol. 2, 1681) described Jane, with considerable exaggeration, as ‘the wonder of the age.’ Oliver Goldsmith in his1771 History of England uses the same phrase to describe Jane. In his book, History of England, Davis Hume portrays Jane as the innocent victim of the ambitions of the Duke of Northumberland.
In the early nineteenth century John Lindgard, a Catholic historian, pushed back on Jane’s image saying the woman that she ‘liked dresses overmuch’, and reminding her promoters that she was only sixteen. Despite this the image of Jane as the innocent martyr persisted, as a subject for tragic romance increased even further in the nineteenth century, an age of mass printing, where her story appears in a variety of media, including popular magazines and children’s books. In 1836, Nicola Vaccai opera Giovanna Gray brought the tragic tale to opera. William Godwin called her “the most perfect young creature of the female sex to be found in history” in his own hagiography of Jane published under the pseudonym Theopilius Marcliffe and Mark Twain had her as a minor character in his book, The Prince and the Pauper. In film, the image of the innocent young woman was portrayed by Nina Vanna in the British silent film Lady Jane Grey; Or, The Court of Intrigue (1923), Nova Pilbeam in Tudor Rose (1936), and Helena Bonham Carter in Lady Jane (1986), none are know for historical accuracy and mainly are romance films. In 2022, Bella Ramsey in Starz’s Becoming Elizabeth is the newest portrayal of the Lady Jane, and gives an insight of the young girls relationships with Mary and Elizabeth, but still hold to many of the traditional images of Jane.
Letters from John of Ulm to Heinrich Bullinger may give one a more realistic picture of the Greys at Bradgate. “Although Ulm admired Dorset and was financially supported by him, Jane’s father emerges from this correspondence as a man of immense vanity. Dorset was forever showing off his ‘eloquent’ Latin, to learned men, ‘with whom he mutually compares his studies.'” (De Lisle. 70) Modern biographers of Jane frequently describe Frances dominance of the relationship, (she was the nice of Henry VIII and resembled him physically in her final days) Dorset’s obsession with his royal connections stands out. The letter shows that Dorset styled himself as a Prince, and Jane as the child of a prince. One of the sources of the troubles may have been that while the Dorsets were extroverts and loved the outdoors, they were, like many of their class, compulsive gamblers. They would play for high stakes in cards and dice, and Jane, who was very pious, like many of the godly, would have deplored by the godly. Jane may have been an introvert and loved quieter things. The Dorsets would have seen their duty to Jane was, “The priority was to produce a ‘gracious ‘ daughter to live up to her proper station and be groomed to make a splendid marriage, and for that, discipline was vital. Good parents were strict parents, especially when it came to bringing up daughters.” (Ives. 53) While the twenty first century West would have much sympathy for Jane, in the sixteenth century this was the universally accepted duty of parents. Many contemporaries have said Jane was close to her mother, and many of the problems may just have been those of a young woman becoming her own person.
Thomas Seymour, a man later described by Queen Elizabeth I on the day of his execution “This day died a man with much wit and little judgment,” came into Jane’s life when she was about ten. In the sixteenth century it was common for a family to place a child in the household of an equal or, better yet, a superior family in what was the equivalent of the modern boarding or finishing school. The object of this was for the child to learn etiquette and proper behavior, and more importantly, to attract patronage for a future career or marriage. Jane, the eldest daughter of a family with no son, was well placed to bring a future husband claim to the Dorset patronage. Also under the terms of Henry VIII’s will, she stood behind Henry’s children to succeed to the throne, through her mother and grandmother. This was very well known to Thomas Seymour, the Lord High Admiral of England and a very ambitious man, who was very jealous of the position his brother, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector, held under Edward VI. Soon after the death of Henry VIII on January 28, 1547, one of Thomas Seymour’s gentlemen, John Harrington, approached Henry Grey and suggest that he place Jane under Seymour’s care as his ward. At the time Thomas was slowly placing himself between Edward and the Lord Protector, who was strict with the king, by slipping Edward money and other presents. Along with trying to bring Jane into his household, “He proposed marriage – in what order is not clear – to Anne of Cleves, the Duchess of Richmond (widow of Henry’s bastard son, and the Duke of Norfolk’s only daughter) , the Princess Mary and Elizabeth, and Katherine Parr.” (Chapman. 22) Katherine Parr and Thomas had a relationship before she became Henry’s last wife, and she still was in love with the Admiral.
Harrington proposed that if Dorset allowed Seymour to become his ward he would arrange a very good marriage for the girl, and when Dorset asked who the groom would be, Harrington replied, “‘Marry,’ quote Harrington, I doubt not but you shall see him marry her to the king; and fear you not but he will bring it to pass, and then you shall be able to help all the friends you have.'” (Ives. 42) Seymour obtained Jane within a week, Ives argues she was only part of his schemes to gain the recognition he believed himself entitled to. “The protector seems to have dismissed Edward as a nine-year-old child, but Thomas – who was by far more personable of the brothers – recognized that, though young, the king was politically and socially important.” (Ibid. 42-43) In Parliament Thomas fought his brother’s attempt to impose the Protectorate until Edward was 18, in 1555, but had to settle to remain in power at the pleasure of the king. In other words, Edward Seymour was in power until another person gained control of Edward, and Thomas was determined to be that person. In the meantime, with the help of Edward, Thomas married Katherine Parr and, despite the objection of her mother Frances, Jane joined the household with Princess Elizabeth, who was fourteen at the time. “Despite her mother’s possible misgivings it was to be one of the happiest periods of Jane’s life.” (de Lisle. 32)
As for Elizabeth, she was not welcoming of the young Jane, who was also her heir, and she had seen many heir jump over each other as circumstances changed. “As Elizabeth was notoriously vain, it also can’t have helped that Jane was proving more adept at her studies than either she or the King, both of whom were considered exceptionally intelligent.” (Ibid. 35) De Lisle notes that John Foxe claimed that Aylmer stated Jane was better than Edward and Ascham later said she was better than Elizabeth, neither had any reason to exaggerate. The Evangelicals of the time were very supporting of women to be involved in the study of Scriptures and Church Reform, and Katherine Parr was an example and leader of this new movement. her house was very deeply involved in such projects, and would publish a translation of Erasmus’ Paraphrases of the New Testament, which Katherine oversaw with the help of Princess Mary, and Katherine published a book of her own, the first by a woman, The Lamentations of a Sinner, which became a bestseller. “For the first time Jane had a sense of what it was to be a member of a network of clever women, working together and propagating new and exciting religious ideas.” (Ibid. 36) Katherine was an educated with intellectual sympathies that appealed to Jane, she also had a personable way with children. She had been a mother to Edward, and it was tragic for the King that Somerset refused her access, as he was trying to keep his brother Thomas away from the king and keep Edward under his control. Katherine was the first woman to publish books, first anonymously then under her own name and had a love of fine clothes and jewels, something Jane acquired as well. Her love of music and art may have led her to become a great patron of paintings, architecture and objets d’art. Unfortuanly her husband Thomas began flirting with the fourteen year old Princess Elizabeth.
This scandal would prove to be the undoing of the Lord High Admiral, and very likely Jane was a witness to the whole affair. It started, according to Elizabeth’s governess Kate Ashely, with Thomas showing up in the Princess’s room in his nightshirt and slippers and wish the young princess “good morning.” Kate Ashley warned the Admiral that such behavior could cause scandal, but he continued, and later would slip into Elizabeth’s bed and while the young girl would shrink under the covers. Elizabeth had confusing feelings about this, as a fourteen year old having such attention form a powerful man was exciting, she was unable to distinguish between a predator and a protector. De Lisle also believes that she might have had an element of revenge towards Katherine for betraying her father by marrying so soon after he died. It was in this period that Elizabeth insisted that Roger Ascham replace William Grindal, who died of the plague, as her tutor, over anyone suggested by the Seymour or Katherine. Jane also liked Ascham, he easy going temperament and intellectual mind appealed to her and later lead to the famous words he later wrote about Jane. What Jane knew of Thomas’ behavior is unknown, but it soon caused trouble in his marriage with Katherine, who was now pregnant. In May, with Katherine six months pregnant, she caught Thomas and Elizabeth in an embrace, which caused a serious argument. While the embrace did not seem sexual, Katherine later explained to Elizabeth that it could harm her reputation. As the daughter of Anne Boleyn, an infamous adulteress, that gave Elizabeth pause, and she later learned many lessons from this relationship. Elizabeth was sent away to the estate of Joan Denny, and Jane accompanied Katherine to Gloucestershire, where she most likely felt much resentment toward Jane, who now have Katherine’s full attention, but she was remorseful for causing Katherine so much pain. Thomas never acknowledged he did any thing wrong and some worried his attention might turn to Jane. He would spend his days looking forward to fatherhood and loved hearing Katherine describe how the baby was moving in her womb and telling all how this new son would avenge all the wrongs his brother had heaped on him.
Katherine went into confinement and gave birth on August 30, 1548, to a daughter, named Mary, after Princess Mary. it had been a difficult pregnancy and for a while their was great joy in the Sudeley home, but Katherine grew delirious and developed puerperal fever and died on September 5, 1548. She was buried in the first Protestant funeral in England on September 7, with Jane as the chief mourner. Her daughter, Mary, later orphaned by Thomas’ execution was placed in the care of Katherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk, who appears to have resented this imposition. In 1549, much of the lands confiscated by the Crown were returned to her, but she disappears from the record in 1550, and is believed to have died at the age of two. Linda Porter, author of a 2010 biography on Katherine Parr, suggests that a 1573 Latin book of poems and epitaphs written by John Parkhurst, Katherine Parr’s chaplain, contains the following reference to Mary:
I whom at the cost
Of her own life
My queenly mother
Bore with the pangs of labour
Sleep under this marble
An unfit traveller.
If Death had given me to live longer
That virtue, that modesty, That obedience of my excellent Mother
That Heavenly courageous nature
Would have lived again in me.
Now, whoever
You are, fare thee well
Because I cannot speak any more, this stone
Is a memorial to my brief life.
Porter suggested that this was an epitaph written by Parkhurst, on the occasion of Mary’s death around the age of two. Porter further speculates that Mary is buried in Lincolnshire, near Grimsthorpe, the estate owned by the Duchess of Suffolk, “where she had lived as an unwelcome burden for most of her short, sad life.”(Linda Porter. “Lady Mary Seymour: An unfit traveller.” 2011 History Today Magazine. Vol. 61, no. 7) Jane would be returned to her parents, but De Lisle says, “Jane’s mother was not getting back the child she had said goodbye to a year before, but a questioning, maturing girl with a strong sense of her own dignity. ” (De Lisle. 44)
For her sisters, Katherine and Mary, the excitement of having their big sister return was soon dampened an awkwardness of readjustment and the changes in Jane. Jane and Katherine had a three year gap in age, and it now seemed much wider, while the younger girls were obedient to their parents, Jane had become more questioning. She was showing the rebellious streak her father had shown at the same age, and was irritated by the restrictions placed on her at home. Frances believed as did all Tudors, that to rule and obey was the foundation of an ordered society, and blamed Thomas for not done a better job in teaching this. She believed that Jane could do either great things for the nation if she followed the traditional path, or if she gave in to selfish desires, evil and bad things for her nation. She was not happy that Thomas soon came around again asking to have Jane returned to his house, again with the promise of being married to Edward. This was a match favored by many of the evangelicals both in England and Europe, but Edward himself never mentions it, she was also considered as a bride for Edward Seymour’s eldest son. Thomas Seymour, who was reckless and forceful, as well as attractive to women, finally saw his luck run out. His plans all failed, he even killed Edward’s dog in his chamber in an attempt to kidnap the king. He was arrested and executed on March 20, 1549, Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, a boyhood friend of King Edward, described Thomas Seymour as “hardy, wise and liberal … fierce in courage, courtly in fashion, in personage stately, in voice magnificent, but somewhat empty of matter.” ( Elizabeth Jenkins. Elizabeth the Great. New York: Coward-McCann. 1959) Thomas Seymour would have his reputation, always subjected to very diverse reactions, would suffer more after his execution. While his actions with Elizabeth, which today would be seen as child abuse, then his interest in her after the death of his wife was considered more concerning. An attempt to marry an heir to the throne without the permission of the council was just one more i na long lines of his attempt to destabilize the goverenmt of his brother. Hugh Latimer said of Thomas:
He was, I heard say, a covetous man, a covetous man indeed. I would there were no more in England. He was I heard say, an ambitious man: I would there were no more in England. He was, I heard say, a seditious man, a contemner of common prayer: I would there be no more in England. Well he is gone. I would he left none behind him.
As touching the kind of his death, whether he be saved or no, I refer that to God only… but this I will say if they ask me what I think of his death, that he died very dangerously, irksomely horribly… He was the farthest from the fear of God that I know or heard of in England…
(Ives. 48)
As he went to the ax, he had sent secret messages to May and Elizabeth to keep working against his brother, he was executed not for what he did, but what he could and might do. Edward clearly liked him, as did many on the privy council, while he was full of confidence, he lacked guile and diplomacy. Katherine Parr clearly loved him ,and so may have Princess Elizabeth, and Jane was attracted to him as well. He may have pocessed the most dangerous traits one could have in the Tudor court, he was ambitious and a fool.
Ives says of Jane at this point, “Despite her youth, Jane Grey really had been accepted as a recruit to the fellowship of European reformist scholars.” (Ibid. 67) In a letter from Ulm to Conrad Pellican he said of Jane, “It is incredible how far she has advanced already and to what perfection she will advance in a few years.” (H. Robinson ed. Original Letters Relative to the English Reformation. Cambridge: Parker Society Publications. 1846-1847 . 29 May 1551, Ulm to Conrad Pellican. 433) By 1552, De Lisle says of Jane:
In May 1552 Jane turned fifteen, the same age at which her mother had been betrothed, and she had no serious rivals left as Edward’s future bride. Lady Jane Seymour (wife of the executed Edward Seymour, Lord Protector) was now the daughter of an executed criminal. Plans for Edward to marry the daughter of the French King, Henri II, had fallen through in March, when Edward had formally declined to ally against the Emperor Charles V. Increasingly, furthermore, Jane was being treated as the leading evangelical woman in England. She was being sought out as a patron by such figures as Michael Angelo Florio, the first pastor of the Stranger’s Church for religious exiles in London, and was looked up to and admired by pious, female intellectuals, as Katherine Parr had once been.
(De Lisle. 89)
The next year would have Jane be transformed from a pious female intellectual celebrated by the reformers into the Protestant Joan of Arc, the pious martyr of the Reformed Faith, and become the immortal innocent victim of history. In 1900 Philip Sidney describes the period in the mythological image of the Victorians:
The history of the reign of the “boy king” Edward VI., presents from beginning to end extraordinary reading. To the student, wading through this vast maze of interminable intrigue, of plots against plots, of creed against creed, of partisans against partisans, it seems as if the annals of England, from 1547 to 1553, had transformed themselves into a fairy-tale. so replete with sensational incidents were so half-dozen tragic years.
From the time when the breath was scarcely out of the body of Henry VIII. until the execution of Lady Jane Grey, English politics may be said to closely resemble the vicissitudes peculiar to the existence of South American Republics in our day. The reign of Edward VI. was not, in fact, that of a single sovereign, but the reign of a pair of self-constituted rulers of the kingdom, respectively the leaders of two different parties, each vainly anxious only to further his own private needs, and both utterly regardless of the welfare of their fatherland.
(Sidney 17-18)
Whitney R. D. Jones describes the period as a time when both Edward and Mary introduced unpopular religious changes and presided over a weakening foreign position as well as deteriorating social and economic stability. (Whitney R. D. Jones. The Mid-Tudor Crisis 1539-1563. New York: Barnes & Noble. 1973. 2) To G. R. Elton, the Tudor period was when the medieval state of England was transformed into the modern state by the revolutionary actions taken in the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, both Edward and Mary were road blocks to that transformation. Elton described them thus, “Of Henry[VIII[‘s three children, two were bigots; fortuanly they were also the two who died the soonest.” (Elton. Reform and Reformation: 1559-1581. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1977. 371) More recent works on this period present a different story, one that is more complex than those writing before. David Loades in his book, The Mid-Tudor Crisis, pushes back on this idea of a troubled and unsettled time and presents the period as one of effective governments that functioned well during the time. he argues the dangers posed by the Pilgrimage of Grace (1536) and the Spanish armada (1588) threated the state more than any of the rebellions under Edward or Mary. (David Loades. The Mid-Tudor Crisis: 1545-1565. New York: Palgrave. 1992.1) Loades does state that the economic troubles of the time, mainly caused by Henry VIII were not as bad as some of the economic troubles earlier and later in the century. Loades does argue that Mary’s successful rebellion against Lady Jane, the only successful one in the Tudor period, tested England’s strength of political traditions regarding the succession, and had Northumberland succeed in defeating Mary it may have lead to the type of absolutist rule that later became the hallmark of Bourbon France. (Ibid. 3) Historian David Starkey does argue that the will of Henry VIII that was behind Mary’s revolt was taken and placed in a box deep in the English archives when it was decided to overrule the line set out by Henry and place Margarete’s (whom he outright excluded form the line of succession) grandson, James VI, on the throne (as James I) after the death of Elizabeth I in 1603. Diarmaid McCulloch gives a picture of Edward “as a committed evangelical monarch supported by men in church and state who shared similar aims.” ( Stephen Alford. Kingship and Politics in the Reign of Edward VI. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2002. 31) Jane was one of the most committed of the nobles who stood behind Edward and his reformation.
Jane’s last year was dominated by John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, Edward VI’s death and his Device of Succession, Mary I and the turmoil of the year 1553. Edward VI was a healthy and rather typical aristocratic young adult of the sixteenth century. By January of 1553, Edward had enjoyed a very successful progress through his land and was nearing his majority, and taking more of a part in the governing of England. Kyra Kramer describes early 1553 in the following:
The king enjoyed the presentation so much that there were almost immediate arrangements to put on a play for him on Candlemas. However, by the end of January, the plans had been delayed for a few weeks because the king was feeling unwell. By the middle of February, it had been put on a more lengthy hold, by occasion that his grace was sick, and the show was therefore deferred until after Mayday. The fifteen -year- old formerly healthy King Edward VI was dying.
(Kyra Kramer. Interpreting the Death of Edward VI: The Brief Life and Mysterious Demise of the Last Tudor King, Yorkshire, England: Pen & Sword Books. 2022, 154)
”The Tudor world had lost a promising young monarch, but what had killed him” (Ibid. 168) The doctors that conducted his autopsy said that the “disease, whereof his majesty died was the disease of the lungs, which had in them two great ulcers, and were putrefied, by means wherefore he fell into consumption(tuberculosis), and hath he wasted, being utterly incurable.” (Ibid. 168) While even today many believe he was taken by tuberculosis, yet, several physicians of the time believed it was something other than tuberculosis, and some thought it was the strangest case of TB they had ever seen. While many of the symptoms looked like TB, other symptoms did not match the disease. TB tends to take years to kill the patient, yet Edward showed no signs of the disease before 1553, plus he had a lack of appetite and a persistent nausea and vomiting that usually does not occur with tuberculosis. Edward also had hair and fingernail loss and scabs forming over his body, which is not a symptoms of tuberculosis. These differences fueled rumors of poising, and helped establish the black image of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland who many believed did away with the king to place his son on the throne. “A seldom mentioned, but significant, clue as to the disease that killed the young king is the fact his uncle, Arthur Tudor, and his half-brother Henry Fitzroy, died of a nearly identical mystery aliment.” (Ibid. 169) Alison Plowden backs this up in her book, Lady Jane, “Edward’s contemporizes believed that he was suffering from the same disease that had killed his half-brother the duke of Richmond – and later historians have followed this hypothesis. (Plowden. loc 1710)The three Tudor princes did of a similar disease at about the same age and had very similar states of health prior to their demises. The image of the three as being frail and sickly is due to the Victorians, again, and an error that has gone unchecked into the twenty-first century. It is highly unlikely that a bizarrely fast form of consumption, of pulmonary infections, tuberculosis, but is more readily explained by a genetic, heritable factor not previously considered. “Taking the various historical details into account, non-classic cystic fibrosis becomes a very plausible cause of the death of the young Tudor royals.” (Ibid. 173) With a possible link to the theory that Henry VIII was positive for the Kell blood group, whose is close to the cystic fibrosis gene in DNA, and is connected to the CFTR genetic mutation, makes the demise of Edward to be a genetic curse of the Tudors. (for a complete discussion of this connection see: Kyra Kramer. Blood Will Tell: A Medical Explanation of the Tyranny of Henry VIII. Bloomington, Indiana: Ash wood Press. 2012. and its connection to Edward VI see: Kyra Kramer. Interpreting the Death of Edward VI: The Brief Life and Mysterious Demise of the Last Tudor King, Yorkshire, England: Pen & Sword Books. 2022) In an interesting little thing, if one is into numbers, Edward died on July 6, 1553, if you turn the last two numbers around you get July 6, 1535, the day Sir Thomas More was executed.
Henry VIII found Parliament as a place of consultation. it was not just a theory, but a matter of good government. Parliament provided Henry, and the other English monarchs, a chance to consult with a wide range of people, mainly the nobility and upper class merchants, than normally possible and gain assent for raising taxes. (Jennifer Loach. Parliament Under the Tudors. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1991. 1) His use of Parliament to establish Royal Supremacy and matters of succession had the effect of creating the idea of limited monarchy where the Prince ruled by consent of the people through Parliament.(Loades. The Mid-Tudor Crisis. 9) Henry VIII said of the institution:
We be informed by our judges that we at no time stand higher in our estate royal as in the time of Parliament, wherein we as head and you as members are conjoined and knit together into one body politic.
(Michael A.R. Graves. Henry VIII: A Study in Kingship. London: Pearson Longman. 2003. 105)
This evolved during Edward’s reign and became the grounds of revolutionary thought that overwhelmed the Stuarts in the next century. (Ibid. 11) Henry to make his moves in the church seem to be the popular will, used Parliament to pass his religious reforms, he also used it to lay out his plans for succession. This move inadvertently increased the power of Parliament, as Henry saw himself as all of his predecessors did, as ruling by the will of God alone. In the next century James I and the Stuarts wrote thesis and argued this many times, the Tudors did none of this because they did not have to. Henry’s Third Act of Succession passed in 1534 laid out who would received the crown, which Henry saw as his personal property to distributed as he willed. This medieval belief was also held by Edward, and as he fell ill in 1553, he decided to lay out his plans for succession, which had he lived most likely been rubber stamped by Parliament in October 1553. This is where David Loades believes had Northumberland defeated Mary would have derailed the slow process of Parliamentary power and set in motion forces that would have lead to the absolutist type monarchy of Bourbon France. (Loades. The Mid-Tudor Crisis. 3) Edward’s attempt to lay out his plan for succession was famously called, “My Deuise for the Succession,” and like many of Edward’s political papers was written by Edward himself and is a working draft whose numerous corrections and alterations clearly represent his thoughts at the time and give one a way to follow some of his thinking. Thus, it was a working draft, started most likely when he expected to survive his illness in early 1553. Eric Ives believes there are four versions written by Edward as he worked out his plans for succession. “At some point, however, a single, small, but critically significant alteration was made in line 3 of the first clause, and it was this which named Jane Grey as the next sovereign.” (Ives. 137) Henry VIII placed his daughters in the 1534 Act, but not rescind their illegitimacy, which allowed Edward to exclude them himself as under English law an illegitimate child could not inherit. Edward feared that Mary would overturn his reformation, and Elizabeth’s mother died a traitor and adulteress, not a good way to start a godly reign. His father had excluded the line from his eldest sister, Margaret, and Edward also did so, as Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, was foreign born and under a law dating from the time of Edward III was excluded from the throne. He also excluded Margaret Douglas, as she was married to a Scot (Matthew Stuart, Earl of Lennox) and her children were being raised as Catholics. The only option left to Edward was Frances Grey, but like his father, and most Englishmen, who believed that only a male should wield the full authority of the crown.
In 1135, Henry I had his barons swear to recognize his daughter Matilda (1102-1167) as the Queen of England, but after Henry’s death, the barons refused to crown her and instead gave the crown to Stephen of Blois. (1092-1154) Matilda tried to claim the crown in a ten year civil war known as the Anarchy, and in the end it was agreed that her son, Henry of Anjou (later henry II) would succeed Stephen. While Henry had mainly personal and dynastic vanity as his opposition to female rule, Edward’s was based on religion. De Lisle explains:
The campaign against idolatry had expunged all that was sacred and feminine from the churches: Catholic devotion to the mother of God was considered by reformers to be a diversion from the proper worship of Christ and the crowned figures of the Virgin had been destroyed along with those of ordinary female saints and mystics. There was no longer a Queen of Heaven and according to the evangelicals’ reading of Scripture, rule by women on earth was also ungodly, being against the divine order.
(De Lisle. 97)
John Knox, Edward’s favorite preacher, would put forth the arguments of the evangelicals in his 1558 book, The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstruous Regiment of Women, while he raged against Mary of Scotland, the primary target of this book was Mary I of England. In Edward’s devise he left the crown first to the sons of Frances, or those of her daughters, even if the son was an infant. it was only when Edward knew he would die soon did he change the line, “Lady Jane’s heirs male,” to “Lady Jane and her heirs male.” Thus Lady Jane Grey became the heir to the throne of England. Had one Charles Brandon’s sons with Mary, Henry (1516-1522) or Henry (1523 -1534) survived, Edward would have named them, and adults, perhaps with sons of their own, and Mary may have become the second Matilda, but without a Henry of Anjou to continue her line. “Far from being a move towards putting Lady Jane on the English throne, neither she nor any other woman was ever to be queen in her own right. In effect, Edward was attempting an English equivalent of the Salic law of France which ensured the monarch was always male.” (Ives. 140) It was an ingenious and totally unrealistic scheme, one in which had Jane been crowned and one of her sisters produced a male child, that boy would be king. In reality, had this occurred one could see Jane proclaiming, much like Selina “Kat” Kyle in the Gotham (2014) series finale, “Like hell.”
Edward was not trying to overturn his father’s will, but to follow it, as his devise mimics that of Henry. Edward, like his father, was setting up a group of counselors to rule the nation until a proper adult male king could take over. ”Henry used statue to register his decision; when Edward instructed the lawyers to put the ‘deuise’ in leangle form he assured them it would too be put through parliament. Son was copying father.” (Ibid. 142) Henry had believed that God had specifically and incontrovertibly showed him his marriages to Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn had defied sacred edit and thus both children were illegiamte, and were so by divine decree. Henry used the term of “his body” and asserted he had “‘full and plenary power’ to assign the crown to whoever his wished either by issuing letters patent or by terms of his last will.” (Ibid. 143) Parliament had accepted that Henry had this power ex officio, because he was king, and Edward would believe he had such power as well. “After all, if he (Henry) as king possessed the power to determine the succession, then in due course his successor would possess that power and be entitled to make his own choice of the next monarch.” (Ibid. 144) Ives says of this, “And although the attempt failed, the accession of Mary (and alter Elizabeth) simply meant that the fundamental incongruities created by their father’s meddling saddled with English monarchy with a contentious succession which was not stabilized until the accession of James VI and I in 1603,” (Ibid) Ives argues that Northumberland gained his identity from his loyalty to the king, so if Edward was the one who suggested jane as his successor “everything in Dudley’s psychology and record would have compelled him to back the king to the hilt. How could a man who found his identity in loyalty deny that identity?” (Ibid. 123) Edward may not have been the pious puppet of myth, but a determined player and manipulator in the dram of July 1553. At the time of James’s succession, according to historian David Starkey, they took the will of Henry and placed it in a box and hid it deep in the dark recesses of British archives. In the end, Ives argues, Edward did get his devise in legal and due form and right was on the side of Lady Jane and Mary was the rebel. Yet in history one man is seen as the main villain of Lady Jane’s life, and Edward’s as well, John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland.
According to the myth, John Dudley had planned the destruction of both Seymour brothers, and maybe Edward himself from the time Henry VIII died. He was the son of Edmund Dudley, (1462-1510) who had been the author of the book, Tree of Commonwealth, a treatise on goverenmt power, and a financial minister of Henry VII. He was executed by Henry VIII for treason ,as many of his policies, while financially successful, were deeply unpopular. John Dudley’s lead the supersession of the rebellions in East Angelica of 1549, then there was the supposed popularity of Edward Seymour, cast as the “Good Duke” and his role in Somerset’s downfall, and his later execution. He also served as an indispensable scapegoat: It was the most practical thing for Queen Mary to believe that Dudley had been acting all alone and it was in nobody’s interest to doubt it. (Ibid. 3 Loades. 267) Later Protestant writers built up the piousness of Edward and transformed Seymour into the good Duke and thus Dudley became the villain of the piece. yet Ives argues, “That, in consequence, Warwick himself became the dominate political figure in the country seems almost an accident, certainly not the achievement of an aggressive careerist in search of supreme power.” (Ives. 111) In many of his actions Dudley seemed trapped by “the ill-considered and fevered contriving of a desperate boy who knew his death was at hand.” (Jordan. 517) Stephen Alford argues that the image of him as the bad Duke is based on the biased historiography of the period and almost universal dislike for John Dudley. (Alford. Kingship and Politics. 168).” In reality both men, Somerset and Northumberland were equally ambitious, although Somerset’s political beliefs may have been more in line with later periods, but Somerset in Northumberland was opposed by “a man who was equally ambitious but one who was undeniably more ruthless.” (Margaret Scard. Edward Seymour: Lord Protector; Tudor King in all but Name. The Mill, Brimscombe Port Stroud, Gloucestershire, Great Britain: The History Press. 2016. loc. 4943) While he was ruthless and ambitious, in January of 1553, Dudley expressed a desire to Cecil to retire to the country and cited an Italian proverb that faithful servants, “A faithful servant will become a perpetual ass.” as he indicated a wish to live out his life in tranquility.”(Letter from Northumberland to Cecil, Chelsea. 3 January 1553. Calendar of Domestic papers 1547-1580, Reigns of Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth. Robert Lamon ed. Burlington, Ontario: Tanner Ritchie Publishing. 2005. 50) In reality, Edward played a much greater role in the devise than previously believed and Northumberland became trapped in actions that quickly escaped all control. (Jordan. 531-32. Loades. Dudley. 230-271) Ives argues that the plan to leave the throne to Jane was not the result of some long planned conspiracy, but of one put together in the shadow of Edward’s imminent death. Northumberland was placed in the same predicament as his father had faced, obey the king now and ignore the repercussion that may come later. Dudley chose to obey the king now, and so David Loades says of the black image of Northumberland, “tells more about the evolution of English history than it does about the Duke of Northumberland.” (Loads. Mid Tudor Crisis. 3) Dudley became the scapegoat for all the exiles in Mary’s realm, and had Edward lived, Dudley may still have been a loser, much like his father, he might be facing a young Tudor monarch, faced with many grumblings over policy, asking, “What have you done with my kingdom?”
On May 25, 1553, Jane Grey married Guilford Dudley in a grand ceremony at Durham Place, Guilford’s sister married Henry Hastings, the Earl of Huntingdon’s heir; and Jane’s sister Katherine married Lord Herbert, the heir of the Earl of Pembroke. Traditionally these matches came to be seen as part of a conspiracy by the Duke of Northumberland to bring his family to the throne. Some historians, though, like David Loades, W.K. Jordan ( W. K. Jordan and M.R. Gleason. The Saying of John Late Duke of Northumberland Upon the Scaffold, 1553. Harvard Library. 1975. 10–11) and Eric Ives (Ives. 153) have interpreted them as “routine actions of dynastic politics” (Loades. John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. 239). William Cecil claims it was Elizabeth Brooke (Northampton’s second wife) who first broached the idea of Jane marrying Guildford. Her husband feared that if Mary came to power, she would not recognize the divorce from his first wife and he would lose the vast Bourchier. With his son married to Jane, Northumberland would not change sides if there was a battle over the succession.(De Lisle. 99) Under the terms of the devise, the crown would be given to the first boy born from any of the Grey sisters, and if Jane was on the throne, Katherine would be the heir and pose a threat to Jane, especially if she bore a boy first. Frances Grey later claimed she had opposed the match, and Henry may have been reluctant as had Jane bore son, his estates would then come under control of Dudley. The story goes that Jane opposed the marriage and was forced to consent, “by the urgency of her mother and the violence of her father, who compelled her to accede to his commands by blows.” (Agnes Strickland. Lives of the Tudor Princesses, Including Lady Jane Grey and her Sisters. Everyman. 1868. 136) The source of this story is two Italians, Raviglio Rosso and Federigo Boardo, usually these sources are well informed, but they also have a reputation for being gossips and the account may be based on gossip and hearsay. (Plowden. loc 1568) The ambitious Greys, once seeing the crown as attainable would have dealt ruthlessly with any opposition, from many corner. Jane may have also considered herself already contracted to Edward Seymour, son of the executed Duke of Somerset, but his eligibility would have died with his father. Guilford has traditionally been portrayed as a conceited and maybe spoiled child, but little recorded of him. Whether Jane disliked him, or did not wish to marry at all cannot be known, her attitude toward him was correct but withdrawn, he may have become fond of her near the end of their lives. (Chapman. 67) Ives contents that the marriages in May of 1553 was for the usual reasons of such marriages of the period, to bind the political élite closer.
Despite being married, it seemed Jane had an aversion to her husband’s family and preferred living with her mother, another reason to doubt the many tales of an evil Frances. Guilford’s mother Jane Guilford Dudley, duchess of Northumberland, also a very proud and haughty woman, argued that Jane’s place was with her husband, and soon Jane was back at Durham house, were her marriage may have been consummated. (Plowden. loc 1721) She would only stay a few nights when she took ill, perhaps brought on by nerves, and she developed the idea that the Dudleys were trying to poison her, and she was sent to Chelsea. Then on July 9, she was taken by Northumberland’s eldest daughter Mary Sidney to Syon House. There she was met by her family and a large group of England’s nobility, who immediately bowed when she entered the room. It was here that Northumberland informed Jane of the death of Edward and that he had selected her to be his successor. Plowden says, “It has been accepted that this was the first Jane knew of the deadly inheritance thrust upon her, and certainly she took no part in the internecine maneuverings of the past few months. But at the same time it is difficult to accept that this highly intelligent, highly educated young woman can really have been so unworldly as not not have grasped the underlying significance of her hastily arranged marriage; or that at least guessed something of what was being planned for her.”(Ibid. loc 1741) Not that prior knowledge could have helped her avoid being now a prisoner of a power-hungry, unscrupulous junta, a good description of the Tudor court in general, and led by Northumberland, a man she feared above all others at court. She fell to the ground weeping in shock, saying the crown belonged to Mary, but the nobles all swore to die for her and she responded that if God had chosen her to be queen, He would help her rule, and she may have seen him as her only friend. Or, she put o na display that she could fall back on if the entire endeavor went to hell.
Historian Leanda De Lisle says this of Jane: “Revisionist historians have argued forcibly that Edward, the maturing, evangelical monarch, was the driving force behind the decision to make Jane his heir. At the same time it is blandly accepted, or even asserted that Jane, who unlike Edward was not weakened by a terminal illness, who was described by one of the King’s own tutors as the more intelligent of the two, and who reputedly had already launched personal attacks on Mary and her religion, was nothing more than an innocent and manipulated girl. That Jane was young there can be no argument. But she had been raised to be a leader of one side of an ideological struggle, in which her coreligionist were now facing the greatest confrontation of her lifetime. Having been persuaded to accept the throne, and assured by the Council that she was Edward’s legal rightful heir, she was now ready to embrace that rule.” (De Lisle. 110) She stepped up an accepted her kingdom, and asked God to grant her, such grace as to enable me to govern… with his approbation and glory.”(Ibid 111) “and with that England’s first Queen regnant made clear that she intended to rule and not merely to cipher. “(Ibid)
By July 10 they had received the letter from Mary, in which she proclaimed herself as the rightful queen. While both Frances and Jane Dudley burst into tears, Jane was resolute, she, “Like Joan of Arc, who defended France at the age of seventeen, she would protect her country and her faith against the threat she believed posed by Mary.”(Ibid 112-113) In many histories an account said to have been written by Genovese merchant Sir Baptista Spinola creates a colorful picture of Jane and Guilford. The problem is it, “is the invention of a New York based journalist and historical novelist turned biographer called Richard Davey. It does not exist before he wrote in 1909.” (Ibid. 113) Contemporary sources only report that Guilford walked beside Jane and her mother carried her train. Guilford, however, was enjoying his new position and expecting a great deal of regal status. “He made no pretense of loving his wife- probably he regarded her as a tiresome little prig – but he was quite prepared to be polite to her in public in return for the golden stream of social and material benefits which would flow from her.” (Plowden. loc 1773) His glory was short, as the Lord Treasurer, the Marquis of Winchester, brought the royal jewels for Jane’s inspection and the crown. Jane recoiled when told to try it on, for her it was the ultimate symbol of sanctified earthly power and not a plaything for boys and girls, and to treat it as just a headdress would be to violate a sacred mystery. Winchester told her she could take it without fear, and that he would have another made for her husband. Jane, most likely, seeing that this was not the nobility trying to fulfill the wishes of the late king to maintain the gospel and Protestant religion, but an attempt to raise a plebeian Dudley to the throne, perhaps to allow his father to rule for life. The Tudor pride that Jane possessed was now placed on full display, she proclaimed that she might make Guilford a duke, but never king, besides, only Parliament could do that.
This action ignited a family battle, and Guilford proclaimed he would be a king, not a duke, and he and his mother stormed out, with the duchess proclaiming that her son would not stay wit this unnatural and ungrateful wife. Jane was determined that she would not allow to be slighted this way publicly, ordered that they were not to be allowed to leave the Tower. In English history, up to 1553, only Matilda, daughter of Henry I, was ever proclaimed Queen regent, she was never crowned, in was prevented in 1141 and Stephen was crowned by the barons. It would ignite a ten year civil war known as the Anarchy, and result in her son Henry of Anjou crowned King Henry II in 1154. Matilda died in Rouen, France in 1161. When Mary I came to power, she married Philip II of Spain, and by act of Parliament in 1554, he was proclaimed King of England and all transactions were done in both of their names until Mary died. (Had Charles III decided to use the name Phillip as his regnant name he would have been Philip II) Mary II insisted her husband William of Orange be crowned king and he ruled as William III until his death in 1702. Queen Ann’s husband Prince George of Denmark received only the title of Duke of Cumberland, and Queen Victoria’s husband Albert was given the title Prince Consort. The husband of Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip, was granted the title of prince of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the same title borne by sons of the sovereign. Queen Elizabeth I never married, and it is uncertain if Parliament would have granted any title to Robert Dudley, the Duke’s son, had she married him as many believe she wanted to.
Jane wished to have Guilford made Duke of Clarence, and as she signed all documents as Jane the Queen, she may have forced the young man who was styling himself as King Guildford to be resigned to the role of Duke. The next days proved to be a disaster for Jane and Northumberland, as Mary rallied her forces in East Angelica and marched on London. As determined as Jane was to protect the reforms of Edward, Mary was as determined to return England to the Catholic fold. The people rallied to Mary, and Northumberland was captured and those who had first proclaimed Jane as queen quickly deserted to Mary. In a letter to John of Ulm, who had high hopes for Jane a friend wrote, “Jane was Queen for only nine days and those the most turbulent ones.” (Julius Ternetianius to Ab Ulmis in Robinson. Original Letters. Vol. 1. 367) (De Lisle comments in a note on page 124: It is said by some historians that the ‘nine-day Queen’ was a alter invention, intended to imply that Jane’s reign was a nine day wonder, But this letter is contemporary and the probable origin of the phrase.) In Hatfield Elizabeth wrote Mary a letter congratulating her and promising her all of her loyalty and support, she had learned the lessons of Tudor politics and later recalled that many turned against Jane because her husband was a Dudley and the Dudleys were hated. It may be the reason she never committed to marriage to Robert Dudley. De Lisle comments on the whole reign, “Jane’s Secretary of State, Sir William Cecil, filed away the documents marked ‘Jane the Queen.’ It might have been her epitaph. but it was as a prisoner in the Tower that she would truly come into her own.” (De Lisle. 124)
Mary I (1516-1558) was the only surviving child of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon, and as a child was treated like the Prince of Wales, presiding over the Council of Wales and the Marches, much as the Prince of Wales would have done. Her mother, Katherine of Aragon, was the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain,(famously referred to as the Catholic Monarchs) and she was infused with the crusader spirit of her mother. In 1501 she married Henry’s brother Arthur, but he died in 1502, killed by a disease that resembled the one that killed Henry’s son Edward in 1553. Shorty after, she married Henry, who actively pursued the marriage, seven years after Arthur died in 1509, Henry in what seemed to be a love match. After several miscarriages and the death of a son, Henry born (born January 1, 1511 and died February 22, 1512) Henry VIII began to fear he have no son to continue the Tudor dynasty. He began an affair with Ann Boleyn in 1525 and over the decade in what was called the King’s Great Matter, he tried to divorce Katherine and marry Ann, using the verse in Leviticus (20:21) that he said condemned the marriage of one to his brother’s wife. On May 23, 1533 Thomas Cranmer declared Henry free to marry Ann and she become his second wife, a union never recognized by Katherine of her daughter Mary. Mary was stripped of her title and forced to be a nurse to her new sister Elizabeth who was born on September 7, 1533. In 1536 Ann was beheaded and Jane Seymour reconciled Henry with Mary and in October of 1537 she gave birth to Edward, and she died soon after. Mary had little contact with Henry’s next two wives, Katherine Howard (who she despised) and Ann of Cleves. But with Katherine Parr she again was reconciled with Henry and did have a family life until the death of her father in 1547. Under Edward she defended the Catholic faith with the same crusader zeal that her mother had shown in driving the Islamic forces out of Spain. Sadly that zeal in Spain produced the policy of Limpieza de sangre (purity of blood) that would give birth to modern racism and push Mary into the counter reformation in England that in many ways drove the English into the Protestantism.
Mary’s will had risen an army that swept Jane from power with little to no effort, the idea of overturning an act of Parliament and of Henry VIII was more that the populace could bear. Eamon Duffy argues in his book, Stripping of the Altars, that the image of Mary was colored by accounts of the Protestants, especially the master propagandist, John Foxe. Duffy argues that Mary had broad support of returning to traditional religious practices and realistic goals based on the realities of a two generation population under the reformed church. many of the things done in England under Mary would later be part of the Counter Reformation in Europe. (for a complete discussion of this see: Eamon Duffy. The Striping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c.1400-c.1580. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. 1992. 524-564) Mary was a small woman who was deeply affected by the events in her life, she was practical, extremely disciplined, deeply pious with a narrow mind. (H. M. F. Prescott. Mary Tudor: The Spanish Tudor. London: Phoenix. 1988. 125) Mary could be passionately affectionate, but no scandal has ever been attached to her and many spoke to her as if she were a nun. (Ibid. 125) The Queen possessed neither guile or a sense of humor. (David Loades. Mary Tudor: A Life. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 1989. 8) Addicted to fine clothes and jewelry, she extended charity to almost all who she came into contact. (Prescott. 124) She was profoundly melancholy and stubborn, but could show mercy to many of her enemies, she pocessed the crusader zeal of her mother in retuning England to Rome, and underestimated the nationalism of her countrymen. Few in Europe thought Mary could challenge Jane, as Northumberland controlled the Tower and most of the nation, and some offered sanctuary if she decided to go into exile, but Mary did not hesitate, she would claim the throne she believed was hers. Ives says of her decision, “Given Mary’s psychology there can be no doubt that the decision to challenge Jane was Mary’s own. To do anything else would have been to deny truth and dishonor her mother a second time.” (Ives. 228) Mary would conduct the only successful revolt in the Tudor period and she became victorious almost by her will alone. Her support came not just from Catholics, but Protestants who believed the succession set down by her father was Parliamentary law and one they must obey. The shadow of Henry VIII still loomed large and potent even after the old king had died. Beset with bad harvest, foreign setbacks, such as the loss of Calais, her reliance on the Spanish along with her marriage to Philip II of Spain, combined with the mass burnings of heretics allowed the Protestants to brand her as “Bloody Mary,” despite that if one added up the executions of Edward, Jane, Mary and Elizabeth, they did not equal the number executed by Henry VIII. Jasper Ridley in 2002 branded her as an evil brutal woman who initiated the English equivalent of the French Terror. (Jasper Ridley. Bloody Mary’s Martyrs: The Story of England’s Terror. New York: W. W. Norton & Co. 2002. 1) Eamon Duffy argues that her reliance on Spanish advisors, because of her distrust of English men who had been in government since the establishment of the Royal Supremacy under her father, had her doing things good for the Hapsburgs but bad for the England. (Eamon Duffy and David Loades. The Church of Mary Tudor. Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing. 2006. 285) In her youth Spain was a beloved ally of England, now it was their bitter enemy, and her marriage to Philip, a foreigner and a Spaniard, inflamed many of the English, resulting in a rebellion, as well as giving the French opportunities (such as taking Calais) to exploit the restlessness in their long battle with the Hapsburgs. In the end Mary died in 1558, believing, most likely, she had failed her mother, her nation and God.
Mary was at Beaulieu soon after her triumphal entry into London listening to Frances Grey plead for mercy for her family. Frances’ mother, Mary Tudor wife of Charles Brandon and sister to Henry VIII, had begged the king to not divorce Katherine of Aragon, to no anvil, and she had known Mary almost al her life. Frances stated that the family was nothing more than the victim of the schemes and ambitions of the Duke of Northumberland, in a story that De Lisle says was, “overwrought, even by the high standards of contemporary conspiracy theories.” (De Lisle. 127) Frances had great influence with Mary, she would spend the rest of her life at Mary’s court, and Mary was inclined to pardon both Henry Grey and Jane. This appalled both of the Spanish ambassadors, Jehan Scheyfve (1515-1581) and Simon Renard, (1513-1573) who were pushing not only for Jane’s execution, but that of Elizabeth’s as well. While they convinced Mary to keep Jane in the Tower, her father was pardoned the next day. Jane would be charged with treason and her family feared for her life. As for the Duke of Northumberland, he was to be executed on August 25, despite many letters and his conversion back to the Church of Rome. He and his son Guilford had been kept in the Beauchamp (Named for Richard Beauchamp Tower, the earl of Warwick who had been a prisoner of Richard II in 1397) Tower, famous for many inscriptions by prisoners, the most elaborate inscription is in memory of the five Dudley brothers, including Lord Guilford Dudley, husband of Lady Jane Gray. The flowers around the arms of the Dudley family represent the names of the four brothers who were imprisoned in the Tower between 1553 and 1554, due to their father’s attempt to put Lady Jane Gray on the throne. The roses are for Ambrose, carnations for Guildford, oak leaves for Robert, acorns for Robur and honeysuckle for Henry. All four were condemned under the charge of treachery in 1553, but after the execution of Guildford, the other three were forgiven and released. Guilford also carved the name “Jane” in the walls of the Tower, many later believed it was for Jane Grey, but his mother was also named Jane, so some dispute it was for the former Queen. Northumberland claimed others had also influenced Edward, but he would not hurt another man at this time, his head was cut off with one blow.
Common knowledge in London at the time was once Jane’s trial had run its course she would be pardoned and divorced from Guilford, on the grounds she had been betrothed to another, a person of Bishop Gardiner’s household whose rank would exclude Jane from the throne. Jane had three ladies serving her in the Tower, she was lodged in the house of the Lieutenant of the Tower, or Tower’s Gentleman Gaoler’s apartments. The ladies were, Elizabeth Tilney,(whose elder sister had served Katherine Howard) Mistress Ellyn (Allan in modern spelling) Mrs. Jacob, who may have been the wife of one of the Jewish musicians at court. Jane had been writing Mary saying she never planned to take the crown, despite her total embracement of it after the fact, and at a dinner she even toasted Mary, wishing her a long reign. She did condemn the saying of the Mass in London and especially the Duke of Northumberland, whom she blamed for her fate. As to his hope of a pardon, she said, “Pardon? Woe worth him! He hath brought me and our stock in most miserable calamity and miserly by his exceeding ambitions. How could he dared hope for a pardon, being in the field (of battle) against the Queen in person as General? Did he not understand he was a man whose life was odious to all men? But what will ye more.” She paused and went on with an unbated fury, “Like as his life was wicked and full of dissimulation. so his end thereafter. I pray God, I nor do no friend of mine die so.” Jane then proclaimed she would die before compromising her beliefs, Like many modern revolutionaries today proclaim, “Should I who am young forsake my faith for the love of life? Nay, God forbid! Much more he should not. but life was sweet, it appeared; so he might have lived, you will say, he did (not) care how.” Going on she quoted Scriptures condemning Northumberland. “Who so denies Him before men, he will not know him in his Father’s kingdom.” (Ibid. 134) While hopeing for a pardon from Mary, and blaming Northumberland for her problems, she intended to take a stand against the reintroducing of the Mass in public. Jane stayed in the Tower until her trial, the rumor she became pregnant originated in a piece of anti-Marian propaganda written ten years later, she would most likely never saw Guilford again in person and would not have been alone with him if she had. her trial began on November 13, 1553, and she intended to play her role as a defender of the new faith on the stage of the public trail.
They were processed to the trial at Guildhall through the Streets of London, lead by a man with an ax, to show all they were charged with a capital offense. Cranmer was first, Mary had never forgiven him for his role in her mother’s divorce, then Guilford, dressed in black, then Jane just behind, looking every inch the star prisoner. “She had dressed in the deepest black as a symbol of penitence, her black cape trimmed and lined with black; even the details of her French hood was black. She held a prayer book open in her hands to broadcast her evangelical piety, while another, covered in black velvet, hung from her waist. Here was not so much penitence, as defiance.” (Ibid. 135) Behind her were ladies and the other Dudley brothers. No transcripts of the trial exist, but Michael Angelo Florio, who had dedicated his Tuscan dictionary to her, said she remained cool and composed from the Tower to the reading of the judgment. Chapman recorded, “The course of the trial was formal and extremely brief. The prisoners pleaded guilty. Judge Morgan then pronounced sentences with all their ghastly details. Lady Jane showed no emotion; at some point in the procedure she looked at Morgan. He never forgot that look. He could not escape the reembrace of the pale, freckled face under the black hood and the large, widely spaced brown eyes fixed steadily upon him.” (Chapman 168) A famous story of Judge Richard Morgan is upon his death in 1556 John Foxe records he called out:
Touching the condemnation of this lady Iane, here is to be noted, that the Iudge morgan who gaue the sentence of condemnation against her, shortly after hee had condemned her, fell mad, and in hys rauing cryed out continually to haue the Lady Iane taken away from him, and so ended hys lyfe.
(John Foxe: Actes and Monumentes of the Churche, 1570 edition, p.1623 at John Foxe’s The Acts and Monuments Online)
The story was repeated, almost verbatim, in Holinshed’s Chronicles, ( Raphael Holinshed ) at The Holinshed Project, and became the accepted explanation of his sudden fall from power and influence. In reality, the circumstances around his death are not known, and Elizabethans believed his sudden fall from grace and death was punishment for his treatment of Lady Jane. There is, however, no evidence he ever fell away from the Catholic Church and had a Catholic burial in 1556. Jane in her part returned to the Tower, and addressed her servants, all who were crying, “Remember – I am innocent, and did not deserve this sentence. But I should not have accepted the crown.” At the time she was maybe sixteen. With the possibility of a pardon still on the table, despite the efforts of the Spanish ambassadors, the Grey family tried to convince Mary that Jane posed no problem to her. It looked as if they would, then Mary announced her intention to marry Philip II of Spain. For Mary the alliance was renewing the one made by her mother, but for many English it was feared it was the beginning of the nation being absorbed into the Hapsburg empire. The council had begged Mary to marry an Englishman, but she was determined and accepted Phillip’s proposal. The action ignited the Wyatt Rebellion and in the end lead to Jane’s execution.
While in the Tower Jane spent her time studying the Bible, it is not known if she had classical text in addition to her Greek New Testament and prayer book. She did have access to paper and pen and did write some verses, such as:
Non aliena putes homini quae obtingere possunt: Sors hodierna mihi, tunc erit illa tibi.
(You think that it is not strange to man what things can obtain: My current fate, then it will be yours)
Jane Dudley
Deo juvante, nil nocet livor maus:
Et non juvante, nil juvat laor gravis.
(By the help of God, the bruise on the head will do no harm:
And a heavy burden helps nothing.
Post tenebras spero lucem
My hope is after darkness light.)
While the lieutenant of the Tower encouraged her to hope for a pardon, Jane’s public response was that she had her mind set on heaven. Mary’s coronation had been a triumph, and now not only had Edward’s religious reforms been reversed but she was now engaged to Phillip, she was triumphant, her mother’s honor restored and , in her mind, all was right with the world. Florio suggests that Jane herself was the intransigent , she hinted that the charges against her were slight and it was her judges who should come to terms with their conscious.(Michelangelo Florio. Historia de la vitade la morte l’illustriss. Middelburg. 1607. 62) With the relaxations of rules made for others it is sure that Jane would have gotten more lenient treatment had she just made a minimum recognition to Catholic services. (J. G. Nichols. ed. The Chronicle of Queen Jane, and of Two Years of Queen Mary. Camden Society. 48. 1850. 27) yet in her writings made in the Tower Jane reveled more about herself than ever before. ”What she wrote in the Tower she wrote from passion and conviction, bringing us closer to the real girl than anything bar her speech from the scaffold.” (Ives. 253) An example of this is the letter she wrote to her former chaplain, Thomas Harding, (1516-1572) written most likely close to the time she heard he had returned to the Catholic faith. The tenor and tone of the letter is seen in the opening where she addresses her former chaplain:
I cannot but marvel at thee and lament thy case; that thou, which sometimes wert the lively member of Christ, but now the deformed imp of the devil; sometimes the beautiful temple of God, but now the stinking and filthy kennel of Satan; sometimes the unspotted spouse of thy Saviour, but now the unshamefast paramour of Antichrist; sometimes my faithful brother, but now a stranger and apostate; yea sometimes my stout Christian solder, but now a cowardly runaway. So oft as I consider the threatening and promises of the divine Justice to all those which faithfully love him, I cannot but speak to thee, yea, rather cry out and exclaim against thee, thou seed of Satan, and not of Juda, whom the devil hath deceived, the world hath beguiled, and desire of life hath subverted, and made of a Christian an infidel.
Chapman says of the letter, “As soon as lady Jane heard of this defection her disgust and fury burst forth in a letter, generally circulated after Queen Mary’s death and printed in Foxe’s Acts and Monuments.” (Chapman. 162) De Lisle comments that, “Jane’s letter, which was clearly aimed at all those tempted to follow Harding, condemned him in language so strong her Victorian admires refused to accept that their ‘gentle Jane’ could have been responsible for it.” (De Lisle. 138) Philip Sidney, writing in 1900, says the Victorians belied that the expressions therein are” hardly what one expects in a theme of pious advice to a friend by a gentle and moral young lady.” (Sidney. 115) He goes on to say that there is no reason to doubt the authenticity of the letter, but warns that critics have “utterly failed to make sufficient allowance for the difference between the language of her time and ours.” (Ibid) He concludes: The letter in question is, in truth, a very fine composition, betraying like the rest of Lady Jane’s works, the masculine spirit of the author, every line breathing the powerful, natural, unrestrained Protestant spirit peculiar to her.” (Ibid. 116) Nicola Tallis remarks that the letter, “The words revel the extent of Jane’s belief and show how her faith had shaped her life.” (Tallis. 232) She concludes, “Jane’s words to Harding had been brutal, but were a reflection of the fact that despite her youth, she would never renounce her faith for hope of earthly life. Her beliefs, as she would soon prove, were unshakable. She believed unswervingly in the ‘shield of faith.'” (Ibid. 232-233)
Ives sees how Jane was well versed in the Apocrypha, as he said, of passages used against idolatry, “She could easily have found similar verses in the Old Testament but what would have attracted Jane to the Apocrypha was its specific warning against ‘gods of gold. silver, wood, and stone born upon men’s shoulders.” (Ives. 254) This was directly pointed at the Catholic practice of parading and vernation of sacred objects, in particular the host (the consecrated wafer that was seen as the body of Christ) used in the mass which Jane denounced as “the invention of man. the golden calf, the whore of Babylon, the Romish religion,. the abominable idol, the most wicked mass.” In her reference to scripture the one passage that Jane referred to most was the tenth chapter of Matthew, where Jesus warned the disciples of the hostile reception the message they bore would receive wherever they went. The letter shows the humanist education that Jane received in its form and many of its passages. The care Jane gave to the form and in construction of the letter showed she hoped for general circulation, which the letter received. This care would also be seen in the account Jane gave of her discussions with John Feckenham.
John Feckenham, (1515-1584) also known as John Howman of Feckingham and later John de Feckenham or John Fecknam, was an English churchman, the last abbot of Westminster. He was imprisoned under Thomas Cranmer in 1549 in the Tower of London, but released by Mary I in 1553. He became a prebendary of St Paul’s, rector of Finchley, then of Greenford Magna, chaplain and confessor to the Queen, and then Dean of St Paul’s (10 March 1554). In May 1556, the degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred on him by the University of Oxford, and when Westminster Abbey was revived, Feckenham was appointed abbot. Under his guidance traditional monastic life began again on 21 November 1556, Westminster School was reopened and the shrine of St Edward the Confessor was restored. He was known for a reputation as a preacher and a disputant of keen intellect but unvarying charity, and employed his influence with Mary “to procure pardon of the faults or mitigation of the punishment for poor Protestants” (Thomas Fuller. The History of the Worthies of England Vol. 3. London: T. Teg. 1840. 375–376) Known for his benevolence and charity he was confinement or prison for most of Elizabeth’s reign as he held to his Catholic beliefs, he died in prison and was buried in the St Peter and St Paul’s Church, Wisbech, Isle of Ely on 10 October 1584. Wyatt’s Rebellion left Mary, “Deeply hurt, angry and bewildered, she knew she must stand firm and that meant she could no longer afford the luxury of showing mercy.” (Plowden. loc 2460) The rebellion resulted in Mary signing Jane’s execution warrant, he was sent to the Tower to try and convert the young girl, an order that was not well received at first. The little time between his final visit to Jane and her execution shows her determination to have her death have meaning.
”John Feckenham had a reputation for persuasiveness. A kind-hearted man, able and sensible, he was unusually liberal for a cleric in that embattled age.” (Ibid. loc 2507) Jane said if he was coming to give Christian exhortation and engage in a stimulating cut and thrust of theological debate he was welcome, as it would be her last such encounter. When Feckenham began by expressing sympathy for her plight, Jane interrupted him with, “As for my heavy case, I thank God, I do so little lament it rather I account the same for a more manifest declaration of God’s favor toward me, than ever he showed any time before..” there was, she went on, no need for anyone to grieve or lament her fate, as it was, “being a thing so profitable for my soul’s health.” She went on to defend the doctrine of justification by faith alone, citing St Paul saying, “If I have all faith without love, it is nothing.” She went on, “True it is; for how can I love him whom I trust not, or how can I trust him whom I love not? Faith and love go both together, yet love is comprehended in faith.” She conceded that is was right for a Christian to do good works, as a token of one follows Christ, but, “when we have done all, yet we be unprofitable servants, and faith only in Christ’s blood saveth us.” Jane moved on to the sacraments, and defended the idea that there was only two, baptism and communion. Baptism as ” I am washed with water… and that washing is a token to me that I am the child of God.” The communion was one of the pivotal arguments between the Catholic Church and the Reformed church. Jane said of the communion that it was, a sure seal and testimony that I am, by the blood of Christ, which he shed for me on the cross, made partaker of the everlasting kingdom.” ””Why? What do you receive in that sacrament?’ demanded Feckenham. ‘Do you not receive the very body and blood of Christ?’ This, of course, was always the crux of any argument between the two creeds, and Jane’s response came prompt and confident. ‘No, surely I do not so believe. I think that at the supper I neither receive flesh nor blood, but bread and wine; which when it is broken, and the wine when it is drunken, put me in remembrance how for my sins the body of Christ was broken, and his blood shed on the cross.'” (Ibid. loc 2529)
Feckenham countered that Christ said “take and eat, this is my body,” and asked if she need any plainer words to see that the actual body of Christ was in the sacrament. Jane replied that Jesus also said he was the vine and the door, yet nobody said he was a vine or door, and St Paul said “he called things that are not, as though they were.” She countered that Jesus was at the table when he said these words and did not suffer until later, he in effect took bread and gave bread, as a symbol of things to come. When Feckenham shot back that she was grounding herself in words of men and not the church, Jane replied in an authentic tone of total, terrifying conviction:
“I ground my faith on God’s word and not upon the church. For if the church be good church, the faith of the church must be tried by God’s word; and not God’s word by the church, neither yet my faith. Shall I believe the church because of antiquity, or shall I give credit to that church which taketh away from me the half part of the Lord’s supper, and will not any man receive it in both kinds? Which things, if they deny to us, then deny they to us part of our salvation.. And I say, that it is an evil church, and not the spouse of Christ, but the spouse of the devil, that altereth the Lord’s supper, and both taketh from it, and addeth to it. To that church, I say, God will add plagues; and from that church will he take their part out of the book of life. Do they learn St. Paul, when he ministered to the Corinthians in both kinds? Shall I believe this church? God Forbid!”
Jane stuck to the Protestant view that in faith alone one is saved and Feckenham argued that people had a role to play in salvation, that one need not just faith by good works as well. Jane asserted the supremacy of the individual conscious, and said that Mary herself would not wish that she violate her conscious. Jane argued even the pagans, the classical writers of antiquity, accepted good conscious as the ultimate authority. Feckenham had gotten Mary to postpone Jane’s execution till the 12th of February in attempt to save the young girl’s soul, and yet he failed. In failure he was impressed by her fortitude, and admired her, an emotion he did not expect to have felt. Jane too felt this, not only had the debate been stimulating, but she liked Feckenham as well. In parting Feckenham acknowledged defeat and said, “I am sorry for you., for I am sure we two shall never meet again.”
Jane replied in a forceful and fluent style, “True it is that we shall never meet, except God turn your heart; for I am assured, unless you repent and turn to God, you are in evil case,” she then gently added, “And I pray God, in the bowels of His mercy, to send you His Holy Spirit – for He hath given you His great gift of utterance, if it pleased Him also to open your eyes of your heart.”
Chapman argues in a sense Feckenham may have won, as in her last speech the abhorrence she had of the Catholics seemed to have weaken, and she may have seen many qualities in Feckenham she admired. She may have been bewildered why such a person should be excluded from Paradise, and this gentle, wise and virtuous man, compared to the corrupt and ruthless Protestants she had known, had become a friend. (Chapman. 186-187) In the end, it was Feckenham who accompanied the Lady Jane to her execution. She was now determined, “Jane was triumphant: she had stood her ground and fought for her beliefs. Her faith had withstood the scrutiny and questioning, and now the hour of death drew nearer, she was determined that she would die for her faith, another female martyr to the Protestant cause.” (Tallis. 262) The Spanish advisors and many English Catholics were pushing for her execution, Stephen Gardiner in a sermon linked Protestantism with treason, the curtain was about to come up in the final act.
The stage was set, it would mirror the battles of the rest of the century. On one hand, the Spanish believed themselves to be chosen by God to convert the entire world to the True Church, and Jane, like a growing amount of English Protestants saw themselves in the same vain. Spain in 1554 was at the height of its glory, its influence in the Church and Europe was supreme. The marriage between Philip and Mary would allow them to surround France, and their culture, replete with its Limieza de sangre (purity of blood) would dominate European culture (giving rise to modern racism) they also dominated the Catholic Church and were champions of the forceful universal conversion of all in any nation. It was a cross road that would collide in 1588 with the defeat of the Spanish Armada, and Spain would never recover. It would make France the premier Catholic power in Europe and they and England would be in conflict for almost three centuries, until the Germans arose in the mid eighteen hundreds. As for Jane, Ives said, “Jane faced imprisonment in the Tower positively. The loss of liberty was irksome, but the more she could, by God’s grace, triumph over hardship, the more confident she could be of her enteral destiny.”(Ives. 260) Jane the young woman who was the champion of many evangelicals, the former Queen of England, now was soon to be Jane the Martyr.
In the aftermath of the Wyatt Rebellion, Mary was forced to sign the execution warrant for both Jane and Guilford. Ives says of this action, “Given this, the decision to execute Jane and Guilford looks like panic.” (Ives. 267) Ives argues that the rebels were trying to resurrecting Jane’s claim to the throne may have been an effort to tie her to Northumberland or make it impossible for Mary to continue to protect Jane. Renard and several on Mary’s counsel feared her soft side might still pardon Jane, pressed hard for the execution, pointing out hat Philip would not come to England until the deed was done. Renard did have the satisfaction of reporting to Phillip that “there is no other occupation than the cutting off the heads and inflicting exemplary punishment.” (Ibid) Phillip, who later would propose to Elizabeth as Mary laid dying, was especially driven to have Jane executed. John Knox and John Ponet, both blamed mary’s counsel, and Knox would say of the act, blaming Gardiner and papist as corrupting Mary “for who could have thought that such cruelty could have entered into the heart of a woman and heer that is called virgin, that she would thirst for the blood of innocents and of such as by just laws and faithful witnesses can never be proved to have offended by themselves.” (Ibid. 268) Ives wonders why it was so important to execute Jane and leave her sisters still in the succession and Mary had her mother and sisters at court. Ives asks,” Would her death remove an uncomfortable reminder of earlier treachery? Was it revenge on Suffolk for endangering the settlement of the year before? Or were the executions unfinished business and Guilford Dudley the real target?” (Ibid) The day before Jane’s death, Gardiner preached a sermon attacking the whole reformist agenda and ended the sermon with a plea for Mary to not grant mercy to individuals but show mercy to the commonwealth who the individuals corrupted. “Mary was ultimately responsible for what was both a crime and a folly, but the guilt may lie elsewhere.” (Ibid) Chapman says , “It was said afterwards that ‘these two simple young souls’ were separately executed in order to ‘avoid commotions,’ and that Queen Mary’s refusal to reprieve them so roused the pity and wrath of the people as permanently to destroy her popularity. (Chapman. 191)
Jane wrote letters to her father and sister, and according to Florio, her mother, but all traces of that letter have disappeared. In her letter to her father, she reassures him that God brought them here and they were only God’s instruments. She began:
Father, although it hath pleased God to hasten my death by you, by whom my life should rather have been lengthened, yet I can so patiently take it, that I yield God more hearty thanks for shortening my woful days, than if all the world had been given into my possession, with life lengthened at my own will. And albeit I am very well assured of your impatient dolours, redoubled many ways, both in bewailing your own woe, and especially, as I am informed, my woful estate: yet dear father, if I may, without offence, rejoice in my own mishaps, herein I may account myself blessed, that washing my hands with the innocence of my fact, my guiltless blood may cry before the Lord, Mercy to the innocent!
Jane goes on to remind him that she had been pressed to accept the crown, and concludes with:
And thus, good father, I have opened unto you the state wherein I presently stand, my death at hand, although to you perhaps it may seem woful, yet to me there is nothing that can be more welcome than from this vale of misery to aspire to that heavenly throne of all joy and pleasure, with Christ my Saviour: in whose steadfast faith, (if it may be lawful for the daughter so to write to the father) the Lord that hath hitherto strengthened you, so continue to keep you that at the last we may meet in heaven with the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
She signs the letter “I am,Your obedient daughter till death, Jane Dudley.” De Lisle says that no letters to her mother Frances or her younger sister Mary survived, and Frances may have destroyed them in an effort to get along with the new order in England. Fro Frances, to survive, she had to conform, or at least appear to conform, with Mary’s return to the Church of Rome. Many others, like her friend William Cecil, were doing. While Jane may have been aware of this, her letter to her sister Katherine, who was fourteen at the time, suggests otherwise. The letter was written in her copy of the Greek New Testament, which is the only thing that would have not been confiscated by the crown. She opens the letter urging her sister to hold fast to the true religion and not be tempted by the world.:
I have sent you, my dear sister Katherine, a book, which although it be not outwardly trimmed with gold, or the curious embroidery of the artfulest needles, yet inwardly it is more worth than all the precious mines which the vast world can boast of: it is the book, my only best, and best loved sister, of the law of the Lord: it is the Testament and last will, which he bequeathed unto us wretches and wretched sinners, which shall lead you to the path of eternal joy: and if you with a good mind to read it, and with an earnest desire follow it, no doubt it shall bring you to an immortal and everlasting life: it will teach you to live, and learn you to die: it shall win you more, and endow you with greater felicity, than you should have gained possession of our woeful father’s lands: for as if God had prospered him, you should have inherited his honours and manors, so if you apply diligently this book, seeking to direct your life according to the rule of the same, you shall be an inheritor of such riches, as neither the covetous shall withdraw from you, neither the thief shall steal, neither yet the moths corrupt: desire with David, my best sister, to understand the law of the Lord your God, live still to die, that you by death may purchase eternal life, and trust not that the tenderness of your age shall lengthen your life: for unto God, when he calleth, all hours, times and seasons are alike, and blessed are they whose lamps are furnished when he cometh, for as soon will the Lord be glorified in the young as in the old.
Ives points out that Jane was not just talking to her sister, but herself as well. she believed it was her duty to guide the youngrgenration and she knew the comforts and certainties that Katherine would face had been the ones she faced and overcame. she goes on:
My good sister, once more again let me entreat thee to learn to die; deny the world, defy the devil, and despise the flesh, and delight yourself only in the Lord: be penitent for your sins, and yet despair not; and desire with St. Paul to be dissolved and to be with Christ, with whom, even in death there is life.
Be like the good servant, and even at midnight be waking, lest when death cometh and stealeth upon you, like a thief in the night, you be with the servants of darkness found sleeping; and lest for lack of oil you be found like the five foolish virgins, or like him that he had not on the wedding garment, and then you be cast into darkness, or banished from the marriage: rejoice in Christ, as I trust you do, and seeing you have the name of a Christian, as near as you can follow the steps, and be a true imitator of your master Christ Jesus, and take up your cross, lay your sins on his back, and always embrace him.
In her conclusion Jane makes it very clear that there is not room for compromise, one must either hold fast to God or suffer the pains of Hell.
Now as touching my death, rejoice as I do, my dearest sister, that I shall be delivered of this corruption, and put on incorruption: for I am assured that I shall, for losing of a mortal life, win one that is immortal, joyful, and everlasting: the which I pray God grant you in his most blessed hour, and send you his all-saving grace to love in his fear, and to die in the true Christian faith: from which in God’s name I exhort you that you never swerve, neither through hope of life, not fear of death: for if you will deny his truth, to give length to a weary and corrupt breath, God himself will deny you, and by vengeance make short what you by your soul’s loss would prolong: but if you will cleave to him, he will stretch forth your days to an uncircumscribed comfort, and to his own glory: to the which glory, God bring me now, and you hereafter, when is shall please him to call you. Farewell once again, my beloved sister, and put your only trust in God, who only must help you. Amen.
Your loving Sister.
Jane Dudley
Jane also composed her own epitaph, and had told Feckenham her greatest joy was to study Greek, Latin and hebrew so to engage with the scriptures’ and the ancients in their own language. These were, and may have been preserved by Feckenham since they came from Catholic sources:
Latin: If Justice is done with my body, my soul will find mercy in God.
(Si iustitia est in corpore meo, in deo misericordiam inveniet anima mea)
Greek: Death will give pain to my body for its sins, but the soul will be justified before God.
(Ο θάνατος θα δώσει πόνο στο σώμα μου για τις αμαρτίες του, αλλά η ψυχή θα δικαιωθεί ενώπιον του Θεού)
English: If my faults deserve punishment, my youth at least, and my imprudence were worthy of excuse; God and posterity will show me favor.
Jane had two sisters, Katherine (1540-1568) and Mary (1545-1578), who was thirteen and nine at the time of Jane’s execution. In the aftermath of both Jane’s and their father’s execution the girls clung to their mother, who seeing the corruption of many of the Protestants, played the catholic at Mary’s court. Jane’s letters and conversation with Feckenham, of which Frances may have been the source, were already published across Europe. “The subsequent pamphlet had the appearance of a martyrology, and a second edition, published later in the year, also included a detailed account of her execution, along with a prayer inspired by her death, written by John Knox.” (De Lisle. 159) Jane’s writings and speech on the scaffold is considered the most powerful attack of the reign of Queen Mary I. Frances was able to rehabilitate her remaining family who soon were fixtures at Mary’s court. Katherine, who in many ways was Jane’s opposite and the most tragic of the Grey sisters, looked only to become a nobleman’s wife and live the typical life of a noble woman. She was a young fun loving girl who had no interest in being queen and was hoping that Mary would soon have children with Philip and she could put all of this behind her. Not long after Elizabeth came to power Katherine fell in love and married Edward Seymour, son the Protector, and would spend the rest of her life under house arrest, even had two children with Edward, and would basically starve herself to death in 1568. She is buried in Salisbury Cathedral along her husband Edward, her descendant, John Seymour, is presently the nineteenth Duke of Somerset. Mary Grey, who was described as being very short and may have been a dwarf, and also may have suffered from scoliosis, also ran into troubles in Elizabeth’s reign. Like Katherine she secretly married for love, married the Queen’s sergeant porter, Thomas Keyes, son of Richard Keyes, esquire, of East Greenwich, who was six-foot eight, the biggest man at court. Mary would spend most of the rest of her life in prison, while Keys was placed in a small cell in the Fleet Prison, where he died in 1571. By 1577 she had been restored and was one of the Queen’s maids of honor. She died of the plague in 1578. (for a complete biography of the last two Grey sisters see: De Lisle. 155-291)
On the morning of February 12, 1554 the execution took place, Guilford on Tower Hill and Jane in a private execution inside the Tower. The story is that Guilford asked to see Jane one more time and she refused, saying it would upsetting and disturbed the “holy tranquility” they had and anyway, they would soon meet in a better place. Plowden says of the story, “but the story has the same odour of sanctimonious sentimentality which hangs over most of the anecdotes which had gathered around Jane, and there seems to be no real evidence that she ever showed the slightest interest in Guildford at anytime during their imprisonment, or he in her.” (Plowden. loc 2594) Of the words that may have passed between them at this point, De Lisle says, “They were words of affection but not of passion.” (De Lisle. 149) While many alter tales made the relationship of Jane and Guilford a romance, (see 1986 movie Lady Jane) their marriage was one of political convince and their relationship most likely was one of convince as well.
Guilford was brought to Tower Hill, the place of public execution of high status prisoners from the late 14th to the mid 18th century, (an area the Tower authorities controlled to keep clear of any development which would reduce the defensibility of the Tower) at ten in the morning. While he had cried like a child at learning of his fate, he died like a gentleman, quietly and without a fuss. he had no priest attend him, suggesting that he refused such and stuck with the reformed religion. His words have not survived, but he was executed with one blow from the ax. Jane, despite the protest of her ladies, stationed herself at her window and watched him leave the Tower and, “return presently the cart containing the decapitated carcass of the tall, strong boy who wanted her to make him a king, lying on the bloodstained straw, the head wrapped in a cloth, rattled past below her on its way to the Tower chapel.” (Plowden. loc 2594) Those near Jane heard her mutter his name and something about the bitterness of death.
Then came Jane’s turn, she walked out, perfectly composed and determined to become a martyr, dressed in the same black dress she wore to her trial. She carried her open prayer book and her ladies, Mistress Allan and Elizabeth Tilney, walked behind in tears, she calmly walked next on the arm of Tower Lieutenant, Sir John Bridges. She was also accompanied by John Feckenham, both had formed an unexpected bond, but neither believed they would meet again, since neither would change their religion. They walked to the scaffold, recently built on the Tower Green next to the White Tower, and Jane with determination, climbed up the steps of the scaffold. she then spoke to the crowd, there are two versions of what she said, both similar which suggest that two people recorded the speech. They are:
The version in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs:
‘Good people, I am come hether to die, and by a lawe I am condemned to the same. The facte, in dede, against the quenes highnesse was unlawfull, and the consenting thereunto by me: but touching the procurement and desire therof by me or on my halfe, I doo wash my hands thereof in innocencie, before God, and the face of you, good Christian people, this day.
I pray you all, good Christian people, to beare me witnesses that I dye a true Christian women , and that I looke to be saved by none other meane, but only by the mercy of God in the merites of the blood of his only sonne Jesus Christ: and I confesse, when I dyd know the word of God I neglected the same, loved my selfe and the world, and therefore this plague or punishment is happily and wothely happened unto me for my sins; and yet I thank God of his goddnesse that he hath thus geven me a tyme and respet to repent. And now, good people, while I am alive, I pray you to assyst me with your prayers.
The 1554 An Epistle of the Ladye Jane:
My lords, and you good christian people, which come to see me die, I am under a law, and by that law, as a never erring judge, I am condemned to die, not for any thing I have offended the Queen’s Majesty, for I will wash my hands guiltless thereof, and deliver to my God a soul as pure from such trespass, as innocence from injustice; but only for that I consented to the thing which I was enforced unto, constraint making the law believe I did that which I never understood. Notwithstanding, I have offended Almighty God in that I have followed over-much the lust of mine own flesh, and the pleasures of this wretched world, neither have I lived according to the knowledge that God hath given me, for which cause God hath appointed unto me this kind of death, and that most worthily, according to my deserts; how be it, I thank him heartily that he hath given me time to repent my sins here in this world, and to reconcile myself to my redeemer, whom my former vanities have in a great measure displeased. Wherefore, my lords, and all you good Christian people, I must earnestly desire you all to pray with and for me whilst I am yet alive, that God of his infinite goodness and mercy will forgive me my sins, how numberless and grievous soever against him: and I beseech you all to bear me witness that I here die a true christian woman, professing and avouching from my soul that I trust to be saved by the blood, passion, and merits of Jesus Christ my Saviour only, and by none other means; casting far behind me all the works and merits of mine own actions, as things so far short of the true duty I owe, that I quake to think how much they may stand up against me. And now, I pray you all pray for me, and with me.
Plowden goes on that the speech shows that, “Even in that last dreadful moment she could find the strength to remain true to her stern Protestant faith and steadfastly reject the age-old comfort of prayers for the dead.” (Ibid. loc 2605-2615) She asked Feckenham, “Shall I say this psalm?” then repeated Psalm 51, called the Miserere, in English as Feckenham said it in Latin. The Psalm is based on the story in 2 Samuel 11-12, and David’s confession is regarded as a model for repentance in both Judaism and Christianity. When done , she rose up and handed her gloves and handkerchief to Mrs. Tylney and her prayer book to John Brydges, she had inscribed to his brother Thomas Brydges, “Forasmutche as you haue desired so simple a woman to write in so worthye a booke goode Master Leaftenaunte therefore I shall as a frende desyre you as a Christian require you call vppon god to encline youre harte to his lawes to quicken you in his waye and not to take the worde of trewethe vtterlye of youre mouthe lyue styll to dye that by death you may purchase eteranl life and remembre howe the ende of Mathusael whoe as we reade in the scriptures was the longeste liver that was of mane died at the laste for as the Scriptures sayethe there is a tyme to be borne and a tyme to dye and the daye of death is better thatn the daye of oure byrtheyours as the lorde knoethe as a frende Jane Duddeley.” (The Lady Jane Grey’s Prayer Book. British Library Harley Manuscript 2342. Fully Illustrated and Transcribed. Introduction by J. Stephan Edwards. 2016. Folio 74-folio 77) She refused the executioner’s help in removing her outer garments. Nurse Ellen and Elizabeth Tylney helped her remove the outer garments, and gave her a “fair handkercher to knit about her eyes.” The executioner asked for forgiveness and Jane gave “most willingly.” He directed her to stand on the straw, she the asked, looking at the block, “I pray you dispatch me quickly.” The executioner said he would and she then asked, “Will you take it (my head) before I lay me down?” To which he said no. She tied the handkerchief over her eyes and then reached for the block, and she could not find it. It was at this time the controlled martyr became the sixteen year old girl, as she cried out, “What should I do? Where is it?” The crowd saw the young girl then and someone, either Brydges or Feckenham, guided her to the block. The martyr then came back, she laid her head on the block, proclaimed, “Lord into thy hands I commend my spirit.” and her had came off in one blow. Chapman describes the aftermath:
Then came the crash. A round, dark object rolled beyond the block. Blood poured from it, over the scaffold – and from the obscene, meaningless fragment lying in the straw. the executioner stooped, fumbled , stood up. His voice rang out across the Green. “So perish all the Queen’s enemies! Behold the head of a traitor!”
(Chapman. 195)
De Lisle said of Jane, “Jane was, in any case, set on martyrdom.” (Leanda De Lisle. Tudor: Passion, Manipulation, Murder. The Story of England’s Most Notorious Royal Family. New York: Public Affairs. 2013. 285) The crowd, who remained silent, watched as a flood of blood drenched the scaffold as the ax separated her head from her body. French ambassador Antoine de Noailles commented that the scaffold was covered in “an abundance of blood.” (Tallis. 277) Monsignor Giovanni Francesco Commendone, who was sent by the Pope, said of Jane, “with great sorrow of the people, testifying their compassion for the iniquity of her lot, when it became known to everybody that the girl, the girl born to a misery beyond tears, had faced death with far greater gallantry than it might be expected from her sex and the natural weakness of her age.” (Giovanni Francesco Commendone. The Accession, Coronation, and Marriage of Mary Tudor. translated and edited by: C. V. Malfatti. Barcelona. 1956. 72) Jane’s body would lie unattended on the scaffold for several hours, perhaps as the authorities debated where to bury her, as she was considered a heretic. Her body was by nightfall buried in the St. Peter ad Vincula, overlooking Tower Green, along with the bodies of Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard. The Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula (“St Peter in chains”) is a Chapel Royal and the former parish church of the Tower of London. it was founded by Edward I, and is in honor of St. Peter’s imprisonment by Herod Agrippa. It is the sight where many of the nobles executed in the Tower or on Tower Hill are buried. The precise location of Jane’s grave is unclear, but along with the two queens she may lie with her husband Guilford and her father in law, Northumberland.
No memorial was erected to her at the time and as England moved from Mary to Elizabeth it became more and more dangerous to discuss her for political reasons. She was almost forgotten by many at the time, and only resurrected by Foxe and other evangelicals in later periods. In 1876. under orders from Queen Victoria, the chapel underwent renovations, and many bodies were discovered, but the collapsing floor ended the project before Jane’s body was found. her image over the years has inspired both sympathy and admiration, as at first she, like Edward VI, was made into the pious and tragic heroine of the Reformation. Jane’s admires were determined to make her remembered, and as Hester Chapman said, The remarkable character and dramatic martyrdom of Lady Jane Grey made her as famous in her own generation as she is today.” (Hester Chapman. Two Tudor Portraits: Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey and Lady Katherine Grey. London: Little Brown & Company. 1960. 154) “Those who knew Jane were determined to remember her as a pious girl who had been slain for her faith. It was an idea of which Jane herself would have approved and which she had been only too keen to promote as her end drew near.” (Plowden. loc 4466) To those she knew and looked up to, her memory inspired deep admiration, as they were impressed by her devotion. Philip Sidney said of her in 1900, “Lady Jane was possessed of the same fir, dauntless, dominate, manly, and imperious will as her cousin Elizabeth.” (Sidney. 116) John Foxe, who immortalized Jane in his Book of Martyrs, opened his chapter on her with, “The next victim was the amiable Lady Jane Gray, who, by her acceptance of the crown at the earnest solicitations of her friends, incurred the impeccable resentment of the bloody Mary.” (John Foxe. edited by William Byron Forbush. Foxe’s Book of Martyrs: A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphal Deaths of the Early Christian and Protestant Martyrs. Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc. 2004. 265) Over the centuries tragedy was the dominant theme of Jane’s story as her image of the innocent, pious martyr grew. In 1986 the film, Lady Jane, written by David Edgar and directed by Trevor Nunn, has imprinted the image of Jane and Guilford as innocent and idealistic lovers who were victims of others. By the twentieth century Jane had been resurrected, canonized, and dehumanized to the point the real person of Jane was incomprehensible.
For Jane, like Mary, the myth had hid the reality of her life. Mary was not the Bloody Mary of mythology, but as determined to uphold her beliefs as Jane was. In the end Jane found victory in martyrdom, but Mary died possibly believing she had failed, failed her mother, her nation and God. Jane’s execution, along with other events sapped Mary’s popularity as Mary underestimated the growing nationalism in England and her action turned the adherence to the reformed church as a patriotic and nationalistic thing in England. The champions of the faith, which includes Jane, also were creating something that they had no idea they were doing. In exile, they had to go against the Great Chain and disobey the ruling power (Mary) as commanded in Romans 13. Jane inspired the Marian exiles, suc has John Knox, John Ponet, and Christopher Goodman, who in trying to meld the idea of the commonwealth and the evangelical church and going against the Catholic Church, legitimizing a concept they most likely would have totally rejected, revolution. (( for a complete argument of this idea see: Douglas A. Breeden. A craving To Reform: Legitimizing Revolution in Mid-tudor England. master thesis. Boca Raton, Florida: Florida Atlantic University. 2006)
In summary, Alison Plowden sums up the character of Jane Grey, who was a legitimate Queen of England and to ignore her is to ignore Edward V and Edward VIII, which we in the present should recognize in the following:
The later twentieth and early twenty-first century should have no difficulty, having become rather better acquainted with the effects of ideological commitment upon personality, for it is only in terms of total commitment to an ideology that Jane can be understood. Only thus it is possible to recognize the loving, lively, gifted child, constasistenly starved of natural affection, sublimating all her overflowing urges and energies in devotion to an ideal. Jane, in fact, had all the makings of a true fantic. In another age she would have been the perfect prototype of the partisan, the resistance or freedom fighter, perfectly prepared to sacrifice her own or anyone else’s life in the furtherance of some cause, be it religious or political.
(Plowden. loc 2660)
The world of Mid Tudor England was a world undergoing a great change, as the Middle Ages was moving on to the modern period. New ideas were being born, revolution was oen, in the past thinkers such as William of Occam struggled with how one was to deal with a ruler one thought was evil or bad. This struggle was intensified by Mary’s accession and her attempt return England to Rome. Teh Portestans, inspired by both Edward and Jane became the Marian Exiles and further struggled with the idea of going against a ruling authority. The Great Chain of Being was slowly being broken, and Jane and Edward were part of the slow change. In their beliefs and commitment to the ideas of the reformed religion, they were creating the modern world. They were the vanguard of a new questioning of the old rules, a questioning that can be seen in the statement Elizabeth I made to James VI in reference to the Presbyterian Church of John Knox. Knox had set up a church were the hierarchy was elected by the people, and Elizabeth said of this, “If the people see the Church can be run without bishops, they soon will see the state can be run without princes.” which was slowly dominating Scotland. Elizabeth was seeing the future, one that Edward and Jane were part of, and an inspiration to many who pushed the new ideas along. In that new world, revolution would be a big part of that world. Far from innocent victims, they were the forerunners of the new age.
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