The Nine-Day Queen Who Lost Her Crown, And Then Her Head

Jane was a descendant of Henry VII (through his daughter Mary Tudor, Jane’s maternal grandmother), so she was not only within the line of succession for the Tudors, but she was also quite useful as a political piece for several people in 1553. She was no mere noblewoman pulled out of thin air!

Some sources claim Jane was 15 when she became queen, a figure based on the most commonly quoted birth date of October 1537. The exact date of her birth is not certain, although there are indications that she could have been born in 1536 or early 1537.

She was no academic wallflower. Jane actually had an excellent humanistic education, studying Latin and Greek and even dabbling in theology and Protestant scholarship, which has led to her character occasionally being portrayed as a Protestant heroine in some retellings of her story.

As the scholar Roger Ascham later recalled, he came across Jane reading Plato when her family was away at a hunt. She reportedly told him that her parents criticized and physically corrected her harshly when she didn’t do as they commanded. But subsequent writers probably took that one comment and stretched it beyond recognition, inventing, if not the reality of her parents’ abuse, then certainly the perception of it.

Some of Jane’s formative years were spent at the court of Catherine Parr, Henry VIII’s widow, making her familiar with elite Protestant political and intellectual networks, and after Catherine’s death, Catherine’s husband Thomas Seymour still considered himself responsible for Jane’s future. He hoped she would marry the young King Edward VI. In short, it is safe to say that by 1553 Jane Grey was hardly a rookie on the political stage.

However, Jane did not marry Edward VI as so many people had hoped. She married Guildford Dudley, the son of John Dudley (Duke of Northumberland), in May of 1553, who was already a powerful political player under Edward VI’s reign. Edward’s health was already failing fast at this point, so you could say the timing was… explosive.

For clarity, Edward VI isn’t the same as Guildford Dudley. Edward was the boy king, the only surviving son of Henry VIII, and he was a fervent Protestant (unlike his older half sister, the Catholic Mary). As he became ill, Edward created his famous “Devise for the Succession,” essentially changing the line of succession. In the final draft, Edward placed Jane and her male offspring above Mary and Elizabeth.

If religion was all that mattered, surely Protestant Elizabeth would come before Catholic Mary? She, however, was also excluded. Both girls were, by English law, bastards. Their mothers’ marriages to Henry had been annulled (although Mary and Elizabeth were subsequently declared legitimate again by Act of Parliament, and included in the line of succession.). But Jane was another Protestant option, from a union no one disputed.

Parliament had initially approved Henry’s order for the succession, so it could be said that there was some legal validity to Edward’s attempt to simply supersede it. But the legal establishment of the period was clearly uncomfortable with Edward’s new scheme; in fact, the constitutionality of the devise is still contested by historians to this day.

Edward VI died on July 6, 1553, and his death was kept secret for a short time while the council worked on establishing the line of succession. Mary appears to have recognized that she was in peril and refused to submit to the government, escaping to East Anglia, where she began gathering her own forces. Thus, even before news of Edward’s passing became public, Jane’s chance at the throne had begun to falter.

It was reported that Jane was told Edward had died, and that she was his choice as heir. According to later accounts, Jane reacted with shock and disbelief at the news, reportedly overwhelmed by what was being asked of her. She nevertheless agreed to take the crown.

Jane entered the Tower of London (where kings and queens historically stayed before being crowned), began issuing documents in her name, and participated in governing and the exercise of royal power. Thus she didn’t make the choices leading up to her position, but she made some choices within it.

Guildford Dudley thought he was going to be crowned as a king with Jane, and his family campaigned for it. But Jane wouldn’t just give him the crown, offering instead to make him Duke of Clarence. They had helped put her there, but they couldn’t control her!

In East Anglia, Mary made her headquarters at Framlingham, where nobles, gentry, commoners and troops began to flock to her cause. A good deal of this support came down to principle. The simple fact is that Henry’s firstborn daughter was widely regarded as his true successor.

Northumberland had gone off with soldiers to confront Mary’s rising popularity, leaving the government at home in serious disarray. The council began to shift allegiance as Mary grew more powerful. On July 19, the council, including Jane’s own father, declared Mary the rightful queen. Within a few days, many who’d pledged themselves to Jane now pretended they never had.

And so, Jane was publicly proclaimed queen on July 10, and Mary got her turn on July 19, so yes, Jane was the queen for only nine days.

Northumberland was cast as the ultimate scapegoat and he most certainly exerted some influence on the plot to make Jane succeed, but Edward devised the succession plan and there were also many councilors, nobles, judges, and even members of Jane’s family who participated. There was a great deal of documentation produced by those who would now be quick to condemn others for treason following Mary’s victory.

Within hours, Jane had gone from queen to Tower prisoner. In November 1553 she and Guildford were tried and convicted of treason and sentenced to death. But Mary didn’t actually kill her for quite some time. Instead, Jane remained in fairly comfortable confinement, at least by Tower standards. It turned out that a death sentence and an actual execution were two very different things.

In early 1554, Wyatt’s Rebellion erupted in opposition to Mary’s impending marriage to a Spanish prince. Though Jane was imprisoned throughout the rebellion and was not involved in the revolt, her father Henry Grey got involved anyway. Now that there were rebels marching against Mary, keeping Jane alive seemed dangerous since the rebels might see her as a potential Protestant rival for the throne.

On February 12, 1554, Guildford Dudley was beheaded. That same morning, Jane was taken from the Tower and beheaded privately, on Tower Green. One near-contemporary account relates how Jane, blindfolded, tried to reach the block and asked someone to help her. While she supposedly maintained her Protestant faith despite the persuasion of the Catholic theologian John Feckenham, politics and religion were both likely factors in her execution. The martyr image came from Protestant writers after the event, and from the French painter Paul Delaroche’s 1833 painting, which was created nearly 300 years after she died.

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