The Life of Lady Jane Grey

Read the story of Lady Jane Grey who was the titular queen of England for nine days in Learn more about Her execution by Mary Tudor.
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Beautiful and intelligent, she reluctantly allowed herself at age 15 to be put on the throne by unscrupulous politicians; her subsequent execution by Mary Tudor aroused universal sympathy. Provided with excellent tutors, she spoke and wrote Greek and Latin at an early age; she was also proficient in French, Hebrew, and Italian. But Seymour was beheaded for treason in , and Jane returned to her studies at Bradgate.

Her Protestantism, which was extreme, made her the natural candidate for the throne of those who supported the Reformation , such as Northumberland.

With the support of Northumberland, who had persuaded the dying Edward to set aside his half-sisters Mary and Elizabeth in favour of any male heirs who might be born to the duchess of Suffolk and, failing them, to Lady Jane, she and her male heirs were designated successors to the throne. Edward died on July 6, On July 10, Lady Jane—who fainted when the idea was first broached to her—was proclaimed queen.

Lady Jane and her husband, however, were arraigned for high treason on November 14, She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to death. She and her husband were beheaded on February 12, ; her father was executed 11 days later. We welcome suggested improvements to any of our articles.


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You can make it easier for us to review and, hopefully, publish your contribution by keeping a few points in mind. Your contribution may be further edited by our staff, and its publication is subject to our final approval. However, her succession lasted for just nine days, as she was arrested and charged for high treason by Mary, who proclaimed herself as the queen, supported by the populace and Privy Council.

Despite her short journey of nine days as the queen, she is still considered one of the most prominent empresses England had. She was later remembered as a martyr during the reign of her Protestant cousin, Queen Elizabeth I. Even though she died young, she had a fetish for learning and became proficient in various languages under her tutors. By using this site, you agree to allow cookies to be placed. Identify Actresses By Eyes. Mary I of England.

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Due to her strict upbringing and abusive behavior of her mother, she never developed a close relationship with her parents. Famous English Women In History. In June , the ailing Edward, suffering from measles and tuberculosis, named Jane as his successor, sidelining his half-sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, as illegitimate under influence from Dudley. Five days after Wyatt's arrest, the execution of Jane and Guilford took place.

On the morning of February 12, , the authorities took Lord Guilford Dudley from his rooms at the Tower of London to the public execution place at Tower Hill and there had him beheaded.

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A horse and cart brought his remains back to the Tower of London, past the rooms where Jane remained as a prisoner. Jane was then taken out to Tower Green, inside the Tower of London, and in private beheaded. With few exceptions, such executions applied to royalty alone; Jane's execution occurred on the orders of Queen Mary, as a gesture of respect for her cousin. According to the account of her execution given in the anonymous Chronicle of Queen Jane and of Two Years of Queen Mary, which formed the basis for Raphael Holinshed's depiction, [7] Guilford faced the block first, and from her lodgings at Partidge's house, Jane viewed his body being removed from the Tower Green.

Upon ascending the scaffold, she gave a speech to the assembled crowd: Good people, I am come hither to die, and by a law I am condemned to the same.

The fact, indeed, against the Queen's highness was unlawful, and the consenting thereunto by me: But touching the procurement and desire thereof by me or on my behalf, I do wash my hands thereof in innocency, before God, and the face of you, good Christian people, this day. She then recited the psalm Miserere mei Deus "Have mercy upon me, O God" in English, [8] and handed her gloves and handkerchief to her maid.

John Feckenham, a Roman Catholic chaplain sent by Mary, who had failed to convert Jane, stayed with her during the execution. The executioner asked her forgiveness, and she gave it.

Lady Jane Grey (1537 - 1554)

Jane had resolved to go to her death with dignity, but once blindfolded, failing to find the block with her hands, began to panic and cried, "What shall I do? With her head on the block, Jane spoke the last words of Christ as recounted by Luke: Pollard called her, [9] was merely 16 or possibly seventeen years old at the time of her execution. Apparently, Frances Brandon made no attempt, pleading or otherwise, to save her daughter's life; Jane's father already awaited execution for his part in the Wyatt rebellion.

Queen Mary lived for only four years after she ordered the death of her cousin. She died in Henry, Duke of Suffolk, was executed a week after Jane, on February 19, Merely three weeks after her husband's death and not even a month since her daughter's, Frances Brandon shocked the English court by marrying her chamberlain, Adrian Stokes.

Some historians believe she deliberately chose to do this to distance herself from her previous status. She was fully pardoned by Mary and allowed to live at Court with her two surviving daughters. She is not known to have mentioned Jane ever again and was as indifferent to her child in death as she had been in life.

Lady Jane Grey - New World Encyclopedia

Lady Jane Grey has left an abiding impression in English literature and romance. The dearth of material from which to construct a source-based biography of her has not prevented authors of all ages filling the gaps with the fruits of their imagination. In Elizabethan ballads , Jane's story is a tale of innocence betrayed. Roger Ascham praised her as noble and scholarly. The greatest Elizabethan tribute to her came in Thomas Chaloner's Elegy, published in Here 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 that she was pregnant at the time of her execution, an assertion that appears nowhere else, presumably to make Mary, the great villain of the piece, appear all the more heartless. From martyrology and poetry, Jane finally made it on to the stage in the early Jacobean period in Lady Jane by John Webster and Thomas Dekker, where she takes on the role of a tragic lover.

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This theme was taken up later in the century by John Banks, a Restoration playwright in his Innocent Usurper: Or, the Death of Lady Jane Grey. Here Jane is only persuaded to accept the crown after her husband, Lord Guilford Dudley, threatens to commit suicide if she does not. First performed after the Glorious Revolution , there is also a strong anti- Roman Catholic dimension to Bank's play, which presumably appealed to the audiences of the day.


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More plays and poems followed in the eighteenth century, when a small Janeite industry began to take shape. In the early 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. Her popularity 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.

Jane's growing reputation was not just a popular phenomenon. Gilbert Burnet, Whig historian and self-publicist, described Jane, with considerable exaggeration, as "the wonder of the age" in his History of the Reformation, a phrase subsequently taken up by Oliver Goldsmith his History of England, published in Even the sober David Hume was seduced by the tragedy of Jane and Dudley. It was not until the early nineteenth century that John Lingard, a Catholic historian, ventured a word or two of counter-adulation, saying that she "liked dresses overmuch," and reminding her promoters that she was only sixteen.

She was recast time and again to suit the inclinations of her audience. After the French Revolution , the new evangelist movement alighted on her as a symbol, marked not for her romance but for her piety. In , The Lady's Monitor declared that she inherited "every great, every good, every admirable quality, whether of mind, disposition, or person. Once again Mary is the cold-blooded fanatic, while Jane and Dudley are the tragic lovers.

More recently the story of the nine-day-queen featured in the film, Lady Jane, starring Helena Bonham Carter and directed by Trevor Nunn, a romance set against the political intrigues of the day. New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards.