Crown of Blood

by Nicola Tallis

  Many of the places that Jane knew have sadly disappeared, or have been altered as architectural fashions have changed through the passages of time. However, there are two sites with which Jane had particularly strong associations and at which she is still remembered. The magnificent ruins of Jane’s childhood home, Bradgate Park, are still largely associated with Jane and her family, and bear testament to the splendour in which Jane was raised. The landscape at Bradgate is largely unchanged, and just as breathtaking as it must have been nearly 500 years ago. Among the ruins, with an element of imagination it is not difficult to conjure the young Jane reading her books in the hall, or walking with her sisters in the beautifully ornate gardens of the house, which was once one of the most spectacular in the country.

  At the Tower of London, Jane is still commemorated as one of its most tragic inmates. Her story is told by the Yeoman Warders to the hordes of visitors who flock to the Tower each year, though many of the tangible reminders of Jane’s tale have long since vanished. The Royal Apartments that Jane once occupied have been demolished, and the site on which she lost her life is unmarked.25 The only reminder of Jane in the chapel is the Victorian slab which lists her as one of those whose remains rest there. Similarly, no evidence of the rooms in which Jane spent her imprisonment survive, though the buildings which held her husband and others arrested in connection with the events of the summer of 1553 can still be seen. Perhaps most poignant of all are the two carvings of the name ‘Jane’ that still survive in the upper chamber of the Beauchamp Tower in which Guildford was once held. Whether they refer to Jane or not, they are nevertheless a persistent reminder of her story, and of her fatal associations with the Tower.

  Jane has also lent her name to modern-day buildings, as well as the Lady Jane Grey School in her home county of Leicestershire, which provides a different kind of testimony to her enduring appeal. Over the centuries her story has inspired writers, artists and playwrights, to name but a few, and the examples discussed cover just a fraction of the material that has been produced since her execution. In the days following her death and most certainly today, Jane is undoubtedly spoken about more than she ever was in her own lifetime.

  What precisely is it about Jane and her story that has captured popular imagination, and continues to fascinate to this day? Her age and the fact that she met a violent death are certainly important, as is that she was most certainly a victim convicted for the sins of others. But there is something more than that. It is a sense of intrigue. Though her life was short, Jane had demonstrated that she was remarkably intelligent, and given the chance she could have been a woman of exceptional ability who achieved extraordinary things. Furthermore, she had a determined spirit, and could not and would not be swayed into renouncing her beliefs.

  Had she been given the opportunity to live a life in which she was free to be herself – without the events of 1553 which saw her unwillingly raised to the throne and then swiftly deposed – there is no telling what she might have accomplished. By contrast, had Jane succeeded in retaining her throne it is interesting to consider what might have happened, and how she would have ruled. Undoubtedly the religious reforms implemented during the reign of Edward VI would have continued with Jane’s wholehearted support, further consolidating the foundations of Protestantism in England. Perhaps they might have become even more radical, and it could have been Jane who was remembered for the burning of religious ‘heretics’, rather than her cousin Mary. It is possible that Jane and Guildford would have had children, and thus that she may have founded a line of kings and queens. We will never know what Jane could have accomplished had her life not been cut short, and it is perhaps this that makes her one of history’s most fascinating ‘what ifs?’ However, Jane’s life was not her own, and was ultimately dominated by her blood. As her example demonstrates, royal blood could be a curse. Though she has made her mark on the pages of English history, it is in many respects for the wrong reasons. Jane is chiefly remembered as a pitiful victim who was ruthlessly manipulated, when the reasons for her recognition should lie elsewhere. Today, we ought to remember her in the way in which she wanted to be commemorated by posterity: as a girl who was so steadfast in her religious faith that she was prepared to die for it; a heroine who believed in immortality, and that her soul would live on. As she was preparing her final messages for those she loved, and writing her farewell statement accounting for her behaviour to the world, her thoughts also turned to how she would be remembered, and she penned three short epigrams in three of the languages in which she was fluent: Latin, Greek and English. It seems fitting, therefore, that the last words, and the most enduring, ought to be Jane’s:

  [Latin] If Justice is done with my body, my soul will find mercy in God.

  [Greek] Death will give pain to my body for its sins, but the soul will be justified before God.

  [English] If my faults deserve punishment, my youth at least, and my imprudence were worthy of excuse; God and posterity will show me favour.26

  Epilogue

  THE TRAGEDY OF Jane’s short life was at an end, but it marked only the beginning of the disaster that would engulf her family. Five days after Jane’s execution, her father Henry was tried and found guilty of treason at Westminster Hall.1 On 23 February, just eleven days after the death of his daughter, Henry also fell victim to the headsman’s axe and was executed on Tower Hill.2 Like his daughter, at his end he professed his devotion as a Protestant, and a contemporary acknowledged that ‘by this faith he supported himself, and in this faith he at length ended his life’.3 Soon after, Jane’s uncle, Thomas Grey, was also executed. Through the intervention of Jane’s mother, her youngest uncle John Grey was spared, as was her half-uncle, George Medley.4 All four of Guildford’s brothers who were imprisoned alongside him were also released, much to their mother’s relief. Robert in particular managed to rise to incredible heights and bask in royal favour: in fact, he came closer to becoming king than his younger brother Guildford ever had.5

  Jane’s mother Frances was now a widow at the age of thirty-six with two young daughters to support. It is a testament to the strength of her relationship with Queen Mary that she was granted the manors of Groby, Bardon, Astley, Beaumanor, and the great park at Loughborough for her lifetime, though Bradgate Park was confiscated and not restored to the Grey family until long after her death.6 It may have been confidence in her relationship with the Queen that encouraged Frances to take her fate into her own hands. On 9 March, less than a month after Jane’s death and precisely a fortnight after the execution of her husband, Frances married for a second time. Her husband was a member of her household, the thirty-four-year-old Adrian Stokes. Initially the marriage was kept a secret, but when it became public it met with the approval of Queen Mary. Mary appears to have been grateful to Frances; by marrying a commoner, Frances had effectively neutralized any threat she may have been deemed to pose via her status as a royal widow. To quote the rule of the heralds: ‘if a noble woman marries a commoner, she ceases to be noble’, and though Frances continued to be referred to as the Duchess of Suffolk, her title was now of little matter. The marriage was a happy one, and Adrian proved to be a loving stepfather to Jane’s sisters, Katherine and Mary. Furthermore, on 16 July 1555, her thirty-eighth birthday, Frances gave birth to her final child, a daughter named Elizabeth. Sadly the child died on 7 February the following year, the second daughter that Frances had lost.

  On the same day as Jane’s execution, her cousin the Lady Elizabeth began her journey to London, there to be interrogated for her role in the Wyatt Rebellion. She was committed to the Tower on 18 March, where she was poignantly reminded of Jane when she saw that the scaffold on which she had lost her life still stood. In contrast to her cousin’s stay, however, Elizabeth’s occupancy of the Tower was destined to be of short duration; no evidence being found against her, she survived her term of imprisonment and was later freed. Nevertheless, as time would reveal, she had learned valuable lessons from Jane’s example, and
never forgot the fate of her young cousin.

  In July 1554, Queen Mary married the Spanish Prince Philip, but sadly the marriage brought her none of the happiness she so desired. Having suffered with two phantom pregnancies, she died childless and sorrowful on 17 November 1558. Her twenty-five-year-old half-sister Elizabeth succeeded her. Mary had treated Jane’s younger sisters with kindness, taking Katherine into her household as one of her ladies, but Elizabeth was to show no such generosity. Her dislike for the family was soon made abundantly clear.

  Her first marriage having been annulled, Katherine Grey fell hopelessly in love with Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, the son of the executed Lord Protector, and the man once spoken of as a potential suitor for Jane. Through his mother, Anne Stanhope, Duchess of Somerset, who was descended from Edward III, Edward had a trickle of royal blood in his veins.7 The couple hoped to marry, and Katherine sought her mother’s intercession to secure Queen Elizabeth’s permission. Frances began a letter to the Queen, one that was sadly left unfinished. Before it could be completed Frances succumbed to an illness, and died aged forty-two on 21 November 1559. She was given a royal funeral in Westminster Abbey, the first royal funeral to be conducted according to Protestant rites, and a splendid tomb was erected to her memory in St Edmund’s Chapel. Her death left Katherine without a champion, and feeling that there was no other choice, Katherine and Edward married clandestinely in December 1560. There was only one witness to the marriage, Edward’s sister Lady Jane Seymour, who died soon afterwards. Katherine quickly became pregnant, and once her condition became obvious she chose to confide in her mother’s old friend, Bess of Hardwick, who berated Katherine for unwillingly involving her. Once Queen Elizabeth discovered the truth her rage knew no bounds; she was incensed that the couple would dare to wed without seeking her permission – permission that would almost certainly have been denied due to the royal blood that flowed in the veins of both Katherine and Edward. Many people considered Katherine to be Elizabeth’s heir, causing the Queen further outrage. The couple were thrown into the Tower, the place that had so many unhappy associations for Katherine.

  The Queen’s dislike of her cousin Katherine was intensified when, still imprisoned, Katherine gave birth to a son, named Edward. The little boy was separated from his mother, much to her sorrow. The Queen refused to release Katherine and her husband, and in 1562 their marriage was annulled as Katherine had lost her marriage certificate, and the only witness to the wedding was dead. However, this did not dampen the couple’s ardour for one another, and the Queen’s wrath was further increased when through the connivance of a sympathetic jailer they were able to meet and conceive another child. To prevent any further meetings that might lead to more children, Katherine was removed from the Tower following the birth of a second son named Thomas, and sent to live with her uncle, Lord John Grey. She was later transferred to the custody of Sir William Petre in November 1564. As it became clear that the prospects of being reunited with her husband and children were slim, Katherine gave up hope and slowly wasted away. She died aged twenty-seven in January 1568 at Cockfield Hall in Suffolk, and was buried in nearby Yoxley Churchyard. There have been suggestions that she died of anorexia, but her symptoms also coincide with those experienced by sufferers of tuberculosis, and it was probably this that killed her. Her remains were later moved to Salisbury Cathedral by her grandson, where the magnificent double tomb she shares with the husband she loved so dearly can still be seen to this day.

  Following Katherine’s death her husband Edward was released from the Tower, and fought for many years to have his marriage declared good and valid. Finally, in 1606, three years after Queen Elizabeth’s death, the marriage was legitimized and Katherine and Edward’s two sons could claim to have been born within wedlock.

  Her younger sister Mary had clearly learned little from Katherine’s example. She too fell in love. The object of her desire, though, was not one with a claim to the throne, but the Queen’s Serjeant Porter, the widowed Thomas Keyes, who had several children. Perhaps she had thought that in choosing a man beneath her social standing, as her mother had done, she would be safe. If this was her belief then she was sadly mistaken. Mary, too, married in secret in 1565, and one of the witnesses at her wedding was her cousin Margaret Willoughby, to whom she was close. However, when the marriage was discovered, once more Queen Elizabeth was furious at her cousin’s presumption to marry without seeking her consent – and to a commoner. Keyes was imprisoned in the common jail of the Fleet, while Mary was sent first to Chequers, then into the custody of her stepfather Adrian, and later to her step-grandmother, Katherine Willoughby. Like her sister, Mary was never allowed to live with her husband, and tragically never saw him again. Though Keyes was released in 1569, his health had been drastically affected by the conditions of his imprisonment, and he died shortly afterwards. Mary begged for permission to look after her husband’s orphaned children but was refused. Despite a brief period of rehabilitation at court, she died in poverty on 20 April 1578, at the age of thirty-three. She was buried in her mother’s tomb in Westminster Abbey.

  It appeared that all of the scheming of 1553 had been for nothing, for both Mary and Elizabeth, whom Edward’s ‘Devise’ had sought to exclude, came to wear the crown. While Mary’s reign ended in misery and is remembered for the cruel burnings of nearly 300 Protestant heretics, many modern historians have celebrated Elizabeth as one of England’s greatest monarchs. Her forty-five-year reign, though, did witness the imprisonment, torture and executions of many Catholics, primarily as a result of Pope Pius V’s bull of 1570. This absolved Elizabeth’s subjects of their loyalty to her, meaning that many Catholics were subsequently viewed with suspicion and were at greater risk of persecution.

  For many years Elizabeth enjoyed a close relationship with Robert Dudley – so close that it was rumoured the couple would marry. They never did, for Elizabeth was determined to reign supreme, married only to her people, but there is little doubt that Robert won her heart – in a way that his brother Guildford had never won Jane’s. Elizabeth soon swept aside the religious changes implemented by Mary, and unlike her father and her half-brother, she styled herself Supreme Governor of the Church of England, a decision that would have met with Jane’s approval. Though Jane’s courage has echoed down through the centuries, her life was ultimately taken from her for nothing. Her inheritance and her title of queen had determined her doom: she had been forced to wear a crown of blood.

  APPENDIX 1

  The Queen Without a Face:

  Portraits of Lady Jane Grey

  IT IS REMARKABLE that for someone of Jane’s fame, no authenticated likenesses of her exist. She was, after all, a member of the royal family – the great-niece of Henry VIII, and a queen in her own right. On the other hand, it does not seem strange at all. Jane was queen for just thirteen days – thirteen turbulent and uncertain days at that, when commissioning a portrait of her would have been low on the list of priorities. Moreover, the fact that no physical descriptions of Jane – her hair colour, her features and her height – survive makes it very difficult to identify or dismiss images purported to be her. Nevertheless, we know that Jane sat for her portrait on at least one occasion, as her mother’s friend Bess of Hardwick owned a likeness of her, which she kept at her magnificent home, Hardwick Hall. Unfortunately, the whereabouts of the portrait is now unknown – it may have been lost, destroyed, or misidentified in the same way that many Tudor portraits have been over the centuries.

  The female miniaturist Levina Teerlinc painted members of Jane’s family – her sister Katherine, her cousin Elizabeth, Katherine Parr, possibly even her mother.1 Indeed, one of Teerlinc’s miniatures has, in the past, been identified as Jane, almost certainly incorrectly.2 That is not, however, to say that Jane was not painted by Teerlinc, but if she was then the likeness probably no longer survives.

  Over the centuries many likenesses have been claimed to represent Jane. The most famous is the full-length portrait painted
by the mysterious ‘Master John’ that now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. For many years after the Gallery acquired the painting in 1965 it was accepted as an unquestionable image of Jane, until it was reidentified in 1996. Historian Susan James made a convincing case that the portrait was in fact of Katherine Parr, based on its provenance and the items of jewellery that the sitter wears, which can be identified in Katherine’s surviving jewel inventories.3 Most notable among these is the distinctive crown brooch that Katherine wears at her breast, a piece that was commissioned by her. Even if Jane had borrowed these pieces from Katherine for the purpose of having her portrait painted, as has been suggested, there is still good evidence for identifying the sitter as Katherine. The portrait was painted in either 1544 or 1545, probably in order to celebrate Katherine’s success as Regent of England while her husband, Henry VIII, was campaigning in France. At this time Jane would have been either eight or nine years old – an impossible age for the lady in the portrait. As J. Stephan Edwards highlights in his study of portraiture relating to Jane, for many centuries the portrait was identified as Katherine, and formed part of the collection of Glendon Hall, the one-time home of Katherine’s cousins, the Lane family.4

  The ‘Master John’ portrait is not the first of Katherine to be misidentified as Jane. At least three other images that at one time were believed to have portrayed Jane have now been proven to be of Katherine, all of which were loosely based on the ‘Master John’ portrait.5 This is probably also true of another portrait in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, known as ‘The Streatham Portrait’ due to its provenance.6 The portrait was actually inscribed with the words ‘Lady Jane’, and after careful research by the Gallery was indeed believed to represent Jane. However, as Edwards suggests, there are many similarities between this portrait and others of Katherine Parr, most notably the jewels worn by the sitter.7 Furthermore, dendrochronology dates the portrait to 1594 at the very earliest, so even if it were of Jane, it could not have been a contemporary likeness. As Edwards argues convincingly, the portrait is more likely to represent Katherine, and has been altered in order to make it appear to be Jane, hence the inscription.