Lady Jane Becomes Queen for Nine Days (Part Two)

Lady Jane Becomes Queen for Nine Days (Part Two)

On the day July 10 1553

Khen Lim

Lady Jane Grey by Matt Abraxas (Image source: redbubble.com)

By the time Part One ended, Lady Jane Grey was forced to step down after nine days at the throne and together with Guildford Dudley, her husband, were arrested, charged and sentenced to death. 

However a reprieve seemed possible for at least the both of them. But then the country heard of Mary’s plan to marry the Spanish Crown Prince, which would mean England would capitulate back to Roman Catholicism. On hearing this, the people weren't happy...

Part Two continues.

The 1544 Wyatt Rebellion fought over the Byward Tower (Image source: Getty Images)

The Wyatt Rebellion

By the turn of the New Year in 1554, Thomas Wyatt the Younger (1521-1554) decided that the people could not accept Queen Mary’s intention to marry the Crown Prince Felipe II (1527-1598) of Spain. Such a marriage, they believed (correctly), would simply submerge England in Catholicism. And so he put his plan up to stage a Protestant rebellion. That would have been fine if not for the misfortune that Jane’s father decided to join in as well.

Called the Wyatt Rebellion, the expressed objective, though not overtly mentioned, was to overthrow Mary. Even more jarring a discovery was that all the rebel leaders were committed Protestants. They were identified as Sir Thomas Wyatt of Kent, the double-dealing Sir James Croft (c1518-1590) of Herefordshire, Sir Peter Carew (1514-1575) of Devon and most unfortunately, Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk, Jane’s father. The idea was that the four leaders would raise rebellions in one of the four counties before eventually converging in London by March of the same year.

In their anticipation to dispose Mary, her half-sister Elizabeth would be their choice of successor. Thereafter, they would expect Elizabeth to marry Lord Devon, Edward Courtenay (1526-1556). At the same time, to block Felipe en route to England, the French armada would stage a blockade.

Luck was on Mary’s side when Simon Renard (1513-1573), the papal legate to England, smelled a rat and suspected something was brewing. He promptly told Bishop Stephen Gardiner (c1483-1555) the Lord Chancellor who, after arresting Devon, confirmed the planning of the rebellion. Pressured by a drastic change of plans, the rebels moved their schedule forward, paving the way for problems to scuttle them.

Thomas Wyatt the Younger (Image source: Magnolia Box)

After delivering a message to Elizabeth at Ashridge House in the Chiltern Hills of Hertfordshire, Croft surrendered once he realised that a successful rebellion was not going to materialise. Carew, on the other hand, was spreading dissent in Exeter with unsettling allegations that Felipe II would introduce the unpopular Spanish Inquisition. 

The idea was to rile the people to arms against Mary but he had two problems. Firstly, the Protestant nobles there were unwilling to commit treason and secondly, the Catholic-based peasants were hardly ever going to go along. With a warrant for his arrest over his head, Carew crossed the Channel and headed for Normandy. Even so, he was invariably arrested.

Around the same time, the French armada encountered logistic difficulties establishing their position at sea and decidedly returned to France thus opening the way for Felipe to reach England. With Jane and her husband already arrested and guilty as charged, her foolish but determined father somehow raised up an army of a mere 140 rebels, many of whom were actually his own men. 

But Coventry blocked his entrance and soon, he gave up. Wyatt the Younger was the only one who managed to establish a formidable-sized army and with January 25 confirmed, he was ready to topple Mary.

Wyatt and his rebels in the Wyatt Rebellion (Image source: Look and Learn)

On January 26, Wyatt began by occupying Rochester. He made a proclamation and many collected. Mary’s forces headed by Lord Abergavenny Henry Nevill (c1532-1587) and sheriff-cum-lawyer Sir Robert Southwell (c1506-1559) appeared initially to have the upper hand, having subdued a 500-strong rebel group two days into the rebellion. 

However with the Mary’s Spanish proposal proving unpopular, Kent was teetering. Eventually the reformer’s preaching had proven too effective than virtually any other country district. Nevill and Southwell promptly lost the support of their armies as their men abandoned arms and went across to Wyatt.

Wyatt by now had close to 3,000 men under his command and confidence was growing. Under the leadership of the Duke of Norfolk, 81-year-old Thomas Howard (1473-1554), Mary despatched reinforcements to stem Wyatt’s advance but to no avail – Howard’s forces soon laid down arms and joined the rebels instead. And with that, Wyatt’s force grew so 4,000 as Howard hastily fled to London.

Meanwhile, Mary’s half-sister Elizabeth found herself caught in the crosshair. Summoned to Court and held incommunicado, her life was at serious mortal risk since there was suspicion that she was part of the uprising. 

By this point, Wyatt held such an advantage that Mary was forced to ask what his terms were to which he demanded that the Tower of London be surrendered to him and that she be placed under his charge. While the first was not unacceptable, it was the second condition that proved insolent enough to rile an otherwise sympathetic London to act against him.

Thomas Wyatt dictates terms to Mary in the White Tower, 1553 by George Cruikshank (Image source: Getty Images)

Just because of this misjudgement on Wyatt’s part, Mary was able to rouse the capital with an unforgettable rally at the Guildhall on February 1. It was this that marked the only opportunistic turning point for the Queen and she took it with exuberance. Unaware of all this, Wyatt and his forces marched on and reached Southwark in central London two days later.

By that time, Mary had enough supporters to fully occupy and block London Bridge, rendering it impossible for the rebel forces to cross and enter the city. Soon enough, the rebels were driven off Southwark under the threats of Sir John Brydges (c1492-1557) who had the guns of the Tower firmly trained on them. 

Having been forced off Southwark, Wyatt and his forces decided on taking Kingston instead but found the bridge there to be destroyed. Even so, they had it repaired and crossed over where they met little resistance.

From thereon, they marched through the outer southwest reaches of London, not far from Charing Cross. Invariably their march was halted by the people of Ludgate and there, Wyatt’s forces came to an end, compelling Wyatt the Younger to finally surrender. 

In what was typically ‘so near yet so far,’ Wyatt’s fatal error was a mere case of a misjudged condition. Otherwise, the outcome could have easily gone his way and history would have been dramatically different.

Having surrendered, Wyatt’s trial ended as expected – he was executed along with ninety of his rebels in the most gruesome way, largely to serve as a warning to anyone else who might want to try something similar against the Queen. 

The beheading of Thomas Wyatt (Image source: Alamy)

After attempts by way of severe torture to get him to implicate Elizabeth as an accomplice failed, Wyatt was beheaded at Tower Hill; his body dismembered into quarters. Courtenay, the one to whom the rebels had hoped to marry Elizabeth upon her coronation was exiled and died in Padua. A few were acquitted. Some were not brought to trial but instead were pardoned. Carew, for one, was flung into gaol but released later.

Elizabeth, on the other hand, was singled out and subjected to intense interrogation. There was great fear that she might end up on the block; such was the witch hunt that Mary had going on and it didn’t matter who was ultimately accused since anyone was ripe for the taking. 

But Elizabeth, though young, was witty and intelligent. For every accusation made, she raised questions and forced her interrogators to back off unless they had provable incriminations. She maintained her unawareness and non-involvement in the uprising and since the interrogators had basically nothing on her, she was finally spared though for good measure, she remained incarcerated.

The Wyatt residence at Allington Castle (Image source: A Kentish Ceremony)

Having Wyatt executed was not enough, it seemed. His family suffered even greater consequences for they lost their title and the privileges that came with it. They also lost their lands as well as their family hone, Allington Castle, a stone-built moated castle in Allington, Kent, just north of Maidstone. It took until Elizabeth, a fellow Protestant, ascended to the throne after Mary that the family could retrieve the lost titles and lands. Interestingly, Elizabeth’s side of the family were related to the Wyatt family.

The last moments of Lady Jane Grey by Hendrik Jacobus Scholten (Image source: Magnolia Box)

Jane’s final hour

Once news got through to Mary that Suffolk was involved in the rebellion, chances of reprieve for Jane and Guildford completely evaporated. Originally scheduled for February 9 1554, the queen moved the date of their execution three further days back in a hope that Jane would convert to Catholicism. To help this along, Mary summoned her chaplain John Howman of Feckenham (1515-1584) to visit her at the Tower.

Although she was initially not too chuffed about his presence, she came to value the friendship that both struck with one another. Despite his efforts, she remained stoic about her Protestant faith, not giving in to his attempts “to save her soul.” As her last experience of humanity, she graciously allowed Feckenham to gesture her to the scaffold for the final time.

On the day before they were to be executed, Guildford asked Jane if they could see one another for the final time if only to bid farewell but it was in vain. She reasoned that, “it would only increase our misery and pain, it is better to put it off for the time being, as we will meet shortly elsewhere and live bound by insoluble ties.” 

Instead, Jane spent her final night, February 8, writing letters to her family members. To her father, she expressed comfort in knowing that in deference to an earthly crown that she wore briefly, she would gain a heavenly one. She ended saying that she’d look forward to meeting him in the kingdom of God.

Lady Jane Grey en route to her execution (Image source: Alamy)

Around ten in the morning of February 12, the Tower guards first took the 19-year-old Guildford, Jane’s husband, from his room to the public execution place at Tower Hill. Jane saw him being led out of the Beauchamp Tower to Tower Hill but she remained calm and composed. By then, she had already heard sounds of hammering from the White Tower, signifying that her scaffold was also being erected.

There, some ‘gentlemen’ were present to shake hands with him. Thereafter in a customary gesture, he addressed the assembled crowd briefly. “Having no ghostly father with him,” Guildford got on his knees and prayed even as he humbly asked those around him to also pray for him, “holding up his eyes and hands to God many times.” 

Though he cried his eyes out on hearing of his death sentence, at the scaffold, he was brave. In his final minutes, the staunch Protestant in him refused the services of a Catholic priest. And thus the moment had arrived with a pregnant pause of silence before the inevitable.

With a single swift stroke of the axe, Guildford was beheaded. As was the practice, a horse and cart came to retrieve his remains back to the Chapel of Saint Peter ad Vincula within the Tower. Unfortunately, that meant moving visibly past Jane’s lodging in Partidge’s house where she had full view of his dismembered body together with his head wrapped in a cloth.

“Oh, Guildford! Guildford!” she cried out in total helplessness.

Lady Jane Grey makes her way to the scaffold (Image source: On the Tudor Trail)

Next, it was her turn to be taken from her room for her execution. Unlike her husband, she was taken to Tower Green set against the White Tower, attired in the same black dress as the one she wore to her trial and now making her way along the same route taken by Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard before her. Through the whole way, Jane had with her a prayer book upon which she prayed until she arrived at the scaffold.

Ascending it, the anonymously authored ‘Chronicle of Queen Jane and of Two Years of Queen Mary’ cited her saying:

“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.

“And therewith I pray you all, good Christian people, to bear me witness that I die a true Christian woman and that I look to be saved by none other means but only by the mercy of God in the merits of the blood of His only Son, Jesus Christ: and I confess when I did know the Word of God I neglected the same, loved myself and the world, and therefore this plague or punishment is happily and worthily happened unto me for my sins; and yet I thank God of His goodness that He hath thus given me a time and respite to repent. And now, good people, while I am alive, I pray you to assist me with your prayers.”

On record, Jane acknowledged that she did consent to become the queen and in doing so, she had committed treason. Yet she made certain that everyone understood – notably after her death – that she never personally sought after the crown. She never had the taste for such high life and never even remotely contemplated the possibility of it. For her to have acquiesced to the throne would have been something that was forced on her by others. 

The young Queen Lady Jane Grey preparing for her execution by Alec c Ball (Image source: Pinterest)

In the same historical record, Jane’s maid, Elizabeth Tilney, recounted, saying:

“She knelt and said the fifty-first Psalm, with Feckenham helping. Then she rose and thanked him for keeping her company. She said that during the last three days she had been more bored by him than frightened by the shadow of death. Then she said that she hoped God would reward him for his efforts.”

Indeed having relieved herself of her book, Jane knelt down and asked Feckenham, “Shall I say this psalm?” He answered, “Yea,” and she turned to the psalm of Miserere mei Deus (Psalm 51: Have mercy upon me, O God), translated into English and in the utmost devout fashion, she read it to the end following which, she stood and offered her maid, Tilney, her gloves and handkerchief and then turned to Lieutenant Thomas Bruges, the lieutenant’s brother, gave her prayer book.

In it was inscribed the following words:

“Good master Lieutenant, Live still to die, that by death you may purchase eternal life. For, as the Preacher says, there is a time to be born, and a time to die; and the day of death is better than the day of our birth. Yours, as the Lord knows, as a friend, Jane Dudley.”

“She gave Thomas Bruges her prayer book, then handed me her gloves and handkerchief,” Tilney recalled.

Tilney clutched the gloves while the other maid, Ellen, stroked the snow-white handkerchief bearing a roughly embroidered moniker JG. Then Jane began to untie her gown. As she was doing so, the executioner offered his hand to help but she sharply refused, preferring her two maids instead.

“The executioner offered to help her untie her gown but she gave him a look and had us ladies do it,” Tilney said.

Having removed her gown, Jane decided that her neck scarf would do as a makeshift blindfold. At this point, the execution knelt down and asked Jane for her forgiveness, which she gave ‘most willingly.’ After that, he coaxed her to stand on the bed of straw at which point, she then saw the solid block.

“I pray you dispatch me quickly,” Jane said to her executioner while readying herself to approach the block.

“Will you take it off before I lay me down?” ‘It’ meaning her head.

“No, madame,” the executioner replied.

The execution of Lady Jane Grey by Paul Delaroche, 1833 (Image source: Wikipedia)

Now with her blindfold in place, she vainly tried to grasp the block but without her sight, it became a frighteningly impossible task.

“What shall I do? Where is it?” she asked in desperation, almost in despair.

“The only time she lost her composure was when she put on the blindfold and couldn’t see where to put her head. She fumbled around the block. None of us thought to help her – it was as if we would be sending her to her death,” Tilney added.

Then someone standing by stepped forward and gently guided her and she laid her head down on the block, stretched forth her body. Tossing her hair in front of her, she bared her neck before she uttered her final words, “Lord, into Thy hands I commend my spirit!”

Tilney recalled that the executioner was swift.

Duchess of Suffolk Lady Frances Grey, left, with husband Charles Brandon (Image source: Susan Higginbotham)

A mother’s lament

In Susan Higginbotham’s book entitled ‘Her Highness, the Traitor,’ Jane’s mother Frances recounted the agonising moments before and on the day of her daughter’s execution:

“I did not see my girl die at Tower Green and for that I will never forgive myself. I should have had the courage she did. … I begged to see the queen. But this time her door, and her heart, were shut as firmly against me as they had been against the Duchess of Northumberland the summer before. My daughter would be given the chance to meet with the queen’s chaplain John Feckenham, who would attempt to save her soul. That was all.

“There was nothing stopping me from seeing my daughter die. Oh, I would have had to get permission to get into Tower Green, but surely a mother would have been allowed that privilege. But I did not dare. Perhaps I feared I could not stay sane after seeing such a sight; perhaps I feared something more mundane, that I might collapse and embarrass my daughter in her last moments. Instead, I spent the night, and much of the morning, in prayer, though I knew Jane hardly needed my intervention with the Lord.

“It was Adrian Stokes who went to the Tower that Monday, February 12, first to see Guildford Dudley die on Tower Hill and then to see Jane die on Tower Green. It was past noon when Master Stokes arrived at Sheen, where Kate and Mary sat with me in my chamber. With him were my daughter’s waiting women, Ursula Ellen and Elizabeth Tilney, both of their faces creased with tears. We women came together in a wordless embrace as Master Stokes slipped from the room.

“Later that day, when prayer had made me strong enough to hear about my daughter’s last hours, Jane’s women and Master Stokes told me of them. For three days, Feckenham, a kindly man, had disputed theology with Jane and found her intransigent. But approaching death had softened Jane and when Feckenham, unable to convert Jane and unable to persuade Mary to pardon her, had begged to do her the last service of accompanying her to the scaffold, she had agreed.

“Wearing the same black dress she had worn to her trial, Jane had walked to her place of execution calmly, reading from the book of Esther as her ladies trailed sobbing behind her. Only the sight she had seen a little while before, that of her husband’s headless body being carted back from Tower Hill had discomfited her and that only for a short time.”

Lady Jane Grey is blindfolded before her beheading (Image source: New Historian)

Following Jane’s execution, Stokes reportedly said, “Everyone on Tower Green was weeping. There were no cheers.”

“The lieutenant gave me some things,” he continued, “Another handkerchief of your sister’s for you, Lady Mary, and this for you, Lady Katherine.”

Mary merely sobbed into the handkerchief given her while Katherine cast a gloomy gaze at the New Testament in Greek that Stokes had passed on to her before adding, “There is a letter written in it to you, Lady Katherine.”

And to Jane’s mother, Frances, he gave another little book with yet another letter within for her.

“Late that night, I read my letter,” Frances recalled, “Jane’s letter to Kate has since been published. It was an exhortation to the godly life, kindly meant but perhaps misaddressed to a pretty young woman who wanted only to marry a kind young man and have his children. Mine never has been published and never will be, for it was of little interest to the greater world, only of immeasurable consolation to me. It told me my daughter loved me and she would pray for me in the next world to have the courage to face the trials to come,” she continued.

“On that bleak February night, this was what I needed to hear. I wear that book on my girdle today, and when I need heart, I only have to open the book and hold it before my eyes. It will be placed in my hands when I am laid in my grave,” Jane’s mother further said.

Final part three will be published on July 23 2017