Jane I

1536-1554. Born: Jane Grey. Daughter of Lord Henry and Lady Frances Grey, Duke and Duchess of Suffolk. Briefly Queen of England in 1553.

Jane Grey claimed the crown because of her maternal grandmother Mary Tudor, daughter of Henry VII, who had married her brother Henry’s best friend Charles Brandon after the death of her first husband King Louis XII of France. Brandon became Duke of Suffolk in 1514 and had a son with Mary whose name was Henry. That son Henry died as teenager. Frances was their next oldest child.

The Third Act of Succession from the year 1544 brought Henry VIII’s daughters Mary and Elizabeth back into the line of heirs to the crown if Henry himself and his son Edward should die without male descendants.

As Edward was a devout Protestant and did not want Roman Catholicism to be restored in England, he removed his Catholic sister Mary from the succession. She was declared illegitimate by parliament in 1532. However, if he removed Mary, he also had to do so with Elizabeth. Despite the Third Act of Succession he declared Frances’ daughter Jane as his successor on 21 June 1553.

Jane Grey was crowned Queen of England in the Tower of London 10 July 1553 as the successor of Edward VI who had died four days earlier. Jane was married to Guildford Dudley who she did not crown king. Meanwhile Mary Tudor was proclaimed Queen in Norfolk. She tried to force Jane to convert to Catholicism. On 14 November 1553 Jane was convicted of high treason together with her husband. But the death sentence was not carried out immediately. During the rebellion of Sir Thomas Wyatt Jane was decapitated 12 February 1554 in the Tower of London after Mary accused her of treason.

Sources:

http://englishhistory.net/tudor/relative/janegrey.html#Biography, 30.04.2010, 12:35.

Given-Wilson, Chris / Curteis, Alice. The Royal Bastards of Medieval England. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,1984.

The Chronicle of Queen Jane and of Two Years of Queen Mary, and especially of the Rebellion of Sir Thomas Wyat. ed. by John Gough Nichols 1850, first reprinting: USA 1986.