by Carol H. Morgan

Created on: April 06, 2008   Last Updated: June 06, 2008

Perhaps one of the most tragic stories of the bloody Tudor period in England is that of Lady Jane Grey, known to history as the Nine Days Queen. In her short and tragic seventeen years of life she became the one of only a few arguably reigning monarchs in Europe ever to be executed, and one of England's most compelling Protestant martyrs during the disastrous period of Bloody Mary I.

THE DEATH OF HENRY VIII AND THE BOY KING EDWWARD VI

The story of Jane Grey began was set in motion in the reign of Henry VIII, who very famously came up short in his struggle for male progeny. His only legitimate son by Jane Semour, Edward, was named as Henry's heir to be supervised in his regency by sixteen co-regents, as Henry was rightly nervous of what maneuvering would occurr to seize power as the boy king was in his minority. There were indeed struggles for power with his Uncle Edward Seymour, Duke of Southhampton, seizing eventual Lord Protectorship (virtual Kingship) for a time until his execution, when the young tyrant Edward indifferently signed his execution warrant. The day of his Uncle's execution the boy wrote in his diary callously "Southhampton executed."

Edward, apparently always sickly, was convinced as he approached likely death by his other Uncle, the Protestant Thomas Seymor, Duke of Somerset, and John Dudley who had gained control of the regency that he shouldn't leave the throne to his oldest sister Mary (dauthghter of the Catholic Cathereine of Aragon) as his father Henry had indicated in his supposedly iron-clad will. His uncles were right in judging that Mary was a threat to the progress the Protestants had gained under Edward (the first truly Protestant monarch in England), under the tutelage of his Uncle Edward Seymour, Duke of Southampton, and his stepfather and uncle Thomas Seymour, Duke of Somerset.

THE NINE DAYS' QUEEN

Thus with some maneuvering Edward before he died at age seventeen (dying just before he would have become king in his own right) named his cousin Jane to the throne instead of either of his sisters. His sister Elizabeth was a Protestant, but deemed young and unpredictable. Edward ruled with a small but iron fist and was easily convinced that females didn't belong on England's throne. But of course the real reason Jane was chosen is that she was to become the daughter-in-law of John Dudley, who then governed the regency and had hatched a plot to take the crown for himself.

Jane was a descendant of Henry's sister Mary Tudor or the Duchess

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