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Throughout the history of the Tudor Period, each monarch has his or her own significant changes made to the kingdom. Yet in the line of Tudor monarchs there is one not normally mentioned. For a nine day blip in history there was a Queen little spoken of now, Queen Jane Grey. She is ever remembered as Lady Jane Gray and not a queen, though a queen she was indeed, even if only for nine days.

The story of Jane Grey's famous life and death would begin without her even knowing it when King Edward quickly approached his imminent death. During his few years as king he had managed to rid England of its Catholic influences and introduced a full, thriving Protestantism to the entire kingdom. This had been a great victory for the Protestants in authority, but they also knew without a doubt that it would all come to an end shortly after the Protestant king died. The next Tudor in the monarchical line of succession was the king's half sister Mary, who just happened to be a devoted follower of the Catholic church. Edward's advisors knew she would surely undo every Protestant reform that had been made, so a plan needed to be devised to quickly solve this problem.

Edward's chief advisor was an ambitious man named John Dudley. He, and not Edward, is most likely responsible for the Protestant reforms that happened in England under Edward's rein. Needless to say, Dudley was more concerned with the religious state of England than Edward, so it was Dudley who fashioned the brilliant plan to save England from Catholicism. Dudley quickly had Edward name as his successor Lady Jane Grey, who was the granddaughter of King Henry's sister Mary Tudor. Jane was only 15 years old, but she was in the Tudor family, and more importantly she was known for her pious Protestant faith. The country would now be safe in Protestant hands, now if only the county could be safe in Dudley's hands!

John Dudley decided that Jane's husband should be his own son Guildford Dudley, thus setting up his own dynasty in England. The two became betrothed, very much against Jane's will, but her parents abused her enough verbally and physically until she complied to marry him. Yet Jane was not aware of the reasons behind the match and the uncommonly fast marriage. Jane did not like the Dudley family, however, and ran away to her own home again. Soon afterward, however, the Dudlies wrote Jane telling her of the king's imminent death and her imminent succession to the throne. Jane did not believe this but was still

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