The Sisters Who Would Be Queen: The tragedy of Mary, Katherine and Lady Jane Grey. Leanda Lisle de

tomb he would bear witness to where the King’s determination to control the future ended, and how efforts to deny women the absolute power of the crown helped bury absolutism in England.

       PART ONE Educating Jane

      ‘Is the Queen delivered? Say Ay and of a boy.’

      ‘Ay, ay my liege, And of a lovely boy: the God of heaven Both now and ever bless her: ’tis a girl Promises boys hereafter…’

      Henry VIII, Act V scene i

      William Shakespeare

       Chapter I Beginning

      Frances, Marchioness of Dorset, prepared carefully for the birth of her child. It was an anxious time, but following the traditions of the lying-in helped allay fears of the perils of labour. The room in which she was to have her baby had windows covered and keyholes blocked. Ordinances for a royal birth decreed only one window should be left undraped and Frances would depend almost entirely on candles for light. The room was to be as warm, soft and dark as possible. She bought or borrowed expensive carpets and hangings, a bed of estate, fine sheets and a rich counterpane. Her friend, the late Lady Sussex, had one of ermine bordered with cloth of gold for her lyingin, and, as the King’s niece, Frances would have wanted nothing less.

      The nineteen-year-old mother-to-be was the daughter of Henry’s younger sister, Mary, Duchess of Suffolk, the widow of Louis XII and known commonly as the French Queen. She was, therefore, a granddaughter of Henry VII and referred to as ‘the Lady Frances’ to indicate her status as such. The child of famously handsome parents, she was, unsurprisingly, attractive. The effigy that lies on her tomb at Westminster Abbey has a slender, elegant figure and under the gilded crown she wears, her features are regular and strong.¹ Frances, however, was a conventional Tudor woman, as submissive to her father’s choice of husband for her as she would later be to her husband’s decisions.

      Henry - or ‘Harry’ - Grey,² Marquess of Dorset, described as ‘young’, ‘lusty’, ‘well learned and a great wit’, was only six months older than his wife.³ But the couple had been married for almost four years already. The contractual arrangements had been made on 24th March 1533, when Frances was fifteen and Dorset sixteen.⁴ Amongst commoners a woman was expected to be at least twenty before she married, and a man older, but of course these were no commoners. They came from a hereditary elite and were part of a ruthless political culture. The children of the nobility were political and financial assets to their families, and Frances’s marriage to Dorset reflected this. Dorset came from an ancient line with titles including the baronies of Ferrers, Grey of Groby, Astley, Boneville and Harrington. He also had royal connections. His grandfather, the 1st Marquess, was the son of Elizabeth Woodville, and therefore the half-brother of Henry VIII’s royal grandmother, Elizabeth of York. This marked Dorset as a suitable match for Frances in terms of rank and wealth, but there were also good political reasons for Suffolk to want him as a son-in-law.

      The period immediately before the arrangement of Frances’s marriage had been a difficult one for her parents. The dislike with which Mary, Duchess of Suffolk, viewed her brother’s then ‘beloved’, Anne Boleyn, was well known. It was said that women argued more bitterly about matters of rank than anything else, and certainly Frances’s royal mother had deeply resented being required to give precedence to a commoner like Anne. For years the duke and duchess had done their best to destroy the King’s affection for his mistress, but, in the end, without success. The King, convinced that Anne would give him the son that Catherine of Aragon had failed to produce, had married her that January and she was due to be crowned in May. It seemed that the days when the Suffolks had basked in the King’s favour could be over; but a marriage of Frances to ‘Harry’ Dorset offered a possible lifeline, a way into the Boleyn camp. Harry Dorset’s father, Thomas Grey of Dorset, had been a witness for the King in his efforts to achieve an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. He had won his famous diamond and ruby badge of the Tudor rose at the jousting tournaments that had celebrated Catherine’s betrothal to the King’s late brother, Arthur, in 1501. In 1529, the year before Thomas Grey of Dorset died, he had offered evidence that this betrothal was consummated. It had helped support Henry’s arguments that Catherine had been legally married to his brother and his own marriage to her was therefore incestuous.⁵ Anne Boleyn remained grateful to the family, and Harry Dorset was made a Knight of the Bath at her coronation.

      From Harry’s perspective, however, the marriage to Frances - concluded sometime between 28th July 1533 and 4th February 1534 - also carried political and material advantages to his family.⁶ His grandfather, the 1st Marquess, may have been Henry VII’s brother-in-law, but by marrying a princess of the blood he would be doing even better; and the fact he had only the previous year refused the daughter of the Earl of Arundel may be an early mark of his ambition. Through Frances, any children they had would be linked by blood to all the power and spiritual mystery of the crown. It was an asset of incalculable worth - though it would carry a terrible price.

      Over three years later, it was sometime before the end of May, 1537, that Frances’s child was to be born.⁷ Harry Grey of Dorset was in London and Frances would surely have been with him at Dorset House, on the Strand.⁸ It was one of a number of large properties built by the nobility close to the new royal palace of Whitehall. There was a paved street behind and, in front - where the house had its grandest aspect - there was a garden down to the river with a watergate on to the Thames. Travelling by boat in London was easier than navigating the narrow streets and foreigners often commented on the beauty of the river. Swans swam amongst the great barges while pennants flew from the pretty gilded cupolas of the Tower. But there were also many grim sights on the river that spring. London Bridge was festooned with the decapitated heads of the leaders of the recent rebellion in the north, the Pilgrimage of Grace: men who had fought for the faith of their ancestors and the right of the Princess Mary to inherit her father’s crown. For all Henry’s concerns about the decorum of female rule, the majority of his ordinary subjects had little objection to the concept. That women were inferior as a sex was regarded as indisputable, but there was room for exceptions. The English were famous in Europe for their devotion to the Virgin Mary, the second Eve, born without the taint of the first sin, and who reigned as Queen of Heaven. It did not seem, to them, a huge leap to accept a Queen on Earth. Just as the Princess Mary’s rights were under attack, however, so were their religious beliefs and traditions.

      When the Pope had refused to annul Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon, he had broken with Rome and the Pope’s right of intervention on spiritual affairs in England had been abolished by an act of Parliament on 7th April 1533. With the benefit of hindsight this was a definitive moment in the history of the English-speaking world, but at the time most people had seen these events as no more than moves in a political game. Matters of jurisdiction between King and Pope were not things with which ordinary people concerned themselves, and the aspects of traditional belief that first came under attack were often controversial ones. Long before Henry’s reformation in religion there had been debate for reform within the Catholic Church, inspired in particular by the so-called Humanists. They were fascinated by the rediscovered ancient texts of Greece and Rome, and in recent decades Western academics had, for the first time, learnt Greek as well as Latin. This allowed them to read earlier versions of the Bible than the medieval Latin translations, and to make new translations. As a change in meaning to a few words could question centuries of religious teaching so a new importance came to be placed on historical accuracy and authenticity.