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

the mayor and aldermen, to pray for the Queen. It seemed their prayers were soon answered. At two o’clock the following morning, on the eve of the feast of St Edward, Henry VIII’s longed-for son, soon also to be christened Edward, was born. By 9 a.m. on that pivotal morning, Dorset was with the large crowd at the door of the medieval church of St Paul’s, singing the Te Deum. When the great hymn of thanks was finished volleys of gunfire were shot from the Tower and hogsheads of wine were set out for the poor to drink. The long-term security and peace of the nation hinged on having an undisputed succession and people of all religious persuasions now rejoiced at the birth of their prince.¹⁸

      As the nation celebrated in the days ahead, Frances joined Dorset and together they made frantic efforts to arrange for permission to be at court for Edward’s christening. It was an event the entire nobility and royal family wished to attend, and Frances’s father had been invited to be godfather at the confirmation that followed immediately after the baptism. But, to their frustration, they found that they were not to be allowed back to Hampton Court. There had been several plague deaths in Croydon, where Dorset’s mother had a property. They hadn’t visited her recently, but no chances were being taken with the possible spread of disease to the palace.¹⁹

      Such precautions would not save the Queen. Days later Jane Seymour suffered a massive haemorrhage, probably caused by the retention of part of the placenta in her womb. She was given the last rites two days after her son’s christening and died on 24th October. Frances was bequeathed several pieces of the Queen’s jewellery, pomanders and other trinkets,²⁰ and while she and Dorset had missed the royal baptism, they took leading parts in the state funeral in November. Dorset, his father-in-law the Duke of Suffolk, and four other courtiers, rode alongside the horse-drawn chariot that bore Jane Seymour’s coffin in procession to Windsor. It was surmounted by her effigy, painted to look lifelike and dressed in robes of state, with her hair loose, and rings on her fingers set with precious stones: the wooden dummy of a woman who had served her purpose. Riding immediately behind it, on a horse trapped in black, was the King’s elder daughter, the Princess Mary, who acted as chief mourner. The child who, thirteen years earlier, when her father was almost killed at the joust, had been his undisputed heir, was now a grown woman, twenty-one and pretty, with his pink and white complexion, and a painfully thin frame. She had seen her late mother humiliated in her father’s quest for a son, and Parliament brought into the divine process of the succession to deny her her birthright. But the vagaries of fate are uncertain. Under the Act of Succession of the previous year, Henry had been granted the right to nominate his heirs, and Mary knew she could yet be restored in line to the throne, despite having been declared illegitimate.

      Behind Mary, sitting in the first of the chariots bearing the great ladies of the court, sat Frances, dressed in black and attended by footmen in demi-gowns.²¹ The procession then continued with the mourners in descending order of precedence so that at its very end even the servants walked according to the rank of their masters. ‘The heavens themselves, the planets and this centre, Observe degree, priority and place,’ Shakespeare wrote later in Troilus and Cressida;

       Take but degree away, untune that string, And hark, what discord follows…Strength should be lord to imbecility, And the rude son should strike his father dead. This chaos, when degree is suffocate, Follows the choking. ²²

^* Salt was used in Catholic baptism until the 1960s: a small amount was placed on a baby’s lips as a symbol of purity and to ward off evil.

       Chapter II First Lessons

      Some of Jane Grey’s first memories must have been of the magnificent family seat at Bradgate Manor in the Midlands, even if she was not born there.¹ It was the first unfortified house in Leicestershire, a palace of rose-red brick patterned in diamonds of deep lilac, that Dorset’s father and grandfather had built as an airy replacement for the ancient castle whose stones still lay nearby. The peace and order heralded with the advent of the Tudors meant everything about the house could be done with an eye to beauty or pleasure. In place of thick walls pierced by narrow openings, large mullioned windows let in the light and its towered wings marked the outer points of a welcoming U-shaped courtyard.

      The family’s private rooms, including Jane’s bedchamber, and the cot she slept in as an infant, were in the west wing. There was a chapel where, as she grew older, she said her prayers, and a small kitchen. The west wing housed the servants’ hall, a bakery, brewery and the main kitchen, which was constantly busy. Her father entertained here generously and when he was in residence the house was packed with at least three dozen of his retainers as well as visitors and members of the extended family. For the most part the household ate together in the great hall, an 80-foot-long room in the centre of the house, kept warm by a large fireplace. There was a dais at one end, where the family ate in state and a gallery the other end where music was played.

      Jane reached what was, in religious tradition, the age of reason, when she was seven. She was small for her age, but with a fiery character to match her reddish hair and a quick, articulate intelligence. She was said later by a contemporary to be her father’s favourite daughter.² She was certainly proving every inch his child. It was a time for her adult education to begin and a year later, in 1545, an impressive new tutor arrived to oversee her studies. John Aylmer had been introduced to Dorset when he was still only a schoolboy and the marquess had paid for his education until he graduated from Cambridge that year. He was a brilliant academic and had been picked by the marquess for his post over several other clever young men of whom he was patron.

      Jane had also, by now, two younger sisters, whose adult education had yet to begin. The middle sister, Katherine, turned five that August, the same month their grandfather, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, died.³ Affectionate and golden-haired, Katherine preferred her pets to Jane’s books, but she was the beauty of the sisters. In the limnings, or miniatures, painted by the court artist Lavina Teerlinc she resembles her lovely grandmother, the King’s late younger sister, Mary Tudor, the French Queen.

      The youngest of the three sisters, Mary Grey, was still only a baby at this time and it may not yet have been apparent that there was anything wrong with her. But Mary was never to grow normally. As an adult she was described as the smallest person at court, ‘crook backed’ and ‘very ugly’. It has even been conjectured that she was a dwarf. Whatever the truth, Mary Grey had something of the best qualities of both her sisters, with Katherine’s warmth and Jane’s intelligence, as well as the strong spirit they all shared. If her parents were disappointed with her in any way, there is no record of it.⁴

      Life at Bradgate was idyllic for the sisters. There were extensive gardens for them to play in, as well as the great park, which was the glory of the house. A medieval village had been destroyed to create the illusion of a perfect wilderness covering several square miles at the edge of Charnwood Forest. Here was a place ‘more free from peril than the envious court’, where you could find ‘tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything’.⁵ The children could walk their father’s prize greyhounds, or accompany their mother and her friends as they hunted deer with longbow and arrows.⁶ On rainy days there were also other amusements inside.

      Dolls were popular toys of the period and the types the sisters enjoyed are described in a later inventory of items in Jane’s possession. ‘Two little babies in