Beheaded Jane Grey had Derbyshire blood

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Reluctant monarch Lady Jane Grey was just 15 when she was ascended the throne. She was beheaded less than a year later. Maxwell Craven traces her Derbyshire links.

Derbyshire can legitimately lay claim to the unfortunate Queen Jane, left, who was placed on the throne of England by a conniving father-in-law as the white hope of the Protestant succession on July 10, 1553, following the death of Edward VI.

Lady Jane Grey, as she is more usually known, was a member of an old and distinguished Anglo-Norman family. Henry de Grey, of Thurrock, had inherited the extensive manor of Codnor, which included Heanor and Langley (Mill), with its castle guarding the Erewash valley by 1201.

The family remained there until the 6th Lord Grey of Codnor died without a legitimate heir in 1496.

A younger son of the family, John Grey, was from Shirland, and his descendants, the Lords Grey, of Wilton in my native Herefordshire, produced yet another branch, summoned to Parliament as Lords Grey of Ruthyn.

One of this branch married the heiress of Lord Ferrers, of Groby in Leicestershire, thus acquiring that wonderful wilderness, Bradgate Park.

Of all the Greys, this branch became most upwardly mobile. Sir Thomas Grey, a nephew by marriage of Edward IV, acquired the Earldom of Huntingdon and Marquessate of Dorset within four years of each other.

The 3rd Marquess married a great heiress, the daughter of upstart Charles Brandon, whose elevation to the Dukedom of Suffolk owed everything to his marriage to Mary, Henry VIII’s sister.

This made Dorset’s three daughters first cousins of the new King, Edward VI.

Dorset cosied up to Henry VIII and, in 1541, was himself made Duke of Suffolk.

He was a weak yet ambitious character and was naturally flattered when his eldest daughter, Jane, was married to the fourth son of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, becoming Lady Jane Dudley. Northumberland was the most powerful man in England at the time, effective ruler while the King was a minor.

So, when King Edward VI died on July 6, 1553, leaving a Catholic heir, Mary – Northumberland, ostensibly to preserve the Protestant succession, but really to preserve his own power as regent – parachuted poor 15-year-old Jane into power.

What he failed to recognise was that the population were not wholly behind the rigid Protestantism of Edward VI and were still recovering from the traumas of the Reformation of 17 years earlier.

Most were quite happy to have Catholic Mary succeed. Indeed, if Mary had not married Philip II of Spain and pursued her restoration of the Catholic faith less vindictively, the Church of England might have withered on the vine.

When the reluctant Jane was proclaimed Queen on July 10, Mary fled to Norfolk. However, it became clear within days that the country would not support Queen Jane’s accession and, after nine days, she was persuaded to abdicate and was lodged in the Tower of London along with her father, while Northumberland went to the block.

Amazingly, Mary let Jane’s father out after a short time, and she would have released Jane, too, once she was confident her position was secure, but for Suffolk’s stupidity. He just couldn’t stop meddling.

Before 1553 was out, he had joined up with another Protestant plotter, Sir Thomas Wyatt, who went so far as to raise an army to topple Mary by force. On February 3, 1554, 3,000 men, led by Suffolk and Wyatt, advanced on the capital but were thwarted again by lack of support.

The rebels were planning to restore Jane to the throne rather than Mary’s Protestant sister, Elizabeth. The upshot of this botched attempt at a coup was that Wyatt and Suffolk followed Northumberland to the block.

Unfortunately, the inescapable conclusion was that with Jane alive, some other madcap grandee might again try to depose Mary, so the now 16-year-old was also condemned to death.

On February 12, 1554, the beautiful and, we are told, intelligent teenage ex-Queen was led to the scaffold on a cold and misty morning and beheaded – the victim of the vanity and folly of her father and father-in-law.

It was a tragic end for a young woman of great promise and of Derbyshire ancestry.

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