

Your Questions on Lady Jane Grey and Tudor History Answered
Email to me your questions on Lady Jane Grey or Tudor history and
I will attempt to answer them as quickly and as thoroughly as possible.
Historian [at] somegreymatter.com *
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a) what level you are at in your studies (i.e., elementary or high school,
university undergraduate, graduate student),
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Historian [at] somegreymatter.com
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Updated 18 December 2007
Copyright © 2007, John Stephan Edwards
May not be reproduced in part or in whole without the author's permission.
David N. asks: I read recently that Jane Grey's birthday has changed. What is that about?
Answer: The exact date of Lady Jane Grey's birth has never been known. Traditionally, she has been said to have been born in the same week, even on the same day, as Henry VIII's son Prince Edward (Jane's cousin). Documents of the period suggest that this is not possible, however. Oxford University Press will be publishing an article in their journal Notes and Queries in September of 2007 in which it is argued that Jane must have been born before July 1537. The exact date remains a mystery, however, because birth certificates did not yet exist and no baptismal record for Jane or her sisters survives.
Anon. asks : I am curious about the austere background and strong cast shadow in the Eworth portrait? That doesn't seem typical of Tudor portraits. Is the shadow prophetic?
Answer: The background is indeed unusual among Tudor-era portraits. Sitters in the period were more commonly depicted in an elaborately decorated setting. At least one art historian thinks the lack of rich background in this portrait may indicate that the sitter is an unknown foreign lady. While this is certainly possible, it is also conceivable that Eworth simply chose to emphasize the sitter rather than allowing the setting to distract the eye of the viewer. See, for example, his portrait of Anne Penruddocke, which has an equally austere backdrop. As to the second question, if the painting was created during Jane Grey's lifetime, the shadow cannot be intentionally prophetic of her fate since that outcome was not yet even guessed at. The shadow cannot be anything more than an ironic coincidence.
Hariette asks: I'm a high school student in Australia basing my historical investigation on Tudor Women. I particularly grew interested in Lady Jane Grey and I need a historical debate to further my research on her, except I find it hard to develop such a question. I came up with minor questions like: - What were the constraints put upon Lady Jane? - How have historians written about Lady Jane Grey, from that time in contrast to the present day? But my teacher wants more. Can you please help me develop some historical questions concerning Jane?
Answer: Since it your assignment to come up with the questions, I'm not going to give them to you outright, but I can offer a few directions in which you might begin thinking. On your first question, "what were the constraints put upon Lady Jane Grey," try refining that one general question into several specific ones. In other words, think about the areas or aspects of her life in which she might have been constrained (for example, religion, childhood, marriage, even being queen), then ask what kinds of constraints she may have faced in that specific area. Think about where those constraints came from, and why they existed at all. Why would anyone want to constrain a queen? Aren't queens in charge? So what was it about Jane or her era that made anyone think they needed to constrain her? Think about larger issues in society, issues that affected entire groups rather than individuals. I think your second question is far more interesting and certainly a major question, but perhaps more difficult for you to answer unless you have easy access to a good university library. In particular, you might think about why historians in different periods might have written differently about Jane Grey (and they certainly did!). Try looking at the bibliography page of this website, and notice the different dates when some of the works were published (Strickland, Davey, Chapman, Plowden, Taylor). Think about what might have been going on at those times that might have affected how writers thought about Jane. Here's a clue: Strickland wrote mostly about women, and she wrote at a time when society actually wanted women to be "perfect angels," quiet, obedient to fathers and husbands, studious, religious, saint-like. Was Strickland affected by this Victorian notion of ideal womanhood, and did it affect how she presented Jane Grey, did it guide her choice of words? Hopefully this will help a bit. And good luck with your assignment!
Natalie asks: I am a third year undergraduate student of history in a UK university and am attempting to write a dissertation on Lady Jane Grey and the 1553 succession. At the moment I'm struggling to find credible primary material and was wondering if you could help.
Answer: Primary source material for Jane Grey is scarce, when compared to the amount available for some of her royal contemporaries,especially Elizabeth and Mary Tudor. And much of what there is has not been published in printed form, but must instead be accessed using original handwritten documents stored in various archives in the United Kingdom. The British Library (BL) has the largest collection of these. Since you are at a UK university, have a look at my Primary Source Bibliography page, where I list all of the handwritten documents related to Jane Grey that are accessible in the BL and other UK archives. Among printed sources, many are rare books that are not readily available to most students and researchers. If your local university or public library subscribes to the online database Early English Books Online (EEBO), however, you can find there a large number of valuable sources. EEBO allows subscribers to read tens of thousands of books printed before 1800 by means of digital scans. It is also fully searchable. It is an outstanding resource for anyone studying early modern British history. If your local library does not subscribe to EEBO, however, you will have to find a specialty research library that has a substantial rare books collection in order to access those materials.
Ani asks: I am a high school student who wants to major in history at college, get a PhD, and become a professor of Tudor history. Any advice?
Answer: First, I wish you the very best of luck with your studies and fulfilling your dreams! Teaching, at any level, is an admirable profession.
That said, I encourage you to be very realistic about your plan to accomplish your goal. There are exceptionally few jobs out there, especially in the US, for college and university teachers of Tudor history, or even general British history. I cannot emphasize enough how few they really are. And that scarcity is unlikely to improve. Yet there are literally hundreds of unemployed PhDs already qualified who want those few jobs. So to make yourself as competitive as possible in such a difficult job market:
You need to have nearly perfect grades, certainly a 3.9 or higher.
You need to be very careful about which undergaduate program you attend. It needs to be among the top 20 in the country. "US News and World Report" magazine publishes a ranking of schools every year. "Google" it and read it.
Apply to the top schools. Go to a top-ranked school if at all possible.
While an undergrad, make sure your grades stay at 3.9 or higher.
Take any and all honors level courses that you can.
Try to get a small article or paper published in an academic journal while still an undergrad. That is difficult to do, but it will greatly improve your chances of getting in to a top grad school.
When you go to grad school, try to get into and attend on the the top ten schools: Columbia, Univ of Wisconsin- Madison, UC-Berkeley, Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Univ of Chicago, Stanford, UCLA, Univ of Michigan-Ann Arbor. PhDs from those schools are more likley to get hired into the few available jobs that are those from less prestigious schools. That is just an unfortuntate and unfair reality, and anyone who says otherwise is misleading you.
Join the various professional organizations: The American Historical Association, The North American Conference on British Studies, The Sixteenth Century Society, The Renaissance Society of America, and others. Each has a website. Attend their national conventions. Try to get a paper accepted for presentation at the regional or national conferences. "Network" with those attending the conferences so that they will begin to be familiar with your name.
Certainly you should try to get at least one article or paper published while still in grad school. Being a university professor involves not only teaching but also constant publishing. The cliche is "Publish or Perish." The earlier in your career that you begin publishing, the better that your employment and promotion chances are likely to be.
If you have any specific questions or need any guidance over the coming months or years, please, always feel free to contact me. And again, Best of luck!
Veronica asks: I am a high school student who has chosen Lady Jane Grey as a model for a history project, and I have only one question. I have read conflicting evidence on Lady Jane being poisoned. I know we may never be able to tell for sure, but what is your opinion on the matter?
Answer: An excellent question! Jane did claim to have been poisoned by her mother-in-law, the Duchess of Northumberland, with whom she seems to have had on-going conflict. In my opinion, however, what Jane really suffered was a kind of psychosomatic disorder. That is, she was so anxious about how her life was going that she literally "made herself sick" with worry, much like modern people developing ulcers from stress. In the early modern period and well into the nineteenth century, illnesses that could not be easily explained by the limited level of medical knowledge of the day was often ascribed to poisoning. And while some people were occasionally poisoned (usually accidentally rather than deliberately), it was only very rarely that someone could accurately claim to have been intentionally poisoned.
Norma asks: In your opinion do you think that Jane consummated her marriage to Guildford Dudley, and do you think she had any feelings whatsoever for him? Depending on what book you read she either had feelings for him or he raped her.
Answer: Jane's marriage was consummated, yes. There is ample primary source evidence to support this conclusion. Later suggestions that it was not consummated are based on two things. First, Ambassador Scheyfve erroneously stated that it was not, an error based on his failure to understand English marriage customs and on his confusion between the three Grey daughters all married or betrothed on May 21, 1553. Second, Protestant martyrologists like John Foxe and John Bale downplayed her marriage and mentioned it only briefly and in passing. They did not directly address the issue of consummation, partly because actively mentioning it served no purpose. But failing to mention it, coupled with minimizing mention of the marriage itself, did serve a purpose. In order to present Jane as an ideal female martyr, it was more "politic" to allow readers to assume that she might have been a virgin. For females to be considered true martyrs, virginity was a huge asset. Sexually mature females were considered less pure, and therefore more problematic as martyrs. Issues of female purity also affected how Victorian era writers presented Jane, so that they were more prone, I believe, to continue the myth that she died a virgin, or that the loss of her virginity was involuntary.
Norma also asks: Didn't Mary I give Jane the chance to save her own life if Jane would renounce her religion and hold to the Catholic faith? So many books with varying stories once again, I'm afraid.
Answer: The story about Jane's life being spared if she would convert is actually a later misunderstanding of the events during the last three days of Jane's life. Mary sent her own confessor, Abbot John de Feckenham, to plead with Jane to accept the Catholic faith before her death. Mary did not do this in an effort to save Jane's life, however. Jane's death was by then irrevocable. Mary did it instead to save Jane's soul. Mary was somewhat fanatic about her faith, and was convinced that her young cousin would "burn in hell forever" unless she accepted the Roman faith. If circumstances required Mary to cause Jane suffering on earth, Mary meant to alleviate any eternal suffering. But because Jane had become a focus for Protestant rebels to Mary's Catholic regime, Jane's death was a political necessity.
Mona asks: Some writers have said that Jane was examined just before her death by some matrons to see if she was pregnant. The well known Chronicle of Queen Jane and Queen Mary does not mention this. Do you think this was an invention by later writers?
Answer: No, I do not think it was an "invention," but at the same time, there is no direct documentation of any kind to suggest that Jane was examined. There is sketchy evidence that some condemned women were occasionally examined by a team of two or three midwives prior to their being executed in an effort to determine whether or not they were pregnant. This does not appear to have been a routine or standard practice, however, at least not in the mid sixteenth century. From what I have been able to discover, none of the other women executed in the mid-Tudor period were examined in this way (e.g., Anne Boleyn, Katherine Howard, Anne Askew). And there is no documentation of any kind that Jane was examined. I suspect it is a colorful addition to her story and that the addition was based in the fact that some women, especially those in later centuries, were occasionally examined.
Mona also asks: In her book Lady Jane Grey, Hester W. Chapman mentioned that Jane’s body was left on the scaffold for a while after her execution and before it was buried, and that the French ambassador saw it. Is this a verifiable fact, and from where? (Prof. adds to this question a related one that also occurs frequently: People often say they have heard stories that Jane was not, in fact, buried in the chapel at the Tower, but was instead buried elsewhere.)
Answer: Again, there is little documentary evidence for this story other than that
provided by the ambassador. But in this case, there is circumstantial evidence
to support the claim. By the time Jane was executed in Feb 1554, Queen Mary had begun the process of returning the English Church to the Roman communion. As part of that process, St Peters-ad-Vincula had, by Feb 1554, become once again a Roman Catholic royal chapel. And according to Roman Catholic burial practices, no person may be buried on sacred ground unless they are confessed and absolved Roman Catholics. Since Jane, Guildford, and Henry Grey had all refused to accept Roman Catholicism in the days and hours before their deaths, it is entirely plausible that they were denied burial in the Catholic chapel of the Tower. Richard Davey and other modern writers do contend that their burial was delayed while special permission was sought from Queen Mary (and perhaps the Archbishop) to inter them within the chapel even though they were not Catholics. I have as yet found no record of any such permission being sought. Nor have I discovered any solid documentation that they were denied burial in the chapel. But neither is there any solid documentary proof that they were buried there. No contemporary source mentions the disposal of her body. Even the Chronicle of Queen Jane, which offers great detail on her last moments, says nothing about what happened after the axe fell.
That said, there is today still a small plaque on the left-hand side of the altar with the chapel stating that the bones of Jane Grey and several others lie underneath a side altar, having been moved there from elsewhere in the chapel during a "restoration" of the chapel in the mid nineteenth century. Whether this is factual or a Victorian invention, I cannot say. At least one nineteenth century source describing the restoration of the chapel states that none of the bones discovered were identified as being those of Jane Grey Dudley.
For my own part, I suspect that Jane, Guildford, and Henry were buried in the chapel. Mary was usually a bit forgiving when it came to relatives, even in matters of religion. She allowed the funeral of her brother Edward VI to be conducted according to the Protestant English Book of Common Prayer of 1552 and allowed him to be buried in Westminster Abbey, itself another royal chapel, despite the fact that he was clearly not a confessed and absolved Catholic at the time of his death. I see no reason why she would not have extended the same courtesies to Jane, Guildford and Henry, especially so early in the reign when she was still eager to gain the support of Protestants opposed to her marriage to Philip. And had they not been properly buried in the chapel, but instead been carted off somewhere, I have to suspect that Protestant polemicists like John Foxe would have made much of that fact. Since they do not mention it, I suspect the burials were within the Tower's chapel.
Mona further asks: Jane had accused the Duke of Northumberland of poisoning her. Somewhere in your website I think [above on this page], you mention that Jane actually accused his wife instead. Can you clarify?
Answer: In the only contemporary relation of Jane's own account of the events of July 1553, Il Successi d'Inghilterra by Giovanni Commondone, Jane is quoted as saying that it was the Duchess of Northumberland who attempted to poison her. This appears to have been changed in later centuries to the Duke. Through a bit of artistic license in making the Duke the culprit, later writers were able to create a more dramatic relationship between he and Jane. I give greater credence to Commendone's account than to those of later writers.