Queen Elizabeth I had a unique relationship with her cousins. First of all, there were quite a few of them, if we count the ones from her mother’s side of the family as well as her father’s and secondly, although one would think that keeping her family close to her would be a good thing, in the turbulent background that the Tudors were set in, this also meant keeping her family close to the crown and without a naturally born heir, these family members could then become a threat to her throne and to Elizabeth herself.
A good example of this, would be the Grey sisters, Katherine, Jane and Mary, the daughters to Elizabeth’s aunt Mary Brandon. The most powerful of all these relationships for Elizabeth could be said to have been Lady Jane Grey.
Lady Jane Grey
Lady Jane Grey often pops up in the history books during the reigns of Elizabeth’s brother, King Edward VI and sister, Queen Mary I more than it does in Elizabeth’s, but it could be said that what happened in those reigns and how close Elizabeth may have been to Lady Jane at the time, could have given Elizabeth a very real example of how dangerous the Grey’s were to her reign, before it had even started.
Elizabeth would have known Lady Jane, when they both became under the protection of Catherine Parr, the last wife of Elizabeth’s father, King Henry VIII.
Jane was an extremely intelligent child before this, having had a very intensive education which included Greek and Latin. However in the February of 1547, Jane was sent into the household of Catherine Parr and her then husband Thomas Seymour, uncle to the then King Edward VI, so she could learn how to act in court. This would be where she would have no doubt communicated with Elizabeth as she was learning the same thing.
This arrangement would not last though, as Catherine was to pass away a year later in childbirth and Thomas Seymour would eventually be arrested for treason. Jane would return to Bradgate Park in Leicester, where it is believed she was born, to continue her studies and her love for books.
Before Thomas’s arrest for treason and while Jane was still under his protection, it has been suggested that Thomas pushed the idea that Jane could be a bride for King Edward, to possibly get himself out of trouble when things took a turn for the worse for him. Jane’s father claimed she would be better suited to the Lord Protector’s (Thomas’s brother, Edward) son. Nothing would become of these two marriage proposals however and Jane would eventually marry Lord Guildford Dudley, the son of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland and at the time, the second most powerful man in the country.
Then a document that was written up when Jane could have been just six years old, came back to possibly haunt her. In 1544, Henry VIII, now a very ill man had changed his will of who he wanted to succeed him. Of course, he wanted his only son and heir to take over but he had added both his daughters back into succession, when previously they had been written out. Planning ahead perhaps, Henry also wrote that if his children did not produce heir, after no doubt the struggle that he had, the line of succession should go to the male heirs of his sister’s children, Mary Tudor now Brandon, cancelling out his other sister’s children from Margaret, which would have had Scottish roots. This included Frances Brandon, Jane’s mother and any heirs of her daughters.
This was suggesting that any male heirs of Jane could indeed hold a right to the throne, but as the young King Edward became ill himself, he decided to change his father’s Act of Succession slightly to include Jane (as well as any children by her) as an more prominent heir, rising higher than his two sisters, Mary and indeed Elizabeth.
With the king’s death on the 6th July 1553, that it is suggested that Jane was told she would be Queen of England three days later, however it wasn’t officially announced until the 10th July 1553.
This would suggest something rather interesting in how we discuss Lady Jane Grey. Firstly, it is interesting that although in the May of 1553, she had married Lord Guildford Dudley, who it has been suggested tried to marry Margaret Clifford, Jane’s cousin first. However, it was decided that he should marry Jane instead, some say, due to the fact Jane was higher up the ladder of gaining the throne, Jane is still known to us today with her maiden name.
Secondly, with the king actually passing away on the 6th July 1553 and with him already have written his Act of Succession, Lady Jane Grey could be suggested as legally starting her reign from then, however this of course would mean the number of days she had reigned for and for which Jane has gone down in the history books as being, is incorrect.
With officially being proclaimed Queen of England, France and Ireland, she was then taken to the secure residence in the Tower of London, where English monarchs customarily resided from the time of accession until coronation.
However the people behind the pushing of Jane’s rise to the throne of England over the past King’s sisters, mainly the father of Jane’s husband were then thrown of guard.
Perhaps they had forgotten Jane’s educational background, her knowledge of how things were done correctly but Jane refused to name her husband Dudley as king, because that would have required an Act of Parliament.
Jane’s educational background could not help her keep her throne however against the might of Elizabeth’s sister, Mary I and on the 19th July 1553, England gained another new monarch. Jane was then imprisoned in the same Tower of London she had arrived in to become Queen of England as a traitor and usurper.
Her trial happened within the Guildhall of the City of London on 13th November 1553. She was found guilty mainly due to the documents she had signed as Jane, the Queen. The sentence was to be burned alive on Tower Hill or to be beheaded as the Queen pleases, but in a perhaps odd circumstance to how we may first picture Queen Mary I, this sentence was not given out straight away. Mary may have had a issue with murdering a once proclaimed Queen of England, even if her actions were to fight against this notion. Jane was left in the Tower of London, while her relation, Mary, thought about what to do with her.
Then the decision was taken out of Mary’s hands as the Wyatt’s rebellion of 1554 sealed Jane’s fate. This rebellion was due to the public’s dislike of Queen Mary I’s choice of husband, in Phillip of Spain, so it was thought to replace Queen Mary I, with Jane Dudley, or if you prefer Lady Jane Grey. Although, there was no proof that Jane was involved in this rebellion, it highlighted the threat Jane was to the Tudor throne, if she remained alive.
Her execution was first scheduled for 9th February 1554, but was then postponed for three days to give Jane a chance to convert to the Catholic faith. This, she did not do, so on the 12th February 1554, Jane was led to the scaffold.
Jane was buried in the church within the Tower of London, the same church that Elizabeth’s mother, Anne Boleyn had been buried in.
What effect did the circumstances of Lady Jane Grey have on Elizabeth and how did it affect her reign?
Elizabeth knew Jane from early childhood, Jane was even a relation of Elizabeth’s and they shared the same religion. Elizabeth knew first hand the intelligence of Jane and yet this did not save her. Jane was put into a position, not by her own wanting but by the men that surrounded her, including Elizabeth’s own half-brother and this did not save her. The fact that Jane got was buried in the same church as Elizabeth’s own mother, another suggested traitor by some, for reasons Elizabeth would always have to prove herself against, must, we can imagine, have hit hard, as well as making Jane’s situation easy to remember for Elizabeth in her later years, when history seemed to have repeated itself.
Did the fact that Elizabeth and her own sister, Mary, was so easily casted aside by the men behind the throne, due to religion and the faint family blood line, stay with Elizabeth?
Is this one of the reasons why, she ruled alone and was suspicious of anyone that had the faintest blood line to her throne in her reign?
Can we take this notion further and ask does this whole situation with Lady Jane Grey explain how Elizabeth acted and felt later with Jane’s siblings and even with Mary, Queen of Scots?
Elizabeth had felt close to Mary, Queen of Scots at the beginning, sharing insights and perhaps thinking of being a mentor to Mary. However Mary too had a claim to her throne through a blood line belonging to a sister of her father’s and in the end Elizabeth, much like her older half-sister Mary, had the same question to answer, how could a proclaimed queen kill another proclaimed queen?
And what would this act ultimately mean for the safety of all queens?
The answers to these questions are very open to debate, but when trying to understand Queen Elizabeth through the women that may have affected her reign and her actions, these questions are worth a moment to think about. As too are the questions that surrounded Lady Jane’s two sister’s stories that we will discuss later in this article.
Katherine Grey
Katherine Grey was younger than Lady Jane Grey but her story and her impact on Elizabeth I could be said to be no lesser because of that.
Born on 25th August 1540 in the family home of Bradgate Park in Leicester, Katherine was soon to be betrothed to Lord Henry Herbert, the heir to the title of Earl of Pembroke. A title that held some importance to the Tudor throne and had some connection albeit loose, to Elizabeth’s mother.
In 1553, when King Edward VI lay dying and changed the Act of Succession to include Katherine’s sister, Jane, what is not often mentioned is the fact that this also highlighted Katherine to the throne after her sister. This caused problems, in many ways.
Firstly, this then highlighted Katherine to the suspicious eyes of both Mary I and later Elizabeth I of her bloodline to the Tudor throne but secondly, with the downfall of her sister Jane, Katherine’s father-in-law chose to distance himself from the Grey family and to do this he sort an annulment for his son. This he got as the marriage between Katherine and Lord Henry Herbert was never consummated, this happened within the same year that her sister, Jane was executed, 1554.
However, with Mary I not naming her half-sister Elizabeth as heir (as still deemed illegitimate) in the first stages of Mary’s reign, and Mary was for a time unmarried, it could possibly mean that it was Katherine Grey who was second in line to the throne. This title Katherine was soon demoted from when Elizabeth was finally declared heir. This demotion wouldn’t last as throughout Elizabeth’s reign, the queen not producing an heir, meant that Katherine was once again thought of as an heir to the English throne.
You might think that to be the heir to the throne, Katherine was able to live in some ease and comfort, but this title was a double edge sword as no doubt Katherine had known from her older sister’s past situation.
Everything Katherine did was seen as a threat to Elizabeth and her throne, this was not helped by John Hales highlighting Katherine’s claim to the throne in his book. So when it was found out that Katherine had married without the Queen’s consent to the first Earl of Hertford and first Baron Beauchamp, a first cousin to Elizabeth’s half-brother, Edward VI, the bloodline made it seem as if there was an conspiracy to take Elizabeth’s throne. Especially when any children Katherine and Edward would have together would have a strong claim to Elizabeth’s throne too, Katherine was eight months pregnant when the news broke.
Elizabeth was not happy, she sent both Katherine and Edward into the Tower of London. However, they were allowed to see each other without the Queen’s knowledge and this produceed not just another child but another boy. Now Katherine had her two boys, Edward Seymour and his brother Thomas Seymour to use as a threat against Elizabeth, if she chose to and this made Elizabeth feel very uncomfortable with her position on the throne.
The name of one of these children, Thomas Seymour, may have hit harder to Elizabeth’s self-consciousness because of Elizabeth’s childhood connections with another Thomas Seymour, which led to Elizabeth being doubted, being accused, perhaps for the first time in her life. It led Elizabeth to come close to experiencing how fast a person could fall in the Tudor court, no matter how close they were to the throne and how fast someone could be subjected to being a prisoner within the Tower of London.
With all these feelings being suggested, it can still come as somewhat of a shock when in 1562, the powers that be, annulled the marriage between Katherine and Edward by the Archbishop of Canterbury, thus making any boy heirs illegitimate to gain the throne. – Chapman, Hester: Two Tudor Portraits: Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey and Lady Katherine Grey. Jonathan Cape, 1960.
When Katherine gave birth to her second healthy boy, she was then held as a prisoner for the rest of her life, just because of the suggested threat her blood contained. She was first held in the care of her uncle, Sir John Grey, then she was placed into the care of Sir William Petre, then the care of Sir John Wentworth, finally ending up at Cockfield Hall in Yoxford when she passes away with consumption on 26th January 1568.
However, not only had Katherine become a prisoner due to who her grandmother was, Elizabeth had also ordered the separation between Katherine and her husband and her eldest child. Her bloodline and perhaps the suspicions and curse of whoever wore the Tudor crown, made Katherine alone.
Katherine’s body was moved to Yoxford’s church in Suffolk before being buried at Salisbury Cathedral to finally lay beside her husband.
How did the story of Katherine Grey affect how we see Elizabeth’s reign?
This is an important question as looking at how Katherine Grey was treated by Elizabeth can lead us to see similarities to Mary, Queen of Scots, to a certain point. It may not show Elizabeth in good light, we may be able to see the unpleasant side to Elizabeth which may go against our normal perception of the Golden Queen.
The power, the might, the female icon of Queen Elizabeth I fades somewhat when we discuss the unpleasant traits of her. The suspicious, vain, cruel, perhaps even possibly selfish traits that can often be seen in her actions tend to sit uncomfortably with us as we try to describe her, but should it do so?
No one is perfect, no one shines with no stain upon their character for the entire existence of their lives. So could it be that Katherine’s situation and so how Katherine was treated within her lifetime be important to us today, to not only give Katherine Grey respect but to understand Elizabeth as a whole?
Does the story of Katherine Grey help us look past the image of possibly Anne Boleyn’s daughter, possibly the image of the true heir to King Henry VIII’s throne, albeit probably not in the form that Henry, himself had thought it would be in and possibly past the image the Glorious Gloriana.
Does the story of Katherine Grey help to not only give Katherine a moment to shine but allow us to discover the human being Queen Elizabeth I truly was, faults and all?
After all, how can we truly get close to understanding the people of the past if we don’t discuss the good with the bad?
Mary Grey
Perhaps the saddest of all the Grey sister’s stories is that of the youngest, Mary Grey. Born on 20th April 1545 and although when her mother passed away, she received a small income, Queen Elizabeth seemed, at first, to take Mary under her wing, by making her one of the Queen’s Maid’s of Honour. Compared to her other two sister’s lives, Mary’s seemed to have a good start, but wait the Grey/ Tudor curse was waiting in the wings…
However, oddly, when she must have seen the outcome of when her sister, Katherine did the same thing, Mary married without the Queen’s consent. On the 16th July 1565, Mary married the Queen’s Westminster porter, Thomas Keyes.
Not only was Thomas the Queen’s porter, he had succeeded his father, Richard, to the post of the Captain of Sandgate Castle.
In 1544, Thomas becomes the MP for Hythe in Kent, however this role seemed to be not to Thomas’s liking as he was fined for not appearing within the Houses of Parliament a year after gaining this post. He was prosecuted within the King’s bench court, but Thomas failed to attend that court case as well. However, luckily for Thomas, his court was ended with the death of the monarch, Mary I.
Thomas was then appointed porter of Westminster and it was here, in his chambers by the Watergate that he marries Mary Grey without the Queen’s consent. Once the news of the marriage had hit the ears of the Queen, she was not happy at all. She instantly thought Thomas had only married Mary to have a claim to her throne. Mary was put under house arrest and Thomas was thrown into Fleet prison. While in prison, Thomas wrote to William Cecil, the Queen’s Secretary, many times, even claiming that he would annul his marriage with Mary if that meant he could leave prison.
He was eventually allowed to leave prison in 1568, but he was not allowed to see his wife nor return to court, and he passed away on 5th September 1571, his wife still being under house arrest at the time.
Two years later, Mary was finally released from house arrest, and she went to live in a house of her own at St Botolphs Without Aldgate in the City of London. Events continue to improve for Mary, as by 1577, Mary was back as a Maid of Honour to Queen Elizabeth I and got given a pension of eighty pounds.
Sadly, the good times were not to last as Mary passed away in 1578 on her thirty third birthday, after catching the plague. She was buried in the same tomb as her mother within Westminster Abbey and although the Queen paid for a lavish funeral, she was not granted a name on her mother’s tomb, luckily for us and the respect to Mary Grey’s life, the archives allow us to know where Mary was buried- Westminster Abbey archives.
How did Mary Grey affect Queen Elizabeth I?
This may seem a hard question to debate, was there really a difference between Mary’s situation and her sister’s? They all had the same threat to Elizabeth’s throne and could be said to have been treated badly for it.
However with Mary’s situation, things seem a little less harsh. This may be because the other two sister’s had such a horrendous time of it, anything could seem to be less harsh compared to it, but it may suggest Elizabeth was learning, albeit all too late, that although the Greys may have indeed a claim to her throne, they may not actually have wanted it.
Although Elizabeth seems to have the same level of anger over the sisters marrying without her consent, Mary wasn’t thrown in the Tower of London for a long period of time, she was given house arrest instead. Elizabeth’s anger did not seem to have lasted as long and before Mary had died, she was back in her original role within the Elizabethan court.
Was this the affect Mary had given Queen Elizabeth, the ability to forgive when she had thought she had been treated badly.
When trying to understand Elizabeth through the eyes of the women who affected her reign, does Mary’s situation show us of an example where the famous intelligence of Elizabeth Tudor that she had as a child was still there, she was still learning in her older age?
Maybe, just maybe.
About the Author
Being a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and having studied history at university, Amanda has written academic papers for universities and special events including the Hampton Court Palace’s Field of the Cloth of Gold event.
Freelancing, Amanda has been a historical researcher for museums, books and television programmes on a range of subjects of different time periods. She has appeared on Sky History’s, History’s Greatest Myths television programme.
She is the author of The Boleyns: From the Tudors to the Windsors, published by Amberley Publishing.
Reviews of The Boleyns: From the Tudors to the Windsors –
‘The Boleyns provides a fascinating summary of the lives of some of the Boleyns’ descendants. With adulteresses, soldiers, statesmen, and queens numbered amongst their progeny, it provides a great overview of the later history of a family usually overshadowed by their most famous member.’ — Elizabeth Norton
‘A glittering evocation of the Boleyn family’s rise.’ — Dr Owen Emmerson, Castle Historian, Hever Castle
‘In taking the long view of the Boleyns, this wonderful book offers a genuinely fresh perspective on one of the most famous families in British history. The executioner’s sword might have brought Anne’s story to a brutal close, but her bloodline would endure far beyond that of Henry VIII and is still part of the royal family today.’ — Tracy Borman.
Amanda has written articles for many magazines, websites and societies, including: Dan Snow’s History Hit, The Anne Boleyn Files, The Whitechapel Society Journal, The Charles Dickens Society and Tudor Secrets and Myths Facebook page.
Her other historical non-fiction books include:
● The award winning, Martha, the life and times of Martha Tabram, a suggested victim of Jack the Ripper.
● The award-winning, Inspector Reid: The Real Ripper Street.
● The Cutbush Connections: In Blood, In Flowers and in the Ripper case, the life, the cases and the family of Superintendent Charles Henry Cutbush.
She is currently working on a number of historical projects, including another book with Amberley Publishing to follow The Boleyns: From the Tudors to the Windsors, due to published in 2025.
ahpurse's Blog: Tudor and Victorian Historian 