Don’t know if this is a Great Debate as such. More like a hypothetical What If.
I read a short article on Jane Grey and I was wondering how English history would have turned out if she or one of her sisters had been a little smarter or luckier. If they had been a little more circumspect and had lived a normal lifespan, one of them probably would have been named to succeed Elizabeth when she died in 1603. The Tudors would have been replaced by the Greys (or Dudleys or Seymours) instead of the Stuarts. Of course if one of the Greys had had a winkie, they might have succeeded Edward in 1553.
I think that Lady Jane Grey and her husband Lord Guildford Dudley were doomed from the start - more as a result of their parents’ machinations than their own desires. However, Jane’s younger sister Lady Catherine could possibly have been more successful if she had played her cards right. She was, after all, a Protestant heir, and her right to succeed was specified in Henry VIII’s will - the same will that had excluded the Scots royal family, descendants of Henry VIII’s sister Margaret.
But Lady Catherine Grey stuffed up big time by contracting the secret marriage with Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford. Queen Elizabeth hated that sort of thing, especially if it allowed the bride to bear the ultimate prize - healthy sons. Silly Lady Catherine. Even had she succeeded, I suppose it would have given rise to a Seymour dynasty rather than a Grey dynasty.
The third Grey daughter, Lady Mary Grey, was deformed in some way (supposedly hunchbacked), so I doubt that she would ever have gained the top prize. But she too made the error of contracting a secret marriage, although only to an unimportant royal gatekeeper, thus forfeiting Queen Elizabeth’s trust and any hope of being considered her heir.
I guess the possibility I find more intriguing is the absense of the Stuarts rather than the addition of the Greys (who admittedly are historically little more than minor footnotes). If the Stuarts had stayed in Scotland, how would it have affected Anglo-Scottish history? If the Stuarts hadn’t ruled, would there have been a Civil War, a Protectorate, or a Glorious Revolution?
I wrote a play about Lady Jane, way back when. There’s no way she would’ve stayed Queen for longer than the 9 days she had. It would have been a disaster to try to continue. She was intelligent but incredibly undiplomatic and intolerant. she wasn’t raised with an eye to becoming queen material. She had a slender connection to the succession that John Dudley, who was being puppetmaster to the dying Edward, saw as a straw he could clutch at. He got Edward to put a blatantly obvious addition to the papers for succession (crammed between the lines) and married his son Guilford to Jane. (I can’t imagine Guilford being as sensitive or intelligent as Cary Elwes was in the film made about Lady Jane).
There wasn’t time to prepare for Edward’s death and what followed it, and they don’t seem to have tried. When the Royal Procession came on her day of coronation, people asked who she was – They were expecting Mary as queen. Even when you’ve got a royal paper putting you on the throne, you still need at least the acknowledgment of the governed. Mary was on the throne in just over a wekk, because she’s what was expected and prepared for. lady Jane might have lived, but her father and poet Thomas Wyatt and a bunch of others tried to stage an uprising with the aim of putting her on the throne, and nobody needed that kind of trouble, so she and Guilford got themselves shortened.
What little information there is about him indicates that he wasn’t. Apparently, he was prone to petulant fits. In the midst of the nine days of turmoil, he demanded that his wife have him crowned king. When Jane (reasonably enough) refused, he stormed away, went, literally, crying home to mama. His mother sent Jane a message stating that her son would not return to Jane until she saw reason and gave her boy what he wanted. Jane responded by ordering him returned for appearance’s sake and locking the gates of the Tower so that he, nor any other members of her dwindling “court” could jump ship.
Here, I have to disagree. Edward was known to be dying for quite a while before his final illness. No one expected him to survive to father children, marriage negotiations notwithstanding.
Mary did not want to have Jane executed, even after the second failed rebellion. She knew that none of this was Jane’s fault (though she welcomed Jane’s nasty, abusive mother to court with open arms.) It was Ambassador Renard who pressed the issue. He was the go-between for Mary’s marriage negotiations with Phillip of Spain. He told her that Phillip would not even consider the idea of coming to England to claim his bride as long as there was a living, protestant claimant to the throne. (A name around which rebellions of those who did not want Catholic rule could unite.)
Mary* really* wanted to marry her cousin Phillip*. She didn’t, however, want to kill her other cousin to get him. She came up with the idea that if Jane could be convinced to convert to Catholicism, she would thus be rendered useless to the rebels and Mary could let her live.
Jane refused the offer of clemency if it came with that price. She was quite content to be a martyr and end her “woeful days” at age sixteen. I don’t blame her-- life didn’t hold much appeal under the control of a childish, ill-tempered husband and cruel parents.
*Vaguely creepy historical note: Phillip had always called Mary his “aunt”. He wasn’t really her cousin (his grandmother was Mary’s mother Katherine’s sister.)
I wasn’t clear here – they knew Edward was dying, but it happened too suddenly when Guilford managed to get his key players in place. They certainly didn’t have time to prepare people for Lady Jane being their new queen.
They were victims of their own plot in that regards. The plan was certainly in motion long before Edward expired but they expected that once they presented the English people with a fait accompli, they would just accept it. All they had to do was hold out until Jane’s coronation. Once she was the annointed Queen, they couldn’t imagine any rebellion succeeding. (The annointing process was thought of as almost sacrosanct at that time-- sort of like a marriage to the people and a confirmation of God’s blessing on the new monarch. Many people were too superstitious to mess with that.)
The only way to get the English people used to the idea beforehand would have been to announce that she was the heir. They didn’t want to do that-- they wanted to keep Mary off guard for as long as possible because the moment Mary got wind of their plans, she would have started raising an army.
What they should have done if they wanted the polot to succeed was take Mary into custody “for her protection” before Edward died. It probably would have been easy to convince the dying little king that his sister or her supporters were conspiring against him and order her at least put under house arrest, if not conveyed to the Tower. Then, if they* really* wanted no opposition, they should have killed her. A public execution would have brought down the wrath of the Catholic world, but Mary was known to be “sickly.” Posioning her could have been covered up with little fuss. (Today, we would have a legend of “The Princess in the Tower” to go along with the sad tale of the little princes.)
Once the Catholic princess was gone and it was widely known that Jane was Edward’s heir, the English people probably would have accepted it a lot easier. Yeah, there would probably have been an easily-quashed rebellion or two, but I don’t think there would have been widely-supported uprisings.
Elizabeth would have been neutralized when Jane took the throne. Most people considered her of dubious legitimacy regardless of their faith and her main support came from the fact that she was “the protestant alternative” to Mary. If a protestant queen was on the throne, Elizabeth’s support would have waned. I envision that the Virgin Queen probably would have married at that point and possibly faded into the background of history. Would she have been happier?
How can you all be so naive?! England already has a Grey dynasty! You’ll find out – when the time comes for the so-called Windsors to take off their masks!
