Lady Jane Grey

Proclaimed queen of England in July 1553 and deposed after nine days, Lady Jane Grey occupied the throne more briefly than any other claimant in the country's modern history. She was born in 1537, the eldest daughter of Henry Grey, Marquess of Dorset and later Duke of Suffolk, and Frances Brandon. Through her mother, a daughter of Mary Tudor, the French queen, and Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, Jane was a great-granddaughter of Henry VII and stood in the line of succession established by Henry VIII's will after his own three children.

Jane received a rigorous humanist education and became one of the most learned young women of her generation, reading Greek and Latin and corresponding with continental reformers. She was firmly Protestant, a fact that made her useful to those seeking to prevent the accession of the Catholic Mary Tudor. In May 1553 she was married to Guildford Dudley, a younger son of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, the dominant figure in Edward VI's government.

As Edward VI lay dying in the summer of 1553, he set out a Devise for the Succession excluding his half-sisters Mary and Elizabeth and settling the crown on Jane. When the king died on 6 July, Northumberland and the council proclaimed Jane queen on 10 July, and she took up residence in the Tower of London. Support for her regime evaporated as Mary gathered forces in East Anglia, and on 19 July the council in London abandoned Jane and proclaimed Mary queen. Jane and her husband remained in the Tower, now as prisoners.

In November 1553 Jane was tried for high treason and condemned, though execution was initially suspended. The rebellion led by Thomas Wyatt early in 1554, in which her father took part, made her continued survival appear dangerous to Mary's government. Jane and Guildford Dudley were beheaded on 12 February 1554, she within the precincts of the Tower; her father followed days later. She was buried in the chapel of St Peter ad Vincula. Later generations, beginning with Protestant writers of the sixteenth century, treated her chiefly as a victim of her relatives' ambitions, and her brief reign is generally excluded from official lists of English monarchs.