Lady Jane Grey: A Tudor Mystery (Tudor Mysteries) [Hardcover]

Lady Jane Grey is familiar in popular imagination as the "Nine Days' Queen." (she was declared Queen but never crowned)

She was a granddaughter of Henry VIII's sister Mary, by Mary's second marriage to Charles Brandon. Thus Jane was a great-niece to Henry and a first cousin once removed to his son, the young Edward VI. Edward ignored Henry's will in his notorious "Device for the Succession." Cutting out his two half-sisters Mary and Elizabeth, Edward nominated Jane -like himself, a strict Protestant - "and her heirs male." Ives contends that Edward wished, like his father, to guarantee a male succession.

Given Ives's usual academic approach, this is a fresh, readable biography, tight and well organised. He eschews the view of Jane as the "usual hapless victim of political intrigue and Protestant martyr." Instead, he portrays "an accomplished young woman with a fierce personal integrity, and England's outstanding female scholar."

Ives pierces behind events to make them comprehensible. Part 1, The Scene, first assesses 1553, when Edward died aged 14, as "The Year of Three Sovereigns." After reconstructing Jane's appearance and personality via her portraits and letters, the chapter "Jane Grey in Context" gives a brilliant political background. The excellent Part 2, The Protagonists, explores the circumstances and motivations of Jane Grey, Mary Tudor, John Dudley - whose son, Guilford, Jane married - and Edward VI. Part 3, Thirteen Days, deals with Jane's Queenship and Mary Tudor's successful uprising; Part 4 gives the descent, execution, aftermath, and resonance down the succeeding centuries. In his pensive, elegiac "Envoi," Ives concludes that although Jane "counted for little," she is one of "brutality's victims who have no choice."

Compared to Leanda de Lisle's fiery The Sisters Who Would be Queen: The Tragedy of Mary, Katherine and Lady Jane Grey this is an elegant and measured work. Equally worth reading. Ives astutely penetrates to the heart of Jane's individual tragedy without losing any of the drama.

Other than its title suggests, this book is essentially an analysis of the year 1553. However, Lady Jane's entire life and works are presented with many discussions of detail. A final chapter details her afterlife in the arts, novels, movies, and so on. Additionally, the young King Edward VI, his chief minister John Dudley Duke of Northumberland, and Mary Tudor, Edward's much older half-sister, are each given a short but fascinating biography. Ives thoroughly reassesses Edward's last will, "My devise for the succession" and draws some remarkable conclusions. In other aspects, in the light of what has been written by Diarmaid MacCulloch, David Loades, Stephen Alford, and even W.K. Jordan, his arguments are not always as new as they might seem. However this is no bad thing. Ives's greatest achievement is that he overcomes hindsight, one of the most frequent and serious sins in historians. Another very agreeable thing is his fairness towards all the players. Unlike some other accounts, his book refrains from distorting evidence to make more spectacular points; nevertheless it is a thrilling read, and also a moving one.

Like his previous work on Anne Boleyn, this book is essentially a thorough, well researched and meticulous presentation of an event, namely being the proclamation of a relatively remote Tudor claimant to the throne, the subsequent ramifications which unfolded because of it and the series of events which preceded it.
When one analyses the case closely, it does seem to be a rather obscure event, but the reasons for catapulting a young, shy, sixteen year old granddaughter of Mary Tudor in favour of her more formidable cousin, Mary, have over the centuries been explained away by the deviousness or ambitions of her parents, and in particular, John Dudley, the then Duke of Northumberland, who has gone down in history as the prerogarator of the whole affair.
Ives' work however very interestingly challenges this theory (which has been conventionally accepted by even some of the most senior and respected historians of our time) whilst not discrediting Jane in the process.

Ives reveals that Dudley was an accomplished soldier (more suited to the military than career politics) who had to contend very early on in life with the ramifications of his father's execution for treason shortly after the accession of Henry VIII, and uses a series of contemporary letters and accounts written by Dudley to support his assertion, that far from courting controversy (and ambition), Dudley was actually a paranoid and insecure individual where the executive was concerned, constantly fearing that he would become victim to court gossip or the disfavour of the monarch as his father and some of his contemporaries had done.
Ives also contests that far from actively encouraging the downfall of his rival, Edward Seymour, Dudley supported and sustained Seymour during his tenure as Protector insofar as was possible and that it was he, rather than the popular Seymour, who encountered Public dissatisfaction as a result of recession, levies and poor management conducted by Seymour which in turn led to higher public taxation.
This is an argument I have rarely encountered in other works however Ives makes a convincing argument for the case that Dudley, far from being the scrupulous and conniving individual depicted of late, was a man committed to his government, work, religion (only converting to Catholicsm before his execution in exchange for a vain promise of life) and touchingly dedicated to his wife, family and even his various sons and daughters-in-law.

Indeed, so impressed was I with this depiction of Dudley's character and the conviction with Ives' arguments, that I also found myself questioning why this man had gone down in history for his notorious role in this event, although as Ives also admits, his protagonists' claims have not entirely been without foundation, with regard to Dudley marrying Guildford off to Jane and contracting almost last-minute alliances with the Earl of Pembroke for instance before Edward's demise in May 1553, thus indicating that he was clearly aware of the state of Edward VI's health at this time and Edward's wishes for the future of the monarchy.

Yet, Ives convincingly argues that Edward's devise for the succession was entirely his own invention and not that of Dudley. One example he cites to support this assertion is Dudley's apparent recognition of Mary as heir in February 1553, and furthermore, no contemporary courtier or ambassadorial account seems to indicate that any plot or anything else was seriously afoot (this was not the case in relation to the downfall of Anne Boleyn in 1536).
Dudley's role in these events only comes into prominence when Edward's health takes a serious turn for the worse, leading to Edward's "devise" as it would be called, supplanting his sisters as heirs in favour of the legitimate, Grey and her "heirs male".
As we can see from the vivid description of the devise, it was incredibly idealistic, unpractical and ultimately, unworkable, appointing the succession to any of the male heirs of Mary Tudor (who were all coincidentally female) and leaving the female parent to rule as regent until that male had reached the age of majority.
As Ives points out, such a devise was unrealistic, and as it could clearly have benefitted the heirs of Eleanor Brandon, or the remaining two Grey sisters and very possibly led to rival factions and conflict between the various heiresses, one analysing the plot in great depth, (in concert with Ives' assertions) would hardly conclude that this was the work of John Dudley.
Nevertheless the full details of the devise is divulged here in fascinating detail and surely reveals as much about the idealistic but deluded Edward at this time as it does about the other two main characters in the plot, Dudley and Jane.

Ives' focus on Jane is also equally as fascinating and lucid, revealing this girl to have been a formidable intellect as well as a devoted reformer, who may have, like her cousin Elizabeth, similarly harboured some attachment towards Thomas Seymour and was certainly in her element when brought up under the guardianship of the Queen Dowager, Katherine Parr.

All in all, I was very impressed with this work, although I have to agree that the title is slightly misleading, choosing not to focus on Jane's life as a whole but on the events which precipitated and succeeded her nine day rule in 1553. However, Ives does delve into some depth on Jane's early life, her rigorous and scholarly upbringing for example, and the religious life with which she was exposed to at her home in Bradgate, which became a sort of staple home for the trendy, up and coming reformist circles of the 1550s.

One aspect of Ives' work which I do not agree with is his conclusion that Jane was the legitimate heir to the throne. As he himself attests in his book, the devise which was so avidly postulated by Edward VI, was practically unworkable anyway and was also based on Edward's manipulation of Henry VIII's 1536 Act of Succession and subsequent Will, which meant that conjointedly, despite Mary and Elizabeth having been declared "illegitimate" by the same Act, he was able to appoint a successor of his own choosing, which is what he did when nominating Mary and Elizabeth as heirs in 1547, should Edward fail to produce any issue.

As Ives states, this reasoning might well have been lost on the majority of the lay population of the day, nevertheless, the "natural" rules of succession based on hereditary right (which would become a sore point for Elizabeth on the point of Mary, Queen of Scots in her reign) was a popular concept both known to the lay people and the nobility alike and would have settled the matter, coupled with the argument that Henry's first two marriages were contracted in "good faith", thus arguing Mary & Elizabeth's technical legitimacy.

However, disagreements on the conclusion aside - this is nevertheless a truly magnificent piece of work on the demise of a remarkable and talented young girl. This work illuminates on the events which lead to this dramatic tragedy and Ives also introduces a new dimension to the argument, particularly on the role of John Dudley, which leads to some sympathy towards Dudley as a potential victim of Tudor politics as well as Jane.

I would thoroughly recommend this book for anyone wishing to study this event in greater depth.