In fact, many would have considered her fate a foregone conclusion: after all, she had, albeit unwillingly, accepted the crown in defiance of Mary, an act of high treason. Surely she would be executed. There was to be no such mercy for the Duke of Northumberland, and on 22 August his head was cut off.
The next few months passed by uneventfully for Jane in the Tower, but she had not been forgotten. As the autumn drew in, under immense pressure from her supporters to punish those who had been involved in the coup, Mary agreed that Jane and her husband should stand trial.
On the morning of 13 November, Jane and Guildford were conducted on foot from the Tower to Guildhall. Upon arrival at Guildhall, the prisoners were escorted to the Great Hall, where their trial was staged in a room full of spectators.
In so doing, she had committed high treason. All eyes were upon Jane as those in the court waited to hear how she would plead to the charges. Life as a Tower prisoner began to resume its normal course for Jane, as it became evident that the sentence passed against her would not be carried out.
There seemed every reason to hope that not only would the queen spare Jane, but that she may eventually set her at her liberty. However, the machinations of ambitious men were to put Jane in terrible danger once more. By early , Mary had signalled her desire to marry Philip, future king of Spain. Many of her subjects vehemently opposed the union — primarily because they feared that Philip would try to embroil England in Spanish wars, and because the Spanish king was a Catholic.
Mary, however, was unmoved, and plans for the wedding continued unabated. But Mary, it seems, had underestimated the level of opposition to the union. Unbeknown to the queen — and, tragically, also to Jane — there were those among her subjects who were preparing to take a stand against the marriage.
In the heart of the Kent countryside, a gentleman named Sir Thomas Wyatt and several of his friends were planning a rebellion that aimed not only to protest against the Spanish marriage, but also to overthrow Mary and replace her with her half-sister, Elizabeth. Worse still, the rebels had recruited a supporter closely connected to Jane: her own father.
The rebellion was fatally compromised almost before it began. The rebels had been careless planners, and in January their plot was discovered. Soon the Duke of Suffolk was fleeing towards the Midlands in order to evade capture and rally support for the uprising. He failed dismally and, on 2 February, was captured in Warwickshire, and dispatched to the Tower as a prisoner.
Thomas Wyatt would soon join him. Jane had known nothing of the rebellion but now, as she languished in the Tower, she may have been painfully conscious that her life depended on its outcome.
Its failure sealed her fate. The decision may have been made as late as 7 February, and it was probably that evening that Jane was told to prepare herself for death. She had already been condemned, and thus the formalities had already been settled. Jane prepared for her end with courage, and began writing her final farewells to her family.
By now she had resigned herself to the fact that death was inevitable, and she was determined to be remembered as a Protestant heroine. Even Feckenham was impressed with her steadfast spirit. On the morning of 12 February, Jane mounted a scaffold that had been specially prepared within the precincts of the Tower. Unperturbed by this gruesome spectacle, she faced death with courage. She made a short speech urging those who were present to pray for her and, having been blindfolded, she knelt on the straw.
Then her calm momentarily deserted her, as she found that the block was just out of her reach. Where is it? At the mansion, she found the Duke, her new husband and her parents. After being told that she was now the queen, writes Cavendish, she fainted. July 10, Jane Grey takes the throne. The fact that Grey was now queen was publicly announced, leading to some grumbling among the citizens.
The English citizens who had been through so much political and religious turmoil thought that Catholic Mary Tudor, with her ties to other Catholic monarchs, was the rightful inheritor of the throne. Although Mary later became unpopular, she was at this time very popular. Grey made it to the Tower of London, from which she would rule, and then had a giant fight with her husband and her mother-in-law because she refused to make him king, writes Cavendish.
Mary Tudor also sent a letter asserting her right to rule. July , Jane Grey occupies the throne, ineffectually. July 19, Mary Tudor is declared queen. Public and political support led the royal council to declare that Mary, not Grey, was the rightful heir to the Tudor throne. Grey was executed along with her husband because she was an ongoing alternative claimant to the throne.
Queen Mary I. However the country rose in favour of the direct and true royal line, and the Council proclaimed Mary queen some nine days later. Unfortunately for Lady Jane, her advisors were grossly incompetent, and her father was partly responsible for her untimely execution as he was involved in an attempted rebellion. In Wyatt was involved in a conspiracy against the marriage of Mary to Phillip of Spain. He raised an army of Kentish men and marched on London, but was captured and later beheaded.
After the Wyatt rebellion was quashed, Lady Jane and her husband, who were lodged in the Tower of London , were taken out and beheaded on 12th February She was then taken to Tower Green within the Tower, where the block was waiting for her. But Henry was also a complex man: intelligent, boisterous, flamboyant, extravagant.
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