Grey, LADY JANE, the 'nine days' queen,' was born at Bradgate, Leicestershire, in October 1537.
She was the eldest daughter of Henry Grey, Marquis of Dorset, who in 1551 became Duke of Suffolk, and of Lady Frances Brandon. The latter was the daughter of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, by Mary, younger sister of Henry VIII., and widow of Louis XII. of France. Lady Jane was brought up rigorously by her parents, every petty fault punished with 'pinches, nips, and bobs;' but Aylmer (q.v.), her tutor, afterwards Bishop of London, endeared himself to her by his gentleness, and under him she made extraordinary progress, especially in languages—Latin, Greek, French, Italian, and Hebrew. Roger Ascham tells how in December 1550 he found her reading Plato's Phædo in the original, while the rest of the family were hunting. She also sang and played well, and was versed in other feminine accomplishments. In 1553, after Somerset's fall, the Duke of Northumberland, foreseeing the speedy death of the boy-king Edward VI., determined to change the succession and secure it to his own family. Lady Jane, not sixteen years old, was therefore married, strongly against her wish, to Lord Guildford Dudley, Northumberland's fourth son, on 21st May 1553; and on 9th July, three days after Edward's death, the council informed her that his 'plan' had named her as his successor. On the 19th, the brief usurpation over, she found herself a prisoner in the Tower; and four months later, pleading guilty of high-treason, she was sentenced to death. She spurned the idea of forsaking Protestantism for love of life, and bitterly condemned Northumberland's recantation: 'Woe worth him! he hath brought me and our stock in most miserable calamity by his exceeding ambition.' Queen Mary might have been merciful; but Suffolk's participation in Wyatt's rebellion sealed the doom of his daughter, who on 12th February 1554 was beheaded on Tower Hill. She was 'nothing at all abashed, neither with fear of her own death, which then approached, neither with the sight of the dead carcass of her husband, when it was brought into the chapel—a sight to her no less than death.' From the scaffold she made a speech: 'The fact, indeed, against the queen's highness was unlawful, and the consenting thereto by me; but touching the procurement and desire thereof by me or on my behalf, I do wash my hands thereof in innocency. . . . I die a true Christian woman.' With Lord Guildford she is buried in the Tower church of St Peter ad Vincula.
See the articles EDWARD VI. and MARY; also The Chronicle of Queen Jane, edited by J. G. Nichols for the Camden Society (1850).