The death of Frances Grey, the mother of Lady Jane Grey.
Frances was the daughter of Princess Mary Tudor and Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. Mary had defied her brother, Henry VIII, in order to marry Charles after her first husband, the King of France, died shortly after their wedding.
Frances was born on July 16, 1517. She was her parents’ second child, and the eldest daughter. She spent her childhood with her mother and appears to have gotten the ordinary education of a noblewoman — reading and writing, religious studies, and the accomplishments expected for a lady at court (dancing, music, sewing, and card play.)
Frances’s father was often away at court, but the family didn’t join him, except for important court functions. Why Mary remained away from court is unknown, since she was known to adore the pomp and splendor of court. (Charles was Henry’s best friend, and he demanded his presence, whether or not Charles would have preferred to stay with Mary.)
Mary was on the side of Katharine of Aragon during her brother’s famous “Great Matter,” and Frances remained close to her aunt. She was also close friends with Princess Mary.
In 1533, Frances married Henry Grey, Marquis of Dorset. She had her first child in October of 1537, a little girl they named Jane after the current queen Jane Seymour.
Because of the deaths of her brothers in childhood, there was no one to inherit the title of Duke of Suffolk when Charles died in 1549. Frances could inherit some of his estates and wealth, but not the title, which was entailed to male heirs. In the absence of heirs, the title simply went extinct.
The privy council, of which Grey was part, bestowed it on him as a new creation. He was thenceforth known as the 1st Duke of Suffolk.
Grey and Frances had two more daughters, but no sons that survived infancy. All of the hopes of the family rested on those daughters, but one of them, the youngest, Mary Grey, was stunted in growth and had a hunched shoulder. She would later be referred to cruelly as “the ugliest woman at court.” The middle sister, Catherine, was pretty, blonde, and outgoing. But Jane … Jane was a problem.
Jane Grey was intensely religious, something that was ordinarily approved of in a Tudor woman, but Jane was a Protestant, whereas it appears her mother, Frances, adhered – at least nominally – to the Old Faith. Jane’s Protestant fervor left her very serious, and her parents probably saw her as a stick-in-the-mud. Jane seems to have had more introverted tastes. She was passionate about her studies and seems to have had an interest in clocks.
It was while her parents were off on a hunting trip and Jane was left alone in the house that she supposedly made the famous allegations of abuse that would haunt Frances’s reputation for hundreds of years. Jane told a visiting scholar, Roger Ascham:
??? ?ℎ?? ? ?? ?? ???????? ???ℎ?? ?? ???ℎ?? ?? ???ℎ??; ?ℎ??ℎ?? ? ?????, ???? ???????, ???, ?????, ?? ??, ???, ?????, ?? ?????, ?? ???, ?? ??????, ???????, ???????, ?? ????? ??? ?ℎ??? ????; ? ???? ?? ??, ?? ?? ????, ?? ???ℎ ????ℎ?, ???????, ??? ??????, ???? ?? ?????????, ?? ??? ???? ?ℎ? ?????; ?? ???? ? ?? ?? ?ℎ????? ???????, ?? ??????? ?ℎ????????, ??? ????????? ????????? ???ℎ ????ℎ??, ????, ??? ????, ??? ??ℎ?? ???? (?ℎ??ℎ ? ???? ??? ???? ??? ?ℎ? ℎ????? ? ???? ?ℎ??) ?? ???ℎ??? ??????? ??????????, ?ℎ?? ? ?ℎ??? ?????? ?? ℎ??? …
Generations of scholars have tended to take Jane’s word for it that she was, indeed, abused, but Frances’s parenting does not appear to be much stricter or crueler than average. Tudor parenting guides urged strict and harsh discipline for children, including liberal use of corporal punishment, for even slight deviations in behavior.
Historian Allison Plowden has written that Jane’s complaints might be simply ”the attitude of a priggish, opinionated teenager, openly scornful of her parents’ conventional, old-fashioned tastes.”
We cannot be sure, also, that the words Ascham attributes to Jane are an exact quote, especially since they were written long after her death and the deaths of her parents.
Jane, being the eldest and heir, had a great deal of expectations put on her to be perfect, and an appealing partner for a fine marriage. A sullen, disobedient girl – one who could not sew or dance correctly – would be a liability. It’s probable that Frances was harsh with her, though it would not have been considered abusive for that era.
The Greys encouraged Jane’s intellectual pursuits by employing fine tutors for her and allowing her to correspond with scholars all around Europe. Jane learned Latin, Greek, Italian, and Hebrew, studying the ancient classics in their original tongues.
For a time, the Greys seem to have had the goal of marrying Jane to young King Edward VI, but those hopes diminished over time. It was probably never a realistic expectation. Kings married princesses from other nations in order to secure important alliances and massive dowries the Greys couldn’t hope to match.
In any case, a plot was hatching as Edward’s health began to fail. Why aim to make Jane a mere queen consort when they might be able to make her queen regnant in her own right?
The idea was to marry Jane to the son of the Duke of Northumberland, who had the men and arms to support the plot. Young Edward would be convinced to leave his crown to the Protestant Jane instead of to his sister, the Catholic Princess Mary. Jane would declare her husband king, and their children would inherit the throne of England.
Frances seems to have been a bit resentful that she wouldn’t be the heir instead of her daughter, but she had no sons and in her mid-thirties, she was considered too old to have any now. Northumberland would only support the plot if his son became king from it.
Jane appears to have resisted the marriage. Some sources say her parents beat her into compliance. (Again, not unusual. Princess Jeanne d’Albret was beaten and physically carried to the altar when she tried to refuse to marry.)
Jane married Guildford Dudley in a double wedding in which her younger sister, Catherine, married Henry Herbert, son of the Earl of Pembroke, to secure more support for the plot. Being much younger, Catherine’s marriage was not consummated, and she remained at home with her mother.
Edward died only a few months later, and Jane was proclaimed queen. Unfortunately for the Greys, Northumberland’s support was not enough to overcome popular belief that Princess Mary was the true heir. Jane’s reign lasted only nine days before Mary took the throne in a bloodless coup.
All of their support vanished like a wisp of smoke. The marriage of Frances’s daughter, Catherine, was dissolved by the groom’s father in an effort to distance himself from their family.
Frances escaped punishment, though her daughter and her husband were in the Tower. Queen Mary seems to have initially decided upon mercy for Jane and her father. She released Grey, though Jane stayed incarcerated. She was tried for treason and sentenced to death, though Mary made no moves to impose sentence.
She may have eventually released Jane, too, if Grey hadn’t decided to support Wyatt’s rebellion. Jane, her husband, and her father were all executed for treason in February 1554.
Frances was now a widow, and her husband’s estates had been seized, including everything Frances had inherited from her parents. She pleaded with the queen for mercy, for the sake of her other two daughters. Queen Mary gave them a small portion of the estate, and kept them at court where she could keep an eye on them.
Despite all that had happened, she and Mary seem to have revived their friendship, and Frances was one of Mary’s favorite companions for playing cards. Frances and her daughters attended Mary’s wedding to Phillip of Spain in 1554, and Catherine and Mary were appointed as maids of honor to the queen.
The thirty-eight year old Frances remarried only three weeks after her husband’s execution, and her choice of a new spouse was a shock for many. She married a man named Adrian Stokes – variously described as one of her husband’s stewards, or master of horse. He was much younger, and of far lower birth, though that may have been why Frances chose him. He was a safe choice, no threat to the queen, but could provide Frances with some security. Everyone was probably further surprised when Frances had more children with Adrian, though they all died young.
Frances died at age forty-two on November 20, 1559 of an unspecified illness. She seems to have been afflicted after the birth of her last child, but it probably wasn’t childbed fever, given the length of it.
While she was ailing, she tried to arrange a marriage for Catherine, but the prospective groom, Edward Seymour, backed off after Frances died and told her widower, Adrian Stokes, to make no more efforts to convince the queen to approve the match.
She was buried in Westminster Abbey. Queen Elizabeth paid for her magnificent funeral, though Catherine and Mary later complained that Elizabeth disliked them, which is thought to be from lingering resentment about how the Greys attempted to disinherit her.
An alabaster tomb was erected above her grave, and bears this inscription in Latin:
????? ??? ?ℎ? ???? ????? ???? ???????, ??????? ???ℎ??? ?? ???????: ????ℎ? ?????? ????? ?? ?????????, ????ℎ? ????? ?????? ?? ?????; ????ℎ? ??????? ? ??????????? ?????, ??????????? ???ℎ ?????ℎ. ???, ??? ??? ?????? ????: ?ℎ? ????? ?? ?????? ????? ????????, ?????????? ?? ?ℎ? ??????? ????? ?? ????????. ?ℎ? ??? ??????? ????? ?? ?ℎ? ????, ??? ????? ??? ???? ?? ?? ?????, ???. ???, ?? ????ℎ, ??? ??? ???? ????, ?????? ?? ???.
