WI: Lady Jane Grey Becomes Queen?
- Thread starter Jessaline
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- lady jane grey mary i tudors
Welcome.
But you're going to have to explain exactly in what circumstances she becomes queen. Couple options:
1) Edward makes his will an Act of Parliament
2) Jane DOESN'T become queen when Edward dies (for whatever reason), so she becomes a Marian exile like her stepgrandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Suffolk
2.1.) Elizabeth dies in 1562 (Jane hasn't been killed because of instance 2), Jane (probably with a couple of half-Dudley babies) becomes queen.
Or, the favourite alt-history nugget, Jane marries Edward VI
Hiya, thank you for your warm welcome!
so sorry I didn’t specify!!!!!!
Well, I was thinking an Act of Parliament would pass, but the option of 2.1 sounds really cool that I never thought about really, I just assumed the next in the line of succession was Mary, silly me haha, so thank you for bringing up such a fascinating point!
Let us say Mary doesn't get control of the naval fleet and their guns during the nine days. They won primarily because they ended up being better armed - and the outcome would butterfly away from there.
The order of succession ran, as per the terms of Henry VIII's will, Edward, Lady Mary (I), Lady Elizabeth (I), then the daughters of the French queen (Henry's younger sister), their issue, and only then, the queen of Scots.
Now, Edward , with his will, attempted to cut out Mary, Elizabeth and Jane's mother (through whom she held her claim). So, should we assume the scenario posited above, that Jane somehow manages to keep her and her husband's heads in place (most likely by not usurping the crown (maybe John Dudley dies before Edward?)), and everything sort of progresses as normal until 1562 (Mary doesn't have half Habsburg babies and Elizabeth doesn't marry). Then we're in an interesting place.
By the terms of Henry VIII's will, Liz's heir is Jane (her mother being dead). Jane is Protestant, married, and most likely, with a kid (at least). Now, the first one, strangely enough, isn't a major thing, since AFAIK the country only went full-bore Protestant under Elizabeth. It's the second two that matter: married with children.
Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1562, is a widow, with no children, who has been raised in France. Plus, she's a foreigner (and while she hasn't got the stain of Darnleigh's murder on her hands yet), she still is likely to be a little bit hard to stomach for the English. Even if she does marry an Englishman (Darnleigh or Norfolk, being the chief candidates).
As to Jane as queen, Dudley might end up being her Darnleigh. He was very put out that she would only make him duke of Clarence/Kendal, and not king. It wasn't something that sat well with him. Darnleigh had the same thing with Mary, she made him duke of Albany, but she refused to name him king. Now if Guilford and Jane have an otherwise happy marriage, then all's well with the world and we get a Protestant power that out-Reforms Luther/Calvin. Further than that, I can't say.
You have to first get Parliament to put Edward's will into law. It's doubtful that would happen - a dying 15 year old with advisors (who have cut out his uncles) making the decisions (talking him into things) getting Parliament to pass a law allowing him to bypass the woman most people think is the rightful heir (Mary) and the dubious second choice (Elizabeth) for an unknown further down the list and wed to the son of one of the advisors who got him to write the will? Parliament is likely to view it for what it is: a power grab by the decidedly non-Royal Dudley.
Don't think it's plausible. There is really no practical, pragmatic way to make Jane Queen without murdering Mary and Elizabeth first. And Elizabeth will be backing Mary at this point, make no mistake (because if they can bypass Mary, they can bypass her and if there is a Queen Jane, Elizabeth is of an age to be treaty bait, which she does not wish).
Don't think it's plausible. There is really no practical, pragmatic way to make Jane Queen without murdering Mary and Elizabeth first. And Elizabeth will be backing Mary at this point, make no mistake (because if they can bypass Mary, they can bypass her and if there is a Queen Jane, Elizabeth is of an age to be treaty bait, which she does not wish).
Oh, wait, I did mention in another TL that Jane could be Queen Consort and the mother of the next monarch if she wed Edward and managed to get pregnant. But her chances at being Queen Regnant are slim to none.
Hence why I suggested, make Jane not accept the crown, i.e. her probable play-acting "I do not want it, and it pleases me not" when offered the crown, is genuine. Dudley can't talk her into it. And her mom and pops back her. (IIRC, her mom did back her, but it was a man's world and daddy and hubby turned the screws)
The Greys would have married Jane off by then (along with the other girls), so you are positing that Jane Grey Courtenay (wife of released by Mary Edward Courtenay), Countess of Devon and mother to surviving children Marie, Gertrude, and William would take the throne instead of Jamie in 1562?
I don't think Mary would undo a marriage, but perhaps there's a rebellion when she succeeds (OTL Jane's reign w/o Jane actually being queen), and Northumberland and Guilford (who seems lìke a twit from what I've read) wind up dead. Then Jane is free. So, when they try to force Mary to marry Courtenay, she pushes Jane or Elizabeth forward instead. He prefers the nerdy Jane to the temperamental Elizabeth and marries her. Liz stays unwed, Mary goes nighty-night in 1558, Liz doesn't like her Grey cousins (any more than she does Mary, QoS) but she doesn't do anything about it. Then she dies of pox or whatever in '62. All hail Queen Jane!
I did a post on this subject several years ago in soc.history.what-if, which I'll recycle here (with minor changes):
***
Queen Jane (Edward VI/Northumberland "coup" succeeds)
The illness and impending death of young King Edward VI in 1553 presented a serious problem to the dominant figure in the English government, John Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland. By the 1544 will of Henry VIII, enacted into statute by Parliament, it was clear that Mary Tudor was to succeed her brother. Because of Northumberland's Protestant policies of the past few years, the accession of the devoutly Catholic Mary would mean an end to Northumberland's influence--and quite possibly his life.
So, according to the standard account, Northumberland hit upon a way to assure that he would dominate the next monarch as he did Edward. He prevailed on the ailing boy king to sign a *Devise for the Succession* illegally changing the succession by making Lady Jane Grey, Northumberland's daughter-in-law, the queen, thus bypassing not only Mary but Elizabeth, ostensibly because both of them were illegitimate. The fact that the "Devise" bypassed Elizabeth has been seen as proof that it was Northumberland's work which he, Svengali-like, imposed on a weak Edward. After all, it is argued, while the devoutly Protestant Edward obviously would not want his Catholic sister Mary to become queen, why would he object to his Protestant sister Elizabeth? OTOH, for Northumberland, the fact that the Devise would bypass Elizabeth as well as Mary was a feature, not a bug--Elizabeth would not endanger Protestantism, but there is no way that Northumberland could dominate her as he supposedly did Edward and anticipated doing with Jane Grey.
More recently, historians like David Loades have argued that the traditional account underestimates the role of Edward VI in the projected "coup" and overestimates that of Northumberland. Edward drew up the original version of the "Devise" no later than January 1553, well before his death seemed imminent. (He had had a bad cold at Christmas, but had easily thrown off such colds before. Contrary to popular belief, he was not a sickly boy.) At this point, it seems to have been a school exercise, not an attempt to address an urgent issue. What it shows was that Edward (like his father) did not want *any* woman to succeed him, if it could be avoided. The original Devise left the crown--in the event that Edward died without issue--"to the Lady Frances' heirs male if she hath any before my death" and otherwise "to the Lady Jane's heirs male." (Frances Grey, Duchess of Suffolk, was the elder daughter of Henry VIII's younger sister Mary, and was next in line after Elizabeth and her issue under Henry's will.) What demonstrates the non-urgency of the succession problem at the time is the references to non-existent persons; Frances had no male heirs, and her daughter Jane was not even married yet. But Edward, who knew that Jane was raised as a staunch Protestant, assumed that she would marry some day and produce an equally Protestant male heir.
Anyway, Edward's health took several turns for the better and worse from January through May. Schyefve, the Imperial ambassador, was convinced in April that the king's life was in danger, but it is not clear that Northumberland thought so--as late as mid-May the king seemed to be rallying, and Northumberland wrote to William Cecil, "Our sovereign lord doth begin very joyfully to increase and amend, they [the royal physicians] having no doubt of the thorough recovery of his highness." http://books.google.com/books?id=6sTwU-W5eGEC&pg=PA279 The fact that it was by no means clear that the king was in immediate danger--pulmonary tuberculosis is one of those diseases which develops fitfully, with many remissions, and the diagnostics of that era were not very advanced--casts some doubt on the idea that Jane Grey's marriage to Northumberland's son Guildford Dudley on May 21 was a crafty attempt by Northumberland to hijack the crown (an idea which incidentally does not seem to have occurred to anyone at the time). As Loades notes, Jane "was not even Northumberland's first choice for his son, but the Earl of Cumberland had rejected his approaches in respect of his daughter Margaret. At the same time Guildford's sister, Catherine, married Henry Hastings, heir to the earl of Huntington, and Jane's sister (also Catherine) married Henry Herbert, heir to the Earl of Pembroke. In other words this was a routine dynastic 'wedding circus' of the kind that was common between aristocratic families, and had no significance beyond that..." Loades, *Mary Tudor: The Tragical History of the First Queen of England,* p. 95.
When Edward's condition deteriorated drastically in early June, the "Devise" took on a completely different significance. It was no longer an academic matter. Something had to be done quickly to prevent Mary from becoming queen and undoing all the work of the English Reformation. "It was at this point that Edward produced his school exercise and instructed his law officers to draw up a will embodying its provisions. However, as it stood it was useless. Frances Grey was not pregnant, and had not conceived for several years. Jane was now married, but her relations with her husband were so bad that there was no chance that she could be even in the very early stages of pregnancy." Loades, *Mary Tudor: The Tragical History of the First Queen of England,* p. 96. Hence, the wording "the heirs male of the Lady Jane" was altered to read "the Lady Jane and her heirs male." This may well have been done by Northumberland, but if so, it was with the king's full approval. The "legal" ground for ignoring the 1544 Act and dispossessing Mary was her illegitimacy, and this required bypassing the equally illegitimate Elizabeth as well. Besides, Elizabeth was single, and there was always the danger that she might compromise the independence of England by marrying a foreign--and perhaps Catholic!--prince. By contrast, Edward liked Jane, and knew that she was a staunch Protestant and was married to an Englishman. The interests of Edward and Northumberland here were therefore identical, and there is no need to posit any "manipulation" of the former by the latter. (True, Frances Grey was still alive and of childbearing age, but she was prevailed upon to yield her claims to Jane's. As one author notes, "[Frances'] subsequent behaviour gives the impression of someone who was always rather anxious for her own skin, so perhaps she reasoned that if the venture did not succeed, she would be better off at one remove from it."
http://books.google.com/books?id=6sTwU-W5eGEC&pg=PA279)
The Crown's legal advisers were reluctant to follow Edward's orders and draw up letters patent embodying his will. The Lord Chief Justice, Sir Edward Montague, pointed out that letters patent could not prevail over statute and that the whole venture would involve all subjects who pursued it in treason under Henry's Act of Succession. However, a personal interview with Edward on June 15, in the presence of Northumberland and his supporters, caused Montague to act against his better judgment. Mary must not inherit the throne, an angry Edward told his visitors, nor must Elizabeth, the daughter of an adulteress. His cousin Jane was a lady of high virtue who would support the growth of "the religion whose fair foundation we have laid." Linda Porter, *The First Queen of England: The Myth of "Bloody Mary"*, p. 191. http://books.google.com/books?id=6sTwU-W5eGEC&pg=PA191 The sight of the desperately ill king summoning up his last burst of energy to berate them seems to have intimidated Montague and the other law officers. (No doubt Northumberland scowling in the background also had an effect.) Montague reluctantly agreed to draw up letters patent, dated June 21, 1553, which made the best of a bad job, trying to counter the Act of Succession by invoking against it "divers acts of parliament remaining in their full force" confirming the illegitimacy of Edward's sisters. When it was known that the legal establishment had given way, the doubters on the council went along.
After Edward died on July 6, it was at first widely believed that the plan to make Jane Grey queen would succeed, however dubious its legal basis. A gloomy report by the ambassadors of Mary's cousin Charles V noted that Northumberland held the Tower, the treasury and arsenal of the kingdom; the Council was at his command; he had men, ships, and artillery. Could one woman, however legitimate her claim, prevail against such power? As the ambassadors noted, "The actual possession of power is a matter of great importance, especially among barbarians like the English." http://books.google.com/books?id=9H505keQWgYC&pg=PA257 How, in view of this, did Mary prevail so quickly, and what would be the POD necessary for making Northumberland and Queen Jane victorious instead?
It has always seemed that the key to Northumberland's defeat was his failure to secure Mary's person. Shortly before Edward's death, the Council summoned Mary and Elizabeth to London to be at the bedside of their dying brother. Both of the sisters were too intelligent to take the bait. Mary instead fled to East Anglia where she rallied her supporters, especially Catholic aristocrats, but some Protestants as well. (For some reason, Northumberland had not anticipated this; his worry was that Mary would seek Imperial support, perhaps by fleeing to the Continent, as she had considered doing in 1550.) Both the aristocracy and the common people might have grudgingly accepted an illegal *fait accompli* rather than start a civil war to overturn it; but once Mary had escaped and rallied her forces, it was clear that the only way to stop *her* would be to wage a civil war, and even Protestants were not willing to do this in defense of an illegal power grab. (Everyone assumed that it was entirely Northumberland's doing; hardly anyone was aware of Edward's role. In fact, there were even rumors that Northumberland had poisoned Edward!) So members of the Council began to equivocate and then to rally to Mary's side, and Northumberland's support collapsed. I used to think the POD was to get Mary's love for her dying brother (she blamed his Protestant advisers, not him, for everything bad) to overcome any fears of a trap, and have her obey the Council's summons in order to see her brother one last time. Supposedly she was tempted to do this until someone tipped her off about Northumberland's plans. But in retrospect it is difficult to see how she could *not* have been "tipped off" in some way. There was considerable reluctance in the Council about the plan, and some members obviously leaked word of it almost immediately. With all the buzz about what Northumberland was up to, Mary would have to be stupid to fall into his trap. And whatever else she was, Mary Tudor was not stupid.
Could Northumberland have prevailed even after Mary escaped? There was a chance to do so, but only for a brief time. To quote another book by Loades, *John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, 1504-1553* (Oxford UP 1996), p. 260: "...the council had no reliable information about what was happening. If they had, they might have replied with something more substantial than words, because although the princess's support was growing by the hour, the progress of her cause, even in the centre of her greatest support, was not unchallenged. The first reaction of most of the towns in East Anglia was to accept Jane. Norwich, Ipswich, Great Lynn, and Yarmouth all started to go down that road, although it appears that in each case the ruling group was divided. Moreover, Northumberland's son, Lord Robert Dudley, from his base in Norfolk, was making his presence felt. *If the council had moved immediately to support him, and sent a force north at once, Mary's power might have been strangled in its cradle, for she had as yet no captain with military experience and prestige, and only a few thousand men.*" [my emphasis--DT] http://books.google.com/books?id=9H505keQWgYC&pg=PA260
So suppose Mary's power is indeed "strangled in its cradle"? At first sight, the question seems similar to the one about "What if Edward had lived?" which I discuss at http://groups.google.com/group/soc.history.what-if/msg/342ab61e0d16fa92 because in both cases we are asking about the effect of a militantly Protestant English monarch. But of course there is an important difference. Jane's claim to be legitimate monarch would be much less accepted than Edward's was (even by those who opposed the religious changes instituted under his reign). She would be seen as having been put on the throne illegally by the hated Northumberland. There would be a huge amount of sympathy for Mary, by no means confined to Catholics. The victorious Mary let Jane Grey live (until her father took part in Wyatt's rebellion) and could afford to do so--she was not a real threat. Could a victorious Jane and Northumberland afford to let Mary live? Yet executing Mary for treason would lead to outrage, and Jane's opponents might rally around Elizabeth, as next in line under Henry VIII's will to the martyred rightful queen. Elizabeth would be acceptable to Protestants and a far lesser evil than Jane to Catholics. OTOH, Catholics might prefer Mary Stewart, who might also get the support of the French once the menace of Mary Tudor and her Spanish/Imperial connection was eliminated.
Leanda de Lisle, journalist and author of *After Elizabeth: The Rise of James of Scotland and the Struggle For the Throne of England* has commented:
"If Jane had triumphed over Mary Tudor I think it likely that there would have been considerably more bloodletting than England saw in August 1553. Jane called for the execution of rebels in Buckinghamshire before she was overthrown. Had she triumphed Mary would also surely have been executed along with her leading supporters in Norfolk and elsewhere. Mary would have continued to have posed a real threat while alive. But once Mary was dead opposition to Jane would have found another focus-.
"The Dudleys were an unpopular family, and while Jane might have attempted to mitigate this by making her husband a duke and not a King, (as she said she would) the fact remained that female rule was still a novelty, and if she did not give her husband power then oppositional factions would have gathered around him as they did around her cousin Darnley, after he was later refused the crown matrimonial by Mary Queen of Scots. If Jane had a son the focus of opposition might even have been her own son, as James VI of Scots became for his mother Mary, Queen of Scots. After all, many Protestants did not approve of female rule.
"If she didn't have a son, and worked closely with her husband, then opposition might have focused on her sister Katherine (whose father in law, Pembroke, had quarrelled in the past with Jane's father in law, Northumberland). Other possible focuses of opposition are Elizabeth Tudor or Mary, Queen of Scots, depending on who they married.
"And one of the ways in which Jane might have stirred up considerable opposition was in the religious arena. Jane was a fervent Protestant of quite a radical sort. She was intolerant of Catholics and the persecution that did not begin under Elizabeth until the 1570s would have begun much earlier (she described Catholics as Satanic). Her Protestantism was also more extreme than Elizabeth's. The Church of England would likely have developed on more similar lines to that of Scottish Presbyterianism, and this would have angered not only conservative areas of England and Wales, but would have upset senior figures in the nobility, who would not all have taken kindly to being lectured by religious ministers on their gambling, their dress, or their extra-marital habits (just as it annoyed many nobleman later in Scotland). But the trouble with 'what if' that there are so many variables that possible outcomes are limitless!" http://ladyjanegreyref.livejournal.com/26650.html
***
Queen Jane (Edward VI/Northumberland "coup" succeeds)
The illness and impending death of young King Edward VI in 1553 presented a serious problem to the dominant figure in the English government, John Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland. By the 1544 will of Henry VIII, enacted into statute by Parliament, it was clear that Mary Tudor was to succeed her brother. Because of Northumberland's Protestant policies of the past few years, the accession of the devoutly Catholic Mary would mean an end to Northumberland's influence--and quite possibly his life.
So, according to the standard account, Northumberland hit upon a way to assure that he would dominate the next monarch as he did Edward. He prevailed on the ailing boy king to sign a *Devise for the Succession* illegally changing the succession by making Lady Jane Grey, Northumberland's daughter-in-law, the queen, thus bypassing not only Mary but Elizabeth, ostensibly because both of them were illegitimate. The fact that the "Devise" bypassed Elizabeth has been seen as proof that it was Northumberland's work which he, Svengali-like, imposed on a weak Edward. After all, it is argued, while the devoutly Protestant Edward obviously would not want his Catholic sister Mary to become queen, why would he object to his Protestant sister Elizabeth? OTOH, for Northumberland, the fact that the Devise would bypass Elizabeth as well as Mary was a feature, not a bug--Elizabeth would not endanger Protestantism, but there is no way that Northumberland could dominate her as he supposedly did Edward and anticipated doing with Jane Grey.
More recently, historians like David Loades have argued that the traditional account underestimates the role of Edward VI in the projected "coup" and overestimates that of Northumberland. Edward drew up the original version of the "Devise" no later than January 1553, well before his death seemed imminent. (He had had a bad cold at Christmas, but had easily thrown off such colds before. Contrary to popular belief, he was not a sickly boy.) At this point, it seems to have been a school exercise, not an attempt to address an urgent issue. What it shows was that Edward (like his father) did not want *any* woman to succeed him, if it could be avoided. The original Devise left the crown--in the event that Edward died without issue--"to the Lady Frances' heirs male if she hath any before my death" and otherwise "to the Lady Jane's heirs male." (Frances Grey, Duchess of Suffolk, was the elder daughter of Henry VIII's younger sister Mary, and was next in line after Elizabeth and her issue under Henry's will.) What demonstrates the non-urgency of the succession problem at the time is the references to non-existent persons; Frances had no male heirs, and her daughter Jane was not even married yet. But Edward, who knew that Jane was raised as a staunch Protestant, assumed that she would marry some day and produce an equally Protestant male heir.
Anyway, Edward's health took several turns for the better and worse from January through May. Schyefve, the Imperial ambassador, was convinced in April that the king's life was in danger, but it is not clear that Northumberland thought so--as late as mid-May the king seemed to be rallying, and Northumberland wrote to William Cecil, "Our sovereign lord doth begin very joyfully to increase and amend, they [the royal physicians] having no doubt of the thorough recovery of his highness." http://books.google.com/books?id=6sTwU-W5eGEC&pg=PA279 The fact that it was by no means clear that the king was in immediate danger--pulmonary tuberculosis is one of those diseases which develops fitfully, with many remissions, and the diagnostics of that era were not very advanced--casts some doubt on the idea that Jane Grey's marriage to Northumberland's son Guildford Dudley on May 21 was a crafty attempt by Northumberland to hijack the crown (an idea which incidentally does not seem to have occurred to anyone at the time). As Loades notes, Jane "was not even Northumberland's first choice for his son, but the Earl of Cumberland had rejected his approaches in respect of his daughter Margaret. At the same time Guildford's sister, Catherine, married Henry Hastings, heir to the earl of Huntington, and Jane's sister (also Catherine) married Henry Herbert, heir to the Earl of Pembroke. In other words this was a routine dynastic 'wedding circus' of the kind that was common between aristocratic families, and had no significance beyond that..." Loades, *Mary Tudor: The Tragical History of the First Queen of England,* p. 95.
When Edward's condition deteriorated drastically in early June, the "Devise" took on a completely different significance. It was no longer an academic matter. Something had to be done quickly to prevent Mary from becoming queen and undoing all the work of the English Reformation. "It was at this point that Edward produced his school exercise and instructed his law officers to draw up a will embodying its provisions. However, as it stood it was useless. Frances Grey was not pregnant, and had not conceived for several years. Jane was now married, but her relations with her husband were so bad that there was no chance that she could be even in the very early stages of pregnancy." Loades, *Mary Tudor: The Tragical History of the First Queen of England,* p. 96. Hence, the wording "the heirs male of the Lady Jane" was altered to read "the Lady Jane and her heirs male." This may well have been done by Northumberland, but if so, it was with the king's full approval. The "legal" ground for ignoring the 1544 Act and dispossessing Mary was her illegitimacy, and this required bypassing the equally illegitimate Elizabeth as well. Besides, Elizabeth was single, and there was always the danger that she might compromise the independence of England by marrying a foreign--and perhaps Catholic!--prince. By contrast, Edward liked Jane, and knew that she was a staunch Protestant and was married to an Englishman. The interests of Edward and Northumberland here were therefore identical, and there is no need to posit any "manipulation" of the former by the latter. (True, Frances Grey was still alive and of childbearing age, but she was prevailed upon to yield her claims to Jane's. As one author notes, "[Frances'] subsequent behaviour gives the impression of someone who was always rather anxious for her own skin, so perhaps she reasoned that if the venture did not succeed, she would be better off at one remove from it."
http://books.google.com/books?id=6sTwU-W5eGEC&pg=PA279)
The Crown's legal advisers were reluctant to follow Edward's orders and draw up letters patent embodying his will. The Lord Chief Justice, Sir Edward Montague, pointed out that letters patent could not prevail over statute and that the whole venture would involve all subjects who pursued it in treason under Henry's Act of Succession. However, a personal interview with Edward on June 15, in the presence of Northumberland and his supporters, caused Montague to act against his better judgment. Mary must not inherit the throne, an angry Edward told his visitors, nor must Elizabeth, the daughter of an adulteress. His cousin Jane was a lady of high virtue who would support the growth of "the religion whose fair foundation we have laid." Linda Porter, *The First Queen of England: The Myth of "Bloody Mary"*, p. 191. http://books.google.com/books?id=6sTwU-W5eGEC&pg=PA191 The sight of the desperately ill king summoning up his last burst of energy to berate them seems to have intimidated Montague and the other law officers. (No doubt Northumberland scowling in the background also had an effect.) Montague reluctantly agreed to draw up letters patent, dated June 21, 1553, which made the best of a bad job, trying to counter the Act of Succession by invoking against it "divers acts of parliament remaining in their full force" confirming the illegitimacy of Edward's sisters. When it was known that the legal establishment had given way, the doubters on the council went along.
After Edward died on July 6, it was at first widely believed that the plan to make Jane Grey queen would succeed, however dubious its legal basis. A gloomy report by the ambassadors of Mary's cousin Charles V noted that Northumberland held the Tower, the treasury and arsenal of the kingdom; the Council was at his command; he had men, ships, and artillery. Could one woman, however legitimate her claim, prevail against such power? As the ambassadors noted, "The actual possession of power is a matter of great importance, especially among barbarians like the English." http://books.google.com/books?id=9H505keQWgYC&pg=PA257 How, in view of this, did Mary prevail so quickly, and what would be the POD necessary for making Northumberland and Queen Jane victorious instead?
It has always seemed that the key to Northumberland's defeat was his failure to secure Mary's person. Shortly before Edward's death, the Council summoned Mary and Elizabeth to London to be at the bedside of their dying brother. Both of the sisters were too intelligent to take the bait. Mary instead fled to East Anglia where she rallied her supporters, especially Catholic aristocrats, but some Protestants as well. (For some reason, Northumberland had not anticipated this; his worry was that Mary would seek Imperial support, perhaps by fleeing to the Continent, as she had considered doing in 1550.) Both the aristocracy and the common people might have grudgingly accepted an illegal *fait accompli* rather than start a civil war to overturn it; but once Mary had escaped and rallied her forces, it was clear that the only way to stop *her* would be to wage a civil war, and even Protestants were not willing to do this in defense of an illegal power grab. (Everyone assumed that it was entirely Northumberland's doing; hardly anyone was aware of Edward's role. In fact, there were even rumors that Northumberland had poisoned Edward!) So members of the Council began to equivocate and then to rally to Mary's side, and Northumberland's support collapsed. I used to think the POD was to get Mary's love for her dying brother (she blamed his Protestant advisers, not him, for everything bad) to overcome any fears of a trap, and have her obey the Council's summons in order to see her brother one last time. Supposedly she was tempted to do this until someone tipped her off about Northumberland's plans. But in retrospect it is difficult to see how she could *not* have been "tipped off" in some way. There was considerable reluctance in the Council about the plan, and some members obviously leaked word of it almost immediately. With all the buzz about what Northumberland was up to, Mary would have to be stupid to fall into his trap. And whatever else she was, Mary Tudor was not stupid.
Could Northumberland have prevailed even after Mary escaped? There was a chance to do so, but only for a brief time. To quote another book by Loades, *John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, 1504-1553* (Oxford UP 1996), p. 260: "...the council had no reliable information about what was happening. If they had, they might have replied with something more substantial than words, because although the princess's support was growing by the hour, the progress of her cause, even in the centre of her greatest support, was not unchallenged. The first reaction of most of the towns in East Anglia was to accept Jane. Norwich, Ipswich, Great Lynn, and Yarmouth all started to go down that road, although it appears that in each case the ruling group was divided. Moreover, Northumberland's son, Lord Robert Dudley, from his base in Norfolk, was making his presence felt. *If the council had moved immediately to support him, and sent a force north at once, Mary's power might have been strangled in its cradle, for she had as yet no captain with military experience and prestige, and only a few thousand men.*" [my emphasis--DT] http://books.google.com/books?id=9H505keQWgYC&pg=PA260
So suppose Mary's power is indeed "strangled in its cradle"? At first sight, the question seems similar to the one about "What if Edward had lived?" which I discuss at http://groups.google.com/group/soc.history.what-if/msg/342ab61e0d16fa92 because in both cases we are asking about the effect of a militantly Protestant English monarch. But of course there is an important difference. Jane's claim to be legitimate monarch would be much less accepted than Edward's was (even by those who opposed the religious changes instituted under his reign). She would be seen as having been put on the throne illegally by the hated Northumberland. There would be a huge amount of sympathy for Mary, by no means confined to Catholics. The victorious Mary let Jane Grey live (until her father took part in Wyatt's rebellion) and could afford to do so--she was not a real threat. Could a victorious Jane and Northumberland afford to let Mary live? Yet executing Mary for treason would lead to outrage, and Jane's opponents might rally around Elizabeth, as next in line under Henry VIII's will to the martyred rightful queen. Elizabeth would be acceptable to Protestants and a far lesser evil than Jane to Catholics. OTOH, Catholics might prefer Mary Stewart, who might also get the support of the French once the menace of Mary Tudor and her Spanish/Imperial connection was eliminated.
Leanda de Lisle, journalist and author of *After Elizabeth: The Rise of James of Scotland and the Struggle For the Throne of England* has commented:
"If Jane had triumphed over Mary Tudor I think it likely that there would have been considerably more bloodletting than England saw in August 1553. Jane called for the execution of rebels in Buckinghamshire before she was overthrown. Had she triumphed Mary would also surely have been executed along with her leading supporters in Norfolk and elsewhere. Mary would have continued to have posed a real threat while alive. But once Mary was dead opposition to Jane would have found another focus-.
"The Dudleys were an unpopular family, and while Jane might have attempted to mitigate this by making her husband a duke and not a King, (as she said she would) the fact remained that female rule was still a novelty, and if she did not give her husband power then oppositional factions would have gathered around him as they did around her cousin Darnley, after he was later refused the crown matrimonial by Mary Queen of Scots. If Jane had a son the focus of opposition might even have been her own son, as James VI of Scots became for his mother Mary, Queen of Scots. After all, many Protestants did not approve of female rule.
"If she didn't have a son, and worked closely with her husband, then opposition might have focused on her sister Katherine (whose father in law, Pembroke, had quarrelled in the past with Jane's father in law, Northumberland). Other possible focuses of opposition are Elizabeth Tudor or Mary, Queen of Scots, depending on who they married.
"And one of the ways in which Jane might have stirred up considerable opposition was in the religious arena. Jane was a fervent Protestant of quite a radical sort. She was intolerant of Catholics and the persecution that did not begin under Elizabeth until the 1570s would have begun much earlier (she described Catholics as Satanic). Her Protestantism was also more extreme than Elizabeth's. The Church of England would likely have developed on more similar lines to that of Scottish Presbyterianism, and this would have angered not only conservative areas of England and Wales, but would have upset senior figures in the nobility, who would not all have taken kindly to being lectured by religious ministers on their gambling, their dress, or their extra-marital habits (just as it annoyed many nobleman later in Scotland). But the trouble with 'what if' that there are so many variables that possible outcomes are limitless!" http://ladyjanegreyref.livejournal.com/26650.html