WI: The Dudley Dynasty

Zachariah

Banned
What if Lady Jane Grey had kept the throne, and the Dudleys had succeeded the Tudors as the new royal lineage of England? Let's say that, after Edward I’s death, everything had gone according to plan for the de-facto Regent John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. On the 25th of May 1553, his second youngest son, Guildford Dudley, had been married to Lady Jane Grey in a wedding at Durham Pace, the Duke of Northumberland's town mansion. And King Edward, in his "Device of the Succession", settled the Crown on his cousin once removed, Jane Grey, bypassing his half-sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, upon his death on 6 July 1553.

The Duke of Northumberland undertook the enforcement of the King's will, and just before Edward VI's death, he'd issued a summons for Mary Tudor to travel to London to visit her dying brother. However, Mary was forewarned that the summons was a pretext on which to capture her and thereby facilitate Lady Jane's accession to the throne. Therefore, instead of heading to London from her residence at Hunsdon, Mary fled into East Anglia, where she owned extensive estates and Dudley had ruthlessly put down Kett's Rebellion.

Jane was reluctant to accept the Crown, but she agreed after being convinced by an assembly of nobles, including her parents and in-laws (as well as by Guildford's approach of "prayers and caresses"). On 10 July, Jane and Guildford made their ceremonial entry into the Tower of London. Residing in there, Guildford wanted to be made king- according to her own later account, Jane had a long discussion about this with Guildford, who "assented that if he were to be made king, he would be so by me, by Act of Parliament". According to later remarks by the Imperial ambassadors, the daily Council meetings were presided over by Guildford, who allegedly also dined in state alone and had himself addressed in regal style. Antoine de Noailles, the French ambassador, described Guildford Dudley as "the new King", and the Holy Roman Imperial court in Brussels also believed in the existence of King Guildford.

So then, what if Mary Tudor hadn't gotten that warning, and had been captured in London instead, with Queen Jane the First of England's proclamation going uncontested, her husband Guildford Dudley named as King Consort, and with their children (which they'd almost certainly have had a fair few of, considering that Jane and Guildford had two and twelve siblings respectively) becoming the heirs to the throne? With the Dudleys replacing the Tudors as the royal lineage of England in this TL, how much might this have altered the course of history, not just for England, but for Europe and the World?
 
The question is who would support Jane? Emperor Charles V requested his ambassador to find out 'who she was', so she was a comparative nobody. The French would've obviously preferred her to the half-Spanish Mary, but they wouldn't lift a finger to help her. In spite of Dudley offering to turn over (part of) Ireland to them if they would. I think any POD to allow Jane into the succession ahead of Mary is either gonna require Edward to live long enough to push his will through parliament or Mary predecease her half-brother (in such a case many could argue that Henry's second marriage was null and void, his daughter a bastard, and I can't really see who might rally to Elizabeth's cause - a bit different to the situation in '58 with Mary, Queen of Scots as dauphine-in-waiting)
 
Something I was wondering earlier, an this might be a bit of a stretch even:

Northumberland marries the dying Edward VI to Jane. Thus, after Ned kicks, unless it can be proved that the marriage wasn't consummated (which many will see as Catholic propaganda anyhow), Jane gets some breathing room until she has her courses. Of course, this keeps Jane on the throne - only as holder of the Crown Matrimonial - (unless Edward's published his Device for the Succession) for a bit longer than nine days. And perhaps after she's crowned it can emerge that she had an existing precontract with Guildford Dudley, rendering her marriage to Edward null and void and Guildford her true husband.

It's just an idea I had.

But, if you want a Dudley dynasty:

...there was a plan in the works at some point during the latter years of Elizabeth I’s reign. Namely, in order to ensure the succession and to prevent a messy union of crowns. It entailed the marriage of Lady Arbella Stuart to an Englishman. And it seems that the Dudleys had not learned their lesson in aiming for the crown once through the Lady Jane Grey, since her onetime brother-in-law, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester and heir-presumptive to his childless older brother, Ambrose, suggested a match between his own son (not the bigamously born Dudley who later emigrated to Italy and worked at the court of the Medici), Robert, Lord Denbigh (who from what I can make out died young/in infancy) and Arbella.
The ambitious Bess arranged the betrothal of Arbella to Robert, Lord Denbigh, the two year old son of the Earl of Leicester and Lettice Knollys. The Queen was furious at this secret alliance but Lord Denbigh died the following year and the plan came to nothing

Whether, if this marriage had gone through (I suppose it necessitates a survival of Lord Denbigh as it’s POD, or a posteriori legitimization of the other Dudley boy (who didn’t seem to do too badly for being bigamously-born bastard, since his first wife was a Cavendish, although his descendants in Italy (who married into the Rucellai, Appiani and Malaspina families, were born of a likewise bigamous marriage of his own to Elizabeth Southwell)), Elizabeth would’ve still named Arbella her heiress, or simply gone the same route in excluding Arbella as she had stricken the children of her cousin, the Duchess of Suffolk, from the line of succession is open to debate.

From what I can make out of Elizabeth’s personality, she would’ve been peeved (ladies related to her marrying clandestinely generally seemed to bring out the worst in her, see Katherine Grey, Mary Grey, Lettice Knollys etc), but at the same time, she seemed to forgive Leicester almost anything. So how might she react to this mercenary marriage?
 
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