Nine-Day Queen: Lady Jane Grey Executed
Lady Jane Grey was sixteen years old when she was beheaded on Tower Green on February 12, 1554, nine months after a Protestant faction had placed her on the English throne as an alternative to the Catholic Mary Tudor. Jane had been queen for nine days before Mary's supporters rallied and Jane's own father-in-law, the Duke of Northumberland, was arrested. Jane was imprisoned in the Tower of London along with her husband Lord Guildford Dudley. Mary initially seemed inclined to spare her cousin but changed her mind after Sir Thomas Wyatt's Protestant rebellion in January 1554, which made Jane a continuing threat as a rallying point. Dudley was executed the same morning; Jane watched from her window as his body was carried past. She went to the block blindfolded, fumbling for the executioner's block and asking a bystander to guide her hands to it. Her composure at sixteen has haunted the English imagination ever since.
February 12, 1554
472 years ago
Key Figures & Places
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