Free Republic

February 12 is the anniversary of Lady Jane Grey‘s beheading at the Tower of London. The Protestant teenager was the designated successor of sickly boy-king Edward VI, but popular and aristocratic support went for Mary Tudor in a landslide. The Nine Days’ Queen landed in the Tower and copped to a treason charge on a tenuous deal for mercy (not applicable to her sponsors and allies, many of whom went to the block). But a January 1554 Protestant rebellion that had Protestant restoration as part of its programme made it a dangerous indulgence for Mary to keep her cousin’s neck...

The true beauty of Lady Jane Grey By Nigel Reynolds, Arts Correpondent Last Updated: 1:38am GMT 05/03/2007 The great unsolved mystery of what Lady Jane Grey, England's shortest reigning monarch, looked like may finally have been cracked, thanks to a piece of jewellery, a flower related to the cabbage and the historian David Starkey. Dr Starkey, a Tudor specialist, claimed yesterday that he was "90 per cent certain" that he had succeeded in identifying the first contemporary portrait of Jane Grey, the pious Protestant pawn who was queen for nine days in 1553 before being beheaded at the Tower of...