Customer Reviews

Lady Jane Grey: A Tudor Mystery (Tudor Mysteries)

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Ives has compiled an exhaustive resource for anyone looking to study the English Succession Crisis of 1553. Though the book takes the name of its unfortunate central figure, Lady Jane Grey, the story within reaches far beyond her. In fact, the best parts of the book in my opinion are dedicated to meticulously scrutinizing the behaviors of two major power players: Mary and Northumberland.

Obviously the value of this book lies in Ives's master analysis, so I do not want to give anything away. However, be assured that in this version of events, nothing is taken at face value. Instead of another retelling of this all-too-familiar story, Ives breaks it down as far as possible. Piecing together Northumberland's service to the crown in the years prior to Edward VI's reign portrays him in an entirely different light than his post-succession crisis reputation. Likewise, very little in Mary's past would lead anyone to believe she was capable of coordinating a swift and decisive armed rebellion against London and Queen Jane. Ives tracks her every movement and explains in detail the mechanisms that allowed her to triumph over Jane in the end.

Also interesting are the chapters on Edward VI. His role in these events is usually reduced to something along the lines of, "he named Lady Jane Grey his heir and then died." However, Ives really did a lot of research on Edward's so-called "Deuise" for the succession. In the end, he presents a possible timeline of events leading to this highly consequential document's existence.

Jane receives her due coverage in the book, with a few chapters on her upbringing and reputation among her contemporaries. Moreover, the last chapter is dedicated to her legacy as portrayed in the arts and popular culture. I will leave Ives's conclusions about Lady Jane and her role in the succession crisis for readers to discover on their own.

Ives creates a detailed history of the puzzling story of Lady Jane Grey, named heir to the English throne by a dying Edward VI and overthrown by supporters of Edward's Catholic half-sister Mary after ruling for just 13 days. The story that has passed down through the years is one of a foiled power-play by Jane's father in law John Dudley, but Ives slowly and carefully demolishes the conventional wisdom about what happened in 1553.

Starting by analyzing the motivations of the major players, he shows Edward to be an independent king trying to resolve the crisis of who would succeed him as he lay dying, creating several versions of a "deuise" for the succession before finally drafting a version that names Jane his successor, removing Mary and Elizabeth from the succession -- ostensibly because both are illegitimate, but really to prevent the firmly Catholic Mary from becoming queen. Edward dies shortly after getting the backing of his council for this decision. Dudley is shown to be less the schemer trying to get his daughter in law named queen and more the loyal councilor trying to carry out Edward's orders. As it happens, Dudley fails to take Mary into custody, allowing her to rally popular support. And Edward's council, after swearing to carry out Edward's orders and initially proclaiming Queen Jane, realize that Mary will prevail and quickly blame Dudley for the whole affair. Their alibi that Dudley pushed Edward and the council to name Jane as successor becomes established history, even though Ives shows that that story fails to fit with the personalities of the people involved.

Meanwhile, Jane comes off as an extraordinarily intelligent woman and fervent Protestant, but essentially a passive player in events. Ives portrays her as someone who never sought the throne, but who was thrust into this situation by others. Her death is ultimately a tragic ending to the story, made necessary by an increasingly unpopular Mary needing to remove Jane as a focus for rebellion against her rule.

Eric Ives' study of Lady Jane Grey is everything you'd expect from the author of the biography of Anne Boleyn against which all others must be measured. Not that it's really a biography. It's an academic yet perfectly readable study of Jane, the chief protagonists in her story, and why her thirteen-day reign failed - the reasons for which turn out to be far more complicated is usually made out to be the case.

Right from the second chapter, Ives also has you seriously questioning how much of what has been written about Jane over the last 450 years can be trusted. John Foxe, in his Book of Martyrs, may have altered the wording of her letters. The oft-quoted letter of reproach she wrote to her father in the Tower is shown to have been unlikely to have been written by her at all - he arrived there less than two days before she was executed, and she wrote him a genuine letter in her prayer book around the same time. Suspiciously, the letter only surfaced at least ten years after her death.

Ives also revises her birthdate, usually given as October 1537. Since Jane Seymour was her godmother, she apparently had to have been born before Jane Seymour `took to her chamber' to have Edward in mid-Sept 1537 - and he pinpoints May 1537 as the most likely date. These may seem like minor things, but once he starts to establish that some of the `facts' of her life aren't actually facts at all, you start to wonder how much else about her has become accepted as fact largely through repetition.

There are a few minor but annoying problems - e.g. on p. 86 he says of Bloody Mary, "Katherine of Aragon had taught her to see herself as half a Habsburg and her cousin Charles V became her sheet anchor". Katherine of Aragon may have heavily allied herself and her interests with her nephew Charles V (eldest son of her sister Juana and Philip the Handsome, a Habsburg), but she was not a Habsburg, and thus Mary was not "half a Habsburg", either in theory or in practice. Ives said the same thing in The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn, referring to Katherine as "a highly respected Habsburg queen". OK, maybe this seems unnecessarily picky - but Katherine simply was not a member of the Habsburg dynasty, and didn't even have any Habsburg ancestors going back to at least her great-grandparents. Her mother and father were both members of the House of Trastamara.

Another minor but annoying mistake on p. 39: "On the other hand Frances [Lady Jane's mother] was in the reformist camp. According to a later story, she and her cousin Eleanor Clifford had been under the influence of the martyr Anne Askew." Eleanor Clifford, born Eleanor Brandon, was actually Frances Brandon's sister - Mary Tudor and Charles Brandon's younger daughter - which is made clear in the family trees at the start.

One last one (p. 290): "The play was dedicated to George I's daughter Caroline of Ansbach, the Princess Royal, and clearly pleased since Rowe was appointed poet laureate three months later." Caroline of Ansbach, wife of the future George II, was George I's daughter-in-law, and was not Princess Royal - but rather, Princess of Wales.

The central argument and ultimate conclusion of the book is a bit too complicated to explain in detail, but to put it briefly, Ives concludes that Lady Jane's right to the throne - unwanted though it was - really was better than Mary and Elizabeth's. Though Henry VIII reinstated his daughters in the succession before his death, he never actually declared them legitimate after bastardising them. Ives contends that he therefore had no right to appoint legally illegitimate children as his successors; it would have been no different from trying to declare his bastard son the Duke of Richmond heir, had he still been alive.

Whether or not you agree with him, it's an unusual way of viewing these events, and an interesting study of the legalities (or illegalities) of Henry VIII's and Edward VI's attempts to nominate their own successors. It's not quite as brilliant a book as The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn, and it doesn't completely replace previous biographies (Hester Chapman's, for instance, will always be worth reading). Nonetheless, its exhaustive research, and its willingness to avoid blindly reiterating legend - instead subjecting it to scholarly analysis - leave it very much deserving five stars.

Historian Eric Ives is a meticulous, scholarly writer who leaves no stone unturned and unless a cache of Jane Grey memorabilia should turn up like the Dead Sea Scrolls (that could happen) the reader should consider this book the definitive Jane Grey.

Jane died before she was seventeen. Brown eyes had she, and a freckled nose. She was universally considered handsome but so short she wore 3" platform shoes. She was the foremost female scholar of her day, speaking eight languages including fluent Greek and Latin. She was spunky: she read Plato in her room while her family was out hunting and she refused to allow her husband, Guildford Dudley to be named king. She had integrity for she at first refused the crown because it belonged to Mary. She went to her death with grace and courage, one of history's great tragediennes.

Many fascinating personalities- the players, the manipulators who strut and fret their hour upon this stage- are examined. Ives considers Mary, who as a private person "was probably the most attractive member of the Tudor family" We see poor dying Edward who desperately tried to emulate his father Henry VIII. We see the movers and shakers, the Duke of Northumberland who married his son Guildford to Jane and Jane Seymour's two ambitious, ruthless brothers, Thomas and Edward. We see Katherine Parr, the kindly widow of Henry VIII, who tried to be a mother to Elizabeth and Jane and who died in childbirth after she married Thomas Seymour. We see the insensitive parents of Jane who bullied and punished her in their effort to mold her into a queenly, highly marketable marital catch.

We see the battles, the forces of Northumberland against the forces of Mary. We see that the cloth of estate was practically ripped off over Jane's head while the nine - days queen was sitting there on her throne. We see how most of the rats deserted her ship.

Eric Ives takes you there, as you've never been taken before. You'll learn a lot, about the personalities and the events as the tapestry of this drama of long ago is unraveled before you. Highly recommended!

Other than its title suggests, this book is essentially an analysis of the year 1553. However, Lady Jane's entire life and works are presented with many discussions of detail. A final chapter details her afterlife in the arts, novels, movies, and so on. Additionally, the young King Edward VI, his chief minister John Dudley Duke of Northumberland, and Mary Tudor, Edward's much older half-sister, are each given a short but fascinating biography. Ives thoroughly reassesses Edward's last will, "My devise for the succession" and draws some remarkable conclusions. In some other aspects, in the light of what has been written by Diarmaid MacCulloch, David Loades, Stephen Alford, and even W.K. Jordan, his arguments are not always as new as they might seem. However this is no bad thing. Ives's greatest achievement is that he overcomes hindsight, one of the most frequent and serious sins in historians. Another very agreeable thing is his fairness towards all the players. Unlike some other accounts, his book refrains from distorting evidence to make more spectacular points; nevertheless it is a thrilling read, and also a moving one.

I've never read anything in-depth about Lady Jane Grey, and after this book, I may not need to search for another if I'm ever looking for more information. Ives presents plenty of material about the young lady that briefly altered history, making it feel like it was one of the most important moments in history.

You get the real facts in this book, and learn about some of the myths that have stuck over the years. I felt transported into time, witnessing the privy council meetings, seeing the rebellion of Lady Mary unfold, and then the tragic execution of Jane Grey itself. I love when authors are able to put the images right in front of you. I value that as a reader, and will stick with the author in every volume they have dished out. Ives has a biography about Anne Boleyn (my favorite figure of the Tudor times) and I know now that it will be excellent.

Great book, very descriptive and informative, essential for any Tudor reader, fiction or not.

Ives' poses the question: What if Jane Grey's "claim" to the British throne after the death of Henry VIII's son Edward was not a "no-starter" from the get-go, but may well have succeeded? As Ives' states, most view Jane's "claim" to the throne as merely a historical footnote, a vain attempt that could never have been successful. Was it?

[The quotes around "claim" deliberately question what part 16-year-old Jane herself played in this drama, a question addressed in the book. Perhaps no answer is possible, but Ives' makes suggestions...]

Frankly, I'm not enough of an expert on this part of history to fully evaluate Ives' discussion. Still, it seems well-reasoned. Ives' analysis of the events suggests the accession of Queen Mary was not by any means a foregone conclusion...

No "Bloody" Mary. No Elizabeth. Queen Jane, and King Consort Guildford Dudney, and their "heirs of the body". Perhaps, no union of England and Scotland. Perhaps, no Hanover monarchs. And the American colonies? Who knows?

Ives' doesn't discuss these suggested historical counter-factuals, but their contemplation is fascinating...

I'll start by saying I'm new to kindle books so perhaps I've missed something but... I found the book to be very good and existing reviews of content and style are sufficient. I have a complaint that the kindle version does not include the often referenced plates. Finding some of the plates displayed on Amazon.com as exclusive online content used to promote the book was insulting. Yes, I later found the disclaimer buried in the book that the kindle version may not include all of the content of the book. I haven't found that online or in front of the buying process.

As the subtitle of this book implies, Lady Jane Grey is as much a mystery as a biography. Both aspects of the book are well done. Ives weaves the mysteries surounding Jane into the biographical material. Besides Jane, there are excellent synopses of Edward and Mary Tudor's lives and an intriguing psychological analysis of the insecurities of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. The last two sections on Jane's life called "Thirteen Days" and "Consequences" are as fine a biographical narrative as you will find. The natural sympathy for Jane is not lost but Ives ties everything down to a close and careful historical analysis. Powerful reading.

The aspects of this mystery are many. Why did Edward VI make Jane his heir within a month of his death? Why did the Council do what Ives calls a "U-turn" within hours to change allegiance from Jane to Mary? What drove the enigmatic Dudley and could Dudley's pressure on Edward (and son's marriage to Jane) have been a factor in Edward's decision? Why was Mary so surprisingly (given her previous life history) prepared for the change in monarchs and Jane's supporters so incredibly ill-prepared? Is there any substance to the "dark" rumors about the cause of Edward's death? And what can we know for sure about Jane given the historical mythology built up around her? Ives does a superb job sorting through the historical data and giving the reader solutions to one of the great mysteries of English history.

This is the story of a highly intelligent, well-educated, and amazingly forthright young woman caught innocently in a web of political intrigue. Ives goes a long way toward unraveling that web. For those interested in both biography and real-life mysteries, this is an excellent book. Highly recommended.