The Symphonic Tragedy of the Nine Days Queen

I just happened to hear this symphony, composed by Arnold Rosner. According to the late composer's website:

In 1981 during dinner with a bridge partner, the discussion turned to theater. A full-time lawyer and part-time producer, he told me of the play The Chronicle of Nine, by one Florence Stevenson, concerning the life of Lady Jane Grey and her nine-day rule of England. Wine having been poured liberally that evening, I blurted out “that would make a nice opera,” and I actually followed this instinct despite no hope at all that point for a production.

Of course, the tradition of a suite or symphony taken from an opera is venerable. It was easy to compile such a piece, although it does somewhat alter the dramatic sequence. The first movement is the Act I prelude, and contrasts eerie string harmonies with angry, perhaps frightening, brass interpolations. The second movement appears in the opera as wedding music in Act I, and is something of a mini-suite in itself. The third movement is a la battaglia and corresponds to the prelude to Act III. If the ending (as in Strauss’s Don Juan) seems unexpectedly subdued, the skirmish described ends very badly for Queen Jane’s forces. The finale is actually the Act II prelude of the opera, where it serves as the preceding king’s funeral music. In this setting, however, it may be thought of as a dirge for Jane or the symbol of the English crown in general.

Re: The Chronicle of Nine:

The Chronicle of Nine is based on a historical drama of the same name, written by Florence Stevenson, based on the life and nine-day reign of Lady Jane Grey as Queen of England in 1553.

The three acts begin with orchestral preludes, followed by introductory ballads sung by a minstrel. The first of these welcomes the audience and prepares them for a sad story. The action of Act I centers around Jane’s arranged wedding with Guildford Dudley. When her parents inform her of this plan she sings an aria of lament, to the passion text in the St. Luke gospel. A large-scale wedding ballet is followed by a discussion between Lord Dudley and John.

Act II concerns Jane’s coronation. The minstrel sings of her attendant crown and jewels.

Early in Act III, Jane, now deposed, is in prison, as is her husband, but he is allowed to visit her. Although married, they have not consummated their relationship and the scene, tentatively at first, is something of a love duet. At the end Jane sings of her hope that she is now pregnant with a son, and muses on Queen Mary’s kindness, while Guildford sings tenderly of the kindness of “this queen”. Act III culminates in Jane’s execution and the Minstrel’s ballad concerns the failure of the duke of Northumberland’s forces to achieve a military victory for Jane’s cause, and goes on to describe a bright sunlit Monday as the approaching day of the beheading. Scene 2 describes Mary’s visit to Jane’s cell. Jane’s father and uncles, under the leadership of one Wyatt have again attempted to proclaim Jane as ruler; their rebellion has failed. To protect the crown from further jeopardy, Mary contends that she cannot sign Jane’s pardon and the execution will proceed. She sings of her need to find Jane guilty of plots against her, and goes on as to the cruel deeds she now must perform. Mary will send her priest to say prayers for Jane, who answers that Mary has more need for these prayers than does she. The final scene begins with a version of the Cries of London and leads to Jane’s farewell and execution. (Notes by Arnold Rosner)

Here's a sample of the symphony.

Her Nine Days Were Up Today in 1553

From History.com: This Day in History: July 19, 1553:

After only nine days as the monarch of England, Lady Jane Grey is deposed in favor of her cousin Mary. The 15-year-old Lady Jane, beautiful and intelligent, had only reluctantly agreed to be put on the throne. The decision would result in her execution.

Lady Jane Grey was the great-granddaughter of King Henry VII and the cousin of King Edward VI. Lady Jane and Edward were the same age, and they had almost been married in 1549. In May 1553 she was married to Lord Guildford Dudley, the son of John Dudley, the duke of Northumberland. When King Edward fell deathly ill with tuberculosis soon after, Jane’s father-in-law, John Dudley persuaded the dying king that Jane, a Protestant, should be chosen the royal successor over Edward’s half-sister Mary, a Catholic. On July 6, 1553, Edward died, and four days later Lady Jane Grey was proclaimed queen of England.

Lady Jane’s ascendance was supported by the Royal Council, but the populace supported Mary, the rightful heir. Two days into Lady Jane’s reign, Dudley departed London with an army to suppress Mary’s forces, and in his absence the Council declared him a traitor and Mary the queen, ending Jane’s nine-day reign.

Author Samantha Wilcoxon writes about why we don't refer to Lady Jane Grey as Queen Jane:

A recent post of mine brought questions to the forefront regarding Lady Jane Grey's status as a Tudor queen. I included her in my list of monarchs but noted that she is not always included in others. This list, for example, mentions her only parenthetically. Jane is referred to as a ruler by Royal.UK, but is still listed by the name Lady Jane Grey. In fact, we most commonly refer to her as Lady Jane Grey rather than Queen Jane.

Why is that? She had not had a coronation, but there are other examples of monarchs who have been accepted as such despite the lack of this ceremony. Edward V is a notable example quite close to Jane's time. Little Edward is never left out of discussions of England's kings though he ruled even less than his distant cousin Jane did.

Jane was proclaimed and deposed with lightening speed, causing some to refer to her as an unsuccessful usurper rather than a legal queen.

Read the rest there.

Image credit: the Streatham Portrait, discovered in 2005/2006, as noted by The Guardian:

Queen of England for nine days, then dispatched by the axeman at the Tower of London at the age of just 17, Lady Jane Grey and her tragic story have exerted a deep fascination for centuries. She is the only English monarch since 1500 of whom no portrait survives. Or so it has long been assumed.

But experts are now claiming that a painting that hung for years in a house in Streatham, south-west London, is of Lady Jane. The owner inherited the work from his great-grandfather, a collector of 16th-century antiques.

A pawn in the ambitious power games of her parents and father-in-law, Lady Jane was briefly queen after the death of her cousin Edward VI - until her short rule from the Tower of London was transformed into imprisonment when Mary I successfully claimed the throne.

Were this a painting of Lady Jane, it would satisfy a centuries-old hunger to know the appearance of this unfortunate teenager, described at the time as "prettily shaped and graceful" with a "gracious and animated figure". . . .

The "new" portrait, which experts have confidently dated to the second half of the 16th century, shows a slender young woman in an opulent gown and jewels, a book held in her left hand. Above her shoulder is a faint inscription reading "Lady Jayne". The costume she wears was in fashion in the early 1550s; Jane was queen in 1553.

There was quite a debate about whether or not this was a portrait of Lady Jane Grey; David Starkey rejected it. Eric Ives, evidently, accepted its validity enough to have it used on the cover of his 2009 book:

Lady Jane Grey, (sic) is one of the most elusive and tragic characters in English history.

In July 1553 the death of the childless Edward VI threw the Tudor dynasty into crisis. On Edward's instructions his cousin Jane Grey was proclaimed queen, only to be ousted 13 days later by his illegitimate half sister Mary and later beheaded. In this radical reassessment, Eric Ives rejects traditional portraits of Jane both as hapless victim of political intrigue or Protestant martyr. Instead he presents her as an accomplished young woman with a fierce personal integrity. The result is a compelling dissection by a master historian and storyteller of one of history’s most shocking injustices.

"The Real Tudors" @ The National Portrait Gallery in London

The title of this exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London is intriguing:  The Real Tudors: Kings and Queens Rediscovered. In case you had been looking at portraits of the Fake Tudors. It runs from 12 September 2014  to 1 March 2015 and then travels across the Channel to the Musee du Luxembourg in Paris! Note the search for an authentic portrait of Lady Jane Dudley:

This special display, focusing on the portraiture of the Tudor monarchs, will allow visitors to rediscover these well-known kings and queens through the most complete presentation of their images staged to date.

Works from the Gallery’s Collection will be presented alongside exceptional loans and a prized possession of each monarch, as well as recent research undertaken as part of the Making Art in Tudor Britain project, to help visitors understand how and why such images were made.

The display includes the Gallery’s oldest portrait, that of Henry VII, which will be displayed with a Book of Hours inscribed by the king to his daughter; six portraits of Henry VIII, including a full-length portrait from Petworth House in Sussex, together with his rosary; portraits of Edward VI and a page from his diary in which he reports his father’s death; five portraits of Mary I combined with her Prayer Book loaned from Westminster Cathedral; and several portraits of Elizabeth I displayed alongside her locket ring. The search for a ‘real’ portrait of Lady Jane Grey in the sixteenth century will also be discussed through the display of a commemorative portrait of Jane that dates from the Elizabethan period.

A beautifully illustrated catalogue with over fifty reproduced portraits, and including the findings from recent technical analysis, is available from Gallery Shops and npg.org.uk/shop (not yet!)

The Last Abbot of Westminster Goes to the Tower

In 1560, John Feckenham, the last Abbot of Westminster, was sent to the Tower of London on May 20th by Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury. Since the reign of Elizabeth I had begun, he had been “railing against the changes that have been made.” Feckenham had been in the Tower before because of his defense of Catholicism. Cranmer sent him there during Edward VI’s reign, although he was freed briefly to debate John Jewel and John Hooper. During the reign of Henry VIII, he had been at Evesham, a Benedictine house suppressed in 1540; he served as chaplain to bishops Bell and Bonner of Worcester and London, respectively until his imprisonment. 

When Mary I succeeded her brother in 1553, he was released from the Tower. During her reign, Feckenham preached in London, served as Dean of St. Paul’s, assisted with the establishment of St. John’s and Trinity colleges in Oxford, and was the Queen’s confessor. He counseled Lady Jane Grey before her execution, hoping to convert her and he interceded for Elizabeth after the Wyatt Rebellion, preventing her execution and gaining her freedom. Feckenham engaged Cranmer, Ridley and Latimer in debate, but would not participate in their trial and execution. 

He received a D.D. at Oxford in 1556 and was appointed Abbot at Westminster, one of the few monasteries re-established during Mary’s reign, restoring the shrine of St. Edward the Confessor. 

When Elizabeth I came to the throne, she offered Feckenham security in his office if he took the Oath of Supremacy and conformed to the new Church of England (the Book of Common Prayer and Thirty-Nine Articles). Since he would not he was expelled from the abbey and for 14 years either held in the Tower or under house arrest as the “guest” of a Church of England bishop who would try to convert him without success. Feckenham prepared John Story (see the upcoming post on June 1) for his execution in 1571 in the Tower and was released on bail in July, 1574.

He was known to be gentle, courteous, and charitable, but proved himself, in the eyes of his bishop-jailers to be an absolutely obstinate papist (Catholic). In 1577, Feckenham was returned to the custody of the Bishop of Ely and was imprisoned in Wisbech Castle in 1580. He finally died there after 24 years of imprisonment on October 16, 1585. 

Feckenham’s life certainly demonstrates his loyalty to the Catholic Church, his endurance and his efforts to minister to the people of England. As the last mitered Abbot to sit in the House of Lords, he argued against the religious settlement Parliament crafted at the beginning of Elizabeth I’s reign, and yet he was always known for his kindly temperament. Although he and Lady Jane Grey could not agree on religious matters, she was thankful for his support even at her execution and Elizabeth probably thought she was being as generous and tolerant as possible when offering him a sinecure at the cost of his conscience.

David Knowles writes about him in his Saints and Scholars, "His mind moved in terms of practical concessions and adjustments; he had neither [Reginald] Pole's forward-looking zeal for reform, not the unworldly, single-minded missionary devotion of a Campion . . . Seen in the whole picture of his life, however, and as a man of his generation, he appears an admirable and sympathetic figure if not wholly an heroic one." More about the Last Abbot of Westminster here.

Lady Jane Grey, the Nine Days Queen

Four days after young King Edward VI died on July 6, 1553, Lady Jane Dudley began her reign as Queen of England. (I call her by her married name because her in-law relationship to the Duke of Northumberland, John Dudley, was essential to her succession to the throne in the eyes of Edward VI). The delay in the accession came about because her father-in-law Dudley waited to announce the king's death while preparing for a smooth transition. Because of her Protestantism, because she was executed by "Bloody" Mary, because John Foxe promoted her cause, she became known as a martyr and victim of Catholic oppression in England--part of the Black Legend of Catholic cruelty. She has also been thought a victim of family abuse and manipulation, an unwilling pawn of Northumberland.

 

Two studies recently have questioned this view: Eric Ives' Lady Jane Grey: A Tudor Mystery and Leanda de Lisle's The Sisters Who Would Be Queen: Mary, Katherine, and Lady Jane Grey: A Tudor Tragedy. Both books are all about the issue of the succession in the Tudor Dynasty, either from Edward VI to Jane or Mary, or from Elizabeth I to Mary, Queen of Scots, or the surviving Grey sisters, Mary and Catherine--so in neither book is Jane the main subject, really. I reviewed de Lisle's book, but have not read Ives' book, but as this reviewer notes, Ives' study is a "provocative and revisionist account" that takes nothing for granted:

Lady Jane Grey: A Tudor Mystery is not a biography. Rather, it is a book about a dynastic and political crisis. The ‘Tudor Mystery’ that Eric Ives has set out to solve is how the ‘legitimate’ Queen Jane, who commanded considerable political support, was overthrown in favour of the illegitimate Mary Tudor in ‘a wholly unexpected political coup’ (1). Viewing Jane’s rule from this angle produces a provocative and revisionist account of the summer of 1553. This alone would make Ives’ book an important piece of scholarship; that he wields an extensive array of archival evidence and provides the most detailed account to date of the succession crisis of 1553 makes this a book that no Tudor historian can ignore. . . .

Despite the title, Jane Grey is not the focus of Ives’s book, though Ives does discuss Jane’s education, family and religion at some length. His Jane is not the tragic figure who appealed to so many Victorians, but a ‘bluestocking’ and committed evangelical used as a political pawn by her indifferent parents. Jane married Guidlford Dudley reluctantly and was initially disinclined to take the throne: indeed, she was apparently surprised to discover that she was queen. Yet once on the throne she wielded power with a firmer hand than her earlier reluctance might suggest, adamantly blocking plans to invest her husband as king. Jane and her supporters had the advantage. They controlled the court, the state administration and the Tower, and Northumberland oversaw orders to the lord lieutenants in the counties to uphold Jane’s rule, whereas Mary possessed significantly inferior resources and was mistaken in her belief that her cousin, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V would come to her aid. Immediately after Edward’s death, few would have bet on Mary. Yet within thirteen days she had amassed considerable support, had been proclaimed Queen in London with the backing of the Privy Council, and Northumberland, who had led an army out of London in order to suppress Mary’s uprising, had surrendered. All of these developments need to be examined anew if Jane, not Mary, was rightfully queen.


Lady Jane Grey and the Tower of London

From Nancy Bilyeau, author of The Crown, comes this background from The English Historical Fiction blog:

On a December night in 1840, a sizable group of writers, editors, publishers, printers and illustrators gathered at the Sussex Hotel, in the fashionable town of Royal Tunbridge Wells, for a dinner party. It is possible that Charles Dickens, the young author of Oliver Twist and The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, was invited to the party. Most definitely in attendance was George Cruikshank, the talented illustrator of Oliver Twist.

The host of this lavish affair was the famed 35-year-old novelist William Harrison Ainsworth. The occasion: the successful serialization over the last year of his fifth novel, The Tower of London: A Historical Romance, which told the story of the tragic Lady Jane Grey, beginning with her arrival by barge at the Tower to launch her nine-day-reign and ending with her decapitation on Tower Green on July 10, 1553. . . .

That dazzling night at Royal Tunbridge Wells, Ainsworth, mercifully, could not know that his books would go out of print, that fellow writers such as Edgar Allan Poe would describe his prose as "turgid pretension."

Yet he is not without a legacy. The book celebrated that night, The Tower of London: A Historical Romance, triggered a new kind of interest in William the Conqueror's castle keep. It was an interest that deepened through the Victorian age, and is part of the reason visitors pour into the Tower, to the tune of 2 million a year. . . .

Ainsworth opened the door to a more illustrious period in the Tower's history. It's true that the novel's prose is melodramatic ("heaving bosoms," "piercing black eyes" and "sinister smiles") and the pages are crowded with Gothic characters (not one or two but three supporting characters who are giants--and a dwarf!) along with august personages of the past. But Ainsworth's diligent research brings to life the grounds, the kitchens, the passageways, the prison cells and the beautiful chapels of the Tower. He made full, imaginative use of the Tower of London, as a setting for a story of high drama. And Cruikshank's 40 engravings and 58 woodcuts play their suggestive part.

And in the center of it all is Lady Jane Grey, a character of undeniable pathos, surrounded by conspiracies. Ainsworth invests the Spanish ambassador, Simon Renard, with the malevolent abilities of a Blofeld straight from Bond. Northumberland is formidable indeed.There is an energy to the book, and an eerie, even frightening atmosphere. The rack, the Scavenger's Daughter and the infamous Little Ease are all present and accounted for.

So, in addition to making the Tower of London a great tourist site, William Harrison Ainsworth might have contributed to the common view of Queen Jane Dudley as a great romantically tragic victim. As I commented on my Radio Maria US show last Saturday, I think that view was corrected by Leanda de Lisle in her book The Sisters Who Would be Queen: Mary, Katherine, and Lady Jane Grey: A Tudor Tragedy, which I reviewed here.

Mary Tudor, Queen of France and Grandmother of Lady Jane Grey

Henry VIII's sister Mary was born on March 18, 1496. She was the fifth child of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. More here. Her life's story is romantic, I suppose, because she married for love after marrying for the state. Mary, the Dowager Queen of France and the Duchess of Suffolk sided with Katherine of Aragon during the crisis of the King's Great Matter, but died in 1533, before the denouement.

Henry VIII, in spite of his early disapproval of Mary and Charles Brandon marrying without his permission, chose to name her heirs in the succession, after his children of course, ignoring the primogeniture claims of his elder sister Margaret's heirs. Mary's daughter Frances married Henry Grey, the Marquess of Dorset and their daughter Jane was chosen by Edward VI to thwart his half-sister Mary's accession to the throne upon his death. But that's another story, told elsewhere.

Charles Major told the love story of Mary and Charles Brandon in the late nineteenth century novel, When Knighthood was in Flower which was made into a movie twice: the silent 1923 version with Marion Davies and the 1953 Walt Disney version with Glynis Johns and Richard Todd, titled "The Sword and the Rose."