TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.
—The transcriber of this project created the book cover image usingthe title page of the original book. The image is placed in the publicdomain.
THE SISTERS OF LADY JANE GREY
[Frontispiece
LADY KATHERINE GREY
(From the original painting, by an unknown artist, in the possession ofMrs. Wright-Biddulph, bearing the following inscription:)
“Now thus but like to change
And fade as dothe the flowre
Which springe and bloom full gay,
And wythrethe in one hour.”
THE SISTERS OF
LADY JANE GREY
AND THEIR WICKED GRANDFATHER
BEING THE TRUE STORIES
OF THE STRANGE LIVES OF CHARLES BRANDON, DUKE OF
SUFFOLK, AND OF THE LADIES KATHERINE AND
MARY GREY, SISTERS OF LADY JANE GREY,
“THE NINE-DAYS’ QUEEN”
BY
RICHARD DAVEY
AUTHOR OF
“THE SULTAN AND HIS SUBJECTS,” “THE PAGEANT OF LONDON,”
AND “THE NINE-DAYS’ QUEEN”
WITH 14 ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
CHAPMAN AND HALL, Ltd.
1911
Richard Clay & Sons, Limited,
BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E.
AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
TO
THE MEMORY OF THE LATE
MAJOR MARTIN HUME
A GREAT HISTORIAN OF TUDOR TIMES
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED BY A STUDENT OF
THE SAME PERIOD OF OUR
NATIONAL HISTORY
PREFACE
The strange adventures of the Ladies Katherineand Mary Grey, although they excited greatinterest at the time of their happening, and wereof immense contemporary political importance,are now almost unknown, even to professedstudents of Elizabethan history. The sad fateof these unfortunate princesses has paled beforethat of their more famous sister, Lady Jane Grey,who, although the heroine of an appalling tragedy,was rather the victim of others than of her ownactions. In a sense, she was merely a lay-figure,whereas her sisters, especially Lady Katherine,who played an active part on the stage of historyat a later period of life, and possessed an unusuallystrong personality, were entirely swayed by themost interesting of human passions—love. LadyKatherine was literally “done to death” by herinfatuation for the young Earl of Hertford, theeldest son of that Protector Somerset who suffereddeath under Edward VI. The feline cruelty withwhich Queen Elizabeth tormented Lady Katherine,after the clandestine marriage with her loverwas revealed, called forth the freely expressedcondemnation of Chief Secretary Cecil, whodenounced his royal mistress’s harsh