Possible portrait of Lady Jane Grey - a postscript

Following on from my recent post about the return to Wrest Park of what has been in the past, and is now once again, being considered to be a contemporary portrait of Lady Jane Grey,

The Art Newspaper has now drawn attention to the fact that thisidentification was being advanced almost twenty years ago in connection with a major the 2007exhibition on portraits of the period.

The article can be seen at Revelation over last surviving portrait of England’s ‘nine day queen’ was made 20 years ago, art historian says

The evidence that the portrait has undergone significant damage and repainting as perceptions changed as to the status of the sitter makes me wonder if the simple white coif was substituted for the more elaborate French hood as an indication of what she wore to her execution.

Lady Jane Grey back in the news

The return of a portrait once believed to be of Lady Jane Grey, but then considered not to be of her, to Wrest Park has led to new research into the painting and the view that, after all, if could well be of her. Although damaged and considerably affected by restoration and apparent overpainting the panel has been dated by dendrochronology  to the period 1539 to 1571, the right time for the painting to have been done in her lifetime. The fact that it had been deliberately defaced might well suggest that happened following the events of 1553-4. The face appears to agree with written descriptions of her. The subsequent renovation might suggest that occurred when she was being presenter as a Protestant martyr, with less emphasis on her noble status as was originally the case.

In recent years what is now referred to as the

‘Streatham’, which was acquired by the  National Portrait Gallery in the 1990s, has become for the moment, the accepted contemporary image of Lady Jane. It is apparently a late sixteenth century copy by an indifferent artist of a lost original, and similar to the ‘Houghton’ portrait, which can be seen at The Tudors ~ The Houghton Portrait

The history and context of the Streatham painting is discussed on Wikipedia at Streatham portrait

Sir Roy Strong in the 1960s concluded that an NPG full length portrait was of the ‘Nine Days Queen’ but this is now universally accepted as actually being of Queen Catherine Parr.

David Starkey favoured in the 1990s a miniature now in the Yale Centre for British Art as the sole surviving image, and he is very critical of the authenticity of the ‘Streatham’ image. However the miniature has not gained universal acceptance as being of Lady Jane.

The history of these and other portraits that have been suggested as being, or possibly being, of her is set out in considerable detail by the Katherine the Queen website in the appropriate section at The Tudors

There are in fact a considerable number of candidates for being a portrait of Lady Jane, and they cannot all be of her. The real questions lie in deciding which are the more likely amongst so many candidates, many of which are copies. 

The Duckett portrait is accessible in full colour on Wikimedia at Lady Jane Grey – The Duckett Portrait.

The painting at Wrest does have resemblances to the Northwick Park painting, which may represent what the original intention of the artist was. It can be seen at Lady Jane Grey Northwick Park.

The new research on the Wrest portrait is illustrated in a series of articles from different newspapers, including the Daily Mail at The real face of Lady Jane Grey revealed?, by the Daily Telegraph at Is this the real face of Lady Jane Grey?, by the Guardian at Sole portrait of England’s ‘nine-day queen’ thought to have been identified by researchers, and by the Independent at Researchers think they’ve unearthed the only portrait of England’s ‘nine-day queen’

The more specialised source Artnet reports on the story at Is This The Only Portrait Of Tudor Queen Lady Jane Grey? 

The identification proposed for the Wrest Park portrait is challenged by J. Stephan Edwards, who has written a comprehensive study of the attributed portraiture of Lady Jane, on his well researched and presented website Some Grey Matter, and that, and much else about the life and death of Jane, can be seen at Re-Visiting the Wrest Park Portrait: A Rebuttal - Lady Jane Grey

The National Trust website for the later family home of the Greys, descendants of Lady Jane’s uncle, at Dunham Massey in Cheshire has a section on portraits of Lady Jane at 

Called Lady Jane Grey, Queen (1537–1554), possibly Lady Mary Neville, Lady Dacre (1524-c.1576)

When it comes to literary portraits Lady Jane Grey was made into a Protestant Martyr by John Foxe, and so successfully that, reinforced by nineteenth century romanticism, it remains an image that is hard to question.

One writer who has challenged the received image is the American writer Susan Higginbotham. A lawyer by training she writes historical novels about England in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as well as about the US Civil War. I have not read any so far, though I have one in my pile of books to read, but from her website it is clear that she seeks to be historically accurate and balanced in her work. That website susanhigginbotham.com is both an excellent resource to correct the failings of so many other novelists writing historical fiction and also displays a nice line in ironic humour. The ‘Humor’ section is well worth perusing.

From her various posts about Lady Jane Grey Lady Jane Grey, the Abused Child challenges the image of her as the mistreated daughter of brutish and unfeeling parents. Fifteen Aids to Grey Is a humorous, nay sharply edged, critique of the way historical novelists have written about her life. As the modern saying has it, Enjoy.

Both with the suggested portraits and the literary evidence any assessment of the ‘Nine Days Queen’ will depend to a great extent on the preconceptions and sympathies of the investigator. It is a story that is test for all interested in understanding the events of those tumultuous years.

The death of King Edward VI

Today is the 460th anniversary of the death at Greenwich Palace of the fifteen year old King Edward VI in 1553.

Despite attempts by the government to keep the news of the King's failing health quiet rumours had clearly got out, and those with aninterst in what was to happen were ready to make the moves they had anticipated. In his last months the King, a convinced reformed protestant thanks to his spiritual formation even before his father's death, appears to have taken the lead in the moves to side-step the 1544 Act of Succession which settled the Crown on his two half-sisters, the Lady Mary and the Lady Elizabeth, and then reverted to male succession with the heirs male of his father's younger sister the Duchess of Suffolk through her daughters. This excluded the otherwise superior claim of Queen Mary of Scots, and her Lennox cousins.

The King, anxious to prevent the accession of the Lady Mary, a devout Catholic, profoundly attached to the Catholic Mass, though she may well have kept quiet about her attachment to the Papacy, now sought to leave the Crown by his will, as though it were his private property - a power conferred on his father, but not on him. By his new declaration the Crown was to pass to Lady Jane Grey, excluding both the daughters of King Henry VIII and Lady Jane's mother, Frances Duchess of Suffolk. For this reason the future Queen Elizabeth I appears as monarch never to have trusted the two surviving Grey sisters, Lady Catherine and Lady Mary, and watched their matrimonial misadventures with a beady royal eye and vigilance. For this see Leanda de Lisle's joint biography of the Greys The Sisters who would be Queen

Having got many of the Council on side the young King may have believed it would all go as he wished. His chief minister, the Duke of Northumberland, who on this analysis emerges less as a die-hard Protestant than as a politique par excellence in all things - hence perhaps his last minute return to Catholicism in the last days of his life and his question even on the scaffold as to whether or not he could still serve Queen Mary - the offer was declined and the axe fell - had made his own moves. His son Lord Guildford Dudley had been married to Lady Jane that spring and Northumberland and the Council moved to proclaim her as Queen. So began the tragi-farce of the reign of Queen Jane.

Meanwhile from her estates in Essex the Lady Mary, apprised of what was happening by those contacts at Court sympathetic to her claims, moved north into Suffolk to Framlingham castle, gathered support, and in what has been described as the one successful rebellion against a Tudor government saw off the challenge to her rights and became Queen Mary I, and, as her half-brother had feared, set about restoring Catholicism. The difficulties she faced included the amount of physical and spiritual damage wrought in the reign of King Edward - whatever she might have achieved had she been spared to pursue her policy of restoration for longer, she found she faced a determined protestant minority willing to die for their beliefs; that would not have been the same six years earlier when their father died.

Evangelical ladies

The most recent tutorial I gave on sixteenth century women concentrated on that distinct group of aristocratic or gentlewomen who adopted evangelical religion, and its consequent politics, in the 1540s and early 1550s. As a group they do not appear to have successors in the later sixteenth century - perhaps Gloriana simply put everyone else in the shade.

They include Queen Katherine Parr, Katherine, Duchess of Suffolk, heiress of the Willoughby de Eresby family in Lincolnshire, second wife of Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk, and ancestress of the Bertie families, her step-daughter Frances Duchess of Suffolk and her daughters Lady Jane Grey, Lady Catherine Grey and Lady Mary Grey. For these four I would recommend Lucinda de Lisle's biography The Sisters who would be Queen, as a balanced assessment of their lives , families and times. In addition there was the assertive Anne, Duchess of Somerset, wife of the Protector, Anne, Countess of Sussex and Anne Askew , whose life and death, shaped by those who used her to attack more prominent figures is in many ways a counterpart to that of the Catholic Nun of Kent, Elizabeth Barton, in the 1520s and 1530s.

As a group they were related, or part of patterns of connection and friendship, and the extent to which they influenced one another looks not inconsiderable.  As supporters of evangelical ideas they were serious and articulate and cannot be seen as mere followers of ecclesiastical fashion. Thanks to John Foxe both Ann Askew and Lady Jane Grey acquired a hagiography as martyrs for the Protestant cause. 

Queen Katherine Parr Image: Wikipedia Katherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk Drawing by Hans Holbein the Younger Image: Wikipedia Frances, Duchess of Suffolk Image: Wikipedia Lady Jane Grey This miniature by Lievine Teerlink is now considered to be the only, or best surviving, likeness Image: MyStudios.com Lady Catherine Grey with her son. She is wearing a miniature of her husband, William Seymour Earl of Hertford. Miniature by Lievine Teerlink Image: Lisby 1 on Flickr

These were all, in their own ways, determined, forceful women, and not easily persuaded to keep quiet about their opinions. In many ways they had the advantages of their social position, which gave them independence and the ability to move as Anne Askew did to London.

One other thing, apart from good birth and controversial religious opinions, which links them as a group is that most of them managed, despite their noble, or at least good, birth to contact marriages with second or subsequent husbands well below their own station. This, which was so often a worry for families with daughters of marriageable age, was something they discarded. Moreover these marriages were sometimes arranged with what looks like indecent haste.  Not for them the traditional life of the pious widow or vowess. Some of the marriages seem surprising given the background of the ladies and their husbands, who were not in a position to aid their wives as Lord Stanley had been able to support Lady Margaret Beaufort.

Katherine Parr's fourth marriage as Queen Dowager to Lord Seymour raised eyebrows, and, although not without parallel (Adeliza of Louvain and Katherine of Valois come to mind), appears hasty and unusual. In the case of the Grey sisters their position as heirs or potential heirs made their marriages ones of immediate concern to the monarch at the time.

Determination to achieve what they wanted, be it in religious, political or personal terms seems to be the distinguishing mark of these women. the cost might be high, indeed fatal on occasion, but they were not to be deterred.

Women of more humble origins have not left such ample evidence of their lives and opinions, but it seems not unreasonable to think that sixteenth century women of all classes and opinions were perfectly well able to give voice to their opinions and ideas within the society in which they lived - something which has not always been appreciated by historians or their readership.