Lady Jane Grey

Lady Jane Grey was proclaimed queen of England in the accession crisis of 1553 and then rejected. Eric Ives reexamines her short claim to the throne and the people who stood around it, and argues for a new reading of who she was and what she did.

This is a work of history and biography. It draws a portrait of Jane as an educated, forceful person, and it treats her as one of the least studied figures in English history. Her own writings receive a fresh literary and religious analysis, which gives the portrait its evidence.

The book also takes up the legal side of the crisis. It argues that the will of Edward VI gave Jane and her supporters strong legal grounds for her claim. Edward VI, Mary Tudor and John Dudley, the duke of Northumberland, each get a reassessment as players in the same struggle.

The larger aim is to show how Tudor politics worked and how power was exercised in early modern England. It suits readers who want an argument-driven account of one crisis, with a close look at a figure usually seen only as a tragic footnote.