Her Highness, the Traitor - By Susan Higginbotham Page 0,152
Mary, are both recorded by contemporary sources.
Mary did indeed make plans to escape from England in 1550, but her confiding her intentions to Frances is purely my invention.
Jane Grey’s exact birth date is unknown, but Eric Ives convincingly places it in the spring of 1537 rather than the October date of tradition. The birthdates of the children of John and Jane Dudley are also unrecorded. An unnamed Dudley son was christened in March 1537, and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, who was Guildford’s godfather, was in England from May 1537 to September 1538; I think it possible then that Guildford was the Dudley son born in March 1537 and that Diego served as his godfather, not at his christening, but at his confirmation on a later date. With the other Dudley children, I have followed the estimates of their ages given by Simon Adams, a specialist on Robert Dudley, or, failing that, those given in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Anne Seymour, born in 1538, was only twelve when she married Jack Dudley. I therefore think it likely her marriage had yet to be consummated when her husband was imprisoned in 1553.
Robert Dudley’s marriage to Amy Robsart was later characterized by William Cecil as a “carnal” marriage, a love match, and that it was not a particularly illustrious match for an earl’s son is further evidence the couple married for love. That Mary Dudley’s marriage to Henry Sidney might have also been a love match is suggested by the fact that she had two wedding ceremonies: one at Esher, the other at Ely Place. It may be that the first was secret, the second public. Her marriage was certainly less distinguished than that of her younger sister, Katherine Dudley, who married the heir to an earldom.
A supposedly contemporary description of Jane Grey’s physical appearance states she was thin and very small, with reddish-brown eyes and nearly red hair. As Leanda de Lisle has observed, however, this description may have been the invention of Richard Davey, a modern biographer of Jane, so I have not relied upon it. No portrait has been definitively identified as being an authentic one of Jane, but John Stephan Edwards makes a good case for a portrait at Syon House as being a true one of Jane. I have therefore followed that portrait, which shows an auburn-haired young woman with brown eyes, in my own novel.
There is no historical evidence that Adrian Stokes suffered the loss of a fiancée. That is my invention.
A “Mistress Ellen,” who is otherwise unidentified, accompanied Jane Grey to the scaffold. As Leanda de Lisle points out, the story about her being Jane’s nurse is a modern invention, possibly inspired by Juliet’s nurse. I supplied her with the first name of “Ursula.”
Recently, several historians, including Eric Ives and Leanda de Lisle, have questioned the story that Frances married Adrian Stokes on March 9, 1554, just weeks after her daughter’s and husband’s deaths. It has been suggested the wedding actually took place in 1555 and there was confusion caused by the official practice of dating the New Year from March 25. In researching this book, however, I found in the United Kingdom’s National Archives a 1560 inquisition post mortem for Frances. To my dismay, it gave the March 9, 1554, wedding date as well as precise birth and death dates of Elizabeth Stokes, her place of birth and death, and the ages of Katherine and Mary Grey—and because it used regnal years, not calendar years, it was unlikely there was confusion over new style/old style dates. While it is possible this information is incorrect, as it sometimes is in inquisitions post mortem, it also seemed likely the dates could have come from Adrian Stokes himself, who would have known this information better than anyone else.
There is, however, evidence that contradicts the March 1554 marriage date. A land grant to Frances dated April 10, 1554, makes no mention of Stokes. As late as April 21, 1555, Frances was still thought to be free to remarry: Simon Renard, the imperial ambassador, passed along the news that the Earl of Devon had been proposed as a husband for her. As Judith Field, a commenter on my blog, pointed out, however, these discrepancies could be readily explained if Frances kept her marriage secret for a time. After wrestling with the matter, I finally chose to use the March 1554 date as the historically more likely one, along with the scenario of a secret marriage.