The most important document in Tudor history? How a forgotten text triggered a royal crisis

The most important document in Tudor history? How a forgotten text triggered a royal crisis When the dying teenage king Edward VI rewrote the royal succession in his own hand, he tried to overturn his father's wishes, disinherit both Mary and Elizabeth, and place his Protestant cousin Lady Jane Grey on the throne. The document was illegal – but it triggered one of the greatest succession crises in English history In the summer of 1553, a dying boy sat on England’s throne. Edward VI was only 15 years old, but illness had left him desperately weak. The male heir who Henry VIII had risked so much to obtain – and on whose shoulders the Tudor dynasty’s future had rested – was fading fast. Observing his decline, those around him faced a question of growing urgency: who should inherit the throne? In Tudor England, the stability of the line of succession was a matter of national survival. The dynasty was still young, founded in 1485 when Henry Tudor defeated Richard III at Bosworth. Stories of the long Wars of the Roses which had devastated the country hadn’t disappeared. It was evident for all to see that a disputed claim to the crown could threaten rebellion or civil war. The official answer, at least, seemed clear. Henry VIII’s will, backed by parliamentary statute, had placed Edward first in line, followed by his half-sisters, Mary and Elizabeth. But it was an answer that young Edward refused to accept. Instead, with his waning strength, the teenage king put pen to paper and – with help from his council – drafted a document in his own hand. Known as the Devise for the Succession, it attempted to overturn his father’s settlement, disinherit both of his half-sisters, and redirect the English crown to a little-known teenage cousin: Lady Jane Grey. Speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, historian Nicola Tallis calls it “one of the most important and extraordinary documents in English history”. England’s religious revolution Why did Edward take such a bold step? To find an answer, it helps to look at the context into which Lady Jane Grey herself was born. “She was born at a time when her great-uncle, Henry VIII, was king of England and was awaiting the outcome of the pregnancy of his third wife, Jane Seymour,” Tallis explains. That pregnancy ended in October 1537 with the birth of Prince Edward, the long-awaited son Henry had spent years trying to secure. Henry’s need for a male heir had already transformed England. His first wife, Catherine of Aragon, had given birth to one surviving child, Mary, but no surviving son. With royal power being expected to pass through the male line, this created a dynastic crisis. In response, Henry sought to annul his marriage to Catherine. His determination to do so brought him into conflict with the pope. When Rome refused to grant the annulment, Henry broke with papal authority and declared himself Supreme Head of the Church of England. “It’s a really key and pivotal period of history that Jane is born into,” Tallis says, “and an interesting time for the country because the cogs of the Reformation were beginning to turn in England at the time of her birth.” The English Reformation, however, was not completed in Henry’s lifetime. He severed England from Rome, dissolved the monasteries and took control of the Church, but he remained doctrinally conservative in many respects. Much traditional belief and practice survived. Edward VI, however, pushed England much more decisively towards Protestantism. Henry VIII thought he had settled the succession Before his death in 1547, Henry VIII believed he had secured the Tudor future. His will, supported by parliamentary legislation, placed Edward first in line. If Edward died without children, the crown would pass to Mary, then Elizabeth. If all three of Henry’s children died without heirs, the succession would move to the descendants of Henry’s younger sister, Mary Tudor, Duchess of Suffolk. Lady Jane Grey belonged to this line. The arrangement was designed to prevent precisely the kind of uncertainty that had once torn England apart during the Wars of the Roses. A clear order of succession was meant to stop rival claimants competing for the throne. But there was an obvious complication. Both Mary and Elizabeth had been declared illegitimate during Henry’s reign, after their respective mothers had fallen out of the king’s favour. Mary’s status was undermined after Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon was annulled. Elizabeth’s was destroyed after the execution of her mother, Anne Boleyn, in 1536. In a decidedly awkward legal compromise, legislation restored both women to the succession without fully reversing their illegitimacy. Edward’s Devise “Edward VI’s Devise for the Succession is a will, to all intents and purposes,” says Tallis. “In this will, he attempted to overturn the provisions for the succession that had been put in place by his father, Henry VIII.” The Devise shows that the young Edward was thinking actively about law, inheritance and religion at the very moment when his own life was ending – and “religion is really at the heart of it”. His motives were overwhelmingly religious. Unlike his father, Edward was “an ardent Protestant”. During his reign, a new Book of Common Prayer was introduced which standardised how worship was conducted in English, removed many traditional religious images and moved worship further away from Catholic practice. “He didn’t want his Catholic half-sister Mary to be given the opportunity to reverse all of his good work in the cause of religion.” Mary was openly Catholic and had remained committed to the old faith despite years of political pressure. For her, Catholicism was bound up with the memory of her mother, Catherine of Aragon and her own legitimacy. If Mary became queen, Edward reasonably believed England’s Protestant Reformation might be reversed. So he resolved to exclude her. But that created another problem. Why Elizabeth had to go too “Edward realised that he couldn’t exclude one half-sister without also excluding the other.” Legally, the two sisters occupied very similar ground. Both had been declared illegitimate during Henry VIII’s reign. Both had later been restored to the succession without being fully restored to legitimacy. Rather than attempt to distinguish between them, Edward “barred both Mary and Elizabeth from the succession by reason of their illegitimacy, which had been enforced by law during the reign of their father, Henry VIII.” It was an imperfect solution. Edward’s real target was Mary. Elizabeth, like him, was Protestant. In religious terms, she was far closer to Edward than her Catholic sister. But for Edward, it was all or nothing. With both sisters excluded, Edward needed a Protestant successor. “So, we see Jane Grey, Edward’s Protestant cousin, who had been third in line to the throne by the terms of Henry VIII’s will, catapulted to first in line to the throne.” “It was a huge turnaround,” Tallis says, “and nobody really saw it coming, least of all Lady Jane Grey.” Jane had not been raised as England’s future monarch. Unlike Mary and Elizabeth, she had not spent her childhood at the centre of dynastic politics. She had grown up largely in aristocratic households, receiving an exceptional humanist education. She was learned, devoutly Protestant and astute, but she hadn’t been prepared to rule a kingdom. Her sudden elevation was politically convenient, too. Jane had recently married Lord Guildford Dudley, the son of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland – the most powerful man in Edward VI’s government. That connection has long prompted historians to ask how far Edward’s plan reflected his own religious convictions, and how far it also served Northumberland’s interests. Either way, Jane was placed at the centre of a crisis she had no hand in creating. Six Wives: A HistoryExtra podcast series Member exclusive | In this six-part podcast series, we’ll be peeling back the layers of mythmaking to take another look at these fascinating women, who shaped the course of Henry’s reign – and the history of England.Listen to all episodes now An illegal revolution The Devise was an audacious move. But it was also “completely illegal,” Tallis explains. “He wrote this will, but was unable to pass it through Parliament, which would have made it legal, because unfortunately it became clear that he was not going to live long enough to do that.” Kings and queens possessed immense authority, but the succession had been shaped by statute. Henry VIII’s earlier arrangements had parliamentary backing. But Edward’s Devise didn’t. Without parliamentary approval, the document had no legal force. Lawfully, succession remained as Henry VIII had established it; it should have “passed to Mary, then Elizabeth, and then Jane if neither of them produced children of their own.” England refuses to accept a new queen Edward died on 6 July 1553. Four days later, “Jane was publicly proclaimed queen at the Tower of London.” However, “Jane’s claim to the throne was nowhere near as strong as Mary and Elizabeth’s – and everybody in England knew it. The reception that came with the announcement was chilly, to say the least.” That reaction isn’t hard to understand. “When I think about it now, I don’t think that’s a great surprise,” Tallis says. “Jane was never raised as any kind of figurehead. She wasn’t ever raised as an heir to the throne. She was just this great-niece of Henry VIII who had been living in the countryside.” Mary, by contrast, was instantly recognisable. She was Henry VIII’s daughter, Catherine of Aragon’s child and, to many people, the rightful heir. She also acted decisively. Rather than submit, Mary withdrew to East Anglia and gathered support from nobles, gentry, townspeople and ordinary men and women who accepted her claim. Many who backed Mary did not necessarily share her Catholicism, but they believed in her hereditary right. Mary also commanded considerable sympathy. She had spent years enduring the consequences of Henry VIII’s rejection of Catherine of Aragon. “There were people alive in 1553 who still remembered Henry VIII’s separation from Catherine of Aragon and the way Mary had been treated at that time, and nobody wanted to see Mary deprived of her birthright again,” Tallis explains. “So I think the idea of this girl, who nobody had heard of, suddenly usurping her place, to all intents and purposes, was met with a huge amount of antipathy.” Within nine days, Jane’s reign had collapsed, and Mary entered London as queen. Lady Jane Grey didn’t survive a further year. On 12 February 1554, she was executed. “ Sadly, I think that from the moment that Jane was deposed, her fate was sealed.” Nicola Tallis was speaking to Isabel King on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation. Authors James Osborne is a senior content producer at HistoryExtra