The birth dates and order of the children of Cecily and Thomas Dorset are very intertwined and almost impossible to establish accurately from this distance of time. Several sources claim that Thomas Dorset, who became the second Marquis upon the death of his father was in fact the couple’s third son. As they had been married since 1474, and he was not born until 1477, it is entirely possible for them to have had other sons before 1477. Edward is a name that has been mentioned more than once for their first son, and it is very possible that the couple’s firstborn son would have been named Edward in honour of King Edward IV. The existence of a second son, whom may have been called Anthony according to several sources is less likely but again not impossible. That Thomas was, if not their first son, at the very least their second seems to me to be the most probable scenario, with their first son named for the king and Thomas, as their second son, after his father. But if one or even two sons did proceed Thomas, they both must have died early on, as it was Thomas Dorset who succeeded his father in 1501.
Melita Thomas in her book The House of Grey has made perfectly good arguments for the birth date and order of the rest of the Dorset children and I have followed her suggestive order in this book. In that suggested order we would have Thomas born c.1477 followed by Richard c.1479, John c.1481, Eleanor c.1482, Anthony c.1483, George c.1486, Cecily c.1487, Dorothy c.1488, Leonard c.1490, Mary c.1491, Elizabeth c.1492, Margaret c.1494 and Edward c.1495. Another daughter Bridget is also mentioned in several sources but if she existed at all, she must have died at a young age. The Dorsets would of course have been considerably fortunate to have all their children, bar one, reach adulthood so the possibility of Cecily having given birth to at least one or two other children who died young and went unrecorded is also very real.
After Cecily’s death, her eldest son Thomas Marquis of Dorset, did not have long to enjoy his full inheritance – he died just a few months after his mother on 10th October 1530, at the age of fifty-three and was also buried in the collegiate church at Astley in Warwickshire. Inheriting both his mother and father’s estates he died one of the richest men in England. In or around 1509, Thomas had married a lady named Margaret Wotton, who became Marchioness of Dorset alongside her husband. Several sources mention that Margaret may have been his second wife and that there is some evidence that he had previously been married to a lady named Eleanor Saint John, but it is unsubstantiated. During their marriage, Thomas and Margaret had eight children together, the eldest of whom was Henry Grey; he became the third Marquis of Dorset in 1530 when Thomas died.
Most of the other Grey boys were involved in the life of the court of Henry VIII to some degree or another. Richard Grey served at court and attended the funeral of Henry VII as well as the coronation festivities of Henry VIII.1 He was very much a part of Henry VIII’s court and it was the king that arranged his marriage to Florence Pudsey, Lady Clifford sometime around 1523. Richard was her third husband and her marriage to her second husband ended after she sued her husband for restitution of conjugal rights, and it came to light that she was committing adultery herself.2 Assuming a birth date for him of c.1479, he was around forty-four years old when he married Florence, presumably prior to then preferring the life of a single man at court. They had no children together and he died in 1541, eleven years after his mother, leaving all his possessions to his wife.3
Sir John Grey who was born c.1481 followed in his brother’s footsteps and also became part of the Henrican court. He married a lady named Elizabeth Catesby in around 1509 at the age of twenty-eight. On several ancestry sites she is named as being the daughter of Sir William Catesby by his first wife, Phillipa Bishopston. This would make her the sister of the infamous William Catesby, advisor to Richard III, and the first named in the verse that was posted on the door of St Paul’s cathedral in 1484 – The Cat, the Rat and Lovell our dog, Rule all England under a Hog (the other two men were Sir Richard Ratcliffe and Sir Francis Lovell, all trusted confidants of Richard III – the hog). This seems unlikely as this Elizabeth was born in c.1438, which means by the time she married John she would have been seventy-one! John was her second husband, as she had previously married a gentleman named Roger Wake in c.1473. Elizabeth Catesby was also said to have died by 1523, when John took a second wife, Anne Barlee. The Elizabeth born in 1438 would have been a grand old age of eighty-five by then. None of this of course is impossible, but it is improbable. A more likely explanation is that she was the daughter of the same Sir William Catesby but by his second wife, Joan Barre, whom he married c.1446. This would give her a probable birth date of sometime in the mid-1450s, placing her around eighteen years of age when she married Roger and in her mid-40s when she married John. She would therefore be a half-sister of the Catesby who was an associate of Richard III. John Grey wrote a will dated 3rd March 15234 but was still alive when his mother died as he was left manors in Somerset for life in her Will. His second wife, Anne, is believed to have remarried in 1530 so John must also have died shortly after his mother.
Little information is available on both Anthony and George Grey. Anthony it seems also served at court with his brothers and volunteered to be part of a band of knights sent to Spain in 1511 to fight the Infidel alongside King Ferdinand. He disappears from the records before his brothers and is not mentioned in Cecily’s Will, so it is probable that he died sometime in the 1520s. George Grey graduated around 1511 with a Bachelor of Civil Law and then took holy orders. He became Dean of the College of the Annunciation of St Mary in The Newarke, Leicester in 1517.5
Leonard Grey, born c. 1490 led a very colourful life. He was a courtier during the reign of Henry VIII and served as Lord Deputy of Ireland from 1536 to 1540. Leonard was sent to Ireland to fight against the Irish rebels, which he apparently undertook with zeal, but was accused in 1539 of allowing his sister Elizabeth›s son, the young Earl of Kildare, to escape to France when his father, Elizabeth’s husband, was captured. He strongly denied the allegations but nevertheless was attainted for treason and executed on 28 July 1541 by the orders of Henry VIII. Sources differ as to whether he married once, twice or not at all.
Little is known of Edward Grey other than he was probably the couple’s youngest son and that he appears to have accompanied Mary Tudor to France for her marriage to the French King Louis and he later served in her household when she returned to England and married Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. Several sources say he married a lady named Anne Jerningham who served with him in the household of Brandon and Mary but again this is uncorroborated.
Out of the female Grey siblings the probable eldest, Eleanor Grey born c.1482, had of course died in 1502. She left behind at least four children, so even assuming she gave birth once a year she must have started having children in 1498. A birth date of c.1482 therefore seems fully accurate, assuming she was married by the age of fifteen, c.1497, and then went onto have four children. Her husband, John Arundell of Lanherne, Cornwall, was born in 1474 so was eight years older than her. After her death, he remarried a lady named Jane Grenville. He had two further sons with her, and a daughter, and their eldest son, Thomas, went on to marry Margaret Howard, a sister of Queen Katherine Howard.
Mary Grey is a rather shadowy figure and seems to have stayed away from court life. Her father purchased her marriage to Sir Walter Devereux and made the final payment towards it in 14946 and the pair were likely married in the mid-1490s. The marriage was not initially consummated, which was understandable given that Mary was probably only around 5–6 years old at the time and her groom only three years older than that. After Dorset’s death Cecily was required to buy the marriage from the king again, and alongside other executors of her husband’s Will was obliged to pay £1000, £200 yearly at Hallowtide for the ‘marriage of the young Lord Ferrers’.7 Together the couple had three sons. Mary died in 1534 and is buried at St John the Baptist Church, Stowe by Charley. Her husband survived her by 24 years and went on to take a second wife, dying himself in 1558. He and his second wife are also buried with Mary in a tomb on the north wall of the chancel, under a beautiful Tudor arch.8
Cecily Grey, the second eldest daughter, was born c.1487 and presumably named after her mother. She lived a less than fortunate life, having been married to a gentleman named John Sutton, 3rd Baron Dudley. John Dudley was a weak man and hugely careless with money, leaving his family in financial dire straits later in life. It seems he lost pretty much everything he owned, including the family seat of Dudley Castle to his kinsman, John Dudley, Viscount Lisle, and ended up having to rely on the charity of friends. An extant letter from Cecily to Lord Cromwell written in 1539 illustrates the circumstances Cecily found herself in:
Right honourable and my singular good lord, in my most humblest wise I have me recommended unto your good lordship: glad to hear of your good health, which I pray God long to continue to his pleasure and your most heartiest desire. The cause of my writing unto you is, desiring you to be good lord unto me; it is so, as you know very well, that, by the means of my lord, my husband, I and all mine are utterly undone, unless it be the better provided by the grace of God, and likewise that it may please the king’s highness to take pity of me and mine, and in that behalf, my humble desire is to your lordship to be good lord unto me, as my special trust is in you above all, next God and the king. The truth is, I have little above 20 pound a year (which I have by my lady, my mother), to find me and one of my daughters with a woman and a man to wait upon me; and surely, unless the good prioress of Nuneaton did give me meat and drink of free cost, to me and all mine that here remains with me, I could not tell what shift to make. Over and besides that, whensoever any of my children comes hither to see me, they be welcome unto the prioress as long as they list to tarry, horsemeat and man’s meat, and cost them nothing, with a piece of gold or two in their purses at their departure. Wherefore in the way of charity I desire you to be good lord unto me, and to consider the poverty of me; for, if ought should come to the house of Nuneaton, I stand in a hard case, not knowing where to be, nor what shift to make, unless it may please you of your mere pity and compassion to move the king to be good and gracious unto me, according unto his most gracious pleasure to help me unto some living. Moreover, I most heartily thank your lordship of your manifold goodness showed unto my poor son Edward Dudley, for, as I perceive by him, you are special good lord unto him, specially as concerning his suit unto my lady Berkeley, not only in procurement of the king’s letters, but likewise you wrote for him as instantly as though he had been your own son. Wherefore I shall daily pray for you that it may please almighty God to reward you, whereas I and my poor son am not able. Notwithstanding it may please you to consider that though you were good lord unto him, yet it was not his fortune to obtain his foresaid suit and purpose which hath been to his great cost and charge, also to his great hindrance divers ways; for all this great while he hath lived on me and other of his friends. Farther, as I perceive he hath been bold to come to dinner and supper to your lordship, by your goodness showed unto him, which hath shifted the better. Desiring you to continue your goodness unto him, considering his poverty, and mine also, I desire you to be good lord unto him in his poor suit, as I shall daily pray for your honourable lordship long to endure. Written at Nuneaton, the 24th day of February. Your daily beadwoman, Cecil Dudley. (To the Right Honourable and my singular good lord, my Lord Privy Seal)9
Her sister Dorothy Grey fared slightly better with her marriage. Born c.1488, she married after 1503 a gentleman named Robert Willoughby, as his second wife. His father, also named Robert was Knight of the Body to Henry VII, king’s Councillor and Lord Steward of the Household. Robert Senior’s cousin, Thomas Kyme, caught the eye of the queen’s beautiful sister, Cecily of York in the early 1500s. Together Dorothy and Robert had two sons, Henry and William and two daughters Elizabeth and Anne. Robert died in 1521 and Dorothy remarried William Blount Lord Mountjoy (as his 4th wife) around 1523. Seven years later in 1530, her daughter Anne married Charles Blount, William’s son and heir and the fifth Lord Mountjoy. Dorothy and William had further children together, a son, John, and two daughters, Mary and Dorothy. He died in 1534 and Dorothy died sometime after 1553 which is when she made her Will.10 Assuming a correct birth date of 1488, she would have been around sixty-five when she died.
Elizabeth Grey, like her brother Leonard, led a rather colourful life mixed up with the Irish rebels. Born c.1492, she travelled to France as a young twenty-two-year-old in 1514 as one of the Maids of Honour to Mary Tudor, when she became queen of France. She remained behind to serve Queen Claude when Mary returned to England, alongside Mary and Anne Boleyn. In about 1522 she became Countess of Kildare when she married Gerald FitzGerald, 9th Earl of Kildare, as his second wife. She married him either against Cecily’s wishes or without her knowledge and she was said to be deeply in love with him. Later Cecily forgave her and agreed to pay her dowry. The couple had six children together, the eldest, Elizabeth, becoming a companion to the Princess Elizabeth, the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth’s husband, the Earl of Kildare, was imprisoned in the Tower of London on charges of corruption and plotting rebellion in Ireland and died in 1534. Elizabeth had remained with him, nursing him throughout his imprisonment from July 1534 until his death on 12th December.
Little is known of the youngest, Margaret Grey b. c1494. She became the wife of Richard Wake Esq. and appears to have been in service to Queen Katherine.11
Through her marriage to Dorset, Cecily became daughter-in-law to the king and queen and entered into the sphere of the royal court. But it was her great-granddaughter who became the most famous descendant of the Greys and reached that ultimate pinnacle of power, albeit briefly. She was named Jane Grey and just over twenty years after Cecily’s death, she became Queen of England for nine days.
Jane Grey was the daughter of Henry Grey, the eldest son of the second Marquis of Dorset. He had inherited the title of Marquis in 1530 when his father died and in 1531, he was created Duke of Suffolk by the king. Then in 1533 Henry Grey made a highly advantageous match when he married Francis Brandon, the daughter of the king’s sister Mary Tudor and Charles Brandon and therefore a niece of Henry VIII.
After the death of his father, Henry inherited Shute manor and all his grandparents’ other lands, but it was Bradgate that Henry and Frances chose to make their family home. It was at Bradgate in 1537 that Jane Grey was born, the eldest of three daughters that would be born to the couple. Henry and his wife Frances were very much involved in court life, with Frances serving as a Lady of the Privy Chamber to Henry’s sixth and last wife, Queen Katherine Parr.
Ten years later, in January 1547, King Henry VIII died and Frances retired to Bradgate with her husband. Queen Katherine Parr, now a widow, very quickly remarried. The man she took as her second husband was Sir Thomas Seymour, one of the Seymour brothers. Their sister, Jane, had been the king’s third wife. By all accounts Katherine had been in love with Seymour before her marriage to the king but had had to let him go once the king had set his sights on her. The couple were married by April/May 1547 and relocated to Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire. In February of that year, Thomas Seymour purchased Jane Grey’s wardship at the cost of £2000 and she left Bradgate and went to live in the Seymour household at Sudeley.
After King Henry’s death, the throne passed to his only son and heir, Prince Edward, who had been born in 1537 to Queen Jane Seymour, finally granting Henry’s wish for a son to carry on the dynasty. The new king was still only a youngster himself, having been born in the same month and year as Jane Grey. Due to his age, a regency council was formed to govern the country, headed up by Edward’s Uncle, Edward Seymour (brother to Thomas) and Sir John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland.
In 1553 at the age of fifteen, King Edward became ill and it soon became clear that an agreed line of succession needed to be established. As Henry VIII had advanced through one wife to another, his daughters from his first two wives, the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, had been barred from taking the throne and Henry had never re-installed them; he had hoped right to the end that he would father more sons with his last wife, Katherine Parr. The act of succession therefore stated that if the direct line from Henry was to fail (i.e. if his only son Edward were to die) then the crown would go ‘to the heirs of the body of the Lady Frances our niece, eldest daughter to our late sister the French queen lawfully begotten; and for default of such issue of the crown … shall wholly remain and come to the heirs of the body of the Lady Eleanor, our niece, second daughter to our late sister the French queen’.12 This plan had depended on the fact that Frances Grey would produce a male heir.
On 25 May 1553, at the age of sixteen, Jane Grey was wed to Guildford Dudley, a son of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. The wedding ceremony was a triple celebration and took place at Durham Place, London, the home of the Dudley family. Jane’s younger sister, Katherine, and Guildford’s sister, Katherine Dudley, were also married at the same time.
As King Edward’s health declined, and with no heirs himself, he had to think seriously about the succession of his crown. As a protestant, Edward decided to leave his strongly catholic sister Mary out of the succession but he did have the option of re-instating his half-sister Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn, and a protestant like himself. But as he penned his Will, he excluded both his sisters from taking the throne after him, instead making it clear that the crown was still to go to the heirs of his cousin Frances. Stating his instructions, he decreed that the crown was to be left ‘to the Lady Frances’s heirs male, for lack of such issue (before my death) to the Lady Janes heirs males’. If Frances had a son and he was underage at the time of Edward’s death, Frances was to act as regent until he was old enough to rule. The only problem remained that as Frances was the mother of three daughters and as yet no sons, it then became dependant on Lady Jane Grey having sons.
As it became more obvious that Edward did not have long to live, the Duke of Northumberland, in his position as one of the leading men on the regency council and by then Jane’s father-in-law, convinced the king to amend his Will. The clause ‘Lady Janes heirs males’ was changed to ‘Lady Jane and her heirs males’. The addition of this one simple word pushed Jane directly in line to succeed Edward upon his death. The reason Northumberland pushed for this is not hard to fathom – once Jane was queen, his own son Guildford Dudley, as her new husband, would be ruling by her side.
On 6th July 1553 King Edward VI died and as per his amended Will, Jane Grey, Cecily and Dorset’s great-granddaughter, suddenly found herself queen of England. On 10th July, Jane was carried by barge along the Thames to the Tower of London where she was crowned. For Dudley, it seemed the plan had gone rather well. But there was one small obstacle to Dudley’s plan. Henry VIII’s eldest daughter, Mary, a strong and proud woman, built in the mould of her mother, Katherine of Aragon, and utterly convinced of her right to be queen, was not going to take this lying down. On the same day that Jane was crowned, Mary wrote to the Privy Council asserting her ‘right and title to the Crown and government of this realm’.
What Jane thought about her sudden propulsion to queenship is a bigger discussion than can be had here and is covered by some amazing authors recommended in the bibliography. It is supposed that she was a victim of those adults around her, who used her as a pawn in their games to gain power and this is probably in part true. But Jane did have a strength running through her and once she became queen, she quickly informed her father-in-law that Guildford Dudley would not serve as king beside her. The fact that she was prepared to stand up to these powerful men may have made her a great leader if she had been given the chance. But it was never going to be.
The Catholic Mary was hugely popular with the people, who had taken Katherine of Aragon to their hearts and had done the same with her daughter, Mary. As she raised her army and set off from her base of Framlingham Castle in Norfolk, heading towards London, many of the nobility who had supported Jane initially, began to retreat. In the end there was no need for battle. On 19th July, the Earl of Pembroke rode into Cheapside to proclaim Mary as queen of England and met with no resistance. All those who had supported Jane disappeared and Jane herself was moved from her royal apartments in the tower to free them up for England’s new queen. Jane had ruled England for just nine days. She was housed in another set of rooms in the tower to await her fate and her husband, Guildford Dudley was also captured and held in the tower.
In the days that followed, Jane’s mother, Frances, met with Queen Mary en route to the capital and begged for her family to be spared. Her words must have had some effect and Jane’s father, Henry Grey, was pardoned. Jane, however, was charged with treason. Queen Mary eventually arrived in London on 3rd August and Jane’s father-in-law, John Dudley, Earl of Northumberland, was executed for treason just under three weeks later.
Jane herself wrote to Mary from the tower and although she would not free her, Mary demonstrated some compassion towards her cousin and agreed she would spare her life. But a few months later, in early 1554, her foolish father, Henry Grey, led another rebellion. This time the rebels planned to remove Mary from the throne and replace her with her protestant sister, Elizabeth. They failed in their task, and although his plan had not this time involved his daughter, Jane, Mary was persuaded by her councillors that allowing her to live would prove a continual threat to her queenship. On 12th February 1554 first Guildford and then Jane were led to the executioner’s block. Carrying her prayer book, Jane gave a brave speech for a young girl who was just seventeen years old, and the executioner ended her short life. Henry Grey was executed eleven days later and all his properties, including Cecily’s beloved Shute, were confiscated by the state.
It was a tragic end to a branch of the Grey dynasty that was begun so successfully by Thomas and Cecily through their union in 1474. Other Grey family members of course went on to lead fulfilling lives, but the riches and manors held by the family during the late 1400s and early 1500s disappeared when instead of living alongside the crown, her grandson rebelled against it.