Where Was Jane Grey Dudley Born?

Tradition has long held that Jane Grey Dudley was born at Bradgate House, the sixteenth-century family seat of the Grey marquesses of Dorset situated near Newtown Linford in Leicestershire. The tradition remained virtually unchallenged until 2008, when Leanda de Lisle suggested the possibility that Jane had been born at Dorset House in The Strand, a thoroughfare connecting the City of London in the east with Westminster in the west.[1] Nicola Tallis repeated de Lisle’s assertion in her own biography of Jane Grey published in 2016. But Tallis argued without evidence that the Dorset House supposedly owned by the Grey Marquesses of Dorset was distinct from the Dorset House of the seventeenth century that had itself been known as Salisbury House in the 1530s owing to its use as the London residence of the Bishops of Salisbury.[2] Melita Thomas likewise repeated the Bradgate tradition in her collective biography The House of Grey of  2019.[3] In the only peer-reviewed book-length study of Jane Grey published thus far, the late Professor Eric Ives skirts the issue of the location of Jane’s birth by stating simply, “We do not know.”[4]

As is the case with so many supposed ‘facts’ attached to the name of Jane Grey Dudley, however, neither Bradgate House nor Dorset House stand up to scrutiny as the location of Jane’s birth.

Historians have long assumed that either Jane’s grandfather Thomas Grey, 2^nd Marquess of Dorset, or perhaps her great-grandfather, also named Thomas Grey, 1^st Marquess of Dorset, built Bradgate House. Construction of the house is usually dated broadly to sometime between the last decade of the fifteenth century and the second marquess’ death in 1530, with the majority favoring the incumbency of the second marquess, 1501-1530. Yet under the restrictive terms of the last will and testament of the first marquess probated in 1501, the second marquess did not become seized (in full legal possession) of Bradgate until the death of his mother Cecily Bonville Grey in May 1529. Thomas, 2^nd Marquess of Dorset was seized of the manor of Bradgate for less than 18 months before his own death late in 1530, hardly sufficient time to build a grand country palace.

When the second marquess died, his son Henry Grey suffered the same handicap as his father in that he did not acquire full legal possession of the manor of Bradgate (was not seized of the manor) until the death of his mother Margaret Wooton/Wotton Grey in the summer of 1539.[5] In his last will and testament, Henry’s father Thomas, 2^nd Marquess of Dorset bequeathed to his wife Margaret “the manor and whole park of Bradgate in the County of Leicestershire.” To that he added a desire that “my building at Bradgate be finished according to a plat thereof made.”[6] The nature of that building is not clear from the text of the will, but it is nonetheless clear through the reference to a ‘plat thereof made’ that the house was still in only the planning stages.

The Department of Archaeology and Ancient History of the University of Leicester, in conjunction with Historic England, conducted archaeological investigations at the ruins of Bradgate House beginning  in 2015. As part of their background archival research, they noted a description of the site written by the diarist John Leland when he visited Bradgate Park in about 1544. Leland described the presence on the site of only a “lodge.” Nick Hill of Historic England argues in his draft report on the history of Bradgate House that Leland’s use of “lodge” to describe the structure can reliably be interpreted to mean a structure on a significantly smaller scale than the grand palace that Bradgate House would eventually become.[7] Results of the archaeological investigations suggest that the “lodge” seen by Leland was a stone and timber hunting lodge lying within what later became a courtyard on the south side of the central range of Bradgate House.[8] The archaeological data reliably demonstrate that construction of Bradgate House did not begin in earnest until 1540 or shortly thereafter.[9] Bradgate House was therefore built by Henry Grey, and only after he came into full possession of the Dorset patrimony upon achieving his legal majority in January 1538 and following the death of his mother approximately 18 months later. Jane cannot have been born in a house that did not yet exist at the time of her birth, whether she was born in 1536 or 1537.

The surviving documentary evidence similarly indicates that Jane cannot have been born at Dorset House in The Strand. While a number of palatial residences and town houses of the nobility and of bishops of the Church did lie along the north bank of The Thames between the river’s edge and The Strand in the 1530s, no establishment known as Dorset House yet existed.[10] That name was not applied to any residence in London until the following century.[11] Neither can any London residence by another name be readily associated with the Grey family of the sixteenth century, perhaps because they did not maintain any London establishment. As late as 1539, Jane’s grandmother Margaret Grey resided for two months with her sister-in-law, Elizabeth Grey Audley, at the Audley’s London home called Christchurch in Aldgate, for example, rather that at a Grey family residence.[12] Further, Margaret’s husband the second marquess did not hold any long-term offices in the Tudor bureaucracy centered at Westminster, so his presence in London was required only occasionally, either for ceremonial duties associated with his noble rank or, more rarely, to sit on a panel of judges for any trial of a fellow peer charged with treason. The Greys lacked any practical need early in the sixteenth century to bear the financial burden of a large establishment in or near London. Lastly, in his will dated 2 June 1530, Thomas Grey did not mention any properties in London or the County of Middlesex, despite enumerating dozens of properties spread across almost the whole of England.[13] And since Henry Grey was still a legal minor at the time of the birth of his eldest daughter Jane, it is improbable that he acquired or built a London abode in the years between his father’s death late in 1530 and Jane’s birth late in 1536.

It is nonetheless likely that Henry and Frances Grey were in or near London throughout much of 1536 and into early 1537. The marriage of Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn had fallen into ruin by the end of January 1536, and the Greys’ presence at the royal court was required both to observe and to participate in unfolding events. Though too young to serve on the Court of the Lord High Steward that tried Queen Anne in May 1536, Henry Grey undoubtedly made himself available to assist Charles Brandon, the second highest ranking member of the Court. Both Henry and Frances Grey must certainly have wanted to be present for the extraordinary events associated with that trial. And following the queen’s execution, the ceremonials and celebrations surrounding the king’s subsequent third marriage and the expected but ultimately canceled coronation of the latest queen, Jane Seymour, all of which occurred in London, required the participation of both Greys.[14] Their daughter Jane was therefore more probably born in London rather than at distant Bradgate.

Throughout the 1530s, young Henry Grey was the legal ward of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. And because Henry did not gain possession of his patrimony until 1539, Charles Brandon supported young Henry financially throughout the 1530s.[15] Further, Henry’s wife and Jane’s mother, Frances Brandon Grey,  was the daughter of Charles Brandon, making Brandon both Henry’s legal custodian and his father-in-law. The Greys almost certainly resided in the Brandon household throughout the first several years of their marriage rather than in a fully independent establishment.

Charles Brandon owned numerous residences in and around London, and Jane’s birth could have occurred at any one of those. Prior to February 1536, Brandon’s principal London residence had been the newly rebuilt palatial house in Southwark known as Suffolk Place. But Brandon exchanged that residence under pressure from Henry VIII for the London palace of the bishops of Norwich known as Norwich Inn or House in Charing Cross, immediately adjacent to Henry VIII’s magnificent Palace of Whitehall.[16] Brandon reportedly used Norwich Inn only occasionally, however, preferring instead a house in Cripplegate, known variously as Base Court or The Barbican, that he acquired through his last marriage to another of his wards, Katherine Willoughby, suo jure 12^th Baroness Willoughby d’Eresby.[17] The greatest likelihood is that Jane was born at either Norwich Inn in Westminster or, more probably, at The Barbican on the northern perimeter of London.

J. Stephan Edwards, PhD
Palm Springs, California
3 July 2024

NOTES:

1. 1. 1. 1. Leanda de Lisle, The Sister Who Would Be Queen: The Tragedy of Mary, Katherine, and Lady Jane Grey (New York: Ballantine Books, 2009), 5 and n.8.
         2. Nicola Tallis, Crown of Blood: The Deadly Inheritance of Lady Jane Grey (New York: Pegasus Books, 2016), 26.
         3. Melita Thomas, The House of Grey: Friends and Foes of Kings (Stroud: Amberley Publishing, 2019), 240.
         4. Eric Ives, Lady Jane Grey: A Tudor Mystery (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 36.
         5. Margaret Grey was still living as late as 18 April 1539, evidenced by a letter to Thomas Cromwell signed by her. See L&P, Vol. 14, Part 1, 374–386. Henry Grey obtained a grant from the Crown, dated 12 July 1539, as son and heir of Thomas Grey for the reversion of the lands formerly held by Margaret Grey during her widowhood. See ‘Henry VIII: Grants in July’, L&P, Vol. 13, Part 1, 561–589, Item 47.
         6. National Archives PROB 11/24, Last Will and Testament of Thomas Grey, 2^nd Marquess of Dorset, dated 2 June 1530, f.74r.
         7. Nick Hill, Historic England, “Bradgate House Historic Building Report: Ownership and Documentary History,” unpublished draft dated 26 February 2022. Cited with permission. My sincerest thanks to Nick Hill for sharing his several drafts reports with me.
         8. Nick Hill, Historic England, “Bradgate House Historic Building Report: Initial Summary,” unpublished draft dated 13 March 2022. Cited with permission.
         9. Adrian Bonsall, email correspondence, 21 February 2024. Mr Bonsall cites dendrochronological analyses performed in 2022 on roof and floor timbers from the original construction of the surviving chapel at Bradgate. Those studies indicate that the timbers were felled in or after 1540.
         10. The noble houses along the Thames extant in the 1530s were, from Charing Cross in the west to Baynard’s Castles in the east: Hungerford Inn or House, home in the 1530s of Walter Hungerford, 1^st Baron Hungerford of Heytesbury;  Norwich Inn or House, the former London residence of the Bishops of Norwich acquired by Charles Brandon in February 1536 and subsequently known after 1556 as York House; Durham House, former London residence of the Bishops of Durham granted by Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall to Henry VIII in July 1536 and used until 1553 as a facility for entertaining and/or housing foreign ambassadors; Carlisle Inn, residence of the Bishops of Carlisle until 1539, when it was transferred to John Russell, later Earl of Bedford, thereafter becoming known as Russell House and Bedford House; the Savoy Hospital; Chester Inn and Worcester Inn, London lodgings of the Bishops of Chester and Worcester, respectively (known together after 1549 as Somerset House); Bath Inn, residence of the Bishops of Bath and Wells, also known as Hampton Place in 1539 and as Seymour Place by 1545, then as Arundel House after 1549; Exeter House, which housed the Bishops of Exeter and later known successively as Paget Place, Essex House, and Leicester House; The Temple Inns of Court; the Whitefriars Carmelite monastery; Salisbury Inn (later Dorset House); Bridewell Palace; the Blackfriars Dominican monastery; and Baynard’s Castle.
             Interspersed among the noble residences and their adjoining gardens and outbuildings were a multitude of lesser houses, tenements, public houses, inns, and tradesmen’s quarters. The north side of The Strand was occupied in the 1530s entirely by similar lesser houses and business premises. See Survey of London: Volume 18, St Martin-in-the-Fields, II: The Strand, edited by GH Gater and EP Wheeler (London: London County Council, 1937) for a detailed description of the history of the area.
             There exists one mention of a property owned or occupied by Henry Grey in Westminster in 1547, but the description is frustratingly vague: a “garden in the tenure of the Marquis of Dorset … attached to what was afterward Carew House, on the site of Dartmouth Street.” See Survey of London: Volume X: The Parish of St Margaret, Westminster, Part I, 61. Dartmouth Street is today located in the Queen Anne’s Gate area near the southeast corner of St James’s Park.
             Somewhat confusingly, the same Survey of London refers elsewhere (Volume 14: St Margaret, Westminster, Part III: Whitehall II, 19) to a Dorset House in Whitehall, a short distance northeast of the reported location of the “garden in the tenure of the Marquis of Dorset.” The Whitehall property was previously the site of the Cockpit, an outbuilding of Whitehall Palace during the Tudor era. The Crown let the property out in 1715 to James Stanhope, later 1st Earl Stanhope. Following his death in 1721, his widow transferred the house to Lionel Sackville, 1st Duke of Dorset, from whom the eighteenth-century house got its name. It was located at No.70 Whitehall, immediately adjacent to the north (back) side of what is now No.10 Downing Street. See Richard Garnier, “New Light on No.70 Whitehall (Dorset House),” The Georgian Group Journal XXV (2017), 53-72.
         11. What became known after 1604 as Dorset House was known in the 1530s as Salisbury Inn and was the London quarters of the Bishops of Salisbury. Located south of Fleet Street adjacent to Water Lane, it was surrendered to the Crown in 1564 and granted by Elizabeth I to her maternal cousin and Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Richard Sackville. His son, Thomas Sackville, became Earl of Dorset in 1604, and his house became known only thereafter as Dorset House. The Dorset House in The Strand was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666, leading to the move to the later Dorset House at No.70 Whitehall, Westminster.
         12. Margaret, Marchioness of Dorset to Thomas Cromwell, 8 March 1539 and 18 April 1539, Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 14, Part 1, January-July 1539, edited by James Gairdner and R.H. Brodie (London: HMSO, 1894), 182 and 380. Christchurch was known prior to 1534 as the Priory of the Holy Trinity and was occupied by the Augustinian Canons. At the Dissolution, Henry VIII granted the property to Thomas Audley, Lord Chancellor of England from 1533 until 1544. Aldgate and Christchurch are approximately 0.5 miles north of the Tower of London.
         13. National Archives PROB 11/24/73r–76r , Will of Thomas Grey dated 2 June 1530 and probated 28 November 1530.
         14. Jane Seymour wed Henry VIII at Whitehall Palace, London, on 30 May 1536. She was proclaimed queen consort five days later, but her expected summer coronation was canceled owing to plague in the city.
         15. Margaret Grey to Thomas Cromwell, 4 February 1533, L&P, 61–68, Item 153.
         16. ‘Suffolk Place and the Mint’, Survey of London: Volume 25: St George’s Fields (The Parishes of St. George the Martyr Southwark and St. Mary Newington), edited by Ida Darlington (London: Athlone for the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, 1955), 22–25; J. J. Foster, ‘Celebrated Birthplaces’, Antiquary Vol. 12 (July-December 1885), 166. Henry VIII coerced Brandon into surrendering Suffolk Place so that it might be incorporated into the marriage portion awarded to Jane Seymour upon her marriage to the king in May 1536.
         17. G. H. Gater and E. P. Wheeler, eds., St Martin in the Fields, Part II, volume 18 of Survey of London (1937), 51-60. Charles Brandon acquired possession of Base Court in 1533 upon his marriage to fourteen-year-old Katherine Willoughby, suo jure 12^th Baroness Willoughby de Eresby. Young Katherine’s father, the 11^th Baron Willoughby de Eresby, had received Base Court as a grant from Henry VIII in 1516 when he married Maria de Salinas, a lady-in-waiting to Henry VIII’s first wife, Katherine of Aragon. Katherine Willoughby Brandon inherited the house from her parents upon her father’s death in 1526. The former site of the house is today occupied by the Barbican Centre and the Barbican Housing Estate.