On the one side, her father Sir William Dormer's family (moderately prosperous Buckinghamshire landowners and wool merchants)[6] remained staunchly Catholic.

The poet Richard Edwardes described eight ladies at Mary's court, writing:[8]Dormer is a darling, and of such lively hue,That whoso feeds his eyes on her may soon her beauty rue.

[10] In the end she made her own Spanish match by marrying Don Gomez Suarez de Figueroa of Cordova, Duke of Feria, a close confidante of Philip II of Spain and his first ambassador to Elizabeth I's court.

[13] When the Duke of Feria was replaced as ambassador in 1559, he and Jane returned to the continent with a mixed retinue of monks and nuns, her cousin Margaret Harington, and Susan Clarencieux who was one of Mary's former ladies-in-waiting.

[14] The English ambassador Nicholas Throckmorton sent John Somers and Robert Jones to talk to them near the Château d'Amboise in France in April 1560.

Jane kept up an infrequent correspondence with Elizabeth I, sending William Harington to her with a letter and a token of good will, perhaps a gift of jewellery, in August 1568.

[16] Jane received letters from four popes and maintained numerous other contacts sympathetic to the Roman Catholic cause in England, and within Spain she was a champion of exiled English fallen on hard times.