Jane Dudley, Duchess of Northumberland

Jane Dudley served as a lady-in-waiting at the court of Henry VIII and was a close friend of his final wife, Katherine Parr.

After the fall of Lord Protector Somerset in 1549, John Dudley joined forces with his wife to promote his rehabilitation and a reconciliation between their families, which was symbolised by a marriage between their children.

Notwithstanding his and her son Guildford's executions, she was successful in achieving the release of the rest of her family by befriending the Spanish noblemen who came to England with Philip of Spain.

An exception is Robert, the future favourite of Elizabeth I; he was born in 1532 as the fifth son, and possibly after the eldest daughter Mary, who became the mother of the courtier-poet Philip Sidney.

[3] The family life of John and Jane Dudley seems to have been happy and was free from any scandals;[4] around 1535 a poem praised the "love and devotion" of their marriage.

The forthright Protestant was burnt at the stake as a heretic in July 1546 on the contrivance of the religiously conservative court party around Bishop Stephen Gardiner.

A postscript she wrote in 1552 under a letter by her husband to their then eldest son, John Dudley, 2nd Earl of Warwick, reads: "your lovynge mothere that wyshes you helthe dayli Jane Northumberland".

She was influential with him; the financier Thomas Gresham and the diplomat Richard Morrison sought her patronage,[1] and she also interceded for Mary Tudor,[21] who had stood godmother to one of her daughters in 1545.

He drew up a document, "My Devise for the Succession", whose final version of June 1553 was to settle the Crown on his Protestant cousin Lady Jane Grey, overturning the claims of his half-sisters Mary and Elizabeth.

Two of their younger children were concerned: Guildford, aged about 17, married Lady Jane Grey, while Katherine, who was between eight and ten years old, was promised to the Earl of Huntingdon's heir, Henry Hastings.

At the time the marriages took place, however, their dynastical implications were not considered significant by even the most suspicious of observers, the Imperial ambassador Jehan de Scheyfye.

[26] Modern historians have considered them either as part of a plot, or as "routine actions of dynastic politics", in the words of David Loades.

[30] On 10 July the Duchess of Northumberland accompanied her son and daughter-in-law on their ceremonial entry into the Tower of London, where they were to reside for the rest of the short reign.

[35] To claim her right, Mary Tudor began assembling her supporters in East Anglia and demanded to be recognised as queen by the Privy Council in London.

[1] Knowing the Queen's character, in June 1554, Jane Dudley pleaded with the authorities to allow her remaining sons to hear mass.

[43] During 1554, the Duchess and her son-in-law, Henry Sidney, worked hard pleading with the Spanish nobles around England's new king consort, Philip of Spain.

In the autumn of 1554 the Dudley brothers were released from the Tower, although the eldest, John, died immediately afterwards at Sidney's house in Penshurst, Kent.