The Forbidden Loves of the Grey Sisters Quiz

Answer: Their grandmother was Henry VIII's younger sister.

It's worth a quick look at the family tree to understand the stakes. The Tudor dynasty began with Henry VII, a Lancastrian who ended the Wars of the Roses by defeating Richard III and marrying Elizabeth of York. The power couple had four children who survived into adolescence: Arthur, Margaret, Henry, and Mary. Arthur died before their father. Margaret married the King of Scotland. Mary married the elderly King of France, but when he died, she seized the opportunity to marry for love. Her chosen husband was Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk and Henry VIII's dear friend. Mary's brother was furious, and imposed a ruinous fine on the couple, but they managed to remain together.

Mary and Charles had two sons who died in childhood, and two daughters who lived to marry and have children of their own. The elder, Frances Brandon, married Henry Grey, who was created Duke of Suffolk after his father-in-law's death. After two children who died in infancy, they had three girls, the sisters Jane, Katherine and Mary: great-nieces to Henry VIII.

Answer: She was Queen of England for nine days, then imprisoned and later executed.

As Edward VI was dying in 1553, 16-year-old Jane married Guildford Dudley, the son of the Duke of Northumberland - who was even then maneuvering for Jane to be named Edward's heir. Upon his death in July, Northumberland and Suffolk (Jane's father) led a group of powerful nobles in proclaiming her Queen, reportedly over her objections. Queen Jane had nine days to rule, until Mary rallied her troops and the Privy Council switched their loyalty. Northumberland was executed for treason later that summer; Jane and Guildford followed in February, after Jane's father joined a rebellion against Queen Mary. (He was executed, too.)

Jane's example was a chilling one for her younger sisters, the next heirs in her line. As Jane herself wrote to Katherine, the day before her execution: "Trust not that the tenderness of your age shall lengthen your life ... Labour always and learn to die."

Answer: It was annulled.

Katherine was 12 years old at that double wedding; her groom, Henry, Lord Herbert (heir to the Earl of Pembroke), was perhaps 14 or 15. They had been betrothed for about a year, but with the family making a play for the throne through Jane, they wanted to lock in Pembroke's support.

Of course, when Jane was dethroned and the Grey family was in disgrace, the alliance no longer seemed quite so appealing to Pembroke. Over the objections of both young spouses, he insisted on an annulment. Legally, it was as if the marriage had never happened.

Answer: The Grey sisters were Protestant.

The religious pendulum imposed on England by the Tudor monarchs was tremendously disruptive. Henry VIII broke with Rome, forcing the country with him, and under his son Edward VI the Protestant nobles remained in power. Jane Grey would have been a continuation of Protestant rule, but Mary I restored Catholics' freedom to worship, at the expense of Protestants' safety and freedom. Now, under Elizabeth I, England was officially Protestant again, and the Protestant lords had no desire for the Tudor heirs from Scotland - Mary, Queen of Scots, and Margaret Douglas, the descendants of Henry's older sister Margaret - to bring back the Roman Catholic Church and put their rivals in power.

As the most senior Protestant Tudor cousin (not counting her mother Frances, who had renounced her royal rights in favor of Jane), Katherine Grey was the presumed Protestant heir to Elizabeth. This put her into a position of importance, but also great danger. Elizabeth's hard early life, and recent English history, had taught her that any heir was also a possible usurper.

Answer: An important young nobleman, Edward Seymour

Edward Seymour, a year older than Katherine, was one of *those* Seymours. Jane Seymour, Henry VIII's third queen, was his aunt; his father was Lord Protector to his first cousin Edward VI, until his fall and execution. (Katherine and Edward both had fathers who were beheaded for treason - a sign of the times, and no doubt something the young sweethearts could bond over.) They asked permission from Queen Elizabeth to marry; Katherine's mother Frances begged it as a deathbed gift.

Permission did not come. The reason is not known, but Elizabeth may have feared that an alliance between her heir presumptive and the powerful Seymour family would lead to a rebellion.

Katherine and Edward, though, were young and in love. They could not bear to wait. They married in secret in 1560, with Edward's sister Jane the only witness. Soon afterward Edward was sent to the European mainland, while Katherine remained with the court.

Answer: Katherine became pregnant.

Katherine discovered her pregnancy in early 1561, while Edward was abroad. She was twenty years old and terrified - as heir presumptive, she knew she wasn't supposed to marry without the Queen's permission. She hid her pregnancy with what must have been incredible cunning. Even in a court swirling with gossip, her condition only became known when she disclosed it to two trusted confidants. First, she begged friend of the family Bess Hardwick for help, but Bess had no clever ideas and made it clear she didn't want to be involved. Next she turned to the Queen's favorite, Robert Dudley, the brother of Guildford Dudley who had wed her sister Jane and died for it, and asked him to intercede.

He spoke to the Queen, but the Queen was not amused. She didn't believe Katherine's tale of young love; she smelled a conspiracy.

Answer: Katherine and her husband conceived a second child.

Their first child, Edward Seymour (1561-1612), was born soon after his mother was imprisoned and was confined with her and her pets. Despite this inauspicious start he lived a full life. In a curious twist, there did end up being a monarch from his line: Queen Elizabeth II, descended from this family via her mother.

Edward the elder, imprisoned elsewhere in the Tower, yearned for his little family. He bribed the Tower guards to allow visits, and spent enough time in his wife's rooms to give his son a younger brother. Thomas Seymour (1563-1600) also had a full life ahead of him, but his birth infuriated the Queen. With two strong sons by a highborn husband, Katherine was becoming an increasingly formidable possible rival - and there were people in England arguing that she should be on the throne.

Answer: The Queen never forgave them, and they were separated and never reunited.

The births of little Edward and Thomas - an heir and a spare for Elizabeth I's heir presumptive - were too much for the Queen to take. When plague broke out in London in 1563, she ordered the family to be moved to house arrest in the more sanitary countryside, but this apparent mercy was really an excuse to split the family apart. The two Edwards (the father and the eldest son) were sent to live with the elder Edward's mother, while Katherine and baby Thomas were sent to her uncle. That second pair moved several times to different houses, though they were confined in all of them and not allowed to contact the rest of their family.

Despairing of ever seeing her husband or eldest son again, Katherine died in 1568, at age 27. Some contemporary sources suggest that she starved herself. On her death, little Thomas was reunited with her father and brother, who were soon freed. The marriage had been annulled with the excuse that it had not been performed legally and the priest had not been found, which rendered the children illegitimate and removed them from the line of succession.

Edward remarried twice, both times in secret - he and his second wife Frances Howard concealed it for almost ten years! He died in 1621, at age 81, and is buried with Katherine in Salisbury Cathedral.

Answer: A commoner, Thomas Keyes

Mary was about 20, and Thomas about 40, when they married secretly in 1565. Trying to avoid the forced annulment that Katherine and Edward had suffered, they made sure they had lots of witnesses - but, perhaps as a result, it was only a few months before the Queen discovered their secret.

Mary had no doubt hoped that marriage to a commoner - Thomas was the Queen's sergeant porter, with the court's security in his charge - would give the Queen no grounds for paranoia. She also knew others would see it as a strange match: Mary was quite short and hunchbacked, probably a little person, while Thomas was tall even for a modern man at 6'8" (2.03 m). In the event, though, Elizabeth I was just as furious with Mary as she had been with Katherine.

Answer: She was held under house arrest until after her husband died.

William Cecil, Elizabeth I's chief advisor, wrote: "The Sergeant Porter, being the biggest gentleman of this court, has married secretly the Lady Mary Grey, the least of all the court ... The offence is very great." The Queen took the disrespect to the crown very seriously. Thomas's cell at the Fleet was too small for him, and his imprisonment destroyed his health. Mary, sent to various country houses whose lords were entrusted as jailers, was physically more comfortable, but emotionally distressed. Both parties begged for mercy, but to no avail.

Thomas was finally released from the Fleet in 1568, and died in 1571 aged about 47. Mary was finally freed in 1573. She asked permission to raise Thomas's children, from his first marriage, but this was denied. After a time she bought her own house in London, where she apparently lived in peace on a small royal allowance. Mary died in 1578, during an outbreak of the plague, at about 33 years of age.