Lord Guildford Dudley

Lord Guildford Dudley (also spelt Guilford) ( – 12 February 1554) was an English nobleman who was married to Lady Jane Grey. She occupied the English throne from 10 July until 19 July 1553, having been declared the heir of King Edward VI. Guildford Dudley had a humanist education and married Jane in a magnificent celebration about six weeks before the King's death. After Guildford's father, the Duke of Northumberland, had engineered Jane's accession, Jane and Guildford spent her brief rule residing in the Tower of London. They were still in the Tower when their regime collapsed and remained there in different quarters as prisoners. They were condemned to death for high treason in November 1553. Queen Mary I was inclined to spare their lives, but Thomas Wyatt's rebellion against Mary's plans to marry Philip of Spain led to the young couple's execution, a measure that was widely seen as unduly harsh. Family and marriage Lord Guildford Dudley was the second youngest surviving son of John Dudley, later Duke of Northumberland and his wife, Jane Guildford. The Dudley lineage goes back to a family called Sutton. In the early 14th century, they became the lords of Dudley Castle, from whom Guildford descended through his paternal grandfather. This was Edmund Dudley, a councillor of Henry VII, who, in 1510, after the accession of Henry VIII, was executed. Through his father's mother, Elizabeth Grey, 6th Baroness Lisle, Guildford descended from the Hundred Years War heroes, Richard Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick, and John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury. The thirteen Dudley children grew up in a Protestant household and received a humanist education. Under the young King Edward VI, Guildford's father became Lord President of the Council and de facto ruled England from 1550 to 1553. The chronicler Richard Grafton, who knew him, described Guildford as "a comely, virtuous and goodly gentleman". In 1552 Northumberland unsuccessfully tried to arrange a marriage between Guildford and Margaret Clifford. Instead, in the spring of 1553, Guildford was engaged to the sixteen-year-old Jane Grey. Jane Grey and Margaret Clifford were both great-granddaughters of King Henry VII, but Jane figured higher in the line of succession. On 25 May 1553, three weddings were celebrated at Durham Place, the Duke of Northumberland's town mansion.