Queen for Nine Days

Lady Jane Grey was Queen of England for nine days. It was Edward VI's dying wish that his cousin, Lady Jane, a devout Protestant, be queen ahead of Mary and Elizabeth. But Mary Tudor and the people of England wished otherwise. After her few days as Queen, Lady Jane was removed and imprisoned in the Tower of London. February 12, 1554, after reciting Psalm 51 in English, Jane's head was privately removed by order of Queen Mary.

Mary sent her personal chaplain, John de Feckenham, to the 17-year old in prison awaiting her execution, perhaps with the hope that he could convert her to Roman catholicism and thus save her life. For three days Feckenham and Jane talked, and their debate was transcribed by a witness and published shortly after Jane’s death (know as the Feckenham Debate). The traitor-heroine of the reformation" (historian Albert Pollard's description of Jane) would not budge from her evangelical convictions. As you see by her statement below, some 16th century Christians in England were willing to die for their belief in justification by faith alone, knowing that on this central teaching of Scripture were all the other convictions of the 16th century Reformation: worship/liturgy that is participatory and the means in which grace is communicated in word and sacrament, the doctrine of the Priesthood of All Believers (universal priesthood), and an understanding of real presence in which the grace of Holy Communion is offered to everyone who will receive God’s very spiritual presence into their heart by faith with thanksgiving.

“God forbid that I should say that I eat the very natural body and blood of Christ,” Jane Grey said to Chaplain Feckenham, “for then either I should pluck away my redemption, or else there were two bodies, or two Christs. One body was tormented on the cross, and if they did eat another body, then had he two bodies; or if his body were eaten, then was it not broken on the cross; or if it were broken on the cross, it was not eaten of his disciples.”