Execution of a teen queen
QUESTION Was Lady Jane Grey the youngest royal to be executed? Lady Jane Grey was beheaded at the age of 16, but was probably not the youngest British monarch to be executed.
Born in 1537, she was the granddaughter of Henry VIII’s younger sister, Mary, and the eldest child of Henry Grey, duke of Suffolk. In May 1553, she married Lord Guildford dudley, son of Edward VI’s chief minister.
The following month, Edward VI, a staunch Protestant, nominated Jane as his successor, in part because his halfsister Mary, who was next in line, was Roman Catholic.
Edward VI died on July 6, 1553, and Jane was proclaimed Queen on July 10. She was never crowned and refused to name her husband as king.
She was deposed nine days later when Mary, having gathered sufficient support, rode triumphantly into London and Parliament proclaimed her Queen.
Jane was imprisoned in the Tower of London and sentenced to death for high treason, but Mary initially spared her life. However, when Jane’s father became involved in a Protestant rebellion, her fate was sealed. Jane and her husband were executed in February 1554.
Her martyrdom saw her revered in Protestant circles. She featured in Foxe’s Book Of Martyrs and embellishments to her story began to appear shortly after Mary’s death in 1558.
Ballads of the era depict Jane and Guildford as blameless victims of parental machinations: ‘ The thyng our fathers toke in hande/ Was neither his nor my
consente.’ In Victorian times, she became a romantic heroine in works such as Paul delaroche’s dramatic 1833 painting The Execution Of Lady Jane Grey.
The youngest British monarch to be killed was Edward V. Born in 1470, he was the son of Edward IV. In 1483, when he was 12 and his brother, Richard of Shrewsbury, duke of york, was ten, their father died. Edward was proclaimed king, but was never crowned.
His uncle Richard became Lord Protector and the princes were declared illegitimate. The boys were put under Tragic: A detail from The Execution Of Lady Jane Grey by Paul Delaroche protective custody in the Tower of London. The Princes in the Tower disappeared mysteriously shortly after Richard III’s coronation.
Rachel Dougan, Hawick, Borders. a NUMBER of monarchs around the world were younger than Lady Jane Grey when they were killed.
Ratsadathirat became king of ayutthaya, an ancient kingdom in Thailand, at the age of five in 1533. The following year he was put to death by a relative who usurped the throne.
Tiberius was the son of Emperor Justinian II. Born in 705, he was a baby when he became co- emperor of the Byzantine Empire with his father. Both were killed in 711 during a rebellion.
alexander IV, the son of alexander the Great, was born in 323 BC, the year of his father’s death. He was just 14 when he was killed along with his mother by Macedonian general Cassander in a battle for control of the empire.
Tim Cramer, Cardiff. QUESTION Were sprats once so abundant off the East coast that they were ploughed into fields as fertiliser? THE use of fish as a fertiliser has been a common practice since at least 800 ad, when the Norwegians were known to use herring as a fertiliser.
Sprats are known by many names, including the restaurant term whitebait. The North Sea was a great producer of the European sprat ( Sprattus sprattus), which became part of the staple diet. They were fished in such quantities that there was usually a surplus, which would be sold to farmers as fertiliser.
This was also the case for many common types of fish, such as herring and mackerel. Fish waste was turned into fishmeal for use as fertiliser and this included sprats that were too small to be sold as food.
Sprats have been replaced in agriculture by chemical fertilisers, though fishmeal fertilisers are available for those who prefer an organic option. However, not all brands are purely organic.
Like many species of fish, sprats are subject to quota controls under the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy.
Bob Cubitt, Northampton. QUESTION Were there tripledecker buses in Berlin in the Twenties? FURTHER to the answer regarding the hoax Berlin triple-decker bus, the image modified for publication in a magazine was a British-built aEC (associated Equipment Company) NS type.
Two of these double- deckers were supplied to Berlin’s BOaG in the Twenties. They were built at Walthamstow in North-East London, and were badged as aCLO (associated Company Lorries and Omnibuses) instead of aEC in Germany, due to objections from the German company aEG.
aEC was a major builder of London’s buses, right up to the Routemaster and some later single-deck types in the early Seventies. NS-type buses were a common sight in London from 1923 to 1937.
Originally, they had open tops and solid tyres, but most ended their days with covered top decks and pneumatic tyres.
Peter Casling, Thornbury, Glos. THE Harry Potter Knight bus was the predecessor of the Routemaster, the aEC Regent RT. It was made for the film Harry Potter and The Prisoner of azkaban and built from three buses: RT2240 (KGU 169), RT3882 (LLU 681) and RT4497 (OLd 717), using the number plate from the last bus. It is in Warner Bros Studio, near London, as part of the tour, The Making Of Harry Potter.
Chris Hebbron, Gloucester.
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