John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, who had helped to send the king's uncle, the Duke of Somerset, to the block, again began to plot. Henry VIII's sister Mary, who married Charles Brandon after the death of her first husband, Louis XII of France, had left a daughter Frances, who married Henry Grey, later Duke of Suffolk, and had a daughter whose right to the throne, if Mary and Elizabeth were put away, was at least as good as any. So Dudley arranged a marriage between his fourth son, Guilford, a boy of nineteen, and Lady Jane Grey, a sweet girl of sixteen, whose pitiful history has power to stir a heart of stone. King Edward died July 6, 1553, and Dudley showed what purported to be his will passing the succession to his cousin, Lady Jane, and next attempted to secure the person of Princess Mary, who had however been warned of his purpose. On Monday, July 10, Lady Jane was proclaimed Queen of England and many great nobles gathered around her. The people showed no enthusiasm. They knew Dudley, and they felt that Mary was the rightful heir. So pronounced was public sentiment that the politic began to gather around Mary, who was proclaimed July 19, and Jane descended from the throne which she had unwillingly accepted, after a reign of only nine days. Immediately the Tower filled. Lady Jane herself, and her foolish husband, her father, Dudley and his four other sons and dozens of less degree were confined, and the axeman was to reap a bloody harvest. Dudley and his eldest son, the Earl of Warwick, went to the block almost immediately. Robert Dudley, the husband of Amy Robsart, afterward the favourite of Queen Elizabeth, and Guilford Dudley lodged in the Beauchamp tower. Today one sees their names and inscriptions carved in the soft stone and Guilford, perhaps, twice cut the name, JANE. Mary would have spared her unfortunate cousin if she could have induced her to conform to the old faith, but Jane's Protestantism was too firmly fixed, and she had a will of iron beneath her soft and gentle exterior. Refusing to yield her faith, the Nine Days' Queen went to Tower Green, her husband to Tower Hill, and shortly afterward her father followed his friends and his children. The queen under the influence of Renard, the agent of Charles V, began the series of executions for conscience's sake which has given her the awful title of Bloody Mary. Those who disliked either the Spaniard or the old church had good cause to fear. Elizabeth was confined in the Tower for a time, but Mary could not bring herself to order her execution though strongly advised to do so. But Sir Thomas Wyat, Thomas Cobham and then the three bishops, Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley, with hundreds of others crowded the Tower until it overflowed into Newgate and the Fleet.