THE strange adventures of the Ladies Katherine and Mary Grey, although they excited great interest at the time of their happening, and were of immense contemporary political importance, are now almost unknown, even to professed students of Elizabethan history. The sad fate of these unfortunate princesses has paled before that of their more famous sister, Lady Jane Grey, who, although the heroine of an appalling tragedy, was rather the victim of others than of her own actions. In a sense, she was merely a lay-figure, whereas her sisters, especially Lady Katherine, who played an active part on the stage of history at a later period of life, and possessed an unusually strong personality, were entirely swayed by the most interesting of human passions—love. Lady Katherine was literally “done to death” by her infatuation for the young Earl of Hertford, the eldest son of that Protector Somerset who suffered death under Edward VI. The feline cruelty with which Queen Elizabeth tormented Lady Katherine, after the clandestine marriage with her lover was revealed, called forth the freely expressed condemnation of Chief Secretary Cecil, who denounced his royal mistress’s harshness in no measured terms. It is said that Lady Willoughby d’Eresby, one of the faithful attendants on Katherine of Aragon, was so infuriated by Henry VIII’s courtship and marriage with Anne Boleyn, that she pronounced a terrible curse upon that wretched queen and the infant Elizabeth. If, through her intercession or incantations, she contrived to induce some evil spirit to inspire Henry VIII to make his famous but ill-considered Will, she certainly succeeded in adding very considerably to the discomfort of his celebrated daughter, who, during all her life, had to experience the consequences of an ill-judged testament, whereby Henry VIII, by passing over the legitimate claim to the succession, of his grandniece, Mary Queen of Scots, the descendant of his eldest sister, Margaret Tudor, widow of James IV of Scotland, in favour of the heirs of his youngest sister, Mary Tudor, Queen of France and Duchess of Suffolk, opened a very Pandora’s box, full of more or less genuine claimants, after Elizabeth’s death, to the English Throne. The Spanish Ambassador enumerates a round dozen of these, all of whom, with the exception of Mary Stuart and Lady Katherine Grey, he describes as more or less incompetent place-seekers, not worth the butter on their bread, but who clamoured to obtain the queen’s recognition of what they believed to be their legal rights, and thereby added greatly to the general confusion. Of these claimants, Lady Katherine Grey was by far the most important, her right to the Crown being not only based on two Royal Wills—those of Henry VIII and Edward VI[1]—but, moreover, ratified by a special Act of Parliament. She therefore played a more conspicuous part in the politics of the early years of Elizabeth’s reign than is generally known, and, as a matter of fact, was rarely out