Part I. opens with the death of Edward VI., and ends with the

execution of Jane Grey. The plot is simple――as historical plots have to be.

In the first Act John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, contrives, with the help of Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, to work upon the conscience of the schoolboy king, till he signs away the throne to the Lady Jane Grey, wife of Guilford Dudley, Northumberland’s son. Jane has been nursing Edward, who has come to regard her as a sister. The Princess Mary, the rightful heir, has been kept from her dying brother’s side by a device of Dudley’s, who sends for her, indeed, at the last, but so that she arrives too late to prevent the signing. Edward attributes her absence, as also Elizabeth’s, to indifference. Jane Grey protests against the succession being forced upon herself, but yields sufficient consent to be implicated in the treason. Northumberland defies Mary’s claim, and the princess has to fly with her three faithful adherents, Sir Henry Bedingfield, Sir Henry Jerningham, and Fakenham, her confessor――a character depicted throughout as not only inoffensive but saintly; indeed, as Mary’s good genius, though, unhappily, too seldom successful in his influence.

Dudley goes, in the third scene, to visit Courtenaye, Marquis of Exeter, who is a prisoner in the Tower. The visit is solely for the purpose of making this man his friend and tool, to what end will appear later.