Tudor England has always fascinated me, but I became interested in Lady Jane Grey while doing research for my class on pirate history. Many of her supporters were investing in an expedition to send a ship south to Africa at the point in which Edward VI was dying. Such a business opportunity would become illegal under the reign of Mary Tudor, because it contradicted a Catholic understanding that the Spanish and the Portuguese were to split the southern seas between them without worries about other European competition. Reading about that got me curious about the other political and economic implications of the Edward's death and I turned to academic sources to find more information.