Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Lady Jane Grey: Queen of England?

Starting point is 00:00:00 Probably the most consequential monarch in British history was Henry VIII. He upended much of English society by changing the religion in his country from the top down. He also left in his wake a century of controversy and turmoil about the succession of the monarchy. And in all of that controversy, one figure wound up being nothing more than an asterisk in the list of British monarchs. Someone who ruled for only nine days, if it can be said they ruled at all. Learn more about Lady Jane Gray, the short-of-serving English monarch, Sort of, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Do you ever climb into bed ready to sleep only to have your mind start racing the moment your head hits the pillow?

Starting point is 00:00:51 Thoughts bouncing around, replaying the day or jumping ahead to tomorrow? That is exactly why Catherine Nikolai created Nothing Much Happens. Each episode is a gentle, cozy bedtime story where, well, nothing much happens. No drama, no tension, nothing you need to follow closely. Just soft narration, calming repetition, and soothing sensory details designed to help your mind slow down and your body relax. It's not about entertainment, it's about rest. And millions of listeners around the world use it every night to quiet their thoughts and finally fall asleep. If you've ever struggled to shut your brain off at night, this might be exactly what you've been missing.

Starting point is 00:01:26 You can listen to Nothing Much Happens wherever you get your podcasts. Episodes are every Monday and Thursday. It's hard to state just how messed up the political situation was in 16th century England. I've touched on it in several previous episodes, but everything started because Henry the 8th didn't have a son and heir to the throne of England. It caused him to divorce his wife, Catherine of Aragon, and then to go through five more wives. His divorce caused him not only to renounce the Catholic Church, but also to set up a new church with himself as the head, and to destroy most of the institutions that the Catholic Church controlled in the country. Henry did eventually get his wish. His third wife, Jane Seymour,

Starting point is 00:02:13 gave birth to a son Edward. However, as the saying goes, you have to be careful what you wish for. Edward was raised a Protestant, the first English monarch to have done so. However, Henry died in 1547 when Edward was only nine years old, and this is where the story starts. The ascension of a child to a royal crown is not an uncommon occurrence in history. While someone that young may not be ready to rule personally, it does at least solve the problem of who was going to be the king. When a child, descends to the throne, there's usually a regent who governs the realm on their behalf until they're of age. In the case of Edward, now King Edward V. 6th, he had two regents. The first was his maternal grandfather, Edward Seymour, the Duke of Somerset, who served as regent from

Starting point is 00:02:58 1547 to 1549. The second regent was John Dudley, the Earl of Warwick and later the Duke of North umberland, who served as regent from 1550 to 1553. In January 1553, Edward fell ill developing a fever and a severe cough. Over the next several months, his condition worsened, and the court doctors realized that his illness was terminal. The lack of an heir, the thing which Henry VIII feared, had only been passed down one generation. The young Edward VI had no children,

Starting point is 00:03:32 which meant that the next in line to the throne would be his eldest sister, Mary, who was the daughter of Catherine of Aragon, and was a Catholic. Edward, a Protestant, didn't want his Catholic sister to ascend to the throne. So in June, when it was clear that he would soon die, he issued what became known as the devise for the succession. In this edict, he skipped over his half-sisters Mary and Elizabeth, and declared that the crown would pass to his first cousin once removed Lady Jane Grey. The argument for skipping over Mary and Elizabeth was that they were declared bastards by his father,

Starting point is 00:04:05 and thus ineligible for the throne. Lady Jane Grey was the great-granddaughter of Edward's grandfather Henry the 7th. She also happened to be about the same age as Edward, about 15 or 16 years old. Most importantly, she, like Edward, was raised a Protestant. By all accounts, Jane was well-educated and very intelligent. However, she wasn't really a player in all of the power games which were going on in England. She just happened to have the right lineage and be of the right religion. Oh, and there was one other thing. Lady Jane Grey was married just six weeks before the death of to one Lord Guilford Dudley, the son of none other than Edward's regent, John Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland. If Lady Jane Gray, now Lady Jane Dudley, were to ascend to the

Starting point is 00:04:54 throne, then she would still need a regent, and that would allow John Dudley, aka the Duke of Northumberland, to continue to rule the country. There was a problem, however, with Edward's devise for the succession. Henry VIII had passed a law, approved by Parliament, known as the Succession to the Crown Act of 1543. In it, Edward was listed as Henry's heir, but Henry's daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, were also explicitly listed as being in line for the throne, even though he declared them to be bastards. The Succession to the Crown Act of 1543 was the third and last such act passed during the reign of Henry. The two previous acts explicitly removed Mary and Elizabeth from the line of succession, but the third and final act put them back in.

Starting point is 00:05:42 Moreover, the Succession to the Crown Act allowed Henry to change the succession in his will if he saw fit, and he explicitly didn't do that. In fact, his will reinforced his daughters being in the line of succession, and only if they should not have male heirs would the crown then passed to the descendants of his sister Mary, which would then include Jane Gray. This left everything in a bit of a legal quandary. Could a king, who still had a regent and wasn't ruling in his own name, unilaterally changed the line of succession which had previously been approved by a king and approved by Parliament. Well, that issue came to a head on July 6, 1553, when Edward the 6th passed away. Given the controversy surrounding the succession, word of Edward's death wasn't made

Starting point is 00:06:28 public until July 9th, when Lady Jane Dudley was notified that she was now the Queen Monarch of England. She accepted the position reluctantly, and on July 10th she was proclaimed the Queen of England, France, and Ireland. She took up residence in the Tower of London to await her coronation, which was the tradition for previous monarchs. Behind the scenes, however, a lot was happening. For starters, Lady Jane had very little public support. No one really knew who she was. Mary, on the other hand, was the daughter of Henry, and everybody knew who she was. Mary might have been Catholic, but Protestantism had been brought to England top down only 16 years ago, not bottom up like in other parts of Europe. Most common people had no problem with Mary being Catholic. All of the Catholic

Starting point is 00:07:16 nobility supported Mary, whereas the Protestant nobility had fractured support for Jane, who had a very questionable and tenuous claim to the throne. When Mary got the news of Edward's death, she didn't go to London. Instead, she headed to East Anglia, where she had extensive land holdings, and where the Duke of Northumberland, the father-in-law of Lady Jane, was extremely unpopular for having recently put down a rebellion there. Moreover, there was a huge difference between the two women. Jane was 15 or 16 when she was thrust into the spotlight and had only a few weeks to prepare. Mary, on the other hand, was 37 years old and had spent her entire life embroiled in the politics of court, creating alliances, and otherwise getting ready to become queen one day. A result of this

Starting point is 00:08:02 is that Mary had the support of most of the military, including most of the high-ranking generals and officers. On July 14th, Northumberland left London with soldiers to try and track down and capture Mary, which was now the only realistic way to retain power. But there was no way that this was going to happen with Mary in East Anglia. On July 19th, while Northumberland was away, the Privy Council, the group consisting of the senior members of the House of Lords and the House of Commons, switched their allegiance and declared Mary to be the Queen of England. The decision of the Privy Council to switch their allegiance was largely the result of Henry Fitz-Alan, the Earl of Arundel, who Northumberland had previously arrested twice, and towards whom he had a very big grudge.

Starting point is 00:08:47 With the support of the Privy Council gone, that was it for Lady Jane, and most importantly, for her father-in-law. On July 19th, the day the Privy Council declared Mary Queen, the Tower of London went from being a fortress for Jane to being her prison. Jane is often called the nine-day queen, using the date of July 10th, her receiving. receiving the news of Edward's death to her removal on July 19th. However, if you mark it from the actual death of Edward, she would be the 13-day queen. That is, if you consider her to actually have been a queen at all. One person who certainly did not consider her a queen was the now Queen Mary.

Starting point is 00:09:23 There is an ancient saying attributed to Queen Cersie Lanister, which says, if you play the Game of Thrones, you either win or you die. The Duke of Northumberland found that out really quick. He was captured and on August 18th he was tried for treason. Many of those who sat in judgment were once his colleagues. Northumberland quickly denounced Protestantism and said, quote, The plagues that is upon this realm and upon us is that we have erred from the faith these 16 years. It was a huge PR victory for the Catholics in England and his words were printed and distributed widely throughout the realm.

Starting point is 00:09:58 He was found guilty of treason and was beheaded in the Tower of London on August 22, 1553. Things didn't go any better for Jane and her husband, Guilford. That November, Jane was put on trial for treason, of which there was ample evidence showing that she was a usurper who claimed the title of Queen. She was found guilty and sentenced to be, quote, burned alive on the Tower Hill or beheaded as the Queen pleases. The sentence wasn't immediately carried out, however. That changed when in January of 1554 a rebellion in England took place against Mary's

Starting point is 00:10:29 plans to marry King Philip II of Spain. One of the leaders of the rebellion was Jane's father, Henry Gray, the Duke of Suffolk. The involvement of Jane's family in the rebellion pretty much sealed her fate. On February 2, 1554, she and her husband were beheaded. Jane was only 16 or 17 years old. A similar drama of succession in religion was to be carried out again in just five years, when Mary died in 1558, and was succeeded by her sister, Elizabeth, who was a Protestant. When Queen Mary went on to persecute Protestants, Jane became known as a martyr to the Protestant cause,

Starting point is 00:11:04 a belief that was held for several centuries amongst Protestants in England. For years, historians have considered Jane to just have been a pawn in the meganations of the Duke of Northumberland, who just used her to secure power for himself. There hasn't been much in the way of portrayals of Jane Gray, but there was a 1986 movie where a young Helena Bonham Carter portrayed Jane. There was also a very popular painting called The Execution of Lady Jane Grey, painted by Paul de la Roche in 1883. There are no contemporary portraits of her that survive.

Starting point is 00:11:36 Jane Gray has gone down as a historical footnote. If there's a list of English monarchs, she is either completely omitted, or there is an asterisk next to her name. However, it's her brief brush with fame and power that makes her story so fascinating. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel.

Starting point is 00:11:58 The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. I just want to thank everyone, including the show's producers, who support the show over on Patreon. If you'd like to support the show, just head over to patreon.com, which is currently the only place where you can get show merchandise. Also, if you want to talk to other listeners about the show, head over to our Facebook group or Discord server, both of which have links in the show notes.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Lady Jane Grey: Queen of England?

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