The Rest Is History - 294: Lady Jane Grey: The Axe Falls

Episode Date: January 12, 2023

‘It had the alchemy of a bitter Tory leadership race’. Reigning for the shortest period of any British monarch, can Lady Jane even be considered an official queen of England and Ireland?  In the second of two episodes, tune in to hear Tom and Dominic drill down into the story of her turbulent nine days on the throne, plus her deposition, trial, and execution. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Oh, not for me, oh, not for me, that fatal toy of gems and gold. Blood on its ermined band I see, and thorns are in its silken folds. Let me the shaded pathway keep, remote from wild ambition's glare. Nor lead me to that dizzy steep for clouds and storms are gathering there she died that glory of her age as never roman heroine died and britain's history has no page dearer to british woman's pride that was a poem by the American writer Eliza Leslie. She wrote it in 1833

and it is about the subject of the last podcast we did and this podcast, Lady Jane Grey, Lady Jane Dudley, Queen Jane, however you want to call her, the nine days queen, the 13 days queen. The woman of a thousand names. Yeah, very difficult to pin down. And Dominic, in part one, we set up the situation. We introduced all the various characters. And we left Jane in tears in the Long Gallery at Sion House, proclaimed queen by the Duke of Northumberland,

power behind Edwardward the sixth throne ardent protestant and he has kind of um he has signed up to edward the sixth wheeze to keep his cath his elder catholic sister mary from the throne by essentially saying that jane should become queen Jane I. Yes. So that's the state of play. So Jane has burst into tears. How long does it take her to get her composure back and to agree to become queen? Presumably, I mean, what if she had turned around

and said, no, I don't want this. Mary's the legitimate queen. Because she knew Mary quite well, didn't she? I mean, they were cousins. Of course, they are cousins she knows she knows mary and of course there's that there are two people who she might think could could um succeed instead of her so one is mary and one is elizabeth um so mary's 37 we talked about her in the last episode she's a catholic um she's been a victim all her life and the other person person is Elizabeth. She's also been a victim in a way. She's 20. She's a Protestant. She could succeed too. Why doesn't Jane... Jane clearly has doubts

from the beginning. You can tell by her incredulity and by the tears. I mean, obviously, she's mourning her cousin, Edward. But she's in shock that this sort of chalice has been handed to her. Why doesn't she because she's used i would say tom to being bossed around by men um you know everybody all these bigwigs all the big men of the realm are basically saying to her you're the queen they're kneeling to her she's in she's stunned she hasn't been prepared for it she hasn't been trained nobody has said to her you know even weeks beforehand somebody could have said to her listen listen, get ready, sort yourself out, start looking at maps and thinking about tax plans. You're going to be the queen.

Nobody has said this to her. She's 15 years old. And, you know, what does a 15-year-old do when all the most powerful people in the realm are saying you are the monarch? I mean, ultimately, by the evening, it's clear that she has agreed. Well, we've got a couple of questions here. One from Lauren Dillon. I'm curious how much of a role Jane herself played in her ascension to the throne. Was she manipulated or ambitious? And how did she feel about Mary personally? So your answer to that would be that she's manipulated into it. She's not an agent. And again, Reasonable Doctor, how much was she a pawn in the power

struggles of more powerful men? And how far was she complicit in her ascension to power? I mean, so she's not complicit in her ascension to power, but the question of how much she is a pawn. So to what extent is she a pawn? To what extent is she a puppet once she has agreed to become queen? Because the moment she agrees to that, she then has a degree of power that she did not previously have right and we see that on the next day so i mean again our sources are quite limited but we get a sense of it um and a sense of what how things might have worked out on the next day so on monday the 10th of july she is proclaimed queen in the city so this is the big moment when you know the heralds or whoever pitch up and the big crowd,

and they sort of shout that the king is dead, there is the queen. And people are kind of surprised, I think. A lot of the crowds are taken aback. They're sort of expecting it would be Mary, but it's Jane. Am I right, Dominic? Am I right that normally when this is done, it's quite a brief announcement. It's basically, you know, if the king is dead, God save the king, all that kind of stuff. But when Jane's accession is announced, it's quite long. They have to explain it. And if

you're explaining, you're losing, aren't you? It's the classic thing. I think you're absolutely right. Mary has a very simple, straightforward, clear case, and Jane doesn't. With Jane, you have to always explain why she's queen, why these other people have been cut out. And I think that is obviously a problem from the very beginning. However, we'll come on to Mary in a second. Let's just stick with Jane and her story. Most people, I think, assume that the ambassadors and so on, the courtiers,

she's got all the big men of the realm behind her. She's going to prevail. This isn't actually going to be terribly contested. This is going to work out. There's no rioting in London. People aren't sort of roaring and rampaging through the streets. But there's no great enthusiasm, is there? No, there isn't a great enthusiasm.

But don't forget, Henry VIII had married wives. There'd been never any great enthusiasm for Anne Boleyn. In fact, when Anne Boleyn had gone through the streets, when she had been crowned, she had complained to Henry VIII and said, everybody hates me and, you know, no one is cheering. So to have that, that's not unprecedented. You know, once you're crowned, once it's happened, I mean, who cares if no one's cheering?

You're the queen. They stage a big spectacle, as you're crowned, once it's happened, I mean, who cares if no one's cheering? You're the queen. They stage a big spectacle, as you would expect. She arrives in splendor at the Tower of London. She's splendidly dressed. All the family are there. All the bigwigs are there. Guildford is there. Okay.

So on the question of her family, there are two things, aren't there? The first is that her mother is carrying her train and this upsets people because it's the mother acting as the servant to the daughter upends propriety. And in an age where propriety is incredibly important, this is seen as very sinister. But the other thing is, is essentially she refuses to allow Guilford to become king. Yeah. I mean, this is this is a key point. So she's given all the sort of the stuff when she arrives in the royal lodgings. But one of the things she's given is the crown.

And interestingly, she refuses to put the crown on. Now, one reason for that might be that she feels very, you know, she still feels very conflicted about accepting the royal title. But another reason is that she doesn't like the idea of Guildford having a crown. And she actually explicitly says at this point, he's not going to be king. When it's all done and dusted, I'm going to make him Duke of Clarence. So in other words, he'll be Prince Philip. We were talking in the last episode about King Guildford.

It might well never have happened, even if she had. Well, the Duchess of Northumberland, Sir Guildford's mother at this point, has a massive strop. As she would. Your baggage. Yeah, precisely. And actually, she threatens Jane with, she says,

my son won't sleep with you if you don't make him king uh now who's to say how things would have worked how this would have been resolved um you can't have a king called gilford king basingstoke i mean it's just it's ridiculous listeners from gilford please address your complaints to tom not to me. I think Guildford is a brilliant name for a king. You can't have a king named after a sleepy Surrey commuter town. Do you know what it sounds like? It sounds like an American name, Tom.

Doesn't it? Guildford Dudley. The fourth. Exactly. Well, Guildford is trying to act as a king, by the way. So this is day one. I am king! Jane! Jane, tell them i'm king jane is very uncomfortable with the whole business now one reason why um she may be

uncomfortable why there is also a sense of disquiet around is a message has arrived from mary mary has vanished you know mary is gone right and hadn't northumberland tried to lure her in beforehand by kind of shambolically and i think this is what proves to me tom or suggests to me that this northumberland and we talked about this in the previous episode so jane's father-in-law the the guy who had been basically Edward VI's right hand, the person who's thought of as masterminding the plot. The hand of the king. Yeah, the hand of the king, precisely. Yeah. This is what suggests that he really hasn't masterminded this plot from the very beginning.

Because if he had, it would have been sensible to get Mary under lock and key and secure her person before putting all this in train. And he hasn't done that. Now, I think one reason he hasn't done that is because he's improvising. And the second reason is that everybody completely underestimates Mary. Dominic, just before we carry on with Mary, just a question from Joe Johnson. What is Elizabeth doing during Grey's Nine Days? She doesn't seem to offer Mary any practical support in reclaiming the throne. Is she effectively waiting to see if Northumberland takes Mary out for her? Could Elizabeth have mounted a credible military challenge for the crown if that had happened? Or does she wholeheartedly

support Mary's claim at this point? I think Elizabeth needs Mary. So Elizabeth is kind of absent from the scene, but she comes into London with Mary at the beginning of August in triumph. Because if Mary goes, then her claim is gone as well. Yeah, precisely. So basically, Jane succeeding is not good news for Elizabeth because Elizabeth is out. And if Jane then has children, Elizabeth is completely forgotten. So remember, it's not just Mary as a Catholic who's been got rid of by the Jane stratagem.

It is Mary and Elizabeth as illegitimate. So it's in Elizabeth'sabeth's interest for jane to fail absolutely northumberland obviously thinks and the others think i mean this is so mary we talked in the previous episode about him in the eighth being at the center of the story edward the sixth but obviously ultimately becomes a story about mary and if you want to tell it as a it's often a story of a kind of female victim, but it's also the story of a female winner, of somebody who's actually been a victim and suddenly turns the table.

So Mary, all her life, 37 years, everybody has written her off as just this pitiful drip. You know, she's been, everyone's abused her. They've taken her mother away. They've told her that her religion is rubbish. They've harangued her, her own, as we say. Her own brother, yeah. That fantastic impersonation from the previous episode, which will stay with many listeners.

I wanted to become a Protestant. No! Yeah. Edward VI, Edward VI, Botron and Boss are around. Yeah. And most of the ambassadors here in London, who are our best sources, so they're the ambassador to France,

ambassador to the empire, they basically say, Mary's a bit of a loser, you know, she's probably not going to prevail in this. The one chance she probably, they think, Northumberland's big worry, actually, I think, realistically, is he thinks the empire,

so that's the Holy Roman Empire in Spain, Charles V, one of the two great superpowers, so the two superpowers of France and the empire, he thinks the empire might try to intervene in a succession. But you know what he's done? He's already squared it with the French, who are the counterweight. The French are quite happy with Jane becoming queen. Isn't Charles V writing to his ambassador and saying, who is this Jane person? Exactly. You know, what's the family tree? So it's good to know that everyone was a bit confused.

Exactly. They're as confused as our listeners from the previous episode, actually. And indeed as us. So Mary has vanished. actually, what Mary has done is Mary has shot off into, where's she gone to? Was it Framlingham? I think it's Framlingham, isn't it? So Framlingham is in Suffolk. She's shot off into East Anglia. And she's thinking very fast. But at this stage, they don't know that.

They think, I think Northumberland thinks, oh, everyone knew Mary would create a great fuss, but who cares about her? She's just a loser. She'll probably, you know, she'll probably manage to whip up a few hundred peasants, some sort of mad Catholic squires or something, and we will just be able to disperse them.

You know, it's the usual story of Mary always complaining. Moan, moan, moan. Yeah, moan, moan, moan, who cares? So what then happens in the next few days, Jane is in the tower with Guilford. And, you know, presumably, we don't know. We don't really know what they're doing, but I assume relations are not terribly – A bit frosty.

A bit frosty. Because he's still very keen on being king. But anyway, they're both teenagers. You know, classic. I mean, it's just teenage behavior going on and in the town alone yeah and meanwhile northumberland uh who is you know appears to be the master of the situation he makes an absolutely fatal mistake and that is he says we need to obviously take some troops, go up and secure Mary, crush whatever little pitiful rebellion she's got going on in East Anglia.

And he has the choice. Does he send someone to do it or does he do it himself? And we said in the previous episode, he's a military man. He's used to commanding. He says, I'll do it. I'll take them. And so I'll do it myself. And so he leaves the capital at the end

of that week on Friday, the 14th of July. And the probable expectation is that either he'll secure Mary or she'll just flee. She'll take ship and go off and spend her time moping around the course of Charles V. And he's leading a land expedition, isn't he? But he also dispatches some ships. A fleet. And these are armed with guns. Crucially, crucially. And this is the fear of imperial intervention.

So basically the fleet has been sent round the coast to try and block any attempt by imperial ships from the low countries to supply her with men or to land reinforcements or something like this. And he takes, crucially, Tom, he takes cavalry and he takes some guns himself, but not a huge amount of infantry because he thinks she'll probably be with some sort of mob of demented Norfolk Suffolk peasants. And if we just shoot some guns at them and show the men on horses

they'll run away and it'll be fine there's no there's obviously we're not gonna be fighting any massive battles so off he goes he gets to cambridge on the the 15th and at this point there are sort of reports it's clear that the country is not happy and and why isn't the country happy well because a lot of people probably never even heard of jane barely you know they don't really but everyone knows mary because mary is the great hard done by sob story of henry the eighth's realm so i mean on the on the question of legitimacy and a question we'll come back to i'm sure because it's the big question was jane really a queen was she legitimate i mean, a crucial part of a king or a queen's legitimacy basically depends

on whether people think you're the king or the queen, doesn't it? Right. Yeah, exactly. And if they don't think you're the queen, then basically you're not. Yeah. I mean, you're absolutely right. I think you're absolutely right, Tom. As much as people argue about the legal niceties or the sort of theological niceties, the fact of the matter is, if the public don't think you're the king or queen, then you're not. I mean, it works on consent to some degree. Now, of course, constitutional experts will say, oh, no, no, no, no, no, it works because of important genealogical. But I mean, if the public are not listening listening there's nothing really you can do about it and what is absolutely clear i think is that irrespective of their religious views

most people deep down thought that mary and elizabeth were legitimate they knew that henry the eighth had married their mothers i mean they're not stupid yeah but also i mean just to say despite edward's patronage of of um of the Reformation and the degree, the lengths to which he'd gone, I mean, it's still quite a minority sport, isn't it? I mean, people are kind of buying into it, but it's not something that has as yet become so bedded down that it's come to define how the English see themselves. Which, of course, in due course, it will. Yeah, I think there's a huge amount of fluidity. I mean, for older people, certainly they've seen, you know, religions come and go, basically. And Henry VIII kept changing his mind and changing the rules about prayer books and all these sort of things.

I mean, I do think that, you know, there is perhaps a faint sense in which the parallels between today and the 16th century are not entirely tendentious because they're coming from the same kind of wellsprings and rather in the same way that you know things that that are cutting edge in academic circles and so on are really cutting through to the general public but they haven't absolutely bedded down yet and there's still a lot of resistance. There's lots of people unhappy about it. And lots of people don't really understand it or really know anything about it at all. I think that's right.

Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. And I would guess you could say that the situation there is kind of, perhaps gives you a sense of what the mood is like in England. I mean, obviously, Mutatis Mutandis, of course, but there's a certain degree there. There are lots of people who probably don't really, I mean, don't care is perhaps the wrong expression because, of course, everybody's Christian, but are probably not massively au fait with the theological. It's just a babble to them, and they just want to get along with their lives.

I think there's also the Catholic Protestant thing has not probably for the lost people has not really hardened into two camps. So they know that Mary is loyal to the old ways, the former religious practices, but they don't see that as a legitimate or toxic or un-English rather, or any of those things. You know, there are quite a lot of people who are upset at just how far Edward's reforms have gone,

who are upset at seeing statues smashed and the rude screens pulled down and all this kind of stuff, and they want them back. They liked all that stuff, and they thought, why have these sort of, they probably think, why have all these foreign influence nutters, who are far too enthusiastic about their religion, smashed all our nice stuff that you know and i as you say a nice roost green that we had saved up for in the church and we'd all contributed to

so yes i agree so so it's not as you say it's not absolutely set in concrete yet so mary despite the fact that she's catholic you know there's a there's her catholicism is less significant to people than the fact that she is henry viii's eldest child so while um what's his name, Northumberland is marching into East Anglia, what's Mary doing? So Mary's sending out letters. And actually, when you look at the correspondence, her letters often don't even mention religion. They just say, I'm absolutely the legitimate heir. I'm the legal heir.

And she is very- Which is strategically the right thing to do, right? It is very strategically the right thing to do right it's absolutely strategically the right thing i mean she plays a very you know she plays politically a very canny game her it seems that basically her her campaign the people running it are catholics are the people around her and there's a sort of conservative network that it spreads along. You know, the people disseminate the letters and they carry messages and all that sort of stuff. But she's backed by lots of Protestants. And there are lots of people who have got, there are always people in 16th century who were grievances against the regime.

And particularly, this is why it's really important that she's in East Anglia. She had a lot of support in East Anglia. She had land in East Anglia. She'd taken over of support in East Anglia. She had land in East Anglia. She'd taken over the old affinity of the Dukes of Norfolk. She'd taken over a lot of that kind of network. So Framling had been owned by the Howards. Exactly, the Howard network. She'd taken that.

One of the most powerful networks in England. The boss of Duke of Norfolk, he's in the Tower of London. He's been disgraced. But she's taken that over in his absence. He was due to be executed, wasn't he? The day after Edward VI dies, I think. Is that right? I didn't know.

I'd missed that detail. Yeah. So that's a lucky escape for him. It is a lucky escape for him. But she's also, East Anglia also matters because there've been lots of risings against enclosures. So for people who don't know, this is the practice of big landowners

enclosing land with fences and hedges and things to stop the common people using it. So very, very unpopular with the sort of ordinary folk. And there'd been a great uprising called Ketz Rebellion against this, and that had been put down by none other than the Duke of Northumberland. So basically in that area, everybody hates him, whether they're Catholic, Protestant, or whatever they are. So Mary is getting more and more support. And what clearly happens is that Northumberland had marched out of London on Friday the 14th, and he's got to Cambridge. He stays in Cambridge.

He's hoping to get reinforcements on Tuesday the 18th. So just over a week into Jane's reign, he marches out of Cambridge and he thinks to confront Mary in her ragtag band. And the next day, Wednesday, he falls back. He unaccountably, it seems, returns to Cambridge. So it's like he's lost his nerve. What's going on? Well, what's going on is this issue of the fleet that you had talked about before. Another of his disastrous errors is sending that fleet to forestall imperial intervention. Some of the fleet have deserted with those guns that you mentioned. Now, they haven't done that because they're all raging aficionados of the Bishop of Rome. They've done that because they haven't done that because they're all you know raging aficionados of the bishop of rome they've done that because they haven't been paid and basically mary's agents say oh haven't

you been paid oh well we'll pay you yeah give us your guns come on join the you know she's the logistic there and uh northumberland so this machiavellian conspirator you know he he knows he can't defeat mary with all these guns and the fleet. He's falling back. And the same day, Wednesday the 19th, is the same day that a lot of the Privy Council back in London with Northumberland not there. Yeah. Whoa. They're like, hmm, this is not working out.

This hasn't gone as we'd thought. So Eric Ives in his book says, one one the key factor is this is the moment where basically they have to decide are they going to raise troops themselves to help him or are they not going to and actually when it comes push times to shove yeah not doing something's easier isn't it not doing something is easier you know they start thinking you know what i mean it was a stupid the public you know they're getting reports in from kind of gentry people that they know yeah saying you know jane who that who's jane i mean you know why are we backing mary and they start to it's like it's like this sort of strange alchemy of a of a particularly bitter tory leadership race yes you know yeah we always hated him yeah we never voted for him yeah i never like everything he did was rubbish

exactly they're sajid javid in this analogy is what they are so the councillors on that morning wednesday morning they say actually we've changed our minds we never really backed jane and so that afternoon yet yet again, you know, in the city of London, somebody proclaims, oh, it's actually Mary who's queen. And this time the city goes, the city is delighted. And I think that's, in a weird way, you know, this is a very long-running story because England had always been very, very favourable to Catherine of Aragon.

You know, people had loved Catherine of Aragon. She was really popular. And people had always felt really sorry for her. So when she was being shuttled around all the various houses that Henry VIII sent her to, there would always be crowds weeping and shouting, you know, God bless you, Mom, and all this sort of thing. And this is basically how people think of Mary as well. They don't think of her as Bloody Mary.

They think of poor old Mary, and finally she's going to get her chance in the limelight. So there's bonfires and there's bells. Of course, poor old Jane. What's she doing? She's just sitting in the tower squabbling with Guildford. Yeah. And she's completely forgotten in all this.

I mean, that's the sort's the question before about her agency. She has no agency at all. She's just sitting there in the tower, and eventually people say to her, oh, you know what? You're not queen after all. Sorry. It was all a mistake. And Northumberland gets arrested in Cambridge, doesn't he?

He does, yeah. Again, it's interesting. He supposedly this sinister kind of bearded Machiavel. Yeah, and he does doublet and hose. Yeah. He just completely rolls over. Oh, dear. You know, I've made a terrible mistake.

Whoops. I mean, Mary takes her time. She makes this triumphant progress, and she comes into London on the 3rd of Augustust you know with elizabeth at her side because obviously this is in elizabeth's interests yeah so the whole the nine day 13 day issue well let's let's call it nine days so nine days from when she gets told that she's queen although if you think she was queen then obviously it's 13 day span yeah on what day does she kind of is she told you're not queen in a kind of official way what's the guillotine that drops down that makes it the 13th or 9th i think it's the 19th the 19th because it's the privy council that's when the privy council proclaim mary is so the

privy council basically say no and so she gets told you're no longer queen and she's already in the tower and of course the tower can be simultaneously a palace and a prison and it's pretty much what happens i guess to the princes in the tower that you know one minute one minute they're royal and the next minute they're in a luxury hotel the next minute you're in the basement yeah change to a radiator yeah well it's not that bad is it i mean they're not they're not treated like you know they're treated with the the dignity appropriate to their rank and of course you know mary was very fond of her, right? I mean, Mary doesn't want to execute her.

No, no, not at all. So she gets put up, as is often the way, she gets put up in the sort of jailer's house and she has servants and she has dinner with the jailer. And I think she hobnobs a little bit with Guildford at the beginning. I don't know whether relations have improved. No, I think it does improve. She starts to refer to him as my Guildford. Yeah. Well, of course, yes.

I love you, Jane. Always loved you, Jane. I never wanted to be king. But Mary, once she's installed, she explicitly says to a foreign visitor who records this, he says, what are you going to do? Are you going to pardon people? Are you going to try them? How are you going to handle this? And she says, as to Jane of Suffolk, whom they had tried to make queen,

she, i.e. Mary, could not be induced to consent that she should die. Three days before they went to fetch her from Sion House to take her to the tower, this is Jane, and make her entry into the town as usurping queen, she knew nothing of it, nor was she ever a party, nor did she ever give her consent. So Mary explicitly says, my conscience will not allow me to execute this child. Okay, so Dominic, what everyone knows about Ladyane gray is that she does end up having her head chopped off so i think we should take a break at this point and when we come back we'll look at how it is that jane does end up losing a head we'll be back after the break and carry on with this tragic story i'm marina hyde and i'm richard osmond and together we host the rest is entertainment

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That's therestisentertainment.com. hello welcome back to the rest is history um the coup northumberland's coup has been defeated lady jane gray has gone from being a royal inhabitant of the tower to being a prisoner and mary is now queen andic, you were talking before the break about how Mary is pretty sympathetic to Jane's situation, doesn't want to have her executed, even though she has clearly been guilty by Mary's light of treason because she's been signing herself as Queen and all kinds of stuff like that. However, before we get to Jane, Northumberland, what happens to him? Because if Mary's quite fond of Jane, she's absolutely not fond of Northumberland.

Yes. So Northumberland is tried in Westminster Hall on the 18th of August. So, you know, less than a month after Mary's triumphant entry into London. And to add insult to injury, he's tried by all the people who had previously agreed to his plan yeah but that's a very common tudor experience that's classic tudor behavior isn't it so it's all the people who were kind of slapping you on the back yesterday and playing bowls with you and stuff and declaring you guilty to yeah tomorrow or something so this is exactly what happens he is He basically says, and he says to them, how can you be my judges? I mean, you were in on the deal.

And they say, oh, no, no, no, that's complete fake news. Sweet summer child. And so what happens to him is quite interesting. He is meant to be executed, I think, on the 21st of August and first thing in the morning. And it's cancelled at the last minute. And he gives his confession. He takes Catholic mass. And he says, I've made a series of terrible mistakes.

The Protestantism was all a dreadful, dreadful error. Hurrah for the Pope. So he does this and is he doing that to try and keep his ensure that his family don't lose their right to inherit quite possibly yes so the historians aren't sure some people think he did it because he hoped for a pardon um hence the cancellation which is very unusual of the execution and they think then he was kind of double-crossed that the mary and the authorities didn't deliver on their end of the bargain. Some people think he did this, as you say, to protect his family

so that vengeance wouldn't go down the generations. As indeed it didn't, did it? No, it didn't exactly. So the Dudleys continue to be very powerful. But he is, yes, he is executed after all. It was in the next day. So in front of 10,000 people. Now, interestingly, so he has his head cut off.

Interestingly, Jane, who's in the tower, is absolutely outraged by his behavior in recanting. She can't get over it. And she actually spends, and this is going back to what we were talking about in the first episode about how is Jane really that clever? Is she very well read? Is she very serious she clearly takes this really seriously because she says how could he have taken the mass how could he have gone along with transubstantiation well she's absolutely a believer she spends most of her time in the town and talking about wafers and the body of blood of christ i mean this is this is like a real you know she if she were a teenager now

she'd be on tiktok talking about she really would yeah about the communion and about the details of of communion or something she takes it so seriously she'd be she'd be talking about white privilege i think she might yes that would be the new that's exactly what she would talk she's very very earnest isn't she um and actually this stage, things are going to be all right for her. Probably in the long run, she'd have been pardoned, I think. And I think Mary would have probably let her out eventually. But it's actually Mary that does for Jane in a sort of roundabout way because Mary decides to marry.

She's very keen on this marriage alliance with Philip of Spain, Charles V's son and everybody in england thinks this is an awful idea and hates philip of spain hates the idea of a spanish marriage and it's partly this marriage plan to philip that that provokes a rebellion against mary uh the beginning of the following year 1554 so late january is what's called by this point jane has actually been convicted and gilford have both been convicted haven't they they've been convicted that's true but they've been convicted with the expectation that they will be pardoned be commuted yeah so exactly commuted exactly so she was tried in november and she was given the death penalty

she showed no reaction but i think one reason she may have shown no reaction is that she may well have thought it probably won't happen. You know, she may have been told that it won't happen. She's a kind of model of Protestant sobriety and holiness in that, isn't she? She kind of wears black and reads the Psalms and all that kind of stuff. Cuts a very good dash she's she's a great poster girl for the protestant cause actually yeah you know she's she's perfect um and we'll perhaps come on later in the towards the end of this this bit of the episode um to

talk about why she wasn't a bigger you know why isn't she more well known um which is an interesting question but anyway so so she's got this kind of sentence hanging over her that's probably going to be suspended. And then there is a rebellion led by the son of a poet, isn't it? Yeah, Thomas Wyatt, the poet. So Thomas Wyatt Jr., I suppose he would be called now. Thomas Wyatt the Younger. He leads the rebellion.

Her father, I mean, disastrously and unbelievably foolishly, they all get involved. I mean, why would you do that? Well, they do that because they're true believers, I mean, disastrously and unbelievably foolishly, they all get involved. I mean, why would you do that? Well, they do that because they're true believers, I suppose. They're proper Protestants. They don't like Mary. They believe in it. And maybe they think they're going to – the rebellion is a shambles.

Mary's able to put it down. And at that point, Mary basically – Why does she get rid of Jane? Well, Dominic, before that uh so henry gray her father he has his head chopped off and you know that it was kind of preserved a bit like oliver cromwell's head no i did not i think it got fat it got found in a crypt when was it found i think in the 19th century and it got buried quite recently and where is it now some church in london oh so i just throw that

out as a kind of interesting tidbit we should go and visit it on one of your walks tom i might do that yes yeah yes to the head walk um so jane mary basically says she's got to go yeah exactly exactly what happens um so she and poor gilford i've got to go. So, Gilford has his head chopped off first, doesn't he? He does. So, this is when Jane says, my poor Gilford. Yes, exactly. She sees him walk out. Here's the chop.

And then sees his headless corpse being come back. She supposedly watches the whole thing. So, the audience is quite, the crowd is quite small. There's not a lot of people there, as there had been for some big sort of executions. So in Northumberland, there were 10,000 people that we don't know, but probably not that many people to watch Jane's. Guildford goes first. The ladies in waiting say to Jane, don't watch, don't look, for God's sake.

She watches the whole thing and says, oh, Guildford, Guildford, in that very moving way that I've just done. And then she goes down. she's all in black as you said she's got a prayer book she's very composed and she gives this very kind of you know the classic tudor execution speech but it's very i mean in the long run it's upsetting isn't it so she does give this speech and she's incredibly brave yeah um you know there's no hint of i mean i've just begun there's nothing none of that at all um and the executioner asks her forgiveness and she gives it and she says you know please make it swift and he says that he will um and then she gets blindfolded oh it's an awful

moment this isn't it and then she can't find? And then she can't find the block. Yeah. She can't find the block. But just, I mean... And she cries out, what shall I do? Where is it? And, you know, one of the guys has to kind of help her towards it. And then she lays her head on the block. I mean, I can't imagine how the unbelievable horror of having to compose yourself to have to give this speech.

I mean, the formula, there is a set formula which is that you confess your sins and you basically it's expected that you say even if you don't think you are guilty you say you're guilty as people always did um she gives the speech and actually there's a couple of things that would appeal to you tom because she's still doing theological um argument in her speech so she says uh I look to be saved by no other means but by the mercy of God and the merits of the blood of his son Jesus Christ, i.e. salvation by faith alone,

which is very Protestant. And then at the end she also says, good people, while I'm alive, I pray you to assist me with your prayers, i.e. don't bother praying for me after I'm dead. Not after I'm dead, yeah. Because that's a mad papist superstition. Papist tosh. So she's still going. Right at the end

she's still going and she's still got this composure but then as you say when I think the executioner blindfolds her I mean that must be, I mean being blindfolded is scary anyway and that must be the moment when the panic horror kind of you know really breaks in

somebody guides her to the block um and then she says lord in the hands i commend my spirit and then bang her head is cut off okay so dominic a question from archive of the past and it's the obvious question had she lived would she have been a good ruler impossible to know absolutely impossible to know but it's looking quite good i would say she's clever she's she's modest she's rude she understood you know not to give in to gilford for instance i mean that's quite but but tom the two female rulers that um england had in the 16th century mary and elizabeth were so seasoned by comparison with jane weren't they? I mean, Mary had suffered for almost 40 years and had so much time. Elizabeth had also sort of been through the ringer, had nearly been in fear of her life. Jane is so callow by comparison, no matter how clever she is.

And she's got the problem of the Northumberland family, the Dudley family. I mean, that would have been a massive issue, wouldn't it, you think in the long run so related to that question from Douglas Fife I'm really interested in whether there is an alternate timeline where she could have held on to the throne was there any way it could have happened or was Mary's succession always guaranteed I think it's definitely an alternative timeline and that timeline is one in which Northumberland seizes Mary first, probably Elizabeth as well. He's more ruthless. If they're seized and they're immediately thrown into the tower and then, you know, there's no uprising or something to free them,

then she's queen at the end of the year and then she's queen. Right, but she does have her head chopped off. And so earlier you posed the question of why is she not kind of celebrated more as a martyr? Well, I think it's because of Elizabeth. Because she messes with the Mary Elizabeth narrative, doesn't she? Because if Jane is the great martyr, then Elizabeth's not legitimate. And if Elizabeth is legitimate, then what's Jane even doing there?

And I think that's the issue. I think you can imagine a scenario in which Elizabeth had dropped dead or something, and Mary is succeeded by somebody else. And they then said, oh, poor old Jane. Oh, she really was a queen. This is one reason, I think, why she's not considered a queen. Because it's not in Elizabeth's interests at all to consider her a queen. So let's return to Sander Fearon's question, which we open with,

should Lady Jane Grey be considered a queen? Because she isn't, is she? She's not, you know, you have all those tea towels and rulers and things and mugs showing all the kings and queens of England. And maybe there's one or two in which Queen Jane pops up, but she's not generally counted. Do you think that's reasonable, fair? In a way, it doesn't. I knew we were going to discuss this and I was trying to figure out what

I thought. And in a way, it doesn't matter what we think. Because I mean, just as you said before, if nobody thinks you're a king, then you're not a king. So that would be my answer. The fact that she is not considered to be a queen proves she wasn't a queen. And the kind of, you know, the constitutional legalities of it are irrelevant. Because if you're not considered a queen, you're not a queen. In the same way that Matilda, you know, back in the 12th century, there was a legal case, you know, Henry I was her father. He wanted her to become queen.

She was constantly zipping this way and that, running around in her nightclothes, all that kind of stuff. But she's never considered to be a queen because, you know, she's not rated as a queen because people don't think she's a queen. She was constantly zipping this way and that, running around in her nightclothes, all that kind of stuff. Yeah. But she's never considered to be a queen because, you know, she's not rated as a queen because people don't think she's a queen. And same with Lady Jane, I think. If you don't have your own entry in the Lady Bird, Kings and Queens of England, then you're not. And I think the truth of the matter is, I mean, you all know this far better than me, but with Roman emperors, there were lots of pretenders and usurpers and things.

People called it a basiliscus or something in the Eastern Roman Empire. Are they all counted? I mean, sometimes they were emperor for, they ruled parts of the empire properly in a more meaningful way than Jane did. And they're still not really counted in the lists. I would say with this, she's Inverticom's queen for such a short period of time. She spends the whole of it pretty much cooped up in the Tower of would say with this she's in a vertical miss queen for such a short period of time she spends the whole of it pretty much cooped up in the tower london with poor gilford i mean i'm not going to count him as king that's for that's for sure we're certainly not i mean and

i think that um what you say about the way that both mary and elizabeth had an absolute interest in writing her out of the story i mean they, they couldn't completely, but the pathos and the drama and the nobility that she displays on the scaffold, I mean, it has it all. It's one of the great execution scenes. But if you had your top three Tudor executions in terms of their resonance with the public, I'd go for Anne Boleyn. Anne Boleyn's number one, surely. Thomas More. Yeah. I hadn't thought of Thomas More.

Probably Mary Queen of Scots. I mean, they're all, they're kind of the brand leaders. And Jane's execution is, she's not podiuming. Even Thomas Cromwell, Tom. Or what about Cranmer with his hand in the fire? Yeah. Yeah. And I think Jane suffers suffers doesn't she because the

tudors have a surfeit of heroines so um people choose their favorite wife of him with the eight yeah well we're going back to the way in which everyone everyone's female yeah so um and she's eclipsed ultimately by elizabeth i suppose there's a prostitue and heroin i mean there was a brilliant painting i mean i expect both of, by the time this goes out, both of us will probably have used this painting to publicise the episode on social media by a French painter called Paul de la Roche. It's the most famous single image of Lady Jane Greene.

It was done in 1834. That's the one where she's groping after the block, isn't it? Yeah, and she's terrified and she's surrounded by men in black. There's this scene of this sort of saintly figure. She's wearing white, which is completely wrong. And she's terrified and she's surrounded by men in black. There's this scene of this sort of saintly figure. She's wearing white, which is completely wrong. So it's this sort of this maiden almost suffering the kind of violation of the violence of the men. But it is the most upsetting moment, isn't it, in the story? Yeah, it is.

It is the single most upsetting moment in the story. And that painting was clearly influenced by the execution of Marie Antoinette. So it's kind of merging the two. But it does. I think there's something about Jane's story, which is different from a lot of these. So Amber Lynn had, you know, she conspired effectively to get herself to the top. You know, Cromwell more. They were men of politics.

They knew the rules of the game. Jane was forced into a game completely against her will, really. Her tears were more than justified. Absolutely they were. I know, Tom, are you feeling moved at the end of this doubleheader? Yeah, I am. Oddly, it's the detail that she had freckles. I think what a lot of people take from this, Tom,

is that thing at the very beginning of the first episode where we agreed that if we were catapulted back into Tudor England I would be chosen as king but I don't think it's just because of the sun I think it's also because of my immense martial qualities I see myself as kind of Henry the 7th figure do you? devious, cold, chill

calculating what am I? Henry the 8th yeah you just charge over a cliff that would be my expectation well probably unfair very i suspect both of us would end up on the block to be honest i think we would i think if i was anybody i think and i know this is a terrible cliche and i apologize to everybody but i think i probably would be thomas cromwell in your dreams in your dreams you are so thomas moore you can't deny that on that ludicrous i mean he's wearing a hair shirt as we speak the patron saint of politicians dominic the patron saint of politicians yeah that does not on that

on that note of ludicrous self-promotional fantasy from dominic sandbrook we will say we'll bid you farewell, and we will be back soon. Thanks very much for listening. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip, and on our Q&A we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets,

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