Pod Insights Stuff You Missed in History Class SYMHC Classics: Lady Jane Grey About this episode This 2017 episode covers a very short time between Edward VI and Mary I when Lady Jane was, at least nominally, Queen of England and Ireland. Whether she had any right to the title is still the subject of dispute.
See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Holly Frey? This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argentix. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
0:35 Tracy V. Wilson? You ever show up late to the game and your friends already saved your seat, your drink, even a plate? That's looking out. That's having your back. And that's exactly what AT&T does with the AT&T Guarantee. They know staying connected matters, so they actually guarantee a network that comes through when it counts. AT&T has connectivity you can depend on, or they'll proactively make it right, just like that friend who takes care of things before you even ask. AT&T: Connecting changes everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com/guarantee for details. Workplace chaos. We've all been there. Deadlines are slipping, projects are piling up, and suddenly you realize the missing piece is the right person. That's when you say, this is a job for sponsored jobs.
1:19 Tracy V. Wilson? With Indeed Sponsored Jobs, your job post gets a boost so you can connect with quality candidates faster. In fact, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed are 95% more likely to report a hire than non-sponsored jobs. Spend less time searching and more time interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.
1:46 Speaker 02 Attention Chicken Nugget fans. Burger King heard that a lot of you didn't like the old Chicken Nuggets, so they got to work and reinvented them. These new Chicken Nuggets are their tastiest, crispiest, juiciest nuggets ever. And because better Chicken Nuggets deserve better sauces, they've reinvented several of their sauces, and they created a brand new one. The new special savory sauce, which is only available for a limited time at participating US restaurants, don't wait around. You gotta try the new Burger King Chicken Nuggets today.
2:17 Tracy V. Wilson? Happy Saturday. The nine-day reign of Lady Jane Grey ended on July 19th, 1553, or 472 years ago today, on the day this episode is coming out.
2:30 Holly Frey? Our extremely frequently requested episode on Lady Jane Grey originally came out on March 6th of 2017. Enjoy.
2:41 Holly Frey? Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.
2:52 Tracy V. Wilson? Today's topic is a very, very frequent listener request.
2:56 Holly Frey? That's like, an understatement.
2:58 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
2:58 Holly Frey? You could say very about 12 to 14 more times and it would still be maybe underselling how much we get this request.
3:07 Tracy V. Wilson? A lot, a lot. And this is Lady Jane Grey, also known as the Nine-Day Queen. She came up very briefly in a past episode by Katie and Sarah in their episode Elizabeth I, Before She Was Queen. Basically, for an incredibly short time between Edward VI and Mary I, Lady Jane was at least nominally the Queen of England and Ireland. But whether she had any right at all to that title is still the subject of dispute. Even today, I found scholars with polar opposite opinions on that. And really, a lot of what goes into this story went on behind closed doors and off the record. So different accounts of
3:50 Tracy V. Wilson? it today present incredibly different interpretations of what happened.
3:55 Holly Frey? What we do know is that Lady Jane Grey was born in 1537, but her exact date of birth is unclear. Her birthday is traditionally noted as having taken place in October, the same month as King Edward VI. Her parents were Henry Gray and Lady Frances Brandon. And when Jane was born, Henry Gray was Marcus of Dorset, and he would later become the Duke of Suffolk. And her parents were still pretty young when they had Jane. They had married at the ages of just 15 and 16, and they were only 20 and 21 when she was born.
4:25 Tracy V. Wilson? Jane and her sisters were Henry VII's great-granddaughters through their mother, Frances, whose mother was Mary Tudor. Mary Tudor was Henry VIII's sister, so this made them Henry VIII's great nieces. Mary's husband had also been one of Henry VIII's close friends. So on Jane's mother's side, the family was very closely connected to the throne. And the only reason that Frances had not married someone higher up in the nobility was that her father had been married before, so she had a lot of older half-siblings to marry off before they got to her. And just, uh, two different biographies that I consulted for this, both started with multiple
5:08 Tracy V. Wilson? pages of family trees outlining these relationships. So if it was a little confusing, welcome to the club.
5:16 Holly Frey? It is a little confusing. Frances and her daughters were, at various points, very high up in the line of succession. Henry VIII famously had his series of ill-fedded wives and offspring. And in 1536, two of those offspring, Mary and Elizabeth, were declared illegitimate with no claim to the throne because Henry had divorced Mary's mother and beheaded Elizabeth's.
5:41 Tracy V. Wilson? Consequently, for about a year before Jane's birth, her mother Frances was basically next in line. Henry VIII, at that point, had no sons, his daughters had been declared illegitimate, and he had no other surviving siblings. So his niece Frances, while not his child, was at least a lawfully begotten child and an actual relative.
6:02 Holly Frey? When Edward was born on October 12th of 1537, as his father's legitimate son, he became next in line to the throne, making Frances second, since Mary and Elizabeth were still viewed as ineligible to rule. However, in 1543, Parliament passed an Act of Succession, which received royal assent the following year. And this legislation made no mention of Frances or her family, but it restored Mary and Elizabeth back to the line of succession, regardless of their legitimacy, should their brother die without an heir.
6:37 Tracy V. Wilson? This act of succession also gave Henry the right to name a successor by testament, or in his will, which he did. Henry VIII's will specified that if his children had no male heir, the next in line after Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth would be Francis's children, since Francis was his legitimate niece. The fact that Francis herself was not named in the will as being in the line of succession apparently annoyed her very greatly. And this is one of the reasons why, in some versions of this story, she's the one described as being the mastermind scheming behind the scenes to put her daughter on the throne.
7:14 Holly Frey? So from the time she was born, Jane didn't have that many steps between herself and the throne. And apart from her place in the line of succession, her parents and many other people in her life hoped she would marry someone quite powerful, perhaps even then Prince Edward himself. So they groomed her to that purpose, paying special attention to her education.
7:36 Tracy V. Wilson? She was quite bookish and very precocious, and she developed a widespread reputation as a scholar. She learned to speak and write both Latin and Greek, and she also spoke French, Hebrew, and Italian. She was also deeply religious, and specifically deeply Protestant.
7:55 Holly Frey? In 1547, her parents also placed Jane as a ward in a very prominent family, that of Lady Catherine Parr, last wife of Henry VIII and very recently his widow, after she remarried Thomas Seymour, Baron of Sudley. Sending a child to live with a high-placed family was a pretty typical practice among the nobility, although at age 10, Jane was a little younger than usual for this.
8:19 Tracy V. Wilson? Lady Catherine was also Princess Elizabeth's guardian, so for a time, both Jane and Elizabeth were raised in the same household. Although they did get to know each other, because of the difference in their ages, they weren't particularly close. And Elizabeth was also completely aware of the fact that Jane was a potential threat to her own place in the line of succession, since there were no questions of Jane's legitimacy or her parentage to get in the way of her approval as a potential monarch.
8:52 Holly Frey? For about a year, Jane had access to the same tutors and social interactions as Elizabeth did. And it may have been during this time that Jane's father and her guardian began planning for a potential marriage to Edward, who had become king after Henry VIII's death on January 28th of 1547.
9:09 Tracy V. Wilson? But Jane's time in this household didn't last very long. Catherine Parr died due to complications from childbirth in 1548, and Jane stood in the role of her chief mourner during the funeral ceremonies. Afterward, Jane went home for a while, but after some back and forth between her father and Thomas Seymour, she returned. With Catherine's death, her royal wealth had reverted back to the crown. So Thomas basically wanted to keep Jane as a ward as a mark of his continued status. So it wasn't like he lost in one fell swoop, all of his marks of social well-off-ness.
9:49 Holly Frey? [laughing] Finally, Jane's father agreed to send her back to Thomas Seymour, but that did not last long either. In 1549, Thomas Seymour was arrested and charged with treason in an alleged plot to kidnap the king and marry Elizabeth himself. He had also, at one point the year before, been found embracing her to much scandal. He was executed on March 20th, and Jane once again went home.
10:16 Tracy V. Wilson? In October of 1551, so a couple of years later, Jane's father became the Duke of Suffolk, and this gave Jane a lot more access to the highest echelons of the nobility without needing to be someone else's ward to get there. And from that point, she was often at court, still with a lot of the people around her angling for her to marry the king eventually. At this point, they were both only 14 years old, and while it wasn't unheard of for people to get married that young, especially among the nobility and the monarchy, all the various approvals that would be required for a royal marriage to take place stood in the way, along with there being lots of other potential candidates for Edward's wife, all of whom
11:01 Tracy V. Wilson? would in one way or another suit some kind of political end. So in addition to obstacles, there was competition. However, wiping all of this off the slate is the fact that Edward's health started to fail. And so the idea of him marrying Jane completely fell apart. And we're going to talk about that after we first pause for a little sponsor break.
11:25 Speaker 03 First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?
11:27 Tracy V. Wilson? Hey, everybody. It's Tracy from Stuff You Missed in History Class. That's Alan Goya, a planning engineer at AT&T. He's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, defining the fan's experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.
11:48 Speaker 03 It was going to rival anything that was already built. And that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.
11:56 Tracy V. Wilson? That includes field services manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.
12:02 Speaker 04 Through what Alan's whole crew designed, we connected the event visitors to the world.
12:08 Tracy V. Wilson? And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night.
12:12 Speaker 04 To actually see the whole stadium light up and data is flowing is a beautiful thing.
12:16 Speaker 03 With the fans' experience, it's incredible. It gave me a lot of pride.
12:19 Tracy V. Wilson? AT&T, connecting fans to what they love. Connecting changes everything. AT&T.
12:26 Tracy V. Wilson? So you're considering getting a home security system, but you want something that fits your space. Well, with ADT Blue, it's easy to customize a system that's right for you and set it up yourself. Just pick the kit and monitoring plan that makes sense for your home. Let's say you're worried about package theft. The ADT Plus app can walk you through setting up a new doorbell camera kit. Once it's installed, ADT Pros can help you keep tabs on it 24/7, or you can manage it yourself from the ADT Plus app. There are no long-term contracts, so you can change your monitoring plan whenever you want. The flexibility doesn't end there. You can add to your system as you need to with things like extra cameras or motion sensors. Some life decisions are hard, but thanks to ADT
13:08 Tracy V. Wilson? Blue, you can DIY trusted ADT home security in a snap. Head to ADT.com/BLU to build your system today. And to hear more about home protection and other grown-up topics, check out new episodes of Grown Up Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
13:32 Holly Frey? We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health Versus Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeart Media's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.
14:14 Holly Frey? Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health Versus Hype on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
14:35 Tracy V. Wilson? Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jess A. have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy
15:20 Tracy V. Wilson? only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
15:38 Tracy V. Wilson? Edward VI had only been nine years old when his father, Henry VIII, died. And at first, Edward Seymour, the Duke of Somerset, had been Edward's regent. However, if that last name Seymour sounded familiar, Edward Seymour's youngest brother was Thomas Seymour, the same one we talked about before the break, who was executed for treason after an alleged plot to kidnap the king. His brother's regency did not last long after that. The Duke of Somerset's replacement as regent was John Dudley. John Dudley was the Duke of Northumberland, who had a lot of influence over the young king, understandably, because he was still at that point a child. In some accounts,
16:19 Tracy V. Wilson? literally everything that happened with Jane after this point was a result of North umberland's nefarious scheming and his undue influence over the king. But in other accounts, as Edward gained in some experience and some maturity, he was taking the initiative for at least some of it on his own.
16:40 Holly Frey? In November of 1552, King Edward VI got sick. And by the following February, people were becoming seriously concerned about how long he was going to live. In the opinion of his doctors, he had tuberculosis. And although he did recover somewhat, it was clear that he was still very ill.
16:59 Tracy V. Wilson? As the king's health declined, Northumberland started trying to figure out how to secure his own claim to power, since it was not likely he would have nearly such an advantageous place if Mary or Elizabeth became queen. And this was especially true, since if the line of succession proceeded as planned to marry, he would be basically out because he was a Protestant and she was Catholic.
17:24 Holly Frey? At the same time, Jane, her parents, and the many other interested parties around her abandoned the idea of her marrying this ailing king. Their marrying and his dying soon after, having not produced an heir with Jane, wasn't a risk that any of them were willing to take.
17:41 Tracy V. Wilson? It's not entirely clear who first proposed the idea that Jane should marry Lord Guilford Dudley. He was the fourth and only unmarried son of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. It may have been Northumberland's scheme to connect the family to somebody who was in the line of succession, albeit not at the top of the list, but there's a whole other school of thought on this, that it was really William Parr, Marquess of Northampton, who initially had this plan. William Parr had wealth and property that were at stake, which he would lose if Mary followed Edward on the throne. So according to this theory, Northampton thought that if Jane Grey married Northumberland's son, Northumberland would
18:25 Tracy V. Wilson? be more likely to back her own claim to the throne, and that would help Northampton protect his own financial interests.
18:34 Holly Frey? Regardless of whose idea it was, the betrothal of Jane and Guilford was announced on April 28, 1553. On May 25, at the age of 15, Jane Grey married Lord Guilford Dudley in a triple wedding that made multiple connections among the Dudleys and other families. Guilford Dudley's sister Catherine married Henry Hastings, who was an heir to an Earl, and Jane's sister, also named Catherine, married the heir to another Earl. Although the king himself was too ill to attend these proceedings, the triple wedding was hugely attended by the English nobility.
19:10 Tracy V. Wilson? Meanwhile, as his father had done before him, Edward VI was writing a will to specify who should follow him on the throne, and there's a lot of speculation into how much input he had into this will. As we said before, it's often retold that this was almost entirely Northumberland's influence. But Edward was also raised as a Protestant, and he knew that if his half-sister Mary followed him on the throne, she would roll back what he saw as the progress of Protestantism in England and would oversee the return of Catholicism. So while it's incredibly likely that Northumberland had at least some influence over the young monarch, who was both ill and, as we've noted, not particularly old at this
19:55 Tracy V. Wilson? point, he almost certainly had a real interest in the outcome.
20:01 Holly Frey? On June 12th, Edward met with lawyers and judges and instructed them to take legal steps to make Jane his heir, skipping over his half-sisters, Mary and Elizabeth. He struck through a previous provision in which Francis, Jane's mother, would rule as governor in the absence of male heirs. A patent outlining this new line of succession was signed on June 21st, making it official, at least on paper, that if Edward didn't survive, Jane would be queen.
20:29 Tracy V. Wilson? As we mentioned at the top of the show, different accounts take completely different tacks on whether he had any right to do this. Some of them cite the precedent of Henry VIII's own will, which did specify who should follow him on the throne. But that Act of Succession that had come out in 1543 and 1544 clearly specified that Mary followed Edward in the line of succession. There was also a 1547 Treasuries Act that specified that changing the line of succession as it was outlined in the previous Act of Succession was high treason. So even at the time, in the opinions of some of the judges who were involved in this, the
21:11 Tracy V. Wilson? only way that Edward would have the actual authority to name Jane as his successor would be for Parliament to repeal the Act of Succession. He was king, but that did not mean that he was above the law. Edward did, in fact, issue writs to summon Parliament in September of that year, most likely to do that very thing, get rid of the Act of Succession, so he would have the legal leeway to name Jane his heir.
21:37 Holly Frey? However, in spite of doctors and healers being called in to try to keep him alive until the Parliament convened, or perhaps because of it, given how many medical treatments of the day were actually quite harmful, Edward died on July 6th, 1553. And in spite of the questionable legality of it all, Jane was named queen. On July 7th, the mayor of London, the city magistrates, and the guard all swore oaths of allegiance to her.
22:08 Tracy V. Wilson? Edward's half-sister Mary, however, did not. Even though attempts were made to keep Edward's death a secret until Jane's succession was secure, those attempts were not very successful and Mary heard about it. Elizabeth presumably did as well, but she stayed out of this whole thing. Mary mustered a force to march to London to try to assert her own claim to the throne. And on July 8th, she proclaimed herself queen from her estates in East Anglia. She wrote to the council to instruct them to do the same, and her letter to them arrived two days later.
22:42 Holly Frey? Jane learned that she was queen at Northumberland's estate outside London on the 9th. Her husband was there, along with her parents and some of the royal council. Reportedly, her response was that she accepted the crown, quote, "if what has been given to me is lawfully mine." In some accounts, she then fainted, and in others, she just fell to the ground and wept.
23:04 Tracy V. Wilson? This fainting and/or crying came to be used as evidence that Jane was very young, wholly innocent, completely overwhelmed by circumstance, and was basically a totally helpless pawn of her parents and Northumberland. But modern scholars have taken a different interpretation, that it was a very visible and intentional demonstration of her claim that she had not been seeking this throne herself. It had been bestowed upon her unsought. She didn't really have the means to, like, have a press conference to issue that statement, so instead she fell to the ground and cried so it would be obvious to everyone.
23:42 Holly Frey? From Northumberland's estate, Jane went to the White Tower of London to formally take possession of it as monarch. Almost immediately, though, things started to fall apart as Mary made her own move for the throne. And possibly because Northumberland was hugely out of favor with the general public, Mary was finding huge support. The size of her force grew quickly, including through five royal ships that mutinied with their men forcing their officers to go over to Mary's side.
24:11 Tracy V. Wilson? Northumberland started to rally a force to head Mary off on her way to London, and Jane's father was initially supposed to lead it, but he was becoming increasingly ill, so Northumberland took charge of it himself. But he was so out of favor, and this whole plot was becoming so increasingly a point of contention that his men continually deserted him. And the idea that he would steadfastly support Jane if she was married to his son did not wind up holding up. By July 18th, he only had three men left, and one of them was Jane's ailing father. He abandoned his efforts to protect Jane's claim to the throne on the 19th of July, at which point she was removed.
24:54 Tracy V. Wilson? He formally proclaimed Mary Queen on the 20th.
24:58 Holly Frey? Jane stayed in the Tower of London, though now, instead of being the monarch, she was a prisoner. And we're going to talk about the aftermath and how Jane came to become a cultural figure after we first take a little break, first sponsor break.
25:16 Holly Frey? We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.
25:58 Holly Frey? Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
26:19 Tracy V. Wilson? Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with Vive Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jesay have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy
27:04 Tracy V. Wilson? only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
27:18 Speaker 05 Okay, chicken nugget fans, I've got huge news. The new Burger King Chicken Nuggets just dropped, and they are the crispiest, the juiciest, and the tastiest chicken nuggets ever at Burger King. Burger King heard that a lot of you didn't like the old chicken nuggets, so they got to work and reinvented them. To go along with the new chicken nuggets, a lot of the sauces were reinvented too, because better chicken nuggets deserve better sauces. We're talking new buffalo sauce, honey mustard, sweet and sour, and even a whole new option too, the new special savory sauce, which is only available for a limited time at participating US restaurants. I mean, you need to taste it all for yourself.
28:00 Speaker 05 This new chicken nugget, reinvented based on real feedback, is made with 100% white meat chicken and is now better than ever. You gotta try the new Burger King Chicken Nuggets and sauces today.
28:14 Tracy V. Wilson? For any small business owner, there's a moment when you realize the next hire could be the difference between staying busy and actually growing. The challenge is finding the right person without wasting time sorting through candidates who aren't the right fit. That's where Indeed Sponsored Jobs comes in. When workplace chaos hits and you need someone who can step in and make a difference, this is a job for Sponsored Jobs. It helps put your job in front of candidates who match the criteria that matter most to you, whether that's skills, experience, certifications, or location. And you're certainly not alone in using Indeed. Join the 3.3 million employers worldwide that use Indeed to connect with quality talent that fits their needs. That's millions of businesses turning to Indeed
28:56 Tracy V. Wilson? to help solve hiring challenges and find people who can help drive results. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. Get your $75 sponsored job credit today at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now, then this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.
29:29 Tracy V. Wilson? Mary I, who would go on to be known as Bloody Mary, formally entered London on August 3rd, 1553. And as the Protestants in this story had feared, she did return Catholicism to the monarchy, and to the country, really. She would later refer to 1553 as her miracle year.
29:49 Holly Frey? Trials for the accused who were charged with treason for their role in trying to make Jane Queen started on August 18th. By that point, the Duke of Northumberland and many of his sons and supporters had been imprisoned in the Tower since July 25th. All of the accused were convicted in Northumberland, and two of his men were sentenced to death. Those executions were carried out on August 22nd.
30:14 Tracy V. Wilson? Mary, however, didn't really want Jane to be executed, even though they were on totally opposite sides in terms of religion and in terms of who should be on the throne. And in some accounts, Jane had actually been rude to Mary over her Catholic faith. Mary mostly saw Jane as a pawn and not really that much of a threat. So Jane eventually was allowed some freedom in the tower, including being allowed to walk in the queen's gardens, starting the December after she was imprisoned. However, that changed the following February in 1554. Jane's father joined what came to be known as Thomas Wyatt's Rebellion against Mary. And even though they had nothing to do with this rebellion, the fact that it happened and involved Jane's father
30:58 Tracy V. Wilson? meant that Jane and her husband were no longer viewed as harmless innocents. They were both beheaded on February 12th of 1554. She was just 16 at the time. Jane's father was beheaded for his role on February 23rd. There are a lot of people who get beheaded in this story. That's why the whole Bloody Mary thing happened. Yep. The beheadings continue long after this story is over. Because of the role of religion in this whole saga and Jane's own steadfast devotion, she wound up being regarded as a Protestant martyr. While she was imprisoned in the tower, she wrote letters to her family in her New Testament and in her prayer book. She wrote to her sister in one of these books, quote,
31:43 Tracy V. Wilson? "I have here sent you, good sister Catherine, a book, which although it be not outwardly trimmed with gold, yet inwardly it is more worth than precious stones. It is the book, dear sister, of the law of the Lord. It is his testament and last will, which he bequeathed unto us wretches, which shall lead you to the path of eternal joy. And if you with a good mind read it and with an earnest mind do purpose to follow it, it shall bring you to an immortal and everlasting life. It shall teach you to live and learn you to die." Before her death, she sent this New Testament to her sister.
32:18 Holly Frey? And while awaiting her execution, Jane claimed that she had simply accepted the throne that was offered to her. She had not sought it herself, which she did to try to decouple this concept of treasonous from Protestant. Protestant propaganda after her death reiterated the idea that she was wholly innocent and a religious martyr. Once Elizabeth I, a Protestant, became queen, the idea that Jane herself was treacherous mostly faded.
32:47 Tracy V. Wilson? Lady Jane Grey became a highly, highly romanticized figure after her death. Overall, we don't have a lot of her letters or her personal papers, and it's unclear whether any of the paintings and engravings that were made of her during her lifetime or shortly after it are really of her. A lot of them are just labeled Jane with no other identifying information, so we know it's a Jane who lived around that time, but not whether it was this Jane. Apparently, there was a painting that was very clearly labeled that it was Jane the Queen, but that painting has been lost. The only eyewitness account of her appearance in writing that contains any detail at all
33:28 Tracy V. Wilson? was probably a forgery made for an early 20th century biography. So for a lot of people, their mental image of Lady Jane Grey comes from Paul Delarosa's portrait, "The Execution of Lady Jane Grey," which dates back to 1833, so centuries after all of this happened. So it was really easy, given all of this lack of concrete information, for her to become kind of a blank slate for the heroine in tragic stories and poems.
34:03 Holly Frey? This was especially true around 1714 and 1715, around the time of the first Jacobite uprising, which, to recap, was a challenge by the House of Stuart against the reigning House of Hanover. Because Jane's story was all about the line of succession and religious divisions between Protestants and Catholics, it mirrored the political situation at the time, and it became incredibly popular. Edward Young's poem "The Force of Religion or Vanquished Love" was first published in 1714. Three editions of that poem came out in under two years. The tragedy of Lady Jane Grey was first staged in 1715 by playwright Nicholas Rowe, which was his last play and the most successful play of the season.
34:46 Tracy V. Wilson? As we said at the top of the show, there's a lot of detail we just don't have about Lady Jane Grey. And a lot of people imagine her and have depicted her as this sort of completely lacking agency teenage waif who was pushed from place to place by parents and guardians and Northumberland and everyone else. But given her intelligence and her education and the fact that she had been immersed in a very cutthroat nobility since her birth, it's unlikely that she was the totally unresisting pawn that she's often depicted as. A lot of more contemporary scholars have have compared her behavior to other people
35:29 Tracy V. Wilson? who were within the nobility and the monarchy and the ways that they displayed their own sort of cunning efforts to define themselves and are like, yeah, she, yeah, she, there were a lot of things she didn't have control over. But, you know, her continual assertion of her religious faith and the fact that she deliberately did things to try to distance her religion from treason against the monarchy. Like, these were all proactive steps she took for herself that were quite smart to try to keep, keep the Protestant faith from being tarnished by her role in all of this.
36:12 Holly Frey? Yeah, that, that whole cutthroat angle of the monarchy and the, the royal
36:18 Holly Frey? uh, whole morass is why I think, I, I always have a disconnect where I kind of don't get it. Because I feel like, and granted, I'm looking at this from a very modern perspective, but I feel like if I were involved in all of that, I'd be like, that's cool, I don't need to rain, that's, I'm just gonna go over here and have like maybe a little shop and be alive, that sounds fine.
36:41 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
36:42 Holly Frey? But I guess if you are raised to believe that it is your birthright and that that's the most important thing on earth.
36:49 Holly Frey? You would be more invested in it unless like a hippie like me that's like, "That's cool. Let's just leave this alone."
36:54 Tracy V. Wilson? Don't need to have any of that. Uh, yeah, like that's, it kind of gets on, a couple of things get on my nerves. One is that a lot of the very basic summaries of this whole thing leave out that she was actually a relative. They make it sound almost like she was a hapless teenager plucked out of nowhere and stuck into the line of succession, which that is not really the case. Um, and the other is how many just seem to portray her as a, a blank slate of parental ambition.
37:29 Holly Frey? Yeah.
37:30 Tracy V. Wilson? Who had no say in it. When really, we know that she was quite, quite intelligent and that she corresponded with scholars, uh, in, in Britain and on the continent. Like she had, she had a lot more going on than just, um, a, a, a political pawn for other people to stick somewhere.
37:55 Tracy V. Wilson? Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive, if you heard an email address or a Facebook URL or something similar over the course of the show, that could be obsolete now. Our current email address is [email protected] . You can find us all over social media at MissedInHistory. And you can subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.
38:26 Tracy V. Wilson? Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
38:41 Holly Frey? A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
39:12 Tracy V. Wilson? You ever show up late to the game and your friends already saved your seat, your drink, even a plate? That's looking out. That's having your back. And that's exactly what AT&T does with the AT&T Guarantee. They know staying connected matters, so they actually guarantee a network that comes through when it counts. AT&T has connectivity you can depend on, or they'll proactively make it right, just like that friend who takes care of things before you even ask. AT&T: Connecting changes everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com/guarantee for details.
39:47 Speaker 06 Livrite, publishers of John U. Bacon's New York Times bestseller, The Gales of November: A Chronicle of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald's 1975 Shipwreck. "Never has it been told better than by Mr. Bacon in this colorful book," writes John J. Miller of The Wall Street Journal, while author Hampton Sides proclaims that it's destined to be a classic. The Gales of November, now in paperback.
40:15 Speaker 07 Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.
40:45 Tracy V. Wilson? This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
Previous Behind the Scenes Minis: Sewing Basket Next Unearthed! in July 2025, Part 1 Page updated November 1, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated