Lady Jane Grey: Queen of England?

Podcast Transcript

Most likely essentially the most consequential monarch in British historical past was Henry VIII. He upended a lot of English society by altering the faith within the nation from the highest down.

He additionally left in his wake a century of controversy and turmoil in regards to the succession of the monarchy. In all of that controversy, one determine wound up being an asterisk within the checklist of British Monarchs.

Somebody who solely dominated for 9 days, if it may be mentioned they dominated in any respect.

Study extra about Girl Jane Gray, the shortest-serving English monarch….possibly, on this episode of Every thing In all places Every day.

It’s exhausting to state simply how tousled the political scenario was in Sixteenth-century England.

I’ve touched on it in a number of earlier episodes, however all the things began as a result of Henry VIII didn’t have a son and inheritor to the throne of England.

It precipitated him to divorce his spouse, Catherine of Aragon, after which undergo 5 extra wives. His divorce precipitated him to not solely resign the Catholic Church but in addition to arrange a brand new church with himself as the pinnacle and to destroy a lot of the establishments that the Catholic Church managed within the nation.

Henry did ultimately get his want. His third spouse, Jane Seymore, gave delivery to a son, Edward.

Nonetheless, because the saying goes, it’s a must to watch out what you would like for.

Edward was raised as a protestant, the primary English monarch to take action. Nonetheless, Henry died in 1547 when Edward was solely 9 years previous, and that is the place this story begins.

The ascension of a kid to a royal crown will not be an unusual prevalence in historical past.

Whereas somebody that younger is probably not able to rule personally, it does a minimum of clear up the issue of who was going to be the king. When a toddler ascends to the throne, there’s normally a regent who governs the realm on their behalf till they’re of age.

Within the case of Edward, now King Edward VI, he had two regents. The primary was his maternal grandfather, Edward Seymour, the Duke of Somerset, who served as regent from 1547 to 1549.

The second regent was John Dudley, the first Earl of Warwick and later the Duke of Northumberland, who served as regent from 1550 to 1553.

In January 1553, Edward fell unwell, creating a fever and a extreme cough. Over the following a number of months, his situation worsened, and the courtroom medical doctors realized that his sickness was terminal.

The dearth of an inheritor, which Henry VIII feared, had simply been handed down one technology. The younger Edward VI had no kids, which meant that the following in line to the throne can be his eldest sister Mary, who was the daughter of Catherine of Aragon and was a Catholic.

Edward, a protestant, didn’t need his Catholic sister to ascend to the throne, so in June, when it was clear he would quickly die, he issued what turned often called the “Devise for the Succession.”

On this edict, he ignored his half-sisters Mary and Elizabeth and declared that the crown would cross to his first cousin, as soon as eliminated, Girl Jane Gray.

The argument for skipping over Mary and Elizabeth was that they had been declared bastards by his father and thus ineligible for the throne.

Girl Jane Gray was the great-granddaughter of Edward’s grandfather, Henry VII. She additionally occurred to be about the identical age as Edward, about 15 years previous.

Most significantly, she, like Edward, was raised a protestant.

By all accounts, Jane was well-educated and really clever. Nonetheless, she wasn’t actually a participant in all the energy video games which had been occurring in England. She simply occurred to have the suitable lineage.

There was one different factor.

Girl Jane Gray was married simply six weeks earlier than the dying of Edward to 1 Lord Guildford Dudley, the son of none apart from Edward’s regent, John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland.

If Girl Jane Gray, now Girl Jane Dudley, had been to ascend to the throne, then she would nonetheless want a regent, and that may enable John Dudley to proceed to rule the nation.

There was an issue with Edward’s “Devise for the Succession.”

Henry VIII had handed a regulation, accepted by parliament, often called the Succession to the Crown Act of 1543. In it, Edward was listed as Henry’s inheritor, however Henry’s daughters Mary and Elizabeth had been additionally explicitly listed as being in line for the throne, though he declared them to be bastards.

The Succession to the Crown Act of 1543 was the third and final such act handed through the reign of Henry. The 2 earlier acts explicitly eliminated Mary and Elizabeth from the road of succession, however the third and ultimate act put them again in.

Furthermore, the Succession to the Crown Act allowed Henry to vary the succession in his will if he noticed match, and he explicitly didn’t try this. Actually, his will bolstered his daughters being within the line of succession, and provided that they need to not have male heirs would the crown then cross to the descendent of his sister Mary, which might then embrace Jane Gray.

This left all the things in a little bit of a authorized quandary. May a king, who nonetheless had a regent and wasn’t ruling in his personal identify, unilaterally change the road of succession which had been beforehand accepted by a king and accepted by parliament?

That problem got here to a head on July 6, 1553, when Edward VI handed away. Given the controversy surrounding the succession, phrase of Edward’s dying wasn’t made public till July 9, when Girl Jane Dudley was notified that she was now the Queen Monarch of England.

She accepted the place reluctantly and, on July 10, was proclaimed the Queen of England, France, and Eire. She took up residence within the Tower of London to await her coronation, which was the custom for earlier monarchs.

Behind the scenes, rather a lot was occurring.

For starters, Girl Jane has little or no public help. Nobody actually knew who she was. Mary, alternatively, was the daughter of Henry, and everybody knew who she was.

Mary might need been Catholic, however Protestantism had been dropped at England prime down, not backside up like in different elements of Europe. Commonest folks had no drawback with Mary being Catholic.

All the Catholic the Aristocracy supported Mary, whereas the Protestant the Aristocracy had fractured help for Jane, who had a really questionable and tenuous declare to the throne.

When Mary bought the information of Edward’s dying, she didn’t go to London. As an alternative, she headed to East Anglia, the place she had in depth land holdings and the place the Duke of Northumberland, the father-in-law of Girl Jane, was extraordinarily unpopular for having just lately put down a riot there.

Furthermore, there was an enormous distinction between the 2 girls. Jane was 15 or 16 when she was thrust into the highlight and had just a few weeks to organize.

Mary was 37 and had spent her total life embroiled within the politics of courtroom, creating alliances, and in any other case, on the brink of turn out to be queen in the future.

A results of that is that Mary had the help of a lot of the army, together with a lot of the high-ranking generals and officers.

On July 14, Northumberland left London with troopers to try to observe down and seize Mary, which was now could be solely reasonable approach to retain energy, however there was no method that was going to occur with Mary in East Anglia.

On July 19, whereas Northumberland was away, the Privy Council, the group consisting of the senior members of the Home of Lords and the Home of Commons, switched their allegiance and declared Mary to be the Queen of England.

The choice of the Privy Council to shift their allegiance was largely the results of Henry FitzAlan, the Earl of Arundel, who Northumberland had beforehand arrested twice, and in the direction of whom he held a really massive grudge.

With the help of the Privy Council gone, that was it for Girl Jane and, most significantly, for her father-in-law.

On July 19, the day the Privy Council declared Mary Queen, the Tower of London went from being a fortress for Jane to being her jail.

Jane is usually known as the nine-day queen, utilizing the date of July 10, her receiving the information of Edward’s dying, to her removing on July 19. Nonetheless, if you happen to mark it from the precise dying of Edward, she can be the thirteen-day queen.

That’s, if you happen to contemplate her really to have been queen in any respect.

One one who definitely didn’t contemplate her a queen was the now Queen Mary.

There may be an historic saying attributed to Queen Cersei Lannister, which says, “if you happen to play the sport of thrones, you both win, otherwise you die.”

The Duke of Northumberland discovered that out actually fast.

He was captured, and on August 18 he was tried for treason. Lots of those that sat in judgment had been as soon as his colleagues. He denounced Protestantism and mentioned, “the plagues that’s upon the realm and upon us now could be that we now have erred from the religion these sixteen years.”

It was an enormous PR victory for the Catholics in England, and his phrases had been printed and distributed extensively all through the realm.

He was discovered responsible of treason and was beheaded within the Tower of London on August 22, 1553.

Issues didn’t go any higher for Jane and her husband, Guildford.

That November, Jane was placed on trial for treason, of which there was ample proof displaying that she was a usurper who claimed the title of queen. She was discovered responsible and sentenced to “be burned alive on Tower Hill or beheaded because the Queen pleases.”

The sentence wasn’t instantly carried out, nevertheless.

That modified when in January of 1554, a riot in England came about towards Mary’s plans to marry King Philip II of Spain. One of many leaders of the riot was Jane’s father, Henry Gray, Duke of Suffolk.

The involvement of Jane’s household within the riot sealed her destiny. On February 12. 1554, she and her husband had been beheaded. Jane was solely 16 or 17 years previous.

The same drama of succession and faith was to be carried out once more in simply 5 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 turned often called a martyr to the Protestant trigger. A perception that was held for a number of centuries amongst protestants in England.

For years, historians have thought-about Jane to have been a pawn within the mechanicians of the Duke of Northumberland, who simply used her to safe energy for himself.

There hasn’t been a lot in the best way of portrayals of Jane Gray, however there was a 1986 film the place a younger Helena Bonham Carter portrayed Jane. There was additionally a very talked-about portray known as The Execution of Girl Jane Gray, painted by Paul Delaroche in 1883.

There aren’t any up to date portraits of her that survive.

Jane Gray has gone down as a historic footnote. If there’s a checklist of English monarchs, she is both utterly omitted, or there’s an asterisk subsequent to her identify.

Nonetheless, it’s her temporary brush with fame and energy that makes her story attention-grabbing.

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