History's Youngest Heroes: The Brief Reign of Lady Jane

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There's a 19th century painting by Paul Dela Roche, which when it was first unveiled in Paris, caused a sensation.

In the beginning of the 20th century, it was bequeathed to the National Gallery in London.

It caused a sensation again.

The public absolutely adored this painting.

They were mesmerised by it.

This is Frannie Moyle, an art historian.

And I think it's because people are drawn to horror.

And he presents it in an era before cinema in an incredibly cinematic way.

The subject of this painting is Lady Jane Grey, the young woman sometimes referred to as the nine-day queen.

She's clad in a sort of shimmering white gown

and she is blindfolded, also

in white.

She has this beautiful shiny auburn hair cascading down over her white shoulders

and she's reaching forward blindly towards the wooden block that she kneels before on which she's soon to place her head and of course she is about to be decapitated.

On the 12th of February, 1554, Lady Jane Grey was led from her bedchamber in the Tower of London to be beheaded.

She was 16 years old.

The moment of her execution has been depicted by artists, writers, playwrights, and filmmakers over the years, but perhaps most famously by this painting.

It's a very, very, very odd picture.

This is the historical novelist.

Philippa Gregory.

She's wearing an absurdly low-cut gown.

Certainly nothing any woman would wear to her beheading.

It's very tight-bodest,

you would call it a bustier.

She looks disappointed with where she finds herself.

When he painted this scene, Dela Roche employed considerable artistic license.

Of course, it didn't happen indoors.

It happened on Tower Green in daylight.

Of course, in real life,

she would not have worn this dress and we know that the executioner didn't look like a sexy male model, and it was completely unlike this scene.

It's just this whole way that

our society likes to see romantic women victims.

When Gregory began to write a series of Tudor novels, she felt the previous portrayals of Lady Jane fell short.

So, I think I had this, you know, like the portrait, this rather romantic idea of a beautiful queen dies very young.

To many, Lady Jane Grey is a victim.

But there's another way of looking at her story.

She was a spirited young intellectual who held fast to her convictions, whatever the consequences.

You have someone who is knowingly risking death and then ultimately

knowingly taking death because there is something that matters more to them than their life itself.

And that's a fundamentally heroic position.

It's also a position of agency.

Nobody killed Jane Gray.

She literally chose to die.

I'm Nicola Cocklin, and for BBC Radio 4, this is history's youngest heroes:

rebellion, risk, and the radical power of youth.

The brief reign of Lady Jane

King Edward VI had taken to bed, grievously ill.

It was the winter of 1553.

The king, who had only just turned 15, was not yet married.

If he died, who would succeed him?

His half-sister Mary Tudor?

The next heir is a Roman Catholic, and you know that Mary Tudor, should she she get to the throne by the death of her brother Edward, her half-brother Edward, she's going to return the country to Catholicism without a doubt.

Edward was a Protestant.

England had not been a Protestant country for long.

Just 19 years.

He had grown up with his cousin once removed, Lady Jane Grey.

Edward and Jane were the same age.

They bonded over a shared love of theology.

Jane was a serious scholar.

So she's reading the big,

extremely heavy, often in Latin, theology works of the Reformation.

She speaks and writes in Greek and Latin, French as a normal language, English of course, and she teaches herself Hebrew because she wants to read the Bible in the original Hebrew.

From about, I think, 13, she was writing to major theologians and taking up points that they had said and discussing points with them and writing in effect sermons.

She's a top theologian.

For centuries, the Catholic Church had dominated Western European Christianity.

By the 1500s though, dissent was brewing.

Some wanted to leave the Catholic Church unchanged.

Others called for reform.

Though various reformers had different styles and beliefs, they would collectively come to be known as Protestants.

Lady Jane Grey was born at the height of this crisis.

She became a devout Protestant.

It's of deep, profound importance.

She will not join a church which has these, what she would regard as heresies and abuses.

She won't even pretend to join it.

I mean, it is of existential importance.

For Jane, the issue was close to home.

Her mother's uncle was Edward's father, King Henry VIII.

If he creates a Church of England, which is a reformed Church of England, and makes himself head of it, then he can rule on his own divorce, which is what he wants to do, to get rid of Catherine of Aragon so he can marry Anne Boleyn.

Henry's decision to break with the Catholic Church caused deep rifts within his own family.

With his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, he had one surviving daughter, Mary Tudor.

She remained firmly Catholic.

With his second wife, Anne Boleyn, he also had one daughter, Elizabeth.

She was a Protestant.

After Henry had Anne beheaded, he married his third wife, Jane Seymour.

She was probably the love of his life.

She too had only one surviving child, Edward, now King.

He was a Protestant, so England remained Protestant.

But the Reformation was unstable.

Protestantism had been widely adopted in London.

But places like Cornwall and Wales probably stayed staunchly Roman Catholic for very much longer.

Jane Grey was the eldest daughter of an ambitious family who were descended from the Tudor royal line.

We don't know where or exactly when she was born, though it was likely in the latter half of 1536 or 37.

Her parents, the Greys, were noble and would later become the Duke and Duchess of Suffolk.

Even as a child, it was said Jane read the works of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, yet her family were not especially supportive.

And they are, according to Jane's description of them, rather ghastly parents.

And they, Jane says, beat her for the most minor infractions.

And what they want is children in their own image, not very intellectual, healthy, sporty, hunting, country pursuits, young ladies who will go on to make immensely successful marriages and found immensely successful, at least ducal lines.

On the 25th of May, 1553, Jane married Guilford Dudley.

who is another more of a new family, more new wealth, more new land, and

incredibly ambitious family.

I mean,

dangerously ambitious family.

Guilford's father was John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland.

King Edward was still underage, and Northumberland had become effectively his regent, the king's closest advisor and guardian, exerting heavy influence upon him.

The Dudleys, like the Greys, were Protestants.

By marrying his son Guilford to Jane, Northumberland formed a powerful alliance.

Meanwhile, all eyes were on King Edward's health.

That summer, one ambassador wrote, The king is undoubtedly becoming weaker as time passes and wasting away.

The matter he ejects from his mouth is sometimes coloured a greenish yellow and black, sometimes pink, like the colour of blood.

The Duke of Northumberland needed to persuade the king to name a successor that suited his ambitions.

Neither of Edward's sisters, Mary or Elizabeth, was under his influence, so they wouldn't do.

Edward

writes his addition to his will, in which it's called the devise, and that Northumberland takes that to the Privy Council and makes them agree to it.

Days later, on the 6th of July, King Edward VI died.

He was 15.

That day, Jane hadn't been feeling well herself.

Suddenly, she was summoned by her father-in-law, the Duke of Northumberland, to his London residence, Scion House.

It's dark.

She doesn't know why she's going there.

She travelled by boat along the Thames in the middle of the night.

She gets there, she has to wait for quite a while.

There's nobody particularly in residence at the time, so they've just picked it as a sort of meeting place.

And then she goes in and finds both her parents and Guilford's parents.

They told her the news of the king's death and of his so-called devise.

Edward had deemed his two sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, illegitimate.

The succession had therefore passed over them.

The person who he had named to be England's next ruler was

Jane.

Jane could hardly believe what she was hearing.

We have some accounts which suggests that she literally refuses.

This is a period where there is a belief in the natural divinity of kings, so that since she wasn't born as heir to the throne, she would have known that a lot of people would have thought that Mary or Elizabeth were born with a particular blessing from God, which meant that they were due to be king or queen.

Yet it was also a sign of devotion to God, to follow the instructions of your parents.

And they supported the Duke of Northumberland.

Her obedience is part of her faith.

So

I think

she resisted for some hours and then in the end she agrees that she'll do what they say and they they action the plot and i think it's the religious mission that's persuaded her to take the enormous risk

four days later on the 10th of july 1553 jane travelled by boat from scion house to the tower of london

there

she was proclaimed Queen.

The Duke of Northumberland knew he had to assert Jane's right to rule strongly, so he ordered a ceremony to mark her arrival with accustomed pomp.

He also spread propaganda against the late King's sisters.

According to one chronicler, Criers at the street corners published an order given under the Great Seal of England, which, by the new Queen's authority, declared Lady Mary unfitted for the crown, as also the Lady Elizabeth.

Both ladies were declared to be bastards.

And it was stated that the Lady Mary might marry a foreigner, foreigner, thus stir up travel in the kingdom and introduce a foreign government.

And also, that as she was of the old religion, she might seek to introduce popery.

In London, the atmosphere was tense.

Some believe Jane had denied Mary her rightful crown.

Northumberland and his council knew Mary posed the greatest threat to their new monarchy.

And they start talking about what they are going to to do to Mary, who is not in London at the moment.

Mary was in Norfolk when she heard of her brother's death.

She learned that she had been ousted from the succession in favour of Jane.

In that moment, Mary could have fled the country.

Her mother, Catherine of Aragon, had been Spanish, and she had plenty of allies in Europe's Catholic countries.

Instead, she vowed to stay and fight for the throne.

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That evening, Mary wrote to the Privy Council demanding their allegiance.

Northumberland refused her demand.

Northumberland sets out with his army to arrest Mary.

It's a big misjudgment that they didn't arrest her immediately from the point of view of Northumberland.

They thought that she would just run away, that she'd go to France or somewhere or Spain or somewhere and you know live a life as a religious woman in exile across east anglia support was building for mary this was an area where many were still catholic and the sense of injustice was strong there were reports that the whole country of norfolk had come to her obedience and had taken up the arms to join in her defence

northumberland had no idea she would do this.

What they didn't expect was that she, another

tudor woman of unexpected courage and agency, would immediately muster her army and set up her castle for a siege and prepare to fight for her throne.

While Mary gathered her troops, Jane was at the Tower of London.

She was preparing for her coronation with her new husband Guilford Dudley by her side.

But his loyalty was beginning to look questionable.

As soon as they moved into the tower, he was, he drank a lot, he set up his own court opposite hers.

Though he had no right to the throne, Guilford thought he should be king by virtue of being the queen's husband.

The perennial problem of when you have a reigning queen, what is the status of her husband?

How you manage that relationship when you are, on the one hand, as a wife, promised to obey, and your husband is your lord and master, but you are, in fact, queen of the country where he is a subject.

Jane quickly began to gather her own supporters.

Her mother comes to live with her, her mother-in-law comes to live with her, they bring members of the family, so you have a female court surrounding her.

Apart from a brief and disputed claim by the Empress Matilda in the 12th century, England had never been ruled by a woman.

So

all of the male authority and male power and male intelligence in the sense of news coming in and money is literally in this parallel court which quite uncomfortably operates alongside hers.

So it becomes very, very much like she isn't the monarch, but she's the monarch's wife and Guilford Dudley certainly starts demanding that at the coronation he shall be crowned as equal partner.

Jane refused her husband's demand.

But the power behind her throne, the Duke of Northumberland, had left London to fight Mary.

Without him, Jane was vulnerable.

Members of the court were watching closely.

Most would go wherever the power went.

On the 17th of July, the Duke of Northumberland reached Bury St.

Edmund's, close to Mary's castle at Framlingham.

By now, it was all too clear that he had underestimated Mary's power and her popularity.

He didn't take enough people, and the men that he took became increasingly doubtful about the campaign as as they progressed.

Northumberland and his followers retreated.

They tried to raise more support, but in the end.

There was never a shot fired.

Back in the Tower of London, Jane's supporters have been disappearing.

She locks the gates of the tower.

We're told she locks the gates of the tower at night so that people can't sneak out and go over to Mary's side.

The rebellion's failing as she's watching it.

On the 19th of July, Jane's father, the Duke of Suffolk, told her to take off her royal robes and be content with a private life.

Isolated, with no one to defend her, Jane had to abandon her claim to the throne.

I mean all this happens over a very short period of time.

It's only nine days.

Northumberland had underestimated the public support for Mary.

among Catholics and even Protestants.

And what they didn't realize was that there was such support for Catholicism in the country and that there was such indifference to religion in terms that a lot of the people who supported Mary were actually Reformation or Protestant people and actually just thought it right that the oldest child should inherit.

Two weeks later, Mary marched into London.

accompanied by her sister Elizabeth, as well as by hundreds of nobles who supported her.

For Jane, the Tower of London went from being her palace to her prison.

Initially, Mary comes to the throne and promises peace and promises to rule for all the people.

And what she then sets about doing is trying to come to some kind of agreement with who

was so treasonous that they have to answer for it, and who can beg pardon and be forgiven?

And it looks like everybody is going to beg pardon and be forgiven.

On the 21st of August, the Duke of Northumberland hurriedly converted to Catholicism.

But it was too late for him to escape execution.

The following day, in front of a huge crowd, he was led to the block at Tower Hill and beheaded.

In October, Mary became the first Queen Regnant to be crowned at Westminster Abbey.

Afterwards, she passed an act of repeal dissolving Edward's laws.

In November, Jane was charged with treason.

Her trial took place on a single day,

and she was found guilty.

Jane was now a traitor, sentenced to be burned alive on Tower Hill or beheaded as the Queen pleases.

But Mary didn't set a date for her execution.

The new Queen knew Jane had been a pawn in Northumberland's game and had not herself created the plot, so she was inclined to be merciful.

Two months later, though, at the very beginning of 1554, a nobleman called Sir Thomas Wyatt staged a rebellion against Mary.

It failed.

The conspirators were arrested and put on trial.

Among them was Jane's father, the Duke of Suffolk.

Frances, her mother, disappears into the country and says she knew nothing about it and knows nothing about her daughter, knows nothing about anything, literally throws Jane, as it were, under the tudor bus.

With her father a traitor, destined for execution and her mother gone, Jane was alone.

So far, Queen Mary had spared Jane from her death sentence.

Yet while Jane continued to practice her Protestant religion, Mary reluctantly realized she was a threat.

And Mary knew that the only way to stop Jane being a figurehead of a rival religious conspiracy was to either convert her to Roman Catholicism or behead her.

And even at that last moment, that's when Mary says, but if she will confess to her sins, convert to Catholicism, she can be spared.

In a final attempt to save Jane, Mary sent a Catholic theologian to convert her.

If Dr.

Thomas Fechnam could convince Jane to renounce Protestantism, Mary would spare her life.

Her life's work has been study and particularly theology.

So although she's very young compared to this priest, she thinks the priest is completely misguided and is in support of a completely corrupt institution.

The stakes of their debate could not have been higher.

Mary's genuine conviction would be, was that if Jane died a Protestant, as if she lived a Protestant, her soul would go to hell.

She's basically spiritually dead.

So it doesn't really matter if she's killed or not, because she's already doomed.

I think if you accept that she was as convinced a Roman Catholic as Jane Grey was a convinced Protestant, they are literally both fighting for Jane's life in this world and Jane's life in the next.

And to Mary, Jane's life in this world as a Protestant is a complete waste of time.

Stumped by Jane's resistance, Dr.

Fecknam asked Queen Mary for more time.

He really thinks that

they are talking at a level where he might change her mind.

They're talking so deeply and so seriously, and she's listening so carefully and replying so thoughtfully that he thinks that he might convert her to his form of religion.

Jane's knowledge was fierce and her faith unwavering.

Not even the prospect of execution could compel her to convert.

And that's where Jane takes this really extraordinary decision to die for her faith.

She would rather die than confess to being a Roman Catholic.

But it's a very powerful decision to take that.

The decision was forced upon her, but the death was not.

On the morning of the 12th of February, 1554,

Lady Jane Grey was led out to the block.

Her husband, Guilford Dudley, had already been executed earlier that morning.

Jane was stoic, composed, and resolute.

She wore the black gown that she had worn for her trial, and she carried an open prayer book.

And then she made a speech.

She said, Good people,

I am come hither to die, and by a law, I am condemned to the same.

She spoke in English, asking for forgiveness, saying, Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy steadfast love, according to thy abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions.

She stood up and took off her gloves.

Her ladies helped remove her headdress and collar.

She loosened her hair.

The executioner knelt and asked for her forgiveness, which is a traditional thing, and she forgave him.

Then she said to him, I pray you dispatch me quickly.

And that's not a light request because some executions went horribly wrong.

And she says to him, Will you take my head before I lay me down?

The executioner said, No.

So she knows that she's got time to kneel, compose herself, and stretch her hands out.

So she tied her handkerchief round her eyes, and then she couldn't see the block and she didn't know where it was.

And she has a moment of

really pitiful.

She says, What shall I do?

Where is it?

Really sad.

She put her head on the block, stretched out her hands and says, Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit.

And

he brought the axe down and beheaded her.

Today, the British Library has Lady Jane Grey's only surviving possession, her prayer book.

In it, she wrote, There is a time to be born and a time to die.

And a day of our death is better than the day of our birth.

Philippa Gregory sees both Lady Jane Grey and Mary Tudor as misunderstood.

She's bloody Mary in, you know, in popular history.

So Jane Grey is rather regarded as one of many of Queen Mary's killings.

So you get this,

again, itself a cliché, which is the idea of these two women rivals for the throne, rivals in opposition for power, the young, beautiful one that dies as a result of an older woman's malice, which is a ridiculous simplification of what actually happened.

It's a far cry from the painting by Paul Dela Roche in the National Gallery that Frannie Moyle described.

That someone is prepared to, you know, face death for the sake of of religion, for the sake of their beliefs, for the sake of what they felt was

right.

You know, I do find to this day

hard to comprehend.

And I suppose one can't remove youth from that because one imagines that people aren't kind of fully formed intellectually until much later in life.

But to see a sort of intellect that has crystallized already is fascinating.

The mother in me thinks, stop, don't do that, you know,

take the shilling, save your life.

But principle is something that this world's lacking a little bit at the moment.

And if she is an example of principle, then that's an example worth having.

Next time, on history's youngest heroes.

When a reclusive young woman spots a shipwreck off the coast of Northumberland, she embarks on a perilous rescue mission.

Little does she know, it will make her world famous.

I just can't believe that she could do a thing like that.

You know, I think to myself, I wonder if anybody could do it today, even an Olympic athlete.

Grace Darling, maiden of the sea.

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The new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We demand to be hosted!

Winner, best score!

We demand to be seen!

Winner, best book.

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs!

Playing the Orpheum Theater October 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.