Conspiracy Theories
"My Lady Jane" and the Real Conspiracy to Take the English Throne
Wed, 26 Mar 2025
Teenager Jane Grey was never supposed to be Queen of England. But in 1553, a complex conspiracy put her on the throne. A year later, another conspiracy led to her death. Historians call Jane a pawn, but she may have been a conspirator herself. Conspiracy Theories is on Instagram @theconspiracypod! Follow us to keep up with the show and get behind-the-scenes updates from Carter and the team. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What conspiracy led to Jane Grey becoming Queen?
Most weeks we discuss theories, stories we can't confirm. But this week we're covering an actual conspiracy to steal the British crown. In 1553, King Edward VI lay on his deathbed. He'd reigned for just six years, though since he was only 15, his chief advisor, the Duke of Northumberland, was calling all the shots.
But the Duke wasn't ready to give up his power, even though Edward's death and the coronation of his older half-sister Mary seemed imminent. So Northumberland and his supporters planned a coup. They'd replace Mary with a puppet they thought they could control, 15-year-old Lady Jane Grey. However, they made a crucial mistake. Jane Grey was no puppet.
With the crown on her head, she made her own power plays. And within two weeks, she was kicked off the throne. This week, we'll look at three complex conspiracies. The one that put Jane on the throne, the one that took her off of it, and the one that led to her death. We've got arranged marriages, convenient accidents, poisoning accusations, and a lingering question...
Was Jane Grey a teenage conspirator? Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. I'm Carter Roy. New episodes come out every Wednesday. You can listen to the audio everywhere and watch the video only on Spotify. We would love to hear from you. So if you're watching on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts. And be sure to check us out on Instagram at The Conspiracy Pod.
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Jane I was England's first reigning queen in over 400 years. But she wasn't ever supposed to be queen. Sure, her great-grandfather had been king, but he had many descendants, several of whom had better claims than Jane. Like Jane's mother, Lady Frances Brandon Grey.
To add modern context, Jane had about as much claim to the throne as Prince William's cousins, Beatrice and Eugenie, who are Queen Elizabeth II's granddaughters, but not the daughters of a monarch themselves. But that didn't mean Jane was free of court politics. She was about the same age as the first in line to the throne, Prince Edward.
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Chapter 2: Who was the Duke of Northumberland and what were his ambitions?
She cultivated an underground Catholic stronghold in southeast England, where she owned several manors and castles. If she became queen, the Catholics would take over, and Protestants like the Duke of Northumberland and Henry Grey... would be out of power. But Mary's Catholicism wasn't the only problem the men had with her. She was also a woman. England had never let a woman rule in her own right.
Traditionally, female heirs could be skipped over in favor of any male relative, which is how Edward got the throne over his much older and much more qualified sister. Edward himself didn't like the idea of leaving his crown to a woman or a Catholic, so he went searching his family tree for non-Catholic male relatives he could name as his heirs and found none. Zip, nada, zilch, zero.
Here's who did have a claim to the throne. His half-sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, his cousin, Frances Grey, and her three daughters, Jane, Catherine, and Mary, then Frances's younger sister's daughter, Margaret Clifford. Edward's cousin once removed, Mary, Queen of Scots, was technically next, but she was Catholic.
Worse still, Mary, Queen of Scots, was betrothed to the French Dauphin, so handing her the crown would essentially mean handing England to France, their longtime enemies. That was even worse than giving the crown to his sister. So King Edward and the Privy Council got creative. In the early 1550s, the king wrote a will saying that Mary was his heir for now, followed by Elizabeth.
But hypothetically, if any non-Catholic male baby were born into the family, they'd jump to the front of the line. Yes, he'd rather crown a non-existent man than his own sisters. King Edward thought he still had some time where he could wait for this baby prince to materialize, mothered perhaps by Elizabeth, Francis, or even Jane.
Regardless of who the baby was, it was an extremely convenient setup for the Duke of Northumberland. If a baby inherited the throne, he'd have another 18 years of power. But that baby king wasn't guaranteed. So the Duke of Northumberland set out to make it happen. In 1552, the Duke of Northumberland approached Henry Grey and proposed a bargain.
He'd convince King Edward VI to name Jane Grey his heir outright, forgetting the hypothetical baby boys, and cutting Princesses Mary and Elizabeth out of the line of succession. How? Well, they'd been cut out before. Remember how King Henry VIII divorced Mary's mom?
In the process, he declared Mary illegitimate, saying he'd never been married to her mother and his true wife was Anne Boleyn, Princess Elizabeth's mom. When Henry divorced Anne a few years later, he did the same thing to Elizabeth, declaring her illegitimate. This was a big deal because illegitimate children could not inherit the throne.
so the princesses were kicked out of the line of succession. But a few wives later, Henry VIII reversed this decision, restoring his daughter's birthrights. As Duke Northumberland sought, the princesses had been cut out before, they could be cut out again. He told Henry Grey he'd convince King Edward to do it, making Jane heir to the throne, if, She married Northumberland's son, Guilford Dudley.
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