Hello everyone and welcome to the History of England episode 265.

Live still to die.

So last time John Dudley joined his father in the taking the fall of their master's category

in whatever heavenly location they ended up in and we reflected that Jane would be able

to hear the roar of the crowd as the acts fell.

And we also heard she would have had no sympathy for a man she saw as the agent of her family's

destruction and a traitor to the true faith.

Let's turn now to Jane's life which we spoke of when the tower had become a prison rather

than a palace.

Maybe the clamor of Mary's triumphant entry into London disturbed Jane from a critical task

she was carrying out.

Maybe she rushed from her table to a window to look out or asked her jailer what the

noise was all about.

If so, the task our sixteen year old was engaged in was writing a letter to her conqueror

explaining her actions.

We do not have that letter which is of course a shame, but we do have reports of what was

in the letter from Italian sources which means it could be fluff but proper historians

like Nicolatallet and Eric Ives have pierced together for as what it might reliably have

contained.

Essentially Jane's message was that she was not aware of what was happening until the

very last minute.

She did not ask for it and she was just a victim of Northumberland's machinations.

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