This is an I-Heart podcast, Guaranteed Human.

Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of IHeart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky.

Listener discretion advised.

It was the middle of the night and a spaniel began barking.

And then there was a gunshot.

The barking stopped.

The household at Hampton Court, the palace of the 11-year-old King Edward V6th of England,

began to rouse at the noise.

Something was happening.

Someone was trying to break into the king's bedchamber, and when his dog began

barking, waking up the household, the intruder in his panic had shot the dog. It was January 16, 1549,

and as the scene came into focus, the truth seemed almost impossible to understand.

The intruder who had murdered the king's beloved Spaniel, who seemed to have been attempting to,

at best, kidnap the king himself, wasn't a random knave or criminal. It was the boy's uncle,

Thomas Seymour, Lord High Admiral. For months, Thomas had been making himself more and more

unpopular with his insubordination and obvious ambition.

But now things had gone too far to ignore.

Thomas was taken to the Tower of London,

and an interrogation began to discover just how deep his treason went.

This investigation revealed a chilling relationship

between Thomas Seymour and the king's older sister, Elizabeth.

The woman that we now know as Queen Elizabeth I.

...