What the Tudors Did When They Couldn't Control Anything
Every year in Tudor England, the weather warmed up and people wondered if this would be a plague year. On top of plague there was the sweati...
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Renaissance English History Podcast: A Show About the Tudors
Music, culture, the arts, maritime exploration - Renaissance England was an exciting place to be. So much happening! Breaks with Rome. Wars with France. And Scotland. And Spain! Twice a mont...
Episodes
20 of 643 episodes
The Monks Henry VIII Left Behind, Told in 200 Sonnets
What happens to your whole world when the king decides your faith is wrong? Richard Smith's new book, Beyond Where Words Can Go, follows two...
They Tried to Demolish Hampton Court. Then the Queen Died.
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Where Were You on 9/11? Walsingham in Paris, 1572
Twenty-five years ago today, I was at my desk in Soho, emailing my friends about Thanksgiving plans, when one of them told me to open Yahoo...
Henry VIII Lost at Cards to Anne Boleyn. It's in His Own Accounts.
In 1540, a printer in Venice published a beautiful, enormous book that let you tell your fortune with a deck of cards. The same year Henry V...
Murder at Crowhurst: A Tudor Cold Case
In August 1532 a charcoal burner named Robert Grame was murdered in a wood in Surrey. He worked alone, he carried a checkered board so he co...
There's a Written Recipe for Henry VIII's Perfume
There is a written recipe for Henry VIII's perfume. It's in a 1608 book called A Closet for Ladies and Gentlewomen, and it's rosewater, suga...
The Rebellion That Started Because a Lawyer Paid a Bribe
In July 1549, a crowd in Norfolk showed up to tear down Robert Kett's fences. Instead of stopping them, he agreed with them, helped pull dow...
What Things Actually Cost in Tudor England
Join me for Taste of TudorCon, a free online preview of this year's conference, on August 29th: https://tudorcon.englandcast.com/tasteoftudo...
The Tudors Were Obsessed With Troy (But Never Actually Read Homer)
I just watched Nolan's Odyssey and went down a rabbit hole: did the Tudors even know this story? Turns out, not the way you'd think. For mos...
Two London Historians Show Me the Tudor City Everyone Walks Right Past
I got on a Zoom call with two Blue Badge guides from Context Travel, and by the end of it I had a list of about a dozen places in London I'v...
I Stayed in a 600-Year-Old Inn Full of Secret Smuggling Tunnels
So I recently went to England to sleep in historic places. This is the first episode of a mini series I'm calling Heather Stays in Olde Inns...
The Almost-Marriage That Could Have Erased Lady Jane Grey
In 1513, Charles Brandon knelt in front of Margaret of Austria, regent of the Netherlands, and lifted the ring right off her finger. Twice....
Tracy Borman Makes Me Rethink EVERYTHING About the Boleyns
This conversation totally rearranged some things in my brain. I sat down with Tracy Borman, Chief Historian at Historic Royal Palaces, to ta...
The Mistress Who Almost Made Henry VIII's Bastard Son His Heir
Okay so today's episode is a blast from the past, but stick with me because it's a good one. Back in 2016 I had James Bolton from the Queens...
The Secret That Changes Everything We Thought About "Bloody Mary"
I'm in the UK this week, so I dug into the archive and found this gem from way back when approximately six people were watching my channel....
How Do We Actually Know What Anne Boleyn Looked Like? Art Historian Roland Hui Breaks It Down (Tudor Summit Throwback)
This is a throwback from the very first Tudor Summit back in 2017, the little online conference that eventually grew into TudorCon. I'm digg...
How the Tudors Decided Who Deserved to Eat
In 1547, Parliament passed a law saying that if you refused to work, even for nothing but food, you could be branded and handed over as a sl...
What If Elizabeth I Had Married Robert Dudley? (The Decision That Nearly Broke Her)
A woman is found at the bottom of a staircase in 1560. And the one person who benefits most from it is the Queen of England. This week I'm d...
The Priest Hunter's Nightmare: Nicholas Owen and the Hiding Places No One Could Find
There is a Catholic saint whose actual job, canonized and everything, is patron of magic tricks. Escapologists. Illusionists. And he earned...