Dan Snow's History Hit - 3. Story of England: Tudor Feuds, Explorers and Fanatics

Episode Date: May 23, 2023

The Tudors were the dynasty that had it all- power, family feuds, sex and scandal. Dan couldn't do a history of England without a hearty helping of our favourite family and for this episode, he's joined in the Elizabethan garden at mighty Kenilworth Castle by Dr Joanne Paul who tells the intricate story of the powerful Queen Elizabeth I and her mutual infatuation with Sir Robert Dudley, to whom she gifted the castle. Meanwhile, pirate expert and historian Angus Konstam delves into tales of pillaging, plundering and the Elizabethan Sea Dogs, who took to the high seas to steal from the Spanish and acquire new lands for England, establishing lost colonies, engaging in slavery and looting along the way. It’s a whistle-stop tour of this period of upheaval in England as Dan makes his way to Boscobel House to see the Royal Oak, the hiding place of Charles II from the parliamentarians after his father was executed by Cromwell’s roundheads in the English Civil War. Produced by Mariana Des Forges and sound-designed and mixed by Dougal Patmore. Artwork by Teet Ottin.

This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. On a midsummer morning in 1485, Henry Tudor, an army of 2,000 men, sailed across the English Channel from France, landing in his birthplace, Wales.

As army marched north, amassing more men as it went, they were preparing for a battle that would usher in a new ruling dynasty, the Tudors. Henry had been born in Pembroke Castle 28 years earlier. His family was a junior branch of the House of Plantagenet, which had ruled England since 1154. Over their 300-year reign, England had flourished. Parliament emerged, Westminster Abbey had been rebuilt, and the country's first universities, Oxford and Cambridge, were established. It was the era of Chaucer and Magna Carta. But it was also a time of bloody conflict and unrest, both for the country

and within the royal house. For the entirety of Henry Tudor's life, the country had been embroiled in the Hundred Years' War and then the Wars of the Roses. roiled in the Hundred Years' War and then the Wars of the Roses. For most of the 15th century, the House of Plantagenet had been firmly divided into two, the House of York and the House of Lancaster. For years, cousins on both sides vied for the right to the English throne. Those arguments eventually erupted into full-blown battles across the country. For over 30 years, the family was at war with itself. It all came to a head in August 1485. Henry, a Lancastrian, arrived in England with his army. He was unfamiliar with the

land he was trying to conquer. He spent the first half of his life in Wales and the next half in exile in Brittany and France. Though he didn't care much for battles and he wasn't much of a warrior, he was strong and decisive. He marched on London. But word reached the reigning King Richard III, a Yorkist who assembled his own much larger and more formidable force. He intercepted Henry.

Their forces met on a hilltop just south of Market Bosworth in Leicestershire. The battle raged, each side making advances and withdrawals. Eventually, King Richard led a charge directly at Henry Tudor. It would prove a fatal mistake. It's believed a blow to the head finished off King Richard III. He'd lost his life and his crown in the battle.

And when the fight was over, the crown was recovered from under a bush and placed on Henry Tudor's head. A new era dawned. You're listening to Dan Snow's History Hit. This is my story of England. An epic series that catapults you through one million years of this country's incredible history as I embark on a mighty road trip across 500 miles of England.

From the mysterious stone plinths on Salisbury Plain to the magnificent castles of Dover and Kenilworth. This is day three of the adventure. And it's about time we get into what must be the most popular part of this nation's history. The Tudors. Maybe one of the reasons we love the Tudors is because they have everything a great drama needs.

That's why historical novelists absolutely love them. Passion, power, sex, conflict, violence, deeply flawed, tricky characters. I'm thinking about the Tudors because I'm sitting in the astonishing garden in Kenilworth Castle where Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, Elizabeth the first favourite, created her this kind of magical Italian secret garden. It was an aviary encrusted with gems, with exotic birds chirping inside. There were very unsubtle hints to his family and Elizabeth joining up. This was one of the all-time great marriage plays.

It didn't work out for him, and the money he spent on this garden and generally entertaining Elizabeth plunged him and his heirs into debt. It was Elizabeth's grandfather, Henry VII, who won the final battle of the Wars of the Roses, a victory for the House of Lancaster. He took the throne and his main aim had been to unify the country and put an end to the continual squabbling between different branches of the royal family and establish his right to rule rather than the old labels of York and Lancaster we've come to think of Henry as the first Tudor we all remember his son the big guy powerful, powerful, charismatic, Henry VIII. His reign was absolutely riddled with drama. His desperation to have a healthy male heir, his failure to do so, triggered

a schism with Rome, and that led to a political, intellectual, cultural upheaval, a splintering of Catholic Europe. Although we remember him as having split from the Catholic Church, actually, personally, he still maintained his Catholic practices. Although we remember him as having split from the Catholic Church, actually personally he still maintained his Catholic practices. He seemed to kind of want to have his cake and eat it. He attended Latin Mass and he requested all the Catholic burial rites. He pretty much lived and died a Catholic. Edward and Mary, his son and daughter in quick succession, steered the country in a very Protestant, then a very Catholic route. So it was Elizabeth who was on the throne for a long time, who really embedded Protestantism in England. And it's during her reign that we see a different kind of England

and a new world order emerge. To a certain extent, her reign was about changing the rules, it was about upsetting people's expectations, establishing the sovereign as a woman's job. She was powerful. She was smart. She was clever in her use for foreign ministry, of diplomats, and even a spy network that used kidnappings and codes and moles and torture to help ensure her longevity as queen. She was a formidable leader, and frankly a lot better at the job than some of the wrong-uns who preceded and succeeded her. She was an excellent orator.

She made such a memorable speech to the English army at Tilbury as they waited for a potential Spanish invasion in 1588. She wrote poems and letters. She was expert at hiding her intentions and emotions. And that's why I've come here, because this is one place that I feel holds some clues to the woman behind that iconic white face, that mask of youth, as she hoped it would prove. I'm in Kenilworth Castle. This is the next stop on my tour of English heritage site. This start as a Norman keep and it was built onto and enlarged by so many different famous figures from English history.

It was turned into an extraordinary fantasy medieval castle, a palace by Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester. She'd given him the castle. She'd given him his title and he hoped she might give him her hand in marriage.

She stayed here a few times, but the most famous occasion was the summer of 1575 when she remained here for an unprecedented 19 days, the longest she ever visited any courtier. And it's here I think we can get into who she was and what made her such a remarkable ruler. And the person to really help me with that is Dr. Joanne Paul, brilliant Tudor historian. How are you doing Joanne? I'm all right thanks, it's wonderful to be here. It is isn't it? It's gorgeous. Such a difficult childhood, one minute she's Princess Elizabeth, the next minute her mum's been executed. What kind of world did she grow up in? A very tumultuous one I think, as you say she was a princess, she was a lady, she was a bastard. She's later accused of treason. She gets wrapped up in plots. She's imprisoned in the Tower of London. So it's a

really tumultuous, very difficult childhood. She has to learn a lot very, very quickly. Is she lucky to escape with her life? Probably, yeah. I think it's not luck, though. I think she's very smart. She's very clever. And she learns how to deal with those situations. And does that actually set her up, do you think, to be quite a good ruler? Absolutely. Because she can survive that. Absolutely, yeah. I think that she learns a lot, as I said, very quickly.

I think that she knows how to manipulate people. I think she knows how to hold back, how to play her cards close to her chest. And she uses all of that throughout her reign. How likely was it that she would ascend to the throne? I mean, was it kind of marginal or was she the obvious heir to her sister? Really, according to her father's will, she is the heir and it's unquestionably going to be her as long as her sister doesn't have a child, which at one point it looks like she's going to,ably going to be her as long as her sister doesn't have a child which at one point it looks like she's going to turns out to be a phantom pregnancy but that would have changed everything if she had had a child of her own she doesn't and at the end of

her life Mary I declares Elizabeth the heir and so when she comes to the throne it is fairly uncontroversial and so how do we characterize her rule? She is someone who temporizes. She tries not to make decisions. Her courtiers get very frustrated with her for her constant delay. But that is a great strategy for her. And it sees her through decades of rule. She has huge successes, of course, most famously the defeat of the Spanish Armada, which has a little bit to do with her and a lot more to do with the weather. And there are some tragedies as well and some black marks on her record, particularly the war with Ireland. She leaves the crown very much in debt over that. It's a pretty good ruling strategy to try and not do much, given some of her predecessors and successors, they go into big trouble for doing stuff, for having ideas.

Yeah, we can contrast her with her father. Elizabeth has many suitors who she promises she'll marry, she might marry, she doesn't know if she'll marry. And of course, her father just marries one person after the other. It doesn't really work out so well for him. So hers might be the better ruling strategy. What about the threats to Elizabeth's life? Were people actually trying to kill her all the time?

Especially after she's excommunicated by the Pope, by the Catholic Church, there is a real fear that something might happen to her. There are fairly botched assassination attempts at various points. There is one in particular where someone on her barge is shot when somebody is trying to take her out. So there is a genuine threat. And her courtiers, her privy council, turn that into a real aggressive campaign against Catholics, particularly Jesuits. So that's where the kind of priest hunting and the torture comes into it. It's all about the body of the Queen protecting her safety. Absolutely. And there's a sense of sort of almost preemptive justice about it all, that they're going to get to these people

before they get to the queen. What about the fact that she was female in that powerful position? How do people cope with that? There's a sense in which any romantic or sexual relationship could involve the domination of the queen, could involve someone taking power over her. And that was something they were very concerned about. It happened to her in her youth. She was probably sexually assaulted by Thomas Seymour. And that really, I think, sets the stage not only for this suspicion she has of men around her, of these romantic relationships. She always keeps them at a distance. But also this fear about her. Her body is the crown. So it becomes very difficult. So from that, we do call her Virgin Queen. Do we think that she then, to protect her

political power, abstained from all romantic love, from having sex the whole life? Romantic love seems to have existed for her. Whether that became physical or not, we just don't know. I know that's a boring historian's answer. We just don't know. There's no evidence that any relationship was ever consummated. There were tons of rumors, however, that it was, particularly with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. What's the reality of the relationship between the two of them? They're very close. They're clearly at least good friends. We can see from their letters, they almost have a secret code. He has a symbol that he uses to sign off letters. It's very much like the emoji eyes that we have today. Whenever he writes two O's, he puts

little eyes in them and little eyebrows over them. And that's his symbol to her. She calls him her eyes. She gives him Kenilworth in 1563, right before she makes him Earl of Leicester. But they do seem to court. He takes her on picnics in St. James Park. He's giving her gifts. He gives gifts as well to some of the people in her household, which maybe is greasing wheels of access. And she clearly depends on him, which is, I think, what makes people a little bit nervous. Maybe she depends on him a bit too much. But for decades, they are incredibly close. Was he super good looking? He was very good looking. Yeah, unquestionably so. He was fit. Well, who was he? Robert Dudley was the fifth son of a knight. He was not very important. That knight ends up rising up through the ranks, taking on various peerages. Under her father, Henry VIII. Under her father, Henry VIII, and then

under her half-brother, Edward VI. And it's under Edward VI that he becomes really the most important person in the realm. And it's probably at that point that Robert and Elizabeth meet for the first time. However, that's when the family collapses, essentially. His father is executed. His brother is executed. He and all of his brothers are tainted for treason and locked in the Tower of London. He only gets out just before Elizabeth comes to the throne. So this stain of treason stays with him and makes him a very controversial choice for a queen. Tell me about the famous visit that she made here and spent such a

long time. Nineteen days she spends here at Kenilworth Castle during her summer progress of 1575. It is a 19-day party. There are pageants, amazing fireworks, feasting, hunting, dancing, music, drinking to excess. It's entirely unprecedented that she spends 19 days any one place during a summer progress. And he's fixed the whole place up as well. I mean, he's prepared for this for years. Yeah. Four times she visits Kenilworth, each time he fixes it up a little bit more spending something like 60 000 pounds in 16th century terms which is i don't know 15 million pounds in today's money to do it up for her he builds her essentially an apartment building four stories highys high, just for her, that he can access, by the way, through a connected door.

He has private access to her. It's an incredible expense and it's all for her. And to show off his prestige, his power, his wealth. And what does he want out of that? What's he going for here? I think he's going for a couple of different things. There's a theory that this is history's most elaborate marriage proposal. This is a last-ditch attempt to get Elizabeth, the queen, to marry him. I think also, though, it's a statement of their relationship as it was. They are a sort of

power couple, but without being married. He wants to establish himself as her favourite. Unquestionable that he is her favourite and that will never change. I think he's also trying to make his mark. There are printed pamphlets that go out describing everything that happens during those 19 days. I think he wants to show the world and history what he is up to here. He hired, he had on staff one of England's leading playwrights at the time, George Gascon, who, when it rains and an outdoor performance has to be cancelled, writes a play on the spot for them. The cost is extravagant. Something like, it was rumoured at least, £1,000 a day. This is a man whose annual income is only about 5,000 pounds a year.

And he's spending a thousand pounds a day on this party. So he's plunging him and his descendants into debt. Yeah. Fails to marry Elizabeth, but we're still talking about him. So he succeeds in some ways. I think he really, really does. I think that was part of the plan,

was that 500 years from now, we're still talking about it. Did Dudley remain Elizabeth's favorite? Did he cement himself into that position? More or less. There are a couple blips along the way. He marries three years after Kenilworth, secretly. He has to keep it a secret because he marries her younger, prettier cousin. And so when that's revealed, he's in big trouble. She never talks to the cousin again, Letiz Nols. He eventually manages to worm his way back into favor. There's a whole thing that happens in the Netherlands for a while. That puts him in the bad books.

But when he dies, he certainly dies with the queen's affection, with her favor. And the last letter that he sends to her, she labels his last letter in her own hand and keeps it by her bedside until her own death. Why do people talk about the Elizabethan age as a golden age? What's going on with that? It's a lot to do with what we see at Kenilworth. This splendor, this grandeur, everything is covered in gold and the entire age becomes associated with that majesty. It's also that she stays on the throne all that time. Her triumphs, like the Spanish Armada, the fact that Shakespeare comes from the Elizabethan age,

and little Shakespeare may have been here at Kenilworth during those 19-day celebrations. So I think if we look at the Kenilworth celebrations, we can see this sort of microcosm of the glory of Gloriana. Is that being challenged now? Are we more aware of the kind of catastrophe in Ireland, the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade? Is some of that luster coming off the Elizabethan age, do you think? I think it is, and I think appropriately so. At the time, people were very aware, certainly at least, of the failures in Ireland. That war was very controversial. People knew it was tanking, that the treasury was almost entirely out of coin by the end of her reign. So in some ways,

by taking some of that guilt away, we're seeing it as it was at the time. Stay with us. More of England's great history after this. Stay with us. More of England's great history after this. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb and on my podcast, Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, I try to make sense of everything that baffled our early modern ancestors. Like, what do you do with your waist? If you put your dunghill up against your neighbor's wall, you're going to cause rising damp. Would Henry VIII ever consider executing his wife, the Queen of England and Berlin? I'm not even sure if the Berlins took it seriously because why would they have any reason to suspect Henry

VIII would really get rid of his queen? And why do men grow beards? During puberty, the male body heats up and a smoke rises in the body, pushes out the hair in the face. So the beard is actually a form of excrement. In other words, not just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. Twice a week, every week. Listen and follow on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War.

You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. I'm standing now in the romantic ruins of her splendid apartments here at Kenilworth and thinking about what a beautiful court Elizabeth presided over and as as well as that, she brought the English currency and finances back onto an even keel, and she pretty much maintained domestic tranquility. But abroad, her reign was a time of great discovery as English ships travelled the world, exploring, trading, and doing a bit of fighting. Building on the work started by her dad, Henry VIII, who's pretty much founded the Royal Navy. England became a great naval power. And sowed the seeds for

what would become the British Empire that would change the world for better and worse. The men tasked with exploring the unknown are names we're now so familiar with. Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir John Hawkins. They were pioneers, they were adventurers, they were traders, but they were also conquerors, plunderers, enslavers and pirates. They were known collectively as Queen Elizabeth's sea dogs and you know I'm not going to miss an opportunity even here in landlocked Kenilworth, to talk about some maritime history. Angus Constam is a historian and pirate expert who's been researching a new book about these dubious privateers. First of what we call the Elizabethan sea dogs, started by trading to places like

North Africa and down the West African coast. And part of that was trade. Part of that was slavery. But that led to an interest in sailing further west. And you had English-sponsored ventures to find a sea route through what was the Americas discovered by Christopher Columbus. And it was all about trying to carve their own sea route through to the other side of the world by heading west. So there's two strands. So there's the English mariners were trading,

and they were slave trading, and they were doing regular trade. But at the same time, you've got this push, this drive for finding a route around the Americas, heading west and onto China. Who should we credit really being the first of these Elizabethan sea dogs? Is it Hawkins? We could have said Hawkins. He was a trader, but he was largely involved creating a route into the Americas themselves, into the Spanish main. And the Spanish, after the Treaty of Tordesillas, forgive my pronunciation, in 1492, where the world was divided into two, the Spanish had everything to the west of the line, which is essentially all the Americas, apart from the

coast of Brazil, the Portuguese at that bit, they discovered Brazil. So they regarded everyone else as interlopers. So Hawkins was really an interloper, trying to get in and break into that Spanish market and trade slaves, but then get the goods of the Americas and ship it home. So he sort of set up the triangular trade, the triangular slave trade, if you were. He was one of the pioneers of it. So while he was involved with that, there were other like Hugh Willoughby and Richard Chancellor who were trying to find a route going around the other way, head up north into the Arctic and go right instead of left. They were going around the coast of Muscovy and neither of them really made it. Willoughby landed

up freezing to death in the ice and Chancellor didn't have a much more successful trip. But they were busy trying to pioneer this route. And one of his protégés became probably the most famous Elizabethan sea dog, Francis Drake. Indeed. Well, Drake, of course, was part of Frobisher's expedition. He was actually the one who fought his way out. When Hawkins got caught by the Spanish in Vera Cruz or San Juan de Ulua on the Mexican Caribbean coast, his whole expedition was basically ambushed. They took over the town and the port and were waiting for the Spanish treasure fleet so they could plunder

it. But instead, they came tooled up knowing the English were there and essentially blockaded them at port. So Drake was one of those who kind of led the breakout of this English trading fleet out of the port. And he really didn't like the Spanish after that. So that was the start of a grudge, which developed quite badly for the Spanish in the end, because they regarded people like Hawkins and Drake as nothing more than pirates. And they were happily willing to hang them if they captured them. And the fate of some of Hawkins and Drake as nothing more than pirates. And they were happily willing to hang them if they captured them. And the fate of some of Hawkins' crew was basically imprisonment, enslavement, and execution. So those who escaped back to England were mightily disgruntled and had

this grudge against the Spanish, which lasted a very long time. So the Spanish would come to regret that incident, wouldn't they? Because Drake became the greatest enemy of Spain on the high seas for the rest of his life. Yes. And especially when he then led raids on the Spanish main, on the Spanish New World. Walter Raleigh's often seen to be one of these sea dogs. He's a bit different now from the West Countrymen, those traders, Drake and Hawkins. Tell me about Raleigh's relationship with the ocean and the Spanish main. Yes, Raleigh was a mariner in the same context,

but his emphasis was more on settlement. And his way of dealing with the Spanish was to establish English colonies in the Americas that could then be used as a trading post, an entrepot for trade with the hinterland of North America and Central America, and then essentially breaking the Spanish monopoly that way. And we all know about his failed Roanoke colony of 1585. And there'd be no end of speculation about what happened to his settlers there. They disappeared without a trace on the coast of North America.

But Raleigh was the impetus behind that. And this whole drive for settlement, rather than exploration and conquest, it was conquested by a different route, by putting the flag up. Raleigh becomes obsessed with cities of gold, doesn't he? What are the origins of those myths? He got fascinated by the idea of the Americas as being a source of great wealth and gold and precious metals.

We knew about the mountain of silver of Potosi in Peru, which the Spanish were busy mining. That was the main cargo in their treasure fleets that were sending back to Spain every year. But the notion of El Dorado, the mythical city in the jungle, became something of an obsession. And he and others became obsessed with finding this lost city. And it was another of those rabbit holes of geography and history. Today, we might look at that as just fanciful. But for him, the potential was limitless. Remember that what little charts they had of the Americas

were basic, if not wholly inaccurate. The whole coast hadn't been mapped. Nobody with the map making skills of somebody like Captain Cook had come along. So there was a big there be dragons map in the center of the Americas and who knows what could have been there. And he became obsessed with this quest for gold. So by the very early 1600s, we've got these companies, haven't we? We've got the East India Company, people have heard of, and operating from little bases, little toeholds in Asia. The Levant Company in the Eastern Mediterranean. And you've mentioned the company operating in Muscovy, going to Russia. How do they operate? Have they got little factories?

They're not colonies yet, are they? They're just little areas which local rulers have allowed the Brits to build sort of trading stations. That's exactly it, Dan. There was no notion of empire. It was very much done with the permission of local rulers. The whole idea of reaching the New World, one of the problems was if you wanted to trade with the Far East, the attempts to go around the Northwest Passage had failed. The route around Cape Horn was pretty fraught with danger that really left sailing around Africa and onto India and the Far East that way. So there became a sort of scramble for doing that with the Portuguese, then supplanted eventually by the Dutch and then by the English. And to get there, it meant you had to establish essentially way stations along the way. In the age of steam, that was quite straightforward.

You needed coaling stations. But in this case, you needed people providing water and fresh fruit and so on. So it became a bit of an early land grab in Africa as much as anything else, as well as a land grab in India, not in terms of colonizing, but in creating little trading posts and essentially watering holes all the way. And once you got to the Far East, once you got to India, once you got to the East Indies, then they had the same thing. The idea was to have essentially small fortified enclaves where you could trade from without risking attack, either by the indigenous people there or by rivals from Spain, from Portugal, or from the Dutch. How is British life being changed by the things coming back? Run me through some of the

commodities that are arriving in Britain from these new global trading networks. Well, how do you take your coffee, Dan? Do you take it with sugar or just black? I take it with sugar. Well, there you go. That's something coming from the Caribbean, which was created on the back of the slave trade in the 16th century. But the coffee itself was another import. Tea, another one. But the huge interest in spices, nobody wanted bland mutton anymore. The English might have made their money in the Middle Ages on wool and mutton. But now you had spices coming from the East, things like nutmeg and peppers. Imagine food without pepper. The holes filled with these things, they were almost like a kind of powdered gold, because for the space they took up in a barrel, you could get an awful lot of money for them. But the trouble, of course, was moving them all the way around the world, from the East Indies, from China, from India to England. So it created a need for that.

At the same time, people like Raleigh, they were bringing back people, some of the indigenous people from the Americas or elsewhere. And this was the time when they were painted and feted in court. I'm sure they didn't really savor being taken back to a freezing cold London from their places of origin. But it's a way of opening the world's eyes to what was going on there, to other civilizations. It was all a period where the world was gradually being brought together through exploration, trade and cartography. For the first time in this Elizabethan era, largely thanks to these sea dogs was this whole idea of England being part of a wider world. How did Spain react, Angus, to these pesky sea dogs plundering their coastal cities, stealing ships, acts of piracy, muscling on their trade.

What happened? There were complaints from the Spanish ambassador. There was a ramping up of tension with the Spanish. They wanted a monopoly of trade with the Far East, and they were really not very pleased that the English were essentially muscling in. That presumably leads up to, well, one of the most famous episodes in English history, the Spanish Armada of 1588. There were other causes as well, but the interloping was a big part of the reason why King Philip decided to send that massive fleet to conquer England. The Spanish Armada, the reasons behind it is partly this, almost this continual Cold War between England and Spain. And most of it was driven by religion and the desire of Spain to restore England to the realm of the Catholic kingdoms of Europe. And the whole problem was partly

religious rivalry, but also this whole trade thing, this interloping in the new world, and above all, meddling in the affairs of state in Europe by England. They were at war with the Dutch. The Dutch had rebelled against the Spanish Empire. And there was this long running fight between the two sides. And the English were supporting the Dutch, giving them weapons, the two sides. And the English were supporting the Dutch, giving them weapons, arms, volunteers were fighting with the Dutch. And it got to the stage, by the time of Drake's great expedition of 1585-1586, the two were very much at war with each other. Spain and England, it just hadn't really been declared yet. So the Spanish Armada was a way of, with the blessing of the Pope and with the support of other Catholic countries, Spain was going to deal with this problem once and for all. The impetus was

very much this desire to deal with Elizabeth, her pesky sea dogs, and their meddling in Spanish power. But above all, it was a religious thing. Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher, they all come together to fight the Spanish Armada in that long running campaign, right along the coast, south coast of England, from Cornwall to Kent, and then a fire ship attack in Calais and a great battle off the coast at Graveline. They're all there. They are. And of course, they all rise to the occasion and are affected as heroes. And the whole idea of the Sea Dog is based largely on the performance in the Armada. But they behaved in different ways. While Hawkins, he established the English fleet, as it were. He built up the Royal Fleet of really powerful, small, well-gunned ships, which transformed the way naval warfare was fought.

You could defeat ships through gunnery. The Spanish weren't really geared up for that. They were all about firing one broadside and boarding. And the English sort of kept away, kept the distance and just shot. And this was a groundbreaking change in naval warfare. But above all, people like Drake, he was still a pirate. He spent half of the time trying to pick out Spanish ships and attack them. And he was censured afterwards for pursuing his own agenda rather than Queen Elizabeth's agenda. It all came together, but there was a bit of bad feeling when some of these sea dogs kind of went off in a limb and tried to fill their own holes with plunder

rather than do the bidding of the queen. It's all too easy in the past to talk about the impressive attributes of the sea dogs. And today we're having a bit of a reckoning and we are reminding ourselves that when we talk about trade, human beings, enslaved human beings, were a hugely important part of that trade and the misery inflicted on millions of people

over the coming centuries. Well, it's a legacy of this period. Well, it is. If you see Sir John Hawkins as a huge, immense figure in the creation of the English Navy and essentially creating the modern Navy as we know it through his shipbuilding initiative in the Elizabethan era, he was a man who made his money on slave trading to start with. His whole idea of breaking the Spanish monopoly in the Elizabethan era, he was a man who made his money on slave trading to start with. His whole idea of breaking the Spanish monopoly in the New World was by transporting slaves from West Africa into Spanish colonies. So these sea dogs, not all of them, but some of them made a lot of their money on slavery and established their name, and they cut their teeth on the slave trade. So

there's always that lurking at the back of any glorification of the Elizabethan sea dogs. By the time Elizabeth I dies in 1603, has had created this new idea of England and its role in the world as a trading nation, as a maritime power. And to some extent, this played its part in the creation of the East India Company, which would actually come just after her. But that slowly developed into probably the biggest trading company of the age to come. So that couldn't have happened without Drake, Hawkins, Raleigh, and all those Elizabethan sea dogs. So England's great, and then Britain's great financial explosion through trade. And then the creation of the British Empire, essentially, couldn't have happened without Drake and Hawkins.

This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. The England Elizabeth I left was prosperous, but many of the cracks that she'd managed to paper over were starting to show. And when her cousin James VI of Scotland, James I of England, took over the throne, he inherited a country with pretty serious religious

and political problems. Henry VIII's break with Rome to create a new independent church had obviously been his solution to a very specific problem, is he couldn't have a son. He wanted to get rid of his wife and marry someone else. But it had enormous and far-reaching consequences. It splintered the religious and political landscape right across the country. Some people accepted Protestantism as a new way of life, others clung to Catholicism. These people faced persecution. And on the fringes, as often happens in times of great turmoil, extreme groups on both sides began to emerge. Calvinists, Plymouth Brethren, Presbyterians, and of course the Catholic conspirators behind the infamous gunpowder plot, a failed, hugely ambitious assassination attempt against James I in 1605.

In fact, James had slightly loosened the laws against Catholicism. Under Elizabeth I, the people of England had been required by law to attend her Protestant Mass and recognise her as head of church and state, or potentially face execution. But James had been more moderate with Catholics, a little bit tolerant. As long as people kept their views to themselves and didn't cause trouble, it was sort of fine by him. But that slightly more relaxed attitude didn't lower the temperature. When his son Charles I took the throne in 1625, he outraged extreme Protestant, so-called Puritanical groups when he married Henrietta Maria, a Catholic in the first year of his reign. As a ruler, he frustrated, well, pretty much

everybody. He believed that he had been given the divine right to rule by God, i.e. he pretty much got to decide everything. He didn't like working with Parliament. He dissolved it whenever he came up against opposition and tried to rule alone as often as he could. In his first four years as king, he dissolved Parliament three times and one of those dissolutions lasted 11 years. He would only recall Parliament when he ran out of money. He needed to raise funds because of expensive foreign wars. He lost more popular support when he drained the Fens, a forest area spanning the east of England as a way to acquire more land and make more money from taxes, the local villagers lost their traditional means of livelihood, their wildfowling and fishing,

as strangers came in to farm the arable land. In 1637, he got in big trouble over, you guessed it, religion. He attempted to introduce a new prayer book to Scotland, which enraged Scottish Puritans and was in some ways the final nail in the coffin. Those so-called Scottish Covenanters invaded the north of England in 1640. Charles was in urgent need of money to fight them, but with a dissolved Parliament he wasn't able to raise any taxes. Reluctantly he recalled Parliament to raise money, but in exchange for their support and cash,

they gave him a list of demands for reform. It was called the Grand Remonstrance. Charles refused to agree to the terms, and in January 1642 he stormed into Parliament to try and arrest some of the MPs behind it. They'd been warned ahead of his arrival and escaped on the River Thames. They'd been warned ahead of his arrival and escaped on the River Thames. Londoners were furious. It became too hot for the king to stay there. He fled from his capital. That was the last time any monarchers burst into the House of Commons. By August, Charles had grown fed up.

He declared war on his parliament. It was the royalists, supporters of the king, against the parliamentarians, some of whom wanted to get rid of the monarchy once and for all. The battles that ensued are some of the bloodiest ever to have taken place on English soil. An age of civil wars had begun. You can probably hear the sound of the wind in the trees, oak leaves rustling on an ancient branch. Well, I'm at Boskable House, and that, my friends, is the Royal Oak you can hear. It's actually not the Royal Oak, it's the son of the Royal Oak, descended from that legendary oak tree that became the life-saving hiding place of King Charles I's son,

also slightly unhelpfully called Charles, during one of the final clashes of the Civil Wars, which raged from 1642 to 1651. So now I'm going to enter the house and we can explore just how Charles's son, Charles, the man who would be king, ended up stuck up a tree. So I'm going into Boscable House now. It is unbelievably beautiful. It's a white painted brick with some lovely dark oak beams latticed throughout it.

A classic house like you might find in Shropshire from the 17th century. I'm just coming in now. Nice tiled floor, lovely old oak beams holding up the roof, probably relatives of the Royal Oak. And as we come in here, let me take you back to that cold January day. January the 30th, 1649. After the major bout of ferocious fighting in the Civil War, when a crowd of thousands gathered at Whitehall in London to see the killing of a king. King Charles I was to be executed.

The war between him and parliamentary forces had been raging for seven years and at its end he'd been found guilty of treason. He'd been sentenced to death by his most bitter implacable enemies. During the war the parliamentarians had been described as roundheads. That was their nickname because they had closely cropped haircuts that aimed to distinguish them from the sort of slightly more louche king supporters who wore their hair down in flowing locks and referred to themselves as cavaliers. Historians now think the Civil War is the bloodiest war per capita in recorded British history. The battles themselves cost thousands of lives.

The Royalists had made a strong start, and their cavalry was particularly impressive. But new leadership on the Parliament side emerged. Perhaps most famously, Oliver Cromwell, who was a fanatical Puritan. He was, in fact, a military genius, a great cavalryman. puritan, he was in fact a military genius, a great cavalryman, and at battles such as the one fought at Naseby, he turned the tide of the war. In 1646, Charles had been defeated. He was imprisoned by Cromwell, who was under house arrest in the old Tudor royal apartments at Hampton Court Palace, but he escaped. He was recaptured, and this time he was held under less luxurious conditions, a prisoner at Carisbrook Castle on the Isle of Wight.

But Charles Stuart was not a man to compromise. He refused to accept the reality of his position. He refused to accept defeat and leading figures on the parliamentarian side, decided they had no alternative but to kill him. On the evening of the 29th of January, 1649, Charles said goodbye to three of his children. He told the two youngest not to cry and to obey their elder brother, Charles, who, upon his death, he believed, would become the lawful, divinely ordained ruler

of England, Scotland and Ireland. The next day, he dressed for the icy weather. He asked for a thick shirt so that he wouldn't be seen to shiver. He didn't want anyone thinking he was quaking with fear. As he stepped forward onto the scaffold built outside the banqueting house on Whitehall, he looked out on the crowds and he made a short speech that was pretty much lost on the wind. But it's quite the sight. The grand banqueting house that he'd had commissioned, the scaffold hung with black cloth. At the centre of the platform there was a so-called quartering block. It was used for

dismembering traitors. There was also a razor-sharp axe. Two men in masks stood to attention. The king lowered his neck to the block. After a little pause, he stretched out his hand to indicate that he was ready. The executioner severed his head in one clean blow. England no longer had a de facto monarch, for the first time in centuries. For the royalists, though, Charles I's son, Charles, became rightful king the minute his father's head fell into the basket. And Charles II did what he could to assert his right to the throne. He went to Scotland and the north to raise an army. After tedious negotiations, he gathered a few supporters and they headed south

to face the parliamentarians and regain the throne. But he was very quickly defeated by a superior army of parliamentarian veterans at the Battle of Worcester on the 3rd of September 1651. The loss made it very clear that the Stuart family had a huge uphill battle to fight if they were going to regain the throne. The forces of the Republic were dominant under their leader, Oliver Cromwell. So after that battle, Charles was a fugitive. He escaped northward, knowing he'd have to hide lest he face the same fate as his father. Two brothers, Penderells, they were Catholics and they were royalists. They accompanied Charles from safe house to safe house before they arrived here on an estate where they worked,

at Boscoble House. They'd walked for days. They'd barely slept. Charles was filthy. He was hungry. He was dirty. He walked into this room, which I'm entering now. It's a beautiful oak panel room, quite dark.

The blinds drawn as if someone's still hiding out in here. There's a beautiful oak panelled room, quite dark. The blinds drawn as if someone's still hiding out in here. There's a fire in the hearth. English Heritage have left a big pair of boots out to reflect the fact that Charles kicked his boots off in front of the fire in an attempt to dry them off. But even here, he still couldn't find peace. The area was crawling with parliamentarians looking for him. So Charles was ushered back out of the house and he was sent to hide in an oak tree, which I'm climbing the stairs now, and I can see several oak trees out of the window. There was a dense bit of forest back there in the 17th century. And one of those oaks is the descendant, as I mentioned, of the original oak tree in which Charles hid.

There it is, looking beautiful, almost fluorescent green leaves at this early point in spring. He sat in that tree all day, apparently, hiding away his parliamentarian troops with their dogs searched the forest floor beneath him. And that night he was invited back into the house. He had a hearty meal and they hid him up these stairs here, these brilliant rickety stairs.

I'm just climbing now to the attic and because this house had been built and owned by Catholics they'd got a few priest holes in it. Now priest holes are where you hide particularly Jesuit priests from the Protestant authorities who were searching for them. I'm looking to that priest hole now, the entrance is pretty skinny. He must have been a bit of a snake hip, our Charles. He was about six foot two but he slid in there okay. The man who would be king. The man who spent his early years on soft mattresses in royal palaces, having his every whim catered to. He spent the night curled up in a dark priest hole in an attic. The following day, he came back down these stairs and the good old Penderel brothers escorted him eastwards

to a place called Moseley Old Hall for the next stage of his journey. He actually disguised himself as a servant of a local royalist gentlewoman, and eventually made his way to Shoreham-on-Sea in Sussex, and he boarded a merchant ship now for Rouen, and then he went to Paris. And there, you can imagine, he breathed a sigh of relief. The parliamentarians again had been victorious. Charles, their opponent, had been run out of the country in ignominy. Oliver Cromwell

took over as Lord Protector and ruled as a monarch in all but name. It's pretty commonly said that life was pretty miserable for everyone under Cromwell, unless you were a passionate hardcore Puritan. They imposed strict rules. They didn't believe in pointless enjoyment. Who does? Pubs were shut. Theatres were shut. Sports were banned. Kids playing football could be whipped. And if you swore a lot, you'd go to prison. You get the idea. And yes, they did ban the celebration of Christmas. So it's not wholly surprising that when Cromwell died, he was the glue holding the whole thing together. His son Richard proved pretty incompetent, and I don't think his heart was ever in it. He resigned. Leading soldiers and Parliament invited Charles II to return from exile

and take over again. The monarch was back. People celebrated. Pubs reopened. Charles was very keen to tell everyone about his daring escape and exploits. And so as those Pubs reopened. Charles was very keen to tell everyone about his daring escape and exploits. And so as those pubs reopened, the obvious name for them was the Royal Oak. Well, all that talk of pubs has made me think we should probably head to a pub. We've come to an end of a wonderful day here. Day three is almost over. I'm back in the garden at Bosco Bell House. Oh, the sun is looking so beautiful. There's a bit of wisteria hanging on a building over there. The old stables look so inviting. It's a really quaint, a wonderful scene. And it occurs to me that this England is very different to the next England I'm

going to be visiting because I'm off to the 18th century, the great Georgian age, where I'm going to leave this bucolic country landscape behind and head to the new cities, towns and factories of the Industrial Revolution. When we're talking about that, we're going to be talking about satire, high culture and the slave trade. We're moving slowly from an era where kings routinely had to fight for their thrones, although there was a little bit of that, and we're moving to a point where wars will be fought for trade, for commodities, for colonies, right across the globe. And England will establish itself

through that period as a superpower, the most powerful navy in the world. Combining with its northern neighbour Scotland, Britain will conquer and colonise something like a quarter of the Earth's surface. Britain's imperial, economic and military might would have enormous consequences, not just in Britain, but for people living all over the world. So join me tomorrow as I head to the West Midlands,

just to the west of Birmingham for our international listeners. It's the heart of the Industrial Revolution. This was an area which 200 years ago would have seen endless plumes of smoke rising from thousands of ironworking foundries and forges. You've been listening to My Story of England. Remember to leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts or get in touch with the HistoryHit team at ds.hh.historyhit.com. This episode was produced by Marianna Desforges and edited by Dougal Patmore. See you tomorrow. This is History's Heroes.

People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts.