Dan Snow's History Hit - How to Survive in Tudor England

Episode Date: February 27, 2024

Life in Tudor England was risky. In addition to the outbreaks of plague, the threat of poverty and the dangers of childbirth, there were social risks - of not fitting in, of social death. How was a person supposed to behave? And what were the dangers involved? In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb finds out about the art of surviving by 'blending in', with teacher and writer Toni Mount, author of How to Survive in Tudor England. This episode was produced by Rob Weinberg.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code DANSNOW sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/We'd love to hear from you- what do you want to hear an episode on? You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. It's that time when we play an episode of a sibling podcast, one of the many podcasts here at the History Hit family. This time, it's not just the Tudors. It isn't just about the Tudors, but there's a lot of Tudors, to be honest, in this podcast. It's 16th century Renaissance history in all its glory and all its wonder. This time, Dan has got an episode that is essential if you're planning on time travelling, if that DeLorean is in your backyard. This is how to survive Tudor England. Life in Tudor England was risky, not just for the wives of Henry VIII, but generally there was plague, there was unrest, there was the dangers of childbirth, and then there were some gentler risks, but no less scary,

perhaps. There were social risks, not fitting in, being cut and never being able to appear at court ever again. How are you supposed to behave? You need to find this stuff out. Luckily, Susanna Lipscomb is here to tell you all about blending in with the teacher and writer, Tony Mount, author of How to Survive in Tudor England. Enjoy. survive in Tudor England. Enjoy. Life in Tudor England was risky. There were the recurrent outbreaks of plague, the threat of poverty and the dangers of childbirth. But there were also slightly less aggressive risks in society. The risk of not fitting in. The risk of social death. We might call these the expectations of Tudor society. Walking the walk and talking the talk. How was a person supposed to behave and what were the dangers involved? To give us an insight into how the well-off tried to blend

into society to survive and hopefully thrive, I'm pleased to welcome teacher and author of both historical fiction and non-fiction, Toni Mount. Toni is the author of The Much-Loved Everyday Life in Medieval London, and today she joins us to discuss her latest book, How to Survive in Tudor England. England. Tony Melton, welcome to Not Just the Tudors. Thank you, Susanna. We are going to be talking today about surviving, or as you call it, blending in, in Tudor England. And I want to start with the important point that your work makes, which is namely that we think of the Tudor era beginning in 1485, but very few people woke up after the Battle of Bosworth and thought, oh, now I'm living in the Tudor period, or woke up on the 1st of January

1500 and thought, now this is the early modern era. Why do you think we should hold this thought in our minds when we think of people in this period? What does it mean in terms of everyday life? I think what we've got to get out of our minds really is the idea that a particular date, a battle, a change of dynasty doesn't really affect everyday life for most people. The change is always gradual. People often ask me, when did the medieval period start and finish? As if I could say, well, on Friday the 15th of January or something. But to me, medieval is a huge period.

I take it from around 450 right up until about 1535, 1540. in 35, 1540, because for me, the watershed end of medieval is really Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries, which changed everything socially for the ordinary person in the street. And the reformation that followed was a real big change, even for the casual passerby. It really did change their lives. You explain that your book is about blending into society at a time of rapid and great change. And obviously the dissolution is part of that. What evidence can we look to if we're looking for this blending in?

How do we know people tried? If you blend in, you're accepted by society. If you don't blend in your other and the Tudors had various terms for that strangers that was anybody who wasn't your family or nay foreigners who, they were people from other countries, and you were regarded with suspicion. If a crime was committed, foreigners, aliens would be those who were suspected. And of course, we know that the Tudors, the monarchy, was pretty paranoid about anything different. They were jolly cum ladies as a royal dynasty in Europe. And I can only think that both Henrys in particular thought that everybody was out to get them. So anyone who didn't blend, who didn't belong, could easily get into trouble.

So that's the purpose of the book. How do I stay under the radar and not come to the notice of authority? And I suppose we might say that fitting in to Tudor society involved walking the walk, talking the talk. So let's talk the talk first of all. How should a gentleman speak in the Tudor age? Were there any social faux pas that one had to avoid? One thing that you have to consider, and this goes right from medieval through the

Georgian period, is that words we use today that are quite minor. For instance, if I say I've got a naughty child, I'm not condemning him. But in Tudor times, if you were naughty, you were not. You were not even to us is a very minor insult could be exaggerated. It would have ability to insult than it has today. Now, today, if we say, oh, he's a right bastard, we might not mean it literally. But if you said it in Tudor times, you were impugning someone and a duel could result. Even quite minor insults could really land you in big trouble. And I suppose if we're keeping with this theme of polite behaviour, I love the section of your book which discusses manners, particularly table manners. Can you separate myth or at least stereotype from reality for us and tell us what happened if your manners weren't up to scratch?

There is a phrase, isn't there, that manners make is man. and that is very much a Tudor idea. Any display of ill manners reduced your status. I dare say that there were lords who got drunk and forgot about manners. There's always going to be people like that but on the whole if you wanted to blend in you best behave yourself at the table and if you're anywhere near lords or royalty you have to be quite a secret really to be on the safe side and that's what

sanctuary laws were about. Sanctuary laws were really brought in so that in the street you could identify who was a lord to whom you should make way and take your hat off if you were a male, and those who should do the same to you and clothes were your badge of status. That's very interesting. So the point of these laws, which dictate who can wear what, is largely about trying to enforce social hierarchy, but not simply for the purposes of people looking like they're fitting into their rank of society, but so that other people know how to respond to them.

So it's about categorisation, it's about clarity, clear visual distinction between those of a low social status and those who are the elite. Yes, very much. It also saved arguments. If you're in the street, you're wearing white fox fur, shall we say. You are probably noble or at least higher gentry. Any lesser person would step aside for you in the street and treat you with respect.

So it stopped arguments about who should step aside for whom. If a nobleman who'd fallen on half times met with a wealthy merchant, in theory the merchant should sigh, but if he's wearing danish robes, that's where the trouble starts. That was the main reason for sumptuary laws. And sumptuary laws could also apply to how many courses you were supposed to have at dinner and things like that and how often you could eat meat. That's fascinating and it's certainly true that we do have many disputes in church quite often about who gets to go in which pew because of precedence being such a sort of

important marker of honour and status. With regard to those acts of apparel though, where sumptuary laws were relating to clothing, do we know if the laws were ever actually enforced? Not successfully, no. There were huge problems, especially in that people just ignored them, or that fashion changed so rapidly that new laws would have to be passed in order to keep up with fashion. The introduction of the rough, that happened very abruptly when a Dutch woman came to London and brought with her the method of making starch and how to starch a normal sort of little rough. And people quickly realised that roughs could get bigger and more elaborate and decorative,

but roughs weren't included in the sanctuary laws. So you've got people quite low down the scale. If they could afford it, cause problems. So the rough is a loophole. It's a way around these markers of social status where you can demonstrate wealth without stepping out of line, legally speaking, about what you're allowed to wear. Given that you've started us on a bit of a sense of the clothing of the well-to-do man or woman in Elizabethan England, can you talk us through the rest of this correct apparel, what they would want to wear in order to blend in and hair and makeup as well

please. Tudor fashion changes significantly through time and it depended very much on whether you were a lowly farm worker or a queen's lady waiting or a gentleman courtier. Basically, as with medieval costume, nothing changed underneath. You would wear a shift or sometimes called a chemise. This for women, it would be a fairly plain garment, linen, so all natural fabrics. And the shift would be next to your skin. The whole point is that what you wear on top of your shift is often elaborate or it's wool or if you're rich velvet or silk, something you really cannot wash. silk, something you really cannot wash, so the shift underneath stops you sweating into your posh overgarments. And for men, it would be braids, boxer shorts held up with a drawstring, and a plain long-sleeved shirt.

a plain long sleeve shirt and all the rest would be attached to that or over that so they didn't need to be washed too often and you would change your undergarments rich could change them half dozen times a day but most folk tried to have clean once a week if not daily and then what you are on top of that varied according to your status and fashion for respectable everyday wear for It would be usually a skirt and sort of bodice jacket over the top. An apron was quite normal every day where you'd wear it outside. And you'd keep your hair covered if you were married. You're covering your hair is your advertisement that you're married and of course the idea goes right back to Eve who tempted Adam to stray not by going around stark naked but because of her beautiful hair so unmarried women could show their hair, flaunt it, I'm available.

But day after your wedding, all got to be covered. So that was for ordinary women. People further up the scale were starting to wear hats. And that's particularly Elizabethan times, have an elaborate head with a little hat. They really did change. Gowns tend to go from being flared with Spanish farthingale, which gave a conical shape. But in Elizabeth's reign, you've got the French farthingo,

which could really only be worn by the lectured classes because it was so impractical. So that changed. Headdresses changed. You've got Elizabeth of York and Catherine of Aragon wear English gables, which are pointed with a veil of some sort behind. But then Anne Boleyn brings in a French hood, which is a bit more flattering and softer. And altogether, headwear becomes much more variable,

at least for those who can afford it. Yes, there's a lot of change over time. Although I do think that Maria Haywood has shown that actually there are French hoods in Catherine's wardrobe, even before Anne Boleyn comes in. Perhaps Anne Boleyn is the one who popularises them. But there's a sense that this is a century in which clothing changes really quite dramatically from the very low cut neckline of the 1520s and 30s through to

that enormous rough and very high necked, as you say, completely different shape of dress for both men and women. It's almost a false category to suggest that there is such a thing as Tudor dress because it changes so radically doesn't it? Yes for the men there are so many different styles the sort of very padded shorts look which made them look so they had massive bottoms. Earlier with Henry VIII, they had been padded shoulders to make you look strong. Of course, along with the infamous codpiece, which showed everything. Codpieces, fortunately, go out of style

after Henry's boastful era. Showing everything is what you were supposed to think, but I'm sure that they created an imaginary image rather than anything else. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research.

From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends. Murder. Rebellions. And crusades.

Find out who we really were. By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Let's talk about some more sombre matters. To walk the walk as a gentleman in the Tudor period, one needed education and employment. Why was this a century of opportunity for some people? What new occupations were there? Progress in what we would call science or technology was certainly bringing in the possibility of new things.

In the book, I do an imaginary interview with Thomas Dix, who around the 1560s, his father, Arthur, pretty sure, actually invented the telescope alone into the next century. Galileo claims to have invented it. But we do know he pinched the idea from a Dutchman. And the reason we think it's telescope, Thomas talks about being able to see into other people's houses miles away. So it's a peeping Tom's dream. But he also writes about how the Milky Way is a great swathe of individual stars.

And he wouldn't have been able to see that without a telescope of some sort. And he writes a book about it and actually does a diagram of how he thinks the stars are arranged. So you could start to become a scientist. Mathematicians invent plus, minus and equal signs, which makes writing out equations a lot simpler. There are advances in mapmaking, and this is problematic for your standard academic. academic, they've always believed that Ptolemy, who wrote in the first century AD, knew about geography, but there's no America on his maps. He also wrote that if you sailed as far as the equator, your blood would boil and you would die because of the heat. And yet explorers were discovering

that didn't happen. There were places to the west of the Atlantic that Ptolemy never mentioned. So obviously the ancients didn't have it all correct, and people were daring to think for themselves. The medieval mindset had been that when God created Adam, just 4,000 years BC, Adam knew everything. But after his fall from grace, he gradually forgot things. And in passing on information to the next generation, they forgot even more. So the further you went through history to what was then the present day, the less people knew. That was why medical books, Galen and Poctes and science books by Aristotle were thought to be far more accurate

because they were written a couple of thousand years ago, maybe. So they were obviously closer to Adam and knew a lot more. There was no idea that science and technology could progress. And the Tudors were starting to change that. New ideas were finally being acceptable. And this just led to a complete rethink of everything from geography to poetry to rewriting history. I'm Matt Lewis and I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga and in Gone Medieval we get into the greatest mysteries the gobsmacking details

and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history we're talking Vikings Normans Kings and Popes who were rarely the best of friends murder

rebellions and crusades find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts So what did that mean for the ideal education for a child, typically a male child at this time? It didn't really alter alter children first off had to be told to respect god that was your first thing the second thing was that you had to prepare the child to be a responsible adult and you had to teach the child right from wrong. They were the basics of education. And I'm afraid teaching a child right from wrong involved a lot of beating.

Children were too young to understand that some things were good and some activities were bad. And the only way to instill it in them was to give them a good hiding if they hurt, not even just to keep them in line. And children were actually supposed to be grateful for a good beating. It was past education. education and the Bible supported this idea in saying that a good father disciplines his child and that spare the world is to spoil the child. And small children would be taught the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, in English after the Reformation. Before that it would have been the Pater Nostra, the Ave Maria and various other things. But of course more teaching for the young is done in

English. By the 47th he should be willing to learn in Latin if he's going to continue his education, because grammar schools and university all teaching was Latin. And what new occupations were there available in this period? To some extent, employment opportunities became more limited, especially for those who weren't educated. Employment was dreadful throughout the Tudor period, mainly because landowners had discovered that if you enclosed your fields with hedges and walls and kept sheep, you didn't need to employ a huge workforce. A couple of shepherds with extra hands taking on for lambing and shearing was all you needed. That also meant that more land went over to growing grass for sheep, which meant less for growing crops to feed growing population. Unemployment was rife,

but if you were educated, there were opportunities in new jobs. Printing was really taking off, and of course you had to be literate in both English and possibly Latin. But English was coming into its own. You could now write poetry. A new format was sonnets, the first of which was written towards the end of Henry Yates' reign. The first novels were written, dramas were written, proper plays. There were also things called interludes, which we might call comedy sketches.

called comedy sketches. They would often take place during a full-length drama to allow costume and scenery changes to go on in the background and a merry interlude would keep the audience occupied so that anything that was literate, novels, drama, poetry, you start to get secular music written down. And this happens partly because of the Reformation. The Roman Catholic Church had anthems and various other beautiful pieces of music, but many of the Protestants think music should be plain. Otherwise, it's distracting the congregation from the words. Secular music takes over the idea of beautiful polyphonic harmonies and that sort of thing

so you could be a musician and madrigals coming from Italy the lute becomes more popular and you get a whole load of new instruments. A downside to all this was the threat of poverty, which could and did strike even the rich. Why did poverty become such a major threat in the 16th century, and what types of poverty affected the well-off? As I've mentioned, a lot of landowners were starting to enclose their fields and keep sheep rather than growing food crops. Food became more scarce and therefore expensive. People who would have been farm labourers were

often out of work and once the monasteries were closed there was no fallback. Nothing was put in place of the monasteries as a place to go to beg food and drink and receive alms to help you town to try and get a job. But every town had its preference for local people to get employment. It's what we said at the start about the suspicion of strangers and foreigners. If there was a job going, it would be the local people who would get it. So your incomers cannot get a job. In the bigger towns, there would be guilds. And again, guilds are aimed at keeping the local trades and crafts in the hands of the locals. And their authority's answer to this was to send any vagabonds, as they called them, back to where they'd come from,

which, of course, wasn't an answer. Going back to the parish where you started out, you'd left it because there was no work, and now you were just sent back. Then Henry VIII had money problems and even after the dissolution of the monastery, it didn't entirely solve his cash flow difficulties. So he reduced the value of the coins. For example, the sovereign Henry decided it was now worth £1.02.6

without adding any extra dollars. The silver coinage was debased by adding a bit of tin, a bit of copper, a bit of lead, anything that was going. And it ended up that the English coinage was so bad, so adulterated that foreign merchants didn't even want to accept it. So even if you had a job, the coins in your purse were not worth what they had been. And that also applied to the nobility. It sounds like a good idea to shift your tenants off the land and give it over to sheep. But if there's any problem with sheep and the wool trade on which England relied,

took a dive in the middle of the Tudor period. So money just isn't coming in, and the landlords and nobility have got rid of their tenants. But now the sheep aren't bringing in the same amount of money. There aren't any rents from tenants to pull back on. Possibly, if you do have tenants, they haven't got money to pay you. Landlords are floundering. They're all so short of cash. And that rent might upscale king was in financial difficulties, so the nobility weren't going to be much better off,

which meant the local lord often wanted to marry his children off to the children of London financiers who were still making money. And that, of course, blurred the distinction between lords and commoners. Now, thinking of that class of people who did have money, albeit money that was depreciating in their pockets, I know there were some thrilling, even risky pursuits in terms of leisure at this time. We've done podcasts on football, for example example but I'd like to ask you about indoor fun because it seems that they played a lot of board games and cards is it going too far to say that many Tudors of the upper ranks were inveterate gamblers oh definitely they would bet on two flights on a table which one would take off first. You couldn't do anything without the possibility that it might be gambled on.

Card games come in around the end of the 15th century and there were some very complicated games which were extremely fashionable. But just throwing the dice was a game. You didn't need to bet on anything really and we know that Henry VIII ran up huge debts and any sort of sport required gambling whether it was skittles, bowling, archery, football. And we know that Henry VIII actually had a pair of football boots in his wardrobe. Any sort of sport, you would bet on it.

To finish then, I'd like to return to the mission you set yourself in writing, advising readers how they could blend into society. Was blending in to survive really ever possible at a time of such rapid social, economic, religious and political change? It wouldn't have been easy, that's for certain. Just the face of it made you a suspect. But if you could learn to, as you said, walk the walk, if your language, seemingly, your manners were respectable and you dressed the part, you could fit in. And really, I think fitting in is about the best you could hope to achieve. Staying under the king's radar, not marrying anyone too important,

not being too wealthy or being too poor. You would have to try to be Mr and Mrs average, really, Mr and Mrs average really What's that safe as you can be And keep quiet about your religious beliefs Whichever way they swell Even if you didn't believe You better keep quiet about it Because atheism was a terrible event

The death penalty was the answer to atheism And of course if you believed in Catholicism, just keep quiet. So no great rigid oaks, but instead to be as supple as a reed is the way to survive in Tudor England. Thank you, Tony, so much for your time and your insights. It's been enormous fun. And there's been some wonderful details here that I'm sure have surprised and fascinated people. Thank you so much. Well, thank you for inviting me.

It's been lovely chatting. And thanks to you for listening to not Just the Tudors from History Hit. And also to my researcher, Alice Smith, and my producer, Rob Weinberg. We are always eager to hear from you, so do drop us a line at notjustthetudors at historyhit.com or on X, formerly known as Twitter, at Not Just Tudors. And please remember to follow Not Just the Tudors wherever you get your podcasts, so you get each new episode as soon as it's released. you