Dan Snow's History Hit - Ivan the Terrible

Episode Date: August 29, 2023

The name Ivan the Terrible is synonymous with brutality and ruthlessness. While Western scholars insist that the first crowned Tsar of all Russia did create a policy of mass repression and execution, others claim Ivan’s name has been tarnished by Western travellers and writers. How then should his complex and fascinating personality be understood?  In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb examines the evidence with Dr. Charles Halperin, one of the world's foremost historians of Ivan the Terrible.This episode was edited by Joseph Knight and produced by Rob Weinberg.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world-renowned historians like Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Matt Lewis, Tristan Hughes and more. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code DANSNOW. Download the app or sign up here.We'd love to hear from you! 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, Ivan the Terrible. Such a fascinating figure in Russian history, the time has come for a podcast on Ivan the Terrible. You're going to be hearing from Professor Svetlana Lipscomb. This is an episode from our sibling podcast, Not Just the Tudors. Enjoy. Ivan the Terrible, or more properly Ivan, is a name that conjures up brutality and ruthlessness in the popular imagination. Over 60 million people have watched a video on YouTube, which is one of the epic rap battles of history in which Ivan boasts lyrically of his violence, including the death of his own son. More seriously, Western scholars insist that Ivan did create the aprashnima, a policy of mass

repression and execution. But in 2016, the Russian city of Ariyal inaugurated the first ever monument to the Tsar, celebrating how he protected his people and the Orthodox faith from enemies and expanded the country's frontiers. Russia's culture minister at the time argued that Ivan's violence was a myth, his name having been tarnished by Western travellers and writers. Representations of Ivan Vassilievich, Grand Prince of Moscow and Sovereign of all Russia from 1533 and Tsar Ivan IV from 1547 are evidently not clear-cut. How then should we tell his story? A wise place to start is by challenging simple binaries of good and evil and instead seeking to cast light on a man who was both complex and fascinating. To do that, I'm joined by Dr. Charles Halperin from Indiana, the USA.

He's the author of many titles on Russian history, including Russia and the Golden Horde, The Mongol Impact on Medieval Russian History, Ivan the Terrible in Russian Historical Memory Since 1991, and most recently, Ivan the Terrible, Free to Reward and Free to Punish, which was published in 2019 by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Dr. Halperin, welcome to Not Just the Tudors. Delighted to have you joining us. I've longed to find somebody to talk about this period, and I'm fascinated with Ivan the

Terrible, and the fact that we get a chance to talk about him today is really wonderful. Thank you. My pleasure. Can we start with some sense of context? I suppose the first thing to think about is whether the Russia we're talking about in the 16th century is geographically different to the Russia we talk about today. Can you give us a sense of the geography? The area that Ivan ruled is still part of Russia, but most of what we think of as Russia was not yet conquered by Muscovy, as foreigners, Europeans called it in the 16th century. Muscovy, as foreigners, Europeans called it in the 16th century. It was only really just the close of Ivan the Terrible's reign that the Russians intruded into Siberia, which is a huge

geographic expanse. Crimea does not become part of Russia until the late 18th century. The other areas that were in the process of being conquered or would be conquered in the 17th century are mostly now part of Ukraine, or they should be part of Ukraine, and part of Belarus. But the heartland, the Mesopotamia of the Volga and Oka rivers, which is the core of the Muscovite state, was ruled by Ivan. He inherited it. was ruled by Ivan. He inherited it. His conquests extended Russia down the Volga to Kazan, which is still part of Russia. So he is responsible for that Southeast expansion. But his attempt to conquer to the West, to what is now Estonia and Latvia, failed. And that area did not become part of Russia until Peter the Great, which is over a century later. Russia's geographic boundaries were almost always in the state of constant flux.

What was government and society like in Russia on the eve of Ivan coming to power? One of the characteristic features of 16th century Muscovite history is that nobody agrees with anybody else about anything. In my terminology, Muscovy was, of course, a hereditary monarchy, which is the one thing it has in common with nearly everyone else in Europe. To what extent it was an autocracy, that is a state in which the rule had unlimited authority, is a matter of considerable discussion. On the one hand, some people think that Muscovy was governed by a hegemonic state which controlled everything. But I think there is little question but that it couldn't be because

it simply lacked the technology and communications and transportation to pull it off. There's another theory of Muscovy which argues that sometimes unlike Europe to the west of Muscovite borders, it was ruled collegially, that is by the Tsar and the aristocracy together. This goes back to the cliche that early modern nation states were built by the ruler in alliance with the bourgeoisie against the aristocracy. The current thinking devolves upon a question to which there is, as I say, no consensus. And that is the question of Russian exceptionalism. Was Russia like Europe in the 16th century or completely different than Europe in the 16th century. To some Europeans, Muscovy is barbaric. It's like the Ottoman Empire.

Most certainly, it is not a constitutional monarchy. Never having experienced Roman law, how could it possibly be? It's governed largely by what it calls custom, which is also common to the West, of course. The most radical changes can be justified as being a continuation of the past. That's also not a distinguishing feature of Russia in the 16th century. But the question is, what was really going on? And the answer is, we may or may not know, but we certainly don't agree on what we know. Trying to place Russia within the context of Europe, in most cases, fails at the evidentiary level. The volume of sources and the nature of the sources we have are so different that drawing lines between them and what's going on in Europe

is very difficult. 16th century Muscovy, again, did not derive from the Roman Empire, had no direct exposure to the Italian Renaissance in Latin or Greek, and in the 16th century had no abstract political theory. The only political theory, so to speak, is basically religious. The ruler is supposed to be pious, but the ruler answers to God, not to some institution, either of the aristocracy or of class as a whole. The question is, what is the custom and what is the exception? Russian historians do not agree on whether Ivan himself is the exception. That is, is the level of cruelty that he imposed the norm for Russian history, which is what the advocates of Russia as a totalitarian state insist on? Or is Ivan the Terrible the exception to muscified history, where rulers usually consulted? Of course, consulting can be a formality or it can be a reality. And the reality is in most

of Europe, the same is also true. I mean, Henry VIII can pretend to listen to Parliament, though he cannot pretend to listen to Parliament. And whether he says he's listening doesn't always mean he's listening or not. So that the very definition of Muscovite political culture is contested. I happen to think the solution is that it's both, that it's both collegial and authoritarian in an ever-changing flux. So Ivan became Grand Prince of Moscow and Sovereign of all Russia in 1533 after the death of his father. He was just three years old. The first 13 years of his rule are as a minor. As we know, a minority is often a dangerous time. And these early years were very tumultuous.

I want to know how you think this period in which his mother died and you've got nobles vying for control shaped him as a person. And do you see his coming of age and his coronation in 1547 as marking a new era? The best approach, but also the most difficult in terms of Ivan, is to see his entire reign as evolutionary. One of the great fallacies of many of the treatments of his reign is that they assume he was born a sadistic tyrant. Well, no three-year-old is a sadistic tyrant, but the periodization usually runs that Ivan's minority runs to 1547 when he's crowned,

and that the period of the good Ivan, when he's listening to his good advisors, runs to about 1564, although it's problematic between 1560 and 1564. And then at 1564, he begins the path to mass terror. The problem is that there are indications in his behavior when he's supposedly a good guy of the kind of Ivan that we associate with the bad Ivan. For example, I think one of the major traits of Ivan's character politically, which is typical for 16th century Europe, is that the ruler proves how much power he has by acting arbitrarily, by acting as if he does not need to explain why he's doing what he's doing. He's not answerable. Usually this means doing something negative towards his members of the elite.

Why did he put so-and-so in jail? I have the right to put anybody I want in jail. Don't talk to me. Ivan starts doing that before 1547. He's still in minority and he's still ordering executions or various other severe penalties, like cutting someone's tongue for saying the wrong thing. And yet, during the period when he's supposedly the greatest autocratic tyrant, he occasionally consults people and institutes new reforms, so that at the very least, the periodization is approximate. So that at the very least, the periodization is approximate. So even if we're not to think about them in terms of period-specific behavior, nevertheless,

our childhoods are formative to our characters in many ways. And so I wonder if you have a sense from your reading of the evidence how those early years affected him. Well, the two theories are that the first period didn't affect him. It only happened because he was not yet old enough and experienced enough to put an end to it. And the other theory is that he drew the conclusion that cooperating with people just didn't get the job done. And the only way he could accomplish what he wanted to accomplish

was by coercion. Ivan did not necessarily learn one lesson from what happened during the period of reforms. What strikes me most in the contrast between the late 1540s to 1550s and the middle 1560s through the rest of his reign is something that's not very tangible, but it's what I would call mood. And I think that Ivan and Muscovy shared the same mood at the same time. And the mood during the 1550s and 1560s is optimistic. You don't undertake reforms and expansion unless you're confident of your ability to succeed. And the mood in the latter part of his reign gets seriously depressed.

And some of the extremism is probably Yvonne's frustration at the change. The great cultural achievements of Yvonne's reign all take place during the 1550s and early 1560s. Then either the money runs out, or the energy runs out, or in my terms, you would say the optimism runs out. Tell me about what those cultural developments were in the 1550s, in the years immediately after his coronation. Well, the most well-known achievement is the construction of St. Basil's Cathedral. It is, in terms of its architecture, unique in terms of its grandeur. It is a statement of success, of self-conscious belief that you are a pious state and blessed by

God. In Ivan's coronation, it is always emphasized, Ivan is selected by God, approved by God, and rules by God's will. There's also other construction of other cathedrals and construction in monasteries. Those are great literary achievements. These are not transmutable because they're not translated. The most famous is unfinished. It is something called the Illustrated Chronicle Compilation. If you're planning like a 12-volume manuscript work covering all of world history and all of Russian history with 10,000 miniature illustrations,

you've got to be pretty confident you can sustain the effort. And they started that during the 1550s, and it peters out, stops, and it's never finished. This also directly affects our problems understanding Ivan's reign, because it and other chronicle endeavors all end in about 1563. And for the rest of Ivan's reign, we have to rely upon much less extensive documentation. Of course, at the time, early modern Europe is in the grip of the Protestant and then counter-reformation. And if we think about domestic policy in that first part of Ivan's reign, whilst we have that evidence that you've mentioned, do we see the Russian Orthodox Church facing any similar challenges? And do we know whether Ivan is a reformer or a conservative in this point of time in religious terms?

There is a somewhat increase in accusations of heresy. And there are numerous scholars who legitimately believe that these were influenced by Protestants. Whether these people were even heretics is open to debate. Why? Because we don't have any written works by them. What we know about them almost entirely is what they were accused of by their enemies. And people persecuting heretics are not necessarily known for their truthfulness. What we can say, although again, there are probably some exceptions, is that such heresy did not rise to the level of popular dissemination of the Reformation. The first mass contrary religious movement in Russian history is in 17th century, the old belief. Nevertheless, even in terms of size, a old belief. Nevertheless, even in terms of size, a modest heretical movement could have strong consequences, particularly if it's infected people who are part of the upper echelons of society. A dozen peasants doing something means

nothing. A dozen clerics doing something is something else. Muscovy, Russia is completely unlike everywhere else in Europe. if you have to ask the question and people disagree whether the ruler was literate. I can't think of anyone in Eastern or Western Europe in the 16th century about whom you would not have sufficient evidence to know whether they're literate or not. Well, there's a case that Ivan was not literate. If we're trying to judge what Ivan thinks about something, if he's illiterate, we've got a real problem because the texts written in his name are not his texts. We can argue that from his behavior, he was conservative. That is, at the very least, he supports repression of accused heretics by the Russian Orthodox Church, which, since it's a

religious institution, which does not have an institutional inquisition, relies upon secular authority for physical force. When Ivan's troops conquer part of Livonia, they encounter an accused and convicted heretic from Muscovy, who had successfully skipped the border. He's burned at the stake. This was the secular arm carrying out the wishes of the ecclesiastical arm. Ivan, on the other hand, shows some characteristics, again, dependent a little bit upon whether he can read and write, which indicate familiarity with theology and a curiosity which is not always hostile, but mostly hostile towards other forms of Christianity, which the Russian Orthodox Church disapproved of. He has no problem dealing with some Protestants.

He has no problem with the English being Anglicans. When he can use Protestantism as a political propaganda, when he's invading Lutherans in Estonia, he plays that card full tilt. He can be very tolerant of Muslims who enter his service. When he deals with Muslims, he emphasizes, there are Muslims in my service. I treat them well. They can practice their faith. You have no reason to be angry at me. He uses this particularly towards the Ottoman Empire, which he is probably terrified. After all, the strongest military power in Europe in the 16th century. He sometimes uses it in dealing with Tatar groups, just trying to avoid the annoyance of having to deal with them

militarily. On the other hand, after conquering Kazan, he writes the King of Poland, the Holy Roman Emperor, the Pope, triumph of Christianity over the crescent, we've killed all those filthy, infidel Muslims. Now, when is he being sincere? Well, both times, of course. We know that Ivan's lifestyle is highly religious. He probably attends the liturgy almost every day. He observes all the fasts. He honors all the saints. He makes donations to monasteries, et cetera, et cetera. But if you ask me, what does he believe the interest? How are we supposed to know? Neither for Ivan nor for anyone else in 16th century Russia do we have any private papers at all. No memoirs, no autobiographies, no personal correspondence. Who do you trust? One of the most significant documents which people argue about is the correspondence between Ivan

and an aristocrat who skipped the border and then supposedly corresponded with him and said, you're a filthy tyrant. He responds, you're doomed to hell because I'm chosen by God. The debate is largely in religious terms, who's a good ruler, who's a good advisor. But the question is, of course, are they authentic? If they're not, they don't tell us anything about Ivan. I've argued what may or may not be considered the middle ground. The question is not, does Ivan believe this? Because if we believe that, he was extremely literate in religious texts. He knows scripture, he knows patristics. Like everyone else in religious polemics, he finds what he wants in them, but let that pass. That pretty much like every other ruler I've read a little bit about in 16th century Europe, the man's a congenital liar.

If he's a congenital liar, why are you bothering to ask what does he really believe? I mean, you're dealing with a mass murderer. What do you expect? I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Janaga. To be continued... 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. Now, would you say we should take a similar approach to thinking about his foreign policy? Because you've mentioned the relationship or the front, I suppose, in Livonia, present-day Latvia and Estonia, and you've mentioned the Tatar, so that's to the southeast and south. Should we regard Ivan as, I suppose, both aggressive and defensive when it comes to foreign policy? Well, as always, you have to draw distinctions.

On the one hand, we have the idea that Ivan was continuing the grand Russian imperialist aggressiveness that begins with his grandfather and hasn't ended to this day. Unfortunately, that kind of theory leaves out all of Russian history, which means there's nothing to talk about. Definitely, imperialist expansion to the south and southeast against the Tatars has a defensive element. As they are mutual raids both ways, you can argue, as I would, that conquest was not obligatory. It would have been possible for him to put his energy into building better

defensive military means. But there is something about a defensive nature there. Livonia was not a military threat, period. That is an aggressive war. Again, we know what he said the motives were. We know what other people said his motives were. Probably they're a mixture of it. He was not trying to get a window on the West like Peter the Great. That's anachronistic. Ivan's entire worldview was totally incompatible with Peter's view as an enlightened monarch of the early 18th century. I think there's a strong economic motive. He wants to cut out the German middlemen who were taking some of the profits he wants from foreign trade. On the other hand, people argue he wasn't interested in trade at all.

This is entirely political. He's trying to make himself look good. What war can be attributed to only one motive? But the contrast between the expansion to the West and the expansion to the South and East, I think, is valid. No one needs to argue that Ivan was a consistent ruler. The expansion to Siberia was accidental. It was neither defensive nor aggressive. It's just a couple of Cossacks got lucky. What you have to realize is policy was set at the center

by the same people. And the fact that they would deal differently with different sectors of foreign policy indicates their pragmatism. And I suppose that is part of your answer, if we were to think about the relationship with the English. Because in 1551, we have, under Edward VI, the Muscovy Company, establishing relations between Russia and England. We have stories about the efforts of Richard Chancellor and Hugh Willoughby and others making the journey from England. The question often is, what do we make of Ivan's role in here? Do we think he's making the partnership for trade purposes or because he needs allies against the Russian nobility? What do you think was going on there? Trade between England and Muscovy was much more important to England than it was to Russia.

The Russians weren't against it, but they know by establishing a monopoly, the goal of the English is to rip them off. Ivan was more than smart enough to do that. Why does he put up with it? Ivan does not have a Baltic fleet, and he will go to whatever lengths are necessary to try to persuade the English fleet to try to take out his enemies. One of his main blind spots is he never quite realized the English are never going to do that. The English can make much more money not taking sides in Ivan's wars, and they're not about to give that up. Moreover, the English, the Dutch, and to some extent, the French know exactly what

they're doing. They refuse to let their goods be transported in Russian ships. They want to stop Ivan from getting a Baltic fleet because they know it's their ace in the hole. So from Ivan's point of view, I would suspect the strategic military element is more important. Although he benefits from and has no problem with the trade. But when he's unhappy with Elizabeth refusing to give him military aid, what does he do? He shuts down the Muscovy Company. This kind of stuff continues in the 17th century. When the Russians react to the execution of Charles I, they say, we will not trade with regicides. Well, if they wanted to, they'd have traded with regicides. It's an excuse to shut down the English monopoly.

Let's say they've got ulterior motives. That doesn't change. Too many attempts of analyzing Ivan try to make him only one thing at one time. He's either all good or all bad. It's much more productive to view Ivan as a complex, indeed contradictory, mixture of virtues and vices, which are in constant combat with each other. A man who I think was the smartest politician in Russia at the time, if he had aristocratic opponents, and I suspect he had some, fewer than he executed, but never mind, he outplays them hands down. But his political motives are always a mixture, and he can play whatever card he wants, which he thinks fits. So you've pointed out the problems of periodization,

that historians have traditionally viewed his reign in two halves, and the second half starting from 1564 being when it takes a sinister turn and when the title, The Terrible, becomes more fitting. Could we have a think about the hardships that befell Russia during this time that we need to appreciate before we rush to put labels on Ivan? Fortunately, the hardships are very well studied and very well appreciated because we have documentation. We have cadastres conducted primarily to find out who can pay taxes. We indicate depopulation in the countryside in some provinces up to 90%. Mostly, this has been taken literally. 90% of the peasants there either died or left. That the economy is in a severe depression goes beyond doubt. These people

can't pay taxes whether they're alive or not, or whether they're there or not. There's nobody there paying taxes. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Janaga. 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. We would also judge the consequences of the punitive expeditions merely waging war on his own Northwest Russian cities, particularly Novgorod. Not everyone agrees on the level of destruction. We do know that thousands of people were executed, and we do

know there was an enormous amount of looting going on. Whether Novgorod was permanently destroyed is something else. I tend to doubt that. But the level of destruction was very high, it's without question. Proportionally, the group that suffers most is the elite, because they're the ones who are physically in proximity and therefore greatest risk. The percentage of aristocrats by yards executed is a lot higher than the percentage of peasants executed. The flaws in thinking that Ivan was directing his terror only against the elite, this is

not true. They made no social distinctions who they were going to destroy. Know what you expect them to. If he's trying to destroy the economic base of an aristocratic landowner, you wipe out his lands. You burn and loot everything and you kill all the peasants who grow fruit for him. I mean, it's obvious. The level of destruction was very severe. And it's one of the reasons that compels Ivan to accept a humiliating truce with Poland-Lithuanian-Livonian war. How long that depression lasted is another question.

And the purpose of this mass repression, this mass execution, was what, in your view? It was nothing so simple as to destroy the aristocracy. First of all, because he does not destroy the aristocracy. First of all, because he does not destroy the aristocracy. Second of all, because he does not need the accoutrements of the aprishnam to carry out that level of destruction of the elite. I think that the key to the aprishnam is really not political in the normal sense of the word. That is, he did it because he was the only way to get the authority to kill people he wanted to kill. He wanted to create a separate realm for himself, for reasons that have a great deal to do with ideology. That is, you look at the aprishna, he's looking for something more than political power, because he had enough political power to conduct repression without

the aprishna. A separate estate, black clothes, black horses, dog's heads, brooms, a brotherhood, a separate palace in Moscow, which no non-aprishniki are permitted to enter. These are symbolic policies. They have to do with Ivan's desire for autonomy in a sense that my mentor, Michael Chonjavsky, interpreted as Renaissance, that is expression of individual personality. The problem is that whatever Ivan was trying to do personally, he could only accomplish it politically. And By doing it politically, he unleashed destructive forces that threatened to escape his control and partially did escape his control, and that's why he abolished the apriestum. I've argued that it's to do with Ivan trying to avoid the responsibilities of being ruler in the ideological sense.

That is, to be a good ruler, you have to do bad things. You can't prove a theory that abstract. Ivan's statements about the appreachance range from the propagandistic, everybody I executed was guilty, which is a lie, to more or less ignoring reality. When the Polish-Lithuanian delegations asked the Russian diplomats, why is Ivan establishing the Oprichina? They respond without blinking, there is no such thing as the Oprichina in Muscovy, which is remarkable even for a diplomat to be able to lie like that. And we don't have any unfiltered expression from Ivan as to what he thought he was doing and why he thought

he was doing it. You've given us a sense of the complexity of this man. The concluding remarks in your book are just wonderful. If I may quote one phrase, you write, Ivan was sacrilegious, temperamental, stubborn, and cruel. He was also pious, erudite, perspicacious, witty, playful, and philanthropic. He was always flawed and contradictory, in short, human. Do you have a sense then when and why the phrase Ivan the Terrible became to be used as a political football?

It was not during his lifetime. During his lifetime, to describe a ruler in Russian as Grozny really means awe-inspiring. It's a compliment. It's not a pejorative. He does not really acquire that name well until the 17th century, but its real pejorative and negative ambience is a product of the Enlightenment. If you're asking not about the epithet in its later meaning, but about Ivan's image, Ivan's image is forged in his own time by his foreign enemies and his domestic enemies. He is treated as the ultimate evil, and Ivan's image has remained a polemical football ever

since. He was, after all, fighting against Europeans, and his characterization as evil is war propaganda, which is not known for its delicacy. In modern times, certainly second half of the 20th century, historians made quite clear that the epithet Drozdy was not negative in Russia in Ivan's time. This has had no impact whatsoever upon Ivan's image, neither in Russia nor in the West, because it's really how you interpret, number one, his behavior, once you've decided which of his behavior he is responsible for rather than evil advisors. And it's a judgment of his personality. The one thing which I also conveyed in the passage that you quoted is that Ivan has always struck me as the charismatic

ruler. His image as charismatic is embedded in the literature which excoriated him. And he dominates the 16th century in Russia the way Henry VIII dominated England in his own time, the way Elizabeth dominated England in her own time. That is, the extremes of interpretation of his behavior are an extrapolation from the significance we impute to a ruler who was just that impressive and dominating. Finally then, even though Russian archives have been opened following the end of the Cold War, I realize that much since has been reclassified or is difficult to access. And you've talked about some of the problems of not having ego literature, as we call it, autobiographical documentation for this period.

Given this, and given the fact that we have this political football we've just discussed, do you think we will ever be able to arrive at a definitive history of Ivan? No. Although the archives at different periods have been closed to Western observers, Russian historians of Ivan the Terrible have produced scholarly works of a thoroughly admirable quality. Those historians have mined the archives for every ounce of gold they're worth.

A lot of sources have not been published, and certainly their publication will make them available to scholars who will use them to investigate subjects other than those that the Russian historical origins have investigated. But we have a very good idea of the kinds of sources that are to be found. Occasionally, something fluke may crop up, but mostly what we find could be described as more of the same. More diplomatic papers, more charters, more saying slides, to square the circle about Ivan would require finding the kinds of sources that 16th century Russians simply did

not generate. And therefore, we have to resign ourselves to an imperfect understanding of his role. Everything we learn helps. It's not that such research is useless. It's made major discoveries and it will continue to do so. But to hope even for a consensus is probably mislaid. But then again, as long as we agree to disagree professionally, in a professional manner, that's fine. Thank you so much. That's been a really wonderful introduction and the sense of the work that's being done and the debates that exist around this extraordinary character from history. Thank you so much for your time. You're very welcome. You're very welcome.

And thanks to my producer, Rob Weinberg, my researcher, Esther Arnott, and Joseph Knight, who edited this episode. And thanks to you for listening to Not Just the Tudors from History Hit. We're always eager to hear your suggestions for podcast subjects. So drop me a line at notjustthetudors at historyhit.com or

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