Dan Snow's History Hit - Lockdown Learning: The Tudors

Episode Date: January 15, 2021

We're very pleased to bring you this special 'Lockdown Learning' episode of the podcast, featuring the brilliant Dr Anna Whitelock on the Tudor period. Anna is Director of the London Centre for Public History and Heritage and head of history at Royal Holloway, she's written extensively on the Tudors and in this episode she gives us a general view right across the period.Thank you also to Simon Beale, a history teacher in our community, who has put together the accompanying worksheet, you can download the PDF here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1E4XPAhTiIRHnQsqEC6fqkEJSVk81ZWZO/view?usp=sharing

Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's history hit. The UK at the moment is in a pretty tough lockdown. I know lots of other places

in the world are under similar conditions. So we asked history teachers, is there anything we could do to help? Clearly, this podcast is free. We've made our TV channel as cheap as we can for the next two months. So it's free for a month if you use the code POD1, P-O-D-1. And then your second month, just one pound euro or dollars. You can check it out for a couple of months for next to nothing but we asked on the podcast specifically what could we do and a lot of you just replied we could really use some some general surveys of big historical periods and we're going to start where for some reason every syllabus seems to start and end i'm going to start folks with the tudors partly because lots of people ask for the Tudors and secondly because I know the person that knows all about the Tudors I could just pick up the phone and ring this

person because she's a great friend she's great colleague she's a great ally she is Anna Whitelock she is the director of the London Centre for Public History and Heritage she is the head of the history department at Royal Holloway University of. She is an incredibly talented historian and communicator, and it was a huge, huge pleasure to have her on this podcast. She was so game. She rattled through the whole of the Tudors, as you'll hear, in about half an hour. And our community stepped up even more. We also got a worksheet to go with this episode. It's online. The details are in the description of this podcast episode i will also be tweeting out the link twitter.com slash the history guy it was prepared by a great friend

of history at simon beale he's head of history and politics he's a really really busy guy and yet he found the time to do this and share it with us all so a huge thank you to simon beale if anyone wants to get in touch and thank him on twitter he's's at S-P-B-E-A-L-E and send him some love because he deserves it. So please share the worksheet with students. I hope you find this helpful. We're going to be doing one of these lockdown learnings every single Friday. We've got Mark Morris coming on to talk about the Middle Ages. And please let me know if they're useful and what we can do to improve it. In the meantime, everybody, here is Anna Whitelock for an absolute rampage through the Tudors. Enjoy.

Anna Whitelock, thank you very much for coming back on this podcast. I'm very excited to be here, Dan, and I've not got much else to do, you know, given that I can't go out anywhere. You're one of the busiest people I know, lockdown and no lockdown, but today you are riding to the rescue of the nation's students and teachers because you, one of the great authorities on the Tudors, are going to tell us all about the Tudors and you've got like 20 minutes half an hour to do it, so we're going to rattle through. First of all, why does everyone hear about the Tudors all the time? What even are they? The Tudors are one of the most infamous of the royal dynasties and they of course occupied the throne between 1485 and 1603 and they were the kind of first royal pinups and

dare I say it if you stopped somebody in the street stayed at a social distance from them and asked them to name an English monarch, they would probably name one of the Tudors. It was probably Henry VIII or maybe Elizabeth I. So everybody knows something about them. But the question is, particularly when you're doing exams, do you know the right stuff about them? Or should we peel back the layers and move beyond the cliches? So let's start at the beginning. You mentioned 1485, Battle of Bosworth. Henry Tudor sees off Richard III on the battlefield, sees the crown on the battlefield.

Talk about Henry Tudor. Who was this guy? Was he of royal blood? Did he deserve the crown? Well, first of all, of course, Richard III was the infamous king in the car park. So this was Henry VII who claimed the throne through his mother,

Margaret Bothfort, but had actually been on the continent during the years of what we describe as the Wars of the Roses, but the years of civil war during the late 15th century. So really, he had a claim, but it was a weak claim. And he was really trying it on, but he managed to defeat Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth and claim the crown and one of the really important first things to remember about the Tudors is to suspend hindsight and it's a really obvious point but actually very often when we're learning about the Tudors and when we're writing about the Tudors, we think about what we know happened at the end and it was all all right and it was a strong dynasty despite the changes, the rapid changes and indeed

the unprecedented changes, for example having the first female monarch. But we have to remember that when Henry VIII picked up the crown at the Battle of Bosworth, He was a weak usurper. England had been riven by civil war and he had a job on his hands. He had to bring back the country together. He had to neutralise the threat of the Yorkists, the two warring family branches, royal family branches. So he had a job on his hands, but he set about pretty effectively for example he dated the beginning of his reign to the day before Bosworth so therefore Richard's supporters could be tarnished with the brush of treason and then he set about through various shrewd cautious but ruthless means to establish himself on the throne. Not least, of course, marrying

Elizabeth of York from the rival branch of the family to try and bring those warring factions together. So he does that. He's quite cautious, isn't he, in terms of his kind of foreign policy and what he does. Whereas his son, who everyone will have heard of, he's a bit more relaxed. He's kind of to the man are born. Exactly. When I was studying Henry VII, it was kind of the most boring of the Tudor monarchs. You're just like, can we just move on? Can we get to the main action? Can we get to the main man that is Henry VIII? And Henry VII was always seen as a bit of a miser king. He just sat counting his money. He was a bit boring. He established the Privy Chamber, which became

the kind of hangout of Henry VIII. But for Henry VII, it was a place that he would retreat to, to have some distance away from the hurly-burly of the court. But work that's been done more recently has actually showed that there was more about Henry VII than that. He wasn't simply a kind of cold and distant monarch. He was involved. He was aware of the need for magnificence and display and, you know, building projects like his chapel at Westminster and Richmond Palace, you know, demonstrated his awareness that he needed a bit of Tudor bling. He needed to try and brand the Tudor monarchy. He needed that emblem of the Tudors, the rose, to be in as many places as possible. So he had a keen awareness of that, but he kind of pissed quite a lot of people off, not least the nobles. And they were, of course, who the monarch had traditionally

governed with and through. But Henry decided that rather than use the nobles who were the kind of landed gentry he would bring in new men who were good administrators but weren't there by their birthright and you can imagine that lots of nobles didn't like this very much at all so there was a problem of potential disloyalty among the nobles he tries to offset the threat by putting the nobles under various threats of financial hardship if they turned against him in what were called bonds and recognises. Basically, you would give up a whole load of money if people disobeyed the monarch. But I would argue that he builds in a lot of potential issues. And so the big question, I don't know about you, Dan, but when I was doing my A-levels, Henry VII was on the A-level paper. And it was a bit of,

although he was a boring monarch, it was a kind of easy question. It was Henry VII, founder of stability, question mark. And everybody would say, yes, of course, he was a founder of stability. He brought order after the chaos of the civil wars, and he established the beginning of a kind of administrative footing for the English monarchy, sorted out the finances, he created an important diplomatic alliance with Spain, blah, blah, blah. Since then, historians, of course, like to question and consider traditional assumptions. like to question and consider traditional assumptions. And now people begin to think, well, actually, he built a lot on the work of his medieval predecessors, Edward IV and so on.

And therefore, he was as much a kind of restorer as he was an innovator. And I think I would conclude that it was more luck than judgment that ensured that Henry passed the throne on and actually he was in a pretty precarious position by the end of his reign because his wife had died his heir Arthur had died Arthur in 1502 his wife Elizabeth in 1503 so at the end of his reign all hopes pinned on Henry VIII as he became so it wasn't as strong and stable a succession as it had looked to be at the beginning of the reign. And yeah, Henry, I think, was a bit boring, but ultimately quite lucky. And also lucky, I suppose, he was there when a certain John Cabot, as he's called in English, came to him with the idea of sailing west across the Atlantic, and he established sort of England's first toeholds in the so-called new world and that always happens on Henry's watch which I don't think people remember

you know me and my maritime history I was gonna say if there's a boat involved of course you were going to bring that up but that's actually a very good point because those are the kind of details that people overlook for Henry VII they think of him much more as this kind of domestic boring king who we know for example example, you know, counted his money and he actually personally initialed the chamber accounts, the money that was sort of almost beneath his mattress. So he was personally involved. But yes, on his watch, we see the beginning of exploration around the world. We also, for example, see the first Renaissance artist being welcomed to the court. He begins to make more use than has

been before of the printing press. His heirs had a more classical education. So, you know, we shouldn't forget these elements of his reign that often we associate with the later Tudors, particularly, I think, Henry VIII. Okay, so his young son, Henry VIII. Okay so his young son Henry VIII glamorous dashing an athlete every bit every inch the prince he comes to the throne. Just like when I used to teach this back in the day I used to say to my students imagine the excitement if Prince William became king now and at the time when I was teaching this it was you know William was young and attractive and you know I'm not saying he's not you know know, attractive now, but he's certainly less young. But there was absolutely this sense of, oh, my goodness, after the boringness of the reign of Henry VII, here we

have a glamorous, athletic, young prince and now king. And it's absolutely right, your question, because it's really important to remember that Henry of popular myth, the fat, gross-looking, broad-shouldered, broad-girthed king, was not how Henry came to the throne. He was young, he was athletic, much was expected of him. He had great hopes, in particular, of course, glory. He wanted war with France, as I know you're aware of. He wanted to get on his ships, get on his boats and win back territory in France. So much, much more proactive and aggressive in terms of his foreign policy than his father, who had been much, much more defensive. And really, Henry VII's foreign policy consisted of alliances, marriage alliances to shore up his dynasty. For Henry VIII, he had France in his sights,

and he really wanted to go to war. So we should say we haven't got much time to do the big guy, but that bit of the foreign policy was he ended up with the tiniest, tiniest fragment of France by the time he died. I mean, he just spent a lot of money for almost no benefit, right? Absolutely. I mean, this is completely right. And this is why we, you know, really, really need to think about Henry VIII, because maybe we think of him as a kind of warrior king, maybe, but absolute failure, really. I mean, it was kind of desperately embarrassing levels of failure, given how much he had talked it up but also of course we associate Henry VIII with the reformation and we can fall into really easy cliches when we think about the reformation you know Henry established the Church of England well of course structurally he broke

with Rome but to what extent did England become Protestant clearly Clearly not overnight. And there's a whole patchwork of responses to Henry's break with Rome that historians have looked at, looking at things like wills, which show how people at the time of their death often have a very Catholic wording in terms of their faith as is demonstrated in their will. So really the idea that England became Protestant really can't be upheld. It was much, much more of a slow process. And indeed, even when, you know, the sort of bells and candlesticks and everything that was associated with the Catholic Church were abolished, again, we can see from the record that many parishes just kept these kind of ornaments out the back expecting

that they would sort of be brought back so much much more of a complicated picture when it comes to religion under Henry VIII but I suppose the shorthand is at the end of his reign was it not more Catholicism without the Pope that yes Henry had broken with Rome, but the church, beyond its sort of structural change, actually doctrinally looked quite Catholic. And of course, the other interesting fact to remember about Henry VIII is that he had actually been awarded the title of Defender of the Faith of All Things, Defender of the Catholic Faith, from the Pope, because he wrote against the Protestant reformer Martin Luther. from the Pope, because he wrote against the Protestant reformer Martin Luther, and the Pope was so pleased with him as a faithful son that he gave Henry the title of Defender of the Faith, which of course monarchs can still use today. What about Parliament and Henry? Was he an innovator, or did his reign see innovation that helped to establish Parliament and the beginnings

maybe of cabinet, government, that kind of stuff? Yeah, good point. I mean, Parliament, of course, was very important in Henry's reign, in particular, because of the Reformation. And it was through Parliament and through Acts of Parliament that step by step, Henry broke with Rome. And actually, even recently, Henry VIII has been referenced in various newspapers talking about Henry VIII's powers and Parliament and lots of comparisons made between the break with Rome and Brexit. And Parliament was important in both respects.

And it was through acts of Parliament that literally stripped away the layers of relationship between England and the Roman Catholic Church, you know, layer by layer. So Parliament really important. But I think what we begin to see in Henry VIII's reign is gradual moves towards centralisation and the beginning of a sort of administrative foundations for the Tudor monarchy in the state. And this is where the big guns of Geoffrey Elton, who was a Tudor historian, I think he was Ben Elton's uncle, for those of our listeners who know Ben Elton, the comedian. But Geoffrey Elton was very much about how Henry VIII, and in particular, of course, his right hand man, Thomas Cromwell, really did centralise and make more efficient the organs of government,

Parliament, the Privy Council, which I think you perhaps can think of as a precursor in some ways to the Cabinet. So it was all about, for them, the institutions. But Elton's rather jumped up PhD student, who went by the name of David Starkey, challenged that thesis quite dramatically and directly and actually said it was all about people and personalities. And yes, these institutions may have become more important, but ultimately it was about who you trusted, who you wanted to hang out with. And Henry VIII had particular favourites, particular men who he liked to go hunting and jousting and play tennis with. And ultimately, with them was where the business took place. And it wasn't really as much about the Privy Council as perhaps

people like to think. And he had lots of wives. Just quickly, let's deal with the wives. Six wives. What is there to say about the wives? I suppose the interesting observation is not to forget Catherine of Aragon. He was married to Catherine of Aragon for, you know, 20 odd years. We often think of Henry VIII literally chopping and changing his wives, but he had a long marriage to Catherine of Aragon. And Catherine of Aragon, who is ultimately thought of as a sort of rather frumpy, dowdy woman, when she married Henry VIII, and of course previously had been married to prince arthur she really was sort of one of the most accomplished educated young princesses in

europe she was hugely impressive and really acted as a kind of pseudo ambassador for her her parents ferdinand and isabella ferdinand of arragon, Isabella of Castile. So we shouldn't overlook Catherine of Aragon. And then, of course, yes, his wives, much, much has been written about those. And often his reign is being, I think, dominated by looking at events through their eyes. And in a sense, I think we need to perhaps look through the lens both of Henry, but also some of the men around him and the work of people like Stephen Gunn and others have started both in Henry VII's reign some of the men around him and the work of people like Stephen Gunn and others have started both in Henry VII's reign and in Henry VIII's reign, as well as the work, of course, of Starkey is looking at the role of the men as well as, of course, his wives. You're listening to Lockdown Learning with the one and only Anna

Whitelock. More coming after this. Land a Viking longship on island shores scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Douglas Adams, the genius

behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity.

Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Right, what about Henry VIII's children? The rest of the Tudor dynasty is made up of three of his children. Let's start with his little son, his youngest surviving child, Edward. Exactly. Now, of all the Tudor monarchs,

Edward is really the only one who was supposed to become king. Interesting fact. And of course, he only ends up being king for five years. All the other Tudor monarchs ultimately became king or queen, as it turned out, because of the premature death of the heir as it should have been whether it be Arthur in the case of Henry VIII whether it would be Edward's young death untimely death which made for the inheritance of Mary and then of course Mary failing to have an heir meaning that Elizabeth succeeded so Edward nine-year-old boy king and the big question was literally how do you fill your father's shoes how did he fill his father's shoes his father's shoes were massive and Henry VIII literally his body had come to represent England you know the growing power of England after the break with

Rome his claims for imperial monarchy were perfectly represented by his broad shoulders and girth. Now we have a weak and feeble young boy king, Edward VI. How on earth could it be argued that this wasn't a sign of a weakened English monarchy, but in fact England still remained strong and this was how it was supposed to be. And a comparison was drawn with the example of Josiah, the young king of ancient Judah in the Old Testament, who basically went all out to destroy idolatry in the church. And so comparisons withdrawn with the young king Josiah and Edward VI as a sort of idea to argue that, you know, this is God's plan. It wasn't just like a bit of an unfortunate accident that we have a young boy on the throne.

It was actually design. And I suppose the big things to think about for Edward's reign is, you know, was he simply a puppet? Was he a puppet king who was played by first his uncle, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, and then John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. Well, now historians really have acknowledged that Edward was becoming more and more and more involved in politics over the course of his reign. He was precocious. He was bright. He was interested. And of course, we have his journal and papers, which make quite interesting reading. It's a kind of Adrian Mole diary for the Tudor century. It's very accessible. You can get hold of a copy. And he's musings on various things, including, for example, his sister, Mary, who was maintaining her Catholicism, despite Edward, of course, turning the church in a more Protestant direction, Mary refused to obey her brother. And they have these big spats, brother and sister, arguing. Mary saying, you know, look, little brother, until you, you know, at least become a man, I'm certainly not going to listen to you. And Edward saying to Mary, you know, I am the king,

you need to obey me. So in a nutshell, with Edward's reign, he is much more important than historians traditionally allowed. He was becoming more involved in politics. He was clearly more committed to religious reform. And of course, it was under Edward that England moved in its furthest Protestant direction by the 1552 prayer book. So it used to be, you know, seen another boring reign and also, of course, Edward's reign and Mary, who we should go on to talk about, being part of what was described as the mid-Tudor crisis. So this was another big set piece question on A-level papers. Was there a mid-tudor crisis during the reigns of Edward and Mary? And the news flashes there was no mid-tudor crisis. It's okay, the monarchy endured. And this is another

one of those times where historians like to come up with a kind of cliche that gets on an essay paper, an exam paper. This was the thesis of a guy called Whitney Jones back in the 1970s, claiming there was a mid-tudor crisis. But really, it overstates the case. There was no crisis. Continuity and stability ultimately won out. And that's true of Edward's reign and indeed Mary's. Nothing to see here, folks. No crisis at all. Let's talk about mary his older sister he inherited because he was a boy obviously but then they would run out of boys no more tutor boys and it went to his older sister mary was a catholic and people used to call her bloody mary what where are we at the moment we do call her bloody mary and in a way it's the most boring thing about her yes of course during her reign almost 300

men women and children were burnt at the stake that is true and it was a ferocious period of persecution and this was only over a couple of years point one burning was the established and accepted punishment for heresy and this took place on the continent and it took place in reigns before during Henry VIII's reign for example it was that ferocity that marks Mary's reign out so that's the first important point the second point about her religion is actually although we can think of it as just simply repressive it was enlightened too and the work in particular of Eamon Duffy and his book Fires of Faith made the case that England during Mary's reign was really progressive and forward thinking and was in his words a laboratory of counter-reformation thinking so all of the kind

of new thinking from the Catholic Church that came about really from what was known as the Council of Trent which was this big meeting of the Catholic Church trying to get their house in order in response to the Protestant challenge of the Reformation and so all of these new ideas around preaching and teaching and education this was the kind of thing that Mary, through her right hand man, when it came to the church, Reginald Paul, Cardinal Reginald Paul, these kind of enlightened policies to re-educate people and re-enthuse them about the Catholic Church were implemented on her watch. The problem was that she died prematurely and they didn't have time to bed in. But the other thing that's most important about Mary is that she was the first crowned Queen of England. Never before had a woman been crowned. And so Mary's reign is notable for having to negotiate really the reality of a woman as queen. What did that look like? How should the

rituals change? What happened when she married? All of these questions had to be asked and answered for the first time. So much of the Tudors is just about the body of the king or queen, like whether they live or die, whether they're sick or healthy. Like if she'd lived, could England be a Catholic country today? Or was it turning into a Protestant country despite everything she was able to do? Well, that's a really, really important question. I mean, Eamon Duffy would say that at the end of Mary's reign, even, you know, only after five years, that the burnings had been devastatingly effective in his words, but also that Catholicism was broadly accepted. But I think the point about the royal body is absolutely important.

And that's one of the sort of central themes, I would argue, that you can chart across the Tudor monarchy, the challenge and the problem and the relevance and the preoccupation of the royal body, whether it would be Henry VIII's body and questions around impotence or not, or whether the marriage with Catherine of Aragon was consummated, whether in fact he was affected by the jousting accident he had in 1536. And of course, then he's deteriorating health and the impact that might have had on his kind of temper and his character and his policymaking. Edward, the impact of a boy king. Mary, the reality of a female monarch for the first time. And what's absolutely crucial when you have a female monarch,

and of course, this remains true of our monarch today too, is a female monarch not the first time and what's absolutely crucial when you have a female monarch and of course this remains true of our monarch today too is a female monarch not only has to provide an heir as all monarchs do but she has to produce an heir and so her body becomes relevant and important in a way that it doesn't for a male monarch so you know Henry could literally have as many sort of illicit affairs as possible as he wanted. But for a female monarch, it was all about chastity and then it was about fertility. And ultimately, of course, Mary's reign failed because of her failure to provide an heir. And that fundamentally not only undermined her political strength and reputation, but of course also ultimately led to her death and there being

no Catholic heir to build on her legacy. And therefore with Mary's death, of course, Elizabeth comes to the throne and turns England away once more from the Roman Catholic Church. Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn, Protestant, Henry VIII's second wife. Elizabeth, one of the most famous and celebrated monarchs, really, in English history. Does she deserve her reputation? No, she doesn't. I think, well, first of all, she doesn't deserve the epithet Virgin Queen. Of course, that really is a bit of a nonsense because for certainly for, you know, half of Europe and indeed for many English men and women, she was the little whore,

she was the daughter of the great whore that was Anne Boleyn. And so she absolutely wasn't regarded in a very favourable light. And indeed, through her relationships with Robert Dudley and so on, she was actually regarded as being very unchaste and therefore not at all worthy of the title Virgin Queen. And it was only, of course, actually in the late 1570s when Elizabeth really got to the point where she was kind of a childless, post-menopausal, unmarried queen, which was not a position of strength. And it was then that, you know, those around Elizabeth really created the spin that was Elizabeth the Virgin Queen, making a virtue out of essentially a weakness. You know, Elizabeth is overstated, her reign and her success in my view, because the main task of a monarch was

to provide an heir. And Elizabeth didn't even try to provide an heir, and she didn't even name an heir. And of course, as you will know, Dan, her, you know, much celebrated military victory, the Spanish Armada, again, you know, was it not more a victory for the English weather than it was for Elizabeth? Indeed, what was her role and significance? Has it not been entirely overstated? And certainly Elizabeth's reign in terms of foreign policy was really marked, in my view, by foreign policy failures rather than success. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt, and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed.

We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams, The Ends of the Earth, explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity.

Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. So we remember the Spanish Armada, but that was just one campaign in a war that went on for, what, decades? Like, I mean, the war against Spain went on for ages and actually there was no clear victor on either side.

No, it was a massive, massive drain. And of course, the Anglo-Spanish alliance had been a hugely important alliance to the Tudor dynasty, right back to the formation of it with the marriage of Catherine of Aragon and Prince Arthur, which had been brokered by Henry VII but this war that Elizabeth and Philip continued that involved Mary Queen of Scots and followed the execution of Mary Queen of Scots but also most particularly followed Elizabeth's decision to finally intervene decisively in the Netherlands in support of the Dutch rebels there against the Spanish. And that really tipped the balance and made Philip, you know, despite his reservations about a war with England, it left him really with no choice. But the war was inconclusive,

it was costly, and it wasn't until Elizabeth died and her successor came to the throne that the war was ended. And that really brings us to one of the other failures of Elizabeth's reign which is not only the profound dynastic instability that is marked across her reign her refusal to to marry her sort of dithering around about marriage candidates and then her refusal to execute Mary Queen Queen of Scots, who, of course, also posed a dynastic threat, and she only eventually agreed to execute her, having for a number of years, almost two decades, Mary, Queen of Scots, you know, being a thorn in Elizabeth's side, actually, you know, within England. And then by Elizabeth's failure to name an heir,

of course, ultimately, with her death the throne is passed to the king of Scotland James which is remarkable in itself you know England and Scotland were of course old enemies ancient enemies and here was a king of Scotland claiming the throne winning the throne because Elizabeth had not even tried to provide an heir by marrying and trying to have a child. And so all the accolades that go with Elizabeth, who's seen as the kind of poster girl of the Tudor monarchy, you know, what's all that about? Because didn't she ultimately fail? And the Tudor monarchy, of course, died out with her. You're always so hard on Elizabeth Tudor. I think she's overrated i really do and i think

you know she manages to build on the legacy of her sister mary who's had to negotiate all the challenges of being the first woman on the throne elizabeth gets to build on that mary gets forgotten and then elizabeth of course gets the big tomb in Westminster Abbey, even though Mary's buried beneath her, but barely gets a mention. Anna Whitelock, thank you very much for coming on this podcast, taking us through the Tudors. That was a tour de force. What is the last thing? We've got people doing the GCSEs listening to this.

We've got people doing their A-levels listening to this. What is a little tip right from the coalface of modern scholarship that no one else will know that listens to this podcast could put in an essay about the Tudors that will blow the mind of the examiners. Gosh, Dan, I don't know if I can live up to that billing. But what I would say is a couple of points is think about changes over time. A lot of these Tudor monarchs, you know, what's true at the beginning of their reign is not true at the end. We talked about the royal body. You know, Elizabeth was a 20-something when she became queen. She was almost 70 when she died.

We know about how much Henry VIII changed. So think about changes over time. There's really subtle differences. So when you get a question asking you about something, one way in which you can perhaps challenge the assumptions of the question and show that you're kind of on the ball and thinking is well okay but that might have been true for some of the reign but was it true of all of the reign so that's one thing also across the Tudor monarchy think about continuities we also we all think about differences between the monarchs but you know what remained the same and one of the sort of things that I think has been overstated is the impact of gender yes we have the first crowned queens during the Tudor dynasty but actually how much changed was this kind of oh my goodness a crisis or did the monarchy actually endure and remain stable and

I suppose finally that whole issue of the royal body really think about the impact of being a young boy, being a woman. What did that mean for these key issues about dynastic stability, continuity, and the image of England? Because of course, at the time, there was this sort of understanding that the monarch had two bodies. One was their natural body and one their body that represented England, that represented the body politic, the realm. And for someone like Henry VIII, that was quite an easy equation to draw. The big, broad-shouldered Henry VIII did represent a strong England. But what about the body politic under Mary or Elizabeth? You know, in Mary's case, a married queen, but one who fails to have children, is marked by ill health. And Elizabeth

is an unmarried queen. How do those royal bodies become emblematic of a strong England? And that's something that Elizabeth does achieve greatly in she manages to make a virtue out of her virginity and I would encourage everybody to look again at that famous Armada portrait of Elizabeth and look at the strategically placed bow at her groin suggesting symbolizing her virginity and a direct parallel in that portrait is being drawn by the defeat of the armada and the impregnability of the borders of england the body politic remained impregnable to the spanish invasion and an equation drawn there with the body of the queen which is also impregnable which also remains entirely closed off and so finally even though she's a woman even though she has a very much weakened royal body

suddenly her royal body becomes a strength and that Armada portrait I think says as much about the power of the English monarchy as the image the Holbein image of Henry VIII with that prominent codpiece says about his reign and about male monarchy. And on that basis, you know, Elizabeth should be applauded. And that's a pretty big achievement. By the time she was dead, had all her teeth rotted out? Yeah, pretty much. She loved sweet things. She loved things, you know, custard, sweet tarts. She was a bit of a picker with food, but she loved all that sweet stuff. So yeah, it wasn't a good look going on. It wasn't a good look. Black teeth. Anna Whitelock, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. You're a hero. Pleasure. I feel we have the history on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours,

our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished and liquidated. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. Just before you go, a bit of a favour to ask. I totally understand if you don't want to become a subscriber or pay me any cash money, makes sense. But if you could just do me a favour, it's for free. Go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. If you give it a five-star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review, purge yourself, give it a glowing review,'d really appreciate that it's tough weather that law of the jungle out there and uh i need all the fire support i can get so that will boost it up the charts it's so tiresome but if you could do it i'd be very very grateful thank you douglas adams the genius behind the hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit.

Douglas Adams, The Ends of the Earth, explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. you