Dan Snow's History Hit - The Tudors

Episode Date: July 31, 2020

Jessie Childs is an award-winning author, historian and expert on the Tudors. She joined me on the podcast to discuss this notorious family. What did people think of them at the time? Do they deserve their reputation - both good and bad? All in all, why are we so obsessed?

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History. I am so pleased to say that this is a rerun. We've gone deep back into the archive. I think this is one of our first ever podcasts and no one was listening. None of you were listening back then. 2015. God, I was a child. This is Jessie Childs, one of my favourite historians. She's so talented, award-winning historian. She wrote a beautiful book about spies in Elizabethan England. I want to talk to her about perhaps some of the aspects of Queen Elizabeth I that don't often get talked about. And whether, in fact, she was just as brutal as her big sister, who got a slightly tougher press from contemporaries and those observers who followed their rules. This, everyone, is the brilliant Jessie Charles talking about Queen Elizabeth and how she maintained her grip on power. If you want to watch documentaries, we've

actually got Jesse Charles on History Hit TV. We've got lots of documentaries about the Tudors. If you want to go over there and check that out, please go to historyhit.tv, use the code POD1, P-O-D-1. You will get a month for free, and then you'll get your second month for just one pound, euro, or dollar. So sign up. We sign up we got modern history we got Tudors we got ancient history we got all sorts you're gonna love it but in the meantime everyone here's Jesse Charles talking Elizabeth I enjoy why are we obsessed with the Tudors well there's the's the people, for a start. You have the soap operas. You have Henry VIII, barrel-chested, massive copies.

The wives. You have Mary Tudor, who's not so interesting on a popular level, but who's burning all these people at the stake. You have Elizabeth I. Was she a virgin? Wasn't she? I mean, you have all these things that sort of academics sniff at a little bit, but that really bring people in and

then on the level that academics get excited by this is the time when the archives are really opening up people are really writing things the parish registers you know from 1538 we have them so we know when people are being baptized when they're dying you have more diaries you have more literacy so that's very very exciting i do know that's fascinating you learn something every day i've never thought about that so So there is, it makes sense. There's a step change, isn't there? I guess because printing press as well, between the 15th and 16th centuries,

really in terms of the amount of sources there are. Yeah, I think there is. And you have also this tremendous spirit of inquiry that happens in the 16th century. So you have humanism and the Renaissance and the discovery of new worlds and new peoples. And there is this sense that anything can happen and that the son of a butcher can become, you know, rise to the top of the government or Cromwell, you know.

And so there is that wonderful sense of opportunity and individualism that comes with Protestantism as well. And you have all this change. You have great change with religion as well. And so I think it all comes together and then you have these personalities that people can really get involved in for the first time ever really we know what they look like thanks to holbein you know if you look at medieval pictures they're all sort of kneeling in prayer and they're in profile and it's not very exciting or they're sort of hidden by their great big i mean the henry the fifth

those late plantagenet paintings are rubbish aren't they they're not lookers are they whereas you know you look at holbein you can see in some of his portraits you can see the stubble on the face or you can see the worry in the eyes of some of the courtiers that he paints i mean it's it takes you there straight away and with henry you know we all know what he looks like we all know that pose that's standing astride uh they're sort astride. They've somehow mastered PR and propaganda. And of course, at the end of Elizabeth's reign, you have Shakespeare as well, which did her no harm. sense in which a lot of modern Britain starts to emerge? First colonies, the Royal Navy, do we think it's sort of ground zero for a lot of the modern British project? I think almost when you look back with hindsight, you can see that it starts there. Whether when you're living through it at the time, that was the case. I think we were sort of,

Henry VIII, when he broke with Rome, said that this nation is an empire and then you have uh all the wonderful literature in elizabeth's reign and it's all very much gloriana and you look across you have the armada portrait with her hand on the globe whether when you're living through each moment at the time you're thinking we're on the cusp of change i don't know it's okay so then so because people also talk about you know this yeah the use of statutes the role of parliament under henry the eighth and stuff and how important it becomes but so actually you saying that you think is it is it is the tudor century did more big stuff happen than in the the centuries either side or is the 17th century just as important just as interesting but we just don't know we don't the public don't enjoy it and know as much

about it i think that's true i think i always feel a bit sorry for the 17th century on the popular level. I mean, obviously not in academe where it's very well covered, but I kind of feel like it gets run over a little bit. People just sort of go the Tudors and then they jump forward. I don't really know why because it's our century of revolution. And I know, okay, Charlesi comes and we have the restoration and and a lot of stuff gets reversed but it's still our revolution you look at france you look at america and the celebrations they have around their revolution and our revolution is sort of

it's even though it's now called the war of three kingdoms which you think might get people a bit game of thronesy about it they still don't still don't really clutch onto it that much. And I don't know why because the writing of the time is astonishing. It's where it all happens. And I, weirdly, as an 18th centuryist,

so I've always thought everything happens in the 18th century, long 18th century, 1688, 1815, it's where it all happens, right? And I've just got, recently, this nagging problem that I keep thinking,

you know, I think the real action is in the 17th century. The birth of a scientific revolution, all that stuff, that's really 17th century, isn't it? The real expansion of the Royal Navy and all the work Pepys does, that's 17th century. And lots of the constitutional stuff is 17th century. I feel like I'm sort of betraying the 18th, but I'm going to try and stay firm. So let's just deal with some of the big questions here. Where are we on Tudors? Henry VIII, the eighth blood-soaked nutty genocidal tyrant or sort of brilliant enlightenment prince oh renaissance prince both okay he was the first both of course he was he started off this

young strapping very promising young man beautiful good looking, and seemingly very chivalric, but always warlike and always ruthless. And then of course, as he gets older, he gets fatter, he gets incredibly capricious. At the end of his reign, you know, he is your archetypal tyrant, and he will change his mind and people don't know where they stand. At the end of his reign is the Henry VIII, I think the popular image of Henry VIII. But I think he was almost like, I write in my book, this is an awful sort of literary thing, but they like medlar fruit.

And I don't know about you, medlar fruit is this fruit that ripens with its own corruption. And I liken him to that because he does, he almost becomes himself when he is the most corrupt. We almost love him like that more. Do you think he becomes more capricious and tyrannical because that's what happens when you concentrate power in one hand?

I think I'd be just as bad. Or do you buy the kind of head injury and all these other sort of theories that are coming out? I don't buy the head injury as this happened and then he changed and something happened in his brain. I think what is interesting and what is valid is well a that was a very bad year we're talking about 1536

when he had the bad injury also because his his illegitimate son henry fitzroy died and uh i think it's very you know it's easy to forget he's one of those sort of forgotten figures but he was a great sign for henry the eighth that he was virile and again we think of Henry VIII as sort of such a manly man and but actually he had fears about impotence and he was very anxious and he was kind of a one-woman guy you know in the sense that that he did marry for love in a way that very few people did and he was hurt especially by Amelina Catherine Howard and that's why he became so vengeful. What also is valid is the sense of pain that he had to live with. I mean, everyone knows that sort of if you've got the flu, you feel rough, you become a bit depressed, you get a bit cross, you get a bit

snappy, you don't sleep well. I think all those things, although it's, you know, then getting into the territory of feely-feely and what did he think and how did he feel but I think that's quite important he was in a lot of pain his leg ulcer was separating horribly when it burst he was limping around by the end of his reign he was carried around in a sort of almost like a Stanislaw stairlift kind of thing and he burst when they put him in the coffin didn't they didn't he I think he burst I think his body sort of erupted yeah as I get older maybe my body's. And I get increasingly interested by the stuff historians aren't really very good at, which is looking at the more prosaic and physical reasons. We're all so good at sort of thinking, now, why was the emperor Tiberius?

What was going on with him? Maybe he was just getting old and tired. And these people lived in the pre-modern world. There was no medicine. They must have, so many people must have been living with chronic pain. And that would change you, wouldn't it? I think it would. I think it would.

I think it explains a lot of these snap decisions that people make and then changing their mind the sense of sort of blaming other people as well you know he was so reliant on his positions he's so reliant on his inner circle and when they let him down you can see him having a go at them and and becoming you know really unfair is, I think, as you said, there's this sense there's so much of a burden on their shoulders. And they are the divine right monarchs, these Tudors. And they very much feel, all of them, that they have this divine contract with God and they are there on this earth to rule for God.

And therefore, everything they do is not only being scrutinized by their people and their subjects, but far more importantly, for God. And therefore, everything they do is not only being scrutinized by their people and their subjects, but far more importantly, by God. And it depends, you know, what they do here on earth will determine how they, you know, what happens to them in the afterlife. So it's a huge burden. That sounds totally exhausting. Okay, so let's move on to his daughter, Elizabeth, the other famous Tudor. Was she brilliant Machiavellian political controller? Or was she quite lucky? I think she was brilliant, actually. I gave her a bit of bashing in my last book because I talk about a minority that she persecuted.

That last book, by the way, God's Traitors. Fantastic book. Jesse Charles, buy it immediately. It's fantastic. It's prize winning. It's a prize winning book. I hear the plug there. Sorry about that.

But the point being that I always give her a bit of a hard time and I kind of, it's nice to be able to big her up a little bit because of course she's brilliant. She picks the right people at the right time. She is lucky. Anyone who rules for 44 years in that period is lucky. Anyone who rules for 44 years in that period is lucky. But she was very canny with the decisions she made or the decisions she didn't make half the time. She kept people hanging on.

She didn't jump at things like her father did. But she also was her image. She was so careful of her image. And this was really important as a Renaissance queen. And this was really important as a Renaissance queen. If you look at Mary, Queen of Scots, who's sort of in many ways her great nemesis during most of this period, cousins, rivals, queens. Mary just couldn't control her image. So there were all these stories about her being, you know, a slut and being hopeless and not looking out for her country. And whereas Elizabeth just had all the right people around her and saying the right things and celebrating her in the right way. And she was very good at the sort of the common touch when she was on progress.

But then she could also keep her distance in her portraits and keep her eternal youth. So she was she was very canny and very brilliant and utterly ruthless as well. utterly ruthless as well. 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

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did we fall into the Stuart era by chance as much as judgment? I think she knew exactly what she was doing. I think the moment you name your successor, then people are looking to your successor. And I think she could never name Mary Queen of Scots because she was Catholic and that just wasn't going to happen. But James, Mary's son, all the sort of bat channels were being worked all the time, really. And I think everyone kind of knew that James was going to take over and she knew too and but she was very clever in not naming him too much and making sure that the sun shone on her and that's that's very important as a ruler and she

was the state I mean if Elizabeth it's so hard to sort of imagine what she was going through but she was facing assassination plots the whole time from dissident Catholics. And if she had collapsed, so would the whole Protestant state. So it's so important that she stays alive. And if she named her Mary, for example, then, you know, the plots might well have continued. And if she named James or Arbella Stewart. The problem with not naming a successor is then you get other people speculating.

The thing about Elizabeth is, does she sort of paper over the cracks in English government and society? Because the crown is kind of poor. There's a big problem with the religious divide in the country. And a generation after Elizabeth dies, the entire country falls into the worst violence that our country's ever known. What was the Civil War, the War of the Three Kingdoms in the 17th century. Was she as great a ruler as people have thought her? Or did she just sort of hold it all together while she's alive, but didn't really lead a lasting legacy? I think she was great in many ways, you know, the sense that she lasted that long, the sense of the culture that was going on at the time, the propaganda, the literature.

Actually, the Church of England is an amazing construct. It, in a way, was very middle way. It wasn't, of course, Catholic. They didn't have the mass, but it kept enough features. If you look at the wording in the prayer book of the mass to make sort of crypto Catholics kind of happy to go. It's not hardcore Lutheran. It's not hardcore Lutheran. And then the Protestants, you know, the Puritans wanted far, far further reform. And she resisted that continually. And she was often a check on her ministers who wanted to go further. So the england is is an incredible legacy of her reign um but many

things i mean things like the economy that was sort of the currency things like that were actually sort of being straightened out in the reign before hers in mary's but elizabeth gets a lot of credit for it she should get credit for many things i mean the poor laws as well and also i think the sense that she could and did delegate i mean there's a great debate over whether actually she was really sort of presiding over what you call a monarchical republic and it's it's you know people like the cecils who are running running the gig so i think one of her best things is to know and to trust the right people well yeah because we worked together on a spanish armada program the other day didn we? And what's interesting there is that Elizabeth, she didn't have much to do with it, really. What part of that victory can she take credit for?

to allow her admirals to be able to make decisions on the ground. And as we showed, you showed, and Geoffrey Parker, going through those incredible manuscripts, you see the frustrations of the Spanish generals and how they can't get messages quickly to Philip II of Spain and how Philip II of Spain anyway has it predetermined because it's God's will and this is how it's going to happen. And then somehow the fleet will join hands with Palmer. And it was never going to happen.

I think for me, that's flawed strategy is the reason it didn't happen. And Elizabeth let Drake and Howard get on with it. I suppose that's, and especially in pre-modern government, arguably in modern government, but there aren't proper communications and instantaneous ways of maintaining your control on situations. So I suppose really what they've got to do is appoint the right people, give them the right resources and let them get on with that. It's kind of all you can do. Yeah. Yeah. And you could. How long would it take?

It's certainly with Philip getting it across Europe, it would take two weeks or so for a message to get there. I mean, Elizabeth, it's a bit quicker because you're just talking across Britain. But even then, you've got to have some very fast horses and you've got to have the post system, you know, with riders all ready to go. And you can't, you know, as you know, with military affairs, you can't wait for responses days later or even hours later. Look at the stable of advisors and commanders that Elizabeth had. Was that pretty good? I mean, you compare it to Charles I, some of his advisors, and does that really show the difference between the two rulers? Yeah, I think it does. I think Burley was one of the greatest statesmen. William Cecil,

Lord Burley, was one of the greatest statesmen our country has ever had. And he ran the show a lot of the time, or at least he worked very effectively alongside Elizabeth and he could speak truth to power on the other hand she needs to be culpable for certain ministers I mean Francis Woolsey is one of those very interesting characters I mean he's often um shorthand said that he's Elizabeth's spy master and he's one of those people that you need to have that you don't want to sort of broadcast um he's the guy who sort of gets up to all sorts of shady um agent provocateur and double agents and triple agents and entraps mary queen of scots in the end and he's but you have to remember with him his motivation he was in paris in in 1572 at the time of the massacre of saint bartholomew's day so he saw he was on

secondment with the english embassy there he saw thousands of French Protestants the Huguenots being massacred and and babies even being killed and people being thrown into the Seine and I don't think you know that experience he was there with his wife child and pregnant wife at the time um so you can imagine you know how much he hated and feared Catholicism at the time so and also he has this wonderful at the time of Mary Queen of Scots's trial he said um trying to remember what he said he said um I have done nothing as a private man unworthy of an honest man nor as a public man unworthy of my calling and then he said I protest before God that as a man careful of my mistress's safety I have been curious which is the most wonderfully sort of Rumsfeldian double language.

So whether or not she was brilliant to have him, I think she probably was because he kept the state safe. On the other hand, there are people like Richard Totcliffe, who she almost sort of unofficially appointed. He was very much her appointment, her man. He would write to her directly. And he was a priest hunter. He would go off and find priests and he would drag them out of priesthoods and he would torture them. And he

would even be at their trials, mocking them sometimes. And it's pretty interesting when you read his letters to Elizabeth and he's joking about the way he's going to torture a priest and how he will hang him up by his hands and he will soon have him dancing like a trick at Trenchmore, which was a sort of very jerky, very rustic kind of dance at the time. And you read that and he's writing that directly to Elizabeth and it kind of makes you question her judgment a little bit sometimes. So her fingerprints were all over the bloody clampdown on Catholics in that period. She can't get away from it.

You know what? Can I just show you something? I think I've got it right here. Jessie's just charging across the other side of this lovely study. This perfectly arranged study there. She found it immediately. This is, by the way, I promise you this is not premeditated. It was on my desk.

This is a letter. Do you recognize the hand? Elizabeth Regina. Exactly. It's the beautiful, famous, italic hand? Elizabeth Regina. Exactly. It's the beautiful famous italic signature of Elizabeth I. This is on

a torture warrant of 1571. So her fingerprints are on it. Her signature is literally on the torture warrant there. This is a copy by the way I didn't steal it.

Bloody Bess. Okay brilliant. So Jessie what what okay so the Tudors we know we've explored why they were so popular, why they remain so popular today.

We explored some of the extraordinary things, the armada, the drama, the wives, Shakespeare. What were their fundamental, what were their enduring legacies in England and Britain? Oh, boy. I think Church of England, you have to give them that, even though it's not that sexy. Shakespeare. Yeah, pretty good. Although he's also Jacobean, but of course he was born in Elizabeth's reign. And the New World. I mean, it did start there in the sense of discovery, Virginia. So I think, you know, they is Henry VIII starts the 16th century behaving like Henry V, you know, dreaming about empire in France. By the end of the period, you're dreaming about empire in the New World.

It's the East India Company. It's Virginia. I mean, that is a change of mindset that's, well, competes with anything today that we're going to see in this great technological revolution, I think. Yeah, you're right. And Henry VIII utterly wanted to be Henry V. I mean, he really tried to emulate him. And you can see that in the way he was painted and in medals and things. But yes, his eyes were on France.

And at the time, England was very much, you know, bit player between France and the Holy Roman Empire. And it was sort of, England could sometimes affect the balance of power and diplomacy, and that was about it. And so Henry V, you know, rides into France and wants to win things. And you're absolutely right. And then and so Henry they you know rides into France and wants to win things and you're absolutely right and then by the end you know when France is not really on the radar

in the same way and they're looking out and I think there is you know we're talking about that spirit of inquiry and that sense that anything is possible I think it is incredibly exciting and I know you're talking to Peter Frankopan about the silk worlds you know it's always important to bear in mind that there's so much else going on. And also, I mean, India I find fascinating at the same time as Elizabeth, direct contemporary, was

Akbar. And he was fascinating. He welcomed all sorts of religious minorities into his court. He welcomed debate. He allowed the Jesuits in. The Mughal Emperor, who was probably the most, the peak of the empire in India, wasn't it? And then it went in a precipitous decline.

And after that, partly when the English arrived. Sure, first of all, the English. Well, you know all about the East India Company. Yes. 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 podcasts. If you give it a five-star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review, purge yourself, give it a glowing review, I'd really appreciate that. It's tough weather, the law of the jungle out there, and 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. you