Gone Medieval - How to Survive the 15th Century

Episode Date: August 8, 2025

As a summertime treat, Dr. Eleanor Janega is let out of the Gone Medieval dungeon to join Matt Lewis to delve into the complexities of the 15th century, focusing on England's tumultuous history. From the political upheavals following the deposition of Richard II to the Wars of the Roses, they explore significant figures including Henry V, Joan of Arc, and several influential queens. Their discussion highlights the evolution of political structures, the rise of Parliament, and the changing role of women in this fascinating period, shedding light on how these historical events shape our understanding of medieval England and its legacy.More:How to Survive the 14th Centuryhttps://open.spotify.com/episode/4H07YkgPdb3iYvCrokhDajMovie Knight: Medieval World on Filmhttps://open.spotify.com/episode/51UIHVtrsIHqKJujhu1HnSGone Medieval is presented by Matt Lewis and Dr. Eleanor Janega. Audio editor is Amy Haddow, the producers are Joseph Knight and Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world,

to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanorianoga. Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit. The podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the Vikings to the Normans. From kings to popes to the Crusades. We delve into the rebellions.

plots and murders. To find the stories big and small that tell us how we got here. And tell us who we really were. It's always fun to do an episode with Eleanor so that we can chew the code about something medieval. And neither of us has to be on our best behavior for a guest either. This is the kids throwing a house party while the oldies are away, except that it's medieval history. And I'm an moldy. But anyway, so we found an excuse to do it. We're going to take a look at the 15th century, mainly in England, to try and figure out what on earth was going on. What impact did this tumultuous century have on England and the English and on those around them too? Well, we're going to try and work it out. I don't know, we've made it out of our respective isolation cells and into the

the communal area of the gone medieval dungeon just for a little while. We've been chained to the big wall. It's nice to stretch our legs before having them stretched another way. What can I say? I do feel like you ought to explain to listeners the current setup that you're sitting in as well, because I'm going to have to look at you while I talk to you in this current setup. Okay, to be fair, this is looking rather dungeon-like because I am in Amsterdam, which is, you know, gosh, no one has suffered like I have.

But my hotel room is what we in the business call quite live, which means it's echoey. So I've constructed a little fort out of my duvet and a couple of chairs. And I'm just kind of sitting in that for your listening pleasure. And I think that that just goes to show how much we at Gone Medieval love our listeners. I am willing to sit in a hot little tent for your love. So consider that. So you go. Listeners can imagine that we're having this little discussion in,

a little quilt fort in the gone medieval dungeon somewhere on a rare spellout of myself. Is anyone else listening in a tent fort? Sound off in the comments if you've built a tent fort to listen to Godmendival. And if you haven't, get on with it. And we're going to talk a little bit about the 15th century. And I love the 15th century. This is what I would class as my history home. This is where I am most comfortable.

and so we thought it'd be quite nice if you and I just chewed the breeze a little bit about the good bits and not so good bits of the 15th century. Yeah, absolutely. I think that it is one of the most enigmatic centuries. And I think, you know, for me, I'm a little bit more of a 14th century girl myself,

but there's so many incredibly interesting things that happen in the 15th century. And I think in a lot of ways, what the 14th century does is it sets up all of these incredible things that happen. We get all of these balls rolling in motion and the 15th century really sees this huge payoff for all these incredible historical acts, actions, and in some cases, pandemics. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, we're going to stay in England, really, for this particular chat

because there's so much you could talk about everywhere else. So we're going to be Anglo-centric and we're just going to stick to England for the purposes of this. But I guess the big headline for the 15th century is no pandemic, which has got to be great news after the 14th century. Oh, absolutely. You know, we have had so many successive waves of plague after the Black Death kicks off in the 14th century. And so, you know, you might be going into the 15th century saying, well, it's about to be smooth sailing then. And alas, that is not quite the case. Yeah. Well, then that's not to say that there's not outbreaks of illnesses and all of that sort of stuff, We don't have the same global pandemic that was the black death all over those years before.

But we're still living in a time when people will have a memory of that. There will be old people alive who, at the beginning of the 15th century, who will live through the black death. And there will be people alive who never knew their parents because they lost them to the black death. And there were people whose fortunes were affected, sometimes positively, by the outcomes of the black death. There are families who are wealthier than they might have been if there hadn't been. the Black Death. So no pandemic, but people living in the shadow and the aftermath of the Black Death still. Yeah, I think that that's a really important point because people have a tendency

to think that a historical event happens and then everybody just sort of moves on. But there's a really important cultural memory that happens as a result of the Black Death and this understanding that, in theory, something like that could happen again at any time. You know, and I think that we're in a really great place to understand that now because of what happened to us with COVID. But it's easy to sort of forget how terrifying this must have been in a world with no germ theory, no access to antibiotics, which is what you need for the Black Death, and things of this nature. So you're living with people who really understand that terrible things can happen at any moment. And given that the explanation for things like that is usually that God is annoyed,

the 15th century is the century to be good to God. Let's be nice to God. We don't want to annoy him again. Yeah, there is rather a lot of that about the shop. And so a lot of the things that we see begin to kick off in the 15th century do have to do with worries about what God wants. We have a lot of people that we're going to talk about who are very specifically attempting to live lives of religious vigor and forever.

And this is also a time when we're going to get a lot of questioning about what exactly it is that cop ones. And we're not, you know, just out the other end of this century, we will end up with the Reformation. And there are, the 14th century saw the beginnings of Wycliffe's ideas on reforms. The movement is continuing in Eastern Europe in particular with the Hussites. And we're not that far away from religious revolution spreading across the whole of Europe. So again, we can see those things at play in people's minds that religion and

how you do religion and what God might want from people is still concerning them because, in part, they don't want another black death. Don't want to annoy God? Exactly, 100%. Now, I understand that we are probably just limiting ourselves to England just as an attempt to get me to shut about the Hewisites for a few minutes. And I just want to acknowledge that, well played, Matt. It'll work. But having said that, you know, I always go on about the Hothites, but Lollardree is so important as a religious movement in England at this point in time. And I think it is really important to point out that there are extant in England these ideas that, I don't know, I think maybe the church isn't actually serving us in a great way in England.

That's something that already exists. It's really easy for us to kind of look at the history of Protestantism in England and say, oh, this is something that Henry VIII did because he got a little bit horny. But I think it is important to note that there are people who are really pushing the bounds of Christianity and they've got new and really exciting ideas that are going to be ticking over in the 15th century and that it doesn't spring out of nowhere. Yeah, and you do see right at the beginning of the century, Henry IV and Henry V, trying to work out what to do about Lollards.

They will begin and then they will decide to come down pretty hard on them. you know, they will condemn it as heresy and they will burn Lollards all over the place. Henry V, particularly ruthless with heretics. But you can see the English government at the beginning of the 15th century wrestling with ideas of what will later become Protestantism and what they mean, those kind of reforms tend to favour the people rather than the elites. So the elites are the ones that want to protect the status quo because the status quo has worked quite well for them for hundreds of years by this point.

So why would they want to upset it? So you can see them, you know, struggling with how do we tackle this? And their response is pretty harsh at the beginning of the 15th century. So if you want to survive the beginning of the 15th century, maybe don't out yourself as a lullard is a good start. Yeah, that's a really hot way of doing things. And indeed, there are a lot of people who are willing to go to the bat. You know, we see, for example, William Sawtree gets burnt, like right out of the gates, about 14.01. He's like, let's kick the century off right, by getting done for being a heretic.

And this has a bunch of knock-on effects because it does, for this moment, set the royalty up as still protectors of the church. And that's important because, you know, these are ways of thinking about what kingship does and what it is meant to do, right? And I think also when we're considering kingship in the 15th century in England, you know, we have to be asking what it is we're using kings for, right? Because everything is so incredibly up in the air, we have so much fighting about who's going to be the king that we need to ask what it is that kings are actually doing for the people. And one of the things that they do by coming down on the side of the church against Lawlers is they say, well, we're upholding papal norms. we are a really great link for the church to the people of England and this is something that they are coming down really strongly upon and that kind of makes sense if you see what they are up to behind the scene.

Because they are the establishment and the church is the establishment and the establishment is sticking together. And talking about Henry IV, again, if we go ever so slightly back to 1399, Henry the 4th has deposed his cousin Richard II and that is a really significant break in English politics to end the 14th century on. It's distinct from the deposition of Edward II in that Edward is succeeded by his own son. Richard is not, he's deposed and he's succeeded by the cousin who does the deposing. And that sets a pretty dangerous precedent.

You know, we're going to get to the Wars of the Roses later, but plenty of people will tell you that the deposition of Richard the Second kind of makes the Wars of the Roses inevitable. I'm not sure inevitable is the right word, but what it does is set a really dangerous precedent that the people can go to. So if you're in a position like we were just talking about where you feel like the crown isn't doing right by you, what can we do about a rubbish king? Well, actually, what we can do about a rubbish king is get rid of him. And that's new. That's brand new. It turns out.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. And I think that this is something that historians always, we're wary of, aren't. we? The idea that anything is inevitable. Nothing is inevitable. Things can change all the time. There are actions and there are reactions to things. But fundamentally, what it does make inevitable, I think, is questioning, that questioning. The idea that kings are kings and there's nothing that one can do about them is gone at this point in time. And we can say that there has to be some sort of mastery that is happening on the part of kings. There has to be some, way of showing what it is that royalty can and should be doing, and that if you're not doing that,

someone can sweep in and take you away. And so I don't know, I think widely historians look at this as a bad move for anyone who likes a really easy takeover for kings at the very least. Yeah, and it's something that 15th century kings in England are going to have to live under the shadow of, isn't it? Previous kings have thought, well, even if my people don't like me, tough. You know, I don't necessarily have to work too hard at being a brilliant king because they're stuck with me anyway. Kings in the 15th century have this kind of specter in the background that actually if you're rubbish, there is something that people can do about you. They don't even have to wait for your son to be the right age to succeed you. What they can do is just set you to one side, maybe kill you,

and replace you with someone else who is from your wider family. And that's a brand new threat for medieval monarchs to have to deal with in England. Absolutely. And, you know, it's odd Europe-wide, I would say. As a general rule of thumb, the ordinary move that you pull, you pull Isabella France's move, you know, that we saw back in the 14th century, which is just you depose your husband

and you rule in place of your minor son. That's what people expect if you have a particularly bad king. But I'm telling you, the king needs to be so bad. Right? The king has to be like widely, universally, absolutely loathed, and you need really strong backing from the nobility in order to pull that off. And we see lots of people try it in varying places. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.

But this thing like your cousin can just come in? Yeah, really not a lot of that. I mean, ordinarily, you know, even if you are dealing with a king who is in particular mental ill health, still ordinarily, you know, his business. brothers kind of prop him up a little bit or his wife does, you know, until you can just kind of get the sun over the line. You develop councils of people in order to hedge around it. And you would never admit, you know, that this king is in such a bad state because that kind of calls into question the entire idea of kingship. And here just this idea that, oh no, we've got another model in the back, go grab the cousin. That's a really new thing that you don't see very often

across the medieval period. I'd like to bring this king back for a refund, please. I believe it's still under warranty. Do you have a replacement? Exactly. You know, and to be fair, look, I don't have a lot of love for Richard the second. You know, I'm not out here defending him. I think that that was a pretty shoddy model,

but I just also think that maybe we didn't consider long-term what deposing him meant. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, Henry IV, you know, the guy who will take his place, he's an interesting figure, I think, because he's someone who has all of the makings of a really, really good king. is a guy who is a crusader. He's been with the Teutonic Knights fighting pagans in northeastern Europe. He's been to Jerusalem. He's been all around Italy. He's done this kind of almost a late 14th century version of the Grand Tour. He's gone and met everybody and had an education and come home

with all of these wonderful gifts that he's gathered everywhere, not quite a straw donkey from Spain, but all of that kind of stuff. He has everything about him that you think if you were, if you were a king, he looks great on paper, but when he comes into contact with the reality of kingship, and in particular, I think the way that he becomes king, he just can't make it work. Yeah, I think that that's really the issue here because, yeah, I mean, I think if you were going to pick another king, he makes a lot of sense. You know, this is someone with a diplomatic gnauss. This is someone who he knows everybody, everybody knows him. You know, it's rather the style at the time to have some kind of religious war in your background. I mean, personally for me,

I kind of like him being up in England because who knows, he might have been called in against the Hussites and I wouldn't like that. So, you know, like, let's distract him. Let's distract him up in England. But I think the issue is it haunts him the way that he has come to power. So you can then never just say, well, I'm the king and that's settled after you pull something like this. Because that's the entire point. What you said is that all. all of this is up for grabs, anyone can do whatever it is they want to do. And I don't think that he's ever able to settle into a position where he says, okay, and now it's the time to just get the machinery of state humming along.

And also in the 15th century, one of the things that's coming in is we're starting to get the machinery of state, right? You know, earlier in the medieval period, it's like, well, what's a king? It's like, oh, that's that guy who he stands up there, and he's the most important guy in in terms of who collects taxes, and you know, you can ask people to raise an army. By the 15th century, we're starting to see people want things in return for their taxes, right? We're starting to see a lot of people saying, wait, what is it that we have Kings for? You know, we've had stuff coming along like the peasants' rebellions are happening increasingly,

and you have people say, well, why is it that I'm paying taxes and what is this King for? What does he do? So now when you bring in this new king and you say, well, we can put a new one in if the other one is bad, then that means that you're never going to be able to get away from those questions about what is the king doing for the generalized population. And that is really going to dog him, I think, for his entire royal career. There's no chance to just kind of get on with the state because he's already offered up the idea that if you aren't doing the correct thing for people, you can be removed.

He also starts his reign off with another pretty bad precedent at the start of the 15th century as one of the numerous rebellions that he has to face from people who decided maybe they didn't want him to be king actually in the end. He ends up executing his Archbishop of York, Archbishop Scrope, which you think of Henry the 2nd and Thomas Beckett. It's not a good look, is it? And I think sometimes it's strange that Henry the 4 doesn't get more. attention for this, more criticism for this. It kind of just seems to slip off the radar everywhere,

but this guy executes an archbishop. Which is wild, especially when you consider how incredibly important York is at the time, right? You know, it's like, this is basically the second biggest bishop after Canterbury. And he's just like, yeah, no, don't need that one. That should be, that should be fine, actually. And I think that it just, it maybe doesn't have the mystery of Beckett's execution? You know, we can say directly, oh, yeah, he had that got killed, right? You know, when we're talking about Beckett,

it's sort of like, oh, you know, was this a misunderstood exclamation? How can we relate to Beckett? And also, you know, Beckett loves it. He simply loved to be martyred. Whereas that is not the case of what happened here. So you don't get this sort of delightful mystery. It's just a straight-up political execution.

And that's a lot harder to spin in an interesting way. But, you know, I would argue that people should be more interested in it as a result of that. You know, Kings are going around doing wild stuff all the time, baby. Like, let's pay attention to that a little bit. Yeah, absolutely. And then moving on from Henry IV, you know, he's rocked by revolts and pressure from people who are thinking, well, you know, we put you there, maybe we can take you down again. Eventually ends up with potentially a skin disease. it might be something like psoriasis,

which people will say, well, that's because you've executed an archbishop, you'd do for us, what do you expect? But he does end up managing to pass the throne on to his son who becomes Henry V. And in Henry V,

we have maybe one of Shakespeare's greatest caricatures. So Shakespeare gives us this lad, this drinker, this party animal, who then undergoes this Damascene conversion at his coronation and suddenly becomes an incredibly sensible person. So we don't really say too much more about him because that's obviously all accurate, isn't it? Oh yeah, that's exactly it. So moving on. Well, John. Good job, Bill. We love that

one. But yeah, I have to say that this is such, it's an interesting one because it's such an enduring idea and people have really latched onto this. But it's so inaccurate. Because I actually think that this is a guy who was pretty serious about the throne. And at the very least, you know, a real hardened politician who's kind of come out from a really difficult upbringing, you know, saw what was going on with his father and was like, no, we got to be hard as nails. You know, you don't get to actually really be, you know, a party boy in these particular circumstances. So I think that it is a really wild characterization, although, you know, obviously it works very well for what it is that Shakespeare is attempting to do. So fair point, right.

It's a nice trope. But yeah, you know, Henry, he's in the Battle of Shrewsbury at the age of 16, and he spends almost all of his time from then until he becomes king, kind of fighting in Wales. And, you know, fighting in Wales is something the English have never, ever been able to do very well. It's a hard job, and he's constantly writing letters back to his dad saying, I've got no men, I've got no money, I've got no chance of making this work, and his dad's like, and you'll be all right, just keep going.

So he is used to making military things work in the time. toughest of circumstances, which is obviously something that's going to play into his later life. But there is no room for him to be this party boy. This guy has been working nose to the grindstone from the age of 16 in one of the hardest parts of his dad's kingdom. Well, I love about the letters back is there's such dad letters. You know, it's such like a dad, I'm hungry, high hungry, I'm dad, you know, the kind of stuff where it's just like, you know, he's making these really good points about, you know, how basically provisions have completely fallen through. They need more of everything. Men, pikes, you know, just reinforcements,

food, like logistics, an absolute nightmare. And it's just sort of like, you'll figure it out. Oh, it's character forming. Character forming for a young lad to be, you know, stuck, be seizing a castle in the rain, you know. And coming through that at all actually is real testament to his abilities as a leader and the fact that he's able to keep his men together at all whatsoever. You know, this is someone who from an early age was in the absolute thick of it. And I think that that's a really important thing to think about because I think too much can be made of the idea that people in the medieval period as teenagers are essentially treated like adults.

It's not always the case. But in this case, it really is, you know, this is kind of like the exception that proves the rule, you know, that most of. teenagers are kind of seen as like young adults not quite formed, but, you know, hey, if you're a prince, they will absolutely go throw you out of battle and see what sticks. Yeah. And like his dad, I think probably, I mean, Henry V's reputation, we're going to get into the 100 years war a little bit in a moment, but his reputation becomes slightly tricky. You'll find people who will hold him up as sort of an ideal medieval king. And he has undergone this education. His position reminds me an

awful lot of the black prince under Edward the third. He's had the longest apprenticeship to be a king that we've seen for a long, long time. He's prepared. He knows how to do all of the things that are expected of him. Lots of people see in him someone that medieval people would have considered to be an ideal king, but other people will see someone who creates an absolute disaster. So he has a slightly tricky legacy, I think, and that legacy largely hinges around deciding to go back to France and restart that war, doesn't it? So I guess the big question is, was that a good idea? No, so I guess we can all go home now.

Done. Next. Okay, all right, all right. Okay, look, to be fair, I think that what the Hundred Years War does that is good for England is it creates a conflict that is not in England. And that is good. You know, if you're on kind of shaky ground with the idea of who is,

the king, what does the king owe the people? It's not a bad idea to say, look over there. It's not a bad idea to say, do you know who really bugs me? The French, right? And get everyone and they've got lots of money and we could go and get some of that. And we could go get it. And you know, everyone who's kind of like vaguely garrulous and pissed off and could be looking at the English throne can start looking at Gascany instead, which would be super helpful. You know, if you're an English king who's on fairly shaky footing. So to be fair, I think I understand why they did it. You know, it's an easy kind of shake-down opportunity

and a way of getting the locals off your back. And I think in the short term, it does make sense for Henry, for the reasons that we've just discussed. You know, this is a guy whose dad has fended off endless rebellions and questions about his right to rule. What better way to prove that you have the right to rule, England, than take armies over to France and unite the whole country behind you. And like you say, stop them asking questions about who's the rightful king of England

because we can go and get rich in France instead. So in the short term, I think it's not a bad move by Henry. The question is, and the question that we never quite get to the bottom of because of his early death is what was his long-term plan? Could he have ever made the English Kingdom of France work? He achieved so much. he is appointed heir to Charles the 6th, but then he goes and dies just a few months before Charles the 6th. So we're left wondering, would it have been a good idea if Henry had lived longer,

or do we have to say that it was a bad idea because it maybe relied so heavily on just how good he was, and nobody else could keep up with that? Yeah, I mean, I think that's kind of the crux of the matter, right? And it gives flavors of the Angevin Empire beforehand. You know, like this is something, and not quite all of France, right, but huge regions of it, were something that together Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine and two of England's best rulers were able to just about keep juggling, right? And no one was able to do it better than they were. And even then, you know, put a terrible strain on their marriage and, you know, relationships and politics generally. So I think the issue is that much land and ruling that much land takes someone who's an absolute

phenom to be completely on the ball. And if you do not have that person, it's very, very difficult to keep the equilibrium necessary to rule that. And let's understand, you know, at the time, everything is bigger and further. You know, you can move pretty quickly in a ship. It is easy to move things back and forth

and you would actually be surprised how quickly that happens. But, you know, the idea of France, it's not like now now where there's kind of like a French identity, Gascany is very different to what's going on in Orillon, just off the top of my head, you know, is, you know, the Burgundians, are they French today or are they part of the Holy Roman Empire? Who knows? Who knows? You know, there are people who are speaking all kinds of language. There are all differing things to kind of keep afloat just in France. Then you've got to keep England afloat. What's going on with Wales? What's going on with Scotland. So there's a lot of varying borders to keep in mind. There's a lot of varying

cultures. And you have to be so good at Statescraft to keep this going, which fundamentally, I would be real with you. A lot of these guys are not. But I guess I also am not sure that that's even necessarily what they were attempting to do. I think that that's how they're prosecuting the war, if that makes sense. And even if you could just like, ooh, get that going for just a little while that that would work. But I think to a certain extent what they're attempting to do is be like, hey, don't think I forgot about you, Frenchies, right? You never know what I could start this conflict again and shake you down for more money. I think in certain ways it is just an exercise and just seeing what happens if you throw the dice. But I mean, I suppose that that's my own

particular historical hobby horse. Yeah, but it's a great what if, you know, what if Henry the 5th had lived another 10 years? We will never know. but it's interesting to wonder if he could have pulled it off because inconsiderate as he is, he goes and dies in 1422 after nine years as king and he leaves a nine-year-old baby behind. And the one thing that people grow up quickly in the medieval period, they don't grow up all that quickly.

This is still a nine-month-old baby. And suddenly he's got the biggest job going in the kingdom. I mean, that's not great, is it? Like, that's a baby. That's a baby, you know, and that's a really difficult and bad thing to have to deal with if you are the court. Like, let's just consider the nobility's around it because literally, okay, well, who's king right now? Who's going to run this thing? And so, you know, traditionally you look at whoever the wife is at the time, but you're also going to need a really good counsel.

And ordinarily, that really good counsel is going to include things like, hey, you're on. So you know, you're your brother's brothers and those sorts of things. But then the issue is, again, I can't stress this enough. We've now established that if there isn't a very good king on the throne, you can go ahead and get a new one. And that's a literal baby. That's a literal baby. This is a genuine crisis for the Lancashrian dynasty,

because they've got to be thinking if someone decides we don't want a baby king, they actually have the precedent to just move his crib to one side and get a grown-up to sit there instead. Yeah, so I mean, it's an absolute disaster for Lancaster, but since I'm Team York, I don't really care. But anyway, you know, like it's, it is one of those things where all of these intensely difficult political moves hinged on the idea that you would get someone who had a steady hand on the tiller. And unfortunately, a baby cannot have a steady hand on the tiller because the baby doesn't have a steady hand. I just think it does seem like in the midst of all of this they're so busy trying to work out what the structures of government might look like

who's going to actually make decisions and how's that going to work when it can't really be the will of the king and we've got to be really careful not to us up the power of the king and one day you might come back and get us if we do that it's almost like they spend so much time fretting about all of this that they forget there is a future king sat there who is looking for some lessons who needs to be taught how to do the job, and they kind of forget to do it.

Yeah, and I think that that is actually what is most damning about the situation, because heretofore, the thing that you would do is you would just say, okay, well, I'm about to be, like, the super-involved uncle. I'm going to make some money right now, you know? Like, I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to be the uncle that stepped up, and we will get this kid's education rolling. We are going to get a bunch of really smart people surrounding, him. And hey, it's an opportunity to enrich yourself. People do that all the time. You know,

they increase their own lands and those sorts of things while they're also babysitting. But the idea is if you do a good enough job and you have a good relationship with your nephew, then when he comes of age, he'll be like, great job, unc, and you can keep all of that land and money, and here I am, I'm the king now. And you can sort of build him in the mold that you want. You can create the king that you desire, which is why people sometimes do rebellions while there are baby kings, because it's sort of like, okay, yeah, well, by the time he reaches majority, I will have turned him into the king that I actually want, right? Everyone forgets to do that because they're so freaked out. You know, everyone forgets to get the good counselors in place. Everyone forgets to just

sort of create an air of business as usual, I think is probably the best way to put it. Because This is something that happens. Does it happen all the time? No. Is it usually considered kind of tricky? Oh, absolutely. But this isn't the first time we've been left with a baby. It's just the first time we've been left with a baby in a political climate that allows you to depose kings easily. Yeah, which is a recipe for disaster. And I do think Henry the 6th, he will become a terrible, terrible, terrible king. You can make the case of the worst king of medieval England, if you like, about Henry the 6th. I think he's up there with some of the other contenders. Interesting one. Ooh, sorry. I'm just like, yeah, that, that is, he would go on my list, I think. You know, he's up there with Richard I'm first. Fighting it out with John. And, yeah, it's nine-month-old baby fighting King John.

I'm pretty sure the nine-month-old baby would win. But, but he. It's true. It's true. For me, he does raise a really interesting question of nature versus nurture, because this is Henry VIII son, Henry the fourth's grandson. So you would imagine he has the qualities required of a good ruler that we've seen in them. what people expect of a good medieval king.

And yet it suggests that it's the education that Henry the 4th had and that arduous military education that Henry V had that made them the people that they were, because Henry the 6th lacks that and turns out to be an absolute disaster of a king. Yeah, I suppose that's true. There is something, unfortunately, to going dad mode and throwing your son into a wet ditch and seeing what happens, which we absolutely don't get out of Henry the 6th.

And I do think that also we have established that that is what this Lancasterian line is supposedly going to do, right? They're going to bring you these battle-hardened kings who really understand what it takes to be a good ruler in tough circumstances. And if you don't then go battle-hardened them, then what's the Lancasterian argument, you know? Yeah, yeah. And we ought to, you're fairly early in Henry the 6th reign, I don't feel like you and I can, talk about the 15th century without straying from the shores of England for a brief moment to give an honorable shout out to Joan of Arc. Hey, girl, hey, we love you.

Yeah, I mean, this is an interesting one because I think even when we are just talking about England, you do sort of have to mention Joan, because it is indeed the English and the Burgundians who put an end to her, which I think is sad and bad. You know, I really wish that Joan hadn't been executed. But it is also interesting because it shows that what we are starting to see in the Hundred Years' War is more of a French identity. You know, I was just saying, oh, well, you know, the Ossetan, they're very different. Which is true, which is true, right? But it turns out much in the way that by getting a bunch of English people together to go attack France and being like, hey, aren't we all English?

And that can help kind of like coalesce one idea works the other way to. and you can get really sick of seeing English people in your backyard stealing your pig and burning your crops. And it might begin to coalesce this idea that there is a Frenchness and that there is this idea of a rightful king of France. And, you know, Jesus, you know what it takes to make peasants be like, you know, actually, I really care about the king. Rather a lot, actually. It's rather a lot. So that was, I think, a bad move on the English part because you do have this possibility in the medieval world, specifically for ecstatic female sainthood. Right.

You know, there's this idea of women being more open, more porous because we're cold and wet, and so we're more susceptible to things like emotions, which is considered bad. But also to divine inspiration in this really untrained. unlearned way. And that's what we see happen in Joan of Arc. She has these visions, you know, of St. Michael and St. Catherine. And, you know, like all the really good fighty saints, right? You know, everybody with a sword is showing up to her, telling her what it is she needs to do. And that's got a real cachet in the 15th century. That's something that people really understand. And that's why it becomes a real threat to the English as well. You know, she becomes this really

important French mascot. And so you can understand why the English and the Burgundians really want to get rid of her because she is a figure around whom people can coalesce very easily because she's tapping in to this new idea of a unified Frenchness. She's tapping in to these medieval ideas about the possibilities of female sainthood. And she's getting the people all riled up. The English don't love it. They don't love it.

Yeah. And I think that getting the people riled up is. is, you know, whatever it is that Joan does experience, you know, we don't know exactly what it might be. Whatever it is that she experiences, however it is that this girl from the countryside ends up in front of the putative king of France telling him, I'll go and break the seizure or Leon for you and get you crowned at Reims, and then she does it. However that comes about, it is a real pivot point for the English campaign in France, because the French suddenly think, oh, hang on, we can beat them. Yeah, it's like this doesn't have to be just an endemic problem, you know, like Vikings in your backyard, having the English in your backyard, right?

And this is something that we could maybe actually put a stop to just draw a line under it and move on. And, you know, God bless her, Joan, in that way that strident people can do, you know, at first she's seen as very useful to the French crown, and then she's seen as kind of annoying. and unable to turn it down because she's got one mode which is like holy war holy war right and I will bring up my favorite Joan anecdote

which is that at one point in time she takes a break from fighting the England to write a letter to the Hussites like a strongly worded letter that it's like oh I'm coming after you next you just wait once I get rid of the English and I'm like no don't fight besties I love you too much

but you know I bring this up because the point is she's only got attack mode, right? And part of the reason that she ends up falling into the hands of the English and the Burgundians is that the French kind of get a little annoyed with her, but she doesn't stop fighting, even though she doesn't necessarily have the backing of the crown, and that's what ends up getting her captured. But I think that we have to acknowledge that it's both a strength and a weakness, and it's ultimately what makes her human. She's not just the saintly legend. She is a person.

who maybe didn't always make the right call, but you know, you live by the ecstatic vision, you die by the ecstatic vision. What could I say? Yeah, and one person's prophetess is another man's heretic, and obviously Joan does not survive the 15th century because she ends up being captured and is deemed to be a heretic by those that have captured us.

But this is an interesting period for women more generally, sort of outside the nobility and outside royalty. You've got people like Christine DePizantzano, writing incredible books in France. And you've got people like Marjorie Kemp and her mystic experiences that aren't a million miles away from Joan. You know, she has all of these visions

and all that kind of thing as well in England. You've got this almost resurgent or not resurgence because it's not necessarily happened before, but you've got the sudden advent of women writing about these experiences that they've had. Yeah, absolutely. And I think this is one of the really interesting things about the 15th century.

Because I think one of the things that we're beginning to see is that there just are. more women who can write, you know? Or not necessarily right because, for example, in the case of Marjorie Kemp, she doesn't write her experience. She hires someone to write it down for her, right? But it means that she knows enough to know that if you really want Sainthood, which obviously that's what Marjorie's gunning for here. Like, you don't hire someone to write down your life experiences if you aren't making a play for something, and she's making a play for Sainthood. But she understands that if you need to do that, you've got to have a written record.

Written records are what makes things possible. And also, probably she is literate. You know, this is something that we don't understand now. I think now we tend to think that if one can read, one must also be able to write. But it's super common in the late medieval period and even indeed into the early modern period for people to be able to read but not write

because writing with a quill, that's really hard. Have you ever tried to write with a will? I'm terrible at it. I haven't actually. It's really difficult. A long time. Yeah, so it's like, you know, I can read medieval documents. Can I write one?

Girl, no. Like, absolutely not. And so there's a lot of that about, right? Which is what we kind of see happening, except for Christina Paisan, she's writing. And not only is she writing, but she is, you know, this absolute literature powerhouse. She knows how to do branding. She understands how you create a manuscript to give yourself a reputation. And I think that's what we see with all three of these women.

with Joan, with Christine, with Marjorie, we see women who understand what it takes in order to create a legacy, and they are all tapping into this in their own ways. And I think that's a really phenomenal and very 15th century occurrence. Yeah, I think one of the interesting things about the 15th century is the beginnings of the emergence of this kind of almost like a cult of authorship. If you think about chronicles that are written before, you know, Random Monk A wrote this one and Random Monk B over there. wrote that page of it. It didn't matter who authored it. What matters is that God's work was being done

by recording these things or copying out biblical passages and things like that. There wasn't that sense of authorship. People didn't put their name at the end of it. It's not by Bob the Monk. In the 15th century, you start to see people putting their name to the things that they're producing. Christine de Pizan is writing an array of books

on all sorts of different topics, and they're written by Christine de Pizan. And her name goes on that. You know, Marjorie Kemp's work, it's written by a scribe, but it has Marjorie Kemp's name put on it. And later in the century, we will get to the point where the printing press is beginning to arrive and take over. And I think you start to see this kind of, you think, Mallory's Moore Darthur, you know, suddenly getting a book that has an author attached to it in a way that we didn't always have before. Yeah, and you know, you could say that this, we see the beginnings of this kicking off in the 14th century with, you know, your good friend and mine,

who, you know, R.P. Chalcer, you would have loved the 15th century. But, you know, it is so much more a thing where you go out looking for a Christine to pies a book. Like, that's what you want to experience. And, you know, that's why she is putting pictures of herself in them and talking about herself all the time and her experiences and really putting that into the work. And so we'll begin to see more and more of that. For example, with artists, it's going to be like a lot less, oh, it's a Flemish master and a lot more, you know, a named guy who is running in artelier, that sort of thing will be more and more common across the 15th century. But we certainly see it in these incredible women and their works.

You know, I don't know the name of the scribe who wrote down Marjorie Kemp's book. I know Marjorie's name. I don't particularly like her. I think she's annoying as hell, but I know her name. But you know, you know, you and whoever met her in the 15th century seem to think she's annoying. Yeah, you know, like I suppose what they say. It's like if you've got haters, you're doing something right. So, you know. Yeah, yeah. And I'm conscious we need to get through the rest of the 15th century.

Oh, gosh. Oh, no. I mean, to back in England, we're going to hit Henry the 6th being absolutely rubbish and useless. He gets away with it for an awfully long time, really. I guess coming to the throne as a baby buys him a little bit of a whole pass for a while, but that's not going to last for very long. And we'll end up in the period that we call the, the Wars of the Roses. And I mean, how many hours could we talk about the Wars of the Roses for? I mean, is there a way to simplify the Wars of the Roses?

Oh, it was a mess. The end. And I mean, yeah, that's the thing. I mean, I swear, like, we spend so much time about talking about the Wars of the Roses. But there's a reason. It's because it's interesting and complex. And it does give us all these kind of sliding door moments about what would happen over here, what would happen over there, if people were better rulers, could this have been taken in hand? And fundamentally, it just does change the direction of what ends up happening in England. It just does. And that's why it's so enigmatic as a conflict. But I hardly need to tell you that. My God. Preaching to the choir over here. Preaching to the Pope. Yeah. My lord. And I think it's it is where that deposition of Richard

the second really comes home to Roos, because you suddenly get this period within 25 years in which you've got Henry the 6th deposed in favour of Edward the 4th. Edward the 4th is kicked back off the throne for a while, Henry the 6th's back. Edward the 4th come back and takes it back again. He dies quite young, leaves his 12-year-old son, Edward V, and for whatever reason, again, hold another podcast on that. Do we want another child king? Who knows? But we end up with him not becoming king and his uncle becomes Richard the third and two years after that you've got Henry the seventh coming along and thinking time for a new broom, let's have a new dynasty and put an end to this medieval period and have the Battle of Bosworth and call it quits. So you do have this sudden

tumbling of crowns in a way that would have seemed, I think, even in the 14th century after the deposition of Edward II, what happens in the second half of the 15th century would have seemed utterly incomprehensible before the middle of the 15th century, I think. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And we certainly see that in responses on the continent where people are like, what is going on up there? You know, and, you know, we... Those English are flipping mad. That's what? And, you know, like, we see the papacy not really knowing what to do and who to support. You know, the Holy Roman Empire is looking at them going, I don't even know what to say about this.

And also, does this mean we can't ask them for troops? You know, we see the French being like, like, this is probably good for us, right? Yeah, I think it's good. You know, and then, you know, occasionally, like the Spanish thing, well, what does this mean for us? How are we going to respond? So everyone agrees that it is just bonkers, right? You know, there is enough to know that this is not business as usual. And there's also enough going on that people are just like the English, no accounting for them. Nothing but sheep in wars up there. We've never quite got rid of that reputation, I think. And the fighting in the wars, The Roses, I think, is really interesting because you've got a military culture in England in the 15th century that has perfected the art of defeating the French.

They know how to fight against French heavy cavalry. You use longbow, dismounted soldiers, very specific tactics. The difficulty is when you come back to England and you start fighting other English people who also know that secret source, you've suddenly got piles of secret source spread all over everywhere and it's just a smeary mess. the tactics kind of cancel each other out and you get these heavy intense battles that are really hard to predict in which no one has any kind of tactical advantage so you get this really weird sort of military stalemate almost

no one can come up with a brand new tactic I'd argue perhaps until Richard the Third leaves that cavalry charge at Bosworth which is maybe an attempt to do something a little bit different but you just end up with these two forces butting heads doing the same things to each other over and over and over again because they don't know how to do anything else. Yeah, perfectly symmetrical violence.

Never solved anything, it turns out. Yeah, it's a really interesting one because, as you say, all of these strengths end up being weaknesses if you're using them on yourself. And it ends up being a real weakness for the average English person, right? Because the commoners are not loving it. You know, the commoners don't like that it's their own people in their backyard churning up their field and, you know, killing them. as well, is you know, I think it is important for us to acknowledge that whilst we know the names

of the people from these great brave lineages and, you know, we can say everyone who is involved with various families, there are, you know, countless peasants who have been told that they need to pick up a pike and go march over to a field who are involved in this as well, and they get really tired of it. So, you know, I think that one of the things that we really see after the Battle of Bosworth is also just an acknowledgement that this has to stop. stop one way or another. You know, it's just got to the point where we cannot do it anymore, which is why people are willing to accept an entirely new family on the throne. Because everyone's just exhausted.

Because what's the option? The option is to go back to fighting each other in a field again with kind of no way of being sure who's going to win. Exactly. It's easy for us to say, oh, well, I don't know. I think that you could prosecute this some more, but, you know, it's not our lives. on the line, right? Yeah, yeah. And we ought to give a mention to the queens of the 15th century because there's some interesting figures amongst all of those as well.

So Henry VIII has Joan of Navarre as his second wife, so not the mother of Henry V, but his stepmother. And Henry will end up accusing her of witchcraft and placing her under arrest, not because he believes she's a witch, but because he wants all of her land of money. Catherine de Valois, Henry VIII, Henry V's wife, pretty short-lived marriage, mother of Henry the 6th. Yeah.

Not hugely impactful at the time. Her real impact comes later on, doesn't it, when she marries Owen Tudor and is the matriarch of the Tudor dynasty? Yeah, exactly. It's one of those things where you're able to see it further down the line. It eventually comes into fruition, but at the time, not a whole lot to write home about, which, to be fair, one of the things I always bring up and I know I bang on about this, But, you know, that doesn't make her a bad queen that maybe kind of makes her a good queen.

Because a really successful queen is a lot of the time one that isn't making waves and is just doing things quietly behind the scenes. Really good queens, a lot of the time you have no idea what they were up to because they're able to do it in such a way that you don't even know what's happening. Yeah, yeah. It's soft power. And if they get a mention, it tends to be because they've done something wrong or something that everybody is disapproving of. So sometimes the silence is the best endorsement you can get. And then kind of through the Wars of the Roses, we've got kind of Margaret Bon Joon, we've got Elizabeth Woodville for Edward VIII, who got Anne Neville for Richard III, and then Elizabeth of York with Henry the 7th.

I wonder, you know, out of that collection of Queens of the 15th century, who do you think gets it right and who gets it wrong? You know, I really like all these women, so it's a really difficult one for me. And I guess that, so it's really easy to be like Elizabeth Woodville got it wrong, but like, babes, she's just like, rolling the dice, right? You know, like if she hadn't got in there and kind of seen what she could play for, then, you know, who's to say, right? You know, she didn't necessarily know that it would end up as badly as it did. And I think that she's just this really fascinating character. So I think that she probably does the worst, but on the other hand, I just think it's because she starts from the weakest position. And so this is really more about positioning and less about

how she plays the hand that she's dealt, if that makes sense. I'd make a case for Margaret of Anjou getting it the most wrong, I think, and not because I don't think she's an incredible political actor. I think Margaret's difficulty is partly that she's French. She's a French queen of England at a time when we're technically at war with France and claiming to rule France. It's a slightly awkward position for her to be in. When her husband has his complete mental collapse in 1453,

and becomes catatonic, she makes a bid for Regency Powers, which in France she would do, and that would be absolutely the thing that would happen. She would have regency powers. But she terrifies the English nobility by doing this. And then later in the Wars of the Rosie, she will escape to Scotland and she will recruit this Scottish army who she can't afford to pay, so she offers them pay in booty if they'll follow her into England and start attacking English people. So you've now got the Queen of England inviting Scots into the Kingdom. and offering to let them steal from English subjects. Yes, she's pretty annoyed at the English subjects at this point.

But it's not a great way of doing things. So I think Margaret makes the big mistake of never quite getting to understand England and the English. She kind of behaves politically as if she's still in France, which doesn't work in England. Yeah, I think that as a general rule of thumb, I would say what her problem is is she thinks there's rules. Right? She thinks that you can just play by the rules of what is happening. And like, let's be fair, there's rather a lot down in France of like having a king go catatonic at this point in time and having the queen step in. That's literally something that the French monarchs are dealing with. Right. And so she's like, oh, well, there are ways of doing these things. And these are how things are done. And honey, you are in the wrong country now, right? We have dispensed with the idea that there are ordinary. avenues for rulership. And her sin really is in her inability to be flexible. She's being rigid because obviously that's what royalty wants to do. They want there to be rules. They want there to be

a rigidity in a way that things are done. But that's the entire point of the conflict she finds herself in, is that it doesn't work that way anymore. Yeah. And in terms of who gets it right, I think it's hard to look too much further than Elizabeth of York for all of the reasons that you've already said that we don't hear that much about her because she quietly performs the role of being Henry the seventh's queen almost to perfection, I think. Yeah, absolutely. I think that she's a real tactical genius in terms of understanding what it is that queenship is meant to do, right place at the right time. I have nothing but good things to say about her, actually, so I'm incredibly biased, don't ask me. But, you know, this is a woman that I would want on my side because she is

really quick thinking, she understands how to bring people in and how to establish relationships, which is most important when you are dealing with conflicts at this level. So yeah, nothing but good things to say. Incredible woman. Elizabeth of York, be my friend. And I guess this leaves a question. If we get to the end of the 15th century, and if we've managed to survive all of this, if we've managed to find a trick of not being declared a heretic, either in as a Lollard or as a prophetess in France and not getting dragged into really awkward battles in the Wars of the Roses where nobody can get a clear advantage. Does England evolve during the 15th century? Has anything changed at the end of the 15th century from the beginning?

Oh yeah, that's a good question. I would say so. I would say, you know, one of the big things that we're seeing, even though it kicks off in the 14th century, is just the fruition of what. what it means to have regime change. You know, if we start at the beginning of this 15th century being like, well, you could have a different king as a treat. By the end of the 15th century, we're like, oh, you could have a whole new dynasty, babe. That could happen at any time. And what we will see increasingly in the early modern period is that happening a lot.

After you get out of the medieval period, English people change dynasties constantly. They're getting a new guy in every five minutes. It's ridiculous. And indeed, sometimes a new woman. know, these things go around all over the shop. So I think that that is, that has to be said that it's a pretty big difference. And I think you make the argument as well that the instability in England in the 15th century kind of forces some of the institutions of government to step up and begin to fill the void.

And in particular, I think that increases the power and the authority of Parliament. You know, to the point where when you get to the Wars of the Roses, Parliament is being asked to judge between the titles of kings. You know, that's a huge step forward, leap forward in the powers and the authority of Parliament. We've gone from the divine right of kings to the parliamentary right of kings. And this, I think, has been a gradual process since Parliament emerged in the 13th century of it, trying to slowly gather in all of these powers to itself.

And if it reaches the point where there's dispute and discussion about who's the rightful king and someone asks Parliament, they're like, oh, yeah, yeah, we can have the right to do that. That's great. And we'll keep it, thank you. And by the 17th century, we'll actually just depose the monarchy altogether. And I think this is, the 15th century is a big part of that process towards what is now a parliamentary democracy, I guess. Oh, absolutely. And I think that one of the things that we're also seeing in terms of this, you know, just the same stuff that we were talking about in terms of people like Marjorie Kemp cropping up, you begin to see more and more of this really well-educated and incredibly wealthy and incredibly powerful mercantile class that really

feeds itself into this parliamentarian tendency. You know, so this idea that ordinary people should have some say in what's going on, or at least wealthy people should have some say in what's going on. Yeah, let's not go on order. just yet. Yeah, never mind. Never mind. But, you know, this idea that there are going to be some structures that people who are not royal or noble are taking part in, and we see that in individuals like Marjorie Kemp, who are ready to tell their story, ready to put themselves forward as a force in this world and not just leaving it all to the nobility. Yeah. And that that mercantile class

will eventually, you know, become a middle class. It's probably a bit early to call them a middle class, but they are a new strata of society that has emerged probably out of the end of the 14th century and will solidify their position in the 15th century at the heart of political life in England and will remain there for the foreseeable future. Absolutely. I think that we're still there now. So, hey there. Before we finish then, favourite king, who's your favorite king that we've talked about in the 15th century? That's a difficult one. I think Henry V, I think, Henry V. I quite like Henry V. I like his tenacity. I think that he does some things that I don't necessarily agree with, but I also understand where they're coming from, and I think that it makes

sense from his standpoint to do, even the things that I think are a little foolish, like attacking France. But I think he's the most capable of the kings, and the major thing that I think he did wrong was die too early. So, you know, I can't get too mad about that, I suppose. I mean, I'd just say Richard the 3rd and fight me. You know, I don't care. But I do see that in Henry V as well. I see the positives of Henry V. I think you can say similar things about Edward V.

Has all of the makings of an ideal medieval king and then goes and dies a bit too early without having planned for a world in which he no longer exists. He could have been a much better king than he's remembered as, I think. But Richard the 3rd is the best. That's the trouble with kingship, isn't it? You know, you start encouraging people to think about themselves as a representative of God on earth, and Lord, they do.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think my takeaway from this discussion is probably going to be that the best way to survive the 15th century is to be on the right side, whether it's of religion or civil war or wars in France. The only question, I guess you have to work out is which side is the right side today? Yeah, I guess that's the thing. It's so easy to hide side. It's like, well, don't do that.

But, yeah, there are so many moving parts. play. There's so much drama. There's so many incredibly intelligent people doing really difficult things. It's that it's easy for us to kind of look down and say, oh, I see how that happened. But, you know, at the time, I guess just keep your options open. That's what you did do in the 15th century. Make a lot of friends. Be super noncommittal. Be Thomas Lord Stanley. What side you're on. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, I guess we ought to let you dismantle your quilt fort in your hotel room. Well, I don't know. Maybe I live here now.

And we ought to get dragged back to our isolation cells somewhere in the darkest reaches of the gone medieval dungeon. But hopefully we will get to do this again soon because it's always such a pleasure to talk to you. Matt, I absolutely love to have some time out of the dungeon and into the blanket fort with you. So thank you. I speak to again soon. Bye. I hope you enjoyed this chat. I know I did. It was an indulgence for me. You can find lots more episodes in our back catalogue about Henry V, Joan of Arc, the Hundred Years' War, the Wars of the

Roses and plenty more 15th century goodness besides. There are new installments of God Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please come back to join Eleanor and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. You can sign up to History Hit to access hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week and all of History Hits podcasts add free. Head to HistoryHit.com forward slash subscribe right now. Anyway, I better let you go.

I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with History Hits.