Gone Medieval - The Medieval Boleyns

Episode Date: November 9, 2023

From the fields of Norfolk to the royal court - via city commerce, local government, liberal education and numerous wedding bells - the Boleyns were just one of many newly prosperous and ambitious families seeking to make the best of a world that was being changed through famine, plague, revolt and civil war – but also opportunity. But while the Boleyns’ new-found wealth delivered power and status, they still lived in a violent world and life could be precarious.In this episode of Gone Medieval, Matt Lewis talks to Claire Martin, whose new book Heirs of Ambition: The Making of the Boleyns uncovers the story of the family behind England's most obsessed-over queen, Anne Boleyn.This episode was produced by Rob Weinberg.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code MEDIEVAL - sign up here.You can take part in our listener survey here. 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. Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. One of the most interesting people in the Tudor period and I know we don't like to use the T word here. It's almost a swear, but bear with me. One of the most interesting people in that period is probably Anne Berlin. How did she get to be in the eyeline of the megalomaniac tyrant who will kill her? No, I won't pull my punches and please stop telling me I look like Henry the 8th to. meanest thing you can say to someone who's a Ricardian, and it doesn't help if you qualify it by saying it's a young Henry VIII either. But the story of how they met, like all the best ones, is medieval.

Claire Martin's new book, Heirs of Ambition, The Making of the Billins, charts the families rise towards that crest that would see them eventually fall. And I'm delighted that Claire is joining us now to explore more of the story. Welcome to Gone Medieval, Claire. Hello, Matt. Thank you for having me. Thank you for joining us. Always happy to take some limelight away from the Tuders who definitely don't deserve it. Absolutely. Start us off with the Berlin family then. When do they appear in the historical record? How far back can we chart the Berlin family? So the Berlin family came originally from Norfolk and from a small village called Saul just north of Norwich. And there they were always free peasants rather than unfree by birth.

There were plenty of other Belins who lived in the villages around Saul and they were probably all related to each other. But this far back there just aren't the records to tell us exactly how. The first Berlin who we're interested in, who is related to the family that becomes the family of Anne Berlin, is John Berlin, who rented a house in Saul sometime before 1283. The name Berlin itself has produced some controversy. It's been suggested that it must come from Boulogne in France, and therefore that's where the family came from. But really, when this family appears in the historical record, they don't appear to be any different from all the other native English peasant families

who were living around them. And I think possibly there might be another explanation for the name. In the linen industry, which was prominent in Norwich, in the area of Saul and Ailsham, the nearby village, in the 12th and 13th century they were making linen there. And the Middle English word bowl or bolling, which is where the word bowl comes from, and refers to something that is round, shaped or swollen,

was also used specifically to refer to the seed pods of flax. Now, the first written record of that is the 15th century, which is a slight flaw in my argument. But just because it was first recorded and written down then, that we still have that today doesn't mean it wasn't being used earlier. And I think that would fit quite neatly with the large number of people called Berlin in the linen weaving area of Norfolk. And the Berlin's would certainly have been involved in the production of linen.

And do we know what they're doing in those early generations? Are they related to the flax industry or the linen industry at all? That area of Norfolk was very heavily populated in the middle ages. unlike today. And so the land holdings that families were living on were generally very tiny and barely able to support them. And so the textile industry would have been important to keep everybody going. And then when the linen industry dies away to be replaced by foreign imported linen, you get the worsted industry and then they get involved in wool production. And the village of Saul in particular was known for producing headgear. So rather than bolts of cloth, they were producing

small individual items, initially co-chiefs or cover chiefs, a type of headdress, and then later on, woolen felted hats. And to give an idea of the status of the family at this period, the next Berlin that we know anything about is a man called Nicholas Berlin, who first appears in the prisoner in Norwich Castle, so not in the best position, and actually a relative of his, we don't know the precise relationship, but a man called Benedict Berlin from one of the adjoining villages, had accused him of being his accomplice in stealing 40 shillings worth of cloth. Now he has a good reputation and these convictions rarely succeeded and he does get released. And then when he goes back to Saul, he rather conveniently gets into some trouble and 12 of his

sheep are seized to ensure that he repairs the damage they've caused, which is very helpful because it gives us an idea of how many sheep he had. And if he had at least 12 and probably more, that would put the Berlin's somewhere in the middle to upper ranks of most villages in this period. It's interesting how those odd moments can help shed a bit of light on the family. You know, he gets released from prison and then his sheep get him into a bit of trouble. And that can tell you so much about where the family were at that point. Yeah.

So interesting. Is there a moment where we see the Berlin's begin to rise to a more prominent position? So I think for the Billins, the change really begins to happen after the Black Death. So with a much lower population, there is the... land that was in such short supply before is more available. So they begin to take on more leases, little bits of land here and there, leasing usually for money rents from their manorial landlords. But they also began to get money together to buy land freehold on the open market, which is something they hadn't done before. And that money in part must have come from involvement in the textile

industry. John Berlin, who I mentioned earlier, his grandson, Geoffrey Berlin, was owed 40, pounds by a Mercer or cloth merchant who lived as far away as Bristol. And that's the only real clue we have about their involvement in the textile industry, but there was clearly a lot more. And Geoffrey Berlin gets enough land together and enough rank to call himself a yeoman. And he's one of the leading villagers involved in building disproportionately enormous church. And it is a lovely church and a lot of the 15th century stuff still survives in this tiny village of about a dozen houses these days. and in 1434

Geoffrey along with three other men from Saul is required to swear the oath against maintaining or harboring lawbreakers which does sound a bit like he was some sort of crime boss but in reality it's recognising that he's one of the leading men now in the county that he can be ranked among the knights and the other lesser gentry

although I would have to also qualify that it's not a very exclusive list and there are 400 people on it nearly from Norfolk but for the Berlin's it certainly marks progress. So do they come across as one of those families who have weirdly done quite well out of the Black Death potentially? Because if they're starting to buy property freehold, that's a fairly significant step forward. So perhaps they've done fairly well from, it sounds horrible, I know, but they've done fairly well from losing a lot of relatives

and have kind of accumulated a chunk of money that they're able to invest. I think that's exactly what happens. Most of this comes from the Monorial Court roles. And there are other families whose names appear all of the time before the Black Death. And you find references for the Billins in Saul, there were very few, but they've become more and more in the years after the Black Death. And I think that was quite common, not just in terms of buying land, but gradually as things settled down, prices became lower and wages became higher, and people were generally becoming a bit more prosperous. I was going to ask whether you felt that Berlin's are representative of the kind of social movement and mobility that was coming about at the end of the 14th century,

perhaps. Are they unusual or are they fairly typical of what was happening? I think they are typical of the new opportunities and admittedly not every family gets as far as the Berlin's and ends up on the throne, but getting a bit more prosperous and being able to get up into say the gentry, more and more people were able to do that. And even just in the Berlin's social circle, you find families like the Haydens or the Pastons who have basically done the same thing. And I think people at the time also thought that things were changing around them, that people were moving around more or at least looking like they were moving around in society. So you get things like the sumptuary law, which tried to make people look as they should and dress the way that they should according

to the social grouping that they were in. And interestingly, that puts merchants worth 500 pounds a year in the same group as Esquire's worth £200 a year. So a huge difference depending on whether their money came from trade or land, but still these two different types of people were seen as being in the same category on some sort of level. And then in that middle section of society, you get new terms like gentlemen, which is used quite variedly and might describe a lawyer who's made all his money himself, or equally the son of a knight whose family is more ancient. And these self-made men bought up things like courtesy books were very popular. You could teach you how to behave yourself so you didn't embarrass yourself at dinner with your social superiors.

Very popular with London merchants who were making money and buying into the gentry and doing things like adopting coats of arms, which were more traditionally aristocratic, and making them a bit London by adding symbols of trade. Yeah, it's interesting that you talk in the book a bit about how society seems to be coming a bit more porous around this time. There is this slight fluidity around the terms and the positions and this idea that that emerging what we might call a middle class, which obviously wasn't a middle class, that they were beginning to seep into the lower nobility's kind of sphere. It's all getting a little bit more porous. And I guess that's slightly frightening for the nobility as well,

isn't it, that all these people are arriving. It's the bit in the middle that's really interesting because you get such overlap of people making money and trade and then going into the gentry. But also more impoverished younger sons, say, of the gentry going into trade. And so the perception that people had that it was harder to tell people apart in that middle section, I think, is accurate. But I think in terms of the tension that was creating, we have to remember that if you were going to become a merchant and make a load of money and buy land, you couldn't buy land. And there's a finite amount of land.

It had to be there to buy. And so on the other side of the equation, our families that are declining, that are passing land on to heiresses or who have got into debt and need to sell land off. So their decline, if you like, makes a space for new people to move in. So there's not the tension that you might imagine. I think where the problem comes is people getting higher than the gentry, particularly if they got there too fast and got too much too fast like the Woodville's. Geoffrey Berlin, who is the Ambelin's great granddad,

he's a really prominent figure in the book in the first half. of the 15th century. Why was he so important to the family's story as they develop? Geoffrey Berlin is really important because he gets them off this slow track of getting a little bit of extra land here and a little bit of extra land there and gets them onto the fast track. And families who were trying to be socially mobile in this way, that meant either a career in the law as a lawyer or in the church or going into business in London. And Geoffrey had a brother Thomas who went into the church, but that obviously meant no children.

So if you were going to advance your family, it had to be either the law or trade in London. So for Geoffrey, it was trade. And he goes into an apprenticeship with a London hatter named Adam Book. Probably through the hat industry in Saul that I already mentioned. That was probably the connection that enabled his father to get him an apprenticeship. And it was clearly the right choice because Geoffrey Berlin had found his niche and was incredibly successful as a merchant,

quickly moved from the Hatters, which are a relatively small guilds, to the much more wealthy and powerful Mercer's, which is very convenient for me because they have very good records. And then by the time he died in 1463, he left cash bequests of at least £5,500, and property worth several thousand pounds more, which would be equivalent to the famously wealthy Mercer, Richard Dick Whittington. But unlike Whittington, Wittington had no children,

and Geoffrey had five. So while Whittington leaves all of his money to the city to endow various charitable endeavours, Geoffrey does leave quite a lot, £1,200 in total his charitable requests, but most of his money goes on buying his children into a new social class. And so he buys landed estates to give them that status.

The manner of blickling, which was not far from Saul, so he went back to his roots and built a vastly extended house there. And he also purchased, the most famous Berlin property of Hever Castle in Kent. He didn't stop there. There were manners to take income from in Norfolk and a property portfolio in London.

And it was all focused on the intention of setting his eldest son up in Norfolk and his younger son in Kent, where they could both rise to prominence but not compete with each other. That sounds like it's easy, that it's all wrapped up. You go to London, you become fabulously wealthy, and there you go, you're a member of the gentry, and off you go into the sunset. It's not as easy as Geoffrey makes it look.

Only around 10% of London citizens actually manage to make enough money to buy any rural property. And that includes people who just managed to get enough to buy one tiny manor. So Geoffrey, with a string of manors and an enormous manor house that he built,

and his third house is a moated castle, there weren't many like him. Yeah, he comes across as just an incredibly impressive figure who manages to realise that idea that London streets were paved with gold. They weren't, but he managed to make them, at least around his house, paved with gold through a lot of hard work and good connections and skill and ability. He just comes across as a really, really smart guy. Yeah, it's hard to explain sometimes why merchants become so incredibly successful

and other people with the same start don't. The only conclusion to draw is they were just really good at running a business. Yeah, and sometimes in the right place at the right time as well. Yeah. What kind of businesses do? we see Geoffrey getting engaged in? You mentioned hatters, you mentioned Mercer's, which is kind of a bit of everything really, isn't it? Yeah, it's a sort of mixed trade. So he started off with his master, Adam Book, who taught him to do the same trade that he was involved in. And although

he's a hatter, he wasn't just a craftsman or a retailer with a shop selling hats. The hatters were international merchants. And Adam Book was actually very wealthy. Wealthy enough John Stowe tells us to glaze all of the windows in St Mary Leboe. So Geoffrey starts off on the trade that he's been taught, and in 1431 he heads out across the North Sea on his first overseas trading trip to the low countries and to the great fares in Antwerp and Bergen. And he spends £40, which was the average starting capital for a merchant,

on linen cloth, linen by this period being imported rather than made in soul, white thread, laces, more hats, and 5,600 wooden combs. And I think it's fascinating that with all the glamour and the huge amount of wealth that comes later, it all starts with these really mundane everyday items that everybody would have needed to buy and replace regularly. And so that's his trade for a while, exporting English woolen cloth and buying in these sorts of goods.

But after about a dozen years, he seems to give up on that. He doesn't appear in the customs accounts importing or exporting anymore, other than briefly dabbling in wool a bit later on. And he seems to settle down as a middleman. So he buys huge quantities of spices, particularly ginger and pepper from Italian importers, as well as expensive dye stuff like Wode and Mada. And he distributes those through Chapman,

who would have took his goods around the country, or sells them to London citizens. And there's an interesting case which shows him sending an agent to the Cotswolds to buy up wool, to gather up a large amount, bring it to London, but whereas other people would have then exported it to Calais, he intends to sell it to other merchants for them to export. So he's allowing other people to take the risks

and the hassle and the problems of international trade, and he's taking money out of the middle. So it's a way to make money from the business activities of others. And he also does that as he gets more capital by extending loans to other Londoners, and sometimes you can see them importing. stuff from the low countries. So yeah, he did a very good job of controlling the risk, but still taking profit. Yeah, it's fascinating. He seemed to have so many fingers in so many

different pies that all seem to work out for him. Yeah, generally, there is a large element of luck in the Bullen story. There must have been deals that didn't go right. We don't have his account books. But generally, he seems to know what he was doing and make the right decisions. And then how significant is it for Geoffrey and for the family standing? when he becomes mayor of London? Geoffrey becomes mayor of London in 1457, and it's the culmination of a longer civic career, starting out as common councilman.

He was then sheriff, which is where men practised their business of government before they came in alderman, and he also serves as MP. And for the Berlin's advancement, that was important, because those positions added status. It enabled merchants to borrow some of the more ancient honour

of the city. For example, if a man was a mayor, his wife then could take the courtesy title of Lady. Geoffrey's widow actually does so. She's referred to as Lady Berlin in the pasten letters, which I think is one of the reasons why there's this persistent myth that I should be talking about Sir Geoffrey Berlin. But it's not true. He never was knighted, but I think the confusion comes from there. But interestingly, Geoffrey initially didn't seem to want to climb this civic ladder. He gets a royal grant of exemption from serving on juries or being a sheriff and various other offices, but that doesn't cover things like being a London alderman. So in 1445, he tries a petition to the mayor and alderman to be exempted from all city offices. We don't know on what basis he was trying to do this,

but it was never going to happen. The city. didn't allow people to get off from paying back the benefits that London had given them by taking part in city government. The position of alderman was very prestigious, yes, but also very time-consuming, and you had to pay your expenses yourself. So there were been plenty of other people who wanted to get out of this. Another alderman John Gedney had spent a while in prison to persuade him that he really did want to be an alderman. So the city wasn't going to start letting men off, or there would be nobody left. to run the city, but Geoffrey gives it a go, and his petition isn't really getting anywhere,

and then in 1446 he is elected sheriff. Now, he already has a royal exemption from being sheriff, but something had changed because he doesn't choose to employ that, and he does serve as sheriff. And the only thing I can see in his life that changed significantly in the intervening period was in September 1446, his first son Thomas was born, and I think it would have been better, for his son that he now had for him to be the son of an alderman or mayor than just the son of a merchant. And you can see once Geoffrey has family, particularly after he has more than one son after 1451, he starts to refocus and that's when he starts buying all this country property for them to live in and live a different style of life. Before we move a little bit further forward with the Berlin story as a whole,

How important were some of the marriages that those Berlin men made in this period and before? So for the Berlin's marriage was really important. They didn't have any noble blood of their own or any network of connections that would be established over the generations by older, more established families. But so they could buy that by marriage. So in 1445, Geoffrey married as his second wife, Anne Who, who was the daughter of a knight, Thomas Who, and he soon became a peer being made Lord Who in Hastings.

And the Who's were a bit of a Goldilocks family for the Billins. They had property, but not a huge amount of cash. And actually, when Lord Who died, it turned out he was in a vast amount of debt. But they were very well connected. Lord Who had spent his career in France and was closely connected with the King's right-hand man and the Earl, later Duke of Suffolk. The Billins were presumably hoping that they could cash in on these connections. but they don't really seem to have had a chance to do anything or nothing that's recorded. And then five years after the marriage, the Duke of Suffolk was dead,

and Lord Who was forever associated with the loss of English territory in France. But Anne Hu did turn out to be an heiress alongside her three-half sisters, which wasn't guaranteed when they married, because her father married again around the same time that she married Geoffrey. And he also had a brother, so there were two chances for a son to be born, and the girls to be pushed out of the line of succession. But luckily for the Berlin's, that didn't happen, and they inherited some property in Norfolk

and the Who's house at Luton Who in Bedfordshire. But that wasn't the only successful gamble on female inheritance. That was also true for the marriage between Geoffrey's son, William, and Margaret Butler. And the Butler family were all under attainder when this marriage took place for their support for the House of Lancaster. And even if they did manage to recover lands and their title, which was the Earl of Almond, Margaret's father Thomas had an elder brother who would be the Earl before him, and he could have had a son or her father could have had a son.

But again, the Billins are lucky. And this time they inherit even more property. And crucially, the claim to the title of the Earl of Armand, which Thomas Berlin makes his own later on. It's fascinating the impact those connections by marriage can have for them. And I enjoyed in the book the way that Anne Who is introduced as kind of the first Anne Boleyn. She's the original Anne Boleyn. Yeah, the first Anne Boleyn who is Anne Who, but becomes Anne Boleyn when she gets married.

And she was very important, not just because of the connections that she brought or the money that she brought. Because when Geoffrey died in 1463, all of her children were underage and unmarried. So it was up to her to shape what happened in the next generation. And then as a widow, she's also more visible, so it's easier for us to see what she's doing in that respect. And she made her home in Norfolk, but it's interesting that she kept their joint household in London together much longer than Geoffrey says in his will

that she should keep their household together for three months, but it clearly goes on for much longer than that. And she even seems to have carried on some of his business, which as a London widow she would have been entitled to do. And so we have records 10 years after Geoffrey done, of John Arndale from Cornwall, who owed her £600, together with two of her sons-in-law, which he specifically says is for merchandise that he had purchased in London.

So she was still very commercially minded. But I guess perhaps her greatest triumph is arranging these advantageous marriages for her children, particularly the marriage between William and Margaret Butler. But also her girls are married into established gentry families or other families who've newly made themselves rich, which gives the Berlin's those wider contacts that they need to establish. But interestingly, we know that she did that with the cooperation and consent of her girls rather than by instructing them that here is a very wealthy, well-to-do family you're marrying this person.

And we know that because in 1467, the younger John Paston, who the Pastons were another self-made family, thought that Anne and Geoffrey's daughter, daughter Alice would make him a good wife. Now, Anne had different ideas about this because he was a younger son, a younger brother, he didn't have any inheritance. But she's reported as saying that she would never advise Alice to marry John Paston, but if the two wanted to marry, she wouldn't stop them. So the Bling girls were very lucky to have a mother who, yes, was ambitious for her family and wanted them to do well, but wouldn't put that above their own happiness and their own wishes. And the that is in stark contrast to many other families, but particularly the Pastons themselves,

because John Paston's aunt Elizabeth, poor thing, was beaten black and blue to try and get her to marry a man called Scrope, who she didn't want to marry. The Berlin seem very close, they stick closely together and always seem to be working in cooperation with each other rather than there being any divisions or conflict within the family. And Anne remains close to her grown-up daughters, even after they're married and move away. and interestingly her daughter Isabel who married William Cheney and whose marital home was in Kent actually ends up being buried at Blickling which was quite a long way from Kent and probably she was visiting her mother who was very ill at that stage and died shortly afterwards

I mean Geoffrey Berlin and Anne Who just seemed like an absolute dream team they just seemed like the power couple I think it was probably not and romantic choice to marry him it was more like the average sort of marriage that was suggested and you thought, oh, that's okay, I'll make the best of it. But they seem to have been quite similar and I think they were a good pairing. Clearly she knew about his business affairs and she manages her property interests

and the relationship with her uncle very well and gets the best out of him to get her inheritance. So yeah, she's a good businesswoman and a bit of a powerhouse. How do the Berlin's then manage to navigate their, way through the turmoil of the wars of the roses and the emergence of the tud. It's a period that sees lots of families ruined. How do they manage to survive it? It's difficult not to be touched by it in some way or another. Given the class they're in once they get into the gentry, it's a little bit different for Geoffrey in London to start with. We do see that he certainly by the mid-1450s, he seems to

have had a partiality for the House of York. Many merchants were thinking, oh, life is going to be a bit better if we have a change of dynasty here. And a number of his friends were the same, if not earlier. And then interestingly, when Edward V. Fourth comes to the throne, he makes another grant of exemption from office to Geoffrey, but he specifically states that it was for good service that Geoffrey had done to his father, Richard Duke of York. He doesn't say what, but for a wealthy merchant in London, it's unlikely that it was, say, military service or service in his household. It's much more likely to have been financial. And Jeffrey only ever makes one personal loan to the Lancasterian government. I think it's possible because after that he was backing the other side. But there's

not a huge amount of evidence for that because he was an alderman and the city's priority was always to keep the city neutral for as long as possible and to avoid picking aside. But being a Londoner had the other advantage that London couldn't be compelled to provide troops for the crown to fight outside London. It was one of their much protected privileges. And so he never had to fight in any of the battles of the Wars of the Roses or risk himself. But that wasn't true of his sons who then went into the rural gentry and had to get a bit more involved. His eldest son Thomas seems to have joined the affinity of Richard Duke of Gloucester, certainly by 1469. Probably when Richard and the King were travelling through Norfolk that summer to recruit men to deal with rebellion in the

north. In November that year, he was appointed attorney to deliver a certain property to Richard, and the other two attorneys were definitely part of Richard's affinity. So we can see where he is because of the people that he's surrounded with. And then we don't really know what happened to him during the re-adeption, but it's probably his service with Richard that led to his death in London in 1471. And that occurs two weeks after the Battle of Barnett. He leaves a very short will, I think it's something like 19 lines long, and leaves absolutely everything to his. his mother and it's clearly a hasty emergency affair rather than a wheel written by somebody who had a long-term illness. So I think it seems likely given the timing that his death was as a result of

injuries sustained at Barnett. So for many families, that would have been the end of the story. So many families just had particularly London families. They were lucky to have one son. But the Billins were very fortunate. They had William as well. And so then William inherited all of his father's property. And William too had an association with Richard Duke of Gloucester. He witnessed a charter for him in 1480. And when Richard took the throne, William was one of those men chosen to become a knight of the bath at his coronation. I think possibly mediated through John Howard, because when John Howard became Admiral of England, which had been Richard's position, William stepped up to be deputy admiral of Norfolk and Suffolk, which was the position John Howard had

held before that. So I think everybody goes up a wrong. The Berlin's at this point, presumably hoping that this connection to John Howard and the new king would be advantageous, but obviously both of their new patrons don't survive Bosworth. This is a bit where it doesn't go successful for them for once. But they were lucky in that Henry the 7th clearly regarded William as useful as a local administrator, but not important enough to get rid of. So he continues seamlessly through on the bench of JPs, and he serves as sheriff and is on various commissions, and lives the life that you would expect from a prominent member of the local gentry. But then eventually the Howard connection does come back into its own,

and John Howard's son Thomas manages to rehabilitate the family and get their lands back, and ends up as close to the throne as they have been. And William steps back up. Clearly they haven't forgotten each other in the intervening period, and he manages to marry his son Thomas to Thomas Howard's daughter Elizabeth, which is the marriage that gives us Anne Boleyn. Can we tell how different William Berlin was to his dad, Geoffrey? You know, Geoffrey seems to have really driven the family's rise. Is William a similar sort of character?

I think William is actually not at all a similar sort of character. He doesn't really inherit his family's ambition. He's more of a placeholder. He just lives the life that his fatherhood bought for him. He doesn't really advance them any further. He acquires an extra couple of manners, and yes, he does establish this connection with the Howard family, which becomes very important later on.

But really, he's a solid administrator and a safe pair of hands. The family property is passed on in good health. He doesn't lose it or get the family into debt. For many families, that would be regarded as a successful generation. I think poor old William suffers by comparison with his incredibly successful father and then his incredibly successful son. But yeah, he's there and he lives the life of a gentry man and passes things on in good health.

What I would say about William is, dare I say, he's more selfish than Geoffrey. Whereas we have Geoffrey planning very carefully for his sons to live the best life he could prepare for them, William seems less focused on setting up a life for his children and more concerned on keeping himself comfortable. So we see this when his son Thomas gets married and needs a household of his own. So William had been splitting his time for most of his life between the Berlin's home in Hever in Kent and Blickling in Norfolk.

But then where is Thomas going to live now that he's married Elizabeth Howard? So William doesn't want to give up either of the houses that have formed a fundamental part of his habits and how he lives his life. So he settles on Elizabeth Howard three of their most most important. minor manners. And also heva Castle, but he specifies that he's keeping that to himself for life, so they can't live there. And these three manners probably generate an income of around 50 pounds. There are rentals from the early 16th century, which give us a total slightly less than that, but the rentals are incomplete. So I think that's the 50 pounds. And the same 50 pounds, presumably, but many years later, Thomas laments that he had to try and live on, well, his wife produced a child

every year. So long term, he remembers being shorter funds in this period. But it wasn't just heaver that William kept to himself. He also seems to have retained Blickling. And there's plenty of evidence that he was active in Norfolk throughout his later years. He was sitting regularly or as regularly as he normally did as a JP. He wasn't a particularly active JP. And he was on commissions of jail delivery in the county. But even more strikingly, his own will states that he was living at Lickling when he died. Now, Thomas and Elizabeth Thomas trying to start a career at court, a house in London might have been quite convenient, but William had sold all of the London property as well in 1495, so they couldn't go there. So the other property the Berlin's had, which often gets forgotten,

is that house at Luton Who, that they inherited from the Who family. So I think it's possible that they went there. And actually in 509, in the pardon role, William does give Luton as one of his recent residences. Now it's not really clear what Luton Hoo was actually like in this period, and the most recent reference that I can find to anybody living there was as far back as the second quarter, I think it was, of the 15th century. But it's given as a residence in the pardon role, so presumably there was a house there to live in. And if Thomas and Elizabeth were living there in this period between their marriage and when William died in 1505, it's possible that's where And Berlin was actually born, rather than at the more famous family seat at Blickling in Norfolk.

And I think there's that trope of an idea that when a family gets wealthy, you know, one generation makes it, the next enjoys it, and the third wastes it. So you get Geoffrey kind of making it, William very much enjoying it. And I guess they're just fortunate that Thomas isn't the kind to waste it. Thomas is actually maybe more like his granddad. Thomas is much more like his granddad. Actually, I think Anne is like both of them as well. So no, they don't get the generation that wastes it. Maybe if they'd gone on longer, they would eventually have had a generation that wastes it.

But William is very much, I'm just going to sit here on what has been provided for me and live a very comfortable life, particularly given that he now had all of the property. Initially, he was only going to inherit part of it. What do you think really explains the Berlin's success in comparison to those around him? We talked a bit about there was this kind of social mobility emerging and a seeping of the social strata maybe, but why do the Berlin's become so much more successful and powerful than some other families? I think that's interesting. And actually, when I started this, I expected to find that they were doing something different or unique that made them special to explain that. But I suppose

in a way, it's perhaps more interesting that I don't think they were. They were simply using the same route to success that other people used who were trying to advance their family, making good marriages, the law or London Commerce, and then later on, Royal Service. I suppose the thing that perhaps stands out a bit is I can almost see a theme of education running through. So Jeffrey had an interest in education. For him, it was more focused on clerical education. He funds clerical education in his will. But he clearly also educated his family well, because his daughter, Anne, who married Henry Hayden, they seem to have had quite an extensive library of English books at home and Henry leaves the first choice of those books to his wife and then afterwards

enough to divide between I think they had seven children so there were clearly quite a lot of books and his wife was going to be interested in reading them and then William educates Thomas well in Latin and French which stands him in good stead in his diplomatic career and Thomas was famously invested in educating his daughter Anne sending her to the continent to learn French and to become more sophisticated. But I think perhaps the most important training that was offered to the Billins was that offered by Adam Book to Geoffrey. And Adam becomes such a close mentor and friend that Geoffrey actually includes him in his own family chantry. And I think it's hard to overrate how important this good relationship between apprentice and master would have been in shaping

his early success and teaching him how to do the business of a merchant well. Having said that, I think it's also hard to ignore that there is no shortage in the Berlin family of just individual talent. And Thomas and Geoffrey were clearly just skilled at the world that they chose to operate in. And there is a hefty dose of luck. The Berlin men married women who consistently turned out to be heiresses, and together they consistently had plenty of children and multiple sons. And that might seem like that people had children and families carried on. but in London we see that families often didn't carry on.

Often failure in the male line meant that the city had to constantly be replenished by more apprentices coming in and adding to this cycle of going to London trying to make yourself rich. Many families either failed immediately, like Richard Whittington, who didn't have any children or after a generation or two. So in a sense, I think the Berlin's story is their ability to outrun this and to achieve a lot really fast before the inevitable caught up with them. And of course, it does eventually.

George Berlin is executed, and Thomas Berlin, despite having three brothers, none of them had sons. And of course, for Anne Billin as well, just when she wanted a son, the Berlin good luck ran out. And then they didn't have all the collateral branches of other people who bore the name Berlin to inherit the property and carry on. And so for them and for at least the name of Berlin, that was the end of the line. there were other people with Berlin blood down the female line and of course one of those was Elizabeth the first which is not a bad legacy for the Billins even if she didn't bear their name.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for joining us to talk through the much more interesting part of the Billins. Who cares about the Tudors? Who needs them? We've got the medieval Billins who seem much more interesting and I'm in awe of Geoffrey and his wife, Anne. I think they were great.

I love him. I am very sympathetic towards him, yeah. Yeah, so thank you very, very much for joining us to talk about them some more. Thank you for having me. Claire's book, Heirs of Ambition, The Making of the Billins, is available now if you want to understand this family even better and get all the background to their rise at the court of those terrible T-words. There are a new episodes of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please do join us next time for more from the greatest millennium in human history.

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