Renaissance English History Podcast: A Show About the Tudors

By All Saints' Day in Tudor London, the sun was down by quarter past four. In the final episode of our autumn series, we find out how the Tudors got ready for the long dark, in their bodies, in their homes, and in their hearts.

We start with the health books. Sir Thomas Elyot warned that autumn was "dangerous to all ages, all natures, and all countries," and Andrew Boorde had a whole diet for melancholy people (no red wine, sorry!). Then we light the mutton-fat candles with Thomas Tusser, find out why one doctor thought the smell of apples was dangerous, and hang out the lanterns with London's mayor. And then we come to Hallowtide, when church bells rang all night for the souls of the dead. Henry VIII nearly banned it, Elizabeth's bishops tried for years to stop it, and ordinary people in places like Sandbach and Weaverham kept climbing the tower to ring for the people they'd lost.

This is episode 4 of 4 in our series on how the Tudors got ready for autumn. Thank you so much for watching!

🎟 TudorCon From Home, October 23 to 25. We livestream the main room all weekend, and every talk is recorded with audio and slides so you can listen afterward. Every ticket comes with a digital swag bag worth over $100:
https://tudorcon.englandcast.com/tudorcon-from-home/

📬 Get the newsletter:
https://www.englandcast.com/newsletter-sign-up/

IMAGE CREDITS
Most images are public domain, via Wikimedia Commons and the Internet Archive. The following are used under Creative Commons licenses:
Wellcome Collection (CC BY 4.0): Castel of Helth title page; physician with urine flask; Andrew Boorde portraits; Breviary of Helthe title page and woodcut
St Mary's, Weaverham: Sue Adair (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Church tower at night: Ben Harris (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Bellringers' board, Fowey: Rob Farrow (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Sunset over fields: Susanne Nilsson (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Tallow Chandlers' crest: D M Wilmot (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Tallow Chandlers' Hall: Dun.can (CC BY 2.0)
Medieval candlestick: Museum of Antiquities, Newcastle (CC BY-SA 4.0)
John Stow's monument: Michael Coppins (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Office of the Dead: Chester Beatty Library, Dublin (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Sanctus bell, Berkswell: Michael Garlick (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Bassingbourn church: John Salmon (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Sandbach Crosses: Mike Faherty (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Bell tower, Pembridge: Sandy Gerrard (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Licenses: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 | /by/4.0 | /by-sa/2.0 | /by-sa/4.0

#Tudor #TudorHistory #Halloween #AllSaints #ElizabethI #HenryVIII #EnglishHistory #History

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every September, all of Tudor England was on the move. In episode 3 of our autumn series, we climb the social ladder one rung at a time, from a seventeen-year-old farm servant looking for next year's job all the way up to Queen Elizabeth watching sea gods row across a lake that was dug just for her.

On the way, we find out why quitting your job without a written testimonial could land you in prison in 1563, wander through Stourbridge Fair (one of the biggest fairs in Europe, right outside Cambridge), peek into Sir William Petre's household accounts at Ingatestone, and follow the court to Elvetham in 1591, where the Earl of Hertford built a crescent-shaped lake with a ship-shaped island for a four-day visit. Plus the staggering cost of hosting Elizabeth on progress, and the nobles who tried very hard to get out of it, including one earl who simply wasn't home when she knocked.

This is episode 3 of 4 in our series on how the Tudors got ready for autumn.

🎟 TudorCon From Home, October 23 to 25. We livestream the main room all weekend, and every talk is recorded with audio and slides so you can listen afterward. Every ticket comes with a digital swag bag worth over $100:
https://tudorcon.englandcast.com/tudorcon-from-home/

📬 Get the newsletter:
https://www.englandcast.com/newsletter-sign-up/

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The harvest is in. Now what? In episode 2 of our autumn series, we head out into the Tudor village with the best guide I could possibly have found: Thomas Tusser, a former choirboy and court musician who walked away from court, became a Suffolk farmer, and wrote an entire farming manual in rhyme.

We crash a harvest home celebration spotted near Windsor by a German traveller in 1598, follow the gleaners into the stubble and the pigs into the woods, and find out why "mast fats up swine, mast kills up kine." Then we spend time with the Tudor farmer's wife, who was winnowing corn, making malt, driving the plough, selling geese at market, and keeping the accounts. And there's a 1523 farming manual that tells husbands and wives to show each other their receipts!

This is episode 2 of 4 in our series on how the Tudors got ready for autumn. If you missed Michaelmas, start there. There's a goose in it.

🎟 TudorCon From Home, October 23 to 25. We livestream the main room all weekend, and every talk is recorded with audio and slides so you can listen afterward. Every ticket comes with a digital swag bag worth over $100. Sign up by September 30th to join the Privy Council and get the bonuses, including the Spooky Halloween Walk through London: https://tudorcon.englandcast.com/tudorcon-from-home/

📬 Get the newsletter: https://www.englandcast.com/newsletter-sign-up/
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

September 29th was one of the biggest days of the Tudor year, and most of us have never heard of it. Michaelmas, the feast of St Michael and All Angels, was when rent came due, farm servants' contracts ran out, London chose its Lord Mayor, and the lawyers and students all headed back to town. It was also goose day, and the reason tenants turned up at the landlord's door with a goose under their arm is funnier (and a little sadder) than you'd think. This is episode 1 of a four-part series on how the Tudors got ready for autumn. In this one: 🪽 Who St Michael was, and why he's weighing souls in English church doom paintings🌧 The Wenhaston Doom, hidden under whitewash for 300 years until a rainstorm in 1892 🪿 George Gascoigne's poem about tenants buttering up their landlords "for fear their lease fly loose" 🏴‍☠️ Busting the myth that Elizabeth I started the Michaelmas goose after the Armada 📜 Why the British tax year still starts on April 6th, thanks to an old quarter day 🎟 TudorCon From Home, October 23 to 25. We livestream the main room all weekend, and every talk is recorded with audio and slides so you can catch up afterward. Every ticket comes with a digital swag bag worth over $100. Sign up by September 30th to join the Privy Council and get the bonuses, including the Spooky Halloween Walk through London: https://tudorcon.englandcast.com/tudorcon-from-home
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The rebellion is over in three weeks. Wat Tyler is dead, the charters are revoked, John Ball is executed, and by every measure that historians usually use, the Peasants' Revolt failed completely. Except that the tax that started it was never levied again in the same way for a hundred and thirty two years.

The next general poll tax in England comes in 1513, under Henry VIII, and even then the government moved carefully. For four generations, the memory of 1381 sat in the room every time Parliament talked about taxing ordinary people.

In this final part of the series we go to Smithfield on the 15th of June, 1381, and work out what actually happened between Wat Tyler and the fourteen year old king. Then we follow Richard II to Waltham, where the chronicler Thomas Walsingham puts a speech in his mouth that is quoted in almost every book on the revolt, and which one of the best modern historians of 1381 thinks was made up.

We go through the reprisals in Essex, Hertfordshire and Norfolk, and then we ask the question the whole series has been building toward. They lost. Did they also win? Serfdom in England is not abolished by an act of Parliament. It drains away. And in 1574, Elizabeth I signs a commission to free the last serfs on the crown estates, which tells you both that villeinage had almost disappeared and that it had not quite.

📅 TudorCon From Home, October 23 to 25: join the Privy Council by September 30 for bonus game nights, early community access, the Spooky Halloween Walk through London audio tour, and 25% off with code PRIVYCOUNCIL. 👉 https://tudorcon.englandcast.com/tudorcon-from-home/

FREE WEEKLY NEWSLETTER Tudor and medieval history in your inbox every week, plus the three history stories that caught my eye. https://www.englandcast.com/newsletter-sign-up/

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices