Renaissance English History Podcast: A Show About the Tudors

In 1591, a Cambridge-educated writer named Robert Greene published a pamphlet exposing London's professional con artists. He named their roles, described their techniques, and basically wrote the world's first true crime series. The problem is that he was also personally acquainted with most of the criminals he was writing about.

Today we're spending 24 hours with a Tudor cony-catcher. A cony is a rabbit. Easy prey. And the operation these people ran was so organized they had job titles, a professional hierarchy, and their own secret language.

Every trick they used still works today. The rabbit just changed shape.

The Tudor Planner crowdfunder is here! https://tudorfair.com/products/2027-tudor-planner-crowdfunder
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's April 1536 and Thomas Cromwell has gone home sick. Except he's not sick. He's deciding what to do about Anne Boleyn.

In this What If episode, we play out three scenarios from that single moment of decision: what Cromwell actually chose and why it signed his own death warrant four years later, what happens if he removes Anne without killing her and she becomes a Protestant cause célèbre in exile, and what happens if he does nothing and bets on her survival.

None of the roads end well. But they end very differently.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1499, Henry VII had two men in the Tower of London. One claimed to be his wife's long-lost brother. The other was an innocent young man who had been locked up since he was ten years old. And the King and Queen of Spain wouldn't send Catherine of Aragon to England until both of them were dead.

This is History as an Empathy Machine, a new thought experiment where we lay out the real options historical figures had and ask: knowing only what they knew, what would YOU have done?

Today: Henry VII, Perkin Warbeck, the Earl of Warwick, and Elizabeth of York, who grew up with the man in the Tower and was never allowed to see him again.

Tell me in the comments what you would have done. Two questions at the end of the episode.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What happened in Tudor England when someone's mind turned against them? There was no therapist, no diagnosis, no prescription. But there was a whole system, and it was more coherent than you'd expect.

We dig into the four humors as a complete theory of the mind, Timothy Bright's 1586 Treatise of Melancholie (the first English book on mental illness), music as formally prescribed medical treatment, and the social structures that made room for people who thought differently. We also look at Will Somers, Henry VIII's jester, what Bedlam actually was in the Tudor period, and why the Henry VIII personality change story is more complicated than it first appears.

The Tudors were trying to make sense of suffering with the tools they had. Some of those tools were wrong. The impulse behind them is completely recognizable.

Music of the Spheres episode is here: https://youtu.be/SPlfSROH4TU

Will Sommers episode is here:

https://youtu.be/Xs8SwqZXPxc

It's Mental Health Awareness Month, and people care about you and your health. If this episode touched something personal: Call or text 988 (US) to reach the Crisis Lifeline, available 24/7. You don't have to figure it out alone.

Sources: Timothy Bright, A Treatise of Melancholie (1586), free on Internet Archive. Andrew Boorde, The Breviary of Healthe (1552). Peter Andersson, Fool: In Search of Henry VIII's Closest Man (2023). Susana Lipscomb, 1536: The Year That Changed Henry VIII. Historic England's overview of mental illness in the 16th and 17th centuries at historicengland.org.uk.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jane Grey wasn't just a pawn. She was a fierce Protestant intellectual who made a real choice when the crown landed at her feet in 1553. What if she'd said no? We explore what Mary's reign might have looked like without a Protestant figurehead to rally around, whether Wyatt's Rebellion would even have happened, and why the answer has less to do with Jane's courage than you might think.

Sign up for the Anne Boleyn Scavenger Hunt here: https://www.englandcast.com/anneboleynscavenger/

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