Renaissance English History Podcast: A Show About the Tudors

In June 1381, rebels broke into John of Gaunt's Savoy Palace, the wealthiest house in England. They smashed the gold plate, crushed the jewels with hammers and threw the silver in the Thames. According to one chronicler, when a man was caught stealing, his own side threw him into the fire.So how do ordinary villagers get to that point?

In Part 1 of a four-part series on the Peasants' Revolt, I go back to the beginning. That means the rain of 1315, a famine so bad the king couldn't buy bread, a cattle plague that took the milk away from a whole generation of children, the Black Death, and a government that responded by making it illegal to ask for a raise.
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Every year in Tudor England, the weather warmed up and people wondered if this would be a plague year. On top of plague there was the sweating sickness, which could kill you between dinner and supper, plus a flu pandemic and years of failed harvests when bread prices tripled. So how did ordinary people live with that constant hum of "something terrible might happen"?

In this episode we go outbreak by outbreak, from the first sweat in 1485 to the plague that greeted James I in 1603, and ask how people coped at every stop. We meet the Brandon boys, two teenage dukes of Suffolk who died of the sweat on the same morning in 1551, and their mother Katherine Willoughby, trying to make sense of it through her new Protestant faith. We look at what people lost when the Reformation took away purgatory, plague saints and prayers for the dead, right while the plague kept coming. And we meet Bartholomew Steer, who planned a rising in the hungry 1590s and had four men show up.

I made this one because so many of us are feeling a low hum of dread about big things we can't control right now. The Tudors don't have all the answers, but they have some surprisingly useful ones, and a bit of plague comedy too.

Also join the Privy Council for TudorCon From Home. Stream TudorCon, October 23 to 25, from your couch for $59, with a Digital Swag Bag worth over $100. Sign up by September 30 to join the Privy Council and get the brand new Spooky Halloween Walk through London immersive audio as a bonus, along with an extra game night, Tudor Zoom backgrounds and your Privy Council badge. Use code PRIVYCOUNCIL to save an additional 25%.
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What happens to your whole world when the king decides your faith is wrong? Richard Smith's new book, Beyond Where Words Can Go, follows two young Benedictine monks, a lord's youngest son and a foundling left on the monastery doorstep, through Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries and all the back and forth of the English Reformation. And it's told entirely in sonnets. Two hundred of them!

Richard is a clinical psychologist in Washington, DC who started writing sonnets for his dog (yes, really), and I loved talking with him about what it felt like to live inside the old faith, where the monks went when their homes were pulled down, and why the sonnet turned out to be the perfect way to tell this story. Our friend Gerry joined us live with some great questions about the manuscripts lost when the monasteries fell.

Find Richard at richardsmithwriting.com and on Instagram @richardsmithwriting.

Get Beyond Where Words Can Go:Bauhan Publishing: https://bauhanpublishing.com/shop/beyond-where-words/Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/p/books/beyond-where-words-can-go-a-novel-in-200-sonnets-richard-smith/7f97cae4082d4972Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/beyond-where-words-can-go-richard-smith/1148428273?ean=9780872334007Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Where-Words-Can-Go/dp/0872334007/
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Twenty-five years ago today, I was at my desk in Soho, emailing my friends about Thanksgiving plans, when one of them told me to open Yahoo because something big was happening in New York. For the anniversary, I wanted to tell you where I was that day. Then I want to take you back to another morning that started out completely normal: Paris, August 1572.

The St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre began just days after a royal wedding that was supposed to bring peace. Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth's ambassador, was right in the middle of it. His pregnant wife and his little daughter were in the house, and a teenage Philip Sidney was sheltering with them while refugees came to his door.

We'll also follow the news back to England, including the refugees who landed at Rye, and look at how quickly grief turned into a demand for safety, both in 1572 and in 2001.

Take care of each other this week, and if you want to, tell me in the comments where you were.
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