Tudor Medicine Wasn’t Stupid, It Was a System
Imagine waking in Tudor England with a fever and no paracetamol, no antibiotics, and no doctor to call. In this first part of A Beginner’s Guide to Tudor Medicine, we step inside the Tudor worldview,...
26 Jan 14min
Was Anne Boleyn Really “Corrupted” in France?
The idea that Anne Boleyn was "corrupted in France has been repeated in popular histories and documentaries, often stated as fact, sometimes even placed in quotation marks, as if it were securely sour...
22 Jan 12min
The Foreign Courts That Created Anne Boleyn
Anne Boleyn didn’t arrive at Henry VIII’s court as an inexperienced girl dazzled by a king. She arrived as someone who had already been shaped inside two of the most sophisticated Renaissance courts i...
20 Jan 30min
Mary Tudor and the Will to Fight
Mary Tudor is often remembered through a single, brutal label: “Bloody Mary.” But in the summer of 1553, she revealed a very different side of herself. In this second part of my series on the two tou...
17 Jan 9min
Lady Jane Grey and the Will to Rule
Lady Jane Grey is usually remembered as a tragic pawn, a frightened girl forced onto the throne by ambitious men. But that story simply doesn’t hold up. When Jane was told she was queen, she wept an...
15 Jan 9min
The 1553 Succession Crisis: A Beginner's Guide
Three Monarchs - 13 Days - One Crown In July 1553, England experienced one of the most volatile succession crises of the Tudor period. In just thirteen days, the crown passed from a dying teenage ki...
13 Jan 30min
The Homes That Shaped Anne Boleyn
Before Anne Boleyn left England for the European courts, before Henry VIII, before scandal, drama, queenship, and tragedy... there were two places that shaped her earliest world, places that were home...
10 Jan 8min
When was Anne Boleyn born? 1501 vs 1507 and Why It Matters
Was Anne Boleyn thirty-five when she died… or just twenty-eight? Because the answer completely changes how we read her downfall in 1536. I’m historian and author Claire Ridgway, and in this companion...
8 Jan 18min
