Renaissance English History Podcast: A Show About the Tudors8 Jul

Henry VIII Got Six Tries. Could His Wives Get One?

Sign up for the weekly newsletter here: https://englandcast.com/newsletter-sign-up Everyone knows Henry VIII's divorce saga. He wanted out, the Pope said no, he invented a new church. Problem solved, if you're the king. But what about his wives? What about any Tudor woman trapped in a terrible marriage? Could she leave? The answer is technically yes. There were legal mechanisms: annulment, formal separation, informal arrangements. The Church courts were open for business. The catch is that the system was designed to be so narrow, so expensive, and so humiliating that most women couldn't use it. Life-threatening cruelty wasn't enough. Even proving your husband was impotent required a process so invasive it makes modern divorce paperwork look like a spa day. And then there's Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII's own sister, who wrote him a desperate letter in 1518 saying she knew her husband didn't love her, as he showed her daily. Henry wrote back telling her marriage was divinely ordained and sent her a nice dress. He would later break with Rome rather than stay in a marriage he didn't want. But that's different. He was the king. This week we're looking at what leaving actually meant for Tudor women: the options, the obstacles, and the staggering gap between what the law technically allowed and what was practically possible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Episoder(621)

Edward VI vs. The Dragon: A Protestant Boy King Who Tried to Rewrite England's Most Elite Knighthood

In 1552, England's teenage Protestant king decided that St. George, patron saint of England, had to go. Not from one town, or one church. From the statutes of the Order of the Garter itself, the most ...

7 Jul 21min

Constable of the Tower, Then Its Prisoner: The Wild Life of Eleanor de Clare

Want to test the new Tudor Scrolls app? Email me at heather@englandcast.com. She was the granddaughter of a king, married off at thirteen to settle a debt, and somehow ended up as the only woman to e...

6 Jul 25min

The Forgotten Welfare State: How the Dissolution of Monasteries Devastated the Poor and Sick

Before Henry VIII, if you were sick, old, or starving in England, there was a place you could go. Monasteries ran almshouses, hospitals, free lodging for travelers, even schools for poor kids, all as ...

2 Jul 20min

What If Mary Queen of Scots Was Never Executed?

Mary, Queen of Scots was executed on February 8th, 1587, on the strength of a decoded letter and a forged postscript that Elizabeth's spymaster slipped into her own secret code. But what if that lette...

2 Jul 20min

The Invention of You: How the Renaissance Discovered the Self

📬 Free newsletter (Tudor news, vocab, treasures, behind the scenes): ⁠https://englandcast.com/newsletter-sign-up⁠ We talk about the Renaissance as the time people rediscovered the ancient world. But...

30 Jun 21min

Before Samuel Pepys, There Was This Devon Farmer Buying Velvet Shoes

A Devon farmer records buying velvet shoes and 30 gold buttons. A London astrologer hides his affairs in Latin. Shakespeare puts a soliloquy on stage and an audience recognizes something true about th...

29 Jun 15min

Body for Body: The People Who Ran the Tower of London

Did you know the very first person ever imprisoned in the Tower of London also became the first person to escape from it? He got his guards drunk, abseiled out of a window on a rope smuggled in via a ...

23 Jun 18min