HistoryExtra Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast 2026-07-20T09:32:47.000Z https://www.historyextra.com/author/tracybormansblog/feed/atom Mike Soutar <![CDATA[Elizabeth I: The power of delaying decisions]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/elizabeth-i-historys-greatest-leaders-podcast/ 2026-07-20T09:32:47.000Z 2026-07-20T09:09:47.000Z We often think of successful leadership in terms of steely resolve and decisive action. And one of history’s most famous rulers, Tudor queen Elizabeth I, was certainly capable of this strength and dynamism. But there’s another side to her story, too: a recurring tendency towards procrastination and indecision.
In this episode, Tracy Borman – chief historian at Historic Royal Palaces and the author of books including Anne Boleyn & Elizabeth I: The Revelatory True Story of the Mother and Daughter who Changed History – tells Mike Soutar why this apparent dithering may in fact have been a strategic masterstroke, and highlights the tips that the queen’s reign has to offer leaders today.
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]]> Tracy Borman <![CDATA[The curse of the Boleyns: how Anne's fall doomed her family]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/the-curse-of-the-boleyns-how-annes-fall-doomed-her-family/ 2026-07-08T14:40:57.000Z 2026-07-06T14:00:02.000Z Anne Boleyn is one of the most famous women in history. Her story has been told countless times since her tragic demise almost 500 years ago. So determined was Henry VIII to make her his queen that he wrenched England away from Roman Catholic Europe and set in train a sweeping reformation that shaped the course of British history. But when Anne failed to give him a son, he had her executed on trumped-up charges of adultery and treason in 1536.
So far, so familiar. But though Anne’s turbulent relationship with England’s most-married monarch has been pored over for centuries, her backstory is relatively unknown. What – or, more precisely, who – made her into a woman so extraordinarily captivating that she held a king in thrall for seven long years and turned his entire kingdom upside down?
Humble roots
Though they rose to become one of the most powerful families in Tudor England, the Boleyns could boast neither royal blood nor aristocratic pedigree. They were likely of northern French descent, among numerous Norman families to settle in England after the conquest of 1066. The first known reference to the family is found in the deed for a small plot of land close to Norwich in 1188. The Boleyns remained in Norfolk for the next three centuries, where they made their living from the wool trade.
It was Geoffrey Boleyn (1406–63), Anne’s great-grandfather, who put the family on the map. He made a small fortune from his work as a hatter, and was appointed Master of the Worshipful Company of Mercers. By 1451, he was so wealthy that he loaned Henry VI money for an expedition to France. Six years later, he was elected Lord Mayor of London. To signal his prestige, Geoffrey purchased several properties, including the manors of Blickling in north Norfolk and Hever in Kent.
Geoffrey’s son William propelled the Boleyns into royal circles when he entered the service of Richard III, who made him a knight of the Bath at his coronation in 1483. William also made an advantageous marriage to Margaret Butler, daughter and co-heiress of the seventh Earl of Ormond, a prominent Irish nobleman.
With a deftness that characterised the Boleyns’ rise to power, when Richard III was defeated by Henry Tudor at the battle of Bosworth in 1485, William declared his allegiance to the new king.
- Read more | What did Elizabeth I really think about Anne Boleyn? These secret symbols might unlock the truth
William also invested heavily in the education of his eldest son and heir, Thomas. Aged about eight when Henry VII took the throne, Thomas grew into a charming and cultured young man who soon won favour at court. Upon the death of his father in 1505, he became the head of the family and led the Boleyns to the apogee of their power. At Henry VIII’s accession in 1509, he was created a Knight of the Garter and an esquire of the new king’s privy chamber.
By then, Thomas was married with a growing family. Like his father, he had chosen a high-ranking bride. Elizabeth Howard was the eldest daughter of Thomas Howard, later the 2nd Duke of Norfolk, and was appointed to serve Catherine of Aragon, the widow of Prince Arthur, whom Henry had married soon after becoming king. “She brought me every year a child,” Thomas said of Elizabeth, though only three survived to adulthood: Mary, Anne and George.
Two small brass crosses mark the burial places of Henry and Thomas Boleyn (junior) – one in the church next to Hever, the other close to Penshurst Place, the seat of Thomas Boleyn’s rival Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham. (It’s thought that Thomas Jr may have been sent to Penshurst to receive an education.) There is no other record of the two boys or of Anne’s relationship with her lost brothers, assuming she knew them at all. The size of the crosses suggests that they died in their infancy – a reminder of the fragility of life in Tudor England.
The Boleyn children were raised at Blickling Hall and Hever Castle, though the latter soon became the principal family seat. Judging from the date of his first appearance at court around 1514, George seems to have been the youngest, and Mary was later referred to as the elder of the two daughters, though their birth dates are unclear.
- Read more | Five shocking tales from Britain’s royal palaces
It is also not clear how much time Anne spent with her mother, but they are thought to have been close. Elizabeth would have superintended her children’s early education, juggling that with her service at court. There was a rumour that Elizabeth was briefly the mistress of Henry VIII, but this is not substantiated by any reliable evidence, and Henry himself later denied it, exclaiming: “Never with the mother!”
From a young age, Anne and Mary were schooled in the accomplishments expected of young women at the time, including music and dancing, embroidery and religion. They were also taught literature and languages – the latter being something in which Anne excelled. Her father proudly noted that she was exceptionally “toward”.
Thomas played an important role in Anne’s education, and his humanist beliefs may have influenced her curriculum. He was a progressive thinker and espoused the emerging fashion for educating daughters, not just sons, as famously advocated by
his fellow courtiers Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell.
Dazzling opportunity
In 1513, when Anne was probably around 12 years old, her father secured her a dazzling opportunity. She was sent to the palace of Mechelen in Brabant (a region now spanning parts of Belgium and the Netherlands) to join the court of Margaret of Austria, Regent of the Netherlands.
It was an education like no other, and profoundly shaped Anne’s outlook, accomplishments and intellect. Her new mistress was a woman who wielded real power in a male-dominated world. Years later, when a queen-in-waiting, Anne remodelled York Place in London on Margaret’s palace at Mechelen, creating the Palace of Whitehall.
Anne remained in close contact with the household at Hever throughout her years abroad. A letter she wrote to her father in around 1514 still survives. As well as showing off her new mastery of French, she assured Thomas that absence had made her heart grow fonder: “I promise you that my love is based on such great strength that it will never grow less.”
Anne’s courtly training continued when her father arranged for her to serve in the French court with her sister. While Mary enjoyed the glittering social life and is rumoured to have become a mistress of King Francis I, Anne preferred the company of his sister, Marguerite of Navarre. An intellectual powerhouse, Marguerite argued for the reform of the Catholic church and was a fierce advocate for female authority. The teenaged Anne soaked all this up like a sponge. By the time she left France in 1521, she was a changed young woman.
Back at Hever, another Margaret exerted a profound influence on Anne: her paternal grandmother, Lady Margaret Butler. Hers was one of the most powerful noble families in Ireland, and Margaret inherited considerable estates upon the death of her father, the 7th Earl of Ormond, in 1515. She was thus a rare example of a wealthy and independent woman in an age dominated by men.
Four years after coming into her inheritance, though, Margaret was suddenly declared insane and deprived of her lands. Whether she really was suffering from a mental illness (or, perhaps, dementia – by then she was aged about 65) is uncertain. Either way, it served as a salutary reminder to Anne of just how precarious a woman’s position could be.
Anne was also influenced by her elder sister, Mary – albeit as an example of what not to do. Returning from France some time before Anne, Mary took up a position in the household of Catherine of Aragon. In 1520, she married William Carey, a gentleman of Henry VIII’s privy chamber, but around that time she almost certainly began an affair with the king. It isn’t clear how long their liaison lasted, but Henry was rumoured to have been the father of at least one of Mary’s children. He neither acknowledged this nor made any provision for Mary once their affair ended. She was simply discarded, her reputation in ruins. It was a lesson Anne never forgot.
A shock proposal
Anne made her debut at the English court early in 1522, after her father secured her a place in Queen Catherine’s household. This exotic arrival from the French court was soon the talk of London. Her intellect, accomplishments and style made the other ladies of Henry’s court appear positively pedestrian. She danced and sang better than any of them and, though not conventionally beautiful, her charisma and self-confidence quickly attracted a legion of male admirers.
Anne’s self-serving uncle Thomas Howard, later Duke of Norfolk, tried to engineer a marriage with James Butler, her cousin and heir to the Earl of Ormond, which prompted the first in a series of clashes with his niece. Norfolk later ranted that Anne would be “the ruin of her whole family”. When it came to the Boleyns, blood wasn’t always thicker than water.
At least initially, the king himself appeared immune to Anne’s charms, and it was not until 1526 that he declared his interest in her. It was at this time that Hever Castle became Anne’s refuge. Contrary to the popular image of her father as a grasping courtier who pushed her into the king’s path to further his own ambitions, the evidence suggests that Thomas tried to protect Anne from Henry’s advances. Whenever his royal master became too overbearing, he arranged for his younger daughter to seek sanctuary at the family home. But the more Anne retreated to Hever, the more determinedly Henry pursued her.
When Anne went to stay at Hever for Christmas in 1526, she received a letter from the king. It was very different to his usual billets-doux: astonishingly, he proposed marriage. This must have sent shockwaves through the castle. Henry already had a wife – one who was greatly revered throughout England. But he claimed that his marriage to Catherine was unlawful and had been cursed by God, as evidenced by the fact that they had no living son.
Henry spent the next seven years trying to convince Pope Clement VII to grant an annulment of his marriage. For much of this time, Anne flitted between the court and Hever. She was attended by both her mother and her sister-in-law, Jane, who married George Boleyn around 1524. By contrast, Anne saw little of her sister, Mary, and later banished her from court for marrying William Stafford, a lowly soldier, claiming that it had brought disgrace on the Boleyns.
At home at Hever
The Boleyn family's manor has its own rich tale
The external form of the Boleyns’ family seat, Hever Castle in Kent, is thought to date from the aftermath of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. Two years after Wat Tyler led a rebellion sparked by onerous taxation, John de Cobham – a wealthy landowner and tax collector – was granted a licence by Richard II to fortify his manor of Hever Cobham, presumably fearing future uprisings targeting tax collectors. He built high sandstone walls around the original manor house, as well as three portcullises and a moat. Hever was purchased in 1462 by Geoffrey and Thomas Boleyn. Soon afterwards, Geoffrey bought out his brother and took sole ownership. He renamed the manor Hever Castle, and proceeded to establish it as a luxurious family home complete with private reception rooms, fashionable oriel windows and fireplaces, and a remodelled great hall.
Geoffrey didn’t enjoy his new home for long because he died just a year later. His younger son, William, inherited Hever, among other manors, but spent most of his time at the Boleyns’ Norfolk seat, Blickling Hall. It was William’s son Thomas who established Hever as the principal Boleyn residence around 1505, almost certainly because of its convenient location. As one of Henry VIII’s most trusted diplomats, Thomas was sent on numerous missions overseas, and Hever was within easy reach of both Dover and the court in London. After the death in 1539 of both Thomas and his mother, Margaret, Hever passed into the possession of Henry VIII, who granted his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, the use of it during her lifetime. She seems to have taken a shine to the childhood home of her namesake and predecessor. She made substantial additions to the castle, including a new entrance hall and long gallery. The ownership of Hever changed hands several times over the following centuries, eventually falling into a poor state of repair. In 1903, it was acquired and restored by the American millionaire William Waldorf Astor. Much of the interior visitors see today is Astor’s creation, though the Boleyn apartments have recently been restored to their appearance in Anne’s heyday.
Source of solace
George was a constant source of solace and companionship to Anne. Like his father, he was a favourite of the king and rose rapidly through the ranks once his sister had caught Henry’s eye. George shared Anne’s reformist views, and they both imported radical religious texts from abroad that might have had them condemned as heretics.
Supported by her brother, Anne brought her influence to bear on Henry, persuading him that a king should be subject to no authority but God’s – a view that made the pope an irrelevance. Henry had the justification he needed to break with Rome and push through the annulment. In January 1533, he married Anne in a secret ceremony at Whitehall. Eustace Chapuys, ambassador to England from the Holy Roman Empire and a prolific letter-writer, claimed that both her parents were in attendance.
Anne’s coronation on 1 June 1533 was – literally – the crowning glory of the Boleyns’ meteoric rise. But it was not long before cracks began to appear in her marriage. Things went from bad to worse in September 1533 when Anne gave birth to a daughter, the future Elizabeth I, rather than the hoped-for son. Over the following two and a half years she suffered a series of miscarriages, the last of them in January 1536. By then, her relationship with Henry had deteriorated so badly that he was seen to “shrink from her” in private.
End of the line
The end came in May that year, when Anne was arrested on trumped-up charges of adultery. Among her five alleged lovers was her brother George. The siblings were swiftly condemned and executed.
Their grief-stricken parents left court immediately. Elizabeth Boleyn died in the London home of Hugh Faringdon, Abbot of Reading, in April 1538. Her husband, Thomas, retreated to Hever, where he lived out his days in obscurity. He returned briefly to court in October 1537 to attend the christening of Henry VIII’s “precious jewel”, Prince Edward, born to the king’s third wife, Jane Seymour, who had replaced Anne. Thomas died at Hever in March 1539, shortly followed by his by then elderly mother, Margaret.
Anne’s former sister-in-law, Jane, who has traditionally – and unjustly – been blamed for testifying against her, went on to serve three more of Henry VIII’s wives. She was executed in February 1542 for aiding and abetting the adulterous liaisons of Catherine Howard, Henry’s fifth wife.
The last of the Boleyns to survive was Anne’s sister Mary. Scant evidence for her life after 1534 survives, but the fact that her father bequeathed her some lands at Hever suggests that they were reconciled before his death. Mary died in July 1543, probably at her marital home, Rochford Hall in Essex.
Yet the family’s fortune would rise again, phoenix-like, from the ashes. Against all odds, Anne’s daughter Elizabeth became the longest-reigning and most successful of the Tudors. And the Boleyn bloodline endures even today, as King Charles III is a direct descendant of Mary Boleyn.
This article was first published in the July 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine
]]> Tracy Borman <![CDATA[Think you know everything about the Tudors? Here are 15 facts that will prove you wrong]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/think-you-know-everything-about-the-tudors-here-are-15-facts-that-will-prove-you-wrong/ 2026-10-08T12:35:32.000Z 2026-04-12T15:00:00.000Z 1. The Tudors weren’t known as the Tudors
Although we use ‘Tudor’ as a nifty shorthand for both the era and the dynasty, it wasn’t used at the time either by the monarchs or their people. Neither did they see it as a distinct period: in fact, Henry VII went to great lengths to emphasise the continuity with his royal predecessors, even down to using the same tailor whom Edward IV had employed.
He also emphasised his Lancastrian roots and tried to downplay his Welsh origins, aware that his grandfather Owen Tudor had married well above him when he bagged Henry V’s widow Catherine of Valois as a bride. Throughout the period 1485–1603, the people identified as subjects of each successive king or queen, as well as taking pride in their local affiliations, rather than seeing themselves as ‘Tudor people’.
2. They had a pretty dodgy claim to the throne
When Henry Tudor won the crown from Richard III at the battle of Bosworth in 1485, he was quick to stress his legitimacy. But there was more than a hint of protesting too much. In fact, the Tudors were descended from Edward III’s fourth son, John of Gaunt, and his long-standing mistress, Katherine Swynford.
Moreover, Henry VII’s father Edmund was the child of Henry V’s widow, Catherine of Valois, by her Welsh attendant. With such a dubious bloodline, it’s little wonder that England’s first Tudor king wasted no time in marrying Elizabeth of York, the eldest child of Edward IV. Their marriage united the warring houses of York and Lancaster and, crucially, gave the Tudors some much-needed legitimacy.
3. Henry VII was no miser
The first Tudor king has a reputation for penny-pinching. But while he kept a close eye on his expenditure, he knew how to splash the cash when it was to his advantage.
In the early years of his reign, when he was under constant threat from rivals and pretenders and many of his subjects questioned his right to be king, he spent lavish sums on dressing the part. Just over a week after defeating Richard III at Bosworth, he ordered a set of new gowns fashioned from cloth of gold, satin and royal purple velvet at a cost of £336, which roughly equates to £225,000 in today’s money.
During the two years that followed, he spent an eye-watering £5,386 (£3.6 million) on his wardrobe. But his generosity had its limits. His wife, Elizabeth of York, struggled to make ends meet throughout their marriage.
4. You would smell Henry VIII before you saw him
For the last 20 years of his life, Henry was tormented by pain from a chronic leg ulcer, which was aggravated by a serious fall from his horse while jousting in 1536. The ulcer often became inflamed and – unsurprisingly – Henry was a difficult patient, refusing to rest for long enough for it to heal. At its worst, the suppurating wound could be smelt from three rooms away.
- Read more | Was this the moment Henry VIII became a tyrant?
5. Henry VIII’s love of hawking was almost the death of him
Henry’s love of sport was well known throughout the court. As a young king, he would spend hours hunting, jousting, shooting arrows and playing tennis. Hawking was another of his favourite sports and his private apartments contained an impressive array of falconry equipment.
But in 1525, Henry was almost killed while pursuing his hawk. Attempting to pole vault over a ditch, instead he fell headfirst into it and almost drowned. Thankfully, his quick-thinking footman, Edmund Moody, managed to pull him out in the nick of time.
6. Henry VIII was a bit of a prude
Contrary to popular belief, Tudor England’s most-married monarch wasn’t much of a lothario. In fact, he had twice as many wives as mistresses. There is only evidence of three extramarital affairs.
The women involved were Bessie Blount (the mother of Henry’s not-so-subtly-named illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy), Mary Boleyn (sister of his second wife Anne) and ‘Mistress Shelton’, who was either Margaret or Mary Shelton, both cousins of Anne Boleyn.
Although there was a rumour that he once had an affair with Anne’s mother Elizabeth, he stoutly denied it: “Never with the mother!”
7. Anne Boleyn did not have a sixth finger on one hand
This oft-repeated tale is based on scurrilous gossip written almost 50 years after Anne’s death. A host of hostile Catholic tracts about Anne appeared in the 1580s as part of a smear campaign against her ‘heretic’ daughter, Elizabeth I.
Nicholas Sander was one of the most influential and claimed that Anne had been Henry VIII’s daughter as well as his wife, the result of his clandestine affair with her mother. Feeding on the rumours of witchcraft that had circulated at the time of Anne’s demise, he asserted that she had a sixth finger on her right hand and a large ‘wen’ (a boil or mole) under her chin.
Such blemishes were commonly thought to be the ‘Devil’s Mark’ – a symbol of having made a pact with Satan. In fact, Anne was proud of her long, slender fingers and always took care to show them off to best effect… all 10 of them.
8. Anne of Cleves was not ugly
You may have heard the story: Henry VIII fell in love with Anne of Cleves’ portrait and immediately signed on the dotted line of the marriage contract. But when he met his bride in person, he was appalled that she was nothing like her profile picture. So, he had the marriage annulled before you could say ‘off with her head’.
In fact, Holbein’s portrait was faithful to Anne, and many contemporary accounts praise her beauty. If anyone had cause for complaint about their betrothed’s physical assets, it was Anne. Henry was no oil painting by the time she married him in January 1540. Pushing 50, he was bloated, ulcer-ridden and almost certainly impotent. It was with understandable haste that Anne agreed to an annulment just six months later.
9. Edward VI kept a diary
The boy king was the only Tudor monarch to leave behind a private journal. But if you’re expecting a tell-all exposé full of secretly expressed desires, grudges and hopes, you might be disappointed. In fact, it’s a rather dry summary of the events of his reign.
Even the execution of his once-cherished uncle is afforded only the following curt line: “The Duke of Somerset had his head cut off today.” Overall, the diary reveals a boy who was precociously intelligent, as might be expected for Henry VIII’s “precious jewel”, who had the best of everything growing up.
But he also appears cold, unfeeling and uncompromising – a dangerous blend of traits that might have made him an even greater tyrant than his father if he lived to maturity.
10. Lady Jane Grey was queen for 14 days, not nine
Jane has gone down in history as the ‘Nine Days’ Queen’. But while it’s true that she was proclaimed queen on 10 July 1553 and deposed by Mary Tudor on 19 July, her reign technically began as soon as Edward VI had breathed his last on 6 July.
On his deathbed, Edward changed the succession in favour of his Protestant cousin Jane to prevent his Catholic half-sister Mary claiming her right. He was heavily influenced by John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, who had married his son Guildford to Jane.
Even so, Edward’s ‘Device’ for the succession was legally-binding, so Jane was the rightful queen as soon as the young king died. Yet she is always referred to as ‘Lady’ rather than ‘Queen’ and is often omitted from the roll call of English monarchs altogether. That owes much to Mary Tudor’s propaganda: to seize the throne, she had to present Jane as a usurper.
11. ‘Bloody Mary’ wasn’t all that bloody
Mary I’s obsession with returning England to the Roman Catholic faith spurred her to have around 300 Protestant heretics burned at the stake. But while there is no doubting the horrific nature of their deaths, Mary acted out of conscience rather than brutality.
Blinded by her own faith, she genuinely believed that she was saving her subjects from eternal damnation by bringing them into the Roman Catholic fold. Furthermore, the number of people who died on Mary’s orders was just a fraction of those who suffered at the hands of her far bloodier father, Henry VIII.
He sent more men and women to their deaths than any other Tudor monarch. Anyone who refused to fall in with his will was sent to the block – commoners, statesmen and wives alike. It even became a crime to think differently from the king. Contemporary records are patchy and inconsistent, so it’s impossible to quantify exactly how many deaths Henry was responsible for. Estimates vary from a few thousand to as many as 72,000.
12. Mary Tudor was a bit of a party girl
Despite her reputation for sober-mindedness and piety, Mary loved to have fun. One of her favourite companions was Jane Fool, a female jester. The queen was also an avid gambler and loved to play cards and board games. She also entertained lavishly and spent huge sums on feasting and drinking.
A scandalised Spanish ambassador reported: “There is plenty of beer here, and they drink more than would fill the Valladolid river [known as the Pisuerga river today]… The ladies and gentlemen put sugar in their wine, with the result that there are great goings on in the palace.”
13. Elizabeth I employed the original James Bond
The queen’s personal astrologer Dr John Dee was one of her closest advisers. She would regularly consult him about the most apposite moment to undertake key events, such as her coronation.
An astrologer, astronomer, mathematician and philosopher, Dee was one of the most learned men of the age. But he also carried out more covert assignments for his royal mistress. She employed Dee as a spy, and he would report on intrigues abroad using complex codes. He signed his letters with the numerals ‘007’.
14. Elizabeth I was (apparently) a man
The ‘Bisley Boy’ legend states that in 1542, the future Elizabeth I (then aged around nine) was sent to Overcourt House in the Cotswold village of Bisley to escape the plague in London. Whilst there, she sickened with a fever and died. Knowing that Henry VIII was on his way to visit his daughter, her panic-stricken governess searched the village in vain for a girl who resembled Elizabeth closely enough to fool the king.
The only child of the right age and colouring was a boy, so in desperation she dressed him in the princess’s clothes and the deception was complete. This unlikely tale dates from the 1800s and was made popular by Dracula author Bram Stoker in his book Famous Impostors.
There is no contemporary evidence to support it and more than a whiff of misogyny about the whole thing. How else could Elizabeth have ruled so successfully for so many years? She must have been a man.
15. Elizabeth I didn’t leave her throne to James VI
But as she lay dying at Richmond Palace in March 1603, she finally settled the matter, gasping that she would have none but “my nearest kinsman the King of Scots”.
This deathbed scene was recorded by the contemporary historian William Camden, who had been commissioned to write a biography of the celebrated queen during her lifetime. But dramatic new research by the British Library has proved that Camden was forced to rewrite it on the orders of the new king to make his accession look more predetermined than it had been.
Using transmitted light, the researchers found that in his original manuscript, written at the time of Elizabeth’s death, Camden had recorded that she died without naming a successor. But a few years later, his words were covered over with the lie that ushered the Stuarts to the Tudor throne.
]]> Emily Briffett <![CDATA[Why Tudor England was more multicultural than you might think]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/tudor-england-5-podcast/ 2026-04-06T09:00:11.000Z 2026-04-06T09:00:11.000Z The 16th century is often seen as a 'golden age' of exploration, which witnessed England's emergence as a major player on the European stage. But it was also a period in which the English became embroiled in international wars and slave trading.
In this fifth and final episode of our series Tudor England: the big questions, Emily Briffett and Tracy Borman venture out in search of unknown lands and riches – and come face to face with Tudor England’s major allies and rivals.
Watch the full episode, or listen ad-free at the link below:
View Green Video on the source website ]]> Emily Briffett <![CDATA[Were the Tudors really THAT superstitious?]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/tudor-england-4-podcast/ 2026-03-31T09:00:17.000Z 2026-03-31T09:00:17.000Z The English Reformation and the dissolution of the monasteries were major milestones in 16th-century England, shaking the very foundations of Tudor religious belief. But while the nation moved back and forth between Catholicism and Protestantism, how much did ordinary people continue to rely on age-old customs and folklore?
In this fourth episode of our series Tudor England: the big questions, Emily Briffett and Tracy Borman unpick the complex web of Tudor beliefs – from the devout to the superstitious – and explore how religious upheaval rocked the nation.
Watch the full episode, or listen ad-free at the link below:
View Green Video on the source website ]]> Emily Briffett <![CDATA[Rich diets and dangerous habits | Food, fashion and festivals in Tudor England]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/tudor-england-3-podcast/ 2026-03-24T10:00:09.000Z 2026-03-24T10:00:09.000Z Why were festivals and feasts such major events in the Tudor age? What toxic beauty products did Elizabeth I plaster her face with? And were the works of the celebrated playwright William Shakespeare smash hits in their time?
In this third episode of our series Tudor England: the big questions, Emily Briffett and Tracy Borman sample the cultural delights of the Tudors - touching on art and theatre, fashion and festivals, science and innovation.
Watch the full episode, or listen ad-free at the link below:
View Green Video on the source website ]]> Emily Briffett <![CDATA[What was daily life REALLY like in Tudor England?]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/tudor-england-2-podcast/ 2026-04-02T09:40:51.000Z 2026-03-17T00:00:13.000Z What was the most popular pastime of the Tudor age? Why was bathing even once a month considered dangerous? And how could living alongside your pets help save on your heating bill in the 16th century?
In this second episode of our series Tudor England: the big questions, Emily Briffett and Tracy Borman roam the towns and villages of Tudor England, painting a vivid picture of daily life – from fun and games to your chances of surviving the sweating sickness.
Watch the full episode, or listen ad-free at the link below:
View Green Video on the source website ]]> Emily Briffett <![CDATA[Could YOU survive Henry VIII’s reign?]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/tudor-england-1-podcast/ 2026-03-10T09:00:12.000Z 2026-03-10T09:00:12.000Z The Tudor world was a turbulent one, with momentous decisions reliant on the whims of those in power. But how was authority felt by the average person? And what were the consequences of losing favour with those in charge?
In this first episode of our series Tudor England: the big questions, Tracy Borman introduces Emily Briffett to the movers and shakers of the Tudor royal court, exploring what it took to run the country - and escape the monarch’s wrath.
Watch the full episode, or listen ad-free at the link below:
View Green Video on the source website ]]> Dr David Musgrove, FSA <![CDATA[Procrastinate like Elizabeth I]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/procrastinate-like-elizabeth-i-life-lessons-podcast/ 2025-12-23T13:26:05.000Z 2025-12-23T13:26:05.000Z Elizabeth I famously managed to keep all her courtiers wondering about what she really meant for decades, and in this episode of our Life Lessons from History series, Tracy Borman explains what we can take from the life of the Tudor monarch.
]]> Tracy Borman <![CDATA[Porpoise for breakfast and late night sex visits: Henry VIII's life in a day]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/porpoise-for-breakfast-and-late-night-sex-visits-henry-viiis-life-in-a-day/ 2025-12-05T17:01:03.000Z 2025-12-05T17:00:37.000Z The year 1533 was a big one for Henry VIII. It began with his secret marriage to Anne Boleyn, followed a few months later by the annulment of his first marriage to Catherine of Aragon. The new queen was crowned in June, then in September she gave birth to the future Elizabeth I, rather than the hoped-for male heir. And as if that wasn’t enough, the Reformation parliament passed radical religious legislation that would separate the country from Rome and make Henry supreme head of the new Church of England.
Amidst these seismic events, however, Henry’s daily life continued much as it had done during the previous 24 years of his reign. The Tudor court ran according to a strict routine, and nothing – not even the pope in Rome – could disrupt it.
In the early years of his reign, when Henry was at the peak of his youthful vigour, he would rise at the crack of dawn and go hunting for several hours – sometimes until dusk. The courtier and diplomat Richard Pace reported to Cardinal Wolsey that, during the summer, the “King rises daily, except on holy days, at 4 or 5 o’clock and hunts till 9 or 10 at night”. Henry would get up later in the colder months, typically at around eight o’clock.
But those carefree days had diminished by 1533. The king was paying much closer attention to affairs of state and was no longer living “in continuous festival”, as his first wife had put it in the early days of their marriage. Nevertheless, Henry still spent a decent amount of each day indulging in physical pursuits. Now in his early forties, he was almost as full of energy as he had been in his youth.
An “improbably large codpiece”
To get Henry ready for whatever the day held, his privy chamber staff had to rise even earlier than he did. Having cleaned the king’s chambers, the grooms would wake the esquires of the body, who slept in the ‘pallet chamber’ next door to the royal bedchamber. The esquires would enter their royal master’s bedchamber to “array him and dress him in his [under]clothes”, which were strewn with fresh herbs to keep them sweet-smelling.
Having been “loosely dressed” by his esquires, Henry would step into the privy chamber so that his six gentlemen could complete the ceremony of robing with whichever garments he had chosen for that day. Henry loved to show off his physique – as well as his riches – in the quality and quantity of the cloth from which his garments were fashioned. His broad shoulders were emphasised by padded and embroidered sleeves, the curve of his calf muscles was shown off to best effect by white silk hose, and his improbably large codpiece symbolised his masculinity and power. Clearly, he pulled it off. The Venetian ambassador, Sebastiano Guistinian, described Henry as “the best dressed sovereign in the world”.
Hair, ear wax and urine
When the king was dressed for the day, his barber would begin shaving his royal master and dressing his hair. He had to be a man of infinite trustworthiness: after all, he would be holding sharp blades to the king’s throat! During the early years of his reign, Henry was clean-shaven, as Catherine of Aragon preferred. But what she liked mattered less by 1533, when he sported a fine beard, which the barber would ensure was neatly trimmed.
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Luxury pervaded the business of hairdressing and shaving, as it did every other element of Henry’s daily routine. Inventories of his possessions list silver basins for shaving and facecloths trimmed with black silk, as well as a comb of “gold garnished with… stones and pearl”, a toothpick case of gold, and an “ear pick of silver”. Among the many gifts that the king had showered Anne Boleyn with during their courtship was a gold ear wax scoop. Who says romance is dead?
Next up, Henry would be examined by one of his team of physicians. They came armed with bladder-shaped flasks for inspecting the king’s urine and would also examine his stools. In submitting himself to the frequent attentions of his medics, the king was following royal protocol – after all, a sovereign’s health was of the utmost importance to the state. But Henry had always been prone to hypochondria and would be thrown into a panic at any sign of illness at court. The French ambassador described him as “the most timid person in such matters you could meet”.
Mrs Cornwallis’s sweet treats
Having been washed, groomed, dressed and examined, the king was at last ready to go out into the court. The first meal of the day was generally served at around 10.30 or 11 o’clock, although sometimes it was as late as midday (breakfast was not a thing until the reign of Henry’s daughter Elizabeth). This was known as ‘dinner’ and was substantial enough to maintain the king and his courtiers until late afternoon. It comprised an array of different meats, such as boar, pork, lamb and venison, as well as game birds like pheasant and rabbit, swan and more unusual fare like conger eel and porpoise. The king had a sweet tooth, too, and regularly gorged on custards, fritters, tarts, jelly, cream of almonds and quince marmalade. His favourite confectioner was a woman named Mrs Cornwallis, whom he rewarded with a fine house close to the Tower of London.
In contrast to the popular image of Henry seated at the top table of a great feast, devouring endless chicken legs and throwing the bones over his shoulder, he was a very fastidious eater and preferred to take his meals in private. He didn’t like to linger over his meals, either, because he was impatient to get on with his day.
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Hunting, archery, bowling and tennis took up several hours. Sir William Kingston, who was a regular at Henry’s court (and was later Anne Boleyn’s gaoler at the Tower), observed that even after more than 20 years on the throne: “The king hawks every day with goshawks and others… both before noon and after.” Having practised these sporting pursuits from childhood, Henry was highly skilled, particularly at tennis. The Venetian ambassador enthused: “It is the prettiest thing in the world to see him play.”
“Tedious and painful”
The distinction between work and play was blurred during Henry’s reign. He would discuss politics with ambassadors and ministers while enjoying a game of bowls or practising archery, and would hold more private audiences with his advisors while being dressed or undressed, taking his meals or bathing.
The privy council was the beating heart of Henry’s government and would meet almost every day at around noon. By 1533, Henry was attending those meetings much more frequently than during the carefree early years of his reign. They would discuss all the most pressing matters of the day – of which there was no shortage in the year that the king rid himself of one wife, took another and separated England from Roman Catholic Europe. Thomas Cromwell was the most influential member of the privy council and worked closely with Henry, often holding private meetings with the king.
Supper was served between three and four o’clock each afternoon and would typically comprise soups, pottage, roasted meats, tarts, custards, fruits, nuts and cheeses. If Henry was peckish in the evening, his cooks would prepare a snack known as a ‘rear night’ or ‘all night’, which was usually served between eight and nine o’clock.
Henry was renowned for his piety and spent a significant part of every day in worship. One ambassador reported: “He hears three masses daily when he hunts and sometimes five on other days.” This had been encouraged by his first wife, a devout Roman Catholic. By contrast, Anne Boleyn was a reformer and introduced Henry to radical religious texts that encouraged him to break from obedience to Rome. Although he admitted to finding writing “tedious and painful”, the king was a voracious reader, and his private library was filled with classical and theological texts from across the world.
Long trips to the loo
Every so often, the king would take a bath in his private apartments. But the leading physicians of the age cautioned against regular bathing in hot water because it opened the pores and allowed deadly diseases such as the plague, sweating sickness and smallpox to enter the body. Instead, cold water was used for washing the king’s hands and face first thing in the morning and before and after every meal. Even if Henry’s baths were infrequent, they were predictably luxurious. At the palaces of Richmond and Whitehall, Henry had steam baths installed, fragments of which are still preserved at Hampton Court.
Henry had his own private close stool (a type of portable toilet) in each palace. His ‘stool chambers’ at Greenwich and Hampton Court were kitted out with pictures and bookshelves to keep the king amused during the long hours that he spent there. His close stools were covered in embroidered velvet, stuffed with swan’s-down and studded with gilt nails.
To emphasise his magnificence, Henry staged lavish evening entertainments at court. His Master of the Revels devised plays, pageants and musical interludes to be performed in front of the king and his guests. Some of the more ambitious set-pieces involved mock battles and the famous ‘Château Vert’ pageant of 1522, when a certain young lady called Anne Boleyn made her first appearance at Henry’s court. As well as being an accomplished musician, Henry loved to show off on the dance floor. He “exercised himself daily in dancing” and “does wonders and leaps like a stag”, reported an astonished onlooker.
Most evenings, the king and his courtiers would indulge in gambling. Huge sums would be won and lost at cards, dice and board games. Between the years 1529 and 1532, Henry squandered a staggering £3,243 (equivalent to £2.36 million today). But there was always a jester or ‘fool’ on hand to cheer the king after his losses. Henry’s favourite fool was Will Somer, who entered his service in 1525 and kept the king entertained for the next 20 years. It was said that “in all the court few men were more beloved than was this fool”.
Henry’s bedroom antics
The king rarely retired before midnight, “which is our accustomed hour at court to go to bed”. An elaborate ceremony of disrobing began as soon as he stepped into the bedchamber. His gentlemen and esquires of the body would carefully untie, unbuckle and remove every item of clothing and then put on his nightgown. Another attendant would bring a basin of water and a cloth so that he could wash his face and clean his teeth. The king’s body servants would then comb his hair and cover it with a ‘night-bonnet’ of scarlet or black embroidered velvet before helping him into bed and lighting a candle next to it. Their work complete, all but one of the privy chamber attendants bowed low and backed out of the room, leaving their royal master to his rest.
Every detail of this protracted routine would be observed each night without fail. It only differed when Henry chose to visit his wife. On such occasions, he would summon his grooms of the chamber, who would dress him in his nightrobe and escort him with lighted torches to the door of the queen’s bedchamber. The king would rarely spend the night there, though, and would return to his own bedchamber once his, erm, ‘business’ there had been concluded.
But given that Anne Boleyn was almost certainly pregnant at the time she married Henry in January 1533, these conjugal visits would have been rare or non-existent until she gave birth in September. The wisdom of the day dictated that sex during pregnancy was harmful to the unborn child, so instead Henry found comfort with other women.
This caused the first serious rift between the newlyweds in August 1533, when Anne was about to enter her ‘confinement’ – the month-long period when a royal wife would live in complete seclusion to await the birth of her child. “The king’s affection for her [Anne] is less than it was”, reported the Imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys. “He now shows himself in love with another lady, and many nobles are assisting him in the affair.” When she heard of this, Anne was “very jealous” and confronted her royal husband. To her dismay, rather than offering placatory assurances, he spat back that she must “shut her eyes and endure” as more “worthy” persons had done. Henry’s affection for his new wife took another nose-dive when she gave birth to a daughter (the future Elizabeth I) on 7 September, rather than the hoped-for son.
Adultery, treason and execution
As the year 1533 drew to a close, the court moved to Greenwich for the Christmas celebrations. “The King’s Grace kept great court, as merry and lusty as ever”, one guest observed. There was a good reason for Henry to be cheerful: Anne Boleyn was pregnant once more. Her New Year gift to the king was an exquisite table fountain of gold, studded with rubies, diamonds and pearls. Designed by Hans Holbein, it featured three naked women standing at the foot of a fountain, water issuing forth from their nipples – a clear allusion to her impending motherhood.
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Sadly, the queen lost the child a few months later and miscarried twice more in the two years that followed. The king, who in the early days of their courtship had been so enraptured that he had overturned his entire kingdom in order to marry Anne, now “shrank from her”. In May 1536, Anne was condemned on trumped-up charges of adultery, incest and treason and executed.
Earlier that year, Henry had suffered a serious accident whilst jousting, which brought the physical activities that had filled so many of his days at court to an abrupt end. Plagued by pain and humiliated by his expanding girth, this most famous of kings became the bloated tyrant of legend.
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