HistoryExtrahttps://www.historyextra.comHome of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast2026-10-24T06:00:12.000Zhourly12000-01-01T12:00+00:00Daily Quiz: 24 Octoberhttps://www.historyextra.com/membership/daily-history-trivia-quiz/2026-10-24T06:00:12.000ZView Riddle on the source website
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]]>TV’s Ghosts is a phenomenon. This is the writers’ golden rule for bringing history to lifehttps://www.historyextra.com/period/21st-century/ghosts-possession-button-house-laurence-rickard-interview/2026-10-23T16:05:47.000ZA headless Tudor nobleman, an Edwardian aristocrat and a trouserless politician from the 1990s might seem unlikely housemates. Add a caveman, a Second World War army captain and a few other restless spirits, and you have the makings of one of Britain’s best-loved television comedies.
Across five series, the BBC sitcom Ghosts won audiences over with its unlikely household mix of living and dead, who are unable to escape one another. Now, with Ghosts: The Possession of Button House bringing the characters back for a big-screen adventure, co-creator, writer and actor Laurence Rickard spoke to the HistoryExtra podcast about what he thinks lies behind the show’s winning formula.
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“Most classic sitcoms to a degree – whether literally or figuratively – are like a family,” says Rickard, who plays caveman Robin and headless Tudor nobleman Sir Humphrey Bone. “And what you want is people who feel like they fulfil different roles – but you want as much clashing as you can get.”
In Ghosts, those clashes are amplified by centuries of changing social attitudes, making for fertile territory.
“The most unalike people you can think of are literally people from different time periods,” says Rickard. “They’re an unlikely family and I think there is a lot of love between them, but there’s certainly a lot of grit in the oyster.”
The golden rule
Rickard’s collaboration with the show’s five other writer-performers stretches back to their work on Horrible Histories, the irreverent sketch show that began adapting Terry Deary’s books in 2009 and introduced a generation of young viewers to the stranger, sillier side of the past.
As the troupe turned their attention to Ghosts, this long-standing creative partnership helped the writers establish their distinctive balance between historical authenticity and humour.
“I think the good thing about having the six of us is that we kind of police each other,” Rickard explains.
“There are certain things we’ll pitch in the room where it’ll get a laugh and then – once the laugh’s subsided – we’ll go, ‘Obviously we can’t do that.’”
Talking about Julian’s locker-room innuendo or Lady Button’s feelings on women’s liberation, Rickard says the writers are particularly careful about how far to push the characters’ more outdated attitudes.
“If it gets to the point where all six of us feel like something’s okay, then it probably is, and if the majority feel like maybe it’s crossing a line, then we’ll pull back and do something else.”
But how strictly do the writers adhere to the historical record? Rickard recalls that the guiding principle on Horrible Histories was simple: “We can’t lie.”
“Even though we’re trying to make history funny, you never really want to say something that didn’t happen,” he adds.
- Read more | “It’s rare that a television show actually changes people’s lives”: 15 years of Horrible Histories
With Ghosts, the team have allowed themselves a little more creative freedom, while drawing a lot of inspiration from the real history of West Horsley Place in Surrey, where the show is filmed.
“[We] wanted all of the context to feel like it was real and genuine,” says Rickard. But that doesn’t mean being so beholden to historical accuracy that it gets in the way of a good joke.
“If we found something that was funny and meant that what happened in the historical context was then only 90 per cent correct, we were like, ‘That’s okay.’”
His golden rule? “Reverence and research, but never too much of either.”
When historical ‘facts’ change
But times move on, and even the most diligent historical research can be overtaken by new discoveries. Rickard points out that, in the years since Horrible Histories first aired, historians’ understanding of some subjects has shifted considerably.
“[I]n a short space of time – 15 years or so since we started doing that show – there were things which we stated as being, in inverted commas, ‘facts’, which we now know aren’t the case,” he says.
“Maybe new facts will come along in 10 years’ time, and it’ll turn out we were right the first time.”
It’s an idea that Ghosts has played with in its own way, particularly in a second-series episode that examines the death of Georgian poet Thomas Thorne and reveals how different eyewitness perspectives can produce very different accounts of the same event.
Rickard draws a comparison with Samuel Pepys’ famous account of the 1666 Great Fire of London.
“In some ways, that’s the definitive version. But that’s one person’s viewpoint.”
For Rickard, some subjects once considered too recent or sensitive for irreverent treatment can become more open to satire as they recede from living memory.
“There’ll be a lot of things in Blackadder, for example, that they wouldn’t have done if it was being made 20 years after the period it was dealing with,” he says. “But you get far more licence as you start to get that gulf of time.”
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Yet for all its mischievousness, Ghosts has achieved something that Rickard says he and his fellow writers never anticipated.
The show has helped viewers feel closer not only to people from the past but also to loved ones they have lost, he says. And Rickard believes part of the show’s appeal lies in making historical figures feel recognisably human.
“History, to a degree, feels remote… Even just thinking back to the Victorians, when society was so, so different, it can feel slightly alien.”
By giving its characters familiar emotions, frustrations and relationships, Ghosts makes those distant lives feel more accessible, says Rickard.
“An awful lot of people have come up to us at various events and said they have found it incredibly comforting when they have lost people,” Rickard says, explaining how, for some fans, the idea of an afterlife filled with friendship and familiar human foibles offers an alternative way to think about death. “There might still be fun and adventure, and warmth and companionship.”
“We hadn’t really thought of that… and it’s lovely and very rewarding, but that was certainly something that was not by design.”
Laurence Rickard was speaking to Elinor Evans on the HistoryExtra podcast about Ghosts: The Possession of Button House, released in UK cinemas on 23 October. Listen to the full conversation.
]]>He was a pirate, slaver and killer. So why is he England's national hero?https://www.historyextra.com/membership/he-was-a-pirate-slaver-and-killer-so-why-is-he-englands-national-hero/2026-10-23T14:30:45.000Z“Just look at Drake! Who is he?” said Pope Sixtus V. “What forces has he? And yet he burned 25 of the [Spanish] king’s ships at Gibraltar [Cádiz], and as many again at Lisbon; he has robbed the flotilla and sacked San Domingo. His reputation is so great that his countrymen flock to him to share his booty.”
It was late summer 1588, and Sir Francis Drake’s fame had spread throughout Europe. As the Spanish Armada limped home from ignominious defeat at the hands of the English fleet (with a helping hand from the weather), the pope was discussing the Elizabethan naval commander’s exploits with Giovanni Gritti, the Venetian ambassador in Rome. “Have you heard how Drake, with his fleet, has offered battle to the Armada?” the pope added later. “With what courage! Do you think he showed any fear? He is a great captain.”
In the space of just over 20 years, Drake had risen from humble origins in rural Devon to achieve a position of great wealth and power. He had won renown as the great commander who bested the Spanish aggressors – and the first Englishman to sail around the world some years earlier. Drake was a hugely popular hero in England, and renowned across Europe.
In the 16th century, though, your perspective depended very much on your nationality. England’s enemies, particularly Spain, saw him as a villainous pirate. Spanish accounts of Drake’s voyages highlight his brutality, whereas English reports depict him in a more positive light, often downplaying any violence.
Is it possible to glimpse the truth about this man whose reputation has been burnished by generations of English history books – but sullied by Spanish? And what can his early life and career tell us about his character?
Little is known of Francis Drake’s early years or education. He was born around February or March 1540 near Tavistock in Devon. His father, Edmund, was a shearman (cutting woollen cloth) and priest who moved to Kent in the late 1540s. Francis did not go east with his family but instead moved to Plymouth, where he lived with his kinsman, William Hawkins. It was here that he gained his formative education and seafaring experience.
At that time, the Spanish monarchy prohibited foreign merchants from trading directly with its colonies in the Caribbean and the Americas. English traders, who saw opportunities to profit from trafficking enslaved Africans to the Spanish territories, resented this embargo. Some simply broke it.
First voyages
With the backing of leading courtiers – and, later, Queen Elizabeth herself – William Hawkins’ son John launched four slaving voyages in the 1560s. These were joined by Drake, whose exact shipboard rank on the first three expeditions is not certain. On the fourth, which sailed from Plymouth in 1567, Drake served as captain of a small bark, the Judith.
The Spanish took pains to stop English slaving voyages, and in September 1568 defeated Hawkins at the island fort of San Juan de Ulúa on the east coast of New Spain, now in Veracruz, Mexico. Drake’s ruthless nature was evident in this episode: instead of aiding his stricken comrades by taking men onto his ship from the overcrowded Minion, he chose to sail the Judith home to England without them.
The Judith “forsooke us in our great myserie”, reported Hawkins, who was forced to land 96 men on the shore of New Spain; many of them were then captured and executed by the Spanish.
These actions did not hamper Drake’s career, though, and the voyage made a considerable profit.
Many Englishmen, including Drake, felt aggrieved by the defeat at San Juan de Ulúa, and in the 1570s began openly attacking Spanish shipping and territories in the Caribbean. To justify what followed, the Spanish ambassador was told that “the Spaniards had procured unto themselves that evil through their injustice towards the English”. Effectively, Drake had launched on a career as a pirate – though from 1572, when he was licensed by the English crown to attack Spanish forces and colonies, he became a privateer. That distinction between banditry and officially sanctioned action was seen to legitimise the actions of English vessels – though not, of course, to the Spanish.
Key to the success of Drake’s raids in the 1570s and 1580s was the relationship he formed with cimarrons – black people who had escaped Spanish enslavement in Panama. They gave Drake and his men invaluable intelligence about Spanish movements and defences, acted as guides, provided supplies, and fought alongside the English.
French and English pirates in the Caribbean were noted for their brutality against the Spanish. In 1571, for example, Drake commanded a small pinnace, the Swan, as part of a larger fleet and, together with French pirates, attacked settlements in Panama. When the crews of Spanish ships fought back against Drake’s vessel, he responded with extreme violence. On the same voyage, he killed the owner of a dispatch boat from Cartagena.
In 1572, Drake led a small fleet returning to the Caribbean. He joined another English pirate, James Raunse, and launched a violent night attack on Nombre de Dios in Panama. One eyewitness described how Drake’s men “began to sound trumpets in the streets and to fire artillery [from four pinnaces they had brought close into the shore] and to discharge harquebuses and arrows through the streets; and they killed some men and women, white and black, and wounded many more, in all 32 persons”.
Drake's progress: global travels of a pirate seafarer
- 1562–69 — Guinea Coast: Drake sails on four slaving voyages to west Africa organised by John Hawkins.
- September 1568 — San Juan de Ulúa, Gulf of Mexico: Spanish forces defeat Hawkins on his fourth slaving voyage. Drake’s ship, the Judith, is one of two to make it home.
- 1572–73 — Caribbean: Drake leads a series of raids, joining forces with cimarron and French allies to attack Spanish settlements.
- December 1577 — Plymouth: Five ships set out under Drake on an expedition to raid the Pacific coast of South America.
- June 1578 — Port St Julian: Having crossed the Atlantic, Drake and his fleet anchor at the harbour today called Puerto San Julián, Argentina.
- September 1578 — Strait of Magellan: Drake and his one remaining ship, the Pelican – renamed the Golden Hind – sail between the South American mainland and Tierra del Fuego to reach the Pacific.
- September 1579 — Palau: Drake follows the Spanish Manila galleon route across the Pacific to Micronesia.
- June 1579 — Nova Albion: Having sailed up the west coast of South America and New Spain (Mexico), Drake lands in North America in a region he names Nova Albion (New England).
- September 1580 — Plymouth: Drake returns home in the Golden Hind, completing the first circumnavigation by an English vessel. He’s knighted the following year.
- 1 January 1586 — Hispaniola: Drake’s fleet takes Santo Domingo and, later, Cartagena (now in Colombia).
- 27 January 1596 — Porto Bello, Panama: Drake dies of dysentery, and is buried in a lead-lined coffin at sea.
Despite their initial success here, though, the English left with little treasure, and Drake was wounded.
After that failure, Raunse went his own way and Drake decided to intercept the Spanish route along which treasure was transported overland between Panama City on the Pacific coast and Nombre de Dios on the Caribbean. So in April 1573, Drake and a French pirate, Guillaume Le Testu, together with cimarron allies, ambushed a mule train and seized some 80,000 pesos in gold, burying the silver they could not carry. Drake sailed home to England with considerable booty, and his reputation as a successful (and violent) commander was established.
English accounts of the 1572–73 voyage stressed the point that Drake treated the Spaniards civilly. He was also said to have restrained the violence of his cimarron allies, on one occasion reportedly ordering them to “never hurt any woman, nor man that had not weapon in his hand”.
On the other hand, Spanish complaints to Elizabeth listed various crimes committed by Drake and his compatriots, and stated that he had “proclaimed war on behalf of the Queen of England”. They noted his harshness – for example, when he allegedly threw Spanish pilot Francisco Ravano into the sea because he refused to guide the English into other ports.
One Spanish source reported that Drake “has committed many other robberies, murders and injuries, concerted with the Cimarrones negroes, and with a French ship”. The Spanish king demanded that Elizabeth should punish pirates such as Drake, and should forbid her subjects from sailing to the Caribbean. The queen, however, took no action against Drake. Instead he was celebrated for his actions.
English casualties
Not every English voyage to the Caribbean returned home safely, of course. The brutal nature of raiding in the region is reflected in Spanish treatment of captured English seamen. John Noble, along with 28 of his men, was taken while raiding near Nombre de Dios in 1574. The Spanish executed Noble and all of his men, sparing only two boys who were condemned to work as galley slaves.
John Oxenham, who had previously served with Drake, sailed from Plymouth to the coast of Panama in 1576, with a crew of 57 men. Initially, they enjoyed great success, plundering the Pearl Islands, but the Spanish sent out a strong force to hunt down Oxenham’s ship. Much of the loot was recovered by the Spanish, and most of Oxenham’s men were killed or captured; Oxenham himself was executed in Lima in 1580.
In his deposition to his Spanish captors, he stated that he had no permission from the queen for his actions, but that anyone who wanted to sail on such a voyage could “depart out of England without there being required more licence than their will to go”.
Francis Drake’s pirate life
Having gained plenty of experience from his earlier adventures, by 1577 Drake was ready for a bigger challenge: to raid Spanish settlements on the Pacific coast of South America. Relations between England and Spain had continued to deteriorate, and Queen Elizabeth and leading courtiers willingly backed the expedition.
On the voyage, Drake told a Spanish captive that “he carried a letter from the Queen of England to plunder on her account, and that whatever he got more was for her”. He also blamed King Philip II for denying English merchants permission to trade in his territories, noting that “if the King of Spain would not give them leave to trade, paying him his dues, they would come and carry away the silver”.
Before the expedition left Plymouth, to avoid suspicion it was publicly declared that it intended to sail to Alexandria in Egypt to trade. Instead, the fleet – led by Drake aboard the Pelican (later renamed the Golden Hind) – sailed south to the Cape Verde islands and Argentina, then passed through the Strait of Magellan into the Pacific.
Now heading north along the west coast of South America, the English vessels attacked Spanish settlements and shipping; at Valparaíso in Chile, Drake took a vessel carrying 200,000 pesos in gold.
In March 1579, Drake’s crew seized the Nuestra Señora de la Concepción – nicknamed the Cacafuego (‘Shitfire’) – with a cargo of 362,000 pesos in gold and silver, the richest prize seized on the voyage.
Drake also landed on the coast of North America, possibly near San Francisco or in Baja California, claiming the region for Elizabeth and naming it Nova Albion (New England).
Long way home
Importantly, he also captured two Spanish pilots and charts for the sea route taken by the Spanish Manila galleons between the Philippines and New Spain. Instead of running the gauntlet of Spanish forces that would face the expedition if it retraced its route home around South America, Drake was able to sail across the Pacific.
After facing many dangers, including running aground on a reef, the Golden Hind arrived back in Plymouth in September 1580.
Drake’s voyage around the globe – the first by an Englishman, in only the second vessel to complete such a journey (the first being the Victoria from Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition in 1522) – was a significant feat of navigation. It showcased Drake’s skill as a sailor and captain, as well as his ruthless nature.
From the outset, Drake regarded the expedition as one of reprisal; Elizabeth reportedly said to him that she wanted to be “revenged on the King of Spain, for divers injuries that I have received”
Drake’s hard-nosed attitude extended to the men under his command. He suppressed a suspected mutiny by trying and executing Thomas Doughty, one of the gentlemen officers in the fleet, for treason in July 1578.
Drake also fell out with Francis Fletcher, his ship’s chaplain, and as punishment ordered him to be “excommunicated” – to live with the ordinary sailors and to wear an inscription around his neck that called him “the falsest knave that liveth”.
English accounts of the circumnavigation claimed that the Spaniards Drake encountered received fair treatment. Some Spanish prisoners also reported that he gave them gifts and entertained them with displays of his power and wealth. One described the style in which Drake lived aboard his ship, with fine clothes and food, and how he “was held in great reverence by his people, that he had a guard, and that when he ate, trumpets and clarions were sounded”.
Such accounts sound suspiciously like propaganda. Drake certainly used violence against the Spanish and Portuguese ships he encountered in his search for plunder. One statement by a Spanish sailor described how “the captain, Francis, had taken and burned a ship at Arica, and that at Callao de Lima he had boarded Miguel Angel’s vessel and others, looking for plunder, and had found none, and had cut the vessels’ cables; and that about Callao he had plundered the ship of Patagalana and slain the crew”.
Drake also warned a Spanish viceroy that he would slaughter Spaniards in retaliation if they killed any English prisoners they held.
Casual brutality was a feature of the expedition. Drake is described as taking a “negro wench called Maria” from a captured ship, a woman who “was afterward gotten with child between the captaine and his men pirats”. She and two male slaves were later callously abandoned on an island.
On Drake’s return to England, the Spanish government demanded that he should be punished, and restitution made of the goods he seized. He wasn’t, and it wasn’t. No accurate record exists for the vast treasure Drake brought home. In order to hamper Spanish attempts to reclaim goods seized, he and the queen decided not to make an official inventory. But it’s certain that the original investors and the queen profited handsomely from their investment.
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Rich rewards
Drake reaped considerable rewards from the circumnavigation. He took at least £10,000 for himself, and purchased Buckland Abbey in Devon. In April 1581, when the queen visited the Golden Hind, Drake received a knighthood for his services. (Though many depictions of this event show Elizabeth knighting him with a sword, in reality the queen requested that the French ambassador did it.)
Plymouth honoured Drake by appointing him as mayor in September 1581; he also served as an MP. The Spanish continued to view him as a threat and, in May 1582, Philip II reportedly offered 20,000 ducats for his head.
Together, Drake’s circumnavigation and his earlier exploits in the Caribbean enhanced his reputation as a skilled officer, and were key factors in his advancement as open war broke out with Spain in 1585. He played a key role in the destruction of the Spanish ships at Cádiz in 1587, and in the defeat of the Armada in 1588.
Drake and Hawkins both died on a 1595–96 raid to the West Indies, the former perishing from dysentery on 27 January 1596 in Porto Bello (now Portobelo), Panama.
He is best remembered today as a naval hero and navigator, respected for the circumnavigation and Armada campaign. Yet his early career reveals how, underpinning those achievements, lay a violent ruthlessness – a drive to win at all costs.
Elaine Murphy is professor of maritime history at the University of Plymouth
This article was first published in the November 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine
]]>How Ghosts makes history funny – without getting it wronghttps://www.historyextra.com/membership/how-ghosts-makes-history-funny-without-getting-it-wrong/2026-10-23T11:55:17.000ZHow do you make history hilarious without mangling the facts? As Ghosts: The Possession of Button House arrives on the big screen, co-creator, writer and actor Laurence Rickard (AKA Robin and Sir Humphrey Bone) reveals how the team brought the much-loved sitcom characters back to life for the feature film.
Talking to Elinor Evans, he shares the team’s approach to historical accuracy, discusses why our understanding of the past is always changing, and explains how Ghosts has become an unexpected source of comfort for many.
]]>Henry VIII’s mistresses: who else did the Tudor king sleep with?https://www.historyextra.com/period/tudor/henry-viiis-mistresses-who-else-did-the-tudor-king-sleep-with/2026-10-23T10:26:00.000ZPopular history is so well versed in the six wives of Henry VIII that they require little introduction. From the colourful bodice-ripper series The Tudors (2007–10) to the feminist retelling in Six (2017–present), we are reminded of the old mantra we learned at school: divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.
We might also be forgiven for thinking that the king was so busy keeping up with the women to whom he was legally united that he had little time for any others. However, Henry VIII, with his “angelic” face, athletic build and red-gold hair, had an eye for the ladies, and in his early years, particularly, few were able to resist him.
Paradoxically, we can learn most about Henry’s mistresses through his wives. Anne Boleyn’s refusal to sleep with the king in the late 1520s was all the more successful because until this point he was accustomed to other women saying yes. Two of them are known to us: Elizabeth Blount and Anne’s own sister, Mary, who were Henry’s lovers in the late 1510s and early 1520s after he started to question his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.
Who was Bessie Blount?
Elizabeth, or ‘Bessie’, is the first woman who is known, with any certainty, to have been Henry’s mistress. She was born at Kinlet in Shropshire in around 1500, making her just a teenager when she arrived at Henry’s court. Her family home fell under the jurisdiction of Catherine of Aragon’s first husband, Arthur, so it's possible that the young Catherine saw Bessie as a baby during her residence at Ludlow Castle in 1501–02. In fact, it is quite likely that Bessie’s parents capitalised on this early connection to place their daughter in the queen’s household.
Two court dances suggest the duration of Bessie’s tenure. Bessie is recorded as being one of eight in a masque performed to celebrate new year 1515, partnered by Henry himself. Then, in October 1518 she was paired with courtier Francis Bryan during a masque performed at Durham House in London. It was around this time that she fell pregnant with Henry’s son.
The pregnant Bessie disappeared from court, taken in secret by Henry’s leading minister, Thomas Wolsey, into the safety of the Essex countryside. There, at the Augustinian priory of St Laurence at Blackmore, also known as ‘Jericho’, Bessie gave birth to Henry Fitzroy, the king’s only acknowledged illegitimate child.
Henry stayed at two of his nearby properties that summer, Havering-atte-Bower in August and Beaulieu in September, which would have allowed him to visit his newborn son, had he been minded to do so. What Catherine thought of the arrangement, or whether she was then aware of the situation, is not recorded. Wolsey stood in as godfather and the boy would later be given such significant titles as the Duke of Somerset and Richmond.
A marriage was arranged for Bessie to Gilbert Tailboys in 1522 (although some sources suggest 1519) and she retired from court for a time, bearing at least two more children (some sources suggest up to four) in the early 1520s. The uncertainty of the children’s birth dates has led to speculation that they were fathered by Henry, although by this time we know he had moved on to Mary Boleyn. Bessie remarried in the 1530s following Tailboys’ death and lived long enough to outlive Henry Fitzroy (who died in 1536), serving briefly as a lady-in-waiting to Anne of Cleves shortly before her own death in around 1540.
The other Boleyn sister
Another masque marks the entry of the Boleyn sisters to the Tudor scene. In March 1522, Mary Boleyn took the part of Kindness and Anne that of Perseverance in the Chateau Vert pageant at York Place. Henry was among the eight men led by the figure of ‘Ardent Desire’ to lay siege to the castle to rescue the women.
Anne had recently returned from the French court, which Mary had left several years before – rumours still persisted that Mary had been intimate with Francis I. In February 1520 Henry had attended Mary’s wedding to his gentleman of the privy chamber, William Carey, or at least sent a gift in addition to his offering of 8s 6d. The exact moment Mary became Henry’s mistress is unclear, but it is interesting that her marriage coincided with substantial gifts from Henry to her father and husband.
Much of Mary’s personality and education eludes us, as do the details and duration of her affair with Henry. Both she and Anne were already known to Henry as the daughters of Sir Thomas Boleyn who, along with Wolsey, had masterminded the magnificent Anglo-French meeting at the Field of Cloth of Gold. Yet it was Mary who caught Henry’s eye first and her two children, Catherine and Henry, born in 1524 and 1526 respectively, have sometimes been attributed to the king. As Mary was married, though, the children were legally considered to be those of her husband, who always treated them as such.
By the time of Henry Carey’s birth, though, the king’s attention had wandered to the enchanting, dark-eyed Anne Boleyn. We only know about his prior relationship with Mary because he required a dispensation to marry her sister, and had to admit to the affair. When questioned about his relations with the Boleyn girls and their mother, Henry replied, tellingly, “never with the mother”.
After Carey’s death from the sweating sickness, Mary remarried for love, returning briefly to court during her sister’s reign and admitting her secret. Mary was banished for her indiscretion and lived out her days in the Essex countryside.
Henry’s relations with Bessie and Mary are known to us almost by accident. If Henry Fitzroy had not lived, or had Henry not been forced to declare his past relationship with Mary, he might today be lauded by historians for his faithfulness to Catherine of Aragon.
These accidental survivals raise the question of what other secrets have remained concealed in Henry’s private life. Glimmers of possible affairs can be read into his associations with other women at his court. In 1534, during the king’s marriage to Anne Boleyn, the imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys wrote that Henry had “renewed and increased the love which he formerly bore to another very handsome young lady of his court” and that Anne attempted to “dismiss the damsel from her service”.
Referred to as the ‘imperial lady’, the identity of this woman cannot be verified, but her presence seems to have put a strain upon Henry’s marriage, occasioning harsh words between husband and wife. ‘Imperial’ may not have referred to the woman’s origins but instead highlighted her sympathies to the cause of Rome and Henry’s rejected daughter, Mary.
Also from this era date the rumours of Henry’s involvement with Anne Boleyn’s cousin, Margaret (or ‘Madge’) Shelton, who may be the same person as Mary Shelton, who until recently was assumed to be Anne’s sister. Chapuys’ letters from February 1535 make reference to a Mistress Shelton, and any affair she had with Henry would date to that year. Early in 1536 Madge was engaged to the ill-fated Henry Norris, who lost his head along with Anne Boleyn that May. Mistress Shelton was suggested as a potential wife for the widowed king two years later, but she married another man in 1546 and lived well into the reign of Elizabeth I.
Who were the other rumoured mistresses?
Most of the other reputed mistresses who may have shared Henry’s bed date from the earlier part of his reign. During Catherine of Aragon’s first pregnancy, in 1509, Henry was embroiled with Anne Hastings, sister of the Duke of Buckingham and a newly married member of Catherine’s household. Henry’s close friend William Compton appears to have acted as a go-between, although Anne later went on to have an affair with Compton himself. Henry sent her away from court in retaliation.
There was also a ‘Madame the Bastard’ who kept Henry dancing into the small hours of the morning in 1513 at the court of Margaret of Savoy, and Étiennette de la Baume, whose plaintive letter to Henry asking for assistance reminded him of the promise he had made her when leaving France that year, and that he had called her his ‘page’.
There was the mysterious Jane Popincourt, who was refused entry to France by Louis XII, with the comment that she should be burned, plus a host of other ladies who received gifts from Henry at some point, or danced with him in a masque. Their connections with Henry are only fleeting and suggested, yet they might hint at secrets that the king had hidden more successfully than those of Bessie and Mary.
Given Henry’s desire for an heir, it is unsurprising that various stories survive that connect him with illegitimate paternity. The timing of these is interesting, with three in particular dating from the period when the king was wooing Anne Boleyn and, apparently, refraining from sex. If Henry did not sleep with Anne until 1532, Tudor medicine would have advised him not to remain completely celibate, as this would have been thought to imperil his health. Accordingly, Henry may have sought solace elsewhere.
Mary Berkeley had been married in 1526 to her uncle’s ward, Thomas Perrot, settling in Pembrokeshire. Perrot had been knighted by Henry that year and was a great hunter; it is thought that Mary was part of Catherine’s household, placing the pair at court during these years. Mary’s eldest son, John, was born in November 1528 and reputedly bore a great resemblance to the king. As a young man John was in the king’s favour – Henry once intervened to prevent him from being punished after he was drawn into a brawl. Later involved with piracy, debt, deception and scandal, John’s reputed parentage may have been a convenient way to escape retribution.
In the same way, another man claimed to be Henry’s son, with perhaps the same intentions. Thomas Stukeley was employed as a standard bearer in 1547, in his late teens. The son of Jane Pollard, who was married in around 1520 to Sir Hugh Stukeley, Thomas is thought to have been conceived when Henry stayed at their Devon home of Affeton Castle. Thomas was something of a romantic figure, and poems and plays written about him after his death (for example, George Peele’s 1590s work The Battle of Alcazar) served to inflame such rumours.
Finally, the child arguably most likely to be related to Henry is an Ethelreda, or Audrey, Malte. If Henry had sought sexual satisfaction from someone other than Anne Boleyn, he is more likely to have turned to a woman of the lower classes, who were considered to be more ‘earthy’ and would not complicate lines of dynastic inheritance. Audrey’s mother was a Joan or Joanna Dingley, employed as a royal laundress, and the girl was raised by one of the cutters in the king’s wardrobe [who cut clothing patterns out of cloth]. John Malte “and Awdrye his base daughter” received a grant of £1,312 from the king while he lay on his deathbed, a huge sum for mere servants. Nothing more is known of Joanna or her daughter.
What this exploration of Henry’s love life makes tantalisingly clear is the fragile nature of the surviving sources. Henry’s desire for secrecy, and his ability to achieve it, are coupled with the problematic nature of rumour and second-hand accounts that date from this period. It may be that Chapuys exaggerated, or that Perrot made false claims; perhaps, in the case of Jane Popincourt, Louis XII was mistaken; or Anne Hastings’ sister was being over-protective.
What we know for certain is that our scant knowledge of Henry’s affairs with Bessie and Mary reached us accidentally and indirectly. Far from being a prude, Henry was a very private man and took measures to cover his tracks. When it comes to the question of who shared the king’s bed, it is likely that we will never know the full truth.
Amy Licence is an author and historian. Her latest book is Philip II: The King, the Man, the Marriages (The History Press, 2026)
A version of this article was first published by HistoryExtra in February 2016
]]>Pompeii wasn’t destroyed when you think it washttps://www.historyextra.com/membership/pompeii-wasnt-destroyed-when-you-think-it-was-video/2026-10-23T09:54:32.000ZHow do pomegranates help to unlock a 2,000-year-old mystery? Here's how they illuminate whether we've got one of the most basic facts about the destruction of Pompeii wrong.
For centuries, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that buried Pompeii has most regularly been dated to 24 August AD 79. But a growing collection of archaeological clues – from mysterious graffiti and Roman coins to woollen clothing, grapes and even pomegranates – suggests the disaster may actually have struck months later.
So when did Vesuvius really erupt? *HistoryExtra'*s Kev Lochun, with expertise from Dr Jess Venner, investigates the evidence behind one of ancient Rome’s most enduring mysteries – and asks whether a 2,000-year-old assumption needs to be rewritten.
You can watch Kev's full podcast series, four episodes on the mysteries of Pompeii with Dr Jess Venner.
View Green Video on the source website]]>The Vikings had a terrifying myth about the end of the world. Was it inspired by a real deadly disaster?https://www.historyextra.com/period/viking/fimbulwinter-inspired-by-real-disaster/2026-10-23T09:16:17.000ZThe legend goes something like this: before the gods met their enemies in their final battle, an unprecedented winter would take hold. A thick blizzard would come down from every direction, blocking out the weakening sun. Three successive winters would pass, with no summer between them.
This is the story of Fimbulwinter, the “mighty winter” of Norse mythology: the prelude to the destruction of the world at Ragnarök. It’s a story preserved in the Prose Edda and Poetic Edda; one part of a broader suite of legendary tales from these two sources of Norse mythology.
But what if Fimbulwinter wasn’t just a story, but rather, a memory?
“We know beyond any doubt now there were a series of really drastic volcanic eruptions in the mid-500s, with enormous effects on Scandinavia, that really impacted the population” says Professor Neil Price, one of the foremost world experts on the Viking Age.
Scientific evidence confirms the eruptions, but establishing what they did to Scandinavian communities is harder, and tracing their effects into stories told centuries later is harder still. Price nevertheless suspects that accounts of the disaster survived through oral storytelling, eventually becoming preserved for evermore as part of the grand Norse vision of the world’s end.
A fragmented empire
The volcanic eruptions Professor Price describes struck more than two centuries before the conventional (though contentious) beginning of the Viking Age in the late eighth century. In this early medieval period, Scandinavians then lived in farming societies connected by trade, warfare and travel to the rest of Europe, where Roman imperial power had broken down. Some historians refer to this period of turbulence the Age of Migrations. But Professor Price argues that the vast movement of peoples was only part of the upheaval.
“What we're really looking at is the disintegration of a superpower,” he says, speaking on an upcoming episode of the HistoryExtra podcast. “What happens when something like the Roman Empire begins to come apart in different ways, at different speeds, in different places, all through its territory, and what comes out of that?”
- Read more | This Viking ruler begged to be dismembered – but his rival had something far worse in mind
Imperial rule in western Europe fragmented during the fifth century. Scandinavia had never been a Roman province, but its inhabitants were connected to the empire’s economic and military networks. Disruption farther south affected the movement of goods, wealth and people. “There is a decline in the numbers of settlements, the numbers of cemeteries, basically a decline in human habitation in Scandinavia at this time,” Price explains.
Amid this destabilisation, Scandinavian mercenaries returning north, Price suggests, could use their military experience to strengthen their position at home, consolidating power around themselves as regional warlords. So, communities were already dealing with economic disruption, conflict and shifts in political authority when the eruptions began.
Changing climates
In AD 536, observers around the Mediterranean reported an unusually dim sun. The historian Procopius, writing about the wars of the eastern Roman emperor Justinian, described weak sunlight resembling an eclipse. Other accounts recorded disturbed seasons and problems with food supplies. These witnesses were far from Scandinavia, so their reports show how widely the effects were felt.
Researchers can compare those accounts with records preserved in ice and wood, thanks to archaeological science. Ice cores contain sulphate deposited after volcanic eruptions; unusually narrow tree rings can indicate poor growing conditions. Together, they help researchers connect eruptions with periods of abrupt cooling.
This evidence points to major eruptions in 536 and around 540, followed by another in 547. In a short window, the climate suffered repeated, violent disturbances. As a result, says Price, “you end up with something resembling a volcanic winter.”
For communities of early medieval Scandinavia, these eruptions would have been catastrophic. “The margins of subsistence [in this region], in terms of the regular climate, the scarcity of agricultural land and so on, they're so much narrower than they are in, say, the Mediterranean.”
Unlike in the warmer climates of the Mediterranean, Scandinavian farmers needed enough warmth to bring in their harvest before autumn. They also had to gather fodder to keep livestock alive through winter. A poor growing season threatened both sources of food. Repeated agricultural failures would make survival nearly impossible.
“Some scholars have estimated that the combined impact just of the volcanic eruptions is a 50 per cent mortality rate, not universally across Scandinavia, but in some places,” says Price. “In social terms, that's catastrophic.”
Even where communities survived, their inhabitants faced years of disruption. “An awful lot of lives were not only ended, but the lives of all the survivors were also disrupted.”
A legendary truth?
Price thinks those experiences of intense climate disruption may help explain the legend of Fimbulwinter. He sees similarities between the environmental crisis and the wider mythology of Ragnarök: darkness, cold, hunger and the breakdown of social order; a memory of a real environmental catastrophe, passed down across generations, possibly transformed over the course of centuries into this frosty myth of the precursor to the end of the world.
But Ragnarök, despite all the death and despair, isn’t a tale of total doom. The stories also describe a world renewed after the destruction, though scholars debate how Christian influence may have shaped the surviving accounts. For Price, the prospect of life continuing after catastrophe is another possible connection with the sixth-century experience.
- Read more | This Viking warlord had a magical banner that promised victory. But it had a secret curse
“Ragnarök is not in the past tense. It's still in the future. [And] of course, in the 6th century, the world didn't actually end,” says Price. “People did get past that.”
Research into connections between natural events and traditional stories is called geomythology. These connections can be suggestive and persuasive, but similarities alone don’t prove that a story descended from a particular event. Could a culture that has had no experience of a long, harsh winter create a myth that tells of a long, harsh winter, drawn from imagination rather than reality? Logically, yes. Retaining some scepticism is important.
That’s why Price says “it's an interesting idea, but it's also a bit risky and like a circular argument because you find what you're looking for in the end.”
“But personally, I think the idea that there is an echo of that disruption, that trauma, centuries later in the Norse myth of the end of the world, I think it's very strong.”
Neil Price was speaking to James Osborne on the HistoryExtra podcast.
]]>History crossword: 16 Octoberhttps://www.historyextra.com/membership/history-crossword-16-october/2026-10-23T07:31:30.000ZView Riddle on the source website]]>The History Round: our weekly trivia challengehttps://www.historyextra.com/period/general-history/weekly-history-quiz/2026-10-23T07:31:14.000ZTest your knowledge with our general knowledge weekly history quiz...
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Did you know we have other regular quizzes here at HistoryExtra? To test your historical knowledge even further, try our daily quizzes, or our weekly crossword.
]]>Can you solve our history crossword of the week?https://www.historyextra.com/period/general-history/crossword/2026-10-23T07:30:10.000ZView Riddle on the source website]]>