Tudor England: A History

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Tudor England: A History

Tudor England: A History

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BOGAEV: Well, bringing this up some more to modern times, I’m, I’m thinking the Tudors had just been getting so much pop culture airtime lately. You have Hilary Mantel’s novels and the spinoffs on TV, and then on stage, and The Tudors on Showtime. So why do you think there’s this particular interest in the period right now? WOODING: I think it created the most extraordinary sort of mindset, and one that’s not just limited to, you know, the occasional genius playwright. In a world marred by rupture, conflict and argument, Dekker offers an image that may clearly be embellishment, but nonetheless resonates today: one of a people who “never sawe the face of any Prince but her selfe, never understoode what that strange out-landish word Change signified”.

BOGAEV: Hmm. Well, is this why you think, Henry VII didn’t get his own Shakespeare play? I mean, he does appear just at the end of Richard III as Richard’s successor after the Battle of Bosworth Field. But that’s it. Shakespeare didn’t take him on. Fasting was a regular part of Tudor life, both before and after the Reformation. In the pre-Reformation period, everyone abstained from meat and dairy on Wednesdays and Fridays, on the eve of important saints’ days, and throughout Advent and Lent. One of Protestantism’s attractions was that it dispensed with these requirements. However, the threat to the fishing trade was such that Friday fasting was hastily restored during Edward VI’s reign – although it remained unpopular, as the attempts to regulate butchers’ sales on fast days indicate. [35] In later Protestant culture, it became common to mark times of mourning, or special intercession, with fast days. Public fasts might be held in parish, town or by the nation at large in response to a particular crisis, whilst the godly might keep private fasts, accompanied by prayer and almsgiving, in pursuit of greater personal sanctity. [36] The response to the terrible famines of the 1590s, after three consecutive harvests had failed, was to declare public fasts on Wednesdays and Fridays – with the pious objective of showing penitence to a providential God for the sins that had merited such punishment, and with the practical objective of giving the food saved to the starving poor. The Council interpreted God’s displeasure as a response to the ‘excesse in dyett’ and ‘nedeles waste and ryotous consumpcion’ prevalent throughout the kingdom. [37] In more private fashion, many dedicated Protestants resumed the medieval practice of fasting the night before receiving communion. [38] Growing Vegetables to Feed the Poor One of the myths that you talk about is, you write that while Henry VIII and Elizabeth usually get all the attention. Henry VII was actually the most effective and impressive Tudor king. So why is he so overlooked? I do think one thing that set them apart though, is that even the wealthy in Tudor society quite often had a really powerful sense of social responsibility towards the poor. Something which I think, well, I think perhaps compares favorably with attitudes today.Thirsk, Food in Early Modern England, 13; Thomas Elyot, The Castell of Helth (1539), STC 7643, fos. 33v–34r. This bleeds into a revisionist account of Henry VIII that portrays our most notorious monarch not as a sex-crazed monster but as an “oddly bookish king”, who gathered the finest legal and theological minds of his age to try and resolve his “Great Matter”, the divorce of Catherine of Aragon (no less sharp but determined to remain married), in the pursuit of a male heir. It is the dust raised by these tome-flippers that irritates religious orthodoxies, leading in significant part to the Reformation (or indeed reformations – Wooding stresses that it was Henry VIII’s son, Foxe’s “godly imp” Edward VI, whose tenure saw the first Book of Common Prayer, the everyday impact of reform with a meaningfully Protestant character, and a great explosion of anti-papal rhetoric). The story of the Tudor monarchs is as astounding as it was unexpected, but it was not the only one unfolding between 1485 and 1603. In cities, towns, and villages, families and communities lived their lives through times of great upheaval. In Tudor England: A History, Lucy Wooding lets their voices speak, exploring not just how monarchs ruled but also how men and women thought, wrote, lived, and died. Obviously for the elites—who are tutored at home and who then might go to Oxford or Cambridge University, or, indeed, who very often traveled Europe and went to universities abroad—for them, there is an education of quite extraordinary range, which is why Elizabeth I is supposed to have spoken about seven languages. It’s really not uncommon for people at the very highest levels of society to be extraordinarily gifted in terms of language and literature. BOGAEV: Well, we’ve barely scratched the surface, but how could we? It’s been so interesting. Thank you so much for talking today.

WOODING: Yeah, in a way. I think that… I mean, one of the problems with Henry VII was that he was very efficient, and he was very efficient at extracting the money that was their due from the more elite members of society. There can never be a definitive history of Tudor England. The debates about religion, government and society still rage unabated as they have done for much of the past 500 years. I suppose, ignoring for a moment the Horrible Histories nature of the period, this is why the reigns of the Tudor monarchs continue to have such a hold over our imagination in a way that the Plantagenets and Stuarts do not. Scene Three: Late 1557, The Works of Sir Thomas More, sometime Lord Chauncellor, wrytten by him in the Englysh tonge are published by the printer William Rastell, who was also More’s nephew. In London, however, this was not quite the case. 1558, the year we analyse in this episode, was one of tension and surprise. Mary’s death in November was not anticipated. When it came it brought attention, scrutiny and power to Elizabeth. As Wooding explains, people had been watching the young princess carefully for a long time. Now, it seemed, she would be forced to show herself.Richard Gardiner, Profitable Instructions for the Manuring, Sowing and Planting of Kitchen Gardens, STC 11570.5 (1599), Sig. D2v. There is some mild revisionism. Henry VII is rescued from later Tudor propaganda and shown to be a half decent king. Mary I's reputation as the sadistic burner of Protestants is put into the context by the more than double the number killed under Elizabeth after the failed Northern uprising (although of course it is the burnings that did for Mary's reputation, not simply the number). WOODING: Because this is the era of Renaissance and because everyone in Europe is preoccupied with the past—with the classical past and with the biblical past. in the 16th century, their idea of progress is not forward looking like ours might be today. I mean, nowadays, you know, we look forward to—I don’t know—colonizing Mars or finding a cure for cancer. But what did this mean for the ordinary people of England? What was their experience of life like as the monarchs came and went? Wooding explains that many parishes life went on, with continuous readjustments, in a relatively uninterrupted manner.



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