History Cafe
350 episodes - English - Latest episode: 12 days ago - ★★★★★ - 14 ratingsTrue history storytelling at the History Café. Join BBC Historian Jon Rosebank & HBO, BBC & C4 script and series editor Penelope Middelboe as we give history a new take. Drop in to the History Café weekly on Wednesdays to give old stories a refreshing new brew. 90+ ever-green stand-alone episodes and building...
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Episodes
#38 Newton the Alchemist - Ep 1 Was Newton the last of the Magicians?
April 17, 2024 07:30 - 36 minutes - 33.3 MBThe short answer to the question, ‘was Newton the last of the magicians?’ is, yes …. And also … no. Newton and alchemy turn out to be ‘a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.’ We toss a coin and take a heads-and-tails approach. In this podcast we argue that the alchemical experiments he undertook had nothing to do with magic. Newton’s alchemy now looks to historians like good science (although he would have called himself both a natural philosopher and a chymist). It was well conce...
#96 Extortioners and hatchet men - Ep 5 What Wars? What Roses?
April 10, 2024 06:05 - 29 minutes - 26.8 MBHenry VII invented the idea of the Wars of the Roses and the notion that he alone could end them. With a comparatively weak claim to the throne he found a novel way to deal with the nobility - through extortioners and hatchet men. He could only get away with this because the Black Death had fatally damaged the status of the nobility and caused the rise of the small independent farmer. Feudalism in England and Wales was over… or at least we thought it was, until now. Hosted on Acast. See aca...
#95 Murder in the Tower - Ep 4 What Wars? What Roses?
April 03, 2024 05:58 - 29 minutes - 27.2 MBOne common-girl-denies-king-until-he-marries-her, two kings, three royal murders in the Tower, and the Queen's mother accused of witchcraft. Just about standard for late 15th Century England and Wales. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#94 'Political gangsterdom' - Ep 3 What Wars? What Roses?
March 27, 2024 06:39 - 35 minutes - 32.3 MBBy the time Henry VI finally lost the last bit of England's French Empire in 1453 he could no longer go to war in France to occupy and enrich his nobility. This small, interrelated and bickering group, cooped up in England with an agricultural depression settling in, now resorted to what the historian Michael Postan long ago (in 1939) famously called ‘political gangsterdom.’ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#93 'A plague on both your houses' - Ep 2 What Wars? What Roses?
March 20, 2024 09:13 - 31 minutes - 28.7 MBWhy was the 15th century in England and Wales so violent? It certainly wasn’t York v Lancaster, white-rose v red-rose rivalry. Monarchs were useless but that’s not unique to the 15th century. So what was it that defined this period? It has everything to do with the plague… Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#92 'Welcome Traitor!' - Ep 1 What Wars? What Roses?
March 13, 2024 07:49 - 28 minutes - 25.7 MBWhy do we know so little about medieval history? About England and Wales in the fifteenth century? The Wars of the Roses (Lancaster v York) lasted 4 months not the traditional 85 years. Even the roses were (mostly) inventions. And was it even medieval? The execution of the King’s chief minister as a traitor in 1450, by sailors dissatisfied with an ineffective king, was shocking. It revealed that the common people believed the true crown was the community. You can’t get more modern than that. ...
Ep 1 The Secret History of the Suffragettes - #34 Getting the vote in 1918 - the secret strategy
March 08, 2024 10:07 - 35 minutes - 32.3 MBREPEAT FOR INTERNATIONAL WOMAN'S DAY - Mrs Pankhurst claims she won women the vote through ‘marvellous leadership.’ An all-male conference of MPs counters that it gifted women the vote. We reveal that neither is true. The door to women’s suffrage is finally opened in January 1917 through brilliant negotiations behind the scenes by Millicent Fawcett, the president of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage, her female colleagues and the enlightened MPs who work with her. [Please note on our lo...
Ep 2 The Secret History of the Suffragettes - #35 Most women didn’t want the vote
March 08, 2024 10:07 - 27 minutes - 25 MBREPEAT FOR INTERNATIONAL WOMAN'S DAY We go back to the great number of unsung women and men who made great strides towards women’s votes and female emancipation by 1900. Emmeline Pankhurst sets up her Women’s Social and Political Union in 1903 as a pressure group for votes for poor working-women in the cotton mills. By then a majority of MPs is already consistently in favour. But the public are uninterested and no government will therefore act. The question is whether the WSPU can find a fo...
Ep 3 The Secret History of the Suffragettes - #36 The Pankhursts didn’t want the poor to get the vote
March 08, 2024 10:06 - 30 minutes - 28 MBREPEAT FOR INTERNATIONAL WOMAN'S DAY The WSPU – the Pankhurst Suffragettes - begin in the Manchester Labour Party in the 1890s and learn their publicity-grabbing tactics from Labour. But these tactics turn out to have the worst possible effect – making women’s votes even less likely than before. They are so bad, in fact, it makes you wonder whether the Suffragette leadership had some other agenda. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Ep 4 The Secret History of the Suffragettes - #37 Hunger strikes and forced feeding
March 08, 2024 10:06 - 38 minutes - 35.1 MBREPEAT FOR INTERNATIONAL WOMAN'S DAY The militant strategy of the WSPU – the Pankhurst Suffragettes - is delivering them headlines. It gets them nowhere with the government but it makes enormous sums of advertising revenue from fancy retailers, and funds Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst’s society lifestyle. Rich London ladies in silks and satins pour in the money, while working-class activists take all the risks. WSPU officer Theresa Billington drafts a constitution to give everyone a say bu...
Ep 5 The Secret History of the Suffragettes - #41 The violence the Suffragettes wouldn’t admit to
March 08, 2024 10:06 - 37 minutes - 33.9 MBREPEAT FOR INTERNATIONAL WOMAN'S DAY From 1912 the WSPU – the Pankhurst Suffragettes – are out of control and dangerous. But that is not how they're remembered. Anyone who disagrees with the violence either leaves or is thrown out. Whatever they later claim about their ‘wonderful leadership’, it is their young, poor members who are inventing new and increasingly dangerous ways of intimidating the government. The WSPU leadership claims it never threatened life, only property, but this is mani...
Ep 6 The Secret History of the Suffragettes - #42 The violence backfired
March 08, 2024 10:06 - 37 minutes - 34.1 MBREPEAT FOR INTERNATIONAL WOMAN'S DAY November 1912 sees the first defeat for women’s votes since 1891. The government has been struggling with law and order after two years of mass strikes. That year even school children go on strike. The violence of the suffragettes is barely noticed and can definitely not be rewarded. For the first time in a generation, Parliament turns against women’s votes. What little sympathy there was for women’s suffrage among the wider public ebbs away. But Christabe...
Ep 7 The Secret History of the Suffragettes - #43 The Suffragettes did not win the vote
March 08, 2024 10:06 - 41 minutes - 38.2 MBREPEAT FOR INTERNATIONAL WOMAN'S DAY Suddenly, after 1913 votes for women looks inevitable. Not through the chaotic, dying campaign of the suffragettes. But through the political brilliance of Millicent Fawcett and the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. Their 1913 alliance with the Labour Party changes the whole political balance. Now Liberal Prime Minister HH Asquith’s blockheaded intransigence over women’s votes is costing his party dearly and letting the Tories in. At the 1915 e...
Ep 8 The Secret History of the Suffragettes - #60 After 1918 - the secrets are out - Ep 8 The Secret History of the Suffragettes
March 08, 2024 10:06 - 44 minutes - 41 MBREPEAT FOR INTERNATIONAL WOMAN'S DAY The reason we all believe Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst achieved women’s votes in Britain is because that’s the narrative created in the 20s and 30s by former suffragettes. The reality of what Emmeline and Christabel got up to post 1918 is shocking. Suffice it to say it involves racial purity and telling working women they can buy silk underwear, shapely shoes and fur hats, not by improving their working conditions but by giving into the feminine desir...
#91 Death Camp tattoos were IBM numbers - Ep 10 Trading with the Nazis
March 06, 2024 08:17 - 35 minutes - 32.4 MBDuring the war US and British bankers continued to send cash to Germany, while American companies in Germany were drawn down a slippery slope of collaboration. American bosses may have kept in touch with German subsidiaries via neutral hang-outs (like the fictional Rick’s Bar in the 1942 film Casablanca). Some made use of prisoners of war for slave labour. The five-figure tattoo on every death camp inmate began as an IBM-Dehomag punch card number. Nobody was going to be called to account for ...
#90 British appeasement, a sinister game? - Ep 9 Trading with the Nazis
February 27, 2024 22:46 - 31 minutes - 28.6 MBIn 1937, the new British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, believed he single-handedly could ensure world peace. He told the King, George VI, that he would do this by pursuing his objective of Germany and England being ‘the two pillars of European peace and buttresses against Communism.’ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#89 Britain's Nazi Allies - Ep 8 Trading with the Nazis
February 21, 2024 08:18 - 30 minutes - 28.3 MBIn 1935 the Etonians in the British Cabinet and Foreign Office rejected all calls from the USSR to unite with France and Eastern Europe against the rise of the Third Reich. They were far too terrified of Communism. Instead, Britain agreed a treaty allowing the Germans to expand their navy. When supporters of the elected left-wing government in Spain faced annihilation by Franco’s fascists in 1936-7 the Tory Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, openly welcomed the carnage in Spain. It would, he d...
#88 'It haunts me' - Ep 7 Trading with the Nazis
February 14, 2024 09:37 - 27 minutes - 25.5 MBHorrified by the implications of aiding German rearmament, a few British and American companies made serious attempts to get out of Germany in the 1930s. Particularly after Kristallnacht, 10 November 1938, when Nazi thugs attacked Jewish businesses. But the British Establishment saw Hitler as ‘a man who could be relied upon’. The Bank of England argued as late as March 1939, four days after Hitler had marched into Prague, that the British couldn’t just pull out of Germany, without bringing do...
#87 Kill Nazism with kindness? - Ep 6 Trading with the Nazis
February 07, 2024 11:21 - 27 minutes - 25.4 MBA perfect storm created the conditions for the Nazi’s march to war. The naïve belief that you could kill Nazism with kindness (aka trade agreements from which bankers and businessmen personally hoped to profit) was held simultaneously by the US Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, the Governor of the Bank of England, Montagu Norman, and the second in command at the British Foreign Office, Orme Sargent. Their opponents in government argued that tough action was necessary to contain Germany ‘even ...
#86 'Hell-bent to supplant our democratic government' - Ep 5 Trading with the Nazis
February 01, 2024 09:38 - 26 minutes - 24.2 MBIn 1936 the US Ambassador in Berlin, William Dodd, wrote to President Roosevelt warning of a pro-Nazi clique of US industrialists ‘hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government.’ We look at the notorious Liberty League and the dinner in New York’s Astoria to celebrate the fall of Paris to the Nazis. We showcase the businessmen who believed they were above democracy and could achieve world peace (under fascism) through world trade. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/pr...
#85 Nazi sterilisation, the American way - Ep 4 Trading with the Nazis
January 24, 2024 09:40 - 30 minutes - 27.9 MBFor all the complaints about the difficulties of doing business in Hitler’s Germany, the Americans seemed strikingly settled there. Now we get to the nub of why, when Germany occupied Austria, Czechoslovakia and then part of Poland in 1938-39, its military rolled out in General Motors and Ford cars and trucks, and its planes were using General Motors and Ford parts. They were also burning American fuel. And using American research to justify forcibly sterilising those they considered mentally...
#84 Dollars and Dictatorship – Ep 3 Trading with the Nazis
January 17, 2024 09:43 - 24 minutes - 22.3 MBSTAND-ALONE. The Americans insisted on extracting every cent from war-torn Britain and France in the aftermath of World War I. They made them repay the money they had borrowed, at increasingly high interest rates, to buy American weapons to fight Germany. It led to economic depression. The 1929 Wall Street Crash was part of a global financial meltdown which led to economic nationalism – survival of the fittest, everyone for himself. And that was before Hjalmar Schacht Reichsminister for Econo...
#83 Enrich your enemy, impoverish your allies - Ep 2 Trading with the Enemy
January 10, 2024 07:52 - 31 minutes - 29.1 MBThe US had a paradoxical strategy to ensure repayment of its WW1 loans. It would make Germany economically prosperous to ensure Germany was in a position to pay reparations to France and Britain (as per the Treaty of Versailles). This would mean that impoverished Britain and France could keep repaying the interest on their wartime loans to the Americans. Economist Maynard Keynes, aware that Britain and France would never recover from endless interest repayments, proposed cancelling all war de...
#83 Enrich your enemy, impoverish your allies - Ep 2 Trading with the Nazis
January 10, 2024 07:52 - 31 minutes - 29.1 MBThe US had a paradoxical strategy to ensure repayment of its WW1 loans. It would make Germany economically prosperous to ensure Germany was in a position to pay reparations to France and Britain (as per the Treaty of Versailles). This would mean that impoverished Britain and France could keep repaying the interest on their wartime loans to the Americans.Economist Maynard Keynes, aware that Britain and France would never recover from endless interest repayments, proposed cancelling all war deb...
#82 'The whole world belongs to the Americans' - Ep 1 Trading With The Nazis
January 05, 2024 12:32 - 28 minutes - 25.7 MBCarl Siemens, chair of Siemens the German electronics business, complained in 1929, ‘the whole world belongs to the Americans.’ If you want to understand how it was that American businesses ended up investing so heavily in Germany in the 1920s and 30s – so heavily that eventually they enabled Hitler to arm the fascist Third Reich - then you have to start by going back to the First World War. It starts with asking why the Americans declared war on Germany on 6 April 1917 but mysteriously did ...
#82 'The whole world belongs to the Americans' - Ep 1 Trading With The Enemy
January 05, 2024 12:32 - 28 minutes - 25.7 MBCarl Siemens, chair of Siemens the German electronics business, complained in 1929, ‘the whole world belongs to the Americans.’ If you want to understand how it was that American businesses ended up investing so heavily in Germany in the 1920s and 30s – so heavily that eventually they enabled Hitler to arm the fascist Third Reich - then you have to start by going back to the First World War. It starts with asking why the Americans declared war on Germany on 6 April 1917 but mysteriously did ...
#33 Sex, Hollywood and Fashion
December 30, 2023 21:24 - 33 minutes - 30.8 MBWhy did fashion become so much more conservative in the 1930s? We look at the puritanical Hays Motion Picture Production Code that banned indecent passions, and at MGM’s Adrian Greenberg, the most powerful Hollywood designer of his day. The arrival of colour film stock and the invention of the close-up meant Adrian designed for the camera, experimenting with hats and calf-length dresses that flattered both the lead actresses and ‘Nancy’ in the plush seat. MGM’s Louis B Mayer, who’d started ou...
#79 Santa Claus and the Knickerbockers
December 20, 2023 11:16 - 29 minutes - 27.1 MBA whole lot of nonsense has been written about the invention of the modern Christmas. It was thought up by Washington Irving or Charles Dickens or Prince Albert. We just can’t resist attaching a famous name to things, especially if the name belongs to a writer or a royal. We deserve better than this. So here's our offering from the History Café Christmas Party! Have a good one. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#30 ‘A tall and desperate fellow’ - Ep 7 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot
December 13, 2023 13:12 - 33 minutes - 30.5 MBThe night before - 4 November 1605: Guy Fawkes, a Catholic with experience as a soldier fighting for the Spanish, is found with matches and fuse powder in a storeroom under the House of Lords. He’s ‘booted and spurred’, ready for a quick get-away. Or maybe not. The government account keeps changing. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#29 The king's fear - Ep 6 Blowing up the Gunpowder plot
December 06, 2023 11:26 - 32 minutes - 29.4 MBAs his father had done, King James I's Chief Minister, Robert Cecil ,built his entrapments around a germ of genuine plotting. We uncover a small Catholic rebellion in Warwickshire in response to the king’s tougher anti-Catholic laws. And we examine Cecil’s imaginative embellishment: a mystery letter delivered to a compromised Catholic peer on 26 October warning of ‘a terrible blow this Parliament.’ It was handed to the king to decipher. If anything was designed to terrify James I, whose fathe...
#28 ‘A formidable network of secret agents’ - Ep 5 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot
November 30, 2023 17:13 - 31 minutes - 29.2 MBWe dig deeper into the animosity between the King, James I of England and VI of Scotland and his Chief Minister, Robert Cecil, whom he bullied and called names. And we see the Gunpowder plot in the context of the previous plots hatched by the Cecils (father and son) against their enemies. All of which historians now agree were largely fabrications. Father was Elizabeth I's Chief Minister, like his son he had spies everywhere and openly boasted of his policy of entrapment. Hosted on Acast. S...
#27 'Hellish miners' - Ep 4 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot
November 21, 2023 17:42 - 33 minutes - 30.6 MBTo avoid any possible blame for the plot falling on himself or the king, Cecil procures confessions saying the seven gentlemen plotters began excavating a tunnel under the House of Lords long before the government stepped up its anti-Catholic legislation. They apparently lived on site, in an upstairs room, seven to a bed. They dug unnoticed, only in the day (or was it only in the night?) for almost a year, before spying a handy cellar next door for the gunpowder barrels. Yes. Of course. Hos...
#26 Why blow up Parliament anyway? - Ep 3 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot
November 18, 2023 19:00 - 30 minutes - 27.9 MBThe parliament of 1604 refuses to grant the king money. They’re still paying for the effects of the last plague. But this is Cecil’s job. What to do? On 5 November 1605 the assembled MPs and peers are calmly informed that there has been a devilish Catholic plot to blow the lot of them up. A plot that their king and Cecil have brilliantly foiled. Unsurprisingly, this time, they vote the king the money he so badly needs. Job done. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot - Ep 3 Taster
November 12, 2023 18:27 - 5 minutes - 4.64 MBBlowing up the Gunpowder Plot - Ep 3 Taster by Jon Rosebank, Penelope Middelboe Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot - Ep 2 Taster
November 12, 2023 18:23 - 2 minutes - 2.42 MBBlowing up the Gunpowder Plot - Ep 2 Taster by Jon Rosebank, Penelope Middelboe Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#25 ‘Here lieth the Toad’ - Ep 2 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot
November 12, 2023 18:21 - 34 minutes - 31.9 MBWe take a look at James I’s shadowy chief minister Robert Cecil who manages to implicate most of his Catholic enemies in the plot. Cecil was so desperate to improve King James’s dire view of him (his father had caused the execution of James’ mother, Mary Queen of Scots) he would stoop to anything. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#24 ‘There is no state trial so totally devoid of reality’ - Ep 1 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot
November 05, 2023 09:42 - 32 minutes - 29.7 MBBACK BY POPULAR DEMAND - FOR 5 NOVEMBER! We look at the story the government published as The King’s Book, more than 500 witness statements and other contemporary sources and conclude, like the Victorian antiquarian Jardine who wrote up the trial from the State Papers, there is no reliable corroborating evidence for the gunpowder story we’ve been told. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot - Ep 1 Taster
November 01, 2023 20:00 - 5 minutes - 5.43 MBBlowing up the Gunpowder Plot - Ep 1 Taster by Jon Rosebank, Penelope Middelboe Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#06 London fires were visible from France - ep 6 of Who really won the Battle of Britain?
November 01, 2023 19:57 - 23 minutes - 21.8 MBWho won the Battle of Britain? For good strategic reasons Churchill claimed victory. But the Germans, who saw the eight months of the Blitz as part of the same campaign, achieved much of what they intended. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Battle of Britain - London Fires Were Visible From France - Ep 6 Taster Final
November 01, 2023 19:54 - 1 minute - 1.27 MBBattle of Britain - London Fires Were Visible From France - Ep 6 Taster Final by Jon Rosebank, Penelope Middelboe Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#05 Forcing Britain 'to her knees' - ep 5 of Who really won the Battle of Britain?
October 28, 2023 10:06 - 25 minutes - 23 MBThe Battle of Britain was never as close as the popular story has it. The RAF was too well organised and supplied. But is that why the Luftwaffe switched to bombing London? Or was there another reason? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Battle of Britain - Taster Ep 5 - Forcing Britain To Her Knees
October 24, 2023 16:47 - 1 minute - 1.3 MBHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#04 More than a double bluff - ep 4 of Who really won the Battle of Britain?
October 24, 2023 16:44 - 31 minutes - 29.3 MBChurchill talks up the threat of invasion, even though it looks impossible. ‘I might as well send my men straight into a sausage machine,’ writes the German Chief of Staff. But invasion preparations still go on. Who is bluffing who? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#03 'Always carry pepper to throw in their eyes' - ep 3 of Who really won the Battle of Britain?
October 22, 2023 19:54 - 31 minutes - 29.1 MBBritain is gripped by fear of invasion. Government leaflet 'If the Invader Comes' calls for pepper and ‘a sharp knife to kill them if necessary.’ Churchill goes on BBC and says ‘we await undismayed by the impending assault. Perhaps it will come tonight.’ So why in private is Churchill saying he doubts the invasion would ever take place? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#02 A battle for air superiority? - Ep 2 of Who really won the Battle of Britain?
October 22, 2023 19:47 - 29 minutes - 27 MBWas the Battle of Britain a fight for Luftwaffe air superiority in order to enable an invasion? The Luftwaffe itself did not think so. It had another agenda altogether. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#01 Waterworld Flotilla - ep 1 of Who really won the Battle of Britain?
October 05, 2023 17:15 - 24 minutes - 22.7 MBThe Germans make extraordinary preparations for the immense task of invading Britain in 1940. Why bother when neither Hitler nor any senior German officer wanted to do it or thought it was possible? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#72 It was mainly the poor who burned - Ep 5 Bloody Mary Tudor?
September 28, 2023 21:01 - 42 minutes - 39.3 MBMost of those executed for their beliefs under Philip and Mary 1555-58 came from places with a long history of religious dissidence. It matches European evidence that many – perhaps most – of those burned at the stake were not Protestants, but ‘anabaptists’ or people with similar beliefs – usually poor - whom both Protestants and Catholics were persecuting. The government of Edward VI had already begun before Mary came to the throne. But why so many in England? We discover literature appearin...
#71 Most who were burned were not Protestants - Ep 4 Bloody Mary Tudor?
September 20, 2023 15:05 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBUntil six weeks before the child was due, everybody at court and indeed in Europe, believed Mary was pregnant. She suffered a rare disorder - pseudocyesis - maybe triggered by a tumour on her pituitary gland that would eventually kill her. The imminent birth of a Catholic heir to the Anglo-Spanish dynasty meant that the select council governing the kingdom really now had no alternative but to grasp the nettle of suppressing any potential causes of unrest – including any remaining shreds of di...
#70 More interested in pirates than heretics - Ep 3 Bloody Mary Tudor?
September 15, 2023 14:26 - 39 minutes - 36 MBWho ran the persecution of heretics in England 1555-58? England was a joint monarchy but historians traditionally accused bigoted Mary of running the clamp down herself - with her cousin, Reginald Pole the Archbishop of Canterbury. There’s no evidence it’s true and Pole was useless at running anything. But didn’t Mary intervene to make sure Thomas Cranmer was burned – Henry VIII’s archbishop? No, again. Cranmer was tried by the pope and Mary had no power to spare him. As for Mary’s Privy Coun...
#69 Who exactly was a heretic? - Ep 2 Bloody Mary Tudor?
September 08, 2023 18:10 - 38 minutes - 34.9 MBEngland in the mid-1550s was being governed by a joint monarchy: Philip and Mary and a select council of extremely able English politicians. Almost all of them had experience in government stretching back through the violently protestant regime of Edward VI. To all appearances they had for years been living as active protestants. And yet here they were in a government that was conducting a campaign against religious heresy that we have always understood to be a Catholic campaign to stamp out ...