Gervase Rosser, ‘Going to the fraternity feast: Commensality and social relations in late medieval England’, JBS 33 (1994), 431. I studied for both my degrees at Magdalen College, Oxford, before lecturing for two years at Queen’s University in Belfast. I was a lecturer at King’s College London between 1995 and 2016 and I joined Lincoln College, Oxford, in October 2016. Then, if you can imagine Henry VIII succeeding him, he’s 17 years old. He’s tall, he’s handsome, he’s full of life. He wants to separate himself from his very overprotective and sort of careful, father. He wants a court which is perhaps a little bit more ostentatiously magnificent. He takes part in a lot of jousting, which was actually a bit irresponsible of him, because kings were not really supposed to risk their lives in this way. But he didn’t care, he was going to do it anyway. LUCY WOODING: It’s great that people are fascinated by the Tudors. It’s lovely that there are all these films and novels and so on. And, you know, anything that promotes enthusiasm for history, I’m totally behind. 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).

Tudor England? Think again - The Telegraph Think you know Tudor England? Think again - The Telegraph

In this episode Dr Lucy Wooding tells us more about these two fascinating characters. Mary and Elizabeth were the first women to rule England in their own right. United in complicated ways by their blood, it turned out that there would be an even greater division when it came to their faith.

Dr Lucy Wooding

WOODING: Well, we have to be a little bit careful there because of course we’re still talking about an age in which literacy is limited. But, I think it goes further down society than some people might assume.

Encountering the Word of God in Early Tudor England* | The Encountering the Word of God in Early Tudor England* | The

These counter-examples are not just distracting “whataboutism”. Wooding argues that our modern sense of “good” and “bad” monarchs is a lazy shorthand for the complex ways in which beliefs changed across 118 years of Tudor rule. It is easy for us to see the people of the past as helpless subjects to a procession of heroes or villains at the very top. What really made the difference for poor Perotine though, along with so many others, were the vicissitudes of public opinion across a Renaissance that was “raw, sharp-edged, invigorating and disputed”. 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? It’s interesting that, you know, with Anne Boleyn, he’s already had an affair with her sister. So yeah, no surprises there. So, I don’t think seeing him as some kind of sexual predator is really at all appropriate.

College teaching

So, yeah, there is a sort of concerted attempt by some of the upper echelons of society to deride Henry VII’s achievements. To deplore his reign and, you know, his style of kingship, which is deeply unfair. I mean, if you look at late 16 th-century culture more generally and the way that women are depicted in ballads, as well as in plays, as well as in poetry, you don’t really get the overriding impression that women were quiescent, submissive, and silent. Far from it. 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? William Harrison, The Description of England, ed. G. Edelen (Washington, DC, and London, 1994), 216. WOODING: It’s been a very, sort of, powerful part of the stories that the English—later the British—like to tell about their own history. That Protestantism wasn’t, until very recently, understood in British culture to be a superior form of Christianity. And anti-Catholic prejudice has survived into the 21st century. It still, you know, affects the role of the Monarch today. I think the assumption always was that the pre-Reformation Church must have been a disaster, because Protestantism must have naturally been the reaction against that. So, you know, for generations we took the view that the late medieval church was unpopular and oppressive and that it alienated its congregations by worshiping only in Latin.

Tudor England: A History: Wooding, Lucy: 9780300162721 Tudor England: A History: Wooding, Lucy: 9780300162721

If you’re a fan of Shakespeare Unlimited, please leave us a positive review on your podcast platform of choice.At the start of this period before the Reformation, you also have a way of looking at the world which sees sacrality. Which sees, you know, spiritual meaning and indeed spiritual power invested in material things.

Lucy Wooding (1558) | Travels Through Time Mary and Elizabeth: Lucy Wooding (1558) | Travels Through Time

This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer, with help from Leonor Fernandez. We had technical help from Tiffany Cassidy at Oxford, and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc. Other people would see him as a kind of reluctant—or not quite a reluctant Protestant—a Protestant who was a bit slow on the uptake, you know? That he had some of the ideas. He appreciated the importance of the Bible. He appreciated, you know, that the reform was needed, but that he just didn’t get very far with the doctrine. was a crucial year in the story of the House of Tudor. It marked the moment when the crown passed from Queen Mary to her formidable younger sister Elizabeth. It also was the year when the long history of Catholicism in England came to an end. To learn much more about all of this, Violet travelled to Oxford, to meet Dr Lucy Wooding, the author of Tudor England: A History. *** [ About our format ] *** Now that we look more at the underbelly of society. Now that we look at what it’s like to live through these upheavals, we are more alive to the reluctance, I think, that many people felt about this new, quite contentious way of looking at religion. And a religion which did require a level of literacy and which deplored the kind of material sensory culture of pre-reformation religion, which, I think, made it hard to understand and assimilate for a lot of society. Now, we are looking at it from that perspective. We realize that the advance of Protestantism was a lot slower and more halting, and more reluctant than we ever thought. Become a Teacher Member Get full access to the latest resources and ongoing professional developmentBOGAEV: Well, we’ve barely scratched the surface, but how could we? It’s been so interesting. Thank you so much for talking today. Shakespeare in performance From playhouse to film sets, explore four centuries of staging Shakespeare