Renaissance English History Podcast: A Show About the Tudors

In 1602, Elizabeth I wrote a formal letter to the Emperor of China, hoping to open peaceful trade between their two realms. The letter was sent with an English explorer attempting to reach China via the Northwest Passage. He never made it. The minicast stayed in England for centuries, was once used to line a farm’s bran bin, and was not finally delivered to China until 1984. This episode tells the story of that extraordinary diplomatic misfire, and what it reveals about Elizabethan ambition, global trade, and how history sometimes survives by accident. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Yesterday we chatted about how crimes were solved. Today, we look at convictions. What happened after conviction in Tudor England? This minicast looks at how punishment worked through shame, visibility, and public order, from the stocks and church penance to execution and royal mercy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How did Tudor England solve crimes without police or forensic science? This episode explores how murder and suspicion were investigated through community testimony, coroners’ inquests, confession, and local justice, and why the world of Matthew Shardlake feels surprisingly accurate. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Christmas Character quiz is here: https://www.englandcast.com/christmas-character-quiz/ - I'd love to see what you got!And the ecard site is here: https://www.englandcast.com/tudor-tidings/How did the Tudors understand the human body, and why does their approach feel so strange to us today? In this episode, I explore how people in Tudor England thought about health, illness, emotion, and balance, and how the body was believed to be shaped by air, weather, and even feelings themselves. We’ll also look at where Tudor medicine overlaps with our own, and why their way of living in the body wasn’t as unscientific as it’s often assumed. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For more than three centuries, a restrained Tudor portrait was confidently labeled as Lady Jane Grey. But the woman in the painting is almost certainly not Jane at all.In this episode, we explore the evidence that the famous Wrest Park portrait actually depicts Mary Neville, Lady Dacre, a young widow navigating disgrace, poverty, and political survival after her husband’s execution. Through costume, symbolism, provenance, and later portraits, a very different story emerges.Grab your 2026 Tudor Planner here: https://tudorfair.com/products/2026-tudor-planner Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.