Renaissance English History Podcast: A Show About the Tudors

Latest Episodes:

What If Lady Jane Grey Had Refused the Crown? May 05, 2026

Show notes

Jane Grey wasn't just a pawn. She was a fierce Protestant intellectual who made a real choice when the crown landed at her feet in 1553. What if she'd said no? We explore what Mary's reign might have looked like without a Protestant figurehead to rally around, whether Wyatt's Rebellion would even have happened, and why the answer has less to do with Jane's courage than you might think.

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The Dairymaid: Tudor England's Most Underestimated Woman May 04, 2026

Show notes

Someone left a comment asking about Tudor dairymaids, and I went down a rabbit hole I did not expect. The dairymaid looks like a background character in Tudor history. She is absolutely not.

We're covering her daily work, the surprising economic independence the dairy gave women in a world designed to give them none, and why the phrase "as smooth as a milkmaid's skin" is actually encoding centuries of accumulated medical knowledge that eventually gave Edward Jenner the lead for the smallpox vaccine.

She woke up before dawn, milked the cows, made the cheese, sold the butter, saved her money, and changed the world in ways no one thought to write her name next to.

🔎 Join the free Anne Boleyn Scavenger Hunt at englandcast.com. 15 days, 15 clues, ending May 19 on the anniversary of her execution. https://www.englandcast.com/anneboleynscavenger/

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How Did Tudors Survive Without Coffee? (The Answer Is Weirder Than You Think) Apr 27, 2026

Show notes

You've probably heard that Tudor people never drank water, that ale was the default drink for everyone including children, because the water would kill you. It's in pretty much every Tudor history book from the last thirty years. And it turns out it's a lot more complicated than that.

In this episode we dig into where the "nobody drank water" story actually comes from, why the sources historians rely on have a serious bias problem, and what a remarkable piece of recent research from Trinity College Dublin found when they actually reconstructed Tudor beer from 16th century records. And then coffee arrives in England around 1650, and everything changes.

Link to the two-sleeps video is here:

https://youtu.be/x1Q4tYhLRvA

TudorFair.com for the mug!

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The Tudor Uber Driver Who Floated Tudor London Apr 25, 2026

Show notes

Before bridges, before coaches, before passable roads, if you needed to get anywhere in Tudor London you needed him. The Thames waterman was licensed, badged, opinionated, and completely indispensable.

In this episode we spend 24 hours on the river: shooting London Bridge, ferrying Shakespeare's audience to the South Bank, and watching the coaches arrive and take everything away.

Plus: John Taylor, the Water Poet, who was furious about all of it and wrote pamphlets to prove it.

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The Most Important Woman in Tudor England You've Never Heard Of Apr 22, 2026

Show notes

Before hospitals, painkillers, or germ theory, the Tudor midwife was the most powerful person in the room. Licensed by the Bishop, sworn to secrecy, she outranked duchesses, performed sacraments no other woman was allowed to touch, and knew every secret in the neighborhood.

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What If Mary Queen of Scots Had Run? A Tudor Thought Experiment Apr 21, 2026

Show notes

Scotland in the 1560s was chaotic even by Tudor standards. In this thought experiment episode, we ask: what if Mary Queen of Scots had fled to France in 1567 instead of marrying Bothwell? We walk through the real history, then imagine how one different decision might have changed the Catholic plots against Elizabeth, the Spanish Armada, and the entire trajectory of the British monarchy. Plus: come join us at TudorCon, October 23-25 in Richmond, Virginia. tudorcon.englandcast.com.

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The Medieval Women Who Ran Businesses, Won Lawsuits, and Refused to Be Pushed Out Apr 20, 2026

Show notes

History says medieval women were powerless. Some of them knew exactly where the power was and went and got it.

In this episode I'm looking at four women who built careers, won lawsuits, and left things behind that still exist today, all inside a legal system that was stacked against them. Katherine Fenkyll ran one of the most active cloth businesses in Tudor London for thirty years, negotiated with guilds and cardinals, and took people to court over bad silk. Rose de Burford chased Edward II for an unpaid debt five times while simultaneously producing embroidered vestments for the Pope. Alice Chester took over her late husband's international shipping operation and donated the first crane to the Port of Bristol. And Joan Bradbury founded a school in Saffron Walden that is still open today.

None of them were rebels. They were just very good at finding the gaps.

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Why Tudor England Refused to Eat Tomatoes For 200 Years Apr 17, 2026

Show notes

The story of how a respected Elizabethan botanist looked at a tomato, applied perfectly logical medical reasoning, and concluded that English people shouldn't eat one, and why it took two hundred years for anyone to prove him wrong.

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What It Was Actually Like to Work in Henry VIII's Kitchen Apr 14, 2026

Show notes

Henry VIII's kitchens at Hampton Court occupied 55 rooms, employed 200 men, and burned six tons of wood every single day. This episode spends 24 hours inside that operation, from the scullions lighting fires before dawn to the leftover food going to the poor at the end of the day. We cover the kitchen hierarchy, the staggering food quantities, the spit boy and his very specific idea of a holiday, who ate what and where, and the theft problem that required a royal decree to address.

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In Tudor England, Your Dreams Were Everyone's Business Apr 10, 2026

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In Tudor England, a dream wasn't private. It was medical evidence, potential divine communication, and possibly a message from Satan. This video explores the three frameworks Tudor people used to understand their dreams, and the story of Elizabeth Barton, the Holy Maid of Kent, whose visions made her famous across England and then got her executed in 1534.

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