Renaissance English History Podcast: A Show About the Tudors

This episode features a live Tudorcon talk by Terry Jones, longtime docent at Agecroft Hall, exploring how jewelry functioned in Tudor and early Stuart England.

From pearls and signet rings to portrait jewels and the Order of the Garter, this talk looks at how men and women used jewelry to signal power, identity, loyalty, and belief. Recorded live, the episode includes audience questions and the informal rhythm of an in-person lecture.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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Poison was the rumor that never died in Tudor England. In this episode, we look at the deaths that Tudor contemporaries believed were “too convenient” to be natural: the Scottish commissioners who fell ill during Mary, Queen of Scots’ marriage negotiations in France, the sudden collapse of Ferdinando Stanley, and the suspicions surrounding Darnley and Amy Robsart. Whether these cases were illness, accident, or something darker, the fear of poison shaped Tudor politics in surprising ways.

Get your 2026 Tudor Planner here: https://tudorfair.com/products/2026-tudor-planner?_pos=1&_sid=f3a155f11&_ss=r

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Margaret Douglas, niece of Henry VIII, spent her entire life at the center of Tudor politics. In this episode I look at her childhood in the royal nursery, the scandal that sent her to the Tower, her influential marriage into the Lennox family, and the choices that helped place her grandson James VI on the English throne. A detailed look at the woman who linked the Tudor and Stuart dynasties.

Related episodes:

Margaret Douglas' secret marriage: https://youtu.be/wIFZYwqhc90

Arbella Stuart: https://youtu.be/YJKkrYLRgy8

Tracy Borman on the other contenders: https://youtu.be/Uod4VosDhno

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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