The English People at War in the Age of Henry VIII

This lecture argues that engagement in war vitally shaped the relationship of Henry VIII's subjects with the king and with his immediate successors. Their idea of national history and their place in it, and their sense of Englishness, Welshness, or Englishness in Ireland.

This lecture asks what weapons people owned in Henry VIII's England and whether they knew how to use them, some of its evidence drawn from coroners' inquests into accidents with bows, guns and swords. Exhortations to manly valour egged soldiers on to fight, but as in most wars before penicillin, more died of disease than from enemy action.

This lecture examines war and the economy in Henry VIII's England: heavy taxation and disrupted trade threatened recession. But, arms traders, fortification builders, privateers and those who raided the Scots for their livestock, often with names familiar to followers of North-Eastern football - Robson, Milburn, Charlton - did well.

This lecture explores how military service related to the social power and self-image of lords and gentlemen in Henry VIII's England. While contemporaries complained that they were giving up the knightly ways of their forebears, many still valued their martial honour and found a satisfying place in the new structures of the lord lieutenancy or the increasingly permanent English army in Ireland.

This lecture uses the records of hundreds of parishes and boroughs to see how communities coped with the pressures of war in Henry VIII's England. This included buying and maintaining up-to-date weapons and armour, fortifying the coasts and developing new mechanisms of local government to organise their efforts.

This lecture introduces the series and asks how many people took part in war in Henry VIII's England and how far those not directly involved were aware of what was happening.