By the 1580s, the English atrocities and the rebellion of James Fitzmaurice and the Earl of Desmond, Catholicism and its association with resistance ot English rule was clearly established. Events at Smerwick convinced the English that the foreign threat through Ireland w

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The later Tudors faced a choice in their policy towards Ireland - would they resign themselves to the old ways, ruling through the Old English with minimal control; or would they turn to outright conquest? In the 1560's Shane O'Neill demonstrated the weakness of Tudor power

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There are many myths about the Elizabethan Navy, the idea of a world-beating tool that created an international Empire. It wasn't quite, and it didn't, at all. None the less Elizabethan's reign and innovations did change England from naval also-ran to Premier league.

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Black Africans began to make their way in increasing numbers to England - firstly mainly via trading countries like Spain and Portugal, but increasingly direct. What sort of lives did they make in England?

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Elizabeth's reign famously saw England enter the search for new markets with which to trade and explore. In this episode, we focus on trade with West Africa, and John Hawkins' infamous voyages of the 1560s.

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A horribly brief introduction to the West African kingdoms with which the Portuguese started to trade and a smidge of their backstory, before the English began to arrive in the 16th century. 

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What started as a curate's egg of an episode, ends up with an introduction to a new player, Francis Walsingham, and the story of the St Bartholomew's Day massacre in Paris in 1572.

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Through the 1560s, the progress of the reformation gave both the Protestant Godly and Catholics much leeway and wriggle room. A series of events in the late 1560's and early 1570s would begin to end that. One of those was the Papal bull, Regnans in Excelsis.

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The saga of the life and times of Mary Queen of Scots continues, but in 1568 something stirs in the north of England...

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In Scotland Mary's grasp on her kingdom begins to wobble. In 1566, Elizabeth's parliament also gives her serious grief, drawing an increasingly waspish response.

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