Heather: Hey everybody! Welcome back to the Tudor Summit. I’m Heather and..
Jonathan: I’m Jonathan –I’m her husband.
Heather: And I hope you’re having a great time at the summit so far. I’m the next speaker and I’ve been interviewing all of this other people and I thought it would be fun for me to get interviewed. In the last Tudor summit I just did a big talk and I thought that this would be more fun. So I needed somebody to interview me. And it works because we actually have another show that we do together called Watching the Tudors where we watch the Tudors. And he knows nothing about Tudor history so he asked me questions.
Jonathan: It really works perfect. Because I’m about as interested as that TV show with the… keep me entertained. And just have her fill in the gaps. So were used to this question and answer routine.
Heather: Exactly. So today you’re gonna interview me about Tudor rebellions.
Jonathan: Sounds good.
Heather: If you don’t know me already I’m Heather Teysko from the Renaissance English History Podcast and Watching the Tudors. And that’s Jonathan. And I think we’re just gonna jump right in to the questions, aren’t we?
Jonathan: Let’s go I’m excited to learn about rebellions.
Heather: There you go ‘coz we’re rebellious people. We’re such rebels. You’ve got your questions I’ve got my answers.
Jonathan: Let’s do this.
Heather: Let’s do it.
Jonathan: Alright. So why were people rebelling in the Tudor period? What was going wrong?
Heather: Okay, what was going wrong?
Jonathan: Well I mean they gotta rebel against something.
Heather: So we have to remember that the Tudor period was a 120 years. And there were three main reasons for Tudor rebellions. Early on it was dynastic and even towards the end there were dynastic rebellions. But early on the dynastic rebellions were actually to force the Tudors off of their throne. To force Henry VII off of his throne. By the later period this dynastic rebellions weren’t to push Elizabeth off her throne, she was secure in that way but it was to affect succession to have her name an heir. So that was the first dynastic rebellions. Next there were religious rebellion like we’ve been seeing on the show right now. We’re in Season 2.
Jonathan: So we’re kind of in the middle of all the protestants and catholics.
Heather: Dissolutions are starting. Getting ready to have a dissolved monastery. So there were the rebellions associated with that. And then even you know leader when Edward VI became a King and he was highly protestant there were rebellions, but then under Mary there was you know, back-and-forth rebellions with religion and even the big rebellion that Elizabeth had to deal with, with the Northern Earls was largely rebellion with a.. trying to put a Catholic on the throne after her. So there was religion and then economic. This was a period especially in the 1540s, there was a lot of economic change. It was a movement from a very medieval society to a pre modern society and early modern. And you can’t have that without some change or some growth and some angst. And so especially in the 1540s there was some problem with the harvest, the currency wasn’t stabilize. There was a big problem with land enclosures, illegal land enclosures and things like that. So that was another source of rebellion was economic issues. So dynastic, religious, economic were the three.
Jonathan: So then who were this people rebelling. So I’m guessing like the people in the early dynastic rebellions were the people who were trying to get power. But like the economic rebellions and the religious rebellions, were this like monks that were taking up arms or normal people, nobility that were fighting against the King or normal people rebelling against nobility.
Heather: Yeah, yeah. Largely, well like you said it depends. With the dynastic ones it was usually related to the nobility dealing with that. But with the economic ones, with the Kett’s rebellion was the very famous one dealing with the land enclosures. And that was normal people who went and tried to tear down some illegal, what they said was illegal land enclosures. They actually got the landowner on their side and started the whole big rebellion against that. And with the Pilgrimage of Greece, –which was the one we’re gonna see coming up in the next season of the Tudors. That started of with people who were upset at their monasteries being torn down and being dissolved. And a lot of rumors, there was a lot of rumors at this time, especially in these places that were so far from London. There was suspicion of –cuz news didn’t travel that well. And so there was rumors that there was gonna be no more meat allowed. And you know all this kind of really random stuff.
Jonathan: So people were rebelling like sometimes against rumors?
Heather: Exactly. So there you go.
Jonathan: Interesting. Not much has changed in the world.
Heather: No. The more things change the more they stay the same.
Jonathan: Alright. So what were the early rebellions that Henry VII was dealing with? What were those about?
Heather: So the one thing it’s important for us to remember is that, I know you say this all the time, right. We definitively look back at 1485 and say that was the end of the Wars of the Roses right. You say that all the time.
Jonathan: Clearly, it’s obvious.
Heather: But we see that… but at the time period the Wars of the Roses had been going on for decades right. So this was just one more battle and potentially what could have been going on a for much longer period. So there were Yorkist who were disaffected to the Yorkist lost who were upset about that and who wanted to replace Henry VII, knock him off his throne and put somebody else on the throne. So the first one he had to deal with was Lambert Simnel who was.. he had to deal with a couple of pretenders. So Lambert Simnel he was a boy who was about the same age as The Princes in the Tower would have been. And they initially were gonna say he was one of the Princes in the Tower, those were the two boys who went missing. And then they were trying out to figure out what to call him and they eventually said that he was the Earl of Warwick who would have had a better claim to the throne than Henry Tudor did. Problem was the Earl of Warwick was in the Tower of London.
Henry could just bring him out and parade him through London and that’s what he did. Henry was lenient with the people involved with this, well with Lambert Simnel himself he actually made Lambert Simnel a spitboy in his kitchen which was you know nice he didn’t kill him. Then he did have some more rebellions that were more economic related. He wanted to make war in France and that upset the Yorkists because they’re like ‘Well that doesn’t affect us ‘coz were so far in the north, why should we have to pay more taxes for a war in France’ and so he had a rebellion with that.
And then same thing he wanted to deal with something going on with Scotland and wanted to raise taxes for that and people in Cornwall were upset about that ‘coz why should they have to pay for something going on in Scotland. So he had a couple of rebellions against that but then the one that was the most serious threat to him was Perkin Warbeck and that was another pretender.
And Perkin Warbeck was groomed, really trained to look like a Prince. And he claimed to be Richard, one of the missing Princes in the Tower. He had support from foreign governments who recognized him. He even made a good marriage in Scotland to an Irish or a Scottish noble woman. And so people like kind of recognize him. Now the people who recognize him were the people who were not friendly to the Tudor dynasty. So it was in their interest to say yes and kind of stir some stuff up. But he had the support and you know it was a question, is this really Richard? Could Richard really have escape from the tower? Maybe is he alive? And you know there’s still some people who say maybe it was him and there’s still question about that.
Now at first Henry VII tried to be lenient towards him, he actually brought him to court. He kind of put him under house arrest at court. Henry VII than a lot of ways was a really quite a peace loving kind of guy. He didn’t really want to hurt people per say. Then what happened was Perkin Warbeck tried to escape so then he went to the Tower and then there was this whole mess where he was trying to hatch an escape plan with the real Earl of Warwick who was the one that they tried to do the fake. That they were like trying to communicate and just launch and do an escape plan and anyway Perkin lost his head. So he was killed. So those were kind of the major ones that he had to deal with. And the one, the dynastic one with Perkin Warbeck was the biggest threat to him.
Jonathan: So that’s what Henry VII had to deal with?
Heather: Yes.
Jonathan: I see. And what is a spitboy?
Heather: He’s the person who turns the spit in the kitchen with the fire. So it wasn’t the nicest job.
Jonathan: Nah, it’s not the worst job.
Heather: Well in the winter it would be nice to be warm by the fire. In the summer it wouldn’t be so nice.
Jonathan: We have difference in opinion.
Heather: It beats the person who empties the privy chamber.
Jonathan: Yeah. I’ll take the spit.
Heather: Okay.
Jonathan: Shall we move on to Henry VIII? What kinds of rebellions did he have to deal with?
Heather: Henry VIII felt two major rebellions.
Jonathan: What types of rebellions were these?
Heather: Well one was religious and one was economic. He also I have to say, you could say he faced the potential of rebellion with some Yorkist who were still alive. So the Earl of Warwick was the nephew of Edward IV okay. Edward IV was the last Yorkist King. He had a sister Margaret Pole. Margaret Pole stayed alive, the Earl of Warwick fellow got killed. Margaret Pole stayed alive then she had children and those children started hatching some stuff. And one of them was living in exile, he was a strong Catholic. He was a Cardinal he went to Rome and started hatching some stuff. And Henry VIII took that as a reason to put this whole family to death. Just get done with this Yorkist, this leftover Yorkist.
This is 50 years after the battle of Bosworth but he still hanging on to it right. He’s not letting that go. And he actually killed Margaret Pole who is like 67 years old by this point. And it was a really gruesome thing, she actually like, they say she tried to runaway and like the executioner had to like chase her. Not very nice. But that was, you could have say that, that was rebellion but it never actually turned into a rebellion. The major rebellion he had to deal with was the first one the Amicable Grant and that was he wanted to raise taxes for war with France. It was in 1525. This would have been a really good time to invade France because the French king –I think we saw this in the Tudors– was actually held hostage in Spain by Charles.
Jonathan: By the Holy Roman Emperor.
Heather: Yeah, exactly. So it would have been a really good time if he wanted to invade France. To go do that he needed money to do that and he was gonna raise taxes. Well people rebel against this, they said they didn’t want to pay the taxes. And they actually were successful, he withdrew the request for the tax and he didn’t get to invade France and all of that went away. The next one that he had to deal with, the very famous one was the Pilgrimage of Greece. Now this turned into a really big, huge up to 40,000 people rebelling in the North, in Yorkshire. And it spread all throughout Northern England.
And this was again, this was the one that’s against the changes in religion, this is where you’re seeing people way up in the Yorkshire who were actually far from the power base in London and they’re really upset about this changes. That heir monasteries are being dissolved –and we talked in our show about how the monasteries, the school, and the hospitals, the hotel and all of this kind of stuff right. And they’re seeing that being dissolved and so… There were also rumors that the new liturgy under the protestants that were gonna come. And that’s one more there was a rumor that there was not gonna be any meat. And so there was a rebellion that started. Now Henry initially tried to buy some time and he tried to talk to the leaders. One of the leaders was Robert Aske and he actually invited him to come to court for the holidays. And he spent Christmas with him and then he sent him back on a promise of good behavior. And then it turns out there was another portion of the rebellion that started back up again and had nothing to do with Robert Aske. He wasn’t involved in it but somebody else started up. Henry took that as an excuse to just kill them all, hang them all in chains. It wasn’t pleasant at all. But you know this was, tens of thousands of people rebelling against him for that. So that was the other really big ones that he had to deal with.
Jonathan: I like it.
Heather: Do you?
Jonathan: Well I like the idea of people you know rebelling. I don’t know about killing them all with chains but you know. Let’s just stand up, when they’re taking all our monasteries. What are you doing? Let’s stand up.
Heather: Power to the people. I like it.
Jonathan: Alright. How about Edward? What kind of stuff did Edward have to deal with?
Heather: Well Edward also had two major rebellions. One was religious and one was economic in nature. The first was the Prayer Book Rebellion which happened in Cornwall. Now this is again a place that’s very far from the power base. So this was when the changes were coming between the Catholics and the protestants. So this was when Thomas Cranmer had introduced a new book of Common Prayer. And the people in Cornwall were not happy about this. They wanted to have their old liturgy back and they wanted to practice mass the way they had been for a thousand years. And so they had a pretty large rebellion. And also then he had Kett’s Rebellion. And Kett’s rebellion was this one with the land enclosures like I talk to you about. They actually captured, the rebels captured Norwich and it was again thousands and thousands of people that were rebelling against this. And it actually did wind up changing social policy. Poor laws were put in to effect to help the poor people who were being affected by this. And so that was another one that Edward had to deal with.
Jonathan: And is this the same Norwich that we know from..
Heather: Yeah.
Jonathan: Okay.
Heather: No, it’s the city of. Not Norfolk the Duke of. It’s Norwich the city of East Anglia. Okay so those were the two and Edward only reign for 6 years so you know, to be fair to have two rebellions in six years is a pretty good ratio.
Jonathan: Sounds good. How about Mary now?
Heather: So you know actually you could say that Mary’s reign started with a rebellion against her with Lady Jane Grey. Lady Jane Grey was the protestant that Edward –was a strong protestant — and Edward wanted to make sure that his catholic sister Mary did not inherit which had been Henry VIII will. And so he tried to name Lady Jane Grey as his successor. Well, the people supported Mary and so the people round up coming to Mary’s, to her support, to her side. But she had to fight, she had to gather troops. And Lady Jane Grey was queen for nine days. And Mary squashed this rebellion and became queen.
Jonathan: Squashed odd words.
Heather: Mary became queen.
Jonathan: Yes.
Heather: And then she had another rebellion with Wyatt’s Rebellion. Now this was because of her marriage, she wanted to marry Philip of Spain. There was a lot of worry about her having this foreign Spanish prince that she was gonna be married to. Would he become the King of England, you know there was a lot of worry about that. And so Wyatt led a rebellion, he made it to London with five thousand people. Mary gave a stirring speech at the Guildhall and she actually use the same kind of imagery that we think of Elizabeth as using, saying that she was married to her people, that she loved the people of England the way a mother would love their children, her child. And you know that, that was who she was married to and who she was committed to. And even if she married Philip it wasn’t gonna change anything. And she wound up putting Wyatt down and he lost his head then.
Jonathan: Who was this Wyatt guy?
Heather: Thomas Wyatt. That’s the son of the other Thomas Wyatt.
Jonathan: Ahh the poet guy.
Heather: Yeah.
Jonathan: Wow. It’s all such a small world.
Heather: Well it is. The population was a lot smaller then and at court specially was a lot smaller. So that’s what Mary had to deal with, again she reigned for what 5 years or so, so she was still working on a pretty good ratio of having a rebellion every couple of years.
Jonathan: So moving on from Mary, what did Elizabeth have to deal with?
Heather: Well Elizabeth didn’t have really any dynastic threats to her except for the ongoing question of her succession. Who was her heir gonna be. And so the major one that she had to deal with in 1569 was the Northern Earls who had this idea that they were going to have Mary Queen of Scots marry the Duke of Norfolk who was a different one by this point. And that they’re gonna have the Duke of Norfolk marry Mary Queen of Scots and they’re gonna have her be the heir and they wanted also England be Catholic again. And so the major rebellion that Elizabeth had to deal with was the Great Northern Earls and that they actually wanted to have the Duke of Norfolk marry Mary Queen of Scots and have her declare the heir and also have England become Catholic again. So they actually made it all the way to Durham Cathedral where they celebrated a Catholic mass, pretty big deal. But then as the government’s army came the rebels were all kind of dispersed and everything like that. So that was the main one that she had to deal with. She did have a rebellion planned in Oxfordshire in 1596 but it was a complete failure, it was like rebellion failed. Only four rebels showed up to fight. So you could imagine they would have been very angry at the rest of their crew.
Jonathan: Like, ‘Hey guys you left us hanging. Seriously you couldn’t have told us that like ..’
Heather: So four rebels turned up for that one.
Jonathan: I’m guessing it wasn’t a successful rebellion.
Heather: No, it was not. And then she also had to deal with the Earl of Essex who was a favorite of hers. He was upset at the lack of power that he had and he tried to intrigued the whole rebellion that last about 12 hours. Within 10 days he was convicted of treason. Within 2 weeks he was put to death.
Jonathan: Knowing nothing about that story at all, it’s never a good hand like the whole don’t bite the hand that feed you. She was like treated him well. Like come on dude. It’s a bad move.
Heather: Yeah it was. So those were the major rebellions that our Tudor monarchs had to deal with.
Jonathan: And just for me to recap they were either dynastic, which is like challenging who’s sitting on the throne or who is going to be at the throne later, economic or religious. So what other reasons are there? Like other stuff I’m sure.
Heather: Well, it’s just there.
Jonathan: Alright. So overall what did all of this rebellions, sort of like what kind of impact did they make on England or on at least the Tudor period?
Heather: We know it’s really interesting because we look at… Well to start with, rebellions could impact foreign policy for example so like when Henry wanted to invade France and he couldn’t. There went that. Or when Henry VII his father wanted to invade Scotland but there was a rebellion, ‘coz you have to move your troops around right. So if you wanted to invade Scotland but there’s this thing going on in Cornwall you’ll not gonna be able to do that. So rebellions could actually have an effect on the foreign policy so that was one thing. Also foreign policy with Spain which was at such a height at the beginning of the 16th century took such a nosedive after Wyatt and his whole fear of Mary marrying Philip. And it never really recovered from that.
Elizabeth stayed in an ongoing war with them for 20 years or something. So we have that as an outcome of rebellions was foreign policy was affected. Interestingly a rebellion made it possible for a woman to reign by herself without a consort even when she was married. And that what’s Wyatt’s Rebellion, because what Mary had to do was, she had to then say that she would not let Philip be King above her, that he would be her consort. So even though she’s married to him, the money at the time, the currency, the coins that were printed at that time had her ahead of him. And even when they got married she took the place of honor even though she was the bride or woman. So it meant that you could have a woman reigning on her own even when she’s married. Now that of course will make it really possible for Elizabeth to reign on her own. So that kind of came out of the rebellion against a marriage and against a woman.
Jonathan: It’s really interesting just.. kind of unwittingly like pushing along women’s rights, like just out of nationalistic sort of like fear or pride.
Heather: And then another thing of course was with the changes to the religion. So this Catholic rebellion in 1569 actually round up doing more to push protestant fever and protestantism forward than it would have like because suddenly there was this big fear of Catholics as being this fifth column in the country that was gonna rise up. And so there was a lot of fear of Catholics in the country and that became.. This is the era then where even being a Catholic is illegal, being a priest becomes illegal. And this is where you’ve got the priest holes and you know these secret Jesuit missionaries coming in and everything like that.
So that was another kind of side effect of this or result of this rebellion was that it push the protestant’s agenda along further and faster than it probably would have like to. And social policy with.. economic policy.. Before Kett’s rebellion there was actually vagrancy laws and if you were caught begging you could be sentenced to 2 years of slavery. After that within 5 years there actually Poor laws put into place where every district has to have a designated position that was the collector of the alms. And that alms collector had to keep track of all the licensed poor people. And there was this acceptance that the poor will gonna be taken care of. So the alms collector would report every month –there is a regular period — how many poor there were and how much money they needed. And then there would be tax on the people who could afford it.
Jonathan: So is this like the beginning of socialist programs?
Heather: I mean you could say that. This is the beginning of when people see that there are times where people want to work and can’t and they’re not just vagrants. And that the government or the people have a responsibility to look out for others.
Jonathan: To take care of each other.
Heather: You know but also that comes out of the church not doing it as much.
Jonathan: Yeah ‘coz that’s kind of what the churches would have done.
Heather: Right.
Jonathan: Okay. So yeah you take it out of the hands of religion.
Heather. So then government does it. And this was a period where you know before then it was illegal to be a vagrant and then it turned into this social programs to help the poor people. So I think the main thing is.. Oh! The other thing is strengthening the position of London with regards to, up until this point Yorkshire, Cornwall these places that were far from London kind of operated on their own and were like their own little places. With these rebellions more strength from London came there, there was more involvement. And it’s kind of like if you have an employee and you let them do their thing for a while and then they messed up and then you wind up like micromanaging them because of how they messed up. That’s what kind of happen with this is Cornwall and York were brought under much more centralized.
Jonathan: And also I feel like the central government kind of was learning about how much power they actually did have.
Heather: Yeah.
Jonathan: We can you know.. like we used to not be worried about stepping up to all this sort of distant places but now that we know we can control you we’re gonna do it.
Heather: Right. And also well.. And in another part of it is early on when all of this threat against Henry VII dynastically, sometimes he actually had to stall for time in Cornwall and he gathered his troops together, and even Henry VIII had to stall with Robert Aske and then Pilgrimage of Greece and he had to figure out what his move was gonna be. With Elizabeth there was none of that. Like there was any kind of hint of rebellion against her and she was on it, she didn’t have to stall, she didn’t have to think about it. So that was kind of something else that the monarchy became stronger during this period as well and stuff like that. So there you go.
Jonathan: So is there any other things in regards to rebellions that you’d like to bring up that we didn’t cover?
Heather: I just think it’s interesting that they were often successful. And I think you know sometimes you think why would anybody rebel against the King? Like you’re not gonna get there and yet sometimes they really were successful and this one with the Amicable Grant.
Jonathan: Well like the tax.
Heather: Yeah. And with changing the social policy. It was something that you would have changes that could come out of a rebellion.
Jonathan: You might lose your head but it probably gonna do, not probably but maybe actually do something.
Heather: Yep but it’s gonna be a nasty death.
Jonathan: So thank you. How can people learn more about you and all the amazing Tudor stuff that you do?
Heather: Well, there’s the Renaissance English History Podcast and Watching the Tudors both of which are on itunes. And all of the podcasters you can go to englandcast.com for more on that. I also do a daily Tudor minute which I send out which is today on Tudor history. It sends out every Monday thru Friday. And that’s that side of things. But I also have a shop which opened this year and I sell cool things like this shirt which is the Tudorholic shirt that goes into details about Tudorholics. And this mug that is with Elizabeth I and it says, ‘Fix the church, repel an invasion, stabilize the currency but first coffee’ that’s been popular. But also I have a subscription box service, so you know those things where you can pay for 39.99 a month including shipping and you got a monthly delivery of Tudor themed treats.
Jonathan: Like goodies.
Heather: That come to your door every month. So we just launched that, the first boxes are going out today and it’s called Treasures from Bess, it’s named after my history crush Bess of Hardwick. So you can go to treasuresfrombess.com to learn more about that and sign up. And I have the wonderful Tudor planner which is now going into its third year, and this is a weekly and monthly diary that looks like a beautiful old book and it’s filled with Tudor history, this week in Tudor history, everything like that. Was very popular this year. And then I have like journals like this is based on a French Book of Hours that was from the 15th century, that opened up into a shape of a heart and it features quotes from Henry VIII love letters to Anne Boleyn. And I also have things like this combat boots that have portraits of Elizabeth on them, super cool.
Jonathan: We have tights with the portraits of the six wives.
Heather: And also that purse back here. I have a purse that has that same pattern as a portraits of all of the six wives on it as well.
Jonathan: So you can find all sorts of cool Tudor themed stuff.
Heather: And all of fun things. And it’s all on tudorfair.com so people can go there to check that out.
Jonathan: It’s not on Englandcast?
Heather: No, tudorfair.com. Well, Englandcast.com has a link but yeah, tudorfair.com is the shop. So I would love to welcome you over to that little piece of wonderful Tudor goodness.
Jonathan: And if you enjoy our silly banter please check out Watching the Tudors podcast.
Heather: Yes ‘coz that’s super fun.
Jonathan: And if you just like Tudor stuff and her boys check out the Renaissance English History Podcast. Like that one’s kinda better.
Heather: They’re both there online. Do you have any other questions for me? Is there anything you wanna know about rebelling that I didn’t answer.
Jonathan: Nothing that the people watching are gonna care about.
Heather: That’s funny. Alright. Hey thank you for watching I hope you have a great time for the rest of the Tudor summit and the next video will be live at the top of the hour. And thanks for watching! Thanks for being part of this event, so much fun!