Together the Elizabethan explorers, and authors like John Dee and Richard Hakluyt built excitement about the possibilities of global exploration. Francis Drake gave it expression. The Spanish MainRead More

From 1578 to 1582 the courts of France, Spain and England buzzed with the possibility of the latest office romance – between the Queen of England and Duke of Anjou.Read More

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 atRead More

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 wouldRead More

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 didRead More

  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 inRead More

  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 massacreRead More

  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 earlyRead More

  The saga of the life and times of Mary Queen of Scots continues, but in 1568 something stirs in the north of England… Transcript Last time, I left you withRead More

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.              Read More

  Did Elizabeth have a foreign ‘policy’? If so what principles drove it – dynasty, parsimony, protestantism? This week Elizabeth intervenes in Scotland and France.   Transcript   This week,Read More

  How did Elizabethan government work, and what was Elizabeth’s court like? Transcript This week I thought we should have a bit of context, why don’t we? Over the nextRead More

A game of 2 halves this week; the major themes of Elizabeth’s reign and then the Funeral of Mary and Elizabeth’s  coronation . Ooh, and the appointment of Cecil asRead More

    Transcript Hello everyone and welcome to the History of England Episode 288 Elizabeth I and the Historians. We left Elizabeth passing through Temple Bar, with professions of loveRead More

Transcript Let me take you to London on a January morning in 1559. It’s cold, and there had been a light dusting of snow, and in January London 1559 letRead More

1558 was a fateful year for England which would have a fundamental impact on its future. Find out why.   Transcript Last time we heard about how a fortuitous doomedRead More

The return of the King meant demands for the English to enter a war they did not want, and in which none of their interests were really at stake. Transcript The DukeRead More

  The story of the Marian persecution. And of a Queen’s need to have her Prince at her side to help with the alarms and excursions of protestant rebels. TranscriptRead More

The plan was that 1555 saw the transformation of England – the birth of an heir for Mary and Philip, the launch of a new Reformation Anglicae to re-invigorate Roman CatholicismRead More

Once Pole had returned and parliament had re-enacted the heresy legislation after the brief Edwardian holiday, the Marian church could at last exercise the full force of the law against protestants. JohnRead More

Catherine Willoughby leaves England to become one of the Marian Exiles. When Pole told parliament that he came to build he meant what he said, and would deliver, in part.Read More

In 1554, 300 schoolboys of London played out the divisions of their parents on the fields of Finsbury. It was an instructive backdrop to the return of Papal authority inRead More

In July 1554 Philip finally landed in England, and all went very well; Mary and Philip were married, and were kind to each other, there was a great pageant ofRead More