HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: The official website for BBC History Magazine
date: 2025-11-26T13:23:05.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Christopher Marlowe: life of the week
items: Who stole the Tudor crown?
items: Elizabeth I’s shadowy spy network was tasked with uncovering secret conspiracies. Here’s what it found
items: Crystal balls & contacting angels: predicting the future in early modern England
items: 420 years ago, a deadly conspiracy to kill Britain’s king nearly succeeded. What if it had worked?
items: This unassuming accessory gave the poor of Tudor England a vital way to survive
items: Who laid the fuse for the Gunpowder Plot?
items: What did the Tudors think was ‘good’ sex? These tips and tricks were key to relationships in the 16th century
items: The Virgin Queen? Elizabeth I's forbidden love
items: Master the art of procrastination, with the help of the Virgin Queen

Christopher Marlowe: life of the week
type: item
date: 2025-11-25T08:00:44.000Z
creator: Elinor Evans
subject: Elizabethan
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: Life of the week (podcast series)
description: Stephen Greenblatt sheds light on the brief life of playwright Christopher Marlowe, one of the great rivals of William Shakespeare, whose death in a Deptford tavern in 1593 still leaves a great many unanswered questions
encoded: From his possible espionage work for the Elizabethan state to his open flirtations with atheism and subversive sexual themes, the brief life of playwright Christopher Marlowe tells us much about the shadowy edges of 16th-century England. Stephen Greenblatt joins Elinor Evans to discuss the subversive, dangerous life of 'Kit', who became both a collaborator and rival of his contemporary, William Shakespeare. Stephen Greenblatt is the author of Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival, Christopher Marlowe (Bodley Head, 2025). Buy it now from Amazon

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Who stole the Tudor crown?
type: item
date: 2025-11-14T08:00:07.000Z
creator: Rob Attar
subject: Elizabethan
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Stuart
subject: Tudor
description: Tracy Borman shares explosive new research that challenges what we thought we knew about the end of Elizabeth I's reign
encoded: On her deathbed Elizabeth I named the Scottish James VI as her successor, ensuring a smooth transition from the Tudor to Stuart monarchies. That, at least, is what we've long believed. But an explosive new discovery casts doubt on this version of events, suggesting that the Stuart succession was far less secure than we may have thought. In her new book, The Stolen Crown, historian Tracy Borman draws on this research to paint a vivid new picture of these turbulent years, which she explores in conversation with Rob Attar. Tracy Borman is the author of The Stolen Crown: Treachery, Deceit and the Death of the Tudor Dynasty (Hodder & Stoughton, 2025). Buy it now from Waterstones

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Elizabeth I’s shadowy spy network was tasked with uncovering secret conspiracies. Here’s what it found
type: item
date: 2025-11-13T10:10:05.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Elizabethan
subject: Period
subject: Stuart
subject: Tudor
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: In a kingdom recently divided by faith, Elizabeth I’s government turned to espionage to defend the Protestant crown. This is how her spymasters built a culture of fear that reshaped England’s religious and political life
encoded: Elizabeth I’s England of the late 16th century was a Protestant nation riven by anxieties that were a consequence of a bitter divorce. The blame lay at the feet of her father. But it wasn’t Henry VIII’s famous separations from Catherine of Aragon or Anne of Cleves that were the source of the trouble. It was his divorce from Rome. Only a generation earlier, England had been a staunchly Catholic country. That had changed when Henry VIII, seeking to wrest power away from the papacy, had broken from Rome in the 1530s. Following his death, Elizabeth’s half-sister, Mary I, had tried to reverse that, burning Protestants and restoring the pope’s authority. But, when Elizabeth came to the throne in 1558, she reinstated her father’s Protestantism through the Elizabethan Religious Settlement: a middle way that was designed to bring the realm back. It only partly worked. To Protestant hardliners, Elizabeth’s church was still too Catholic. To Catholics, she was a heretic and an illegitimate queen. Abroad, Philip II of Spain and the papacy viewed her as an enemy of the faith, and in 1570, Pope Pius V excommunicated her – releasing her subjects from allegiance to the English Crown. From that moment on, the Catholic institutions across Europe became Elizabeth’s greatest enemies. And Catholics in England now lived under intense suspicion. The myth of the Tudor ‘secret service’ As fears of foreign invasion and internal rebellion grew, Elizabeth’s court increasingly viewed intelligence as a potent weapon to be wielded against the Catholic threat, and it fell to two men to spearhead its use: Sir Francis Walsingham, her shrewd and zealous secretary of state; and Robert Cecil, the brilliant son of Elizabeth’s long-time advisor William Cecil, Lord Burghley. “Both of these men, Robert Cecil and Francis Walsingham, have got a reputation of being the M figure out of MI5 – the head of a vast and highly organised secret service,” says Professor John Cooper, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast…

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Crystal balls & contacting angels: predicting the future in early modern England
type: item
date: 2025-11-05T08:00:55.000Z
creator: Ellie Cawthorne
subject: Elizabethan
subject: General Early Modern
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Stuart
description: Martha McGill delves into the world of divination in the 16th and 17th centuries – and shares some tips on how to gain supernatural insight
encoded: Eating the palpitating heart of a mole. Sleeping with a wolf's tooth under your pillow. Communicating with angels through a crystal ball. In the 16th and 17th centuries, people had many cunning methods for predicting the future. Historian Martha McGill shares some extraordinary stories of early modern divination with Ellie Cawthorne, from fraudulent money-spinning scams to astrologers and palmreaders who offered supernatural insights.

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420 years ago, a deadly conspiracy to kill Britain’s king nearly succeeded. What if it had worked?
type: item
date: 2025-11-04T12:10:25.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Elizabethan
subject: Period
subject: Stuart
subject: Tudor
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: In 1605, a small band of English Catholics tried to destroy the king, his family and parliament in a single explosion. This is what might have happened if Guy Fawkes had successfully lit the fuse
encoded: It's the evening of 4 November 1605, and a search party has descended into the cellars beneath the Palace of Westminster. Among the stacks of firewood, they find a man, calm and composed, guarding dozens of casks of gunpowder. That man was Guy Fawkes, and within hours from him being found, he was due to light a fuse that would have upended English history. The discovery of Fawkes foiled the conspiracy and exposed a broader network of Catholic conspirators whose aim was to blow up King James VI and I, along with his government, during the ceremonial opening of parliament. The Gunpowder Plot, as it came to be known, had failed. But what if Fawkes had succeeded? As Professor John Cooper explains on the HistoryExtra podcast, the explosion would have changed the course of British history overnight. The explosion that would have destroyed Westminster Thirty-six barrels of gunpowder had been smuggled into the undercroft beneath the House of Lords; more than enough to obliterate the heart of English government. “If it had all ignited,” explains Cooper, “it would have created an almighty explosion, certainly sufficient to destroy most of the Palace of Westminster.” “The House of Lords would have been blown to pieces,” he continues. “The House of Commons across the courtyard would also have gone. Westminster Hall would also have been very badly damaged.” Calculations suggest that the blast radius might have even reached parts of Westminster Abbey. “So we're talking about an almighty explosion,” Cooper notes. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-55322642-1-3fe2264-e1762257614104.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A contemporary Dutch print of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot shows divine light guiding the authorities to capture Guy Fawkes beneath the House of Lords. His arrest, moments before he could ignite 36 barrels of gunpowder, thwarted the Catholic conspirators’ bid to destroy Parliament and King James I." title="Gunpowder Plo…

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This unassuming accessory gave the poor of Tudor England a vital way to survive
type: item
date: 2025-10-25T10:45:10.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Elizabethan
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: How did a law passed by Elizabeth I turn fashion into welfare? Ruth Goodman explains the story behind one garment and the difference it made to the 16th-century poor, and examines the origins of England’s first social safety net
encoded: Imagine losing your livelihood in 16th-century England. There was no welfare state, no pensions, no hospitals or residential homes for the elderly, and no benefits for the sick. If you were injured, widowed or simply too old to work, you were faced with a life of financial instability at best, or permanent penury at worst. “What if things had gone wrong, and somehow you didn’t have a patch of land to make a living from?” asks historian Ruth Goodman in episode three of her new HistoryExtra Academy series, Tudor Life. For most working people, life in Tudor England was precarious. Labourers worked the land for local farmers, often earning just enough to get by. Women and children contributed through spinning, domestic service or working in dairies. In this situation, one bad harvest, a bout of illness, or the loss of a spouse could tip a family into destitution. “That happened to a lot of people,” says Goodman. “Even if your dad had a patch of land, he might have had seven kids, and by the time it’s divided up there’s next to nothing left. So there were plenty of people who didn’t have enough land to sustain their families, and plenty of people who couldn’t find other skilled work.” For many, the looming prospect of eventual poverty was an inevitable part of life. The Tudor population was rising faster than its economy could support, prices were soaring due to inflation, and the enclosure of common land (once a lifeline for the poor) was stripping people of access to grazing, wood and food. Before the 1530s, much of the kingdom’s informal welfare system had been provided by monasteries. Religious houses offered food to the hungry, lodging for travellers, and small pensions for the sick and elderly. But when Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries between 1536 and 1540, that network disappeared almost overnight. Centuries of charitable provision were gone, and nothing stood ready to replace them. Read more | The dissolution of the monasteries Unsurprisingly, begging and va…

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Who laid the fuse for the Gunpowder Plot?
type: item
date: 2025-10-19T07:00:39.000Z
creator: Danny Bird
subject: Elizabethan
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Stuart
description: Historian John Cooper introduces us to the conspirators behind the infamous plot to blow up king and parliament
encoded: In the autumn of 1605, Robert Catesby and Guy Fawkes led a desperate band of Catholic gentlemen in one of history's most daring conspiracies. Having smuggled 36 barrels of gunpowder beneath the Palace of Westminster, their plan was to blow up James VI & I, along with the majority of England’s Protestant elite, paving the way for the restoration of Catholicism. In this first episode of our four-part series on the plot, Danny Bird speaks to historian John Cooper to uncover a world of persecution, espionage and faith-driven extremism. They unfurl the conspirators’ bold plan and interrogate the powerful spy networks of late Elizabethan and early Jacobean England that set the scene for an explosive act of treason. Want to know more about the Gunpowder Plot? Danny Bird has curated a selection of essential reading from the HistoryExtra and BBC History Magazine archive to help you explore the religious tensions, political intrigue and lasting impact of this infamous act of treason. Go beyond the podcast. John Cooper is the author of The Lost Chapel of Westminster: How a Royal Chapel Became the House of Commons (Apollo, 2024). Buy it now from Amazon

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What did the Tudors think was ‘good’ sex? These tips and tricks were key to relationships in the 16th century
type: item
date: 2025-10-08T15:53:59.000Z
creator: Isabel King
subject: Elizabethan
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: Discover / Apple News
subject: Historical people
subject: Tudor life
description: From the importance of female pleasure to why you might need ribbons in the bedroom, historian Ruth Goodman explores the world of Tudor sex
encoded: Is there any better way to understand the deadly politics and high drama of the Tudor era than through the lens of their audacious romantic entanglements? After all, King Henry VIII had six wives, instigating the Reformation in the name of love (and presumably lust, too), meanwhile Queen Elizabeth I grew a cult of personality around her virginity, developing it into a sharp instrument of power and control. Sex, or lack thereof, was clearly important to the Tudor royals. But away from the courts of kings and queens, what role did intimate romance play in the lives of ordinary Tudors; the people who were farmers, millers, bakers and blacksmiths? What did they get up to in the bedroom, and what was the role of sex in their lives? Good vs bad sex “[Sex] was seriously important to people in Tudor Britain,” says Ruth Goodman, speaking in her newest HistoryExtra Academy course, Tudor Life, “it marked the moment of adulthood. A single person [as opposed to someone who was married] wasn’t considered to be fully adult”. Watch now | Ruth Goodman on Tudor life As a watershed moment in a person’s life, sex was incredibly important, both practically and symbolically. However, it wasn’t necessarily straightforward – there were social norms that dictated how people should be having sex. Sex was only considered ‘good’ if it took place within marriage and, as Goodman explains, “so long as it fulfilled one of two purposes: one was to bond a couple together, and the other was procreation”. No matter what sort of sex it was, if it happened outside of the marital bed, it was immoral. Anything that fell outside of the “traditional marriage picture of a man and a woman creating babies” was a transgression and ‘bad’ sex. But that didn’t mean that the Tudors discouraged pleasure. The importance of pleasure One of the main Tudor beliefs about sex was that a woman could only conceive if she was enjoying the act, and this would ideally include a female orgasm. “Just as a man needed to be intere…

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The Virgin Queen? Elizabeth I's forbidden love
type: item
date: 2025-07-04T08:00:14.000Z
subject: Elizabethan
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: British queens
subject: Historical people
subject: Life in Elizabethan England
subject: Tudor kings and queens
description: In 1579, the queen embarked on a romance with a French duke she affectionately dubbed her “frog”. The pair seemed destined for marriage. Yet, writes Elizabeth Tunstall, the people of England had other ideas…
encoded: On 17 August 1579, a ship sailed up the Thames and dropped anchor in Greenwich. Moments later a duke emerged, dressed in the finest clothes that money could buy, and conversing with his entourage in French. The prince’s nationality might have provoked the suspicion – if not the outright hostility – of many residents of Tudor London. Yet this Frenchman was about to be welcomed into the heart of Richmond Palace. There he would be entertained lavishly, wined and dined at parties and balls. And all with good reason. For this Frenchman was being lined up to marry Queen Elizabeth I. Over the centuries, Elizabeth’s romantic travails have become one of the great soap operas of English history. When Elizabeth ascended the English throne in 1558 as a 25-year-old, it was widely expected that she would find herself a husband and produce an heir to carry on the Tudor dynasty for another generation. However, while the queen had several suitors over the years, each proposed match hit the rocks before she could be tempted to offer her hand in marriage. From English earls to Scandinavian kings, none quite fitted the bill. And so, by the time the party of Frenchmen disembarked in Greenwich in the summer of 1579, Elizabeth was well on her way to securing her place in the history books as the ‘Virgin Queen’: the woman who would, so we’re told, sacrifice her heart for the good of the nation. Yet she wasn’t done with trying just yet. As her 46th birthday closed in, Elizabeth would embark on one final bid to find a husband. And this one would take her closer to marriage than perhaps any courtship yet. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/FFWM82-cmyk-WL-0294cdd.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A cow stands in the middle of the image, being ridden by a man in a dark cloak and hat. Behind the cow, a man wearing light pink holds its tail, while another man milks the cow. In front of the cow stands Elizabeth I, dressed in white and another man dressed …

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Master the art of procrastination, with the help of the Virgin Queen
type: item
date: 2025-06-23T09:22:20.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove
subject: Elizabethan
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Elizabeth I knew that delaying decisions was her secret superpower, Professor Tracy Borman tells Dr David Musgrove, and it's a technique we could all learn something from
encoded: I’ve been putting off writing this piece for quite a while. Not because I’m plain lazy, but because I’m channelling my inner Tudor queen. My Life Lesson from History this week, as proposed by Professor Tracy Borman, is that we should master the art of procrastination. Helping us in this endeavour will be Elizabeth I, the procrastinator par excellence. I know what you’re thinking. Procrastination is a bad thing. It’s what you do when you can’t make a decision, or you’re unwilling to knuckle down to a task. This is the territory of urgently needing to tidy up your bedroom when you should be revising for your exams. We’re not talking avoidance procrastination here though – we are looking at deliberate, strategic procrastination. For Elizabeth, it was a case of good things coming to those who wait. “Elizabeth was the absolute master of procrastination, or at least that’s how it appeared. So really her strategy was to resist the pressure that she was constantly under from her male advisors, her parliaments, her people even, to do things like marry, have an heir and go to war,” says Borman. “She played the procrastination card brilliantly because instead of being pressured into making a decision, she would say, ‘Hang on, I just need a bit of time. I’m only a woman: what do I know?’” Avoiding the altar Let’s have a quick recap of who Elizabeth I was. She was queen of England from 1558 to 1603, and daughter of King Henry VIII. She was Good Queen Bess and Gloriana, the virgin queen who never married, and who navigated a half century of rule as a woman in a man’s world. Part of her success and longevity as a monarch was because she was slow to play her hand. The way she managed the pressure to marry is a case in point. “When she comes to the throne, she’s single, she’s 25 years old. Of course, the first thing everybody expects her to do is to take a husband and thus secure the dynasty, the succession. It’s the right thing to do, not just for a queen, but for any woman,” expla…

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