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The Tudor law that forced an occult practice underground for centuries
As well as creating new regulations on faith, Henry VIII’s 16th-century government also decided which kinds of knowledge were legitimate – and which were criminal
The people who controlled Tudor England made certain that any belief that didn’t align with strictly Christian values was deemed to be highly suspicious, and likely criminal. Witchcraft and demonology were stark examples, but Henry VIII himself also passed a law that criminalised palmistry: the reading of one’s fate from the palm of the hand. Henry VIII ruled from 1509 to 1547, presiding over one of the most transformative periods in English and wider British history. His reign encompassed religious revolution, repeated rebellions and an unprecedented expansion of royal authority. But while Tudor governments worked to centralise authority and standardise religious belief after decades of dynastic instability, many elite thinkers continued to explore esoteric ideas in private: the truth was, the early modern period was the perfect hotbed for alternative ideas to flourish. The people who lived in the early 16th century were wracked by uncertainty. England was still emerging from the Wars of the Roses, and Henry VIII was only the second Tudor king; his claim to the throne rested on recent victory in battle rather than ancient lineage, making loyalty to the crown a constant concern. Early modern governance relied heavily on local surveillance and reputation, and strangers presented a challenge to that system. Roma communities were newly visible in England in the early 1500s. As historian Alison Bashford explains, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, contemporary Europeans believed these communities came from Egypt. “Hence the term ‘gypsy’,” she says. It was a misidentification that would shape Tudor laws, based on false ideas that Roma people came from a place imbued with ancient, supposedly occult forms of knowledge. The Egyptian Acts and Tudor control Under Henry VIII, Parliament passed a series of statutes known collectively as the Egyptian Acts. They aimed to fix populations in place and eliminate practices that escaped oversight. But they had a much longer reach than you might first think. “Henry VIII’s Egyptian Acts actually run through the 18th and 19th centuries,” says Bashford. “They’re the forerunners of vagrancy acts that continue well into the 20th century.” Watch now | Tudor love lives: inside a 16th-century bedroom These laws targeted cultural practises that didn’t fit within church or guild oversight. The aim was to impose a Tudor vision of order, in which authority flowed from crown to institution to subject. One law that is a perfect example of this attempted authority was the ban of the practice of palmistry. “As far back as Henry VIII’s time, one of the clauses in the original Egyptian Act was to render unlawful the telling of fortunes from the palm,” explains Bashford. Practising palmistry required no licensing and no formal apprenticeship or qualifications. It was an unregulated, and – to Tudor society – incomprehensible form of secret knowledge that posed a tangible threat to the established social and religious order. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/GettyImages-1397985996-6d2d6ae-e1771418600358.jpg" width="1480" height="1000" alt="This woodcut of Roma fortune tellers, first published in 1552, reflects Tudor England’s suspicion of so-called 'Egyptians'. Under a series of Tudor laws, Roma people faced expulsion, persecution while practices such as palmistry and fortune telling were outlawed as fraud or witchcraft." title="Gipsies Fortune Telling" /> Knowledge after the Reformation The ban of palmistry sits within the broader context of the English Reformation. Henry VIII’s break with Rome in the 1530s fundamentally altered how knowledge and authority were organised in England. By dissolving monasteries, abolishing papal authority, and declaring himself Supreme Head of the Church, Henry concentrated interpretive power in the crown – and thus himself. Palmistry fell victim to this because of who practised it – and how. It was associated with the occult, with women, oral transmission, and independence that didn’t rely on parishes or churches. But by banning this form of knowledge, the king had also turned it into a magnet for some of the elites who were interested in the esoteric. Read more | Porpoise for breakfast and late night sex visits: a day in the life of Henry VIII To demonstrate that point, Bashford points to the 17th century and one of England’s most celebrated intellectual pioneers: Isaac Newton. “Isaac Newton bought what were then called chiromancy books. He bought one called Palmistry: The Secrets Thereof Disclosed,” Bashford says. But just because the elite had discovered a fascination with the subject didn’t mean that the laws were changed. It persisted for centuries. “That law continues through the 18th century and the 19th century,” Bashford explains. “It comes into vagrancy law after the Napoleonic Wars. It remains in place through the 1890s, when a whole number of palmists suddenly proliferating in the West End [of London] are charged … under a clause that has its origin in the Egyptian Acts.” The cultural survival of hidden knowledge Still, the tradition persisted in Roma communities. “All the way along [the story of palmistry] are Roma people themselves – almost always women – traditionally telling fortunes from the palm,” says Bashford. By the 19th century, Roma fortune tellers were fixtures of British leisure culture – Bashford cites Blackpool as a place where it became a key feature of entertainment as the country’s religious tensions began to fade. What the Tudors had framed as a threat to state order steadily became a form of risqué fun-making, imbued with a cultural mystique and links to occult and spiritual traditions. But Henry VIII’s ban on palmistry had never been exclusively about religion and superstition. It was about consolidating authority, and keeping power in the hands of the ‘right’ people. Alison Bashford was speaking to Elinor Evans on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
Joanne Paul explores the life of the inscrutable Thomas More: the thinker and humanist who served as Lord Chancellor to Henry VIII yet refused to get involved in his Great Matter, ultimately choosing his conscience over his life
Thomas More is best remembered as a martyr and a saint, but the circumstances of his death were just one facet of his controversial life. Historian and biographer Dr Joanne Paul speaks to Kev Lochun about More's many faces: the Lord Chancellor who refused to yield to Henry VIII; the writer who gave us Utopia, and the zealot who believed heretics deserved to be burned. Yet, she argues, he was none of these things of in isolation, but instead a complicated man whose life has lessons for us today. Thomas More's Utopia is considered one of the most influential pieces of political philosophy today, but how did his contemporaries see it? Joanne Paul considers that thorny question for HistoryExtra. Go beyond the podcast.
The simple secret that kept the ordinary Tudor diet surprisingly healthy
For most people in Tudor England, an ordinary diet was more structured – and often more varied – than we might expect
The excesses of Henry VIII conjure images of lavish feasts: whole-roasted pigs, venison pies, exquisite fruit jellies and fine wines imported from the continent. It’s an image of luxury – but one almost entirely disconnected from the reality experienced by most people living in Tudor England. While Henry VIII and the upper echelons of Tudor nobility could pick and choose from vast, sprawling buffets, ordinary people had their diets dictated by the unyielding rhythm of the seasons. According to the historian Ruth Goodman, this seasonality imposed strict limits on what people could eat and when. At the same time, however, it also created an extraordinary variety across the year, with no two months’ food ever quite the same. Speaking on the new HistoryExtra Academy course Tudor Life, Goodman explores what this meant as the year unfolded, and asks: what was a Tudor diet really like – and just how healthy (and how tasty) was it? The simple foundations of the Tudor diet The diet of most Tudors was built on very humble foundations. “The most important food for any Tudor was probably bread,” Goodman explains. “But ‘bread’ often meant a whole range of things; it covered many different styles.” Watch: What did ordinary Tudors eat? In the fifth episode of her HistoryExtra Academy series Tudor Life, social historian Ruth Goodman takes us inside the kitchens of ordinary Tudors, sharing what would have been served up on the average table. Membership exclusive – watch now In many upland areas, wheat was difficult to grow, and ovens were expensive to build and fuel. As a result, people typically turned to oats instead. “Oats were easier to make into a flat cake rather than a traditional loaf,” says Goodman. “These were dried in front of a fire and cooked on a griddle.” This pattern was repeated across England. According to Goodman, people ate “different sorts of oatcakes, barley bread, rye bread”, and “every region had its own specialities”. What linked these breads together – whether wheat or oat – was their importance as a staple food. “Bread was the thing that people ate most often,” notes Goodman. “For many people, it was their main food: breakfast, dinner and supper. This was a time before potatoes, before widespread rice, before pasta. The carbohydrates people ate came exclusively from local grains.” But what were people eating with their bread? How pottage changed throughout the year “The next most important food for most people was pottage, which simply means ‘something cooked in a pot’.” Pottage could be thick or thin, vegetarian or enriched with meat or dairy. Its defining feature, though, was flexibility. “It was even more varied than bread,” Goodman says, “and it was super seasonal.” This variety was driven by necessity, but it also prevented monotony. Even if the method of cooking remained the same, the flavour, texture and nutritional profile of meals shifted constantly. Pottage wasn’t the only food that changed, however. Modern diets assume year-round access to milk, eggs, butter and meat – but most Tudor diets did not. “It’s not just plants that changed with the seasons,” Goodman explains. “In Tudor times, meat, fish, eggs, cheese and butter all had seasons of their own.” Milk production followed the reproductive cycle of cattle. “Cows went dry in the winter,” Goodman says. “You then had to wait until they’d had a new calf before they came into milk again.” As a result, “the milk season ran from March through to about October”. Yet even in that broad time frame, some dairy products were better suited to being made in certain months more than others. “That first flush of milk – when the grass is lush and green – is very high in fat, which makes it extremely good for butter-making.” Butter was therefore a spring and early summer food, unless preserved with salt. She continues: “As the grass changes and the weather moves through the seasons, the milk contains more casein [a type of protein], which makes it perfect for cheese-making.” As a result, Tudor cheese production peaked from early summer onwards. Read more | 5 things you (probably) didn't know about the Tudors Eggs, meat and the limitations of daylight Eggs were equally seasonal. “Chickens don’t lay in low light levels,” Goodman explains. “They’re triggered into laying by the pituitary gland, which responds to how much daylight there is.” As days lengthened, egg production rose; as nights drew in, it stopped. What meat was available was dictated by a very similar logic. “It didn’t make sense to kill a cow when she was in calf,” Goodman notes. Slaughter was therefore timed to avoid waste and protect future productivity. Sheep were managed strategically, too. “Easter was the time for lamb, if you had one spare. For the rest of the year, you’d wait until the sheep had been shorn. After they’d been shorn and you’d made your money from their wool, the oldest ewes would be eaten as mutton.” The winter months of the Tudor diet Fish added another layer of seasonality. “Different shoals come through at different times of the year,” Goodman explains. Fresh fish availability fluctuated with migration patterns and weather. Preservation methods (salting, smoking and pickling) extended access to fish, but these foods filled gaps rather than dominating diets. “Yes, you could preserve things – salt cod, pickled herring, smoked kippers – and eat them all year round. But people tended to eat them in the late winter, when there wasn’t much fresh food.” What about vegetables? But for all that meat and dairy were important components of the Tudor diet, it was vegetables that formed the backbone of pottage. “You were generally reliant on your own garden for vegetables,” Goodman says. “It was good to have a garden with lots of variety that would ripen at different moments. There was a huge seasonality.” A diet built around bread and pottage might sound very dull, but Goodman argues the opposite. “Although living off bread and pottage sounds super boring, the Tudor diet was actually quite varied.” She concludes: “The list of ingredients that went into pottage was very specific to the week of the year. What you ate one week would be completely different from the next – and so pottage changed constantly.” This was a variety fostered by the seasons, deeply embedded in an understanding of the rhythms of the natural world. For all that Henry VIII enjoyed what he wanted, when he wanted it, most Tudors were able to keep themselves fed with a humbler – though no less variable – set of foods.
Want to know more about Elizabeth I and her remarkable reign? Rachel Dinning rounds up essential reads to explore her early life, rise to power, court intrigues, and the legacy that made her one of England’s most iconic monarchs.
Elizabeth I remains one of the most recognisable and influential monarchs in English history. Born into scandal, declared illegitimate, and raised in the shadow of political and religious upheaval, she would go on to rule England for more than four decades. Her reign witnessed religious transformation, cultural flourishing, and international conflict, while her carefully crafted image as the ‘Virgin Queen’ helped cement her place in both history and myth. In this four-part HistoryExtra podcast series – coming out on 8 March – I’m joined by historian Dr Nicola Tallis, a leading expert on Elizabeth I, to explore the queen’s extraordinary life and legacy. Together, we trace Elizabeth’s journey from her turbulent childhood and precarious path to the throne, through the challenges of ruling as a female monarch in a male-dominated world, to the threats posed by rival claimants, conspiracies, and foreign invasion. We also examine her final years, the question of succession, and the myths that transformed her reign into England’s so-called ‘Golden Age’. Below, I’ve selected some essential further reading, listening and viewing from the HistoryExtra archive to help deepen your understanding of Elizabeth’s life and world. These include expert insights into Elizabeth’s early years and education, her relationships and court culture, the political and religious tensions that shaped her reign, and the lasting legacy of one of Britain’s most iconic rulers.
What happened to Shakespeare's daughters? A guide to the playwright's family life and descendants
The story of the Shakespeares was one of social advancement, says Stanley Wells, reflected in dwellings that rose from rural farmstead to manorial splendour. Along the way were some family upsets: pregnant brides, lawsuits and excommunication. As a film adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell's novel Hamnet arrives on cinema screens, find out more about when William married Anne (Agnes) Hathaway, when their children were born, and what became of the Shakespeare family after the playwright's death…
He is one of the greatest writers of all time, and our longing to know as much as we can about him continues. We know that William Shakespeare was born in 1564 to John and Mary Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, and that he was their first child to survive past infancy. During the Elizabethan period, infant mortality was very high, and his parents had already lost two daughters before young William was born. The exact date of his birth is unknown, but his baptismal record survives, showing that Gulielmus filius Johannes Shakespeare (William, son of John Shakespeare) was baptised in Stratford-upon-Avon’s Holy Trinity Church on 26 April 1564. His birthday is now celebrated on 23 April, since it was common for baptisms to be held three days after a birth. As a film adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell's historical novel, Hamnet, starring Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal, is released, find out more about the playwright's home life and how his family influences shaped him – plus what happened to his daughters after the story of Hamnet concludes. William Shakespeare's birth family: who were his parents? The story of Shakespeare’s family – one of upward social mobility – is reflected in their homes. Start in the small village of Wilmcote, three miles north of Stratford-upon-Avon, where the playwright’s mother, Mary Arden, grew up in a small farmhouse built around 1514 by her father, Robert. Mary was the youngest of eight daughters by his first wife; his second, Agnes Hill, brought with her two sons and two daughters. When Robert made his will in 1556, he named young Mary as one of his two executors and left her a substantial amount of land and money, which suggests that she was a woman of exceptional ability. Mary Arden married the up-and-coming glover (and later wool dealer and money-lender) John Shakespeare, probably in 1557. Before long they moved into his substantial double-house in Henley Street, Stratford-upon-Avon, now known as Shakespeare’s Birthplace. Mary had eight children, but only six survived infancy. John gave the town loyal service, rising through the ranks from the relatively humble role of ale-taster to become alderman and, in 1568, bailiff (or mayor.) His application for a coat of arms was unsuccessful in 1576, but he was granted one 20 years later, when he was said to be worth £500 – a sum not to be sneezed at. He died in 1601. In 1594 John’s eldest son, William, had become a shareholder in the troupe of players called the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, based in London. Three years later William demonstrated his commitment to his home town of Stratford by buying New Place, the largest house in the borough. Shakespeare’s marriage to Anne Hathaway In 1582, at the age of 18, Shakespeare married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway (also known as Agnes), who was already around three months pregnant with their daughter Susanna. The Hathaways – tenant farmers with 90 acres of land in the nearby village of Shottery – were acquaintances of the Shakespeares, and William may have met Anne while helping with the local harvest. To ensure the pregnancy didn’t cause a scandal, Shakespeare had to apply to the Bishop’s Court in Worcester for permission to hold a wedding at short notice. Between 1570 and 1630 the records show that only three men in Stratford-upon-Avon were married below the age of 20 (the average age to marry was 26). Shakespeare was the only one of those whose wife was already pregnant. William and Anne also had three children, an elder daughter, Susanna and twins Judith and Hamnet. Shakespeare's family at New Place New Place in Stratford was demolished in the 18th century but archaeological excavations carried out under the auspices of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust have added to our knowledge about the size and layout of the property. It had five gables, a courtyard, three floors, and between 20 and 30 rooms – more than enough to accommodate the entire extended family, if necessary. Indeed, Thomas Greene, Town Clerk from 1603 to 1617 and a member of the Middle Temple, who described himself as William’s cousin – the word could be flexibly used – lodged there with his family. There would also have been ample space for William’s unmarried brothers, Richard, Gilbert and Edmund, of whom little is known. We do know that Edmund, 16 years younger than William, became an actor in London like his brother, had a bastard child, and died when he was only 27. He was buried in what is now Southwark Cathedral on the last day of 1607 to the sound of the ‘great bell’ – the tolling of which cost someone, probably William, £1. Gilbert, who witnessed the deed of purchase for New Place in William’s absence, worked at one time as a haberdasher in London. Of Richard we know only that he was baptised in Stratford on 11 March 1574 and buried there on 4 February 1613. William’s sister Joan, born in 1569, married a hatter, William Hart, some time before 1600. They had four children: William, Mary, Thomas and Michael. Joan’s husband died in 1616 only a week before his famous brother-in-law, who left Joan life tenancy of part of the Henley Street house, along with £20 and “all his wearing apparel”. She lived there until her death in 1646 when the house, along with the adjoining dwelling, passed to her son Thomas, and then to his son, another Thomas, by the will of Shakespeare’s granddaughter, Lady Elizabeth Barnard. The property, identified as the Birthplace on the earliest surviving map of the town (dated 1759), remained in the family till 1806. The line continued; John Shakespeare Hart, a chair-maker, was buried in Tewkesbury Abbey in 1800 with a memorial that mistakenly described him as “the sixth descendant from the poet Shakespeare”. Subsequent family members emigrated to Australia. When Shakespeare died in 1616, the bulk of Shakespeare’s estate went to his daughter, Susanna, who, with her husband John Hall, moved into New Place while Anne was still there. Anne lived at New Place for another seven years until her death in 1623. What happened to William Shakespeare's children? Shakespeare's only son, Hamnet – the name a variant of Hamlet – died in 1596, aged only 11. Presumably, like his father, he had been a pupil at the free grammar school, though its records from this period don’t survive. Susanna, born six months after her parents married, seems to have been an accomplished woman with a mind of her own. She was reported to the Ecclesiastical Court for refusing to take communion at Easter 1606 when, in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot, the authorities were especially anxious to round up possible Roman Catholic sympathisers. The case was dismissed. The following year she married the strongly Protestant physician John Hall, and her father gave her the substantial gift of 107 acres of land in Old Stratford as a marriage settlement, while apparently retaining a life interest. In 1613 her marriage was afflicted by scandal when one John Lane claimed that Susanna had caught a sexually transmitted infection from a married hatter and haberdasher named Ralph Smith. She successfully sued Lane for defamation of character in Worcester Consistory Court. Lane, who did not turn up to defend himself, was excommunicated. These events are dramatised in Peter Whelan’s successful play The Herbal Bed (1996). The Halls are believed to have lived in the large and handsome house on the outskirts of the town now known as Hall’s Croft, which dates from 1613 and may have been built for them; when Shakespeare died in 1616 they moved into New Place. Shakespeare left most of his property to Susanna and appointed the Halls as his executors. Susanna lived until 1649. Her epitaph reads “Witty” – that is, intelligent – “beyond her sex, but that’s not all, / Wise to salvation was good Mistress Hall.” In this period, education for girls lagged far behind that for boys, but there were petty schools in the town where both boys and girls could learn to read, write and do their sums. Susanna’s signature survives in the records of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. Shakespeare’s younger daughter, Judith, seems to have been a bit of a handful. At the age of 31, less than two months before her father died, she married Thomas Quiney, son of a prominent townsman, in Holy Trinity Church – but was excommunicated because they had not obtained the special licence required for marriage in Lent. There was reason to marry in a hurry: soon afterwards Quiney was accused of “incontinence” with Margaret Wheeler, who had been buried with their illegitimate child. He pleaded guilty. Shakespeare made changes to his will seemingly designed to protect Judith’s interests. She and Thomas went on to have three sons, all of whom died young; they called the eldest, born soon after his grandfather died, Shakespeare. Judith lived until 1662. Shakespeare’s last direct descendant was Elizabeth, born to Susanna and John Hall in 1608. He left her most of his silver plate (easily convertible into cash if she wished). She married Thomas Nash and they lived in New Place. After he died she married John Barnard, a prosperous widower with several children, in 1649. When her mother died soon afterwards the couple moved into New Place. A staunch Royalist, Barnard was made a baronet in 1661. Later they moved back into his ancestral home, Abington Manor in Northamptonshire, an even more splendid house than New Place, where Elizabeth died childless in 1670. So a family story that began in a modest farmhouse ended with Shakespeare’s granddaughter in a great manor house. What would Mary Arden have made of that? Does Shakespeare have any living descendants? Shakespeare has no direct living descendants, but there are still descendants of his sister Joan and her husband William Hart. His childhood home on Henley Street in Stratford remains in the care of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. Stanley Wells is a leading authority on Shakespeare. He is honorary president of The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and professor emeritus at the University of Birmingham
Meet the incredible woman who saved Portugal's Jews
With the Inquisition active throughout much of Europe, the first half of the 16th century was a perilous time for Jewish people. Andreé Aelion Brooks explores how the fabulously wealthy Doña Gracia worked tirelessly to protect her community
Still in her 20s, Gracia Mendes Nasi (Nacy), better known as Doña Gracia, was recently widowed and fabulously rich. She should have been able to live in comfort for the rest of her life. Her husband, Francisco Mendes, a spice dealer and banker, had divided his wealth in his will between Gracia and his brother, Diogo. Yet without her husband’s protection, even her money could not shield her from a looming crisis. Indeed, being in possession of such a fortune in patriarchal and Catholic Lisbon in the middle of the 1530s was inherently dangerous for someone of Doña Gracia’s background. She was a converso, a term for a person forced to convert from Judaism. When the papal nuncio, an ecclesiastical diplomat, paid a visit to her palatial home in the old Jewish quarter of Lisbon, he demanded yet another bribe to keep the Inquisition from beginning work in Portugal. The Inquisition, Gracia knew, rounded up conversos, who were then charged with being insincere Catholics and imprisoned. Whether this was true or not, their assets were confiscated. Furthermore, Doña Gracia certainly wasn’t sincere in her public faith. While she had married Francisco, who was also her maternal uncle, at Lisbon Cathedral, the ceremony had been preceded by a secret Jewish wedding. Compounding Doña Gracia’s problems, representatives of the Portuguese king, John III, had also visited her. They told her they wanted to take her young daughter, Ana, to the palace to live as an adopted child of the royal family. According to local laws, the king could thus gain the use of any portion of the Mendes fortune that belonged to Ana. It was clear Doña Gracia needed to make a new start elsewhere in Europe, but there was another problem: converso families were forbidden to leave Portugal. Demonstrating the skill that would make her an outstanding leader, she set two plans running simultaneously, an approach she would follow for the rest of her life. Read more | Your guide to the Spanish Inquisition Firstly, she sent a message to the king explaining that most of the fortune he sought was with her brother-in-law, Diogo, in Antwerp. To retrieve the fortune, she needed the king’s exemption to leave the country. And, of course, she could not leave her baby daughter behind. Nor her two nephews, who were registered to begin studies at university in Louvain. Nor her younger sister, Brianda, who was betrothed to Diogo. She also contacted Diogo to bring one of his spice ships, pick up the family from Lisbon and take them to Antwerp. The greedy king, hoping to maximise the amount of money he could seize, agreed to let her travel. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/GettyImages-173449744-8114cab-e1768985633175.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="An illustration of a man in a white and red apron, a tall white coned hat, and holding a stick in one hand. Behind him, there is a large building with many windows" title="A depiction of a man condemned to be burned on the orders of the Inquisition (Image by Getty Images)" /> But Doña Gracia had no intention of giving up her fortune so easily. Before departing for Antwerp, she had also set the second part of her plan in action. She had applied to the Vatican for a ‘Safe Conduct’, a super-passport valid throughout Christian Europe and which overrode any local laws preventing someone from travelling abroad. Throughout her life, Doña Gracia believed in doing what she could to maximise her chances of success. Her skills went beyond protecting her own family. Not only did she take the helm of her late husband’s business, an unusual enough development in itself in the late Renaissance era, but she assumed a leadership role within the converso community. With the threat of the Inquisition looming, Doña Gracia began to expand a nascent escape network that spirited members of the community out of danger and helped them travel to the Ottoman empire, which offered a haven for Europe’s Jewish community. In 1536, with the formal establishment of the Portuguese Inquisition, the situation for conversos in the country grew even more perilous. Read more | Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul: the history of a city of many names Speaking truth to power In 1553, Doña Gracia too would relocate to Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul), but in the latter half of the 1530s her focus was on building a new life in Antwerp. Yet here, she encountered many of the same problems she had faced in Portugal. The rulers, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, and his sister, Mary of Austria, who acted as governor of the Habsburg Netherlands, were quick to pick up where the Portuguese king had left off. The royal duo tried to pledge young Ana to a marriage that would be advantageous to them. Summoned to Mary’s palace to approve the match with Don Francisco D’Aragon – an illegitimate Spanish nobleman and descendant of the royal house of Aragon – Doña Gracia played for time, repeatedly implying she was sick. But she was so opposed to the union that she was reported as saying she would rather see her daughter drown – an audacious and insulting remark. Doña Gracia didn’t back down. She told Mary that she was furious about how Ana’s selected suitor had blamed the continuing persecution of conversos on Doña Gracia’s own obstinacy. Doña Gracia’s confrontational manner shocked Mary, a blue blood who had been queen consort of Hungary and Bohemia before she was widowed and became governor. Once again, Doña Gracia was forced to leave, fleeing to the Republic of Venice in 1544. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/GettyImages-463914533-e7876ff-e1768986146801.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A painting showing a large snaked line of people processing through a town square, surrounded by white building with blue and orange roofs. A crowd watches on as hundreds of men in black cloaks walk behind one another" title="An 18th century depiction of the procession of criminals sentenced by the Inquisition of Lisbon. As the persecution intensified, Doña Gracia helped many to flee to Constantinople (Image by Getty Images)" /> Compounding her difficulties, Doña Gracia did not even have the support of her own family. While in Antwerp, Diogo had died and named Doña Gracia as the guardian of his infant daughter rather than the child’s own mother – his wife and Doña Gracia’s sister, Brianda, who was talked of as untrustworthy. This so angered Brianda that, when both were living in Venice, she betrayed Doña Gracia as a secret Jew. In 1549, Doña Gracia again had to flee, this time to Ferrara, a tolerant duchy in northern Italy. Throughout, Doña Gracia continued to be a leader among her people, despite facing many setbacks. At one point, she helped lead a boycott of the Italian port of Ancona in retaliation for the burning of more than 20 conversos by the Italian Inquisition – an outrageous act even by the standards of the era. But the boycott was not a success in the long run because the Jewish merchants in the Ottoman empire who used the port could not agree on a combined strategy. Doña Gracia also failed in efforts to persuade the Venetians to give the conversos one of their lagoon islands as a place to settle. Read more | “Some say that the first Jews sailed here on King Solomon’s ships”: Kavita Puri on India's long Jewish history Life in the open But Doña Gracia’s sheer persistence also paid off. In 1553, she settled in Constantinople with her entourage. Here, she could live publicly as a Jew. Moreover, she persuaded Suleiman the Magnificent, sultan of the Ottoman empire, to grant her a long-term lease on Tiberias (in present-day Israel). She helped finance the rebuilding of a city that nestles on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, and it became a refuge for those conversos wishing to live in their own semi-autonomous area. Doña Gracia thus headed one of the earliest attempts to found a modern Jewish state in the Middle East. Her efforts here likely saved a significant portion of the ethnic Jewish world at a critical juncture in its history. She planned to settle in the region herself and built a mansion in Tiberias, but she died in Constantinople in 1569. In the years since, knowledge of Doña Gracia’s remarkable life has gradually faded, but that may be changing. Four years ago – during a period when the State Archives in Modena, northern Italy were closed because of the pandemic – archivist Alberto Palladini took advantage of the peace and quiet to clean out a box of old letters. It included two from Doña Gracia. These showed she spelled her last name as Nacy, not Nasi as the historical record currently suggests. It’s a small detail, but significant, if only because it hints at the possibility of further revelations should researchers go looking, which seems likely given the current interest in the lives of powerful women whose place in history has been under-appreciated. As for Doña Gracia herself, she certainly never sold herself short. As the seal for her correspondence, she used the Lion of Judah. This suggests she saw herself not just as a rich and successful businesswoman and philanthropist, but as someone descended from the House of David, a Jewish royal. Andrée Aelion Brooks is a journalist and lecturer. Her books include Russian Dance: A True Story of Intrigue and Passion in Stalinist Moscow (John Wiley & Sons, 2004) This article was first published in the January 2026 issue of HistoryExtra magazine
The SECRETS of Anne Boleyn's most treasured possession
Discover the prayer book that Anne Boleyn carried around "like a handbag", as Dr Owen Emerson and Professor Kate Williams get closer to Anne’s treasured Book of Hours, a personal prayer book on display at Hever Castle
Get closer to a remarkable Tudor artefact, as Dr Owen Emerson and Professor Kate Williams get closer to Anne Boleyn’s treasured Book of Hours, a personal prayer book on display at Hever Castle. Including illustrations and prayers to be conducted at different times of day, this Book of Hours would have governed Anne Boleyn’s daily schedule – and it even features Anne’s handwriting. Discover the marginalia that shows how the doomed queen turned to the book for solace in times of tumult – from when she was close to death from a disease known as the Sweating Sickness, to the fearful moments when she waited for King Henry VIII to decide her fate. View Green Video on the source website
Tragedy and triumph: a 500-year history of Mexico
Paul Gillingham chronicles the conflict and crushing poverty – but also the tolerance and optimism – that have shaped Mexico since the early 16th century
The chaos of the Spanish conquest, the humiliation of military defeat to the United States, the disruption of the revolution… Mexican history is often viewed through the lens of trauma and violence. Yet, as Paul Gillingham outlines in a new book, Mexico: A History, this was also one of the earliest democracies in the world – one in which Indigenous peoples enjoyed rights unthinkable in the US at the time. Paul guides Spencer Mizen through one nation's extraordinary history.
Was a ruthless Tudor matriarch behind the disappearance of the Princes in the Tower?
Margaret Beaufort has long been put forward as a shadowy mastermind potentially behind one of England’s greatest royal mysteries. Does the case against her stand up to scrutiny?
In the summer of 1483, two boys vanished inside the most famous fortress in England. Edward V, aged 12, and his younger brother Richard, Duke of York, were last seen in the Tower of London after their uncle seized the throne as Richard III. Within months, they were gone, and Richard stood to benefit. But he’s not the only potential culprit behind the disappearance of the two boys who became known to history as the Princes in the Tower. Over the centuries, suspicion has settled on other figures including Henry VII, Henry Stafford, and Margaret Beaufort. Beaufort was the canny and formidable mother of Henry VII, and matriarch of the Tudor dynasty. Was she, as some rumours have suggested, the hidden hand behind the princes’ disappearance? According to historian Lauren Johnson, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, the answer is unequivocal. “There is absolutely no evidence that Margaret orchestrated the disappearance – or the murder, I believe – of the Princes in the Tower.” The Princes in the Tower, and the problem of power Who were the princes in the Tower, and why were they important? Young Edward V was the eldest son of Edward IV, and an uncrowned king; his brother Richard was next in line. After Edward IV’s sudden death in April 1483, the boys were placed in the Tower of London, ostensibly for Edward’s protection before his coronation. Instead, their uncle Richard, Duke of Gloucester, declared their parents’ marriage invalid, had himself crowned Richard III, and kept the boys locked away. By the autumn of that year, they had disappeared. Some have suggested they might have escaped to a foreign country, smuggled out by a benign benefactor. But, as Johnson argues, given the violence of the period and the amount that people stood to gain from their removal, it was more likely that they were murdered. In late medieval England, royal imprisonment could be a death sentence. “Look at what happened to Henry VI: he gets murdered in the Tower. There are other instances of kings who are locked up – Edward II, Richard II – they don’t make it out.” Against that backdrop, the princes’ disappearance looks to be part of a broader trend of royals who were locked away and murdered. But who might have done it? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/GettyImages-520681987-a12d0cc-e1766501084686.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Painted in 1831 by Paul Delaroche, The Young Princes in the Tower imagines Edward V and his younger brother Richard, Duke of York, shortly before their disappearance in 1483. Imprisoned in the Tower of London after their uncle seized the throne as Richard III, the boys became one of England’s most enduring historical mysteries" title="The Young Princes in the Tower, 1831 (1910). Artist: Paul de la Roche" /> Why Margaret Beaufort became a suspect Margaret Beaufort was, by 1483, one of the most powerful women in England. A wealthy and politically astute noblewoman, she was also the mother of Henry Tudor – a distant Lancastrian claimant to the throne who was at that time living in exile, in part due to the risk of violence against him as a rival for the kingship. When Henry defeated Richard III at Bosworth in 1485, Margaret’s influence and prominence grew further. Read more | The Wars of the Roses: the 15th-century clash of kings that heralded the dawn of the Tudor dynasty Her success has encouraged later generations to look back and imagine her as a ruthless architect of events. In some versions of the story, the disappearance of two rival princes becomes a necessary step in clearing the way for her son’s accession. But this image of events isn’t medieval in origin. “No one at the time thought it,” Johnson stresses. “No one suggested the possibility of Margaret’s plotting in any way for [at least another] 150 years. It is essentially a product of fiction.” Instead, the idea emerged much later, shaped by Tudor mythmaking and a persistent suspicion of politically powerful women. Motive, means and opportunity When historians consider who might have been responsible for the princes’ fate, they return to basic questions of motive, means and opportunity. On all three counts, Johnson argues, Margaret Beaufort is an implausible candidate. “The one person who had access and motivation to get rid of these children was the person who was sitting on the throne,” she says. “And that was Richard, as far as I’m concerned.” Indeed, Richard III arguably had the strongest incentive to neutralise his young rival claimants, who would surely have become a growing political problem. Beyond motive, there are question of logistics. The Tower of London was heavily guarded, tightly managed, and central to royal authority. Margaret Beaufort, far from being an anonymous figure, was highly recognisable and closely watched. Read more | Have we finally unmasked the killer of the Princes in the Tower? “There’s no way that some random noblewoman is going to be getting into the Tower,” Johnson says, “or having one of her very recognisable attendants get into the Tower.” Any attempt by her, or on her behalf, to interfere with royal prisoners would almost certainly have been noticed. But none of this means that Margaret Beaufort was politically passive. She was strategically engaged in dynastic manoeuvring, though constrained by limits imposed by her position and visibility. “We have so little information about Margaret’s activities in this period because she’s very careful,” Johnson explains. So why does the accusation endure? Partly because the fate of the princes technically remains unresolved, and partly because Margaret Beaufort’s later success makes her an alluring suspect. But there’s no direct evidence to support that narrative. “There’s nothing to it,” Johnson concludes. Case closed? Lauren Johnson was speaking to Emily Briffett on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
Henry VIII wanted a giant Tudor tomb. So why didn’t he get it?
Henry VIII planned a monumental tomb to match his power and legacy. Instead, the king who reshaped England’s relationship with Rome now lies beneath a small, easily missed slab. Here’s how three Tudor monarchs, and a civil war, erased his grand design
It would be entirely possible to visit St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle and glance over the modest stone slab marking the grave of Henry VIII without noticing it. Its setting might be grand, but the marker itself is startlingly small: which is striking, given that it denotes the resting place of a titanic monarch who dominated the first half of the 16th century of English history with his palaces, pageantry and sweeping religious reforms. How exactly did a king famed for grandeur and excess end up with one of the least conspicuous graves of any English ruler? As historian Kate Williams explains, the anonymity was never Henry’s intention. “Henry VIII wanted a giant tomb in St George's Chapel,” she says, on an episode of her HistoryExtra Academy course. “But he made a big mistake.” It was that mistake that would ultimately ruin his ambitious vision and leave him with the humble gravestone. Henry VIII’s vast funerary vision Henry VIII’s planned tomb was intended to be a memorial that also served as a message. Late medieval and early Tudor monarchs used their tombs to assert legitimacy, commemorate dynastic claims and broadcast their religious identity. Henry VII’s chapel at Westminster, completed in gilded splendour, set a new standard. Henry VIII planned to exceed it. “He wanted a huge tribute with a big bronze effigy of him,” says Williams, “surrounded by pillars and models of angels and saints. It was going to be inside a black marble chapel.” The king saw that as befitting the scale of his ambitions and achievements in life. A tomb on this scale would have functioned as his final statement of royal authority, suitable as the resting place of a monarch who made himself head of the English Church. But the mistake Henry made was that he didn’t complete it during his lifetime. Instead, he trusted his successors to see it through. An unfinished project inherited by unwilling heirs When Henry died in 1547, his tomb was incomplete and enormously expensive. It was a problem that his heirs had little appetite to solve. Edward VI, aged nine, ruled through Protestant councillors who were cutting costs and scaling back on religious symbols. The Catholic-inspired elements of Henry’s design were at odds with the new regime. “Edward VI didn’t continue with the plans for the tomb,” Williams says. “[Edward’s successor] Mary I didn't either.” Mary’s decision was down to more personal reasons. Henry had annulled his marriage to her mother, Catherine of Aragon; their estrangement shaped Mary’s childhood. Honouring her father with a lavish monument held little emotional appeal. Read more | Henry VIII’s six wives: your guide to the Tudor king's queen consorts Then there was the final, and longest-serving Tudor monarch, Elizabeth I. She inherited a financially stretched kingdom. “She took a look into the plans for the tomb and decided against it,” says Williams. The cost was enormous. The political value was negligible. Across a generation, the project moved further from relevance. What Henry imagined as a dynastic centrepiece morphed into a burdensome relic of a former monarch whom no successor wished to resurrect. The Civil War destruction of Henry VIII’s incomplete tomb But that still left the unfinished elements. What happened to these partially completed parts of Henry’s tomb? During the Civil War, royal monuments across England were dismantled as symbols of Stuart kingship and Catholic “idolatry”. Henry’s incomplete bronze effigy (which had never been installed) was seized. “Oliver Cromwell's soldiers melted it down,” Williams says. The destruction reflected widespread Parliamentarian iconoclasm targeting royal and religious imagery with equal fervour. Other elements of the tomb took unexpected journeys. The elaborate sarcophagus originally crafted for Cardinal Wolsey, later claimed by Henry for his own tomb, was eventually repurposed. Today, it stands in the central crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral, protecting the remains of Admiral Horatio Nelson, Britain’s most celebrated naval commander. It's questionable whether any royal monuments have had stranger afterlives. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/GettyImages-55920299-560015d-e1765544375718.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Admiral Nelson’s tomb in the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral is seen here after restoration in 2005. The black marble sarcophagus was originally commissioned in the 16th century for Cardinal Wolsey — and later intended by Henry VIII for his own burial — before being repurposed to honour Britain’s naval hero following his death at Trafalgar in 1805." title="Restoration Of Nelsons Tomb At St Pauls Cathedral" /> Windsor Castle’s modest marker For generations after Henry’s death, his burial remained effectively unmarked. Only in the 1830s did William IV introduce the simple ledger stone seen today. “William IV thought: ‘maybe we should commemorate the fact that Henry VIII is lying there,’ and he made that slab,” Williams says. But even in William IV’s age of revived Gothic splendour, there was no desire to recreate Henry’s original design. “There was no way he was putting in the black marble and the angels and all the rest of it.” Henry VIII imagined a monumental afterlife. Instead, the king who reshaped England’s political and cultural milieu lies beneath a marker smaller than those of many of his courtiers. The reasons speak to the politics of the Tudor succession, the emotional rifts within the royal family, shifting religious priorities and the disruptive violence of the Civil War. No heir shared Henry’s appetite (or financial capacity) for self-commemoration. By the time a monarch did finally choose to mark his grave, the opportunity for grandeur had long passed. “Henry VIII thought that everyone loved him,” says Williams. “It wasn't quite the case.” Kate Williams was speaking on her HistoryExtra Academy series, Royal residences: secrets and scandals. All episodes are available now ad-free on the HistoryExtra app. Start watching today.