HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: The official website for BBC History Magazine
date: 2025-10-20T11:36:46.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: 5 things you (probably) didn't know about the Tudors
items: What did the Tudors think was ‘good’ sex? These tips and tricks were key to relationships in the 16th century
items: From fatal foliage to the perils of ploughing: the Tudor calendar of death
items: Tudors in turmoil: deciphering Hans Holbein’s masterwork The Ambassadors
items: Tudor spymaster: the secret machinations of Robert Cecil
items: Explore Hampton Court Palace with Professor Tracy Borman
items: Who was the real Thomas Cromwell? Your guide to Henry VIII's "faithful servant"
items: The Evil May Day Riots of 1517: what happened?
items: Tudor podcast episodes
items: 7 things you (probably) didn't know about Tudor fashion

5 things you (probably) didn't know about the Tudors
type: item
date: 2025-10-20T08:00:29.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: Historical people
subject: Tudor kings and queens
subject: Tudor life
description: Ruth Goodman, who teaches our new HistoryExtra Academy course on Tudor life, shares five insights about the dynasty’s legacy
encoded: 1. The Tudors brought peace and prosperity to England Bringing peace was probably the most important thing the Tudors did for us. The British countryside is littered with the sites of medieval battles – places where opposing forces stomped over crops, burned barns and rounded up people’s sons. For centuries, rival aristocrats made and broke alliances, and killed those who got in their way. Henry Tudor took the throne in exactly this way at Bosworth in 1485, when he persuaded a number of warlords to desert their king, Richard III. But there it stopped. Intrigue and power politics were thenceforth undertaken by more covert means. Everyone became a bit safer, the day-to-day became a bit more predictable, and lots of people got a little bit richer. Less war meant that more crops made it to market, more young men were available for work, and there was less damage done to buildings, less thievery with menaces and safer travel. In turn, this meant more trade and a greater willingness to invest. The peace the Tudors brought to their lands benefited all – rich and poor alike. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/GettyImages-540735906webready-614eaac.jpg" width="5572" height="3714" alt="An engraving shows Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester during the Reformation, presenting an English translation of the Bible to Henry VIII (Image by Getty Images)" title="An engraving shows Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester during the Reformation, presenting an English translation of the Bible to Henry VIII (Image by Getty Images)" /> 2. Henry VIII was a reluctant reformer When the Tudors came to power, the Catholic church was already struggling to maintain its grip upon the minds and souls of Europe. New ideas about the nature of God and the state of Christianity were circulating. So when Henry VIII lost patience with the pope, there were plenty of people delighted by the opportunity to rethink England’s official religious position. Read more | Tudor Eng…

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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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From fatal foliage to the perils of ploughing: the Tudor calendar of death
type: item
date: 2025-07-15T08:00:27.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: Death
subject: Historical people
subject: Tudor life
description: Delving deep into reports of coroners’ inquests from Tudor England, Steven Gunn and Tomasz Gromelski show how accidental deaths reveal the rhythms of work, travel and leisure throughout the year
encoded: January Deadly cold and woodland woes Tudor England languished in the chill grip of a ‘little ice age’, and winters were especially harsh. Decembers were bad enough: in one 1542 blizzard, eight travellers – seven of them women and girls – died on the roads of Herefordshire and Shropshire. January was worse still. Snowstorms in January 1541 wreaked havoc across the Midlands. In Nottinghamshire, William Johnson lost his way heading home from Burton Joyce to his house at Shelford, and perished after falling into an unseen tributary of the Trent. In Derbyshire, three members of the Crabtre family died when their house in Kinder was flattened by a “snowe dryft”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/BAL3294700cmyk-53b87bf.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A man dressed in a green smock and red tights is in the middle of cutting logs with an axe. Around him are other people, including a woman in a blue dress with a baby and another woman bent down on the floor to pick up more logs" title="A man wields an axe in an early 16th-century illustration. Chopping wood in icy conditions was fraught with danger (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> January 1571 claimed victims in East Anglia. Peter Eade, a runaway servant just nine years old, died in snowy Rushford, Norfolk, wandering and hungry. And Robert Kyng, aged 40, fell into a snow-covered “sawyng pytt” in Holton Hall Wood at Stratford St Mary in Suffolk. Many people had to brave such cruel weather to undertake their work, not least felling leafless trees in a season when dormant wood was less likely to crack when cut. William Smale paid the ultimate price when tackling an oak in Bagborough Wood, Somerset in 1513. He cut through it with his axe, but it caught on an ash tree as it fell. To free the oak, Smale hacked three or four times at the ash. It shattered and sent sharp fragments flying at his head, piercing his brain. He died three days later. February Fatal foliage and football Februar…

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Tudors in turmoil: deciphering Hans Holbein’s masterwork The Ambassadors
type: item
date: 2025-06-17T08:00:52.000Z
creator: Tracy Borman
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: Tudor kings and queens
subject: Tudor life
description: Hans Holbein’s masterwork The Ambassadors is an exquisite portrait of two 16th-century diplomats. But it is also crammed with symbols and hidden messages. Tracy Borman deciphers the clues that betray the turbulence of a fateful year
encoded: Europe was teetering on the brink of a major rift. Relations between England and continental powers, always fragile, were at risk of fracturing fatally. Often violent confrontations between the Catholic Church and burgeoning Protestant adherents were spreading like wildfire, and the English king seemed determined to add fuel to those flames. Tensions could scarcely be higher. It was at that moment, in 1533, that Hans Holbein the Younger – the most celebrated court painter of the Tudor age – accepted a commission from a recently arrived visitor to the English court. A portrait would be produced, celebrating the wealth of those depicted. But in its extraordinary details, some more obscure and cryptic than others, the picture also reveals important aspects of the sitters and the tempestuous era in which it was painted. As London’s National Gallery celebrates the reopening of its Sainsbury Wing and a major redisplay of its collection, it seems like an apposite moment to take a fresh look at this masterful painting and the turbulent year that spawned it. In the eye of the storm Henry VIII, king since 1509, had recently defied the pope by setting aside his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, to marry Anne Boleyn, the woman who had captivated him for the previous seven years. This sparked a seismic shift in England’s religious, political and social life that would reverberate down the centuries. Jean de Dinteville, ambassador of Henry VIII’s great rival, Francis I of France, instructed Holbein to capture this extraordinary moment with a portrait of himself and his fellow diplomat Georges de Selve, both of whom were caught in the eye of the gathering storm. The result would become one of the artist’s most celebrated works. Dinteville, then aged 28, was a member of one of the most influential families in France. His first embassy to England had been in 1531, the year when Henry was granted the title of supreme head of the English church. With the king of England now on the verg…

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Tudor spymaster: the secret machinations of Robert Cecil
type: item
date: 2024-10-21T06:30:55.000Z
creator: Rob Attar
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: Tudor life
description: Stephen Alford reveals how Robert Cecil played a vital role in steering late-16th century England through some particularly perilous waters
encoded: Late Tudor England was a dangerous place, with plots both at home and abroad, and no certainty about who was going to succeed the ageing queen, Elizabeth I. Into this perilous world stepped Robert Cecil, a brilliant but unglamorous statesman and spymaster who played a pivotal role in keeping the country together and ensuring a smooth transition to the Stuart monarchy. Professor Stephen Alford speaks to Rob Attar about this unheralded titan of the Tudor and Stuart courts. Stephen Alford is the author of All His Spies: The Secret World of Robert Cecil (Penguin, 2024) Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Waterstones

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Explore Hampton Court Palace with Professor Tracy Borman
type: item
date: 2024-05-14T11:20:37.000Z
subject: Elizabethan
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: HistoryExtra Academy
subject: HistoryExtra Academy Elizabethans course
subject: Tudor kings and queens
subject: Tudor life
description: Professor Tracy Borman and Charlotte Hodgman discuss the life and reign of Elizabeth I at one of the Virgin Queen's most extraordinary royal palaces
encoded: View Green Video on the source website Want to learn more? Why not explore our HistoryExtra Academy course on the Elizabethans, led by Professor Tracy Borman. Free with your subscription to HistoryExtra

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Who was the real Thomas Cromwell? Your guide to Henry VIII's "faithful servant"
type: item
date: 2024-05-02T13:35:28.000Z
creator: Tracy Borman
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: Tudor life
description: How much do you know about Thomas Cromwell? As Henry VIII's chief minister, he became one of the most powerful men in England – but little is known about his origins. Here, historian Tracy Borman answers all the questions you need to know – from his meteoric rise to his spectacular fall from favour…
encoded: What is Thomas Cromwell remembered for? Thomas Cromwell enjoyed a meteoric rise from the son of a Putney blacksmith to the chief minister of Henry VIII. A man of exceptional ability and with an enormous capacity for hard work, he dominated England’s political and religious life for a decade. He ruthlessly dispatched those who stood against him and his royal master, notably his rival Thomas More and Henry’s notorious second wife Anne Boleyn. He also masterminded the seismic religious changes of the 1530s, playing a key role in the split from Rome, the establishment of Henry as ‘Supreme Head’ of a new Church of England, and the dissolution of the monasteries that followed in its wake. When and where was Thomas Cromwell born? The man who would one day become the most powerful in England was of such humble origins that nobody can be sure when or where he was born. The likeliest date for his birth is 1485, which would be appropriate, given it was the year the Tudors seized the throne following the battle of Bosworth. His birthplace is often cited as Putney, which at the time would have been a small village by the river Thames, west of the City of London. What were Thomas Cromwell's origins? Records suggest that Thomas was the youngest of three children – and the only boy – born to Walter Cromwell and his wife Katherine née Meverell. Considerably younger than his sisters, he may have been an unexpected child. In the only recorded reference to his mother, Thomas made the unlikely claim that she was 52 when she bore him. He made the remark during the debate about Henry VIII’s annulment with reference to whether Catherine of Aragon was still capable of bearing a living son. Walter Cromwell was an enterprising if disreputable man with a number of different professions, including blacksmith, fuller (cloth dresser) and cloth merchant. He had ingratiated himself with the new Tudor dynasty by serving as a farrier in the future Henry VII’s contingent at the battle of Bosworth in 1…

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The Evil May Day Riots of 1517: what happened?
type: item
date: 2024-05-01T09:36:05.000Z
creator: Emma Slattery Williams
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: Tudor life
description: In 1517, a mob terrorised the streets of London and took up arms against foreigners. Why did they turn to violence? And what happened in the so-called Evil May Day Riots?
encoded: What were the Evil May Day Riots? The Evil May Day Riots (also known as the Ill May Day Riots) were violent disturbances that took place in London during the evening of 30 April 1517 and early hours of 1 May against foreigners living in the city. It is considered to be one of the earliest race riots in the world and early modern London’s largest outbreak of violence against immigrants. What were relations like between immigrants and the English residents of London beforehand? As a thriving port and international city, London was home to people from many nations, including Italy, the Netherlands and France. The capital’s thriving economy attracted merchants and artisans from all over Europe. It’s thought that around two per cent of early 16th-century London’s population came from overseas. While relations were cordial on the whole, some Londoners complained of being cheated by ‘foreigners’, people they claimed received protection from their nations’ ambassadors, instead of facing the punishments that English citizens would receive. London was also suffering from an economic downturn. The previous winter had been tough, with prices rising and wages decreasing after a difficult harvest, and some blamed foreigners for their troubles. What caused the riots? According to Edward Hall, a lawyer and historian who chronicled English life during these years, a preacher called Dr Bell (or Beal) gave a xenophobic speech in mid-April 1517. Bell, who had been persuaded to give his speech by a broker, John Lincoln, accused immigrants of taking jobs from English workers. Read more | The Gordon Riots: how an anti-Catholic petition escalated into the most destructive riots in London’s history “The aliens and strangers eat the bread from the poor fatherless children, and take the living from all the artificers, and the intercourse from all merchants, whereby poverty is so much increased that every man bewaileth the misery,” said Bell. He declared the land they were on was given by God …

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Tudor podcast episodes
type: item
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: Tudor exploration
subject: Tudor kings and queens
subject: Tudor life
description: Browse our archive of HistoryExtra podcasts on the Tudor period, from ruling monarchs to everyday life...

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7 things you (probably) didn't know about Tudor fashion
type: item
date: 2023-12-26T08:14:39.000Z
subject: Elizabethan
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: Evergreen
subject: HistoryExtra Academy
subject: HistoryExtra Academy Elizabethans course
subject: Tudor life
description: Dr Jane Malcolm-Davies shares a selection of lesser-known tidbits about Tudor clothing – from underwear to headgear
encoded: 1. Fabrics and layering reflected social standing The types of material used in clothing reflected the hierarchy of Tudor society. Linen and wool were worn by all people, with the best types of wool and silk reserved for the wealthiest. In the 16th century, an ordinary woman would wear a kirtle over a linen undergarment called a smock; a wealthy woman might also wear a petticoat. A kirtle comprised top and bottom sections – a slit and laced bodice, incorporating stiff canvas for support, plus a full skirt with a front slit – fitted to each woman’s measurements, with different tailors catering to rich and poor. More affluent women displayed their wealth through layered clothing and underneath such finery as crimson silk petticoats. Men’s underwear took the form of a long shirt and tightly fitted leg coverings known as hose, which was cut on the bias of the fabric to give it elasticity. By the end of the Tudor era, full-leg hose had evolved into knee-length breeches made from leather, wool or silk, depending on the individual’s status and wealth. On the podcast | What did the Tudors wear? 2. The codpiece was the ultimate men's accessory Increasingly popular from the mid-15th century, codflaps and codpieces served a functional purpose by fastening the bias-cut hose and covering the crotch area. Gradually, they evolved into elaborate fashion statements: wealthy men flaunted codpieces adorned with ornate decoration. Although the precise reason for their increasingly extreme protuberance is unknown, codpieces combined function with fashion, catering to both comfort and societal expectations of display. Surviving examples indicate a range of styles, from opulent to extremely simple. The popularity of codpieces ebbed by the late 16th century, but they remain intriguing artefacts, reflecting the interplay of function, culture and style during the Tudor period. Read more | Dandies, fops & macaronis: fashionable men through history 3. Tudors wore conventional garments A Tudor …

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