HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
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: The other prince in the Tower: the tragedy of Edward of Warwick
items: The rise of Henry VII: how a life of cheating death prepared him for the throne as the first Tudor king
items: The power behind the throne: women in the Wars of the Roses
items: History explorer: Tewkesbury Abbey and four more places linked to the Wars of the Roses
items: The Wars of the Roses: the 15th-century clash of kings that heralded the dawn of the Tudor dynasty
items: Richard III: your guide to the last Yorkist king of England
items: Alternate history: what if Richard III had won at Bosworth?
items: 10 things you need to know about the battle of Bosworth
items: Unburied treasures: the 10 greatest discoveries made by the British public

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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The other prince in the Tower: the tragedy of Edward of Warwick
type: item
date: 2024-11-21T15:01:48.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Royal children
subject: Tudor kings and queens
description: The 1499 execution of Edward of Warwick snuffed out the final embers of the Wars of the Roses. Sarah Norton introduces the last male heir to the House of York – and explains why he “had to perish” to secure the crown for Henry VII
encoded: On 28 November 1499, Edward of Warwick – the 24-year-old heir to the House of York – finally left the Tower of London. It was only the third time in 14 years that he’d been outside the infamous Norman fortress – but he wasn’t able to appreciate the moment. He was not striding out towards freedom but instead, flanked by two men, being marched the short distance to Tower Hill, where an executioner waited on a temporary wooden scaffold. Between two and three o’clock in the afternoon, Warwick was beheaded for treason. His execution marked the culmination of years of political instability. For much of the 15th century, England had been embroiled in civil war as the houses of York and Lancaster vied for the throne. After Henry Tudor took the crown from Richard III in 1485, Warwick was taken to the Tower, aged just 10. He was not the first Yorkist prince to meet this fate, of course. His cousins, the better-known princes in the Tower, had been similarly imprisoned here in 1483 – and their subsequent disappearance remains the most infamous cold case in medieval and early modern English history. Listen | All eight episodes of our podcast series, The Princes in the Tower: a Medieval Murder Mystery In comparison, the story of Edward of Warwick has been largely overlooked – perhaps because of the absence of mystery and conspiracy in his tale, which is no less tragic. The “unhappy boy”, as he was called by contemporary Italian scholar and diplomat Polydore Vergil, was one of the longest-standing residents in the Tower’s near-thousand-year history. So how did this third prince come to be in the Tower? To understand, we must go back to the beginning of his tale – because his execution brought to an end a lifetime of tumult. His story reflects the turbulent times through which he lived, when brother fought brother and cousin met cousin in battle. Edward of Warwick: early life in the Wars of the Roses On his birth in February 1475, Warwick was fourth in line to the throne. He was or…

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The rise of Henry VII: how a life of cheating death prepared him for the throne as the first Tudor king
type: item
date: 2024-08-01T08:58:06.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: Tudor kings and queens
description: Want to know why Henry VII is remembered as an intensely suspicious king, wracked by paranoia? The answer, writes Nathen Amin, lies in his death-defying rise to power
encoded: Portraits of Henry VII typically share a few key traits. They depict a man with a lean, strong face, a shock of brown hair escaping from beneath a black cap. A long nose; often the ghost of a smile. And dark, piercing eyes. Watchful? Wary? Suspicious, even? Certainly that’s how history has remembered him: as a king driven to the edge of tyranny by his rampant paranoia, cursed with a debilitating suspicion of those around him that left him isolated and unloved towards the end of his reign. Francis Bacon, writing in the early 17th century, remarked that Henry was “a dark prince, and infinitely suspicious”, who would admit no one “to his power or to his secrets”. There is an element of truth in Bacon’s judgment that Henry became “lost in a wood of suspicions”. Read more | Henry VII: the greatest pretender Henry’s wary nature is typically attributed to his shaky claim to the throne. The first Tudor monarch was unable to escape the taunt that he was a usurper with no right to call himself king. In fact, his renowned paranoia was the inevitable consequence of a traumatic youth – a trait ingrained long before he harboured ambitions to wear a crown. If we delve deeper into Henry’s background, we can draw a fuller picture of one of our most circumspect of monarchs – one that might elicit sympathy for a long misunderstood king. Growing up with the enemy Henry was not born to rule. Indeed, he was born far from the throne, both figuratively and literally. The son of Margaret Beaufort, an English heiress of royal descent, and a half-Welsh, half-French earl named Edmund Tudor, Henry was born in Pembroke Castle on 28 January 1457. It was an inopportune moment to arrive in the world: civil war was brewing between the rival houses of York and Lancaster, remembered today as the Wars of the Roses. Henry was related on both sides of his family tree to the beleaguered Lancastrian king Henry VI, who was both his maternal cousin and his paternal half-uncle. He never knew his father, Edmun…

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The power behind the throne: women in the Wars of the Roses
type: item
date: 2021-11-22T16:55:00.000Z
creator: Sarah Gristwood
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Plantagenet
subject: Tudor
subject: Historical people
description: They masterminded coups, brokered peace deals and may even have led troops into battle. Sarah Gristwood unlocks the stories of the women who shaped one of the bloodiest dynastic clashes in English history
encoded: The events of the middle and late 15th century were, we have always been told, driven by men. It was a story of the battlefields on which kings, dukes and earls fought for control of the country during the Wars of the Roses; a great dynastic confrontation that saw the houses of York and Lancaster battle for control of the English crown from 1455–85. This assumption of male dominance is as automatic as the one that saw Margaret Beaufort ignore her own claim to the throne in favour of her son, Henry Tudor, or as the heiress Anne Neville being passed between Lancaster and York as though she were as insentient as any other piece of property. Yet the actions of the women forged during the Wars of the Roses would, ultimately, prove to matter as much as the battlefields. Referred to as that “great and strong-laboured woman” by Sir John Bocking in 1456, Margaret of Anjou, with her determination to hold onto the reins of power, played a vital part in pushing England into civil war. It was two other women, Margaret Beaufort and Elizabeth Woodville, who brokered the marriage that sealed the peace deal. From Henry VI’s wife to Henry VII’s mother, it was women who acted as midwives to the Tudor dynasty. The women behind the so-called Wars of the Roses were playing a game of thrones. The business of their lives was power; their sons and husbands the currency. The passion and pain of the lives echo through William Shakespeare’s history plays – and yet, those plays apart, most of us know very little about their extraordinary stories. This is due, in part, to the patchy nature of the source material. The sources for this particular period are “notoriously intractable”, as JR Lander, an expert on the Wars of the Roses, put it – and more so for women who fought on no battlefields and passed no laws. The detailed records – and the aristocratic letters you find even from the days of Henry VIII less than 50 years later – are largely absent. What’s more, the years that saw the disappearan…

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History explorer: Tewkesbury Abbey and four more places linked to the Wars of the Roses
type: item
date: 2021-05-13T08:05:49.000Z
creator: Sarah Gristwood
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Plantagenet
subject: Medieval battles
description: As part of a series in which experts nominate British locations to illustrate historical topics, Sarah Gristwood visits Tewkesbury, where the battle for England's crown was fought to the death during the Wars of the Roses
encoded: Historians can’t agree on when – and where – the Wars of the Roses ended. A few would declare it to have been as late as the battle of Stoke Field in 1487, when Henry VII saw off the last Yorkist army to oppose him. The popular vote goes to the battle of Bosworth in 1485, when Henry Tudor defeated Richard III – but by then the nature of this great familial squabble had already changed. It was perhaps the battle of Tewkesbury – which took place 14 years earlier, in 1471 – that saw the conclusion of the conflict that truly pitted York against Lancaster. Certainly, that clash brought to an end the so-called Lancastrian ‘Readeption’ that aimed to restore Henry VI to the throne of England. After the Yorkists seized power in 1461, Edward IV reigned successfully for a decade until, in the autumn of 1470, he was abruptly toppled from his throne. Richard Neville, aka Warwick ‘the Kingmaker’, the powerful Yorkist magnate, had suddenly changed sides and struck an unlikely deal with the exiled Margaret of Anjou, queen to the Lancastrian Henry VI, whom Edward had deposed. In 1470, as Warwick’s armies seized control of England, it was Edward who was force to flee into exile. The feeble Henry VI was nominally returned to his throne, and for six months Warwick controlled the country while Margaret (with her son – another Edward, the Lancastrian Prince of Wales) bided their time across the Channel. They may have waited too long. In the spring of 1471, everything changed again. That March, Edward IV was back, and with a fresh army. On Easter Sunday, 14 April, he met Warwick’s forces at the battle of Barnet, in an encounter in which Warwick was slain. This was the news that greeted Margaret after she landed at Weymouth, causing her to fall to the ground, the chronicles report, “like a woman all dismayed with fear”. But all was not yet lost. While Margaret gathered more troops, her ally Jasper Tudor raised another army in Wales. However, she was separated from him by the river Severn. …

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The Wars of the Roses: the 15th-century clash of kings that heralded the dawn of the Tudor dynasty
type: item
date: 2021-04-14T08:01:00.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
subject: Plantagenet
subject: Family and parenting
subject: Medieval battles
subject: Medieval kings and queens
description: The Wars of the Roses were the civil wars fought between the Yorkist and Lancastrian dynasties in the 15th century. Explore the conflict in full – from its root causes and who's who, through to the realities of civil war in the Middle Ages and 12 unbelievable incidents that occurred during the wars
encoded: Seen as one of the bloodiest episodes in English history, the Wars of the Roses inspired not only the quill of William Shakespeare but also the typewriters and word processors of an army of historical novelists. It was a period that saw the deaths of kings, the extinction of royal dynasties and the brutal slaughter of much of England’s nobility, but they were much more than a simple fight to the death between two royal houses. Explore who fought, what happened and details some of the ambition, heroism, loyalty, treachery, greed and pure self-interest that lay behind this dramatic period of conflict. Jump to each section: What were the Wars of the Roses? Wars of the Roses timeline: the three phases of fighting Who’s who in the Wars of the Roses? Why is it called the Wars of the Roses? When did the Wars of the Roses end? Who won the Wars of the Roses: Lancaster or York? Wars of the Roses facts: 8 realities about the clashes for England’s throne 12 unbelievable incidents in the Wars of the Roses What were the Wars of the Roses? Although popularly seen as a long, dynastic struggle between the houses of Lancaster and York, the Wars of the Roses were in fact three separate wars, each with different causes, fought in the 15th-century. Wars of the Roses timeline: the three phases of fighting Writing for BBC History Revealed, historian and battlefields expert Julian Humphrys recounts the twists and turns in the contest for England's throne... Phase one: the ire of Richard of York The initial conflict was caused by the inadequacies and poor mental health of the Lancastrian Henry VI of England, and the ambitions of Richard of York, great-grandson of Edward III, a leading English magnate who demanded a top role in government. This tense situation was exacerbated by rivalries among the country’s aristocratic families. In May 1455, York and the noble Neville family attacked the royal court at St Albans, killing a number of leading Lancastrian nobles. Conflict broke out again in 1…

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Richard III: your guide to the last Yorkist king of England
type: item
date: 2021-03-11T11:43:17.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
subject: Plantagenet
subject: Medieval battles
subject: Medieval kings and queens
description: Richard III (1452–85) was the last Yorkist king of England, whose death at the battle of Bosworth in 1485 signified the end of the Wars of the Roses and marked the start of the Tudor age. Many myths persist about the last Plantagenet king, whose remains were discovered beneath a Leicester car park in 2012; three years later he was reburied in Leicester Cathedral. We share a comprehensive guide to the much maligned English king…
encoded: In this comprehensive guide to King Richard III, historian Julian Humphrys looks at the life and changing reputation of England's most controversial king, Chris Skidmore shares a timeline of key moments in the life of Richard III – plus there's common myths about the Yorkist king considered by the late historian John Ashdown-Hill… Jump to each section: Richard III's birth and family The princes in the Tower Henry Tudor and the battle of Bosworth Richard III's changing reputation Did Richard III have a hunchback? Uncovering Richard III's remains Timeline: key dates in the life and rule of Richard III Did Richard III aim to marry his niece, Elizabeth of York? Large crowds lined the streets as the coffin containing the remains of Richard III was taken to Leicester Cathedral for reinterment on 26 March 2015. The Archbishop of Canterbury led the service, members of the royal family were present, Queen Elizabeth II herself wrote a message for the order of service, while the Leicester authorities made it clear that Richard was being buried not just with dignity but with honour. For many of those present, Richard was a much-maligned king who was finally getting the respect he deserved. But not everyone saw it that way. Writing in The Guardian, Polly Toynbee bemoaned the fact that Britain "mourned a monster" simply because he had been king. Even today, this controversial monarch continues to divide opinions. Richard III's birth and family Born in 1452 at Fotheringhay, Northamptonshire, Richard was the fourth son of Cecily Neville and Richard of York, whose conflict with the Lancastrian Henry VI was a major cause of the Wars of the Roses. In 1460, Richard's father was killed at the Battle of Wakefield but in 1461, his eldest brother, Edward, defeated the Lancastrians at the battle of Towton. became Edward IV and appointed Richard Duke of Gloucester. Unlike his unreliable sibling, George, Duke of Clarence, whose machinations would see him executed in 1478, Richard appears the …

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Alternate history: what if Richard III had won at Bosworth?
type: item
date: 2021-01-12T15:33:44.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Plantagenet
subject: Tudor
description: Jonny Wilkes talks to Professor Emeritus Michael Hicks about how Richard III might have recovered his reputation, to some extent, and consigned the Tudors to historical obscurity
encoded: Each month BBC History Revealed asks a historical expert for their take on what might have happened if a key moment in the past had turned out differently. This time, Jonny Wilkes talks to Professor Emeritus Michael Hicks about what might had happened had Richard III triumphed over Henry Tudor at the battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 Richard III had a clear advantage going into the battle of Bosworth Field on 22 August 1485. As king of England, he commanded an army two or three times the size of the ragtag Lancastrian force that sailed from France, he had brought more cannon, and he was a seasoned warrior. His enemy, a Lancastrian with a tenuous claim to the throne named Henry Tudor (later Henry VII), had never seen battle. When Richard heard of Henry’s landing, he was overjoyed: he had a chance to crush this pretender once and for all. “With the larger army, substantial ordnance and archery, and a fighting ground of his choosing, Richard was best-placed for a defensive battle,” says Michael Hicks, Professor Emeritus at the University of Winchester and author of Richard III: The Self-Made King (Yale, 2019). “Henry had to attack a strongly entrenched position.” Yet Richard famously lost the day, ending 331 years of Plantagenet rule and ushering in the Tudor dynasty, as key allies failed to join the fray and, in some cases, actually turned on their king and attacked his flank. If the brothers Lord Thomas and Sir William Stanley had stayed loyal to Richard – or if they had heeded the king’s warning that he would execute Thomas’s son if they didn’t fight for him– and if Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, had come to Richard’s aid, then Henry Tudor’s reign might never have begun. Henry gambled everything on achieving a decisive victory with his 5,000-strong army, an uneasy alliance of Lancastrians, disgruntled Yorkists, Bretons, French, Scots and Welsh. The pivotal moment came when Richard, spotting Henry at the rear of the action, led a mounted charge. Breaking through…

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10 things you need to know about the battle of Bosworth
type: item
date: 2020-08-22T02:30:00.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
subject: Plantagenet
subject: Tudor
subject: Family and parenting
subject: Medieval battles
subject: Where history happened
description: The battle of Bosworth, fought on 22 August 1485, was the last significant clash of the Wars of the Roses. The armies of Yorkist king Richard III were defeated by Henry Tudor (later Henry VII), which heralded the end of the Plantagenet dynasty and marked the birth of the Tudor age. Richard III was killed during the brutal battle. But how did Richard III die? Here, Chris Skidmore, author of Bosworth: The Birth of the Tudors, brings you 10 facts about one of the most famous battles in English history
encoded: For many, 22 August 1485 remains one of the key dates in British history. Yet what exactly took place in the early hours of the morning (the battle was over by noon) still remains tantalisingly elusive. So, what are the facts? Many myths surrounding Bosworth remain prevalent – stirred by the imaginings of Shakespeare, whose famous words, “A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse”, placed in the mouth of the defeated Richard III, are occasionally still recounted as part of the narrative description. Despite decades of research into what exactly happened at Bosworth, and where exactly the battle was fought, it seems truth remains inconvenient when it comes to telling a good story. That shouldn't stop anyone knowing the basic facts of one of the most famous battles in English history, however. So for anyone interested in knowing as far as possible 'what happened', here are 10 key things to bear in mind… The battle of Bosworth wasn't actually fought at Bosworth It only became known as the battle of Bosworth from around 25 years after it was fought. Instead, contemporaries knew it as the battle of 'Redemore', meaning place of reeds. Other names for the battle included 'Brownheath' and 'Sandeford'. The site of where the conflict took place has now been located two miles from the battlefield centre, close to the villages of Dadlington and Stoke Golding. The landscape would have been a marshy plainland (later to be drained), across which ran a Roman road. Listen | Historian and politician Chris Skidmore offers his take on pivotal moments such as Richard’s seizing of the throne, his death at Bosworth and the disappearance of the princes in the tower It is hard to imagine the scale of battle Richard III's army, at around 15,000 men, was approximately three times the size of Henry Tudor's army at just 5,000 men. Meanwhile the Stanley brothers (Henry Tudor's step-father, Thomas Lord Stanley, and Sir William Stanley) had around 6,000 men between them. These numbers meant that th…

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Unburied treasures: the 10 greatest discoveries made by the British public
type: item
date: 2020-07-24T11:30:48.000Z
subject: Anglo-Saxon
subject: Bronze Age
subject: Membership
subject: Roman
subject: Viking
subject: Period
subject: Viking Britain
description: From Bronze Age cups to souvenirs from Hadrian’s Wall to coins hidden at the height of the Viking wars, the British public has discovered hundreds of thousands of archaeological finds, many of which have been recorded with the Portable Antiquities Scheme. Now, 23 years after it was found ed, the PAS – run by the British Museum and Amgueddfa Cymru-National Museum Wales – has recorded more than 1.5 million finds. To mark that milestone, we asked six PAS archaeologists to nominate 10 discoveries that they believe have done most to transform our knowledge of the past…
encoded: Compiled by Michael Lewis The Ringlemere Cup gives us the rarest of glimpses of life in Britain more than three millennia ago We know very little about the people who occupied the south-east corner of the British Isles 3,500 years ago. Yet a little light was shone onto this distant world on 4 November 2001, when metal-detectorist Cliff Bradshaw started scanning the fields of Ringlemere Farm, near Sandwich in Kent. What Bradshaw found nestled beneath the surface that day is one of the oldest treasures ever discovered in Britain. It was a Bronze Age gold vessel dated to 1700–1500 BC, and such was its age and rarity (it is one of only two gold Bronze Age cups found in England) that it was acquired by the British Museum. The Ringlemere Cup was originally 11cm high with corrugated sides. I say ‘originally’ because, when Bradshaw discovered the vessel, it was severely misshapen – presumably after being hit by a farmer’s plough. Had Bradshaw not chanced across the object, it might have been lost forever. So what was the cup used for – and by whom? We can only guess. But a clue is provided by the fact that it has a rounded base. This means that the vessel could not stand alone, suggesting it might have had a ritual use – perhaps it was held or passed around, a bit like a modern-day communion vessel. Maybe it was made to carry an alcoholic or herbed drink as part of a ceremony – although that is, of course, firmly in the realms of speculation! What we are more confident of is that the cup was deposited (perhaps ritually) within a barrow in a prehistoric complex that dates back to c2300 BC, but with activity on the site going back even further in time. We also know that the Ringlemere Cup is one of six stylistically similar Bronze Age vessels that have been discovered across Europe – suggesting that, even at this distant point in history, ideas and skills were transmitted across the continent. Yet it is unlikely that the cup itself was created on the continent. Archaeologists…

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