Loading summary
Transcript118 lines
- [00:01]
A
Want to walk the halls of Anne Boleyn's childhood home or explore the castles that made up Henry VIII's English stronghold? With a subscription to History Hit, you can dive into our Tudor past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week covering everything from the ancient world to to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com subscribe hi, I'm Daryna, co founder of Quo.
- [00:37]
B
If you run a business, you know the team that responds first wins the customer.
- [00:41]
A
You've probably opened your phone to a bunch of missed calls and no voicemails. Those are missed opportunities and exactly why we built quo. QUO is the business phone system that helps your team handle every call and text remote right away. Join over 90,000 businesses that win more customers with Quo. Try Quo for free@quo.com business that's Q-U-O.com business have you ever been stuck on a weight loss plateau, trying everything and anything you can to lose that extra weight and reach peak health? We've all been there, but Noom's unlocked a secret to reaching the mountaintop. Go in micro the Noom GLP1 microdose program starts at $99 and is delivered to your door in seven days. Start your microdose GLP1 journey today at Noom.com that's n o o m dot com Noom micro changes big results Noom GLP1 RX program involves healthy diet, exercise and support. Individual results may vary. Meds and personalization based on clinical need. Not reviewed by FDA for safety, efficacy or quality. No affiliation with Novo Nordisk, Inc. The only US source of FDA approved semaglutide not available in all 50 US states.
- [01:49]
C
Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan.
- [01:51]
A
Fellas.
- [01:52]
C
I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.
- [01:57]
B
And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball. But you can call me the Smash Daddy.
- [02:01]
C
And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.
- [02:10]
B
That's right.
- [02:10]
A
Hey.
- [02:10]
B
Hey. So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.
- [02:15]
C
And along the way we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.
- [02:22]
B
News flash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday and you can find Fantasy Fanfellas wherever you get your podcasts.
- [02:34]
A
Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb and welcome to Not Just the Tudors From History Hit the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to samurais, relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. When Richard III of England was hacked down in the mud at the Battle of Bosworth field on 22 August 1485, into the chaos strode Henry Tudor, claiming the crown by right of conquest. But let's be clear, by blood, his claim was wafer thin. He was descended from the Beaufort line, which was illegitimate and formally barred from succession. His title rested less on ancient inheritance than on the sharp edge of a sword and and the loyalty of men who had gambled everything on his victory. But Henry was not the only man or boy or, frankly, person who might have worn the crown. At the time Henry VII seized power, there were 18 Plantagenet descendants with stronger hereditary claims. His reign was consequently defined by the systematic elimination of rivals. What became of Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Warwick, the last undisputed legitimate male heir of the House of York? Or John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, once named heir by Richard III himself? Across the channel, the ambitious Margaret of York schemed tirelessly for her Yorkist kin. Even foreign monarchs, including James IV of Scotland, could trace a thread, however slender, back to the Plantagenet line. Then there were the pretenders. The word meaning playment, not counterfeit. Lambert Simnel, a boy paraded as a lost prince. And Perkin Warbeck, who convinced courts across Europe that he was one of the vanished sons of Edward IV of England. Were they frauds, pawns, the genuine article? Or plausible alternatives in a world desperate for certainty? The truth is that in 1485, England did not breathe a sigh of relief. It held its breath. The wars of the Roses may seem to have ended, but on battlefields, in bloodlines and backrooms, the fight for the throne was only just beginning. Joining me to untangle this web of rival dynasties, suppressed heirs, foreign ambitions and potentially outright imposture is Matt Lewis, co host of our sister podcast, Gone Medieval. Together, we'll ask the provocative question, if not Henry vii, then who was the rightful king of England? And how differently might history have unfolded if someone other than Henry Tudor had seized the crown? I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb, and this is not just the Tudors from history hit. Matt. It's lovely to Talk with you. But I think we should first of all put some cards on the table. You are a former chair of the Ricardian Society. Society. You are a major fan of Richard iii. Would it be fair to say that you do not think that Henry VII had a rightful claim to the throne?
- [05:59]
B
Yeah, I mean, you know, let's get the easy bit out the way first. Richard III in 1485 for me, definitely rightful King of England. I will always concede that Richard doesn't do a great job of being king. Hence the reason he ends up at Bosworth in 1485 facing someone like Henry Tudor who you know, was a bit of a nobody to didn't have the greatest claim to the throne of England. It's sort of Richard's failure that allow Henry to sneak in there.
- [06:23]
A
But Henry VII a bit of a nobody. What then was Henry Tudor's claim?
- [06:27]
B
How did he justify is tenuous in that he is now possibly the last remaining remnant in this diminishing pool of potential rivals to the House of York. There are other claimants within the House of York that we might think about. The house that Richard belongs to. Outside of that, the Lancastrians in the direct male line have been extinct since 1471 when Henry VI and his son, the 17 year old prince of Wales are killed. Henry VI dies in the Tower. Probably killed, his son dies on a battlefield. So there's not really a Lancastrian claimant as such. The nearest there was that was left was perhaps the Duke of Exeter who. Who perhaps ill advisedly goes on the 1475 campaign to invade France with Edward IV and somehow accidentally falls over the side of the ship on the way home. Who knows how that happened? But isn't that convenient for Edward perhaps? Who knows. So by the time we get to 1485, Richard III has become King. He has declared his nephews illegitimate. There is a core of people who absolutely believe that those boys, the princes in the Tower as we remember them, Edward V should have been king. And in no small part this is because throughout Edward IV's reign they have built their entire futures around the idea that Edward V is going to come next. They've built connections to his court in Ludlow where he's training as Prince of Wales to be king. So they've lost an awful lot from Richard coming to the throne. And I often think it's less about whether people agreed with Richard's reasons for doing it or liked Richard or anything like that, more to do with the fact that they're losing an awful lot when they can't get hold of those two boys for whatever reason, I'm sure we'll come back to it.
- [08:10]
A
Let's put it to one side for a second.
- [08:11]
B
We'll set that down for now. What they do alight upon is this figure in exile called Henry Tudor. So he is connected to the royal family. His mother is Margaret Beaufort, and Beaufort is a name that anyone familiar with the period just before the Tudors will recognize. If you're familiar with the Tudors, you'll know Margaret Beaufort, I'm absolutely sure. The Beauforts are descended from John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, who is the third son of Edward iii. So there's the connection to the throne. The Beaufort line is illegitimate, but has been made legitimate by John of Gaunt when he married the matriarch of that line, Catherine Swynford. So he had both Parliament and the Pope declare those children to be legitimate. So they've had that sort of stain of illegitimacy removed. So he does have a viable claim to the throne. He has royal blood in his veins. I think one of the interesting things about Henry is that he has far more French royal blood than he does English. And the French are in a little bit of a crisis at this period, and I think they think they can launch Henry Tudor across the Channel and keep him out of their way for a while. He'll keep Richard busy. I don't think the French expect Henry to succeed at all. But what Henry has managed to do is gather around him all of those disaffected Yorkists, kind of Edwardian Yorkists, we might call them, supporters of Edward IV who can't be reconciled with Richard III's government for whatever reason. And he draws them to him, essentially by promising. In Ream Cathedral on Christmas Day 1483, he promises to marry Elizabeth of York, Edward IV's oldest daughter. And so, as well as this kind of last thin strain of Lancastrian legitimacy that he might be able to offer, he's now drawing in disaffected Yorkists as well. And this makes him actually much more of a threat than he might have appeared to be on paper. And arguably, it's that Yorkist support that propels him to the throne. They are fighting for him at Bosworth and they will make up the bulk of his early government as well. This is a man who's been in exile for half of his 28 years. He doesn't know how to run a kingdom, he doesn't know how to run a government. So he's reliant on People who did that for Edward IV. So Henry VII's government in its early years has a very Yorkist sheen to
- [10:19]
A
it, and I suppose that's one of the ways in which he is shoring up his claim after Bosworth, that he's putting people of authority and experience into key positions, but also people who themselves have connections to the Yorkist line. And one of the things, of course, is marrying Elizabeth as he's promised.
- [10:40]
B
Yeah. And there's lots of discussion and speculation about whether Henry tried to get out of marrying Elizabeth. He takes a little bit of time to do it. I think he's very keen to make the point that he is the king, so he's crowned before he marries Elizabeth, so that he is the king. It's not that he's the Queen's husband. You know, he wants no illusion that somehow Elizabeth is the rightful monarch and he's just there as her consort. But there's lots of speculation about whether he tries to set Elizabeth aside. But I think the fact that that Yorkist core of support is beside him, probably crossing their arms and staring at him and saying, come on, Henry, come on. You know, there is a nudge he's given in Parliament to say, are you going to marry Elizabeth as you promised that you would? I think that makes him realise he kind of has to go through with it at that point to keep that support around him.
- [11:22]
A
Let's think about who else had claims to the throne, and perhaps we ought to start with Elizabeth herself. I mean, why does she not claim her position?
- [11:32]
B
Because we're in that age, I think, where female monarchy is not yet a thing. Elizabeth is the oldest child of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville, but it's her younger brother, Edward, who is always positioned as Prince of Wales and next in line. Women are considered able to transfer a claim so they can pass on a claim during this period, but they're never really positioned as the rightful. I mean, Henry, I tried it with Empress Matilda and it didn't go very well and kind of no one tried it from that point onwards until we get to kind of middle of the 16th century with Jane Grey and then Mary and Elizabeth and you suddenly get hardcore of queens regnant. So Elizabeth is not really in a position to claim the throne for herself in her own right. What she does is claim it as a representative of her father. And I think lots of people would actually have rather seen Elizabeth as queen than Henry as king at that point, because they know Elizabeth, they know what they're going to get. Henry is an unknown Quantity. And so I think they would have probably been more comfortable with Elizabeth. But Henry kind of steams in, gets himself crowned before he's married, and says none of that. Absolutely not.
- [12:37]
A
What is his level of support? You suggested that maybe a lot of people would have backed Elizabeth, and also this idea that actually people are backing him for their own purposes. But, I mean, how much support does he have?
- [12:49]
B
Not a great deal, I think. You know, he seems to make some really close friends during his time in exile in those last few years, as he's building his cause against Richard. And those people are at the heart of his government for the whole of the rest of their lives. You know, they. They begin to die out towards the end of his reign. And you see that actually having an effect on Henry, I think, and changing him alongside, you know, his wife and his oldest son dying. I think all of these things come together to make him feel like he's suddenly really fragile because he knows so much is dependent on the scaffolding that's been arranged around him to prop him up, that he feels exposed when all of that is stripped away from his monarchy. So I don't think he actually has a great deal of support. We've been in a world by 1485 where Lancastrianism hasn't really been a thing for 14 years. There are definitely those who would quite like a change from the Yorkists who don't get on very well with the Yorkist. The Earl of Oxford being a prime example, who leads Henry's army at Bosworth, absolutely cannot be reconciled with the Yorkist government in any color, any format, Edwardian or Ricardian or anything. So there are a few people, but not enough to really propel Henry to the throne. And so I think what he's doing is bringing together anyone who has a grievance. You know, he. He's gathering unhappy people to him and saying, I will change this for you and make this better if you get me back to England and get me on the throne of England. And I think he's acutely aware that almost nobody puts him on the throne in 1485 because they like him, because they really want him, because they believe in him. They put him there because he's the only option.
- [14:27]
A
Who do you think had the strongest claim to the throne then, after Richard III died?
- [14:33]
B
It's an interesting question, because the one problem that Richard has faced, personally and dynastically, is that his only legitimate son has passed away the year before he dies at Bosworth. That's left him really really exposed. So he doesn't have a son who can. Can claim the throne after him. There are really two candidates from within the House of York that stand out. So in the. The direct male line, you've got Edward, Earl of Warwick, who is the son of Richard's older brother, George, Duke of Clarence. The problem for Warwick is that he is barred from the succession by his father's act of Attainder in Parliament. So his father was executed for treason. And the act of Parliament specifically said, you and all of your children are removed from the line of succession. You can't succeed to the throne. I mean, it's only a law. Laws can be changed. It's easy to do. So there is the possibility that he could be put back there. That's an issue for Richard while Richard is alive, because Warwick arguably has a better claim than Richard. So he's got to be careful about legitimizing him while he's still alive and creating a problem for himself. And so the other option, and the one that people seem to turn to more, more fully, although we should also say that Richard never specifically denotes anybody as his heir after his son dies. Kings aren't great at talking about who's going to succeed them very often, although I think Henry VIII actually changes that, that round.
- [15:49]
A
Yes, Henry VIII can't stop talking about it, but he's very specific about who it should be.
- [15:53]
B
Medieval kings never want to talk about what might happen when they die, because that's kind of admitting they're human and they might actually die one day. So Richard never addresses this, but probably John de la Pole, who is one of his nephews in a female line, so is the son of one of his sisters, is the oldest, most senior male of the House of York after Richard. So most people would probably have considered John de la Pole to be his. His heir presumptive, unless Richard had another child, had he lived longer after Bosworth. Against that, you can stack the claim of Edward, Earl of Warwick, albeit that it has a legal problem to get around.
- [16:28]
A
So what happens to Edward, Earl of Warwick under Henry?
- [16:33]
B
I mean, people like to think Richard III is a horrible guy. Edward, Earl of Warwick is someone who is not very well treated by Edward IV. During Richard III's reign, he is sent to be the head of the Council of the North. He's feted by Richard's government. He is being trained to be a senior figure in Richard's government. And in the immediate aftermath of Bosworth, one of Henry's first acts is to send people north to get Elizabeth, who is going to need to marry, but also to recover Edward, Earl of Warwick, who is then thrown in the Tower and spends the 14 years of the rest of his life in prison in the Tower until He's executed in 1449. Henry wheels him out, you know, most famously in 1487 during the. What's remembered as the Lambert Simnel affair, which Henry tells us is a plot centering in Ireland in which some boy from Oxford has been taken over there, crowned as king, pretending to be Edward, Earl of Warwick. And so Henry wheels him out at St. Paul's and says, you know, I've got the real Warwick here. They're just being silly over there, just ignore them. So he becomes this kind of political tool. He's used when he's useful and he's tucked away in the Tower. When he's not, there emerges this idea that he may have had some mental health issues, but that seems to be based around. Solely around one comment from an ambassador who said that he didn't know a goose from a capon, which I think is meant to suggest that he's not very worldly wise. You know, he's quite a naive person. He spent all of his adult years locked in the Tower, presumably not being very well looked after and very well educated.
- [18:01]
A
And actually, I mean, I speak as a vegetarian, but I imagine eating goose and a cap on chicken. Maybe you don't know the difference very well. If you're, you know, that's not. It doesn't necessarily suggest that you're mentally unwell.
- [18:13]
B
No. And it might. Yeah, it might just mean exactly that, you know, he's not been taught the finer things in life. He doesn't have that kind of discerning nature to him that would stand him out as a prince, which. Which I think is what Henry must have wanted. He didn't want this guy to be a viable rival that people might one day look to, to restore the House of York.
- [18:28]
A
It's such a sad story, isn't it, Warwicks?
- [18:31]
B
It is. It's horrible. You know, he's. What is he, nine or ten years old, I think, when Henry comes to the throne, spends 14 years locked in the Tower, kicked about as a political football, gets wrapped up in this idea that he's trying to escape in 1499 and is executed because it's politically convenient for Henry to. To do so at the time, you
- [18:50]
A
know, and Isabel of Castile and Fernando of Aragon, the monarchs of Spain, have a role as well, don't they, supposedly?
- [18:58]
B
So, you know, we're led to believe that the marriage that's been negotiated between Henry's oldest son and heir, Prince Arthur Tudor, and Catherine of Aragon, is due to take place, is the date when Catherine is supposed to travel to England is approaching, and that Ferdinand and Isabella are kind of, you know, concerned that there's these Yorkist people lingering around. You know, what if. If somebody chose to threaten Henry's throne, they don't want that to threaten their daughter's position as well. And so we get the position. By 1499, there are two significant people in the Tower. One of them is Edward, Earl of Warwick, and the other one is the person we call Perkin Warbeck. So there is this concocted plot, I think, that they're going to escape from the Tower of London together. It's foiled before it even happens, which is a great sign that it was probably a big setup and they're both executed. And the understanding is that this is because the Spanish monarchs were keen for Warwick to be out of the way. But if. If you're concerned about who Perkin might really have been, even if it's just a might, you know, he's as much of a concern as Warwick was, because if, if he's the younger of the princes in the Tower, then he doesn't have the same legal barrier to his succession that Warwick has, so, in fact, would be the greater threat. So even if the Spanish monarchs can't be sure who he is, they probably want them both dealt with, really.
- [20:15]
A
There's a letter sent from Pueblo, who's the ambassador, one of the ambassadors from Spain, who writes after the executions that not a drop of doubtful royal blood remains in the kingdom, which allows that marriage to go ahead. But I'm sure you're right that both of them are a threat. Can we just have a little moment of counterfactual what if. How would things have been different if the Earl of Warwick had become king?
- [20:38]
B
It's really hard to know because his problem was always going to be that he lacked any kind of a personal power base. So his father's execution and the stripping of all of their titles in 1478 meant that Warwick was brought up, you know, in the care of King Edward iv, but was never given this kind of personal power base. He wasn't building up lands and titles, he didn't build an affinity around himself, people who would have been loyal to him. So he would always, I think, have represented someone who would have been a puppet to restore the House of York. You know, if anybody felt like Tudor government was beginning to not look Yorkist enough and that Henry was moving away from all of those people who had helped him onto the throne. Then Warwick becomes someone that they could kind of pick up and shove at the front and say, you know, he's the rightful king and we're going to follow him. I mean, we. It's really hard because we get no glimpses of his personality, we get no glimpses of what he's really like, we get no glimpses of what kind of king he might ever have been. I think in that short spell from 1483 to 1485, you can say that his uncle Richard clearly thinks he's capable enough, that one day he will be a major figure in Richard's Yorkist England. But that is. Is ripped away by Henry Tudor's fear of what Warwick represents. So I think we would have ended up with a similar position to Henry Tudor himself. You know, this. This puppet being put up there by everybody else who really wants what they want down here, and it doesn't really matter who's up there as the face of it all. So it's really hard to know because of the situation he's in. We just don't know Warwick at all.
- [22:14]
A
So we've got Warwick in the Tower, we've got Elizabeth of York neutralised by marriage and just by being a woman. And you mentioned John de la Poole. John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln,
- [22:26]
B
can have a fight over Pole or Poole?
- [22:27]
A
Yes. Let's say both are acceptable. Does Henry VII consider him an ally?
- [22:34]
B
Initially, yes. I think he has to be wary. They're a Yorkist family, you know, John's mother is the sister of Edward IV and Richard iii, Elizabeth, the Duchess of Suffolk. Initially, the de la Poles seem to gather around Henry. You know, John's father, the Duke, he gets this nickname, the Trimming Duke, which is suggested, as you know, because he knows how to trim his sails to the prevailing winds. And he's very quickly around Henry Tudor and being like, you know, I'm keen to be a part of this. This looks great. Can I get on board with all of this? John and his dad are attending council meetings and I think you have to imagine that Henry is looking at them through slightly narrowed eyes, but they seem to be making this effort to convince Henry that they're on his side now, that they're not any kind of a threat. And Henry seems to accept that, you know, in a way that he doesn't with Warwick. Warwick goes straight to prison. John de la Pole, the Earl of Lincoln is arguably has a better claim to the Yorkist throne than Warwick does. And yet he's not imprisoned, he's at council meetings, he's being involved in government. So they seem to have done a pretty good job of selling their loyalty to Henry, at least in the early couple of years of his reign.
- [23:41]
A
So what changes?
- [23:43]
B
It's hard to know what causes John to do this, but in 1487, he flees over to the continent and gets wrapped up in that 1487 threat that we call the Lambert Simnel affair. So he goes to Margaret of Burgundy's court. So Margaret is the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy. She is the sister of Edward IV and Richard iii, so she's John's aunt as well. Moves from. From Burgundy up to Ireland, joins up with this army that is preparing invasion, sits in Dublin Cathedral and watches this boy that we're told is Lambert Simnel getting crowned, which that is a moment, you know, for the man who is the rightful Yorkist claimant to sit and watch somebody else being crowned as the New Yorkist King of England and someone that we're told is a random boy from Oxford. That's a moment. That's an important moment, I think. But John, you know, invades with that army. They try to get into the city of York and York's, like, not having any of this, don't want to get involved in this, thank you very much. They turn south and they end up fighting with Henry's forces at the Battle of Stoke in the east Midlands in June 1487. And John is amongst the dead. So he dies fighting for this Yorkist rebellion, this effort to restore Yorkist kingship. And we're told in a couple of the sources that Henry is really annoyed that John's been killed because he thought John was the one who could really explain to him the depth and the breadth of this threat that he was facing. So he had been hoping to talk to Jon and find out what was really going on and finds himself quite miffed that John's been killed in the fighting and can't explain all of this to him. So John never openly claims the throne in his own right, but he does get mixed up in this Yorkish rebellion against Henry that ends up costing him his life.
- [25:23]
A
Whilst we're talking about Poles and Paul's, let's talk about another woman, very important in the Tudor period, Margaret Poole. She becomes sort of a great survivor, actually becomes the Countess of Salisbury in her own right. Would she ever contended for the throne.
- [25:40]
B
She possibly struggles again in the same way that Warwick does, because she's affected by her father's attainder. So she's Warwick's sister, she's George, Duke of Clarence's daughter. And also by the fact that she's a woman during this period too, nobody seems to seriously back Margaret as an option. And Henry, you know, marries her off to one of his distant cousins, who is not a member of the nobility. You know, he's a shyer gentryman, and I think that's a way of neutralising her threat. She's not allowed access to any kind of a power base, any kind of significant marriage that would allow her to create a threat to Henry vii. Although, you know, Henry viii, when he comes to the throne, initially, you know, Henry loved his mum and he's very keen to plug into all of that Yorkish stuff that's been asleep while Henry VII has been very nervous of it. And he's willing to create Margaret Countess of Salisbury, to give her this title that her family used to have and to appear to, you know, set her back up and allow her to take her rightful position as a member of the Yorkist royal family of his mother. And obviously, it's only later on in the reign that Henry begins to view that whole family as a little bit more of a threat and that Margaret, in her own person, you know, in her 60s, pays the ultimate price for the fear that her family have created for Henry.
- [26:55]
A
Yes. I always wonder whether Catherine of Aragon played a role in. In influencing Henry to create Margaret as Countess of Salisbury in her own right. You know, she's a lord, essentially, in her own right, because she was so used to women holding power in Spain. But that's running ahead. So let's talk about a few more possible claimants to the throne. Edmund de la Paul.
- [27:17]
B
Yes. So he is younger brother of John. So with John no longer around, it makes sense that Edmund might be considered the next viable Yorkist claimant. And it's not just Edmund either. There's a William and there's a Richard, so there are several brothers out there. Again, they seem to be reconciled to Tudor government. You know, their father never gets involved in these rebellions. They don't appear to get involved in any of these rebellions, don't appear to court any suspicion or anything like that, which makes it all the more of a shock, I think, that in kind of 1501, 1502, they all of a sudden, around the time that Prince Arthur is dying, in the almost the immediate aftermath of the execution of Perkin Warbeck and the Earl of Warwick, that Edmund and his younger brother Richard flee to the Continent, you know, they get to the Holy Roman Empire, to the. The court of Maximilian, the Holy Roman Emperor, and they begin to call themselves Duke of Suffolk. So the title that Henry hadn't allowed Edmund to inherit from his father when he passed away, he tried to quietly, you know, let's just forget it was ever a dukedom and don't worry about that. He starts to call himself Duke of Suffolk, but he also begins to call himself the White Rose, the White Rose being the badge of the House of York. So he is now openly proclaiming himself as the rightful Yorkist heir to England. This is a direct threat to Henry vii. This couldn't be any clearer. I'm the Yorkist King of England. And they're desperately trying to get support on the continent for this idea that they're going to restore the White Rose. Edmund is really a victim of circumstance. So the Archduke of Burgundy is kind of heading off to Spain to press some of his wife's claims there, gets washed up on the south shore of England by a storm. And Henry's like, come to my court. You're definitely not a prisoner. Let's not call you a prisoner. But, you know, but if you wanted to carry on on your journey, how about you gave me a little something that I want and then I'll let you carry off on your journey? And the thing that Henry wants is Edmund de la Pole. He wants him return to England. And so to get his freedom, Edmund is sent over here as a prisoner. And Edmund ends up a prisoner for the rest of Henry VII's reign in the tower and is eventually executed in 1513 by Henry VIII. And I think it's quite interesting because we get this story that Henry vii in his will, leaves an instruction for his son to execute Edmund. He's excluded from the pardon at the beginning of Henry VIII's reign. And we get this story that Henry VII leaves an instruction for Edmund to be executed and people criticise him for this, for expecting his young son to do something that he wouldn't do himself, he wasn't willing to undertake himself. And I also think it's interesting that Henry chooses the eve of going to France on an expedition there to execute Edmund. It might hint at a little bit of nerves about leaving a Yorkist threat behind him. Points maybe to his own fear and insecurity of his position still. But it's also interesting because in 1415, when Henry V goes off to Agincourt and Henry VIII, wouldn't he just love to be Henry V?
- [30:15]
A
Absolutely wants to be.
- [30:17]
B
He's Kind of modelling this 1513 invasion. And what does Henry V do before he heads off to Agincourt in 1415? Cuts the head off a Yorkist threat in Richard of Connersboro.
- [30:28]
A
So you're saying you think it might just be imitation?
- [30:30]
B
Why keep him in prison for four years into your reign and then suddenly decide on the eve of your invasion of France that you're going to execute a Yorkist heir who's been a prisoner for 10 years?
- [30:40]
A
By this point, I mean, it is absolutely that moment of vulnerability, isn't it, though, when you leave your realm, you leave it behind in this case, in very good hands. But he goes to France, you know, that is the moment if there's a rebellion going to come. And in fact, of course, the Scottish do invade during that period. Everybody can see that that's a vulnerable moment.
- [30:59]
B
He's not wrong that there's a threat, he just doesn't necessarily see where it's going to come from. And I think in these cases, they're very often more than one thing going on, isn't there? You know, if Henry feels he needs to deal with Edmund at this point, it may not have been lost on him that this would be in almost direct imitation of what Henry V did before he went off to what became the glories of Agincourt. So Edmund is executed in 1513. This still leaves his brother Richard on the continent, who now begins to call himself the White Rose and is quite famously remembered as the Last White Rose. Might be a bit of a spoiler, though. And so Richard, you know, begins to ingratiate himself with Francis the First in France, and he's actually killed in 1525. So last, you know, more than 10 years after his brother, he's killed in 1525 at the battle of Pavia, fighting for Francis. You know, Francis is captured, Richard is killed. News gets back to Henry about the battle and he throws a massive party. And again, I have to wonder whether he's more happy that Francis has been caught, which is hilarious. It's great for Henry. You know, this is really funny. The King of France is a prisoner, but actually, is he more happy that Richard is dead? He'd been desperately trying to get his hands on Richard for a decade. By this point, he'd been sending people to try and kidnap him, apprehend him, deal with him, bite him, all sorts of things, and he simply couldn't get his hands on Richard. Richard was viewed as a very charismatic figure, a competent soldier. Although he dies at Pavia, a very real threat to Henry's throne again. So in 1525, there's a reason for Henry to celebrate, because to his mind, that's the last of the threats from that family. So the William that we mentioned, for some reason, when Edmund and Richard go off overseas, they leave William behind, which isn't very fair on William, really, because poor old William cops for all of the suspicion now, and he ends up in prison in the Tower of London and he's a prisoner for 28 years or something like that. He's the longest serving prisoner in the history of the Tower of London. He dies, still imprisoned in the Tower decades later, having tried several times to take his own life in fairly unconvincing ways. But he tried on at least three occasions to take his own life. And again, this speaks to that lingering Tudor fear of Yorkist blood. It's very easy to say that the Tudors saw threats from Yorkists all over the place, and sometimes that's not what's really driving their actions, I don't think. But sometimes you really can see them still being absolutely petrified. You know, why keep William, a junior brother of a junior branch of the family? Why keep him imprisoned for longer than anybody else has been imprisoned at the Tower of London? It can only be because he still represents some kind of a threat in the mind of the Tudors.
- [33:32]
A
That's so interesting. We've looked at the male Yorkist claimants. There are a couple of women as well, aren't there?
- [33:38]
B
There are so. I mean, there's daughters lingering around, particularly daughters of Edward iv. So if Elizabeth of York is a route to legitimacy for Henry vii, then what about all of the other daughters of Edward iv? And they are, you know, all of them live into the 16th century. They are married to most of them, to members of the nobility. You know, you've got Catherine, who is married to the Earl of Devon, the Courtenay Earl of Devon, and their family will go on to be influential in Tudor England. And again, Henry viii, I think, is willing to embrace those kind of people, you know, his cousins and his uncles and things like that, on his mother's side in his early reign. He's very happy to embrace them. It's only much later on that he becomes afraid of them a little bit. Bridget, the youngest, becomes a nun. There's all sorts of women in the family, but none of them ever seem to be particularly singled out. It's hard to know Perkin Warbeck when he lands in England for the last time. When he's caught, he lands in the southwest, possibly to piggyback off a tax rebellion that had been happening there, but he arrives too late for that. But that's also Courtenay country of the sister of the younger of the princes in the tower. Did he feel like he might get some sympathy in that region from his sister or safe passage through? I mean, he doesn't from Catherine's husband. He's one of the people who shuts down and attacks Perkin. But, you know, is that a reason why he's aiming for that territory? Was there a belief that he might get a bit of sympathy from one of the sisters of the princes in the tower? Maybe. So there is still this idea that they, they could be movers, they could be up to something, but they never really seem to fall under any suspicion and they never really press any kind of a claim. So whether they're just very carefully flying under the radar and ensuring that they're never ever seen as a threat in a way that men never never very good at. Foreign. Reports in Unlock the savings at Boost Mobile Get Unlimited Wireless for 25amonth forever
- [35:41]
A
and keep your phone.
- [35:42]
B
It's a veteran move. Unlock the savings@boostmobile.com Unlock 25 forever requires customers to remain active on Boost Mobile Unlimited Wireless plan. For offer details, visit boost mobile.com the longer you stay alive, the longer you can enjoy Boost Mobile's unlimited plan with a price that never goes up. So here are some tips. Do not parallel park on a cliff if you want to enjoy an unlimited plan with a price that never goes up. Do not mistake a wasp nest for a pinata if you want to enjoy an unlimited plan with a price that never goes up. Do not microwave a hard boiled egg if you want to enjoy an unlimited plan with the price that never goes up. Stay alive and enjoy Unlimited Wireless for $25 a month forever. With Boost Mobile, after 30 gigs, customers may experience lower speeds. Customers will pay $25 a month as long as they remain active on the Boost Mobile Unlimited plan.
- [36:21]
C
Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.
- [36:29]
B
And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball but the smash daddy.
- [36:33]
C
And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.
- [36:42]
B
That's right. Hey, hey. So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.
- [36:47]
C
And along the way we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers. And Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.
- [36:54]
B
Newsflash, I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find fantasy fanfellas wherever you get your podcasts.
- [37:02]
A
Thank you for calling the Bombas Comfort line. Bombas make socks, slippers, tees, and underwear made with the highest quality materials. Press 1 for comfort, 2 for style, 3 for donation. You chose Style Bombas Styles for whatever you enjoy. You can run in Bombas, lounge in Bombas, dress them up, dress them down, but always give back in Bombas because with every item purchased, another is donated Bombas Comfort. Worth calling for. Go to bombas.com audio and use code audio for 20% off your first purchase. That's b-bas.com and use code audio. So I say this very gingerly, not trying to make you feel at all
- [37:49]
B
angry, but definitely gripping the arms of my chair.
- [37:52]
A
Yes. And I know we could be here for about a week, so. So let's. Let's just see if I touch this very gently. Can we summarize who the princes in the tower were and how their disappearance paved the way for Henry? Let's start with that.
- [38:06]
B
No, we can't summarize this. Someone locked the door. We're in here for the long haul now.
- [38:10]
A
Oh, God. Tried.
- [38:11]
B
So we've got princes in the tower, two sons of Edward iv, one remembered as Edward V, so he's proclaimed king after their father died. The younger Richard, Duke of York, who is the person that Perkin Warbeck claimed to be. Whether they're a threat or not kind of depends in part on whether they're still alive, because it actually doesn't depend entirely on whether they're even still alive in 1485. So my take is that Richard III doesn't kill his nephews. I don't think he had good enough reason to do that. I think if he did it and kept it quiet, you kind of do it for no good reason. So I think they survived beyond Richard's reign. And I suspect that the Lambert similar affair of 1487 was never about the Earl of Warwick. I think it was about Edward V. And I think there's a strong possibility that Perkin Warbeck really was the younger of the princes in the tower. I can't prove any of that, and that's not really the point, because in the 1490s, nobody could really prove any of that conclusively either. The problem is, for Henry VII, the fact that nobody knows what's happened to Edward IV's sons means that the door is still ajar. They can still be a threat. And it's part of the reason why I would argue if Richard III killed them, he needed everybody to know, because it's the only way you neutralize the threat. And that's really proven in Henry VII's reign. When people aren't sure that they're dead, they're not sure that both or one of them isn't still alive somewhere. Enough that throughout the 1490s, for the best part of a decade, people across Europe are willing to believe that the younger of the princes in the Tower is there and is a threat to Henry vii. Maximilian I, the Holy Roman Emperor, famously champions him, calls him, you know, the rightful king of England. And even after Perkin is captured in England, signs this confession that says he's a fraud, Maximilian is still writing to Henry Tudor and saying, take care of Richard, you know, look after him. Don't be mean to him. So he doesn't kind of give up. Even when Perkin has said, I'm not really Richard. We see at various stages, you know, we see the king of France, the king of Scotland, the king of Denmark kind of join in and recognize him. And there's two sides to that, because definitely they're people who want to cause trouble for Henry, king of France, king of Scotland, always coming out of it, always desperate to cause trouble for the king of England. The spot where I think they would lose out of this is. Is creating this idea that a boy from the streets of Tornai can be plucked up and proclaimed as a rightful king of another country. Because for. For a king of France, for a king of Scotland, for a king of Denmark, for a Holy Roman Emperor to do that damages their own majesty, their own prestige, the. The specialness of their position. And it also creates, at the same time, the risk that someone will do that to them. You create a precedent that you can find somebody who looks vaguely convincing and say that they're a king. I think that any benefit they might have got in being a bit of a nuisance to Henry VII wouldn't be worth the risk that supporting a fraud and imposter would create for them. But whether I'm right or wrong, whether the boys were murdered in 1483 or survived for many years after that, it's the doubt is the problem. For the Tudors, the belief that at least one of them could be alive leads to threats. For Most of Henry VII's reign, it was 1499 before Perkin is executed and done with, and it almost immediate that that sparks the de La Pole brothers heading off into exile. You know, was that because they felt Warwick was the rightful heir and now the path was cleared for them, or was it because they believed Perkin was the younger of the princes in the Tower, who, restored to legitimacy when their sister has married Henry vii, is also restored to a better claim to the throne and possibly still a preferable one to the Tudors because people had built their futures around those two boys.
- [42:03]
A
It's such an interesting question, and one reason why it's so tantalizing is because it's unanswerable. I mean, your point about legitimacy, I think is a good one, that we can see that Richard III was not threatened by George, Duke of Clarence's son, the Earl of Warwick, because he considered him to be unable to take the throne, effectively illegitimate when it came to claiming the throne. So therefore, if he's proclaimed the princes in the Tower illegitimate, that's enough to put them out of the line of succession as far as he's concerned. On the other hand, we don't see them after 1483. That also is quite strange.
- [42:39]
B
Unless Lambert Simnel was Edward V and unless Perky Morbec really was.
- [42:42]
A
Are you persuaded by both of them? And I mean, why does Henry VII deal so leniently with Lambert Simnel, do you think?
- [42:48]
B
I think the boy that is caught on the battlefield at Stoke and is held up and is put to work in the Royal kitchens and you know, we have a record of him working as a falconer in the reign of Henry viii. It's kind of last time he's remembered anywhere. I don't necessarily think that was the boy that was leading the army. You know, we're told in Parliament that this is an 8 year old boy who led the army onto the battlefield. And that's just bizarre. That just doesn't make sense. Pretending to be a 10 year old Edward, Earl of Warwick, you're still not going to follow a boy you think is a 10 year old onto a battlefield. So by this point, Edward V, if he's still alive, would have been 15 and a half years old. He'd have been exactly the same age as the Black Prince was at the Battle of Crecy, exactly the same age as the future Henry V was at the Battle of Shrewsbury. He'd have been almost the same age as his dad was when he launched onto his glittering career in the wars of the Roses. You know, one of the few people to be undefeated on the battlefield in the wars of the Roses, Edward iv. So he's actually the right age to be someone that you might really want to follow rather than an eight year old boy. So if I'm right about this, I accept the if. I accept the if. I know I'm right, but I accept the if. If I'm right about this, I don't know what happens to Edward at Stoke. I don't know whether he's killed, I don't know whether he's captured, I don't know whether he escapes. We do get one source on the continent, Adrian de Brute, who talks about the. The leader of that army being taken through Calais and overseas onto the continent. So there are potential options. But I don't think the Lambert Simnel that is then put to work in the Royal Kitchens was really the boy that was leading that army. I think what Henry does is find himself a patsy, someone to take the fall for it, someone to make a joke out of this. And if he's had, in 1487, if he's had an invasion of his kingdom in the name of a Yorkist threat, whoever that threat really was, he's dealt with it by giving the person an odd name, a common background, making a bit of a joke of it and trying to laugh off the threat. And that works spectacularly in 1487 to the point that people still believe it now. And I think he just rinses and repeats that in the 1490s with.
- [44:49]
A
Wait a second. If we accept this argument that Lambert Simon, the boy in Henry's care after this point, is not Edward, is not the man who was leading or boy who was leading the armies, what then happened to the person who was in this scenario? If you've got Edward V dashing away from the battlefield, why does he go quiet?
- [45:15]
B
Yeah, I mean, that's what I don't know. He might have been killed there along with John de la Pole. You know, is Henry annoyed because he can't get his hands on John and the real person who'd been leading that army is he captured, in which case you're not going to advertise the fact that you've got Edward V in prison, because then everyone will know Edward V's alive and they'll start thinking we might quite like him to be king, actually. And if he's escaped again, you can't say, well, I nearly got my hands on Edward V, but he's escaped and he's out there somewhere to threaten me again. I think this idea that it was always a joke, it was always a bit of a nonsense and it's just this eight year old boy from Oxford is invading England. Just makes it enough of a joke for Henry to get away with it. So what I don't know is if I'm right. What happened to Edward afterwards? Was he. Yes.
- [45:58]
A
Why does he not try and come back?
- [46:00]
B
I mean, maybe he's killed, maybe he's captured and held somewhere. Henry is not averse to holding Yorkist Ayres in prison for a very, very long time. We know that from Warwick's fate.
- [46:10]
A
Now, Perkin Warbeck, there is a much grander attempt to put him on the throne. There are many moments at which there's an attempted invasion. As you say, he gets the support of some really important people in Europe at the time, including people to whom he's related. Although, interestingly, that idea about landing in the southwest, presumably he was hoping if he happened to be Richard, Duke of York, he would have thought his sister might come to his support. And that doesn't happen either. And Elizabeth of York doesn't say anything and there are lots and lots of questions, but I want to put you that he confesses in the end. I know he's confessing in a coerced situation, but looking at the details of the confession that he gives, the level of idiosyncratic detail in that, which speaks to him having a genuine memory of growing up in the streets of Tournai and then traveling across the continent and in his letter to his mother as well. What do you make of those?
- [47:15]
B
So I think the letter to his mum is actually a little bit bizarre in that it's weird detail and it's a weird way to talk to his mum. But the confession is undoubtedly tricky and the most tricky bit of it is his reiteration and confirmation of his confession on the gallows, you know, as he's about to be executed, I strongly suspect. So we have, you know, a source like Bernard Andre tells us that Perkin is beaten black and blue by Henry's servants before he's bought before the King.
- [47:41]
A
He's a blind court poet. Is that Bernard Andre?
- [47:44]
B
Yes, yes. Yeah.
- [47:46]
A
I'm just saying he couldn't have seen it himself.
- [47:47]
B
Absolutely. And the Spanish Ambassador, de Puebla, says that he's disfigured by the time he gets back to London. We have a herald's account that talks about him lacking lustre in his left eye, which might mean that his left eye was the focus of some of this beating. But, you know, I suspect that that confession was something Henry had crafted and put in front of Perkin, that he's had Several years. By this point, we've had the Setabal testimonies in Portugal, which is supposed to be this big investigation into Perkins kind of background, having come from France, northern France, traveled through Portugal before he went to Ireland. But this kind of smacks of finding what Henry wanted it to find. And I suspect that Henry has had enough years to have created this backstory for Perkin of being this boy from the streets of Tornai. A boatman's son from Tornai.
- [48:37]
A
Not a boatman's son. That's not in the. That is not in the confession. It's not a boatman's son. That is a. That's a mistranslation. But certainly someone of some importance from Tornai.
- [48:46]
B
Yeah. But I think Henry has had enough time to gather those details and craft a backstory for Perkin that Perkin is then forced to sign and put his name to. You know, it's what worked with the Lambert Simmel affair. And I think Henry kind of does it again in the 1490s to Perkin Warbeck. But, you know, and the real issue is that Perkin confirms this on the gallows at that moment when he's gonna be executed, when he is facing God and he's facing the Day of Judgment. He says, my confession is true. I am an imposter, and I was never Richard, Duke of York. For me, that is the big hole in my argument, because why would he stand there and do that and imperil his soul if he was lying? And the only explanation that I can offer is that, you know, he. We know he has a wife. There are a couple of sources that talk about his wife, Catherine Gordon, landing in the south of England with a child and potentially pregnant with another one. Was this a way for him to protect his family? I don't know. But undoubtedly, that is a huge problem for the idea that his confession was a lie, that he was willing to stand up on the gallows in the moment before he's about to meet God in judgment and say, I'm an imposter. I'm a fraud.
- [49:55]
A
One thing that I found really interesting is that the idea that the weird name Perkin Warbeck, which would be a great name for a cat, actually comes from, perhaps, at least according to the confession, Pierre Quinne. Like Pierre? Oh, yes. No, that is a much more recognizable name. And Quin, meaning little Peter. So there's some sort of actual derivation from a kind of Netherlandish source.
- [50:21]
B
Yeah, and it is that, you know, I mean, Tornay sits on that. That kind of nexus of Netherlands and France. And there's. There's a whole mush of languages going on there. And it's entirely possible that people get called very different things. And then you try to Anglicise that and you spell it two or three different ways and you can fall into this trap of like, nobody knows what his name is because they're calling him Pierre and Pierre Quinn and Peter Quinn and all these kinds of different things before it ends up being Perkin. But I think that's a bit of a red herring in that people didn't spell things in any kind of standardized way. And if it was a name from Tornai, where you've got all of this melting pot of languages going on, and then you try to Anglicise whatever you think that name is, I think you just fall into a trap of no one spells anybody's name properly.
- [51:05]
A
Yeah. Okay, so let's put that to one side then. Let's think about Margaret of York, also known as Margaret of Burgundy. She plays a role in these sort of attempts to take the throne by the so called pretenders.
- [51:18]
B
She does. And she is, I think, a really, really interesting figure. So she is a sister of Edward IV and Richard iii, actually very close to George and Richard. They're the three youngest surviving children. They grow up together in the nursery at Fotheringay, so I think would have been quite close. Interestingly, she quite often appeals to Edward when he is king for help for Burgundy against France. And Edward is always trying to play this game of, of, you know, balancing his allegiances, never quite openly declaring for either side, which means he never helps his sister. Richard is much more willing to help Margaret, perhaps because of that closeness that they have. There is a moment when Edward refuses to send help and Richard is like, I'll take an army over there when he's still Duke of Gloucester, I'll take an army over there and I'll go and help. And Edward's like, you can't. You can't do that. And when Richard becomes king, we see him building this kind of really offensive alliance against France. He's in contact with Isabella of Castile and she's saying, you know, I'll provide you with 30,000 men and I'll pay for them if you'll attack France with them. And so I think there's an element there of him perhaps finally getting the chance to support his sister. So I think there is this closeness between them that might make it a really good place for Richard to send one or other of the princes in the Tower if they're still alive, maybe. So Margaret might have known what happened to at least one of her nephews, Edward IV's sons, if not both of them. There's lots of interesting things about Margaret. A couple in particular is the reputation that she has in England compared to a reputation on the continent. Henry vii, because of the threat that she poses to him, he paints this picture of her as the diabolical duchess and describes her as the dog that would go back to lick at pools of its own sick. You know, he's desperately trying to portray her as just this vicious, nasty, horrible, horrible woman who just wants to cause trouble for him. If you go anywhere on the continent, Margaret is adored, she's absolutely loved as an effective governor, as a protector of Burgundy, she shelters her stepdaughter from the. The winds of French attentions and all sorts of stuff to keep Burgundy independent for as long as possible. And she is deeply, deeply respected and loved. It's a very different picture to the one that develops of her here in England. And I think the other thing, throughout the the 1480s and 1490s, after Richard III is killed, Margaret is. Is definitely trying to restore the House of York, no doubt about it, but not at any cost, not just to cause trouble for Henry vii. So when she champions the Lambert Simnel affair and when she champions Perkin Warbeck, she's not restoring the House of York unless they're legitimate Yorkist heirs of some description. She's got other nephews who are willing to rebel. John de la pole rebels in 1487. If you're looking for a Yorkist champion, why not make it him? He's a man in his early 20s. There's no doubt about who he is. He's been trained for government. He would make a perfect figurehead. Has probably the best Yorkist claim left in England. If the princes in the Tower are dead, why not back him? Why back this, this imposter? Because she's not really achieving her aim if she does that. Why back Perkin Warbeck when, almost immediately after Perkins death, we see John's two brothers, Edmund and Richard, very happy to head off onto the continent and declare themselves the White Rose and the rightful kings of England? She had other opportunities, other options, who weren't imposters and frauds and weren't someone that people could make a joke of. So I think Margaret, in backing those pretenders, absolutely, she wants to cause trouble for Henry vii. Exactly. Like the King of France and the King of Scotland, she has a motivation to do that. But I think her motivation is to restore the House of York, and she doesn't do that by backing imposters. And I don't think she needs to back imposters, because she has very real options to back legitimate Yorkist heirs to take the throne instead. So what Margaret knew about those imposters is impossible for us to be certain of. Who did you really think Lambert Simnel was? Who did she really think Perkin Warbeck was? We simply don't know. She says she believes Perkin Warbeck was her nephew, Richard, Duke of York. We know less about what she thought about the Lambert Simnel affair. Actually, she doesn't ever really tell us who Lambert was meant to be. So I think Margaret is a really interesting figure in this because, again, wants to cause trouble, but has a very definite aim that isn't fulfilled by backing these imposters. Activecampaign is the marketing automation platform built for big swings and big dreams. Generate ideas in seconds, import your brand, and create full campaigns with simple prompts.
- [56:02]
C
Get started for free@activecampaign.com Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things, Sander.
- [56:14]
B
And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball, but you can call me the Smash Daddy.
- [56:18]
C
And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.
- [56:26]
B
That's right.
- [56:27]
A
Hey.
- [56:27]
B
Hey. So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.
- [56:31]
C
And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.
- [56:39]
B
News flash, I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find Fantasy Fan Fellas wherever you get your podcasts.
- [56:56]
A
Can we talk briefly about some of the foreign claimants with Lancastrian blood at this period of time? I mean, there were a number of people who arguably had a better claim to the throne than Henry vii. But do any of them press their claim?
- [57:14]
B
Interestingly so, before all of this kicks off, we've had a moment where Charles the Bold, the Duke of Burgundy, has fallen out with Edward IV over their invasion of France in 1475. And Charles the Bold, just before he's killed in battle, is making a very powerful effort to leverage his own Lancastrian blood that he's acquired from his mother to position himself as a rival to Edward iv. He's talking about taking Edward's crown at one point. He's recruiting Englishmen into his army with the intention of doing this, but he ends up getting killed in battle. But we see other monarchs doing this. So Maximilian I. One of the potential motivations that you could see for him backing Perkin if he didn't believe that he was the real Richard, Duke of York, is that one of the deals that they strike is that if Perkin is killed in his attempt to take the throne. So one of the interesting things about Maximilian is that he kind of signs this document with Perkin in which Perkin is required to pass his Yorkist claim to the throne to Maximilian, who has his own Lancastrian blood as well. You know, there is Lancastrian blood all over the place at this point. And so Maximilian is very definitely getting something tangible out of backing Perkin in terms of a legitimate potential to claim the throne of England. And that's before you even add in, you know, that all of these claims are coming largely from Spanish blood, from. From mothers. And that's because the Iberian Peninsula, Spain and Portugal is awash with Lancastrian blood at this point. John of Gaunt, at the end of the 14th century had launched this huge campaign into Castile and places like that. And when he'd made peace, he'd married daughters into the Portuguese and Castilian royal families and everything else. So arguably, Catherine of Aragon has more Lancastrian blood and a better claim to the throne of England than her father in law, Henry VII and her husband, Arthur Tudor. So there is, you know, the Tudors always seem to see that Lancastrian blood as much less of a threat than the Yorkist blood that they're really, really concerned about, I think, because Henry is desperately trying to position himself as a Lancastrian heir, as the kind of figurehead for this almost non existent Lancastrian claim to the throne of England. So there is definitely all of this rival Lancastrian blood that might be out there that you don't really see pressing its claim anywhere. You do see Charles the Bold thinking about doing it to Edward IV and challenging him. You do see Maximilian saying, you know, if you're not successful, can I have your claim to the throne of England, please? But he never really does anything with that. So Europe is awash with viable blood to the English crown, but it seems to be the Yorkists in particular that are really drawing the focus of the Tudors.
- [59:55]
A
Let's come to an end and think about how we should reflect on this. And I'll tell you A little story which is that the other day, whenever I go for a walk with my son, he says, tell me some history, Mummy. And so I was trying to start telling him about Edward iv, about Richard iii, about the princes in the Tower, this sort of thing, and I got to the word legitimate, that they'd been declared illegitimate. And he said, what does that mean, Mummy? I mean, born outside of marriage. I didn't know you could have children outside of marriage. And then, of course, we had to go down a bit of a. Bit of a rabbit hole of explaining the birds and the beast. So we never got back to telling the story, which I hope we'll pick up at one point. But it is interesting because one of the things he also said is, I thought the crown just went from one king to their son. This whole question here is about hereditary monarchy and whether actually a crown does pass from a man to his son. Does it make a mockery of that? And what do you think the whole business of Henry VII taking the throne in light of all of these other claimants tells us about being a rightful king or not?
- [61:07]
B
Yeah, I'm jealous that your son asked you to talk about history with him. All my kids are grown up now and they have always spent all of their lives saying, shut up about history.
- [61:14]
A
I'm sure it will come.
- [61:16]
B
One of the really interesting things is that we've been talking here about who was the rightful king, who was the legitimate king, who had the best claim to the throne. And it's kind of. I mean, now everyone's listened to it, we can say it's kind of nonsense, really, isn't it? It doesn't matter. The monarchy today is regulated by statute. You know, we have this whole list of who's where in line to the throne, down to the dozens and hundreds of people that simply didn't exist until very, very recently. Henry VIII is really the first king to start thinking about regulating the line of succession in statute, in parliament.
- [61:48]
A
And that's just so that he can override actually the sort of principle of hereditary monarchy.
- [61:52]
B
Absolutely. And it's only since 1272 that we've had this idea that a son automatically succeeds their father. So Henry III changes the law so that his son Edward I, who is away on crusade when Henry dies, succeeds in the moment that Henry III dies. So that 1272 is the birth of this idea that the king is dead. Long live the king. Before that, you had an interregnum. A king could only be made by a coronation. And so from the death of one king to the coronation of the next. There simply was no king. And that caused all kinds of problems and chaos. So we've seen a kind of gradual effort to deal with that problem, to close that interregnum. But it still leaves us a problem of what happens when a king dies without a son, a Prince of Wales to succeed him as his heir, as Richard iii does in 1485. And to some extent, you know, Edward IV leaves this problem behind him in 1483, too. His son isn't able to smoothly succeed him. So who is the rightful king in that situation? And the simple answer is whoever can make themselves king. And so, as much as I hate to say this, as much as I am going to choke on the words, the bottom line is that in 1485, Henry VII is the rightful king of England because he is the man wearing the crown. However he gets there, he wins it in battle. Doesn't matter when he undergoes a coronation, when he is anointed in Westminster Abbey and that crown is lowered onto his head, he's the only rightful king of England.
- [63:21]
A
You heard it here. You heard Matt Lewis say that Henry VII was the rightful king of England.
- [63:26]
B
AI. Voices can make you say anything nowadays, Susie. It's not me. I didn't say that.
- [63:31]
A
Thank you so much for talking about this with me. It's been such a joy.
- [63:34]
B
Thank you. It's been a great pleasure.
- [63:37]
A
Thank you for listening to this episode of Not Just the Tudors From History Hit. And to my producer, Rob Weinberg, we are always eager to hear from you, including receiving your brilliant ideas for subjects we can cover. So do drop us a line and Not Just the tudors@historyhit.com and I look forward to joining you again for another episode next time on Not Just the Tutors From History Hit.
- [64:10]
C
Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan. Fellas, I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things, Sanderson.
- [64:18]
B
And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball, but you can call me the Smash Daddy.
- [64:22]
C
And we are currently deep Div Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.
- [64:31]
B
That's right. Hey. Hey. So each week, you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.
- [64:36]
C
And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.
- [64:43]
B
News flash, I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find Fantasy fan fellas wherever you get your podcasts. When people want the truth about a product, they don't just search, they go to Reddit. Whether they're debating the best espresso machine or the right B2B software, redditors are there to make a decision. With Reddit ads, you can reach these high intent buyers right where their research is happening. Join the conversation and grow your business@business.Reddit.com Podcasts valid for new Reddit ad accounts only. Only valid once per business. Additional terms apply. See business.Reddit.com for more information.