A (3:04)

The wrestlers circle each other carefully, arms outstretched, looking for an opening. Sweat trickles down their foreheads, stinging their eyes. Wrestling is a tough sport at the best of times. Today's an August day in 1413 at Windsor, and the audience assembled to watch the bout includes the new King of England, Henry V. Henry is an absolute wrestling freak. He doesn't have many indulgences, but medieval WWE is one of them. So the pressure and the heat is on. As the wrestlers wheel, clinch, grapple and throw each other to the ground. They're trying to make sure everyone is entertained. Someone else who's invested in a good show is a bloke called Sir John Oldcastle. Oldcastle is an old pal of the king, close enough that he's sitting with him in the crowd. In fact, he's laid on the wrestling and paid for the whole thing. He's done that because he wants his mate Henry to do him a solid. Because here's the thing. Oldcastle is a Lollard, one of those proto Protestant religious reformers we met a couple of episodes ago when John Badby was being burned in a barrel. An Oldcastle's Lollard views have run him into trouble. The bishops have been complaining they want him imprisoned or worse. Now no one sane really wants to get flame grilled like Badby. So John Oldcastle is on a PR drive, like some sort of 15th century Vince McMahon. He's got up this wrestling show and as it goes on, he's gabbing in Henry's ear about his Lollard issues. Except Oldcastle is getting it all wrong. A sensible man might be fessing up to dabbling in dodgy pamphlets and promising to tone it down a bit. Oldcastle is doing the opposite. He's lecturing Henry on how the Lollards are right, the Church needs reform and every friar in England wants beheading. He says he's sure Henry won't mind telling the bishops to let him off. Right? Wrong. As Old Castle witters, Henry suddenly snaps. He takes his eyes off the wrestler about to launch a people's elbow on his opponent and starts furiously berating Oldcastle for his cheek. In fact, he gives him such a dressing down that Oldcastle gets up and legs it. Deciding that he very much can smell what the rock is cooking, he gets his horse, gallops home from Windsor to Cooling Castle in Kent and barricades the door. As he gallops, Oldcastle must be wondering two things. One, was WrestleMania really such a good idea? And two, what in the name of Triple H has happened to the guy he thought was his guy? King Henry V, the all new, no nonsense Plantagenet King of England. I'm Dan Jones and from Sony Music Entertainment. This is history Season 8 of A Dynasty to Die For Episode 5 the Switch Up When I was a kid, a teacher in school played one of the oldest pranks in the book on me. I can't remember what I'd done to deserve it, but I was asked to leave the classroom and run an errand to see if any other teachers along the corridor had something I assumed was a scientific or mathematical learning aid for use in experiments. A long wait. And like the gullible little gimp I was, I did exactly that. From classroom to classroom I went a nervous knock on the door, a squeaky little Excuse me, sir. I've been sent by Mr. Such and Such to ask for a long wait. And a long wait. I got a lot of long waits, in fact, so that by the time I got back to my classroom empty handed, almost an entire lesson had gone by. Because guess what kids, a long wait isn't a maths or science prop. It's oh, he worked it out. Now why am I telling you this story, which apparently serves only to reveal how dumb I was as a kid and how quietly sadistic my teacher was. Well, because I want to remind you what a long wait Henry V has had by the time he becomes king after the death of his father, poor old Henry IV in April 1413, he's 26 years old by the time he gets his hands on the crown. It's been more than 140 years since a legitimate heir to the throne has had to wait that long to become King. Henry has been an active Prince of Wales for an eventful 13 years, and while in many ways the length of his apprenticeship will stand him in incredibly good stead for the demands of kingship, it's also potentially a problem. This is for two reasons. The first is that as Prince Henry has had opinions and policies that clashed with his father's, and he's gathered around him A natural group of allies. Some of them, like Bishop Henry Beaufort, who was his Chancellor when he ran the council for a bit, are useful political partners. Others, like Richard Courtney, the one time Chancellor of Oxford University, Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, or John Oldcastle, the failed wrestling promoter, and Lollard are friends. It's fine for a prince to have a squad. It's his right and his prerogative. For a king, it's not such a good look. And in a country that's still very fragile after the psychodrama of Richard II's reign and deposition, the sniff of a cabal of favorites around the king, an in crowd and an out crowd can quickly spiral into nasty political discontent. The second reason that's a problem is baked into the whole situation of Henry taking the throne in the first place. Because Henry, like his dad, is a Lancastrian. They're members of a branch of the Plantagenet family who weren't supposed to necessarily get the crown. One of the main reasons Henry IV was able to kick Richard off the throne was that behind him he had the Duchy of Lancaster, the biggest private noble land holding in England. But one of the perennial problems Henry IV suffered as king was the obligation to reward loyal servants and landholders from his Lancastrian duchy with fat annual cash payments and access to the rewards of being royal favourites. And I'll pause there and say that in the world of this Is history, there's absolutely nothing wrong with being a royal favourite. In fact, we highly encourage it to Check out our Patreon page if you want to find out just what a great community we've got going on over there. Anyway, when Henry V becomes King in spring 1413, after 13 years of his long wait, all this is on his mind. He gets to be king at last. But he needs to signal loud and clear that things are different now, that from the moment of his coronation, he's a king, not a prince, and a public monarch, not a private Lancastrian lord. And fair play to Henry, he pulls it off. On the day of his coronation, instead of partying with his pals at the customary feast in Westminster palace, he sits stern and austere, not even staggering onto the dance floor to sing Champagne Street Supernova. With his arms around his homeboys at the end of the night, the chroniclers who write about the coronation immediately clock that something's up. It's like he's a new man, they say, a much more severe, businesslike, pious and stern one. And that starting from a base which was fairly severe, businesslike Punishment. Pious and stern to start with. But this is just the opening credits of the reign, because Henry gets right down to work and he shows very smartly just how he intends to put this new, impartial, even handed public kingship into practice. One of his first moves is to bury his father, Henry IV, at Canterbury Cathedral. The service is carried out in June 1413, with no expense spared. Full royal bling and Henry's somewhat estranged brother Thomas in attendance. The two of them now fully reconciled after the old king threatened to make Thomas his heir. To make sure no brothers feel left out, Henry's also planning to make his brother John the Duke of Bedford and Humphrey the Duke of Gloucester. The family is patched up and not long after, the new king does something even smarter. In December 1413, Henry holds a somber parade from King's Langley in Hertfordshire all the way to Westminster Abbey. It's a parade with a coffin, and the coffin contains the body of Richard ii. Richard, his father's cousin and nemesis, was buried at King's Langley because it was an out of the way royal manor. But Richard had wanted to be buried in a tomb he had designed in Westminster, inscribed with a hilariously ott tribute to himself, saying that he was the best thing since blowjobs. And I kid you, not, as wise as Homer. No, that's not Homer Simpson, but the great Greek poet considered the father of the entire corpus of Western literature. No matter. By having Richard reburied, Henry symbolically puts to rest all the divisions lingering from 1399, whilst also cleverly reminding everyone who likes conspiracy, conspiracy theories that yes, Richard is actually dead, he did in fact die. No, he's not living in Scotland with Elvis, Lord Lucan, Tupac and Richie from the Manic Street Preachers. In the meantime, Henry carries on creating his new, even handed version of kingship. He reshuffles the council, bringing back his guy, Bishop Beaufort as Chancellor. But he keeps on the payroll enough of his father's old advisors that there's the feeling of a meritocracy. His next step is going to be to take his New Monarchy on the road. Henry knows that there have been constant complaints about a lack of justice in England. With gangs on the rampage in the Midlands, he wants to uproot the whole of government temporarily and take it to the source of the trouble so that he can personally oversee a new approach to keeping the peace. But before he can do any of that, he spends a few days in the summer of 1413 chilling out at Windsor. And that's when his old pal from his princely days, John Oldcastle shows up with a troupe of wrestlers and a long list of rants about the Lollards. So now I hope you can understand just how badly Old Castle has failed to reach the room in asking for special treatment from the King. When Henry crashes out on Old Castle at the wrestling match, it's 100% Old Castle who's in the wrong. But if you think that Old Castle learns his lesson after the row at Windsor, well, let's just say things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.

B (16:06)

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C (16:37)

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A (17:10)

The guys who kicked down the door of the London Book Illuminator in the summer of 1413 know exactly what they're looking for. This guy has long been suspected of keeping dodgy papers full of Wycliffe heresy, and if it's in there, the door Kicker inners are going to find it. The place is ransacked and all sorts of incriminating materials are taken away, including a big stack of illegal writing which more or less has the words Property of John Oldcastle low down Dirty Lollard stamped on every page. This was how the whole Oldcastle saga got started. Oldcastle didn't deny the papers were his, but he said he hadn't read them. The Bishops complained to Henry, Oldcastle complained to Henry at the wrestling match, and Henry let him know whose side he was on. In August 1413, Oldcastle goes to ground at Cooling Castle, but in September 1413, the Goon squad turns up at his front door demanding that he hands himself over into the custody of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Oldcastle realizes that Archbishop Arendelle, the guy who burned Badby and turned Oxford University into a sanitized intellectual desert in pursuit of heretics, there isn't A man worth goading by resisting arrest. So rather than playing for a siege, he opens up the gates of Cooling Civilly and lets himself be taken away to the Tower of London, where he's going to face trial. Now, given how much trouble Old Castle is currently in, playing nice is probably a wise idea. But as we've already heard, Oldcastle isn't always full of wise ideas. And for every good thought he has stage a royal rumble, get the King on side, he has a very bad one. Make king so mad I have to hide in my house and then get sent to the Tower of London. The pattern continues when Oldcastle goes on trial for heresy in September 1413. To begin with, he presents the court with written testimony explaining that he has some unusual beliefs. Sure, but they're well thought out and not really anything to get worked up over. The problem is, once Arundel and the judges get stuck into this testimony, questioning Oldcastle, he can't help getting shirty. And when I say shirty, I mean he berates the judges, ceaselessly calls them all names, then yells to the audience watching proceedings in court that they must beware the bishops and clerics, because they're leading both you and themselves astray and are taking you down to hell. Oldcastle actually manages to reduce Archbishop Arundel to tears of exasperation, but not of mercy. All he does is to make it crystal clear that he's an unrepentant heretic. Arundel decides he has no choice but to proceed to judgment. He finds Oldcastle guilty. Under English law, the punishment is death by burning. At this point, word reaches King Henry V that his one time pal Oldcastle is in serious trouble. And here comes the first test of his new impartial kingship. If he's really serious, Henry is going to have to agree that that his friend should be burned rather than bend the law of the land to get Oldcastle off the hook. And that's what Henry does. The best he can do for Oldcastle, he says, is to invoke a convention that says condemned heretics should have 40 days to think about whether they really want to be toasted like a marshmallow. That's his lot. It's all that's legal and it's all Old castle deserves. On September 25, 1413, on Henry's orders, Oldcastle is sent to the Tower of London for the prescribed 40 to mull things over. And for a couple of weeks, Oldcastle does some very hard thinking. He thinks and he thinks and he contemplates exactly how unpleasant his death at the stake is likely to be and after 24 days of thinking in this fashion, behind the thick walls of London's premier fortress, John Oldcastle comes to his decision. On the night of October 19, 1413, with the help of two lollards from London, he breaks out of his cell and e.

C (22:11)

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A (22:45)

London in 1413 is, by modern standards, not a big city. Within the square mile of its walls and the sprawl of the suburbs, about 50,000 people live there. That's roughly the size of a crowd at the average Premier League football football match. It's not no. 1, but honestly, how hard can it be to find a man in a city that small? Well, apparently pretty hard, because hidden away in the back rooms of bustling taverns and dark houses that back onto busy market streets and in the crypts of churches where priests sing the mass and tired choir boys doze through early morning services, there are places a man can hide and hope never to be found. That's the underworld that John Oldcastle disappears into once he's somehow busted out of the tower, and once he's vanished into it like a rat up a drainpipe, it proves very hard to find him again. Unless, that is, he wants to be found. And at the end of 1413, Old Castle comes close to surfacing once again. It happens at Christmas time, after a busy first eight months, as King, Henry V is planning to spend the Christmas break at Eltham palace, his father's favorite house a little way down river from London. All three of his brothers are coming, and in a sign that he doesn't have his royal scepter stuck permanently all, all the way up his ass, Henry has placed an order for some of the finest French and Portuguese wines to be laid on for all the guests who are coming. He's also asked his staff to arrange a bit of entertainment in the form of actors known as mummers. Various companies are going to show up to the palace and put on their shows, culminating in a performance on the final night of Christmas January 5th, or Twelfth Night. Which sounds like fun, but for Henry and his brothers, this is a bit of a twitchy time. When they were kids, there was a plot to kill them all at Windsor on January 6, 1400. Fourteen years on, they're a bit more secure, but you never know. And you know why you never know, because you never know. On the morning of January 5, urgent messengers arrive at Eltham palace with words that strike a chill into Henry and his brother's hearts. In London, two Carpenters Lollards have come forward and confessed to knowing about a plot to take down the whole Royal family. The mummers booked to perform that night are actually a group of assassins and kidnappers. They're going to try and kill or snatch Henry and his brothers, after which a large scale rebellion is going to descend on London and start a Lollard revolution. It's about the worst news possible and there can be no doubt whose hand lies behind it. This is Old Castle. Henry swings straight into action. He leaves Eltham and rides to Westminster where security is as tight as it can be. The Mayor of London orders raids on suspected Lollard hotspots, including pubs called the Axe and ironically, the wrestlers on the Hoop. Sheriffs all over England are put on high alert. Informers who are arrested are pumped for intel and the shape of the planned Lollard Rising becomes clear. On January 10, 20,000 lollards are expected to assemble on a patch of land called Ficketts Field, just outside the City of London. If all goes well, they're planning to ransack London's biggest churches and proclaim Oldcastle King of England. But that's a very big if. And on the night of January 9th, Henry, his three brothers and his closest noble allies, the Earls of Warwick and Arundel, ride out with a crack squad of troops from the Royal household and lie in wait on the road to Fickett's Field. They have the gates of London barred shut and roadblocks set up around the city. Then they wait. As they do, a meteor streaks through the night sky. But they don't let it spook them. And soon enough, plodding through the darkness, little groups of Lollards from out of town start to pitch up, looking guilty and trying to figure out where this thicket's Field place is. Some of them even confuse Henry's soldiers for fellow plotters and ask for directions. It's not exactly a difficult job to pick them off and cart them off to jail. When dawn breaks, the rebellion that never was has fizzled out. The unlucky Lollard rebels have been busted and are awaiting jail. And in some Cases execution. The lucky ones slink away to have more illegal thoughts about transubstantiation. In the privacy of their own homes, Henry has come through his first major test without wavering. The only frustration is that John Oldcastle, friend turned enemy who's nicknamed Henry the Prince of Priests, melts away with the bulk of the rebels and disappears once more. If Henry had the luxury of infinite time, he would turn over every stone in the kingdom to run Old Castle to ground. But his experience chasing the slippery Welsh rebel Owain Glyndur in his teens taught him that you may as well waste your energy chasing your own shadow. Oldcastle may come again, or he may not. Henry leaves that one in God's hands. And instead he turns his attention to a far bigger matter than a gobby heretic. Because over in France, word has got around that England has a new king who they don't rate much. In fact, the French have decided that even though they live in a civil war torn hellhole, the time is ripe to start a fight with a little English newbie on the other side of the channel. They start the fight by sending over a gift for Henry that's nothing short of an outright insult. They think this Plantagenet is going to be a walkover. They have no idea what a shower of merde they're about to rain on their own heads. But that's for next time on this is History. Hello again. Now, before you go off to cause bother at some Lollard Rising or other my dear royal favorites, it's time to help me out with a question. If there's ever a subject that's right for having a bit of fun with, then surely it's medieval wrestling. So I want to know, if you were a medieval wrestler, and I'm not saying you're not, what would your name be? What would be your special moves and walk on music? My favorite wrestler as a child was Stone Cold Steve Austin. So you can just call me Stone Cold Dan Jones. And if you don't call me that, I'm going to crack a can of mead on your head. Look out for producer Al's question on patreon@patreon.com thisishistory limu emu and Doug, here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug. Uh, Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us? Cut the camera. They see us. Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty.

B (31:28)

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A (31:28)

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