But, towards the end of his reign when he was so anxious about the succession, when he was so anxious about what he had unleashed by breaking with Rome, I think there is a menacing tone to many of his actions, to his manipulation of faction.

WOODING: I’m not entirely sure. That’s a very good question, and I ask myself that question quite often. I mean, obviously I think this period is utterly fascinating. But you know, this is what I do for a living, so I would say that. In a world marred by rupture, conflict and argument, Dekker offers an image that may clearly be embellishment, but nonetheless resonates today: one of a people who “never sawe the face of any Prince but her selfe, never understoode what that strange out-landish word Change signified”.I do think one thing that set them apart though, is that even the wealthy in Tudor society quite often had a really powerful sense of social responsibility towards the poor. Something which I think, well, I think perhaps compares favorably with attitudes today. I mean, I’ve always argued that Henry needs to be set in the context of his own time, rather than evaluated according to later categories of what we think Protestant and Catholic might mean. Because in the 1530s and 1540s, everything is still in flux. There is no single Protestant identity. One of the myths that you talk about is, you write that while Henry VIII and Elizabeth usually get all the attention. Henry VII was actually the most effective and impressive Tudor king. So why is he so overlooked?

From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited. I’m Michael Whitmore, the Folger director. Lucy Wooding teaches history at Oxford University and is the author of a biography of Henry VIII. Mary’s reign was eventful, but it also turned out to be short. In 1558, aged just forty-two, she died. This event moved the English nation into a new and uncertain era. Mary’s successor was her younger half-sister Elizabeth. The daughter of Anne Boleyn, there was a great deal of uncertainty about the direction the new queen would take England in. Just one thing was plain. By 1558 the young Elizabeth was known to be clever and single-minded. These were qualities that, over the course of her long reign, would turn out to be crucial. WOODING: Well, because Britain became a Protestant country, because Protestantism became a big part of its identity, we assumed for many years that when Protestantism first arrived in England in the 1520s, that it was enthusiastically welcomed, endorsed by in a great sways of society. We used to think that by 1547, England was already fairly Protestant. The story of the Tudor monarchs is as astounding as it was unexpected, but it was not the only one unfolding between 1485 and 1603. In cities, towns, and villages, families and communities lived their lives through times of great upheaval. In Tudor England: A History, Lucy Wooding lets their voices speak, exploring not just how monarchs ruled but also how men and women thought, wrote, lived, and died.For a woman who had real kind of imagination and determination—it’s not easy to get an education. It’s not easy to express yourself through writing—and yet people did. And the few voices that we hear—I mean, they may be just a few voices, but they’re really quite powerful and eloquent voices. There can never be a definitive history of Tudor England. The debates about religion, government and society still rage unabated as they have done for much of the past 500 years. I suppose, ignoring for a moment the Horrible Histories nature of the period, this is why the reigns of the Tudor monarchs continue to have such a hold over our imagination in a way that the Plantagenets and Stuarts do not. My attention has just been drawn to Lucy Wooding's wonderfully engaged, thoughtful and most generous review of my Selling the Tudor Monarchy. I am most grateful for her succinct summation of some of the most important arguments and lucid presentation of what I was trying to do. I accept the criticisms which are helpful and well worth further reflection. Only on two points would I comment: I think it’s encouraging to see the first two female heads of state. I think, you know, our fascination with Mary and Elizabeth is deserved. They did an extraordinary job against, you know, some obstacles.

BOGAEV: Well, this brings us to the nobility and to kings and queens, and you have a lot to say about all five of them in this period. But maybe we could do a little bit of a romp through royalty, because your book is so compelling in its myth busting. Print has always been associated with the arrival of Protestantism, but actually for the first 50 or more years of the printing press in England, it was churning out great medieval religious classics. So, we began to think again. WOODING: Well, we have to be a little bit careful there because of course we’re still talking about an age in which literacy is limited. But, I think it goes further down society than some people might assume. Quoted in Andy Wood, Faith, Hope and Charity: English neighbourhoods, 1500–1640 (Cambridge, 2020), 55.At the simplest level, then, this book is immensely valuable because of the range of sources it uses, and the connections it makes between them. Plays, poems, prayers and proclamations are set alongside translations, polemics, portraits, coins, seals, processions, masques, progresses, court rituals, funerals, coronations, architecture and a lot more besides. Sharpe also insists that ‘we must consider, as well as statements and objects, silences, spaces and alternatives’. Just to bring all of this together is an achievement in itself. Sharpe’s concern, however, is how to ‘read’ these many and varied images, visual, verbal and ritual. He sees them as ‘dialogues with subjects’, not the simple transmission of statements about authority but a series of exchanges about the nature and validity of that authority. So, yeah, there is a sort of concerted attempt by some of the upper echelons of society to deride Henry VII’s achievements. To deplore his reign and, you know, his style of kingship, which is deeply unfair. This ‘dialogue’ was growing rapidly in scope and intensity during this period. Sharpe notes the proliferation of images, particularly during Elizabeth’s reign, partly encouraged by technological advances in printing or portraiture, partly a response to a growing market economy. He argues for the emergence of a Tudor ‘public sphere’, suggesting that a unique concern with art, spectacle and display gave the early modern era a concern with ‘the theatricalization of regality’ which would be lost after 1688, and not resurface until the Victorian age. Yet this was not a ‘public sphere’ formed in opposition to the state; rather it was an outgrowth from the state. Opposition to a monarch was more likely to appropriate official imagery than destroy or repudiate it. Critics of Henry VIII could take his self-presentation as the Old Testament King David and instead of David’s piety, regality and musicianship read instead a message about his sins, especially his adultery, and the disaster which followed from it. For Sharpe, it was the Henrician Reformation that gave birth to the ‘public sphere’ in England, and in his view ‘we can be in no doubt that Henry VIII and his successors discerned a public sphere which was far removed from the passive subjects discussed by Habermas’. Not so much print and coffee-houses here, as a hugely important oral culture, public debate and participation alongside an emerging ‘consumer culture’. WITMORE: We can’t seem to get enough of the Tudor dynasty in all of its soap opera twists. But to really know the Tudors, you have to look past the famous names and racy plot lines twist.