John Devere, Earl of Oxford, rides along the front line of his troops. He calls out last minute orders, tweaks positions and tries to reassure his men that God is on their side. He looks closely at their faces on the watch for signs of fear. To rally their spirits, Oxford calls out the name of the king Henry VII, the first monarch of the Tudor line. The troops show him their approval. All the same, tired to know how enthusiastic they'll be once the fighting starts. England is a violent place, but no one has ever seen a tear up quite like this. Oxford is 44 years old and the living, breathing definition of a tough cookie baked hard in the furnace of the wars of the roses. His dad and brother were beheaded by the Yorkist king Edward IV for treason, when Oxford was barely out of his teens. Embittered, he fought against the Yorkists in the carnage of the battle of Barnett. He escaped to exile, then returned to command Henry II as troops at the Battle of Bosworth. Today, on June 16, 1487, he's taking up arms again. Against a coalition of rebels, he wants to see the Tudor crown dashed, trashed and smashed forever. To renegade Yorkist lords, the Earl of Lincoln and Lord Lovell, have joined forces with a gang of Irish rebels and German mercenaries. They found themselves a pretender king. He's a lad named Lambert Simnal, who's pretending to be the Earl of Warwick, and now they've crowned him King Edward VI. If that sounds slightly sketchy, well, it is. The rebels are without question a weird bunch. All the same, they're here, armed and dangerous, infields outside Stoke in the West Midlands at the heart of the Tudor realm. The core of their army is 2,000 nasty continental mercenaries known as Landsnecks, who wear brightly coloured uniforms and fight with guns and long sharp pikes. They also have about 4,000 semi-naked Irish soldiers bearing knives, axes and bad intentions. The loyalist troops, Oxford's commanding, outnumber the rebels, but they're facing wild men, fighting for a wild cause. What's more, Henry VII won't come within a mile of the battlefield in case he suffers the same fate as Richard. That doesn't exactly scream confidence. That sort of randomness can turn a sure victory into a coin toss, as Oxford knows all too well. Blasts from the Landsnecks' guns announce that the Battle of Stoke has begun. A drum roll sends the Irish marauders on the charge, screaming their tribal war cry of Kromaboo! Oxford takes a deep breath. He yells again for his front line to stand firm against the first wave of the attack and for his archers to be ready to unleash hell. Then, if he's got any sense, he says a little prayer. The fate of the Tudor dynasty is in his hands. Either Oxford wins today, or England slides back into full-blown anarchy. They're all better hope that God is listening. I'm Dan Jones, and from Sony Music Entertainment, this is History. Season 1 of The Tudors. Episode 3, The Coin Toss. Is God listening to Henry Tudors' prayers? Or is he distracted by a new episode of his favourite history podcast? We're about to find out. But if you want to achieve God-like listener status, why not sign up to become one of my royal favourites on Patreon? You get every episode ad-free, and a week early. You'll also get instant access to this week's bonus episode, where I'll be discussing why Margaret Beaufort was certainly not the mother-in-law you wanted living with you. That's all for you to discover on patreon.com/ This is History. For now, let's get back to Stoke. Hi, it's Bloma Faith. My podcast Mad Sad and Bad is back for season 4. I'm sitting down with some amazing people, including the Tisha Wright. When I'm really fearful of something, I just run towards it. Judy Love. I'm Sullivan. Out of choice. Yeah, that could get you any day. Race Campbell. Here we have Anita, who's a dog-side-kit-how-eddy. Stop barking when I'm-- You said you're too noisy. I'm plenty more. Mad Sad and Bad with me, Paloma Faith. Listen now wherever you get your podcast. Looking to strengthen your health and well-being, tune in to the Dr. Tina Show, one of Apple Podcast's top alternative health shows. I'm Dr. Tina Moore, naturopathic physician and chiropractor, and I cover topics like metabolic health, chronic diseases, pain management, and more, with expert interviews and solo episodes. I keep it no nonsense with a science-backed approach to empower you to improve your health and resilience. New episodes every Thursday, produced by Drake Peterson and Wellness Loud. If you ask me, and you didn't, but you're here, so buckle up anyhow, one of the best films made in the 21st century is The Coen Brothers Masterpiece, "No Country for Old Men." Adapted from the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name, "No Country came out in 2007, and it won four Oscars, including Best Supporting Actor for Javier Bardem." In the movie, Bardem plays a psychopathic killer with an unforgettable, terrible haircut known as Anton Chigger. In one of its most famous scenes, Chigger visits a gas station in Texas and forces a bewildered station clerk to bet his life on the toss of a coin. As the scene builds, he asks the clerk to tell him, "What's the most you ever lost on a coin toss?" And as it slowly begins to dawn on the clerk, that this nutter really is demanding that he stake his mortality on a game of heads or tails, an awful calm descends on the scene. If you haven't watched the movie, well, I recommend you do so immediately, or after enjoying this episode and our bonus episode of This Is History Plus over on Patreon, obviously. Either way, I just want you to know that I think of that movie a lot when I'm writing these podcast episodes. There are so many critical moments in history that seem to come down to single moments of chance in which fate, destiny, character, politics, strategy, and all the rest of it collide and are shaped by the output of a single question. The Battle of Bosworth, in 1485, would put Henry Tudor on the throne was one of those moments. What's not fully appreciated, I think, is that the Battle of Stoke, in 1487, is another. Stoke gets far less attention than Bosworth, but the same weight of English history is hanging on its outcome. The rebel army, a rivet Stoke, determined to wrench the centre of gravity in England back to what remains of the House of York. They intend to install yet another new royal family, backed by Burgundy and the Lords of Ireland, who've been promised that they will become major players in the foreign affairs of the realm once the battle is won. They hold an alternative reality in their minds and for a few bloody hours in their hands. All they have to do is win the coin toss of a battle against a Tudor King who is too cautious even to appear. But then, to bring us back to the beginning, along comes John Devere, Earl of Oxford. Again, Devere is not a famous character in English history, but he probably should be, because it's his leadership at Stoke on June 16th that keeps the Tudor show on the road. Surviving accounts of the battle are patchy, and are drawn up years after the event. But so far as we can tell, the battle begins with a gun volley from the German mercenaries and a charge from the Irishmen. That puts the absolute fear of the Jesus into the English troops and how the few of them take flight and run away from the field screaming that the battle is lost. Mercifully for the Tudor cause, the comrades show a bit more balls and hold the line. After some intense and bloody first wave fighting, Oxford's men start to come to terms with the challenge before them. Oxford uses his longbowman to attack the Irish, whose armour amounts to woolen cloaks and the occasional leather jacket. After about 3 hours of fighting, the Irish have had enough of being slaughtered and legate, at which point the Germans figure, well, there's no point hanging around either. the back all because.
and wrung, with Oxford's men chasingly York is rabble towards the river Trent, which fills up with bodies and runs red with blood. Most of the rebel leaders are either captured or killed. The Earl of Lincoln, a nephew of Edward IV and Richard III, so, with a decent claim to the throne himself, is cut down. So too is the commander of the Irish, the Earl of Kild-Air's brother Thomas Fitzgerald. The leader of the German mercenaries goes down like a sack of cartothel. Lord Lovell, who nearly managed to assassinate Henry Tudor in York the previous year, does the sensible thing and runs away. A long, long way away. In fact, he ends up in Scotland, where he's given safe haven by King James III and later by his successor, James IV. Lovell survives for a good while longer, but he's neutralised as a threat to the Tudors. All that leaves one significant conspirator who took to the field at Stoke. That's the pretender King, Lambert Simnall, aka Edward Earl of Warwick, aka Edward VI. Simnall is still just a land of about ten years old when he goes into battle. We can only imagine what a terrifying experience it must be for him. But then again, his young life has already been pretty weird. Less than two years ago, he was the young son of a tradesman in or near Oxford. But somehow rather, he's been groomed to impersonate an Earl, shipped off to Ireland to be crowned as a king, then hauled back over to England to be paraded around as the antidote to the Tudors. And now, well, he's been thrust into the hellscape of German and Irish and English butchery. It definitely doesn't beat sitting around in the hovel, waiting for someone to invent the PlayStation. Anyway, luckily for Simnall, he isn't killed at the Battle of Stoke. Instead, he's captured by a knight called Robert Bellingham and he's presented as a prisoner to the Tudor Court. Simnall must fear the worst, but he has a major letoff. Rather than being strung up by his bootlaces, he's given a job in the royal kitchens. At first, he's a turn spit, which means sitting, rotating the joints of meat that are roasted in the royal ovens and fireplaces. But eventually, he gets promoted out of the kitchen when he's given a job as a royal falconer. Twenty years after the Battle of Stoke, the writer, Pollydall Virgil, says that Simnall is still alive. Simnall's letoff is pretty generous as an act of mercy from Henry VII, but maybe Henry's feeling sentimental. It wasn't the lad who masterminded the plot for which he was just the figurehead, he got mixed up in a bad business. And in any case, with Stoke I, Henry is able to breathe a little. In fact, he has a little patch and tree planned, a party, to show England that life under the new Tudor Royal family isn't all bloody battles and power struggles, it might even be kind of fun. The medieval aristocracy had many virtues, but dressing subtly wasn't one of them. Some outfits looked less like Lord of the Manor, and more escaped upholstery, which is one reason I like quince. They make the opposite, timeless pieces in premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere and marino wool. I've been wearing one of their soft cashmere sweaters lately, and these 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters start at just $60. Everything at quince is priced 50% to 80% less than similar brands, because they work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. Find your next four favourites at quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Visit free shipping on your order and 365 day returns, now available in Canada and the UK too, and when quince asks where you heard about them, let them know. It was This Is History, it's the best way to support the show. Crowds of Londoners line the banks of the Thames and marvel at the flotilla of beautiful boats that are being rode smartly upriver against the current. It's a late November morning in 1487, and though this is usually a dark, dank time of year, today the city is a riot of colour and celebration. There are dozens of barges on the water. Some carry city dignitaries, the mayor, the older men, members of the city's livery companies. The most eye catching one, which really gets the crowds going as it passes, is decorated with a giant red Welsh dragon. The dragon breathes fire as it goes, the fairly unsuttle metaphor for Henry Tudor's own furious conquest of England two years ago. But if the dragon boat is the most fun, the most valuable cargo is carried on another barge. That's Elizabeth of York, Henry's Queen, who's being rode all the way from the Royal Manorant Rennich to the Tower of London, where she's going to stay the night before her coronation. 21-year-old Elizabeth is in her finest robes, and she's accompanied by a whole posse of other lords and ladies. They include a noblewoman who has oversight on all family matters at the Tudor court. King Henry's mother, Margaret Beaufort. 30-year-old Henry may be the King, but everyone knows that when it comes to matters like this, his mum, wears the trousers. When Elizabeth disembarks at the Tower of London, she goes straight into a new round of crimping and preening. She's got to look the part for her big debut at Westminster. The next day, she hops into a vehicle even more splendid than her barge. That's a golden litter. Think of it like the box of a cable car designed to fit one person, and instead of being lifted from above, it's lifted off the ground by people, kind of like a sleigh. Anyway, Elizabeth is covered on all sides with cloth of gold and carried on poles by a team of knights. The eldest child of King Edward IV sits in this dazzling cabin and is paraded through the streets of London. When she gets to the Palace of Westminster, she rests overnight once more. Only on the third day, which is Sunday the 25th of November, does she finally make it to Westminster Abbey, with a crown is going to be popped on her head. The details of Elizabeth's coronation survive in unusual detail, so we can still imagine today just what a knees-up it is. When she goes into the Abbey, she's wearing purple velvet, with one of her sisters carrying the train of her dress. Noble men puff their chests out and parade with her, holding the queenly regalia, a gold crown studded with pearls and sapphires, a rod made of ivory, a jeweled septer. The Noble men who carries the septer, the Duke of Suffolk, tells anyone who will listen that he's performed the same duty at every coronation for the last 20 years, which either says a lot about him or a lot about the turnover of kings and queens in England lately. But it's not polite to talk of such things, as Elizabeth of York is enjoying her moment in the limelight. Not least, because from a high vantage point in the Abbey, her husband, the King, is watching proceedings from a little hidey hole. Utical says kings can't, or don't, publicly attend the coronation of queens. The Henry wants to keep his eye on things, and so he watches from behind a wooden grill, a company, of course, by his all-seeing mum, Margaret Beaufort. After an impressive amount of bowing and scraping, getting up and sitting down, listening to hymns and anthems, and so on and so on, Elizabeth is finally announced as a fully-fledged queen. And the whole Abbey cheers, then decamps to neighbouring Westminster Palace for a slap-up banquet. For once, it's a completely joyful occasion. Henry Tudor has had a baptism of fire, and he's delayed the coronation of his queen for nearly two years as he's fought those fires. And today, the royal family is starting to really look like one. Maybe this chewed a lot, have a future after all. Certainly, there's a next generation. When Elizabeth is crowned, she's already the mother of a young boy named Arthur. And it won't be too long before the royal nursery starts expanding. a daughter called Margaret will arrive in.
1489, followed by a boy called Henry in 1491, and a girl called Mary in 1496. Several other children will sadly die in infancy. That alas is part of the course in 16th century England, but the birth of so many princes and princesses is good news for the royal family all the same. As one of ten children of Edward IV, Elizabeth knows that a large family isn't the be-all and end-all of dynastic security, but it certainly counts for something. And it also suggests that Elizabeth's marriage with Henry is at the very least functional. One influential 17th century writer, Francis Bacon, will claim that Henry hated Elizabeth, despite marrying her, because he could never shake his dislike of the House of York. Bacon writes that Henry's aversion towards the House of York was so predominant in him as it found place not only in his wars and councils, but in his chamber and bed. In fact, although we don't have a blow-by-blow emotional account of Henry's marriage with Elizabeth, there's very little to suggest that they were after each other with the kitchen pots and pans like Tom and Jerry. That being said, there is evidence that relations between Elizabeth and Henry's ubiquitous mum, Margaret Beaufort, might be a little tense from time to time. Margaret has a seriously unusual status at court. Having been the architect of her son's rise to power, she has no intention of taking a back seat now that he's king. Margaret has the official title of My Lady the King's mother. She's granted the legal status of a femme soul, an independent woman. Feel free to imagine her shaking it like Beyonce and having all the single ladies played barred-core style on loops and flutes every time she enters a room. She also wears the same quality of ropes as Queen Elizabeth, a major signifier of political status in a clothes-obsessed court. It may or may not be the case that Margaret Beaufort is the mastermind behind a deal that makes her the queen be. Elizabeth's mum, Elizabeth Woodville, has been living in relative harmony under the new Tudoré jume ever since the Battle of Bosworth. But in February 1487, right after the coronation, Elizabeth Woodville is abruptly kicked out of court. She has her lands taken away and given to her daughter, the queen. She goes off to live in forced retirement in Bermann, Zabby. Is this Margaret Beaufort's doing? It's not impossible, but it may well be that Henry reasons there can only be so many alpha females at court before things start getting difficult. He has his wife and his mother already occupying roughly equal status. He draws the line at his mother-in-law Elizabeth Woodville too. There is just one more bit of evidence though that things might not be totally hunky-dory between Queen Elizabeth and Margaret Beaufort. That comes from the report of a Spanish diplomat at Henry's court. He writes that Queen Elizabeth is "kept in subjection" by Margaret Beaufort. Another English court flunky goes in much harder, writing that it's impossible to get a word in with the Queen because of "that strong whore the king's mother." Tiddle-tattle? Or is there something nastier brewing shade Tudor? Historians have seen it both ways. But in March 1487, two months after the coronation, the gift lands in the laps of the new Tudor family, which makes all the gossip about squabbling seem unimportant. From 1,000 miles away, comes an offer too good for Henry Tudor to refuse, an offer that will eventually turn the whole history of England's politics and religion upside down. Shack here. What's it like to buy a car from Carvano or 100% online and get it delivered to your door? Let me tell you, your car is here, Mr. Shack. Thank you, Mr. Carvano guy. Can't wait to take it for a spin. Only the best for you, Mr. Shack. Hey, have you always been so big tall and handsome? Not always. I was 6-10 once. Seven days to love it or return it, Mr. Shack. Not that I would. You never do. No, I never do. So buy your car today on Carvano. Delivery fees may apply. See our seven-day return policy at Carvano.com. The Royal Nursery at Farnham Castle south of London in Surrey is a busy place with one important figure at its heart. All day, women bustle around attending to the needs of a very special little boy, Arthur Tudor. An experienced noblewoman called Elizabeth Terrell, who brought up Edward IV's kids, is in charge. When Little R. T. is hungry, a wet nurse called Caroline Gibbons feeds him. When bumpers feel in sleepy, there are two women employed to rock his cradle so that he can get some zeds. Tapestries hang in the chambers, weighed down at their bottom edges with iron bars, so they stay tight to the walls and keep out drafts. When Arthur is out of his cradle, he sleeps in a feather bed, and his spider-man sheets aligned with the expensive fur known as Irmin. His nurses wear white uniforms of satin and velvet. Arthur's grandma, Margaret Beaufort, has a house just down the road at Woking, and she can pop in and check up on him whenever she's in the mood. His dad, King Henry, is a much less frequent visitor. In fact, in the seven years that Arthur spends at phantom castle, Henry only comes four times. But hey, it's a busy job being king, and to make up for it, Henry does what any good absentee father does. He throws money at the problem. He elots 1,000 marks, now depending on who you ask, that's about 200,000 or a million pounds in today's terms. Either way, it's an absolute fortune for the running costs of Arthur's nursery. Get the kid a loaded toys at Christmas, and pay for a shitload of therapy later. That is dad skills 101. But if Henry only pops in to see his number one son occasionally, that doesn't mean he never thinks about him. In fact, as Arthur is stretched out in his furry sheets guzzling wet nurse bazooka, Henry is working flat out on prepping for a future in which Arthur will be the best king Arthur since, well, King Arthur. In part, that means hiring good teachers. Once Arthur is out of diapers, he's introduced to a couple of fellers who will look after his training in kingly pursuits, riding, hunting, fighting, and general crisis management. When the lad is just three years old, he's given the formal title of Prince of Wales, and he's inducted into the order of the garter, the most elite nightly club in the land. Most important of all, King Henry is working on a royal bride. And in March 1487, he reckons he's found one. Because that month, a proposal comes in from the joint rulers of Spain, Isabella I of Castile, and 3rd and the 2nd of Aragon. These two, known as the Catholic Monarchs, have been ruling together over a united Spain since 1479. They have a small brude of children of their own, and the youngest is a girl called Catherine of Aragon. She's just nine months older than Arthur, and the Catholic Monarchs reckon that a wedding between the youngsters would be a great strategic move for the new kingdom of Spain and the slowly recovering war-torn basket case that is England. So that's what they suggest, in a deal first pitched in 1487. It's what you might call a 360-degree contract, not just a marriage, but a fully-fledged international pact, which will put England and Spain in league together against the French. They'll be free trade for English and Spanish merchants, and the two realms will be Inca-Hootes militarily. England will be tied into a foreign war over which Henry VII won't have an awful lot of control, but on the other hand, he'll be mobbed up with the first rank European power. He'll have ballast if he wants to fire up the Hundred Years' War again, and when the wedding goes through between Arthur and Catherine of Aragon, he'll land a dowry of a pool of 200,000 crowns. How much is 200,000 crowns? Listen, if
If you've got to ask, you've never seen the inside of a private jet. Henry Tudor has been blessed with a lot of near misses and unexpected surprise drops of good fortune during his life, but this is up there with a lot of them. He plays it cool to begin with, and eeks out negotiations for month after month, as he tries to extract maximum military advantage from the deal terms. But the fact is, Henry is on to a very good thing indeed, and he knows it. Which is why, in March 1489, he agrees the terms of a pact with Spain known as the Treaty of Medina del Campo. In 1490, the treaty is formally ratified, and with it, his son Arthur is betrothed to Catherine of Aragon. Maybe a good few years before the children are old enough to go through with a wedding. A lot, lot more of that in good time, but right now, it looks as though Henry has landed a properly impressive foreign policy coup. In 1487, he was clinging to his throne by the sheer clenching of his bony buttocks. When Medina del Campo gets over the line three years later, it looks like the sun is shining brightly on the house of Tudor. But here's the thing about brightly shining suns. They don't stay brightly shining forever, and in Henry's case, there's someone who's more than willing to cast a shadow. Once upon a time, before the Tudors shacked up with the king and queen of Spain, England's go-to ally was the Duchy of Burgundy. Things have changed since the Battle of Bozworth. Now, Burgundy is a hotbed of Tudor hate, led by the inveterate schemer Margaret of Burgundy bereaved sister of Edward IV and Richard III. Margaret was a guiding hand in the career of Lambert Simnal, the pretender who was carried into the Battle of Stoke and now spends all his time turning pig carcasses in the royal kitchens. But just because that pretender didn't work out, Margaret of Burgundy has no intention of letting the Tudors off the hook. So Margaret raids the costume department and starts again. In the early 1490s, the court of Burgundy, another bogus king of England, is proclaimed. For long, he's doing the tour of Europe, telling anyone who listen a truly astonishing tale, that one of the princes in the tower survived, and it's him. The kid who's spinning this outlandish line was actually born a Flemish boy called Perkin Warbeck, but now he insists, and Margaret agrees, that he's a Yorkist prince with an absolutely cast iron stake to the English throne. That claim is about to send a torpedo into the hull of the good ship, Henry Tudor. But that's for next time. On this is his throne. OK, look, don't say I didn't warn you. But this Tudor court drama is really rather reminiscent of reality television, like Henry VII watching his wife's coronation behind a secret wooden grill. So that makes me want to ask my dear royal favourites. If you could watch a coronation in secret, how would you disguise yourself? The best answer will receive a signed copy of my book, Lion Arts.
[email protected]/thisishistory. How we made your mother is the how I met your mother rewatch podcast with me, Josh Radner, and series co-creator Craig Thomas. Well our guest today is the great Bob Odin Kirk. I want to tell you, that cast Alison, and Toby, and Neil, and Jason, and you, you were so upbeat and gone how the spirit that you guys had was like, I actually thought it was like,
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