Renaissance English History Podcast: A Show About the Tudors

Episoder

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  Melancholy, Mutton Candles and Banned Bells: How the Tudors Faced the Dark 01.10.2026 19min

  By All Saints' Day in Tudor London, the sun was down by quarter past four. In the final episode of our autumn series, we find out how the Tudors got ready for the long dark, in their bodies, in their homes, and in their hearts. We start with the health books. Sir Thomas Elyot warned that autumn was "dangerous to all ages, all natures, and all countries," and Andrew Boorde had a whole diet for melancholy people (no red wine, sorry!). Then we light the mutton-fat candles with Thomas Tusser, find out why one doctor thought the smell of apples was dangerous, and hang out the lanterns with London's mayor. And then we come to Hallowtide, when church bells rang all night for the souls of the dead. Henry VIII nearly banned it, Elizabeth's bishops tried for years to stop it, and ordinary people in places like Sandbach and Weaverham kept climbing the tower to ring for the people they'd lost. This is episode 4 of 4 in our series on how the Tudors got ready for autumn. Thank you so much for watching! 🎟 TudorCon From Home, October 23 to 25. We livestream the main room all weekend, and every talk is recorded with audio and slides so you can listen afterward. Every ticket comes with a digital swag bag worth over $100: https://tudorcon.englandcast.com/tudorcon-from-home/ 📬 Get the newsletter: https://www.englandcast.com/newsletter-sign-up/ IMAGE CREDITS Most images are public domain, via Wikimedia Commons and the Internet Archive. The following are used under Creative Commons licenses: Wellcome Collection (CC BY 4.0): Castel of Helth title page; physician with urine flask; Andrew Boorde portraits; Breviary of Helthe title page and woodcut St Mary's, Weaverham: Sue Adair (CC BY-SA 2.0) Church tower at night: Ben Harris (CC BY-SA 2.0) Bellringers' board, Fowey: Rob Farrow (CC BY-SA 2.0) Sunset over fields: Susanne Nilsson (CC BY-SA 2.0) Tallow Chandlers' crest: D M Wilmot (CC BY-SA 2.0) Tallow Chandlers' Hall: Dun.can (CC BY 2.0) Medieval candlestick: Museum of Antiquities, Newcastle (CC BY-SA 4.0) John Stow's monument: Michael Coppins (CC BY-SA 4.0) Office of the Dead: Chester Beatty Library, Dublin (CC BY-SA 4.0) Sanctus bell, Berkswell: Michael Garlick (CC BY-SA 2.0) Bassingbourn church: John Salmon (CC BY-SA 2.0) Sandbach Crosses: Mike Faherty (CC BY-SA 2.0) Bell tower, Pembridge: Sandy Gerrard (CC BY-SA 2.0) Licenses: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 | /by/4.0 | /by-sa/2.0 | /by-sa/4.0 #Tudor #TudorHistory #Halloween #AllSaints #ElizabethI #HenryVIII #EnglishHistory #History Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  From Farm Servant to Queen: How Every Tudor Got Ready for Autumn 30.09.2026 15min

  Every September, all of Tudor England was on the move. In episode 3 of our autumn series, we climb the social ladder one rung at a time, from a seventeen-year-old farm servant looking for next year's job all the way up to Queen Elizabeth watching sea gods row across a lake that was dug just for her. On the way, we find out why quitting your job without a written testimonial could land you in prison in 1563, wander through Stourbridge Fair (one of the biggest fairs in Europe, right outside Cambridge), peek into Sir William Petre's household accounts at Ingatestone, and follow the court to Elvetham in 1591, where the Earl of Hertford built a crescent-shaped lake with a ship-shaped island for a four-day visit. Plus the staggering cost of hosting Elizabeth on progress, and the nobles who tried very hard to get out of it, including one earl who simply wasn't home when she knocked. This is episode 3 of 4 in our series on how the Tudors got ready for autumn. 🎟 TudorCon From Home, October 23 to 25. We livestream the main room all weekend, and every talk is recorded with audio and slides so you can listen afterward. Every ticket comes with a digital swag bag worth over $100: https://tudorcon.englandcast.com/tudorcon-from-home/ 📬 Get the newsletter: https://www.englandcast.com/newsletter-sign-up/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  Thomas Tusser's Tudor To-Do List for Autumn (Written Entirely in Rhyme) 29.09.2026 19min

  The harvest is in. Now what? In episode 2 of our autumn series, we head out into the Tudor village with the best guide I could possibly have found: Thomas Tusser, a former choirboy and court musician who walked away from court, became a Suffolk farmer, and wrote an entire farming manual in rhyme. We crash a harvest home celebration spotted near Windsor by a German traveller in 1598, follow the gleaners into the stubble and the pigs into the woods, and find out why "mast fats up swine, mast kills up kine." Then we spend time with the Tudor farmer's wife, who was winnowing corn, making malt, driving the plough, selling geese at market, and keeping the accounts. And there's a 1523 farming manual that tells husbands and wives to show each other their receipts! This is episode 2 of 4 in our series on how the Tudors got ready for autumn. If you missed Michaelmas, start there. There's a goose in it. 🎟 TudorCon From Home, October 23 to 25. We livestream the main room all weekend, and every talk is recorded with audio and slides so you can listen afterward. Every ticket comes with a digital swag bag worth over $100. Sign up by September 30th to join the Privy Council and get the bonuses, including the Spooky Halloween Walk through London: https://tudorcon.englandcast.com/tudorcon-from-home/ 📬 Get the newsletter: https://www.englandcast.com/newsletter-sign-up/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  Why Tudor Tenants Brought Their Landlord a Goose (Michaelmas Explained) 28.09.2026 18min

  September 29th was one of the biggest days of the Tudor year, and most of us have never heard of it. Michaelmas, the feast of St Michael and All Angels, was when rent came due, farm servants' contracts ran out, London chose its Lord Mayor, and the lawyers and students all headed back to town. It was also goose day, and the reason tenants turned up at the landlord's door with a goose under their arm is funnier (and a little sadder) than you'd think. This is episode 1 of a four-part series on how the Tudors got ready for autumn. In this one: 🪽 Who St Michael was, and why he's weighing souls in English church doom paintings🌧 The Wenhaston Doom, hidden under whitewash for 300 years until a rainstorm in 1892 🪿 George Gascoigne's poem about tenants buttering up their landlords "for fear their lease fly loose" 🏴‍☠️ Busting the myth that Elizabeth I started the Michaelmas goose after the Armada 📜 Why the British tax year still starts on April 6th, thanks to an old quarter day 🎟 TudorCon From Home, October 23 to 25. We livestream the main room all weekend, and every talk is recorded with audio and slides so you can catch up afterward. Every ticket comes with a digital swag bag worth over $100. Sign up by September 30th to join the Privy Council and get the bonuses, including the Spooky Halloween Walk through London: https://tudorcon.englandcast.com/tudorcon-from-home Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  The Peasants' Revolt Was Crushed. So Why Did England Never Tax Like That Again? 25.09.2026 22min

  The rebellion is over in three weeks. Wat Tyler is dead, the charters are revoked, John Ball is executed, and by every measure that historians usually use, the Peasants' Revolt failed completely. Except that the tax that started it was never levied again in the same way for a hundred and thirty two years. The next general poll tax in England comes in 1513, under Henry VIII, and even then the government moved carefully. For four generations, the memory of 1381 sat in the room every time Parliament talked about taxing ordinary people. In this final part of the series we go to Smithfield on the 15th of June, 1381, and work out what actually happened between Wat Tyler and the fourteen year old king. Then we follow Richard II to Waltham, where the chronicler Thomas Walsingham puts a speech in his mouth that is quoted in almost every book on the revolt, and which one of the best modern historians of 1381 thinks was made up. We go through the reprisals in Essex, Hertfordshire and Norfolk, and then we ask the question the whole series has been building toward. They lost. Did they also win? Serfdom in England is not abolished by an act of Parliament. It drains away. And in 1574, Elizabeth I signs a commission to free the last serfs on the crown estates, which tells you both that villeinage had almost disappeared and that it had not quite. 📅 TudorCon From Home, October 23 to 25: join the Privy Council by September 30 for bonus game nights, early community access, the Spooky Halloween Walk through London audio tour, and 25% off with code PRIVYCOUNCIL. 👉 https://tudorcon.englandcast.com/tudorcon-from-home/ FREE WEEKLY NEWSLETTER Tudor and medieval history in your inbox every week, plus the three history stories that caught my eye. https://www.englandcast.com/newsletter-sign-up/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  The Day the Rebels Walked Into the Tower of London | Peasants' Revolt Part 3 23.09.2026 20min

  In two weeks in June 1381, English peasants drove a Chief Justice out of Essex, took Rochester Castle, walked into Canterbury Cathedral, camped outside London, burned the richest palace in the country, and then walked into the Tower of London and beheaded the Archbishop of Canterbury. And a fourteen-year-old king rode out to meet them and said yes to everything they asked for. This is Part 3 of my series on the Peasants' Revolt, told day by day, from Brentwood on 30 May to the night of 14 June with the rebels holding London. We cover Wat Tyler, who has no history at all before that month, John Ball's sermon at Blackheath, the manor court rolls they burned everywhere they went, the Flemish weavers murdered in the streets, and Johanna Ferrour, the woman the court records name as a leader of the attack on the Tower. ▶️ Part 1: https://youtu.be/bl5z1blEY-Y | Part 2: https://youtu.be/AT5AWrkIBVE 🔔 Subscribe for Part 4, the aftermath, which is where this story really gets you. ✈️ This episode is sponsored by Context Travel, who run small group and private tours led by scholars and local experts. I took their Hampton Court tour this summer, and my video about it is here: https://youtu.be/V9iXh7Eask4. Book a tour: https://www.contexttravel.com/ 📬 My weekly newsletter: https://www.englandcast.com/newsletter-sign-up/ 📅 TudorCon From Home, October 23 to 25: join the Privy Council by September 30 for bonus game nights, early community access, the Spooky Halloween Walk through London audio tour, and 25% off with code PRIVYCOUNCIL. 👉 https://tudorcon.englandcast.com/tudorcon-from-home/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  Where Did All the Women Go? The Tax That Started the Peasants' Revolt | Part 2 22.09.2026 24min

  In 1377, England counted about 1,355,000 adults for a new poll tax. In 1381 it counted again and found about 896,000. There was no great plague, no famine and no invasion. So where did a third of the country go? They were at home. Village after village sent in tax lists with far more men than women, because families had simply stopped telling the government their daughters, sisters and widowed mothers existed. In Part 2 of my series on the Peasants' Revolt, I look at the 30 years that pushed England to breaking point. We cover the labour laws that fined workers to lower their bosses' taxes, a law telling ploughmen what they could wear, villagers who paid for copies of the Domesday Book to prove they were free, a ten-year-old king, and a poll tax that charged the poorest family the same per head as the richest. It all ends at Brentwood on 30 May 1381, when the people of Fobbing threw the tax commissioner out of town. 📅 TudorCon From Home, October 23 to 25: join the Privy Council by September 30 for bonus game nights, early community access, the Spooky Halloween Walk through London audio tour, and 25% off with code PRIVYCOUNCIL. 👉 https://tudorcon.englandcast.com/tudorcon-from-home/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  How Rain, Dead Cows and the Black Death Started the Peasants' Revolt 21.09.2026 25min

  In June 1381, rebels broke into John of Gaunt's Savoy Palace, the wealthiest house in England. They smashed the gold plate, crushed the jewels with hammers and threw the silver in the Thames. According to one chronicler, when a man was caught stealing, his own side threw him into the fire.So how do ordinary villagers get to that point? In Part 1 of a four-part series on the Peasants' Revolt, I go back to the beginning. That means the rain of 1315, a famine so bad the king couldn't buy bread, a cattle plague that took the milk away from a whole generation of children, the Black Death, and a government that responded by making it illegal to ask for a raise. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  What the Tudors Did When They Couldn't Control Anything 18.09.2026 28min

  Every year in Tudor England, the weather warmed up and people wondered if this would be a plague year. On top of plague there was the sweating sickness, which could kill you between dinner and supper, plus a flu pandemic and years of failed harvests when bread prices tripled. So how did ordinary people live with that constant hum of "something terrible might happen"? In this episode we go outbreak by outbreak, from the first sweat in 1485 to the plague that greeted James I in 1603, and ask how people coped at every stop. We meet the Brandon boys, two teenage dukes of Suffolk who died of the sweat on the same morning in 1551, and their mother Katherine Willoughby, trying to make sense of it through her new Protestant faith. We look at what people lost when the Reformation took away purgatory, plague saints and prayers for the dead, right while the plague kept coming. And we meet Bartholomew Steer, who planned a rising in the hungry 1590s and had four men show up. I made this one because so many of us are feeling a low hum of dread about big things we can't control right now. The Tudors don't have all the answers, but they have some surprisingly useful ones, and a bit of plague comedy too. Also join the Privy Council for TudorCon From Home. Stream TudorCon, October 23 to 25, from your couch for $59, with a Digital Swag Bag worth over $100. Sign up by September 30 to join the Privy Council and get the brand new Spooky Halloween Walk through London immersive audio as a bonus, along with an extra game night, Tudor Zoom backgrounds and your Privy Council badge. Use code PRIVYCOUNCIL to save an additional 25%. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  The Monks Henry VIII Left Behind, Told in 200 Sonnets 16.09.2026 46min

  What happens to your whole world when the king decides your faith is wrong? Richard Smith's new book, Beyond Where Words Can Go, follows two young Benedictine monks, a lord's youngest son and a foundling left on the monastery doorstep, through Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries and all the back and forth of the English Reformation. And it's told entirely in sonnets. Two hundred of them! Richard is a clinical psychologist in Washington, DC who started writing sonnets for his dog (yes, really), and I loved talking with him about what it felt like to live inside the old faith, where the monks went when their homes were pulled down, and why the sonnet turned out to be the perfect way to tell this story. Our friend Gerry joined us live with some great questions about the manuscripts lost when the monasteries fell. Find Richard at richardsmithwriting.com and on Instagram @richardsmithwriting. Get Beyond Where Words Can Go:Bauhan Publishing: https://bauhanpublishing.com/shop/beyond-where-words/Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/p/books/beyond-where-words-can-go-a-novel-in-200-sonnets-richard-smith/7f97cae4082d4972Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/beyond-where-words-can-go-richard-smith/1148428273?ean=9780872334007Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Where-Words-Can-Go/dp/0872334007/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  They Tried to Demolish Hampton Court. Then the Queen Died. 14.09.2026 11min

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  Where Were You on 9/11? Walsingham in Paris, 1572 11.09.2026 11min

  Twenty-five years ago today, I was at my desk in Soho, emailing my friends about Thanksgiving plans, when one of them told me to open Yahoo because something big was happening in New York. For the anniversary, I wanted to tell you where I was that day. Then I want to take you back to another morning that started out completely normal: Paris, August 1572. The St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre began just days after a royal wedding that was supposed to bring peace. Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth's ambassador, was right in the middle of it. His pregnant wife and his little daughter were in the house, and a teenage Philip Sidney was sheltering with them while refugees came to his door. We'll also follow the news back to England, including the refugees who landed at Rye, and look at how quickly grief turned into a demand for safety, both in 1572 and in 2001. Take care of each other this week, and if you want to, tell me in the comments where you were. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  Henry VIII Lost at Cards to Anne Boleyn. It's in His Own Accounts. 11.09.2026 35min

  In 1540, a printer in Venice published a beautiful, enormous book that let you tell your fortune with a deck of cards. The same year Henry VIII married Anne of Cleves, annulled it, and married Catherine Howard on the day Thomas Cromwell was executed. So I went looking for the English version of that book. There isn't one. And working out why turned into a much better episode than the one I set out to make. The Tudors were obsessed with cards. Henry gambled at them constantly, and there's an entry in his own Privy Purse expenses recording him losing twenty crowns at a game called Pope Julius to "my lady Marques," which is Anne Boleyn, on the road home from Calais in November 1532. Possibly during their first week of marriage, if you believe Edward Hall. But nobody was reading cards. Not tarot, which was a card game in Italy and never really crossed the Channel, and not ordinary playing cards either, at least not in any way we can evidence before the middle of the seventeenth century. Tarot divination was invented in 1781 by a French pastor who decided the deck was secretly ancient Egyptian, at a time when nobody alive could read a hieroglyph. What Tudor England had instead was stranger and much more practical. Two acts of Parliament in the same session, one banning cards for labourers on the grounds that it was ruining English archery, the other making witchcraft a felony and naming as its chief targets treasure hunters and people who found your stolen property. A countrywide trade in divination using a sieve balanced on a pair of shears. And one Kentish gentleman who sat down to argue that witches weren't real and accidentally wrote the first book in English explaining how card tricks work. Sponsor This episode is sponsored by Context Travel, who took me round Hampton Court Palace this summer in a group of six with a guide who actually knows the historiography. The on-location video from that day is coming to the channel soon. contexttravel.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  Murder at Crowhurst: A Tudor Cold Case 03.09.2026 25min

  In August 1532 a charcoal burner named Robert Grame was murdered in a wood in Surrey. He worked alone, he carried a checkered board so he could count his money out there among the trees, and half the county seems to have known it. What happened next is why we can still tell this story. The local justice of the peace, Sir John Gaynesford, was an old man who had no obligation to do any of this well, and he did it beautifully. He examined the body, checked for signs of suicide because a widow's survival depended on the answer, found a broken knife handle, took depositions from witnesses more than twenty years before the law required it, and eventually hauled his suspect in front of the Privy Council in Westminster. When that went nowhere, he wrote nine folio pages to Thomas Cromwell and told him he would rather leave the county than keep living like this. And then the case vanishes from the record entirely. This episode is about who Robert Grame was, what Gaynesford did, what probably happened to Anastasia Grame, and how much of the past is missing from the documents we have left. Follow the show so the next one turns up on its own. The autumn collection is up at TudorFair.com, including Bonfires and Boleyns and Sweater Weather and Sovereigns. Source: William B. Robison, "Murder at Crowhurst: A Case Study in Early Tudor Law Enforcement," Criminal Justice History. The underlying document is Gaynesford's report to Cromwell, State Papers 1/72/76-87, at The National Archives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  There's a Written Recipe for Henry VIII's Perfume 31.08.2026 47min

  There is a written recipe for Henry VIII's perfume. It's in a 1608 book called A Closet for Ladies and Gentlewomen, and it's rosewater, sugar, musk, ambergris, and civet, boiled down softly for an entire day. I had no idea that existed until I sat down with Jen Siems of Immortal Perfumes, who has spent 14 years building fragrances out of archival research. Jen is a self-taught perfumer and a former English teacher, which means she talks about rare book rooms the way most people talk about their favorite TV show. She also has Elizabeth's recipe, which includes marjoram for headaches and a truly unreasonable amount of sugar. If you know anything about Elizabeth's teeth, that tracks. We get into: Where ambergris actually comes from, and why a kid walking on an English beach can stumble onto $50,000 worth of it Whether the Tudors really stank, and how much of that reputation we've made up Miasma theory, and why smelling magnificent was a health strategy and a PR strategy at the same time Catherine de' Medici, perfumed gloves, and how French perfume as we know it started with a Florentine bride Mary Queen of Scots' golden pomanders, and the violets-and-sparkling-wine legend that got misattributed to Anne Boleyn for years What Jude Law wore on the set of Firebrand to play a dying Henry, and why Alicia Vikander couldn't stand to be near him Fair warning, Jen explains how civet gets harvested and it involves a comparison to taking your dog to the vet. I was not ready. GIVEAWAY: Jen is giving away a vintage Avon Queen Elizabeth bottle (her torso lifts off, it's wonderful) filled with the Immortal Perfumes scent of the winner's choice. Enter here: https://www.englandcast.com/immortal-perfumes-giveaway/. Closes September 14, US shipping, 18+. Find Jen: immortalperfumes.com | Immortal Perfumes on Instagram and TikTok | the Immortal Perfumes Substack Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  The Rebellion That Started Because a Lawyer Paid a Bribe 27.08.2026 18min

  In July 1549, a crowd in Norfolk showed up to tear down Robert Kett's fences. Instead of stopping them, he agreed with them, helped pull down his own hedges, and led them to Norwich. What followed was seven weeks of about 16,000 people running the county from a camp on Mousehold Heath, with a court, a supply system and a signed list of demands. It ended at the Battle of Dussindale on 27 August 1549.This one has been on my list for seventeen years and I somehow never made it. Fixing that today. Related video on Tudor Vagrancy laws that I mentioned: https://youtu.be/q4Gku_0H_kg 📅 TASTE OF TUDORCON, THIS SATURDAY Free online event, Saturday 29 August, 1pm ET, about two hours. Eight TudorCon speakers each share a piece of their talk: Henry VIII and head trauma, John Dee, the history of English, a dress that took seven years to make, and more. Drop in and out, and there's a replay if you can't make it live. Register: https://tudorcon.englandcast.com/tasteoftudorcon2026/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  What Things Actually Cost in Tudor England 24.08.2026 24min

  Join me for Taste of TudorCon, a free online preview of this year's conference, on August 29th: https://tudorcon.englandcast.com/tasteoftudorcon2026/ A skilled craftsman in early Tudor London earned sixpence for a day's work. I've been staring at that number for ages, because on its own it tells you nothing. Sixpence out of what? Buys what? Compared to whom?So I went digging, and it turns out if you follow that one coin up and down the Tudor social ladder you end up seeing the whole society. The housemaid on a pound a year. The brewer on ten. The king who spent thirty-six thousand pounds on an eighteen-day party in a field. We get into the coins themselves, which have the best names in the world, including the gold angel that doubled as medicine. We climb from the bottom of the ladder to the top. We work out what sixpence would actually buy you at a market stall. And then we get to 1544, when Henry VIII started secretly putting less silver in the coins, and everybody's wages stopped working. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  The Tudors Were Obsessed With Troy (But Never Actually Read Homer) 19.08.2026 20min

  I just watched Nolan's Odyssey and went down a rabbit hole: did the Tudors even know this story? Turns out, not the way you'd think. For most of the dynasty, England's version of the Trojan War came from a completely different, largely invented medieval tradition, one that literally cut the gods out of the story. The real, translated Homer didn't arrive in English until the dynasty was basically over. In this one: two forged "eyewitness" accounts of the Trojan War, the first book ever printed in English, the Tudors' fake Trojan ancestor Brutus, Cambridge's Greek revival, and why not a single Tudor monarch ever got to read a finished English Homer. Join me for Taste of TudorCon, a free online preview of this year's conference, on August 29th: https://tudorcon.englandcast.com/tasteoftudorcon2026/ Get the newsletter: https://www.englandcast.com/newsletter-sign-up/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  Two London Historians Show Me the Tudor City Everyone Walks Right Past 18.08.2026 48min

  I got on a Zoom call with two Blue Badge guides from Context Travel, and by the end of it I had a list of about a dozen places in London I've never been and now desperately need to see. Sean spent almost 30 years in financial services before deciding life was too short not to spend it obsessing over history and art instead. Caroline taught history at a girls' school and specialized in Edward VI, the Tudor everyone skips past on the way from the six wives to Elizabeth I. We talked about the pieces of Tudor London hiding in plain sight: a tennis court wall tucked behind Buckingham Palace, a portrait of Edward VI you can only see properly through a spy hole, a single rose that's been paid as rent since 1381, and why Henry VIII's waistband tells you basically his entire biography. I've been doing this for over 15 years and I did not know most of this going in. Keep a notebook handy, you're going to end up with a list. Context Travel does small private tours led by working historians (not flag tours!) all over London and beyond. Link to check them out: https://www.contexttravel.com/ TudorCon 2026 is October 23-25 in Richmond, VA. In-person tickets are almost gone (less than 10 left), or join virtually with TudorCon From Home: https://tudorcon.englandcast.com Sign up for the newsletter: https://www.englandcast.com/newsletter-sign-up/ This video was made in partnership with Context Travel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  I Stayed in a 600-Year-Old Inn Full of Secret Smuggling Tunnels 13.08.2026 16min

  So I recently went to England to sleep in historic places. This is the first episode of a mini series I'm calling Heather Stays in Olde Inns, because England is full of medieval places to stay, and I wanted to stay in them. First stop: The Mermaid Inn in Rye. The cellars here date back to 1156. The building you see today went up in 1420, after the French burned the whole town to the ground in 1377 (yes, really). A very organized gang of 18th century smugglers used the place as one of their bases. There are still tunnels running under the building to another inn down the street, because apparently that's just what you do when you're moving contraband and don't want the authorities noticing. I got to sleep in a building that has survived fire, smugglers, and about 600 years of English history going about its business upstairs from a bar. Come stay with me. Book your own stay at The Mermaid Inn: https://www.mermaidinn.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices