What the Tudors Did When They Couldn't Control Anything

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