Manage episode 520211988 series 3352669
Power rarely moves quietly, and our tour through the English Reformation proves it. We start with a young, athletic Henry VIII whose dynastic panic collided with fragile Tudor legitimacy and recent civil war. From Wolsey’s velvet control to Cromwell’s hard-edged dissolution of the monasteries, the story isn’t a popular uprising against Rome—it’s a top-down refit of a living church under the pressure of succession, money, and law.
Zooming out, Europe hums with end-times energy: printing stokes polemics, the sack of Rome shatters illusions, and theological debates double as statecraft. We revisit Mary I without the propaganda haze—her measured governance, her duty to crush rebellion, and the way her reign got rewritten by enemies. Then Elizabeth I tightens the bolts: supremacy oaths, recusancy fines, and an intelligence apparatus that turns conscience into evidence. The result is a church that keeps the silhouette of altars while changing the crown above them.
Underground Catholicism adapts with nerve and nuance. Jesuit missions like Edmund Campion’s draw hard lines, house chapels encode the Mass into Byrd’s music, and priest holes become the country’s hidden cathedrals. We unpack the Gunpowder Plot as either interception or invention and track how it cements “Catholic equals treason” in the English mind. From Laudian “beauty of holiness” to the civil war backlash, from Jacobite hopes to the Quebec Act and Wellington’s push for emancipation, we follow the long arc that shaped modern Britain—and its American echo in how nations sacralize power. Subscribe, share this episode with a history-loving friend, and tell us: which Tudor moment most changed your view of the Reformation?
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Chapters
1. Opening, Fundraiser Update, Guest Arrival (00:00:00)
2. Dickens Course Plug And Format (00:03:10)
3. Setting The Stage: Europe In Upheaval (00:08:10)
4. Henry VIII: Politics, Papacy, And Wolsey (00:11:00)
5. Anne Boleyn, Cromwell, And Monasteries (00:16:20)
6. End Times Fever And The Sack Of Rome (00:23:45)
7. Mary I: Myths, Rebellions, And Policy (00:28:20)
8. Elizabeth I: Acts, Oaths, And Recusants (00:36:30)
9. Underground Catholicism And Jesuit Missions (00:44:00)
10. Gunpowder Plot: Spycraft And Narrative (00:50:30)
11. Mary Queen Of Scots And Succession Strategy (00:56:30)
12. Beauty Of Holiness: Laudian Reforms (01:03:00)
13. Civil War, Episcopalians, And Transatlantic Effects (01:09:30)
14. Catholic Emancipation: Quebec To Wellington (01:14:20)
15. Q&A: Mary’s Numbers, Elizabeth’s Statecraft (01:20:30)
16. Closing Plugs And Course Details (01:26:00)
538 episodes