Kings & Queens of England: Episode 3: Tudors

the story of the kings and queens of england is more surprising than you might think it's a fine drama a thousand years of tales of lust and betrayal of heroism and cruelty of mysteries murders tragedies and triumphs and all these figure in the story i'm telling now the story of the tudors above all though the story of this great dynasty of rulers is a tale of passionate love affairs and what happens when love and high politics collide the story begins with owen tudor a hugely ambitious and very handsome young man his father was an outlaw hiding out in the welsh hills but owen managed to get employed as a servant in the household of the infant henry vi now this household was run by henry's mother queen catherine de falwa a very sexy widow who fell for owen completely there's no record that they ever got married but they did have five children when catherine died in 1437 henry vi was still only 13 and the barons who ran the kingdom in his name put owen in prison but when henry came of age he brought his stepfather owen tudor back to court and gave earldoms to his stepbrothers edmund and jasper tudor owen ensured edmund's marriage to a girl from henry's family edmund died very soon after the marriage but his 13 year old bride margaret beaufort was already pregnant their son was born at pembroke castle he was named after the king henry tudor and owen had a grandson with a blood connection to the house of lancaster the family of the king they weren't actually the legitimate line henry of lancaster henry bollingbrook had deposed his cousin richard ii in 1399 to become henry iv the thrones of his son and grandson henry the fifth and sixth rested on that shaky foundation which crumbled in the wars of the roses when the true heirs to the throne the house of york began to battle for their inheritance owen tudor stood squarely with the henries the lancastrians that after all was where he had invested all his hopes he fought for them and in 1461 died for them beheaded by yorkists in hereford marketplace he was the last tudor to lose his head but as we all know the tudors would take up this approach to problem solving themselves you might say with a vengeance edward of york seized the throne edward iv and owen's four-year-old grandson henry tudor began what would be decades of living on the run or as a refugee but three years later king edward did something that would eventually give henry tudor everything owen had wished for he fell in love and that began a chain of events which altered all england's history when edward was about 20 he was waylaid by an attractive widow of about 25 who was trying to recover her late husband's property edward six foot three tall and really very good looking wanted to help and he became besotted it seems she persuaded him to secretly enter into a contract to marry her her name was elena butler about a year later in 1464 another attractive widow 26 years old pulled the same stunt and edward did it again unbelievable this time the lady was called elizabeth woodville and this time it wasn't just a contract to marry it was a full marriage to a commoner when elizabeth woodville was crowned in westminster abbey the whole of europe was scandalized marriage was all about alliances of power and property marrying a penniless woman for love was simply disgusting the negotiators trying to arrange a proper royal marriage were humiliated and when edward heaped honors wealth and titles on elizabeth's relatives the rivers family the nobility of england were outraged they were quite frankly getting completely above themselves if anyone had known about edward's promise to marry elena butler things would have been even worse but she was quietly shut up in a convent and died in 1468 as it was edward lost so much support that in 1470 he was actually driven out of england and henry vi came back to the throne a few months later edward came back into london and regained the crown thanks to the strong support of london merchants to whom he owed money and even more it was said of their wives and daughters who really seem to have found him romantically interesting which face it henry vi certainly wasn't unless you fancied an elderly saintly scholar who'd lost his mind in the battles that followed henry's son another edward was killed and king henry himself captured disappeared into a prison and was never seen again the whole mail line of the house of lancaster the descendants of the sons of john of gaunt was now extinct except for one fragile thread margaret beaufort and her fifteen-year-old son henry tudor not that they had any claim to the crown of course the lancaster dynasty had begun by simply usurping the throne but on top of that margaret's grandfather was illegitimate a law had been passed to make him legitimate but it also barred him and his descendants from the succession and that would probably have been that if it hadn't have been for edward's little secret which didn't emerge until edward himself was dead he was only 41 when he fell ill and died his son the prince of wales also called edward was just 12 years old everyone refers to this young man as edward v but he was never crowned the dead king's will was clear prince edward would be his successor of course but he would be in the care of a guardian and protector of the kingdom that person was edward the fourth's brother richard duke of gloucester we all know him as the most evil king in english history the warped and twisted richard iii richard had been in effect king edward's vice regent in the north based in the city of york and no one at that time said anything bad about him at all but the queen thought there was someone even better to run her son's kingdom her edward iv had died of westminster elizabeth immediately sent her brother and other members of her household rushing up to ludlow where prince edward was staying the idea was to hustle him to london and install him before richard even knew what was going on then she and her family the rivers would have control of everything richard of course did find out what was going on and said he would meet up with the party as they brought the prince through northampton okay okay except that when he got to northampton he found that the rivers didn't have the prince with them alarmed richard took them prisoner and found their baggage stuffed with arms and armor there was plainly an attempt being made at a coup richard nipped it in the bud he found they'd secreted the prince in stoney stratford elizabeth's family home this was before blue plaques had been invented richard escorted the prince to london and installed him in the tower of london while he set about organizing the coronation and then came the bombshell the dead king's contract to marry elena butler had been made in front of a priest who now decided it was time to speak oops if edward really had been betrothed to eleanor his marriage to elizabeth woodville was bigamy and the young prince couldn't be king because he was illegitimate was this true this man robert stillington was no ordinary priest edward had promoted him and trusted him making him a bishop and keeper of the privy seal and then chancellor of england but then stillington became awfully friendly with king edward's ambitious brother the duke of clarence and clarence could not be trusted an inch if edward's children were illegitimate clarence would be next in line to the throne edward quickly had his brother sentenced to death and executed in private with no chance to make a public statement instead the world was told clarence had drowned in a butt of marmsey a barrel of sweet wine such a sad accident and stillington spent a year locked in the tower after his release perhaps nervous of the power of strong drink he kept his mouth shut until edward was dead but now he spoke and parliament believed him with edward's children illegitimate and clarences disinherited when he was executed richard was left as the proper successor he reluctantly accepted well he accepted and the tyre of london changed from the prince of wales his palace into his prison he shared it with his brother neither was ever seen again did richard have them killed no one knows but later the evidence was going to be shaped as far as possible to make him guilty he's been said to have personally killed henry vi and henry's son whose widow he married and done the dirty deed with clarence and the momsey quite apart from the murder of the princes in the tower the picture of richard that's come down to us the hunchbacked sinister and ruthless tyrant is a caricature painted after he'd been deposed and immortalized by the tudor's greatest propagandist william shakespeare one of the buildings inside the tower of london was even given the name the bloody tower to associate it with richard's foul murder of the princes though they almost certainly were in a different building anyway he'd certainly been a popular figure in the north of england where his brother had charged him with healing the divisions of the wars of the roses but it only took four months for a rebellion to emerge against him the rival candidate was of course the boy across the water now not such a boy henry tudor the house of york was now as extinct as the house of lancaster henry tudor was all there was for disappointed yorkists as well as lancastrians and there were plenty of disappointed yorkists richard gave positions power and wealth to men he trusted whom he'd got to know in the north of england leaving a lot of southerners out in the gold who thought they could do much better under a more sympathetic figure and now he came with a force of 2000 refugees and french soldiers owen tudor's grandson landed at milford haven in wales on the 1st of august 1485. three weeks later when he came to do battle at bosworth his force had grown by just three thousand men richard came to the battlefield as rightful king of england before the battle began he held a coronation ceremony restating his right of true succession to the crown a right which henry tudor did not possess at all actually given the fact that his family was specifically barred from the succession he had pretty much less claim than anyone else there but that's not how things were working out richard iii was the last english king to die on a battle the crown of england was found lying under a bush at the end of the battle of bosworth and placed on henry tudor's head and henry understood how you rule england not by winning over great nobles they'd pretty well all been wiped out but by winning over public opinion the pen is mightier than the sword especially when it tells the story of what happened firstly he must not be accused of killing a king so richard iii was not king on the day of the battle of bosworth henry tudor dated his reign from the day before the battle it was richard who'd been fighting against the king not henry henry was king it was richard who was the traitor got that he must deal with the question of his legitimacy as a ruler so he married edward iv's daughter she was the legitimate line of descent from william the conqueror a true plantagenet their son when they had one would be the legitimate heir by every possible standard well so long as that with the fourth daughter was legitimate so that had to be dealt with all documents relating to the business of edward's marriage to elizabeth woodville being invalid were destroyed all documents relating to the illegitimacy of their children were destroyed including the act of parliament that had spelt out why richard should be king these orders were carried out so efficiently that only one copy of the act has ever been found that's how we know about it other evidence may have existed destroyed even more efficiently and if the children were not illegitimate then of course prince edward had been the true king of england and richard was a regicide what a villain assuming of course that richard had been responsible for the boy's death well he couldn't be alive because if he were he and not henry tudor would be the rightful king there are some nasty people who suspect that if the princes in the tower were still alive before the battle of bosworth henry would have disappeared them richard iii became the saddam hussein of tudor propaganda never mind the legitimacy of the war to destroy him it did the world a favor of course the consolidation of power was not only a matter of creating favorable propaganda it also involves getting rid of a few people clarence for example the mamzy drowner had a young son the earl of warwick a nephew of both edward iv and richard iii he had been barred from the succession but so had the man now on the throne so there was no security in that he went straight into prison in the tower of london but then a priest in ireland suddenly produced a ten-year-old boy who he said was the rescued earl the boy looked right spoke right had all the right manners he was solemnly crowned in dublin cathedral as edward vi and a force of irish supporters backed by flemish troops then landed in the north of england they were supported by the earl of lincoln john de la pole who was also a nephew of edward iv and richard iii he was their sister's son in fact richard iii who had no children had designated john as heir to the throne john knew perfectly well that the child was an impostor called lambert simnel who had been carefully trained for the project the rebels had obviously assumed that henry had killed the earl of warwick so wouldn't be able to prove that simnel was an impostor they were wrong the prisoner still alive was put on public display and the rebels were crushed but never missing a trick henry forgave the child and gave him a job in the royal kitchen he grew up to be a royal falconer another imposter appeared in 1492 this time claiming to be the younger of the princes in the tower richard duke of york his real name was perkin warbeck and he stayed on the continent collecting support from anyone who fell out with henry henry had persuaded parliament to set up a special court to try members of the nobility who were a threat to the crown a number of warback supporters suddenly found themselves arrested tried for treason and facing execution this court was to become the notorious court of the star chamber perkin was a constant irritant first trying to invade from ireland then teaming up with the king of scotland and finally in 1497 he raised a rebellion in cornwall which henry crushed and promising leniency persuaded perkin to surrender herkim was imprisoned in the tower which of course already housed clarence's son the earl of warwick and of course it wasn't long before evidence appeared that the pair of them were plotting a joint escape and that was the end of both of them there was one other person with a claim to the throne henry tudor's mother margaret in fact whatever claim he had she must have a better one but no woman had ever ruled england in her own right and henry needed a son to inherit the throne his eldest was named arthur this child of the blood royal was to be linked not just to the plantagenets but to patriotic english legends but arthur died in 1502 leaving his younger brother henry as the tudor heir and in 1509 when the 52 year old king died henry viii succeeded to the throne he was the perfect king a king out of the storybooks he was 17 years old extremely well educated extremely good looking with polished manners and the style and physique of an athlete he also had an unchallengeable claim to the crown and to secure the succession henry viii married the woman to whom he'd been betrothed for seven years catherine of aragon his dead brother's widow the spanish worried that this was against church rules and so the pope granted a dispensation in fact this was all rubbish while the bible specifically forbids a man from sleeping with his brother's wife he'd actually insist that he must marry his brother's widow anyhow two years later catherine gave birth to a son but the infant soon died so did the next in fact the marriage only produced one child that lived a girl called mary henry was effectively all-powerful there were no great barons anymore in england and his father had left a well-stocked treasury parliament consisted to a large extent of men who depended one way or another on royal favor and the countryside was controlled by justices of the peace who served the government you can see the change in the very nature of power from the home of henry's chancellor fifty years earlier edward the fourth chancellor had been a neville the son of the earl of salisbury in those days an englishman's home had been his castle middleton castle actually it was his father's home and that great lord had also been chancellor independently powerful men based in a mighty fortified palace but under the tudors the great power of the nevilles had been broken middleton castle was in the hands of the king when henry viii's chancellor woolsey built himself a home it certainly wasn't a castle it was this magnificent palace hampton court glass windows instead of arrow slits and chimneys instead of crenellations no one needed a fortified house under the protection of a great king and it was all at henry's pleasure if woolsey didn't deliver what the king wanted he was entirely dispensable and that of course is what happened the royal marriage was haunted by the ghost of their dead sons by the end of the 1520s catherine was in her late 40s had stopped getting pregnant and there was still no male heir just a daughter and england had never been ruled by a woman henry determined to have a male heir must get rid of his wife then he would be free to take a younger bride and make a baby boy the bride in question and berlin was already well installed in henry's life henry who'd already enjoyed her sister as his mistress had wooed and with enthusiasm he married her in 1533. her coronation didn't seem to impress londoners their entwined initials on the banners produced shouts of ha ha she was visibly pregnant and gave birth to a child dratt another girl she was named elizabeth and little mary was declared illegitimate the legality of this marriage must be sorted out before her next baby that was woolsey's job he had to persuade the pope that his predecessor should never have allowed the marriage to catherine henry fancied himself as a theologian he'd written an attack on luther which became a bestseller and the pope had declared him a defender of the faith a proud boast which he stuck on the coinage and has remained there ever since every english monarch is fid death so he told woolsey exactly how the argument should be put to the pope woolsey could probably have swung it if he'd been left alone as it was he failed and lost his job and the pope had also failed so henry the defender of the faith fired the pope to achieve this drastic act having himself legally declared the supreme head of the church in england required an extraordinary shift in power he had to find a way of giving the nation a voice so that it could say what he wanted that way was through parliament the church's wealth and power was hugely unpopular the notion of no longer paying church taxes to rome was really very cheery but it wasn't as simple as that some people believe that the pope really did represent divine authority and for many others there was a fear that the pope might excommunicate their customers on the continent if they continued trading with them with the effective help of a new chief minister thomas cromwell and a new archbishop of canterbury thomas cranmer parliament passed the necessary acts by the end of 1534 the king of england had become legally the total overall supreme ruler of the whole shebang as henry viii had become head of the church in england he was a new kind of king one immediate consequence of the new order was that he had control of the fabulous wealth of the english church it wasn't just the pope who got the sack he closed down all the monasteries and nunneries there weren't all that many people in them less than ten thousand over the whole country but there may have been ten times that number dependent on them and in areas such as lincolnshire and northumberland there was armed rebellion one of the rebel leaders was john neville from that great old family of barons but the nevilles were no threat to the modern crown the rebellions were crushed and monastic lands were sold off cheap to bolster the treasury make henry more popular and allow successful businessmen to turn themselves into grateful country gentry who would loyally support the crowd the old struggle for power between the papacy and the monarchy had now been decisively settled beckett the 12th century archbishop whose defense of church power had led to his martyrdom had been the most popular saint in england henry ordered beckett to be declared no saint to be tried and convicted of treason and for his bones to be burned and the dust scattered in the air who's in charge now eh what's more in 1536 catherine of aragon died meaning that the problem of the ex-queen had gone away he and amberlyn dressed in bright yellow to celebrate but four months later he was told that anne had committed adultery henry was surrounded by courtiers jockeying for influence forming alliances factions to do down those who might damage them and anne became a victim of an organized campaign by those who felt endangered by her faction whether it was true or not no one knows because henry's fury was so total that her trial and those of her supposed lovers was a travesty she might indeed get pregnant with a boy but then its parentage would be in doubt and she might not she'd miscarried at least twice since elizabeth's birth without a legitimate son it had all been for nothing anne was imprisoned in the royal lodgings in the tower of london henry had extended them before their coronation and now she was occupying them for the first time not as his wife but as his prisoner after 18 days she was beheaded and henry married jane seymour england after the death of amberlynn was a kingdom like no other henry ruled in england as head of the church as well as king like some pagan priest king he was the judge of heresy as well as crime he held the keys to heaven as well as to earthly promotion that chap in the vatican was now just referred to as the bishop of rome to even think the wrong thoughts in this kingdom could be treason that was how the new chancellor thomas moore found himself imprisoned in the bell tower of the tower of london not for what he did or even what he said but for thinking that the king should not be head of the church he was publicly executed on tower hill henry was terrifying magnificent generous dangerous and in most people's eyes the best king england had seen in a very long time and jane had a son edward sadly she died in childbirth but the throne was safe his only problem was abroad and by 1539 it did begin to look as though the bishop of rome might be lining up some muscle against him but there were now well-established and powerful protestant princes in germany and on the final principle that my enemy's enemy is my friend henry married into their world he got anne of cleaves for a wife the defender of the faith intellectual scourge of the lutherans had married one actually neither of them was much interested in theology or in each other henry now fat with an ulcerating leg and a vicious temper thought his 23 year old wife was plain smelly and lacking in all the graces he called her a flanders mayor and they both quickly agreed the marriage was a terrible mistake fortunately it was soon discovered that she had a pre-contract of marriage with someone else and so there never had been a valid marriage to henry the only casualty was thomas cromwell who'd set the whole thing up and who now went to the block well him and one of anne's ladies in waiting catherine howard her destruction began when moore's ended she was a kind of well-connected monica lewinsky figure a teenager with sex on her mind who wanted to seduce the most powerful man around and he fell for her and married her and when she carried on being sexy and had sex with other men he flew into another tempestuous rage and had her beheaded her lovers heads were mounted on london bridge henry then decided to marry john neville's widow catherine parr she was extremely nervous but had no choice she worked hard at trying to keep henry's temper in check moderating his ferocity towards people he thought were traitors or heretics and persuading him to acknowledge mary and elizabeth as his legitimate children his death four years later in 1547 was obviously a huge relief henry had succeeded in leaving a son but only just jane's son edward the sixth nine years old was a sickly child he was educated as a renaissance prince a humanist and as a protestant far more so than his father he was only a child and government was in the hands of a council but in a world of royal tyranny this so john had been talking things over with his royal little highness and they cooked up this bizarre proposal to hand the throne to john dudley's daughter-in-law the 15-year-old jane gray she was edward's first cousin once removed not exactly next in line for the throne but protestant the hereditary principle was a bit well a bit medieval don't you think give that girl a crown jane knew absolutely nothing about what was being planned for her and when she found out that she was to be queen she fainted in shock england had been swindled and knew it jane came to london as queen but was she everyone's eyes turned to mary throughout all that had happened since henry had disowned her mary had very publicly maintained her catholic faith and the public celebration of the mass she'd become a symbol of resistance to tyranny and whenever she appeared in public she was mobbed and cheered and now mary announced that she was the proper heir to the throne and she was going from her home in framington in surrey to be crowned in london the journey was a procession through villages and towns filled with cheering crowds she entered london to the greatest street party the city had ever seen the dancing drinking and bell ringing went on all night after just nine days as the first woman to rule england jane was placed under arrest by her own father who was supposed to be her chief defender she was imprisoned and mary felt obliged in the end to have jane executed it didn't help that her father joined a rebellion against mary but by then six months after her triumph many people were ready to rebel against mary the defiant woman who'd stood against tyranny was now on the tyrant's throne the english didn't actually like the papacy but mary did the english didn't like spain but mary did she married its king philip ii and the english didn't like being forced to subscribe to religious beliefs on pain of death mary had 277 people burned alive because of their religious opinions bloody mary unable to have children a bitter invalid england's second queen died in 1558 42 years old the most detested ruler in all england's history there were celebrations almost as fervent as it greeted her arrival five years before her sister elizabeth came to sit in that terrible seat and be crowned by the grace of god queen of england france and ireland defender of the faith and supreme head of the church of england and ireland even though there was not a single yard of french soil actually ruled by england calais england's last little piece of france had been lost just before mary's death england had become an island and its queen would have to be an island too she couldn't marry because that would create a king who would be either a foreigner like philip or an opportunist courtier who'd come trailing faction and enemies in his wake she would be both queen and king the virgin queen ruling from a tyrant's throne over a people whose support was essential monarchy in england was a paradox and elizabeth's solution to the paradox was wholly bizarre the tudor monarchy had been shaped by the need to create a line of valid legitimate male successors that had not materialized and now elizabeth would choose to have no child at all how would the crown survive elizabeth succeeded to the throne when she was 25 years old by that age women were generally married with children but elizabeth had never had any intention of doing that her father had killed her mother his behavior towards his other wives had been equally dreadful at 14 elizabeth had announced that she would never marry in fact her survival through mary's reign had depended on her being free of any association with anyone else the slightest hint of her involvement with other people could have made her seem to be connected with plots against mary and would have led to her execution she stayed mute giving no sign of a religious political or emotional attachment that might destroy her by the time she came to the throne the persecutions of her predecessors had left it a stark and lonely place nine bishop bricks were vacant there was only one duke left alive and the treasury was empty she had no close relatives left alive the heir to the throne was her aunt's granddaughter mary queen of scots a roman catholic no one knew whether elizabeth was a roman catholic or a protestant the first test came over the oath of allegiance elizabeth insisted that like her father people must acknowledge her as head of the church the bishops roman catholics appointed by mary said that in that case none of them would allow her a coronation well all except for the bishop of carlisle he did the honours and the popular acclimation for the new queen was terrific and she shouted back got a mercy good people elizabeth interpreted her religious role in a new way she declared that she didn't mind whether her subjects were catholic or protestant so long as they were loyal she survived by being very careful about what she said and did and that was how she coped with sovereignty she dared not marry or be touched by scandal but her every move was watched like any modern royal maybe more so to the extent that her laundresses were bribed by ambassadors who wanted to know whether her periods had stopped in case she was pregnant she made herself look splendid held magnificent pageants and eventually seemed to be holding the kingdom together without the rebellions persecutions and massacres that had become regular features of english life she managed this in partnership with an immensely loyal and capable minister william cecil and constantly teasing the world with a showy flirtation with the earl of leicester robert dudley but the love affair she really encouraged was to have the nation adore her in poetry paintings and theater she was gloriana the magical beauty to whom loyalty and love were equally due and who had no lover or husband to distract her gays the main threat facing her was the possibility of a catholic plot to replace her with one of the grandchildren of henry viii sister margaret either mary stewart queen of scots or henry stewart the earl of darnley both of them had a valid claim as not only was elizabeth excommunicated she was arguably illegitimate they were carefully encouraged to maneuver themselves into helplessness mary was the more dangerous she'd been queen of france until her husband's death and a ruler of scotland who had french backing would be a danger to england even without the religious issue but mary's education had been unlike elizabeth's she'd not lived in fear of her life but in the indulgent french court this was not a good preparation for life in britain a land of conspiracies and killings darnley was a weak man in a weak position a good looking unstable loud what happened next looks like a cunning plan elizabeth pretty much obliged the nineteen-year-old darnley to visit the 22 year old widow mary having ordered him not to marry her the result was totally predictable and darnley was a total liability to mary dim-witted and resentful of his lack of power he was also furiously jealous and when he thought her advisor riccio was having an affair with mary he joined a plot that had ritzio murdered in front of her she now viewed donnelly the patsy in all this with hatred and contempt and was herself complicit in the plot that murdered him with an explosion she ended up fleeing her own kingdom and throwing herself on elizabeth's mercy ultimately a bad place to be elizabeth was half the time sure that mary should be executed to deprive catholic plotters of a candidate for the throne and half the time sure that she should do no such thing ruling queens were rarer than ends teeth for one to kill another really wasn't good she signed the death warrant but in a state of real distress mary and darnley had a son james and he was now the virtually incontrovertible heir to elizabeth's throne she wrote to him confirming that and apologizing for what she'd done to his mother the very idea that it was legitimate to kill a crowned sovereign was extremely dangerous elizabeth was deeply concerned with the rights and powers the prerogatives of the sovereign she was very wary of parliament which in her view treated every request for taxes as a blackmail opportunity to give itself powers of government so she tried very hard not to ask for taxes and her government was parsimonious mean as possible and then some she was determined to protect royal authority she refused to allow parliament to refer to england as a state she said it sounded too much like something to do with the state's general the parliamentary body that ruled the dutch republic that republic born out of a rebellion against the king of spain was in elizabeth's eyes an unfortunate novelty it was her ally in her struggle to keep england out of spain's clutches but she was nervous that its political ideas might be catching england was a kingdom it happened to be ruled by a queen but as she famously said one who had the heart and stomach of a king course elizabeth's greatest moment was when she managed to see off the spanish armada when philip ii by far the most powerful ruler in the world assembled a vast fleet to collect an invasion army from the low countries and bring england back into the roman catholic church the english fleet genuinely patriotic genuinely daring skillfully harried the armada to prevent it finding a safe anchorage where it could make contact with the landing force when the spanish decided to sail home they were hit by strong winds and heavy seas that were too much for many of these mediterranean cargo vessels so far as the english and the dutch were concerned god had blown them away philip himself saw it as a baffling defeat that meant god was not on his side but elizabeth was still not prepared to ask parliament for the money to pay her victorious sailors wages they were not due to be paid until they came ashore so their queen left them rotting at anchor and when messengers came to court to plead for the starving men who'd saved england they arrived in the middle of extravagant celebrations of the victory and were turned away elizabeth died the grandest of all england's rulers in 1603. her successor was mary's son james stewart already ruler of scotland he had inherited glory but with it an empty treasury and an isolated kingdom in the next program we'll see what the stewards did with this poisoned chalice on to the stuarts tonight at 10 and to test your knowledge of henry viii and his six wives sky digital viewers press red coming up on uk tv history decisive weapons at agincourt and in the falklands the longbow and the harrier jet

Channel: AngelDocs

Views: 1,027,218

Keywords: kings queens england, tudors, wars of the roses, tudor dynasty, english royals, History, Elizabeth I, documentary

Id: efY2d49_s0o

Length: 44min 48sec (2688 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 01 2015