Episodes

  • Ep 2:4 Shiny lucre: money, c.1600. Bullion, penny loaves, and corrupt politicians

    Ep 2:4 Shiny lucre: money, c.1600. Bullion, penny loaves, and corrupt politicians
    Oct 10 2024

    I talk to Simon Healy about early modern money: the currency and coins, wages and free dinners, how big a loaf of bread is, bullion smuggling and bribing politicians.
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    57 mins
  • Ep 2:3 In search of the sound of the past

    Ep 2:3 In search of the sound of the past
    Oct 10 2024
    I talk to Dr Katie McKeogh about how music was first printed, what that did to how people heard and played music, and how we can trace this story in the libraries where their music books have come to rest. And about finding slanderous gossip in the margins of contraband liturgy books.
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    46 mins
  • Ep 2:2 Blood thicker than water?

    Ep 2:2 Blood thicker than water?
    Sep 17 2024
    Family, religious conflict, and what to do when your outlawed cousin/brother/son rings your doorbell. This episode explores how family networks and the ties of kinship shaped Catholic resistance in Protestant England.
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    47 mins
  • Ep 2:1: And the joke is on...?

    Ep 2:1: And the joke is on...?
    Sep 10 2024
    Children's antics and domestic theatre in the 1660s, as William Blundell - Lancashire gentleman, Royalist solider, recusant, amateur antiquarian - writes play-scrips for his children in which they make fun of him behind his back... Many thanks for my brother, daughter and nieces for lending their dramatic talents to bring the Blundells to life! Episode 1 of Series 2.
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    30 mins
  • Ep 1:4 Whose past is it anyway? St Alban and Recusants

    Ep 1:4 Whose past is it anyway? St Alban and Recusants
    Jul 10 2024
    Alban - first known Christian in Britain, executed by the Romans for hiding a priest. Recusants - shorthand for English Catholics who rejected the Protestant Reformation, and occasionally got executed for hiding priests. This episode is about fights over who owns history, school plays in the 1600s, and naming your kids after prisons.
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    39 mins
  • Ep 1:3 Elections in James I's England: How to get into Parliament and why on earth you'd want to

    Ep 1:3 Elections in James I's England: How to get into Parliament and why on earth you'd want to
    Jul 2 2024
    Elections in the 1600s: Elections by show of hands, votes for saltpans, and did women vote? I talk to Dr Simon Healy about how Members of Parliament were chosen in Tudor & Stuart England, why people stood for Parliament, who got to vote, where, and why, and how elections were run.
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    53 mins
  • Ep 1:2 Lady Falkland According to Her Daughters: Seventeenth-century parenting, autism and reconciliation

    Ep 1:2 Lady Falkland According to Her Daughters: Seventeenth-century parenting, autism and reconciliation
    Jun 25 2024
    Elizabeth Cary, Lady Falkland, lived from 1586-1639. She was a writer and translator, was seen as eccentric, was a Catholic convert when it wasn't strictly legal - and may have been autistic. Her "Life", composed and preserved by her daughters, records her struggles to be an intellectual woman, a Catholic, and a mother - and their struggles to be daughters.
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    26 mins
  • Episode 1:1 How to be a Dissident: Putting the Law on Trial

    Episode 1:1 How to be a Dissident: Putting the Law on Trial
    Jun 19 2024
    If you are a dissident who wants to uphold the Law, while breaking unjust laws, what do you do? Especially when you’re on trial for breaking a law you don’t believe in. This episode is about some examples of what you might do, from Catholics in Elizabethan England.
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    38 mins