Listen to the October 2015 podcast episode about Bess’s life if you need a refresher
Book Recommendations:
Bess of Hardwick: Empire Builder
Bess of Hardwick First Lady of Chatsworth
Very Rough Transcript: Tudor Times on Bess of Hardwick
Speaker 1: (00:08)
English history podcast. I’m your host, Heather Tesco. And I’m a storyteller who makes history accessible because I believe it’s a pathway to understanding who we are, our place in the universe and our connection to our own humanity. This is episode 64. It’s another joint episode with Melita Thomas of Tudor times. And it’s on best of Hardwick. Just a quick note that the Renaissance English history podcast is a proud member of the Agoura podcast network. And the gaura podcast of the month is the history of Egypt podcast, which you can find on iTunes, any other podcasts, the sort of place and Egypt and history podcast.com. So check that out. Remember, you can always get links to more information on each show, resources and sign up for the mailing list for extra mini casts and goodies@englandcast.com. So moving on from that admin bit, let’s talk a little bit about best of hardwood.
Speaker 1: (01:02)
One thing about this episode is that Bess was the tutor times person of the month this month, but she’s also someone I had done an episode on in October of 2015. So to avoid rehashing all of the basics of her life, we jumped right into talking about the roles women had with regard to land ownership, the way they could run their finances and the options that they had is widows to listen to the podcast on the basic facts of Bessie’s life. Feel free to go back to the archive. And I’ll also put a link on the show notes for this episode. So now let me introduce you to Melita. Thomas of Tudor times Melita is a co founder and editor of Tudor times a website devoted to the tutor and Stuart history in the period from 1485 to 1625, you can find it@tutortimes.co.uk Melita, who has always been fascinated by history ever since she saw the 1970s series, Elizabeth R with Glenda Jackson also contributes articles to BBC history, extra and Britain magazine.
Speaker 1: (02:04)
We started the interview with me asking Malita what made best, so special and why she chose her as the person of the month. Can you tell me a little bit about Bess and why you chose her as the person of the month? Best of Hardwick is perennially fascinating to people. She was married four times, uh, at an early, well, not necessarily an early, but definitely a social climber of the Elizabethan age. She started out as a country gentleman’s daughter and ended up as the richest woman in England after the queen. So quite an interesting career, um, she’s the sort of person you saying nowadays, she’d be, you know, a captain of industry, uh, uh, some of the great women who run Yahoo and Google and prime ministers and she’s, she was a woman of enormous drive and intelligence and business. And,
Speaker 2: (03:00)
You know, just, just an interesting person to look at and see that women weren’t necessarily these downtrodden creatures that the, probably most of them were, but it didn’t, it wasn’t always like that. And there were women who did use their talents to get ahead and not just the talent of who, who they slept with. I mean, obviously she chose her husbands carefully, but she made money out of her land and she made money out of her estates in a way that a number of her male counterparts at the time just failed to do.
Speaker 1: (03:35)
Yeah. And it, it was interesting. One of the things that I really find fascinating about her is how she had to fight for so much with her widow’s rights. She had to go to court and, um, you know, take matters all the way up, you know, to, to the queen when she needed to. And I just wonder if you can tell me a little bit about it. It seems like she just, she didn’t take things sitting down and that’s what I like about her. And, um, you know, can, I think there’s stuff to talk there about there with what widows were meant to receive and how they were able to receive them and then how they would navigate life after their husbands fast?
Speaker 2: (04:14)
Yes. Well, marriage of course, was, uh, it was an economic decision and going, going into marriage was like forming a business partnership. Uh, generally, you know, spouses would be chosen for you by your parents. I mean, people did have an, an element of choice. They weren’t generally forced to marry somebody. They, they really didn’t like, or couldn’t get on with, but conceptually, you know, that that was how society worked. Your parents chose you a spouse and Andy married them and they chose the spouse usually for economic reasons. So a woman would have a dowery, uh, which was usually cash or goods, occasionally land, but generally generally cash and Bess who was a country gentleman’s daughter, not, not wealthy by any means. Her dowery was somewhere between 40 and 60 marks. Now a Mark is about two thirds of a pound. So somewhere between sort of 25 and 40 pounds with her, her cash inheritance from her, from her father.
Speaker 2: (05:17)
Um, so to give you a, um, a sort of a comparitor, although it’s very difficult, cause purchasing power is different. Uh, uh, Duke, the Duke, the Duke of Buckingham had in 1521, he had an annual income of about 3000 pounds a year. Uh, went on of cleaves, was had her marriage and old her settlement from the King was somewhere between three and 4,000 pounds a year. And Henry the eighth left his daughters an annual income of 3000 pounds a year. So with best having a lump sum of 30 to 50 pounds, that that gives you the sort of idea. So a deal more than a, you know, what you might call an ordinary working person would ever have, but by no means vast wealth. So best his first husband was a chap called Robert BOLO or barley at sometimes written, uh, who was another man from Darby HSA about the same sort of age, possibly slightly younger than best.
Speaker 2: (06:17)
We don’t know anything about how the marriage was arranged. Uh, but what was interesting about it is that, uh, Robert was a minor. So he was under the age of 21 at the time of his marriage. And he was also, uh, he was a ward of court. His father had already died. So it’s, it’s very complicated, the, the arrangements around it, and it isn’t absolutely clear how the marriage was arranged. So when Robert died quite quickly after the marriage, probably about 18 months, it’s unlikely that they had consummated the marriage it’s possible, but he, they probably hadn’t. They were probably considered too young. So Bess whose dowery of say 50 pounds had been handed over to the Barlow estate was in theory, do a third of his income for life has her dour. So there’s, there’s three elements to it. There’s the dowery that the wife pays over the family and that money becomes the property of the husband’s family just goes into the family pot.
Speaker 2: (07:21)
Then that is the second element, which is usually referred to as a joint here. And that was the money on the lands that the husband and wife had for their joint lifetime to live on. So frequently, if a son married during the lifetime of his father, he would settle land and income on the son and son and the wife. And that was, that was a joint tier or for Royal women that was there. The joint share that that, um, was given to them. So like the Queens had, you know, they’re 4,000 pounds a year of land and so forth at the death of the husband or the death of the wife. Um, but so is the death of the husband, the, the joint should didn’t necessarily then stay with the wife. Sometimes it did. Sometimes it didn’t because she was entitled to a thing called the dour. So it’s a separate concept. And the dour was generally about a third of the annual income that the couple had enjoyed. Okay. So if he didn’t leave a will, if the husband left, no, will, their wife would get a third of the family estate and income for her lifetime.
Speaker 2: (08:35)
And so a couple, I was just thinking about her first marriage. Didn’t she have to go to court to try to get that seat. Absolutely. So when, when best, when best his husband died, uh, the, the guardian who was administering the land refused to pay the dour probably on the basis that the marriage hadn’t been consummated, it was all just hadn’t. They were all very young and, you know, all the sorts of excuses that people come up with to not pay the money over. And he probably thought that best as a girl of, you know, maybe 16, wasn’t going to do anything about it and that she would just put up with it because she didn’t have rich or powerful friends to help her. And that was the, that was the key in Tudor life. You needed powerful friends, it was all about networking. If you knew somebody who knew somebody, they could fix it for you, but best as a young girl, didn’t have that.
Speaker 2: (09:29)
And you can look at how this experience really marked, how she, her subsequent career, she became an absolutely expert networker. I mean, you know, a presidential candidate is nowhere near as good as best wasn’t networking there. She was just amazing at it. And she obviously worked out that that’s what she needed, powerful friends. So, but even before she, she attained these skills, she, she said, no, I want my dour. And she went to court and a settlement was forced upon her that wasn’t, um, you know, her full rights in, I think 1548, I think, which was, uh, two or three years after her husband’s death. But she continued to fight on. And in 1553, um, she got the full settlement of a third of her first husband’s estate. And she would hold that for life that you can see why, um, these problems arose. Because for example, if a man had married several times and most people did because of, because spouses, you know, everybody died quite young. Uh, a husband might have say a third or a third wife who might be the same age as his son. And when his son inherited, he was going to have to pay his stepmother a third of his income for perhaps the rest of his own life. Right. So it was a huge drain on estates. And there was a lot of feeling that they shouldn’t, you know, a lot of resistance to paying it.
Speaker 1: (11:01)
Uh huh. Yeah. And I could see like if he married three, well, I suppose, yeah. I could see where you would start to divide things up and pretty soon it would all be divided off, especially if you had, I guess, how would it work with, for second sons and for third? Cause I could see this, if a family had multiple sons, how would that work?
Speaker 2: (11:23)
Exactly. So the, the younger sons had even less chance of getting any money if they, if they had a stepmother who was as old as them. So generally the way lands were held most lands, um, were, were held by men and it’s things never change. Do they? And on the man’s death, it was complicated as to whether as to whether land could actually be passed by will because in theory, land belonged to the King. Okay. And well, the crown, so, and at the top of the, of the feudal pile, so to speak, the King gave land to his feudal barons in return for service. And the funeral barons gave land to the people under them in return for military service. And so on, it went down, down the, the hierarchical tree. So if when you inherited, you were a miner, you couldn’t give that service.
Speaker 2: (12:18)
So the land reverted to the crown in theory, and when you reached the age of 21, you were allowed to swear out your livery and take your land back, but it’s not clear that land really belonged to an individual. So, so generally how, how land was, was, was granted. So for example, the King, you know, gave, um, a thousand, you know, a thousand acres, should we say to the, to the Earl of Salzburg and the in return for service. And then the Earl of souls bring, might divide that up into 10 farms of, of a hundred acres each and that hundred acres would be granted to the individual and his heirs. Now, sometimes it was as long as they performed the service. So sometimes it would say the air’s mail, which meant it was only the sons. And sometimes it would just set the heirs, which meant if there were no sons, the daughters could inherit. And that’s kind of like
Speaker 1: (13:20)
The, um, the agreement or the, the device for the succession that Edward, the sixth had done with, with Jane lady Jane gracing, the air’s male, right,
Speaker 2: (13:29)
Exactly. Yes. He tried to entail it on, on, on male heirs and the crown. Well, again, there was, there was arguments about whether the crown could be willed in, in any event, but, but yes, it had never been entailed male. So it had always been to the heirs general and, and some of the oldest older estates, which would this answers, the question that people often ask is how come sometimes women inherited say the elder of Salzburg. There were, there were countless hours of salt spray and contests of Warrick, but not other ones. And in the early days of, of the feudal system, after the Norman conquest, it generally, the, the entails were not, were not limited to males. It was just usually the heirs. So the older titles tended to be heritable by women, but towards the 14th, 15th century, they started limiting it to male heirs. I see.
Speaker 1: (14:25)
Okay. And we could go on for a long time about this.
Speaker 2: (14:29)
We could, yes. Sorry. I digress.
Speaker 1: (14:32)
It’s really interesting. Um, so the thing, one of the, of course, main, um, factors in best his life was her husband and her were in charge of, um, kind of being the guardians of Mary queen of Scots later on when she was on her husband. And I just wonder how she, at that time, she wasn’t under any obligation to be with Mary queen of Scots. And so she was able to start a lot of building projects and go, and, and her marriage was quite strange. Then can you tell us a little bit about what was going on with her later in her life and how, I guess quickly, how she got to that point and then a little bit about what was going on with her then?
Speaker 2: (15:15)
Yes. So after her first widowhood, she married again. So William Cavendish by whom she had quite a few children and they were definitely a business partnership, although there was a big age gap and in order to avoid the problem of underage heirs and losing control of the estates, all the Cavin dishes lands were held, it jointly for best for the life of the survivor. So when Bess outlived him, instead of the lands immediately parsing to their children, she held them all personally, which was unusual. So that, so, um, that there were complications when he died, because he was under investigation for embezzlement, which he probably had done the, I think, I think a lot of money stuck to William Kevin dishes, fingers over the years, uh, that she married a third times, a Williamson Lou and inherited, um, money and land from him as well, again, held health for life.
Speaker 2: (16:13)
And then she made this spectacular match to George Tolbert, uh, Earl of Shrewsbury who had recently been widowed. They were about the same age and it would appear, um, you know, deeply, he seemed very much in love with her when they married, uh, from a playful love letters from the yes. And he called her my, you know, dear sweetheart and his, his nickname for her was, uh, it’s spelled [inaudible]. But, uh, I, it probably came from my known, so my known, so he writes his lessons to her saying he misses her. And, uh, one in particular, he, he misses her at night. So, so we can infer that they were, they were well well-matched. Yes. Um, so yeah, so it was so, and he, he didn’t need to marry again, cause he he’d been married for 20 odd years to his first wife and had numerous children. Uh, but you know, she, she had plenty of money and as is, was the custom of course, when they married, unless other arrangements were made, he would have the control of all of her land and property for her lifetime. Uh, so, and much of the lands that she held were in Darby and many of the shows, freelancer and Darby sure. As well. So it all, all matched together quite nicely. And they arranged,
Speaker 1: (17:37)
Marry her children to his children as well to really try and solidify
Speaker 2: (17:41)
Exactly. And this year, I mean, it was suggested afterwards that this was all sort of some sort of scheme on her part to steal the SROs Bree inheritance. But in fact, it worked for both parties because the oldest son of, uh, um, best Henry Cavendish married one of SROs SROs for his daughters. So he would give shows, Brie would give grace Tolbert a dowery. And, you know, she would take that to the Cavendish family. And at the same time, uh, one of best his daughters, Mary Katherine dish married, uh, SROs, Bree, second son, his oldest son was already married and that would give, um, the second son some, some money in lands as well. So, so it was a good deal for everybody. And although, um, uh, Mary Cavendish and George Tolbert, they got on very well, Henry and grace didn’t actually have any children in the end. So, so from that point of view, it was, it was a dynastic failure and it was Grace’s fault because Henry had so many illegitimate children that he was known as the common bull of Staffordshire and Darby.
Speaker 2: (18:51)
Yes. Uh, so, so it was a good business arrangement as well. The marriage with SROs Bree, but they were, you know, certainly shows where he was, was very attached to best, harder to tell what she thought because her letters are less personal than his, but along comes Mary queen of Scots and well, it, it would put a strain on any marriage and they hadn’t been married very long. They’d been married, uh, I think two or three, about three years when, uh, Elizabeth queen Elizabeth decided that, uh, Mary was never going to go home again. And the best person to keep her in honorable confinement was the electrospray partly because he was very rich. Mmm. And of course that had been helped by, by his marriage to Bess. And he was strategically placed in the Midlands. So not too close to the North, where there was a big Catholic, um, population who was certainly sympathetic to Mary, even if they weren’t necessarily going to get to really rebel to any great effect that, you know, there was a lot of sympathy and certainly a high possibility that she could have escaped, obviously met Elizabeth didn’t want her hanging around London, partly because Mary was famously beautiful and charming and Elizabeth didn’t like, um, so, so the SROs breeze in, in the Midlands on Darby shirt were absolutely ideal location.
Speaker 2: (20:21)
And also, um, Shrewsbury and Bess were very firmly Protestant, but no, no possibility of them. Um, you know, getting involved in any kind of conflict clause and Shrewsbury, he, you know, yeah. You get the impression that he, the poor was a bit of a false pot. Um, but the, the risk he ran was huge because if Mary had escaped, you know, they’re very, very high possibility that he would have been blamed. And we know what happened to noblemen who pissed off the King or the queen, you know, w w it wouldn’t have ended well, if Mary had escaped
Speaker 1: (21:03)
And there were rumors about him not doing such a good job towards the end where weren’t there, that it put him under a lot of stress weren’t there. And he couldn’t like go to court to try to address them because he was stuck there. And,
Speaker 2: (21:15)
Yeah. So, so he was not supposed to leave her at all, how to ask for special permission to leave her. So that meant that unless Bess was prepared to be there all the time, um, you know, she, the couple began to spend time apart because best, you know, she didn’t want to be confined with a, a load of guards, um, hanging around the castle, not able to live a free life. So she wanted to attend to her, her estate and her business and her children and shows Bree couldn’t couldn’t get involved. He was stuck looking after Mary and his, he was very, very stressed. And you can see a deterioration in his character from somebody who was very attached to his wife, to somebody became very suspicious. Very, he thought she was trying to Rob him. He thought she thought he thought that she hated him.
Speaker 2: (22:10)
He, I think the stress, I mean, looking, you know, you can’t tell medically at this distance, I would say he certainly, uh, could well have had the kind of strokes that alter people’s personality. You know, they get very, um, difficult and stressed and, um, paranoid behavior. And he, you know, he accused, he accused her of, um, trying to, uh, uh, forcing him into monetary agreements that when, when he was ill and his own son who was, uh, the second son actually, I called the second son, George is actually Gilbert, Gilbert, um, Gilbert and Mary, who tended to side with Bess. When, when Shannon SROs, Brie quarreled, he accused his daughter-in-law trying to poison his son’s mind against him. So Paul fallowing, he got very, very worked up. Um, and Mary, of course, you know, it was in Mary queen of Scots interest too. So dissension, because, well, apart from the fact that poor woman must have been bought out of her mind, she was only in her late twenties when she was confined. And she was never, you know, never to be free again. I mean, no wonder she was, she was busy plotting, you know, you can hardly blame her. So if she could, so a little bit of dissension and make everybody’s life difficult, you know, she knew she did. Yeah. Yeah. Sheer entertainment value of nothing else.
Speaker 1: (23:41)
Yeah. So that must’ve been very hard for best to watch all of and watch the deterioration of her marriage and, um, her husband becoming so stressed. And, uh, how did she handle that?
Speaker 2: (23:53)
As far as you can tell from the letters, she seems to been genuinely concerned about her husband and wanted to be reconciled. And persistently said, one time, he, he, she went off to visit Chatsworth as she’d customarily done. And it seems, it seems odd that she didn’t just go back home to Sheffield castle or wherever shows Brie was at that time. But whether she needed his permission to move as wives, obviously did men need their husband’s permission for a lot more things. He didn’t give her permission to come back home. So he sort of instituted this separation and she wrote to him and saying, you know, let me come home. I’m, you know, I want to help y’all to look after you. I, I, I don’t know why you’re so angry with me. Tell me why you’re angry with me. And he would, all he would do is say, you know, why I’m angry with you. You’ve behaved appallingly and she’d write back and say, but what have I done? And it’s, it’s very, it’s very sad because obviously he, he had, he had a complete bee in his bonnet that she’d done something, but he’d never tell her what it was. So there were a number of efforts to reconcile them. The Earl of Leicester tried to help them, um, be reconciled, but Shrewsbury just gotta be in his bonnet.
Speaker 1: (25:11)
So let’s talk about what happened with her when once he died and she was, she never married again. And she focused on her building projects and also the theme of her as a, as a dynasty creator, um, you know, with her granddaughter, our Bella. And isn’t it like the, all the Queens and Kings of England kind of descend from her in a way now, is that true?
Speaker 2: (25:39)
No, because her, her granddaughter, our Bella didn’t have any children of her own. So I mean, some of them, I mean, there are definitely desense the Cavendish family. Yes. They’re in, in fact, our, our current queen is descended from her because, uh, her, her grandmother was a cabin dish bending. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So she is descended. And so some of the other, but through the, through the sort of Cavendish children marrying into other members of the nobility, rather than a sort of a direct descent, but yes, the current queen is definitely descended from her. And the idea,
Speaker 1: (26:22)
I feel you, you kind of touched on it where people talked about her last marriage, like she was trying to get in on this family. And I feel like there’s such a double standard with her, and I don’t want to, you know, I don’t, I don’t mean to turn this political, but you know, when it, when you look at men founding dynasties, it’s like, Oh, look at them. They’re so strong. But if you, it’s almost like a negative for a woman to be, to be seen this way. And at the time period, especially in, she fought against so many stereotypes of what women I suppose should do. And, um, I, without it becoming too political, I just wonder if you can talk a little bit about that and, you know, kind of about her legacy.
Speaker 2: (27:02)
She, yeah, she definitely she’s. She was definitely one of those women who, women, people who, who was driven to succeed. And I think it’s probably because, um, you know, sort of some pop psychology, you know, how I love my pop psychology. Um, uh, her childhood was insecure. Her father died in debt. Her mother lost most of her land best became one of those people who totally, um, looked for, for financial security, everything she did was driven by her need for financial security. Now that doesn’t make her a bad person and you can see, I mean, it’s, it has been shown that many, many great sort of, um, entrepreneurs and driven people have had financial insecurity in their childhood. It’s, it’s a very common behavior pattern. And for, for, for the two to mind, it wasn’t just about money. It was about land and it was about holding land and it was about passing your land on to your, to your children.
Speaker 2: (28:02)
And that’s what Bessant. And her second husband, Kevin dish obviously had in mind, they aggregated all their lands together, which was unusual. A lot of, lot of big families had lands all over the place, but they, they concentrated very much in Derbyshire, uh, around Chatsworth and, uh, Hardwick, which is best is, was where Bess was, was born and brought up. So, so they had a big concentration of lands there. The dynastic marriages with the shows breeze, obviously, um, w w w was part of the great scheme, uh, and the most, the most wonderful then aspect match of all was the marriage of her daughter, Elizabeth Cavendish to Charles Stewart, uh, who was, um, Charles Stewart. He was, he was the son of a lady ma Margaret Douglas. And he was the brother of Henry Darnley. So he was Mary queen of Scots brother-in-law. Uh, so this marriage, which on surprisingly, didn’t go down too well with queen Elizabeth, uh, potentially made best as grandchild Elizabeth says now had, there was only one child born of the marriage.
Speaker 2: (29:15)
Uh, Elizabeth was, let’s say not, not very happy, unfortunately for, probably for his head, Charles died young, but, uh, had had the daughter, Bella been a boy. I think it was a very, there’s certainly been a strong possibility that he might’ve inherited rather than James of Scotland. So, so Apollo had a very, very genuine came to the throat and it wasn’t as good as James of Scotland’s, but obviously it was a, it was a card to be played, but in a way it’s all backfired on Bess. That one, because she was very loyal to Elizabeth and there is no evidence at all that Elizabeth, uh, quarreled with Bess, uh, it’s often said that they did, but none of the biographies I’ve read about her or any of the evidence I’ve seen suggests that this is, this is at all true. Uh, so, so Bess was very loyal.
Speaker 2: (30:09)
Um, but obviously she wanted her, she, her granddaughter was now, you know, had Royal blood and she would like to have seen her at least considered by Elizabeth, but Elizabeth, she invited her to court a couple of times, but, uh, she didn’t, she didn’t take to her or she felt she’d be too much of a rival. So she spent most of her, her youth with her grandmother and Bess was then in a cleft stick, because if she, if let our Bella, um, there was, there was a strong possibility, or at least in, in the Queen’s mind that our Bella might be used against her, that she might become the focus of plots and rebellions and possibly even be abducted. I mean, there was talk that she was going to be abducted to Spain. So Bess effectively had to God, the child as though she was a prisoner and, you know, it destroyed their, their relationship because our Bella, it drove her out of her wits to be guarded all the time.
Speaker 2: (31:12)
Although, you know, you can say, actually it probably wasn’t a lot more serious. The most young women were subject to, I mean, women, you know, their lives weren’t very free. Um, but yeah, and again, having, having establish their dentisty, she, she was sorry that obviously her oldest son, Henry didn’t have children, but, um, she called him her, my bad son, Henry, because he, he, he got into debt and she much preferred, well, not necessarily preferred, but her second son William was much more like her very careful looked after his money, um, was it was a suitable air. And because Henry didn’t have children, in fact, it all went to William, but Bess used money to control the family. I mean, she would be generous to Henry and her other son, Charles, but she wouldn’t pay their debts. She’d give them presents, but, but she wouldn’t pay their debts.
Speaker 2: (32:04)
And you know, maybe I’m not saying she should, but you can see, I don’t know if you’ve ever the crispy boats, but you know, you often see them, these sort of matriarchs in her books who hold onto the purse strings and all the young people are sort of trapped. I mean, obviously with your modern mining thing, we’ll just go and get a job then, but, and I could really see it. It’s very similar, the sort of plot in a way that there’s best holding the purse strings. They have to come to her for money and she loves them. And she’s generous. Extremely, yeah. Generous gives a lot to her. Children gives a lot to charity, but she, the whole, the whole thing, she can’t let go, but she did create a fabulous dinner state and fabulous houses. Um, Hardwick hall is, you know, just ad gem of Renaissance architecture, just beautiful, absolutely beautiful.
Speaker 2: (32:56)
And Chatsworth, you can’t see what best is Chatsworth. It’s, it’s headed now between, between the modern, well, behind the 18th century Chatsworth, but, you know, she created, she created great art in the, in that way. Um, but yeah, she was. And her pearls, have you, have you seen the pearls in her picture? Yes. Seven strings of pearls, absolutely glorious. And she loved, she loved beautiful things. Beautiful tapestries, beautiful Globes. She paid for quality. She was nothing miserly about her. You can see when she took our Bella to court, you know, nothing but the best. Sure. Great. Well, thank you so much for telling us more about her. I, um, yeah, she’s amazing. Yeah, yeah, no, she’s take my hat off. She’s somebody. I, I wouldn’t cross her on a business deal, but she was honest. You, you know, you can see she’d hold people to the letter of the deal.
Speaker 2: (33:54)
So she was, she was hard, but she was, you know, she was, she was a great business woman. Fair enough. Good for her. Good for her. Thank you again to Melita Thomas for taking the time to tell us about best of Hardwick, for more information on her, go to tutor times.co.uk, or you can also see the resources available on the England cast site@englandgas.com. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks with the final episode of 2016, it’s going to be on cosmetics and makeup in tutor and Elizabeth in England. So that’s going to be fun last year to start off the year, I did a few shows on the Spanish Armada and this coming year in early 2017, I’m going to be focusing the first couple of shows on war with France, because it seems like a good adage for tutor. England was when in doubt, make war with France. So there’s a lot of other good stuff coming up in the next year as well. Thanks so much for listening. I will talk with you soon.
Speaker 3: (35:05)
[inaudible].
[advertisement insert here: if you like this show, and you want to support me and my work, the best thing you can do (and it’s free!) is to leave a rating or review on iTunes. It really helps others discover the podcast. Second best is to buy Tudor-themed gifts for all your loved ones at my shop, at TudorFair.com, like leggings with the Anne Boleyn portrait pattern on them, or boots with Elizabeth I portraits. Finally, you can also become a patron of this show for as little as $1/episode at Patreon.com/englandcast … And thank you!]
Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast, the original Tudor history podcast, started in 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. In 2019 she created Tudorcon, which is now a yearly event, in addition to writing books, and running TudorFair.com - a whimsical Tudor Merch shop.
She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 30 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history (how exciting when she got to interview Alison for the first time!). In addition to history, she is passionate about travel, and has lived in 3 countries and 4 states (not counting her perpetual state of confusion), and her family (who help her host her YouTube channel occasionally).
