Jonathan Thomas (00:21)
Welcome to the Angotopia podcast where we explore British travel, history and culture. I am your host, Jonathan Thomas. The story of Henry VIII, the king who married six times and executed two of those wives, is part of Britain's national identity. Millions walk through the Tower of London and Hampton Court each year hoping to understand this larger than life figure. But there's a period of Henry's reign that remains largely overlooked when he turned not on wives or ministers, but his own royal family.

Adam Pennington (00:30)
you

Jonathan Thomas (00:50)
cousins whose Plantagenet blood gave them better claims to the throne than its own. Today I'm speaking with Adam Pennington, a Tudor and Plantagenet historian based in London whose first book, Henry VIII and the Plantagenet Poles The Rise and Fall of a Dynasty, that's a mouthful, I think I said Plantagenet right, tells the tragic story of Margaret Pole Countess of Salisbury and her family's collision course with England's most volatile king.

Adam grew up opposite Nonsuch Park, site of one of Henry VIII's lost palaces and has turned his lifelong passion into a career spanning writing, podcasting through the Tudor chest, and co-directing Simply Tudor Tours alongside Dr. Sarah Morris. Simply Tudor Tours is also an Anglotopia sponsor, I should mention. This is not a sponsored episode, but they sponsor Anglotopia's newsletter.

So whether you're fascinated by the tenuous Tudor claim to the throne, the brutal politics of Henry's court, or dreaming of walking in Anne Boleyn's footsteps across England, Adam brings the 16th century to life like few others can. Welcome to the podcast, Adam.

Adam Pennington (01:56)
Thank you very much. It's lovely to be here.

Jonathan Thomas (01:59)
Lovely to have you. This is the first time we're talking about the Tudors. So hopefully this will be a really popular podcast because people, as you know, they love hearing everything about the Tudors.

Adam Pennington (02:10)
Yes, so they are definitely a ⁓ very popular topic and particularly with American audiences.

Jonathan Thomas (02:18)
I think the joke that other historians make is that ⁓ in British history, there's only two things that people care about, the Nazis and the tutors.

Adam Pennington (02:28)
Well, it's funny you should say that because it's pretty much that is exactly how our education system seems to think. People have this assumption, I would imagine that Brits, we learn about all royal history in England, ⁓ in our schools, but that's not true, really. I mean, the sort of standard curriculum takes in the Tudors, and then World War One and World War Two, there might be a little sprinkling of 1066.

otherwise it's pretty much Tudors and the two wars.

Jonathan Thomas (02:59)
really interesting because obviously our history doesn't really cover it at all. It starts in 1776 and that's basically it.

Adam Pennington (03:06)
Yeah.

Jonathan Thomas (03:09)
So growing up opposite Nonsuch Park and so close to Hampton Court, Windsor and London's other Tudor sites, can you tell us about how that environment shaped your fascination with Tudor history?

Adam Pennington (03:19)
Yeah, I think that ultimately it's because it just always felt very present. So much history is scattered throughout where I grew up. mean, even mundane things like road names, a few streets away from where I live, example, there's a road called Anne Boleyn's Walk. We have a Seymour Avenue, Aragon Close. So it's always sort of around me. mean, the village a mile away from me has a full length statue of Anne Boleyn overlooking its ponds.

So I suppose those things and the fact that it was always on my doorstep just made it, yeah, always very present. And because we also obviously learn about it in school, that sort of combined. So it was just always there. And my mum loves history. She was very keen for my sister and I to understand history. So growing up, we would be taken to historic sites. And because a lot of them were almost on top of us, I Hampton Court Palace is a 20 minute drive away, I would say.

Central London is only half an hour on the Tube or the subway as you call it on your side of the pond. So yeah, it was always just very present I think and that rubbed off on me.

Jonathan Thomas (04:26)
So you mentioned that your mother instilled a love of British history in you. Was there a particular moment or discovery that turned a general interest into a passion for this time period and these people?

Adam Pennington (04:30)
Mm.

Yeah, I think what was the gateway drug? It was a film and that's often the case for a lot of people, particularly with the Tudors and by extension of that, the story of Anne Boleyn. Anne Boleyn has become sort of the poster girl of the 16th century for many Tudor history fans. And for me, it was the film Anne of a Thousand Days that really introduced me to Anne Boleyn in a big way.

It was, I saw it when I was about 10. And it was at the point where I was first studying the Tudors at school. And by pure chance, of a Thousand Days was on television. And it's, was a film released in the 1970s starring Richard Burton's Henry VIII and Jean-Vierre Bougold as Anne Boleyn. And it just captivated me. I just loved it. And from there on, my interest in Anne really sort of started.

And yeah, I was hooked. it was seeing that film in conjunction with learning about the Tudors at school, that was sort of where, that was the turning point. That's where I really grew very interested, started reading anything I could get my hands on and asking my parents to take me to the different places, the different historic sites. I can remember vividly going to Hever Castle for the first time, for example, which is the childhood home of Amberlyn.

So would say really it did, yeah, it started with that film.

Jonathan Thomas (06:03)
Yeah, I would argue that ⁓ British film is a gateway drug, as they say, for a lot of late anglophiles. I know a film that affected me when I was a kid was the movie Empire of the Sun about the little British boy during World War II in the Far East. And that was kind of a hook that got me really interested in British stuff. it's, yeah, never discount movies for that.

Adam Pennington (06:21)
you

No, have you seen Hamnet yet?

Jonathan Thomas (06:32)
Not yet. ⁓ I'm waiting for it to come to drop on streaming. I hear it's very good.

Adam Pennington (06:36)
Okay,

it's incredible but unbelievably heartbreaking.

Jonathan Thomas (06:41)
Yeah, that's that's what the social media memes have been saying that it they use that on the nature of daylight piece for Max Richter. So to turn the screws on the viewer. So I know I know nothing. I've not read the book. So I know nothing about the story. All I know is it involves grief. So I'm like, I think I'll wait for that one to be for streaming. But I that's that's the thing is it's creating a lot of interest in William Shakespeare and that time period right now. And it's ⁓

Adam Pennington (06:50)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jonathan Thomas (07:09)
It's been an incredibly popular film.

Adam Pennington (07:11)
Mm.

Jonathan Thomas (07:13)
For those who might not know, Nonsuch Palace was one of Henry VIII's greatest building projects, but it is now completely lost to history. ⁓ Why is that and what can visitors see at Nonsuch Park today and what do we know about the palace that once stood there?

Adam Pennington (07:20)
Mm.

Yeah. Well, what can visitors see today? Absolutely nothing. There's nothing at Nonsuch Park, sadly, other than, and I go to Nonsuch Park every day because it's where I take my dog for a walk. ⁓ But sadly, all that's there are some stone markers telling you roughly where the footprint of the palace was. But as far as actual physical remains, there's nothing at the park. Nonsuch Palace was something of a white elephant of Henry VIII. It was a sort of ⁓

passion project that never really got concluded. It was called Nonsuch because it was so opulent that there had been none such like it, which is where the term Nonsuch was coined. And it was beautiful, but it wasn't huge in the way the Whitehall Palace or Hampton Court Palace were. It was slightly smaller, but very, very beautiful.

But it was never quite finished and it eventually it got torn down actually thanks to and I'm I'm fairly certain it was Barbara Villiers but forgive me if I'm wrong but one of the mistresses of King Charles II and I think it was Barbara Villiers was given Hampton Court, sorry, was given Nonsuch Palace by Charles II and she sold it off and had it demolished to pay off her gambling debts. So that's how

we lost Nonsuch Palace. But if it was still there then it's entirely possible that the streets around it wouldn't have been built so I may not have been born. But that's why we have nothing of it.

Jonathan Thomas (09:04)
Well, thank

God it was torn down then I was just gonna make a joke about if English heritage and national trust were around then that never would have happened.

Adam Pennington (09:14)
Yeah, well, I mean, that's the

devastating thing for us is that what the the Stuarts and the Georgians have got a lot to answer for, because there are there is so much more to the Tower of London, for example, than than what's there now. We have we don't have at one point, the Tower of London had a great hall, which was where Amberlyn was tried. We Amberlyn's royal apartments where she stayed before her coronation and before her execution. They've all gone. So there was a lot.

that was torn down. have nothing really of Whitehall Palace, which was Henry VIII's great central London base really. And a lot of that is owing to the combined forces of the Stuarts, but in particular the Georgians.

Jonathan Thomas (09:57)
So your career spans writing, podcasting, tour guiding. How did you make the transition from being a corporate media events consultant to being a full-time Tudor historian?

Adam Pennington (10:02)
Hmm.

Yeah, I remember when I was leaving my old job and I said to people, I'm going full-time historian. went, what are you talking about? Cause I used to work in, I used to work in the events industry, but it was basically, I say the events industry. I worked for an event, a big festival that happens in Cannes in the south of France called Cannes Lions, which to put it simply is the Oscars of the advertising industry. How did I make that transition? What a big thing really was that I landed a book deal.

Jonathan Thomas (10:15)
What does that even mean?

Adam Pennington (10:37)
So I, during the pandemic, I created my social media account, the Tudor Chest, just as a hobby really. And I know you want to come onto this in a bit more detail in a bit, but that hobby included a blog. That blog then led to me being approached by a publishing house asking whether I would consider writing a book about Margaret Pohl and her family. And when that happened, I thought, okay, is there a way that I could try and carve out a career?

And at that point I then looked at creating a podcast and I'd already met Sarah Morris at an event at Hever Castle. And she and I had spoken about possibly creating a historic tour company because that would also allow me to, because I'd been in this, in the events job for, the time I left 13 years. So events is actually something that I'm really, really knowledgeable about, you know, event logistics and things.

So I thought, well, if I can use that event experience, but through the prism of history is kind of doing, it's joining my two sort of loves into one. So that was how I made that pivot, I suppose, from being in the corporate event industry to running an event company that is at its core based around Tudor history. But then the other things such as writing, doing the podcast.

And it's been neat because I got a relatively big following via Instagram that also then helped with getting the podcast, making the podcast a success, getting big historians onto the podcast to share their amazing stories. So yeah, I suppose that was, that was how I pulled it off.

Jonathan Thomas (12:21)
Well, well done for answering the next three questions in one go. ⁓ Angle Topey had a very similar start. It started as a hobby and suddenly it was a job and it was like, okay. And yeah, it's wild how these things become their own mini headed beast as they say.

Adam Pennington (12:24)
You

Okay.

Mm.

Jonathan Thomas (12:45)
So let's talk about your book. ⁓ So your first book focuses on the Pol family and their collision with Henry VIII. For listeners who don't know this story, can you kind of introduce us to who the Pols were and why their bloodline made them such a threat to Henry VIII?

Adam Pennington (13:00)
Sure. So the Pole, we talk about them as the Pole family because that was the married name, but it wasn't the husband of this marriage that was problematic. It was the wife because the wife, Margaret Pole, had a much grander name by birth and that was Plantagenet. And so therein lies the significance of Margaret. She was Margaret Plantagenet or also Margaret of Clarence.

Margaret was the daughter of George Duke of Clarence and he was the middle brother of King Edward IV and King Richard III. So Margaret was a niece in the male line of two of England's kings. To give her a modern comparison, you could argue she was the Princess Beatrice maybe of her generation, which meant that she had a lot of royal blood.

and that royal blood then was passed on to her own children. And she had five children, four sons, Henry, Arthur, Reginald, and Geoffrey, and the daughter Ursula, who was born between the second and third son, Henry, sorry, Arthur and Reginald. When the Tudors came to the throne, the Tudors claimed that the throne did not bear close scrutiny. They had a claim, but it wasn't especially strong.

Whereas Margaret and the other families with a lot of York royal blood possessed very strong claims to the throne, certainly stronger than the Tudors. So they were, I think in the book I refer to Margaret and these other families as a ready-made affront. To Henry VIII, they were an awkward reminder really of the dynasty that he had overthrown. And they were also notorious for their ability, which was something the Tudors failed in.

was that their ability to have lots of children. And as we know, that was something that the Tudors really struggled with. So that is why this family were a problem for the Tudors. And so the way that the Tudors dealt with that was certainly under Henry VII, the first of the Tudor monarchs, they neutralized those threats by marrying them off. Henry VII marries the York's greatest prize, Elizabeth of York, the eldest daughter of King Edward IV.

Margaret is given in marriage to Sir Richard Pole, who has only a tiny tincture of any sort of link to the nobility. His grandfather was a half sibling of Margaret Beaufort, the mother of Henry VII. And to put Margaret Pole's background and perspective when compared to that of her husband, the marriage brought

So, Richard Pole brought to the marriage two small properties which had an annual income of £50, which is about £35,000 by modern standards. Margaret's father, George, Duke of Clarence, had had an annual income of £6,000, so roughly £4.2 million today. So, the disparity between what Margaret was born to, to what she ends up marrying, is just huge.

But the marriage does provide safety and security, whilst Richard is alive at least. But that is why she is this potent threat and that threat passes on to her children. But she was by no means alone. There were lots of other big families that had a lot of York royal blood, but Margaret was certainly one of the most prominent.

Jonathan Thomas (16:37)
So you write that the House of Tudor was one which should never have been, let alone taken the throne. Can you explain what you mean by that

and how tenuous the Tudor claim actually was?

Adam Pennington (16:49)
Yeah, as far as being a family that should never have been, I mean that, suppose, in the context of having any claim to the Tudor throne. Sorry, having any claim to the throne of England. The reason they come into the mix is that there is a relatively obscure Welshman with... He's a minor member of the Welsh nobility called Owen Tudor.

and he marries Catherine of Valois, the widow of Henry V. Now, marriage to a dowager queen was actually illegal. And so without permission, which he didn't have, would have meant that, well, if permission had been sought, wouldn't have been approved because of the colossal disparity between Owen and Catherine's respective ranks. And hence their offspring,

shouldn't have been, I suppose is what I'm saying. They were like this sort of awkward appendix within the royal family because Owen and Catherine of Valois' sons become half siblings to King Henry VI because Catherine of Valois, she's the widow of Henry V, they only have one child, a son, Henry, who becomes Henry VI.

but she's now got these sons via Owen Tudor and therefore they are half brothers of the king. But their royal link is via their mother who's a French princess, it's not via their father who was an English king. They do trace their descent back to King Edward III, but again that link comes via Margaret Beaufort.

⁓ the mother of Henry VII, but it's again it's born via an illegitimate line because that line via Margaret Beaufort goes back to John of Gaunt who was the son of Edward III, but that line, the Beaufort line, was via Gaunt's mistress Catherine Swinford. And so you've got these two lines that connect. You've got Owen Tudor

marrying this French princess Catherine of Valois and then you've got on the other side the descent of Margaret Beaufort's descendants coming together. And so yes, there is some royal blood there, but it's really tenuous. It's not the official legitimate line and it's

is complicated by the fact that it's via the French princess now dowager queen of England. So though that's why they are, it's a family that should never have been, it's why yes there is this link but there are families with much greater claims to the throne than the Tudors, not least Margaret Pole and her family.

Jonathan Thomas (19:49)
So Margaret Pole is the family matriarch at the center of your book. She's one of the wealthiest and most powerful peers in England, governess to Princess Mary, and ultimately executed at 67. What drew you to her story?

Adam Pennington (19:53)
Yeah.

What drew me to the story was twofold. Firstly, it was the fact that as I grew to understand just how weak the Tudors claim to the throne was, I really wanted to sort of examine, okay, well, if the Tudors claim to the throne is weak, who are the people that possess that greater claim? And so that's where I really started to look into Margaret's story. And then by extension of that,

A lot of people, if they like Tudor history and they follow Tudor history, a lot of people are aware of Margaret Pol's story and the thing they're generally most aware of is that she has a badly botched execution and that she was 67 at the time, which by the standards of the time is pretty elderly. That's probably comparable with being in your mid-90s today.

But what a lot of people don't understand is, what led to that execution? Why was this woman executed? And what people really don't necessarily understand is what's going on around it and the fact that the her execution is part of something much bigger and that there were in fact eight executions and she is the last of them. They include her eldest son. They include her cousin.

So that was the desire really was to actually say to people, well hang on, why aren't we talking about the window of Henry VIII's brain where he turns on his own family? And it's because we all focus on the six wives because they understandably dominate the story. But there is this window that I just felt was really overlooked and is very dramatic.

and that was that was what was that's where the desire to tell this story was born from I guess.

Jonathan Thomas (21:45)
So without ⁓ giving away too much of the book, what's the story that leads to this execution? Like what are the events that culminate in this? Because I mean, even by our standards, execution was a big deal. To hack her head off was a big punishment. So why did she deserve that?

Adam Pennington (21:49)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Well, she didn't she didn't really do anything wrong. What leads to it to try and explain what is known as the Exeter conspiracy? I would need to be with you for about a month because it's really complex. But I suppose the the thing that kickstarts it is actually Henry VIII's marriage with Anne Boleyn because Margaret and her family so when Henry VIII comes to the throne

Sorry to backtrack a bit, but to help make sense of it. When Henry VIII came to the throne, he showed a huge amount of support in Margaret. They had a close relationship. Henry VIII adored his mother, and it was well known that his mother, Elizabeth of York, and Margaret were very close. They were first cousins. So when Henry VIII comes to the throne, under Henry VII, Henry VIII's father, Margaret had been kind of left all but destitute.

are following the death of her husband. But when Henry VIII comes to the throne, Margaret approaches him and sues for the return of her family's lands and titles, which were really vast. And Henry VIII gives them back willingly, but he does something even more unusual and even more special. He makes Margaret the Countess of Salisbury in her own right, making her the richest and most powerful independent woman in England.

to make her a peeress in her own right was extremely unusual. In fact, it made Margaret unique at the time. So she's a sort of a ⁓ very prominent courtier. She's undoubtedly the richest and most powerful woman in England after the Queen. But she's also, by extension of that, very traditional. She was not open to religious reform. She was a committed Roman Catholic.

And because she was so, so close to Catherine of Aragon and was the governess of Princess Mary, the daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, Margaret was committed to Catherine and by extension the interests of Mary. And so in that, in the window when Henry VIII is separating, he's trying to get the annulment from Catherine of Aragon and Marianne Boleyn, Margaret is put in a very difficult position because

her loyalty is both to the King and to Catherine. And so in that window, that's when things begin to change. As things change with almost everyone, because the only people that wanted Amberlyn on the throne were the Boleyns. And by extension of that, the Howards. Everyone else were frankly appalled. And it was Margaret's third son, Reginald, who really...

kickstarts what is eventually the downfall. Reginald Pole was personally sponsored and had his education paid for by the King and that involved Reginald actually going over to Italy where he studied at the University of Padua before making his way over to Rome where he managed to cultivate a friendship with Pope Clement VII, the very man who could have given Henry VIII the annulment, his heart's desire, with a click of his fingers basically.

and when Henry VIII was trying to get the annulment over the line he looked to his noblemen, his senior churchmen and people with a lot of influence to help get the annulment over the line to get the marriage broken down so that he could marry Anne. Reginald showed every sign that he was going to agree with Henry VIII and that he would support the King.

But he never, he just kept saying, yeah, I'll send my findings to England soon. You'll have them soon. You'll have them soon. He eventually sends his findings about Henry the Ape's marriage to Anne Boleyn two months after Anne Boleyn is beheaded. So that tells you how much he drags his feet. And what he sends is not what Henry the wished to hear. It was a, it's called a treatise, but really it was a small book called

Pro Ecclesiasticae Unitatis Defensione, Defense of the Unity of the Church, De Unitate for short. And De Unitate was a blistering attack on Henry VIII. He compared him to ancient dictators like Caligula and Nero. He accused Henry of being worse than a rotting beast. And understandably, this did not go down well with Henry VIII. so assassins were sent into Europe to try and track Reginald down. But...

Every time they got close, Reginald escaped. He evaded capture. This then puts a really, really negative spotlight on his family back home. The Pol family lock sort of Margaret Pol and her eldest, Henry Baron Montague. They close ranks. They say that they support the King. They effectively, well, they state that Reginald is all but lost to them, basically. But...

We then have the youngest Pole sibling, Geoffrey. In Tudor England, the wealth of the family was always effectively entrusted to the eldest. And so Geoffrey Pole, being the youngest of the four sons, was expected to ⁓ lead a nobleman's lifestyle, but didn't really have the money to support it. And he was so in debt that he sent a servant of his over to Reginald.

begging for the ability to go over to Reginald to live with him. And this basically, the man that took those letters was intercepted by a spy of Thomas Cromwell's, which proved that the Pol family was still in touch with Reginald, even though they said that they wouldn't be. This was then proven beyond all doubt by another spy who turned up within the lands of Margaret Pol's primary country seat, Warblington Castle. And that then led

Jonathan Thomas (28:02)
you

Adam Pennington (28:07)
to Jeffrey Pole being arrested, he is in the Tower of London, he's being interrogated, and he starts making statements that seriously implicate his brother, Henry Baron Montague, and then another nobleman, Henry Courtenay Marquis of Exeter, who was a grandson of Edward IV, having committed, having said things that were treasonous. So for example, Henry claims that his brother Baron Montague,

comices on the king's death because of his injured leg that none ruled about the king but knaves and he makes similar statements about Henry Courtney Marquis of Exeter. This then blows up into something known as the Exeter Conspiracy which if you accept the conspiracy was to depose Henry VIII and put Henry Courtney Marquis of Exeter in his place. That then eventually leads to

the belief that if Margaret's sons and her kinsmen, the courtenaise, were... if they were guilty of plotting against the king, that Margaret must have been either party to it or directly involved. And that's how she then gets dragged in. She goes through extended rounds of questioning and in the end they can find absolutely nothing against her. I mean, the amount of information we've got in the records of what she's asked...

it's extensive and she absolutely nails it. They can find nothing against Margaret Pohl to pin anything against her but even so an act of attainder is passed against Margaret and when it's being passed in the Houses of Parliament Thomas Cromwell lifts a tunic into the air as the attainder is being read out and the tunic had ⁓

Jonathan Thomas (29:59)
you

Adam Pennington (30:00)
two floral sigils being intertwined. One was the pansy, the pole family sigil, and the other was the Tudor rose. And this was taken as proof that Margaret had this long-held plan of uniting the House of Tudor with her own through the marriage of Princess Mary with her third son, Reginald. It's my belief the tunic was a fake created to finally have something to pin against her. That is what then allows the attainers to pass and her

being sentenced to death. So I know that was a very long answer, but I felt like I had to get the background in to make sense of it.

Jonathan Thomas (30:30)
you

Although it's very clear, so you did a great job. It sounds like a fascinating story. I'm going to add your book to my cart because I even though I have the galley, I want the actual book. Margaret's execution in 1541 is one of the most horrific in Tudor history. She was reportedly hacked to death by an inexperienced executioner. What does this brutal end tell us about Henry VIII's state of mind by this point?

Adam Pennington (30:42)
you

Mmm.

Well, I don't for a second think that Henry VIII expected her execution to be badly botched. think that when news reached him of that, I think he probably would have been actually quite shocked. It goes wrong because the regular Tower Headsman was with the King ⁓ as part of a royal progress that was going up to the north of England. And before leaving, Henry VIII gave instructions for Margaret's sentence to be carried out.

And what was unusual about Margaret's time was that in the tower was it was quite long. Most people are executed within a matter of days after their trial or their retainer. mean, George Boleyn and Boleyn's brother, he was executed just 40 hours after his trial. But Margaret was in the tower for two and a half years, which is quite unusual. And I think but I think the reason she is eventually executed and what's going through Henry VIII's mind is that inability to get to Reginald.

I think had he captured Reginald, then Margaret may have been freed. And I say that because Gertrude Courtenay, the Marchioness of Exeter, so Henry Courtenay's wife, she was eventually released and pardoned. But equally, the two women's positions were different. Margaret was a Plantagenet, Gertrude married one. So therein, Gertrude was less of a dynastic threat.

But she, Margaret is eventually, she's woken on the morning of the 27th of May 1541 and told you're to die within the hour. It was so rushed that there hadn't been a scaffold prepared and so instead a low wooden block was just put directly on the ground. And yeah, the the axe was handed to an inexperienced youth who just badly botched the job. It was claimed that 11 strikes of the axe were needed.

Jonathan Thomas (32:52)
us.

Adam Pennington (32:53)
Yeah, it was really badly botched. There's a legend which made its way down the centuries that a lot of people think is real, which includes the scaffold, which is how we can almost certainly say it isn't true, because there was no scaffold that is recorded. But there is a legend that when the first blow went into her shoulder, Margaret sprang up and ran around the scaffold being literally chased and sort of hacked apart by the executioner.

⁓ But that is likely entirely apocryphal, as I say, the extant accounts of her execution state that she didn't struggle, but it was badly botched nonetheless. I don't, I certainly don't believe that Henry VIII told, gave instructions that the executioner should deliberately botch it. I think he was just very inexperienced and was probably quite distressed. You know, she's an elderly lady by this point.

And I think most people would have, he would have known who she was. He, she was born all but a princess. She was the last representative really of the house of Plantagenet. So I think it would have been a very stressful thing for the, for the young man who was killing her to go through. ⁓ But it is, it's yeah, an awful thing to have to do. But she's then buried in the chapel of St. Peter of Incular within the walls of the Tower of London.

Jonathan Thomas (34:05)
You one job.

Adam Pennington (34:16)
and her bones were actually uncovered during the reign of Queen Victoria and all that was recorded was that they belonged to a woman of advanced years who had been unusually tall for the time. yeah, and thereafter a marble plaque was put over the top of where she was buried and she was actually, that plaque restored in death the title that Henry VIII had given her, then taken away at the end of her life because her retainer

She just became Margaret Pole again, but she's buried as the Countess of Salisbury, which is quite satisfying, I suppose.

Jonathan Thomas (34:52)
So you mentioned Reginald Pohl. Did Henry VIII ever get his man, or did continue to be ⁓ a thorn in his side from continental Europe?

Adam Pennington (35:04)
Reginald is the survivor really. mean he stays in Italy throughout the rest of Henry VIII's and in the entirety of the reign of Henry's son, King Edward VI, but he does eventually return to England during the reign of Queen Mary I. Because Queen Mary I, known quite unfairly in my opinion to history as Bloody Mary,

is staunchly Catholic and she goes about restoring Catholicism, Roman Catholicism, to England and that enables Reginald to come home. And he comes home really as a, almost like a returning prince. He comes home at the head of 2,000 horsemen where he returns as Archbishop of Canterbury and he becomes one of

very very few men across Mary's reign and her life really who never lets her down and actually a little fact that a lot of people don't know about is that Reginald and Mary die on the very same day. So Mary dies early in the morning of the 16th of November 1558 and Reginald follows her to the grave eight hours later. So he does yeah he does make his way back to England eventually and has a

a very, very prominent role at Mary's during Mary's reign. Yeah, it was when it dawned on me that Margaret, so Margaret was examined at length during over three days when she was being examined about her connections with the Exeter conspiracy.

Jonathan Thomas (36:27)
Interesting. So you mentioned having an, really get this lady moment with Margaret Pole while I writing the book. you share what that breakthrough was?

Adam Pennington (36:51)
And throughout that time, she repeatedly said things or admitted to things that could be viewed as controversial, such as burning of letters or commenting that Reginald's continued escapes gave her great joy. She could have lied. She could have said, he's a traitor. He's dead to me.

but she doesn't. She freely admits her relief that her son is alive. Now that is the entirely natural response from any concerned parent, but this is also the woman who had told Henry VIII that loyalty to him came before anything. And so that convinced me that Margaret was speaking the truth throughout her interrogations because, as I say, it would have been easier for her to lie, but she doesn't. And when that clicked in my head, I

I thought, okay, I really understand this woman. I understand where she was coming from and what she was saying. And by extension of that, it gave me assurance that what she was saying was the truth. And the other big reason behind that, again, that sort of clicked for me was Margaret's own personal faith. Because throughout her interrogations, she repeatedly

comments on what invokes the word of God throughout. She constantly leans on her fervent faith and belief in God, in heaven and hell, in Jesus Christ. And the thing is, in 16th century England, these weren't just rhetorical comments made off the cuff, but deeply serious comments. Margaret

firmly believed that invoking the Word of God was a sort of a sacred matter, by swearing upon her eternal soul on her baptism, which she repeatedly does, she is invoking the Word of God. And I don't believe that a woman who believed so fervently would have done that with a lie on her tongue. And so because of that, I think

She spoke the truth. I think what she said should be taken as irrefutable because of how much she Said she invoked the word of God. It's the same reason that Anne Boleyn I think I mean most people agree Anne Boleyn was innocent but before her execution she swears both before and after the taking of the Eucharist that she is entirely innocent of all charges

And this is a woman who knows within a matter of hours that she is going to be dead. And so to endanger, as she would have seen it, her immortal soul, she wouldn't have done that. She wouldn't have taken that risk. Margaret is saying the same thing. And that's for me why I believe she spoke the truth.

Jonathan Thomas (39:50)
So, for my final question about the poles, what was the most surprising thing you discovered when you were researching them?

Adam Pennington (39:57)
It was the fact that there is actually a lot of evidence that does make Margaret's sons guilty of treason, but very specifically within the confines of what that meant at the time. Now, do I believe that the Exeter conspiracy was a legitimate conspiracy conceived to depose Henry VIII and replace him with Henry Courtenay, Marcus of Exeter? Absolutely not. I do not believe for one second that there was this genuine

conspiracy. And the reason I say that is that in 1537 something called the Pilgrimage of Grace broke out, which was a huge uprising across the Midlands and the north of England against Henry VIII, against the Reformation of the Church, and that involved the dissolution, so the taking down of the monasteries and the break from the papacy in Rome. This was deeply unpopular with English people.

And so there was this huge uprising against Henry VIII's authority. We're talking 50 to 70,000 people up in arms. And at that point, that was the point. If ever there was a moment for the old Plantationet families to unite and join the rebels, that was their chance. mean, Margaret, if you look at the lands of Margaret Pole, she had lands across the whole of England, but they were hugely concentrated.

across the south of England in close proximity to London. The same can be said of the Marquis of Exeter. So if these two families and the other York families had joined forces with the rebels, they would have been able to overthrow Henry VIII easily. But they don't. They do the opposite. They lend support to Henry VIII. Henry Baron Monterey, Marquis' eldest son, he gives 200 men in support of Henry VIII's army. Jeffrey Paul gives 20.

So therein tells us that the one opportunity they could conceivably have had and they didn't take it suggests that they weren't ever can seriously considering overthrowing Henry VIII. What I think happened was actually just a series of rather than a premeditated conspiracy. I think it was just a group of old school nobles with royal blood moaning basically moaning about

state of things in England, moaning about the fact that they were no longer, that their immediate family were no longer on the throne, moaning about the state of England, the break from the papacy in Rome. But that moaning, unfortunately, does cross a line, because in 1534 there was an update to the Treasons Act, which stated that even thinking about the King's death, I mean how they could prosecute that, I do not know.

even thinking the king's death made you guilty of high treason. so speaking of the king's death was categorically treason. And so if Baron Montague, Henry Pole, did comment on the king's injured leg killing him, then that does, if you follow that strict interpretation of what treason is, does cross the line. It does actually make him guilty. It's the same reason why Anne Boleyn

to get bit is technically guilty of treason because one of the most damning pieces of evidence against her and I hasten to add before I say any more actually Amberlyn was clearly not guilty of treason in the sense I don't believe for a second that she slept with any of the men that she's eventually executed alongside but She does make a comment to Henry Norris one of those five men that she says you look for dead men shoes if or But if all but good came to the king you would look to have me. So in other words when the king dies

look to marry me, won't you?" If she said that and the evidence suggests she did, again it does cross that line about mentioning the King's death and so she is technically guilty of treason. And if Henry Pole made that comment a few years later then again he is technically guilty of treason. So it was finding that out that I was quite surprised by. I went into this expecting to discover that Henry VIII had zero justification for any of his actions.

and found actually he did have some reasoning behind some of what he did. we met at an event at Hever Castle actually back in 2022 I want to say and

Jonathan Thomas (44:19)
Interesting. Well, let's talk about your tours. ⁓ You co-founded Simply Tudor Tours with Dr. Sarah Morris, who is also known as the Tudor Travel Guide. How did you two come together and what's the philosophy behind your tours?

Adam Pennington (44:42)
When I went full-time historian in the summer of 2023, I reached out to Sarah because I knew she'd done some tours in the past. Because Sarah's whole thing, where I focus more on the people, the physical figures of Tudor history, Sarah's big thing is the places. She's obsessed with and has an encyclopedic knowledge of Tudor buildings, Tudor palaces, properties, castles.

across the whole of the UK. so the sort of our respective knowledge in those two sort of key areas comes together beautifully. And then with her previous experience of running tours, and my previous experience of events, again, it was sort of like a partnership made in heaven kind of thing. It was a coming together of two people with the same passion and

the respective experience to set up a tour company. The philosophy behind our tours is that we bring history to life. It's uniting lovers of history with the story. I suppose what makes us maybe stand out is that we are historians working in the tour industry rather than

people who work in the tour history in the tour industry, but ⁓ But how can I articulate this more clearly? We're historians running a tour company rather than talk come a tour company running tours about history if that makes sense, so it's not like we're tour guides who've who Focus on anything we're taught where historians Running a tour company so out for us. The history is always

The central part, that's the key. The two of us are not, we're not the story. The story is the story. And that's, suppose, our philosophy is putting the history at the absolute center of everything that we do and making that history come to life through different experiences and hopefully giving people something that they just simply could not get elsewhere.

Jonathan Thomas (46:57)
So give us an overview of the tours you're offering this year. What are you guys doing this year?

Adam Pennington (47:03)
We've got three. So our first one coming up is in May, which is Mary, Queen of Scots from Crown to captivity. And it's our first time going north of the border. So we're going to Scotland. And that tour is about the time that Mary was actually the Queen of Scotland. The Mary, Queen of Scots spent most of her youth in France, but there is this window where she does return to Scotland as Queen.

and we're looking at that window. the point that she gets back through to the point where she's held captive and eventually flee, although we don't go into England, we end with her fleeing into England for safety. Well, throwing herself on the safety of her cousin Elizabeth, but soon realizing that Elizabeth was not particularly forthcoming.

Our second tour is in July and that is where we're basically recreating a royal progress that took place in 1502 between of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. And that starts in the Cotswolds in the southwest of England and it goes right through into South Wales. And we're following that progress in chronological order. we're taking in lots of the...

the key historic sites along the way such as Worcester Cathedral, Gloucester Cathedral, ⁓ Thornberry Castle where we're actually spending two nights. So that's gonna be a really interesting one because it's again, it's a period of history that I suppose a lot of people wouldn't necessarily know too much about. And then in September we have our flagship tour. It's gonna be the third time we're doing it which is the rise and fall of Amberlyn. And that tour.

basically focuses on the last four years of Amberlyn's life. So we start in 1532 at the point that she is made Marquess of Pembroke in Windsor Castle through to her execution and then the aftermath of what that looks like. And so we end that tour with two nights at Hever Castle. And a big part of what we examine at that point at Hever Castle is

what became of the Belins afterwards. How did Sir Thomas Belin and Elizabeth Belin and Belin's parents cope with seeing two of their children beheaded? So that's how we end that tour. So yeah, all three are very different from each other and two of them we've yet to do before. I'm incredibly excited because in Scotland

Apart from Edinburgh Castle, I've not been to any of the other places we're going to, such as the Palace of Holyrood House, which is still now the official Scottish residence of the Royal Family. And same with the places we're going to on the 1502 progress, I've not been to any of them before. So I'm as excited as the tour participants, I guess.

Jonathan Thomas (50:04)
Well, I should ask, are there spaces available on the tours?

Adam Pennington (50:08)
So there are three spaces remaining on the Mary Queen of Scots tour. The July 1502 progress, there is one place available and there's, I think about five on the Rise and Fall of Amberlyn tour. So there are still some spots there.

Jonathan Thomas (50:21)
All

right, folks. Well, you heard it go book those spots because they're gonna they're gonna fill up fast so ⁓ Looking ahead you're now working on two more books without giving too much away. Can you hint at what they're gonna be about?

Adam Pennington (50:36)
Yes, so it's sort of one definite and then I've got an idea for another one. But the one that's definitely that I'm working on at the moment is I'm telling the history of the Royal Consort in a way that it's never really been done in its its exhaustiveness. So I am writing a book which starts with Matilda of Flanders, who was the wife of William the Conqueror.

right through to Queen Camilla. So it's basically a thousand years. Yeah, it's a thousand years of royal consorts. And there was an argument, I mean, a friend of mine, Elizabeth Norton, said to me, why aren't you doing the Anglo-Saxon queens? Why are you starting with William the Conqueror's wife? And I get it, but it's to save myself not having a book, The Width of a Loaf of Bread, I thought, okay, I need to start somewhere. And the thing is actually that pre-conquest,

Jonathan Thomas (51:06)
little bit of history, yeah.

Gotta draw the line.

Adam Pennington (51:31)
the Queens that were there were Queens, but they weren't Queens of England in the way that from William the Conqueror onwards they were because the land it was you know, they just it wasn't as much of a thing. So that's why I'm starting with William the Conqueror. Well, William the Conqueror is Queen Matilda Flanders, but the what's significant about this book is that it's it's twofold really, it's an examination of the people, but also the into what the office of consort is and was.

and how that's evolved over time. Because the expectations placed on Matilda Flanders and Camilla are very different, but they share the same role, that of consort to a reigning king. But it also means that each person I examine, I'm not really looking at their life from beginning to end. I'm looking at them through that time that they are the consort.

So the Amberlyn chapter, for example, is predominantly 1533 to 1536. The Guilford Dudley, the husband of Lady Jane Grey, that really is focusing on the 13 days, not the nine days, because it's 13 days technically. It's what does Guilford Dudley do over those 13 days that Jane is, well, effectively on the throne? What impact did Prince Philip have on Elizabeth II's reign? So it's the office of consort.

Looking at it, but then also looking at the people which also means that people married to a So if you were married to The people that are featured are only people married to a ⁓ reigning or acknowledged King or Queen Which means that for example Diana won't be won't have her own chapter because she was not married to a king She was married to a heir to the throne

She'll be mentioned obviously where necessary, but she won't have her own chapter in the way that Camilla will. So that's the first one. The second one is actually still very, very much in early stages and is totally outside of the realms of history. I'm looking to try and write the first real actual deep dive into Princesses, Beatrice and Eugenie, because they are, I think, the most misunderstood members of the royal family.

Obviously there's been huge amounts of ⁓ scandal involving their parents in the last few years. And to that end, I don't have any intentions of writing this at the moment because I just don't think it's the right time. But I do have a desire to write a book about them at some point, because as I say, I think they're hugely misunderstood. ⁓ But it's certainly not something I'm writing at the moment, but the idea is there. And I've written a bit of a proposal.

But nothing more.

Jonathan Thomas (54:25)
Well, they

both sound fascinating and signed me up for the consorts book because that's going to be really interesting. the consorts are often overlooked except in the big stories of history. But they play such a critical role in the success of a monarch that I'd be really interested to see how you explore that.

Adam Pennington (54:35)
Hmm

Jonathan Thomas (54:50)
Adam represents a new generation of historians bringing the past to life through meticulous research, engaging storytelling and immersive experiences that take you to the very places where history unfolded. His book on the Plantagenet Pole shines a light on a royal family whose blood was their curse and whose story deserves to be far better known. Link in the show notes. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, like, or leave a comment. And if you love the Incautopia Podcast,

Please consider joining the Friends of Angotopia Club where you can get early access to do episodes and connect with other Britain enthusiasts. So join us next time as we continue exploring the people, places, and stories that make Britain's history and culture so endlessly fascinating to discover. Thank you, Adam.

Adam Pennington (55:34)
Thank you very much.