Browse content similar to Shakespeare's Mother: The Secret Life of a Tudor Woman. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
Line | From | To | |
---|---|---|---|
"Everything hath a time," as the Tudors liked to say... | 0:00:15 | 0:00:20 | |
..good Bible reading Christians as they were. | 0:00:21 | 0:00:24 | |
"There is a time to be born. And a time to die. | 0:00:28 | 0:00:31 | |
"A time to win. And a time to lose. | 0:00:34 | 0:00:38 | |
"To everything is due time. | 0:00:39 | 0:00:42 | |
This is the extraordinary tale of a peasant's daughter | 0:00:43 | 0:00:47 | |
who rose to wealth and status. | 0:00:47 | 0:00:50 | |
But lost it all. | 0:00:50 | 0:00:52 | |
She survived the plague, | 0:00:54 | 0:00:56 | |
and lived through four changes of the state religion. | 0:00:56 | 0:00:59 | |
She buried three of her children, | 0:00:59 | 0:01:02 | |
but she gave birth to the world's most famous poet. | 0:01:02 | 0:01:06 | |
This is a story of family and love in a time of revolution. | 0:01:08 | 0:01:14 | |
The Tudor age was a time of radical transformation | 0:01:16 | 0:01:20 | |
in English history and society. | 0:01:20 | 0:01:22 | |
It was a time of violence and war, of class conflict and social unrest. | 0:01:22 | 0:01:29 | |
The Protestant Reformation turned upside down 1,000 years | 0:01:29 | 0:01:34 | |
of English Christianity in a mere 20 years. | 0:01:34 | 0:01:38 | |
We see that tale more than anything else through the lives | 0:01:42 | 0:01:46 | |
of the great rulers - Henry VIII, Mary Tudor, Elizabeth I. | 0:01:46 | 0:01:51 | |
But what was it like to live through those times at the grass roots? | 0:01:53 | 0:01:58 | |
For ordinary people? | 0:01:58 | 0:02:00 | |
And especially, for a woman? | 0:02:00 | 0:02:03 | |
Mary Arden was one of eight daughters born to | 0:02:24 | 0:02:26 | |
an old farming family here in the heart of Warwickshire. | 0:02:26 | 0:02:30 | |
But Mary would leave life on the land for the new world | 0:02:34 | 0:02:38 | |
of the Tudor middle class. | 0:02:38 | 0:02:40 | |
Her children would become haberdashers and glovers. | 0:02:41 | 0:02:45 | |
Two of them made it in the entertainment industry in London. | 0:02:45 | 0:02:49 | |
So her family story is a mirror of the Tudors' changing times. | 0:02:49 | 0:02:54 | |
Tudor England was a small country, | 0:03:00 | 0:03:03 | |
only 2.5 million people. | 0:03:03 | 0:03:06 | |
An agricultural society | 0:03:06 | 0:03:08 | |
where 90% of the population worked on the land. | 0:03:08 | 0:03:11 | |
Life expectancy then was 38. | 0:03:13 | 0:03:16 | |
A third of all children died before they were ten. | 0:03:16 | 0:03:18 | |
Mary's father farmed in Wilmcote in the parish of Aston Cantlow, | 0:03:20 | 0:03:24 | |
just outside Stratford-upon-Avon. | 0:03:24 | 0:03:27 | |
You can see Stratford down there, in the Avon Valley, | 0:03:28 | 0:03:31 | |
the spire of Holy Trinity peeping above the trees, | 0:03:31 | 0:03:35 | |
and the Avon divides the West Midlands landscape here. | 0:03:35 | 0:03:39 | |
To the south was the land of open field farming and sheep grazing - | 0:03:40 | 0:03:44 | |
what they called the feldom. | 0:03:44 | 0:03:47 | |
And to the north, stretching towards Birmingham, | 0:03:47 | 0:03:51 | |
a more wild, uncultivated, wooded landscape - | 0:03:51 | 0:03:55 | |
the Arden. | 0:03:55 | 0:03:57 | |
And that's where Mary's story begins. | 0:03:57 | 0:04:00 | |
The Forest of Arden is still a name on the map today, | 0:04:07 | 0:04:11 | |
and it gave Mary her name. | 0:04:11 | 0:04:13 | |
She had well to do Arden relatives | 0:04:13 | 0:04:16 | |
who could trace their family tree back before the Norman Conquest, | 0:04:16 | 0:04:19 | |
to local heroes like the legendary Sir Guy of Warwick. | 0:04:19 | 0:04:23 | |
But Mary's father Robert Arden was just a husbandman, | 0:04:27 | 0:04:31 | |
a well-to-do peasant. | 0:04:31 | 0:04:33 | |
Born around 1480 at the end of the Wars Of The Roses, | 0:04:35 | 0:04:39 | |
among his first childhood memories would have been news | 0:04:39 | 0:04:42 | |
of the death of Richard III at the Battle Of Bosworth. | 0:04:42 | 0:04:45 | |
So Mary's father Robert was a man from the old world | 0:04:46 | 0:04:50 | |
whose daughters would move into the new. | 0:04:50 | 0:04:53 | |
Robert built his house here in Wilmcote in 1515. | 0:04:58 | 0:05:02 | |
It was identified recently, | 0:05:02 | 0:05:05 | |
astonishingly intact behind its skin of Victorian brick. | 0:05:05 | 0:05:08 | |
I feel like a Tudor estate agent here. | 0:05:14 | 0:05:17 | |
This is the barn area and the yard, | 0:05:17 | 0:05:21 | |
just the same dimensions that it would have been in the 16th century. | 0:05:21 | 0:05:25 | |
The barns, the brewery, the dairy for making cheese | 0:05:25 | 0:05:29 | |
and all that around here. Much larger space than | 0:05:29 | 0:05:32 | |
would actually have been the living space of the house. | 0:05:32 | 0:05:35 | |
Now come in here. | 0:05:35 | 0:05:38 | |
Here's a later extension to the kitchen, | 0:05:38 | 0:05:40 | |
but the really interesting space is upstairs. | 0:05:40 | 0:05:43 | |
It was a traditional peasant house, open to the ceiling, | 0:05:46 | 0:05:50 | |
the bedroom floor was put in later. | 0:05:50 | 0:05:52 | |
Just come and have a look through here. | 0:05:52 | 0:05:54 | |
Robert and his wife raised eight daughters here. | 0:05:58 | 0:06:01 | |
Mary was the youngest. | 0:06:01 | 0:06:03 | |
Forget the floor, as I said before, there's nothing there. | 0:06:03 | 0:06:07 | |
This is open to the roof, a fire on the ground floor level, | 0:06:07 | 0:06:10 | |
going out through a vent in the roof | 0:06:10 | 0:06:13 | |
and nicely seasoning the bacon, which is about there. | 0:06:13 | 0:06:16 | |
It's a typical, open, communal medieval house, | 0:06:16 | 0:06:22 | |
a single open hall with the kitchen at one end | 0:06:22 | 0:06:25 | |
and the chamber at another. | 0:06:25 | 0:06:28 | |
At the chamber end | 0:06:28 | 0:06:29 | |
the mum and dad would have slept downstairs and all the sisters, | 0:06:29 | 0:06:34 | |
and all the servants, the maidservants, | 0:06:34 | 0:06:36 | |
would have slept on a platform above mum and dad's chamber | 0:06:36 | 0:06:40 | |
that you got to by a ladder. | 0:06:40 | 0:06:42 | |
Pretty...pretty close and intimate, | 0:06:42 | 0:06:45 | |
not much privacy, but this is the world in which Mary grew up. | 0:06:45 | 0:06:50 | |
She was born in around 1535. We can't be sure exactly when | 0:06:57 | 0:07:01 | |
as parish registers don't start this early, | 0:07:01 | 0:07:05 | |
but she was baptised here in the church of Aston Cantlow. | 0:07:05 | 0:07:08 | |
This would have been her parish church. | 0:07:10 | 0:07:13 | |
Wilmcote, where she was born, didn't have a church, | 0:07:13 | 0:07:15 | |
didn't have it until 19th century - it was only a little hamlet. | 0:07:15 | 0:07:18 | |
So she'd have been born, she was born and then baptised | 0:07:18 | 0:07:21 | |
probably about three or four days later | 0:07:21 | 0:07:23 | |
in this church, in the font which is still there. | 0:07:23 | 0:07:25 | |
England was still a Catholic country then | 0:07:27 | 0:07:29 | |
and Mary was named after the Virgin Mary, | 0:07:29 | 0:07:32 | |
the patron saint of the village guild, whose chapel was in | 0:07:32 | 0:07:35 | |
the side aisle of the church. | 0:07:35 | 0:07:38 | |
So this is where Mary was baptised, | 0:07:38 | 0:07:40 | |
the medieval font here in Aston Cantlow. | 0:07:40 | 0:07:43 | |
And she's born into the world of old-fashioned English country Catholicism - | 0:07:44 | 0:07:50 | |
the world of the saints and the old stories. | 0:07:50 | 0:07:54 | |
A distant kinsman of hers, John Arden, in his will in 1526 | 0:07:56 | 0:08:01 | |
leaves, "my best damask gown to be made into a cope for the priest, | 0:08:01 | 0:08:06 | |
"my suit of armour to dress an image of St George | 0:08:06 | 0:08:10 | |
"to be hung above the pew where I was accustomed to sit, | 0:08:10 | 0:08:14 | |
"and two heifers for the maintenance of the church bells." | 0:08:14 | 0:08:19 | |
That's young Mary's world, | 0:08:19 | 0:08:22 | |
an intensely local community, | 0:08:22 | 0:08:25 | |
with that sense of the "dear, familiar place," as they put it. | 0:08:25 | 0:08:30 | |
On the very eve of King Henry VIII's great Reformation. | 0:08:30 | 0:08:34 | |
Mary was born at a crucial time in our history. | 0:08:39 | 0:08:42 | |
In 1531, King Henry VIII had split with the Pope, | 0:08:42 | 0:08:47 | |
and declared himself Head of the Church of England. | 0:08:47 | 0:08:50 | |
It was the beginning of a vast change, the Protestant Reformation, | 0:08:50 | 0:08:54 | |
but they don't know that yet. | 0:08:54 | 0:08:57 | |
It's a world in flux, religiously speaking. | 0:08:57 | 0:09:01 | |
Henry discouraged some aspects of Catholic cult. | 0:09:01 | 0:09:05 | |
He got twitchy in the late 1530s | 0:09:05 | 0:09:08 | |
about people lighting candles in front of saints' images, | 0:09:08 | 0:09:12 | |
but not a lot else changed. | 0:09:12 | 0:09:15 | |
The Mass went on exactly as before. | 0:09:15 | 0:09:18 | |
In the West Midlands, it's a deeply conservative area, | 0:09:20 | 0:09:24 | |
so what youth culture there was would have been Catholic. | 0:09:24 | 0:09:28 | |
It would have been focused around the ritual calendar | 0:09:28 | 0:09:32 | |
which was broadly religious but also festive. | 0:09:32 | 0:09:35 | |
So at first at the grass roots not much changed, | 0:09:37 | 0:09:41 | |
but in Mary's early childhood, events began to gather speed. | 0:09:41 | 0:09:45 | |
Between 1536 and 1540, King Henry ordered the dissolution of the monasteries. | 0:09:49 | 0:09:55 | |
Centres of enormous wealth and privilege, | 0:09:55 | 0:09:58 | |
they held a third of all the land in England. | 0:09:58 | 0:10:01 | |
In Mary's village, Aston Cantlow, | 0:10:06 | 0:10:09 | |
the local guild was stripped of its land and silver plate. | 0:10:09 | 0:10:12 | |
When the monasteries were dissolved, | 0:10:14 | 0:10:16 | |
those religious institutions disappeared as well. | 0:10:16 | 0:10:20 | |
Property sold off... Their property was sold, their land was sold, | 0:10:20 | 0:10:24 | |
some of their artefacts, obviously. | 0:10:24 | 0:10:27 | |
Everything was sold to raise money for the crown. | 0:10:27 | 0:10:30 | |
A Victorian teacher here in the village | 0:10:33 | 0:10:36 | |
recorded details of the plunder. | 0:10:36 | 0:10:38 | |
Two towels, altar cloths, | 0:10:40 | 0:10:42 | |
a pix, a cope, a worsted cope. | 0:10:42 | 0:10:46 | |
And vestments, one of them in silk. | 0:10:46 | 0:10:49 | |
These would have been the things the priests wore... For the mass. | 0:10:49 | 0:10:54 | |
And here, one chalice. | 0:10:54 | 0:10:56 | |
But your chalice was saved. | 0:10:57 | 0:11:00 | |
It may be that Henry VIII's commissioners sold it | 0:11:00 | 0:11:04 | |
back to the parish, just a little bit of gain. | 0:11:04 | 0:11:07 | |
A piece of extortion! Absolutely, yes. | 0:11:07 | 0:11:11 | |
'That precious chalice was saved by the villagers...' | 0:11:14 | 0:11:17 | |
Oh, goodness! That is absolutely beautiful, isn't it? | 0:11:17 | 0:11:20 | |
'..and incredibly they've still got it." | 0:11:20 | 0:11:23 | |
It would be used in a nuptial Mass. | 0:11:23 | 0:11:25 | |
For her wedding. | 0:11:25 | 0:11:27 | |
She would have held it? Yes. | 0:11:27 | 0:11:29 | |
It's absolutely wonderful, isn't it? | 0:11:29 | 0:11:30 | |
So when Mary was a girl, England was still a Catholic country. | 0:11:32 | 0:11:37 | |
But her world was poised between old and new. | 0:11:37 | 0:11:41 | |
In society, too, change was in the air. | 0:11:43 | 0:11:46 | |
The dissolution of the monasteries flooded the market with land and money | 0:11:46 | 0:11:51 | |
which would give rise to a new middle class. | 0:11:51 | 0:11:54 | |
But the Ardens and their neighbours were working people | 0:12:06 | 0:12:09 | |
and they got on with life. | 0:12:09 | 0:12:10 | |
By a huge stroke of luck, | 0:12:13 | 0:12:15 | |
a list of contents has survived for Mary's house in Wilmcote, | 0:12:15 | 0:12:18 | |
which gives us a picture of her life at home. | 0:12:18 | 0:12:22 | |
What comes across is that this is a mixed farm. | 0:12:23 | 0:12:26 | |
They're keeping animals, they're growing crops, | 0:12:26 | 0:12:28 | |
and the two are fairly balanced. | 0:12:28 | 0:12:30 | |
He's got eight oxen, that's not an accident. | 0:12:34 | 0:12:37 | |
You need eight oxen to pull a plough. | 0:12:37 | 0:12:40 | |
He's not going in for beef very much, he's only got two bullocks. | 0:12:41 | 0:12:45 | |
But he is dairying. | 0:12:45 | 0:12:47 | |
I mean, seven cows is above average. | 0:12:47 | 0:12:49 | |
The end of the inventory we have a total valuation of... 77... | 0:12:53 | 0:12:58 | |
?77 11s 10d, That's right. Was that a lot of money then? | 0:12:58 | 0:13:02 | |
Well, it's quite a lot for a husbandman. | 0:13:02 | 0:13:05 | |
Most women then were a working class - | 0:13:10 | 0:13:13 | |
in the fields, in the house and in the kitchen - | 0:13:13 | 0:13:16 | |
so Mary grew up multi-skilling. | 0:13:16 | 0:13:18 | |
Mary would have been taught from a very early age | 0:13:19 | 0:13:23 | |
how to do all the things that were essential. | 0:13:23 | 0:13:27 | |
It wasn't just the household and the children, | 0:13:28 | 0:13:32 | |
it was the swine, the dairy cattle, | 0:13:32 | 0:13:36 | |
the fowl, brewing, baking, making cheese. | 0:13:36 | 0:13:41 | |
And she had to be a wonderful planner as well. | 0:13:41 | 0:13:44 | |
She wasn't just planning next week's meals, | 0:13:46 | 0:13:49 | |
she was planning a year in advance. | 0:13:49 | 0:13:52 | |
If she hadn't got her rennet made, | 0:13:52 | 0:13:54 | |
she wouldn't be making cheese next year. | 0:13:54 | 0:13:56 | |
From Mary's time, self-help manuals gave women tips on how to be a good housewife. | 0:13:58 | 0:14:04 | |
"The knowledge of dairies, malting, | 0:14:04 | 0:14:08 | |
"oats and their excellent uses in families." | 0:14:08 | 0:14:11 | |
What about hard agricultural labour? | 0:14:11 | 0:14:13 | |
I mean, Robert doesn't have any sons. what does he do when it comes | 0:14:13 | 0:14:17 | |
to ploughing time and harrowing and all those sort of heavier jobs? | 0:14:17 | 0:14:20 | |
The women would be expected to muck in, | 0:14:20 | 0:14:23 | |
so if the sheep were being sheared, they might be rolling the fleeces | 0:14:23 | 0:14:28 | |
and taking them off to be prepared. | 0:14:28 | 0:14:31 | |
The men would cut the corn, and it would be the women | 0:14:31 | 0:14:34 | |
gathering them up and making them into stooks | 0:14:34 | 0:14:38 | |
and picking up any bits that had been left. | 0:14:38 | 0:14:41 | |
So they were expected not only to run the household and look after | 0:14:41 | 0:14:45 | |
the children and everything directly around the farm house. | 0:14:45 | 0:14:48 | |
But they also were there at the busy times as well, helping out. | 0:14:48 | 0:14:55 | |
Women were very strong. You wouldn't survive very long | 0:14:55 | 0:15:00 | |
if you were a bit weak, shall we say? | 0:15:00 | 0:15:03 | |
But even in Mary's house in Wilmcote, there are hints | 0:15:05 | 0:15:08 | |
of the new middle class taste creeping into the countryside, | 0:15:08 | 0:15:12 | |
the world to which, as a grown-up, Mary would aspire. | 0:15:12 | 0:15:16 | |
At meals, Mary and her sisters would sit on benches, on forms, | 0:15:16 | 0:15:23 | |
as a chair was a mark of status. | 0:15:23 | 0:15:26 | |
Many households only had one chair. Robert Arden actually has three. | 0:15:26 | 0:15:30 | |
So, one for him, one for his wife, | 0:15:30 | 0:15:36 | |
another for a guest, you know. A guest chair. That's right. | 0:15:36 | 0:15:40 | |
Feather beds and mattresses? Yes, yes, yes. | 0:15:41 | 0:15:43 | |
Bolsters and things - you don't quite imagine that. | 0:15:43 | 0:15:46 | |
Is this new taste coming in, Chris? Middle class taste? | 0:15:46 | 0:15:49 | |
Well, the feather beds aren't that new, but it's certainly... | 0:15:49 | 0:15:52 | |
there's a certain emphasis on comfort. | 0:15:52 | 0:15:55 | |
You know, there are feather beds, there's references to cushions. | 0:15:55 | 0:15:58 | |
You know, it's not a bare, austere house. | 0:15:58 | 0:16:02 | |
To have 11 painted cloths is quite unusual. | 0:16:04 | 0:16:09 | |
Most of the walls internally have a painted cloth on them. | 0:16:09 | 0:16:13 | |
You could think of it as being like a sort of wallpaper, really. | 0:16:13 | 0:16:19 | |
You know, it's decorative. | 0:16:19 | 0:16:21 | |
And what we would love to know is what's painted on these cloths. | 0:16:21 | 0:16:25 | |
I mean, it could be scenes from the Bible, | 0:16:25 | 0:16:28 | |
it could be scenes from literature and mythology. | 0:16:28 | 0:16:31 | |
Bright colours and, you know, interesting scenes. | 0:16:31 | 0:16:35 | |
So she grew up with stories? Exactly. In one form or other. Exactly. | 0:16:35 | 0:16:38 | |
And for Mary as a devout Catholic, | 0:16:41 | 0:16:43 | |
the most important stories were religious. | 0:16:43 | 0:16:46 | |
You can still get a sense of her world | 0:16:46 | 0:16:49 | |
here in Stratford's guild chapel. | 0:16:49 | 0:16:51 | |
It's very hard to imagine it now, because it's a pale shadow of what it would have been. | 0:16:51 | 0:16:56 | |
But every surface covered in images and stories | 0:16:56 | 0:16:59 | |
and warnings. With the Christian souls being reborn | 0:16:59 | 0:17:04 | |
and the dead... Going down into the mouth of hell. | 0:17:04 | 0:17:07 | |
Yeah, yeah. A bit like a graphic strip cartoon of how to behave in life, or else. | 0:17:07 | 0:17:12 | |
These were painted in her father's lifetime, | 0:17:14 | 0:17:16 | |
and whitewashed when Mary was in her 20s. | 0:17:16 | 0:17:19 | |
Uncovered in 1804, they were copied | 0:17:19 | 0:17:23 | |
while their colours were still bright. | 0:17:23 | 0:17:25 | |
The blessings of heaven and the terrors of hell. | 0:17:27 | 0:17:31 | |
Such images must have filled her young imagination | 0:17:31 | 0:17:35 | |
along with the great tales - | 0:17:35 | 0:17:38 | |
the murder of St Thomas Becket, | 0:17:38 | 0:17:41 | |
and a favourite story in Stratford... | 0:17:41 | 0:17:43 | |
Wow! Look at that! | 0:17:43 | 0:17:45 | |
George And The Dragon. I love St George And The Dragon. | 0:17:45 | 0:17:48 | |
Yeah, yeah. But everybody knew that story, | 0:17:48 | 0:17:50 | |
and the guild's pageant was the pageant of St George. | 0:17:50 | 0:17:54 | |
So Robert might have brought his girls over, | 0:17:54 | 0:17:56 | |
to stand in the crowd and see the great dragon with its tail | 0:17:56 | 0:18:00 | |
like a Chinese New Year festival. | 0:18:00 | 0:18:02 | |
Well, it clearly was like a Chinese dragon | 0:18:02 | 0:18:05 | |
because there were payments in the accounts for bearing the dragon. | 0:18:05 | 0:18:09 | |
So I imagine lots of little men on sticks underneath this thing | 0:18:09 | 0:18:13 | |
leading it through the street. | 0:18:13 | 0:18:15 | |
There were guilds like this in every town - social and religious clubs. | 0:18:17 | 0:18:22 | |
The Stratford Guild Book shows that Mary's father joined in 1517. | 0:18:22 | 0:18:27 | |
There he is, right at the top, third entry. | 0:18:27 | 0:18:29 | |
Robertus Ardren in Wilmcote. | 0:18:29 | 0:18:35 | |
And this is going to take us from the chapel, the religious side, | 0:18:35 | 0:18:39 | |
out into the social and administrative area, which is through here. | 0:18:39 | 0:18:44 | |
So the guilds were centres of social life | 0:18:44 | 0:18:48 | |
for men and women before the reformation. | 0:18:48 | 0:18:50 | |
They helped shape the ethos of Mary's childhood world. | 0:18:50 | 0:18:54 | |
The Guildhall. Yeah, great. | 0:18:54 | 0:18:58 | |
Ladies and gentlemen, may I ask you to charge your glasses? | 0:18:58 | 0:19:02 | |
The main thing that happened here would be the annual feast. | 0:19:03 | 0:19:07 | |
The feast was the classic networking opportunity, | 0:19:07 | 0:19:11 | |
because this is when everybody would be here. | 0:19:11 | 0:19:14 | |
You forget about the admin, | 0:19:16 | 0:19:18 | |
you forget about the routine, | 0:19:18 | 0:19:20 | |
you just enjoy yourselves and relax and chat. | 0:19:20 | 0:19:22 | |
Because you are all officially equal brothers and sisters, there is | 0:19:22 | 0:19:27 | |
the opportunity to meet a brother of a different social status. | 0:19:27 | 0:19:30 | |
And even a sister! | 0:19:30 | 0:19:32 | |
And even a sister or potentially a spouse! Perhaps a wife to be. | 0:19:32 | 0:19:36 | |
But now the revolutions of the time begin to turn faster. | 0:19:39 | 0:19:45 | |
In January 1547, when Mary was 12, King Henry VIII died. | 0:19:52 | 0:19:58 | |
He was succeeded by his nine-year-old son, Edward. | 0:20:01 | 0:20:05 | |
Precocious, pious, cold-hearted, | 0:20:05 | 0:20:08 | |
Edward was surrounded by Protestant fundamentalists | 0:20:08 | 0:20:11 | |
and they began the real religious revolution. | 0:20:11 | 0:20:14 | |
Mary's childhood world was about to change forever. | 0:20:17 | 0:20:21 | |
So the real religious trauma for Mary Arden | 0:20:22 | 0:20:27 | |
would have occurred in her early teens, when | 0:20:27 | 0:20:30 | |
the Mass was abolished, the churches were stripped bare, whitewashed. | 0:20:30 | 0:20:35 | |
I suppose people moved from a world in which | 0:20:37 | 0:20:41 | |
everything religiously could be taken for granted | 0:20:41 | 0:20:44 | |
to a world in which everything religiously was contested. | 0:20:44 | 0:20:48 | |
In 1549, the government ordered the Catholic Mass to be abolished, | 0:20:51 | 0:20:56 | |
and then the old rites for birth and death, | 0:20:56 | 0:20:59 | |
the old festivals, even dancing round the maypole was forbidden. | 0:20:59 | 0:21:03 | |
Every parish was told to smash its images in wood and stone | 0:21:03 | 0:21:08 | |
and stained glass. | 0:21:08 | 0:21:10 | |
They were to whitewash the painted walls, the Bible of the poor, | 0:21:14 | 0:21:18 | |
and, "Do it properly," the government said, | 0:21:18 | 0:21:20 | |
"not slobbered over with lime that could be washed off tomorrow. | 0:21:20 | 0:21:24 | |
"So that no memory remain." | 0:21:24 | 0:21:26 | |
It was the beginning of what they called "the commotion time". | 0:21:29 | 0:21:33 | |
But out in Warwickshire, | 0:21:40 | 0:21:42 | |
families like the Ardens remained loyal to the old faith. | 0:21:42 | 0:21:46 | |
It would take 40 years for things to change in the countryside. | 0:21:48 | 0:21:52 | |
When Mary was about 12, her mother died. | 0:21:55 | 0:21:59 | |
Mary's father was now in his late 60s, | 0:21:59 | 0:22:02 | |
but a year or two later he remarried - | 0:22:02 | 0:22:04 | |
Agnes Hill, a younger widow who brought her own four children | 0:22:04 | 0:22:08 | |
to live in Wilmcote, along with Mary and her sisters Joyce and Alice. | 0:22:08 | 0:22:13 | |
The living space was cramped, | 0:22:15 | 0:22:18 | |
and relations with their new stepmother would become strained. | 0:22:18 | 0:22:21 | |
So Robert drew up leases to protect his own daughters, | 0:22:26 | 0:22:29 | |
to make sure that if he died they would still inherit. | 0:22:29 | 0:22:33 | |
Tudor people were hard-headed when it came to property, | 0:22:33 | 0:22:36 | |
and for Robert, family came first. | 0:22:36 | 0:22:39 | |
Then in 1553, when Mary was 18, King Edward suddenly died, | 0:22:49 | 0:22:55 | |
and Henry VIII's daughter Mary Tudor came to the throne. | 0:22:55 | 0:23:00 | |
A convinced Catholic, she set out to turn the clock back. | 0:23:00 | 0:23:04 | |
But in winter 1556, Mary's father fell ill. | 0:23:10 | 0:23:15 | |
Well, I'm afraid you've got to imagine Robert in bed. | 0:23:19 | 0:23:22 | |
He has probably caught a bad attack of the flu, | 0:23:22 | 0:23:26 | |
because there's an influenza epidemic going on at this time | 0:23:26 | 0:23:31 | |
and it's fatal flu, he knows it's fatal, he knows he's going to die, | 0:23:31 | 0:23:35 | |
and so he assembles his will. | 0:23:35 | 0:23:37 | |
The first thing he thinks about is the salvation of his soul, | 0:23:40 | 0:23:43 | |
and so he expresses his religious views by invoking | 0:23:43 | 0:23:47 | |
the Virgin Mary. | 0:23:47 | 0:23:49 | |
"Our blessed lady, St Mary, and the holy company of heaven." | 0:23:50 | 0:23:55 | |
These are the phrases which a Catholic layman | 0:23:56 | 0:23:59 | |
would use in these circumstances. | 0:23:59 | 0:24:01 | |
Having looked after his soul, he then disposes of his worldly goods. | 0:24:07 | 0:24:13 | |
But singles out his youngest daughter? | 0:24:13 | 0:24:16 | |
Yes, that's the extraordinary thing, that he obviously | 0:24:16 | 0:24:18 | |
thinks very well of Mary, I think. | 0:24:18 | 0:24:21 | |
You know, because the first thing he thinks of is providing her | 0:24:21 | 0:24:25 | |
with land and with money, | 0:24:25 | 0:24:28 | |
and it's a very substantial sum of money that he's giving her. | 0:24:28 | 0:24:32 | |
?6 13s 4d. | 0:24:32 | 0:24:34 | |
That's a bit more than a skilled carpenter would earn in a year. | 0:24:34 | 0:24:39 | |
So he's leaving her, say, ?30,000. | 0:24:39 | 0:24:43 | |
Wow. Which is not bad. Not bad. | 0:24:43 | 0:24:46 | |
And, rather surprisingly, as she is the youngest daughter, | 0:24:46 | 0:24:51 | |
she is named as one of his executors. | 0:24:51 | 0:24:54 | |
"Alice and Mary my daughters." | 0:24:54 | 0:24:58 | |
He obviously perhaps has some affection for her, | 0:24:58 | 0:25:02 | |
or he certainly has some respect for her as well. | 0:25:02 | 0:25:05 | |
He obviously trusts her, he thinks she's a responsible person | 0:25:05 | 0:25:09 | |
who will look after his, the affairs following on from his will. | 0:25:09 | 0:25:15 | |
Does that mean she's got to ride over to Worcester | 0:25:15 | 0:25:18 | |
to see the will approved, then? I mean, how did it work in those days? | 0:25:18 | 0:25:21 | |
Yeah, I think she did. | 0:25:21 | 0:25:23 | |
And she would also have to negotiate with various other people | 0:25:23 | 0:25:27 | |
who received sums of money and so on. | 0:25:27 | 0:25:30 | |
After all, right at the end he leaves fourpence | 0:25:30 | 0:25:34 | |
to everybody in the parish of Aston Cantlow | 0:25:34 | 0:25:38 | |
who doesn't have a team. | 0:25:38 | 0:25:40 | |
That means someone who doesn't have a team of oxen. | 0:25:40 | 0:25:44 | |
So he's saying those sort of labourers | 0:25:44 | 0:25:46 | |
and small holders of the parish are going to get fourpence each, so | 0:25:46 | 0:25:49 | |
presumably Mary has to go around the houses saying, "Do you have a team?" | 0:25:49 | 0:25:54 | |
And then pressing fourpences into their hands. | 0:25:54 | 0:25:57 | |
As her father's legal executor, Mary surely had basic reading skills, | 0:26:06 | 0:26:12 | |
like many Tudor women of her class, but could she write? | 0:26:12 | 0:26:16 | |
On later legal documents, she makes her mark with her initial. | 0:26:16 | 0:26:21 | |
And the wax seal has her personal emblem from her seal ring - | 0:26:22 | 0:26:27 | |
the horse. | 0:26:27 | 0:26:28 | |
The mark of Mary is a beautifully penned M. | 0:26:29 | 0:26:34 | |
That's how you were taught to do your capital letters | 0:26:34 | 0:26:37 | |
in what was called "secretary hand". | 0:26:37 | 0:26:40 | |
And that possibility becomes a likelihood | 0:26:41 | 0:26:44 | |
when you look at this document, drawn up on the same day in 1579. | 0:26:44 | 0:26:49 | |
And there on the little tag of parchment to the side, | 0:26:49 | 0:26:54 | |
messed up because it's over the crinkle of the parchment, | 0:26:54 | 0:26:57 | |
and what looks like an abbreviated signature. | 0:26:57 | 0:27:01 | |
You put those two together and it looks very much | 0:27:02 | 0:27:06 | |
as if she knew not only how to read, but how to write. | 0:27:06 | 0:27:10 | |
She's quite a catch then - multi-skilled, literate maybe, | 0:27:13 | 0:27:18 | |
set up by her dad with money and land, | 0:27:18 | 0:27:21 | |
and maybe she had a match already in mind - | 0:27:21 | 0:27:24 | |
with the son of one of her father's tenants - John Shakespeare. | 0:27:24 | 0:27:29 | |
John Shakespeare of Snitterfield had moved to Stratford | 0:27:32 | 0:27:36 | |
from the countryside in the early '50s. | 0:27:36 | 0:27:38 | |
The son of a husbandman, he'd done a seven year apprenticeship | 0:27:38 | 0:27:42 | |
to the master glover, Tom Dixon. | 0:27:42 | 0:27:45 | |
So John was a young man with prospects. | 0:27:47 | 0:27:50 | |
In October 1556, John buys two freehold properties | 0:27:53 | 0:27:57 | |
here in the town - one down the road in Greenhill Street, | 0:27:57 | 0:28:01 | |
and one here in Henley Street. | 0:28:01 | 0:28:03 | |
This is a young man with fantastic drive and determination. | 0:28:03 | 0:28:09 | |
And as for the date when he bought this house, | 0:28:10 | 0:28:13 | |
it makes you wonder whether in fact he already had marriage in mind, | 0:28:13 | 0:28:17 | |
because within weeks of purchasing it, he marries Mary Arden. | 0:28:17 | 0:28:22 | |
They marry in 1557. | 0:28:28 | 0:28:30 | |
He's in his late twenties, she's maybe 22. | 0:28:30 | 0:28:34 | |
I pray you, all that are gathered here, | 0:28:34 | 0:28:37 | |
on behalf of these souls, John and Mary | 0:28:37 | 0:28:40 | |
to hear and witness that which they intend. | 0:28:40 | 0:28:43 | |
First there'd be a troth plighting in front of family and friends, | 0:28:46 | 0:28:49 | |
and later a church service. | 0:28:49 | 0:28:52 | |
And with Mary Tudor on the throne, | 0:28:52 | 0:28:54 | |
it's a Catholic wedding with a Latin Mass. | 0:28:54 | 0:28:58 | |
Then a feast, with music, dancing and lots of drink. | 0:28:59 | 0:29:04 | |
No puritan reserve yet here in Aston Cantlow! | 0:29:06 | 0:29:10 | |
And then the newlyweds rode off to begin a new life in Stratford. | 0:29:19 | 0:29:24 | |
Stratford then was a small market town with maybe 1,200 people | 0:29:27 | 0:29:32 | |
and a growing middle class, serviced by | 0:29:32 | 0:29:35 | |
tailors, drapers and glovers. | 0:29:35 | 0:29:38 | |
THEY CHATTER | 0:29:39 | 0:29:41 | |
It was a place where you could rise in the world. | 0:29:41 | 0:29:44 | |
Ah, lovely! The world of Elizabethan interiors. Indeed. | 0:29:46 | 0:29:49 | |
I think that the time that Mary marries in the 1560s | 0:29:52 | 0:29:55 | |
is an interesting time, because everything's shifting, | 0:29:55 | 0:29:58 | |
everything's changing - the effects of the religious Reformation, | 0:29:58 | 0:30:02 | |
and then this massive social change as well. | 0:30:02 | 0:30:05 | |
And there's a shift towards ornamenting interiors, | 0:30:06 | 0:30:09 | |
investment in the home in the form of wall decoration, | 0:30:09 | 0:30:13 | |
in material furnishings and fabrics and textile items. | 0:30:13 | 0:30:17 | |
Let me ask you about this. Yes. I can hand it over to you. | 0:30:17 | 0:30:22 | |
So this is sort of late Elizabethan, something like that. | 0:30:22 | 0:30:25 | |
Yeah. Mary may have worn something like this. | 0:30:25 | 0:30:27 | |
It's difficult to know, I mean certainly Mary would have wanted | 0:30:27 | 0:30:30 | |
to wear something like this, because it's got very fine decoration. | 0:30:30 | 0:30:34 | |
It's called blackwork. And, interestingly, even though it's got all of this decoration, | 0:30:34 | 0:30:38 | |
it's a garment to be worn informally, in the house. | 0:30:38 | 0:30:42 | |
And again I think that really gets to the heart of the significance of the household. | 0:30:42 | 0:30:47 | |
If you're worried about wearing something as beautiful as this in your home, | 0:30:47 | 0:30:52 | |
then it indicates just how important a space for social display, and | 0:30:52 | 0:30:57 | |
perhaps some social competition, that the household was in this period. | 0:30:57 | 0:31:01 | |
Are we allowed to talk about middle class taste | 0:31:03 | 0:31:07 | |
and sort of rising up in the world and, you know, competitiveness | 0:31:07 | 0:31:10 | |
with your neighbours or I mean... Yeah, I think so. | 0:31:10 | 0:31:13 | |
I think definitely. I think, you know, you've got a little bit of extra money | 0:31:13 | 0:31:16 | |
and you use that money to embellish your immediate environment, | 0:31:16 | 0:31:20 | |
your clothing and, of course, your house. | 0:31:20 | 0:31:24 | |
So, and, yeah, in an urban setting you are going to be thinking about | 0:31:24 | 0:31:28 | |
keeping up with the Joneses. There's going to be that sense of wanting to | 0:31:28 | 0:31:31 | |
have a house that fits with your status. | 0:31:31 | 0:31:33 | |
Like most young couples, they wanted to start a family, | 0:31:37 | 0:31:41 | |
but in Tudor England having children was fraught with danger. | 0:31:41 | 0:31:45 | |
A third of all babies died in the first year. | 0:31:47 | 0:31:49 | |
And Mary's first two children both died. | 0:31:51 | 0:31:54 | |
Joan, in 1558, aged two months, | 0:31:55 | 0:31:59 | |
and then Margaret, who died in 1563, aged one. | 0:31:59 | 0:32:04 | |
1563, Margaret, daughter of John Shakespeare. | 0:32:06 | 0:32:10 | |
Unfortunately, it wouldn't have been that unusual. | 0:32:15 | 0:32:19 | |
There's an expectation now that children will outlive their parents | 0:32:19 | 0:32:22 | |
and that, unfortunately, wasn't the case in the past. | 0:32:22 | 0:32:25 | |
The first reliable statistics on the causes of death come from London | 0:32:26 | 0:32:30 | |
in the early 1600s. | 0:32:30 | 0:32:32 | |
The biggest cause of death is actually this category called | 0:32:33 | 0:32:36 | |
"Chrisoms and Infants", which is, you know, is babies, | 0:32:36 | 0:32:39 | |
it's children that are within a couple of months of birth. | 0:32:39 | 0:32:42 | |
And it's almost 2,400 deaths in one year. Wow. | 0:32:43 | 0:32:48 | |
So a quarter of all the deaths in London are | 0:32:48 | 0:32:51 | |
children in their first few months. That's Mary's first two kids. | 0:32:51 | 0:32:54 | |
People sometimes tell you that, | 0:32:54 | 0:32:56 | |
"Oh, they can't have felt as much as we do," | 0:32:56 | 0:32:59 | |
because they had lots of children and lots of children died, | 0:32:59 | 0:33:02 | |
but is that the case? I think that a lot of historians | 0:33:02 | 0:33:04 | |
have altered their thinking on this, because we have found, | 0:33:04 | 0:33:10 | |
there are some really striking accounts of people grieving | 0:33:10 | 0:33:13 | |
for their children, trying to deal with the pain of that. | 0:33:13 | 0:33:16 | |
There are manuals from the period that help you, help you | 0:33:16 | 0:33:20 | |
work to be the healthiest kind of person you can be | 0:33:20 | 0:33:23 | |
and that includes the emotions. | 0:33:23 | 0:33:24 | |
So interestingly, it gives guidelines about how you should | 0:33:24 | 0:33:27 | |
try to manage your emotions and a lot of the manuals say that | 0:33:27 | 0:33:30 | |
grief is the emotion that is most devastating, | 0:33:30 | 0:33:33 | |
not just to the mind and soul but to the body. | 0:33:33 | 0:33:36 | |
And, in fact, if we look in this bill, | 0:33:36 | 0:33:38 | |
compared to, you know, infant deaths it's a very small category, | 0:33:38 | 0:33:43 | |
but there is a category for "Griefe" here - | 0:33:43 | 0:33:45 | |
20 people who died of "Griefe" in London, in this year. | 0:33:45 | 0:33:48 | |
But nevertheless, we've also found documents that suggest that, | 0:33:48 | 0:33:52 | |
while people were aware of the fact that they were supposed to | 0:33:52 | 0:33:55 | |
ideally moderate their emotions, that they also felt very deeply. | 0:33:55 | 0:33:59 | |
And there are people who say things like, | 0:33:59 | 0:34:02 | |
"I know that I shouldn't be grieving this extremely, | 0:34:02 | 0:34:05 | |
"I know that, you know, my child was never really mine, because | 0:34:05 | 0:34:08 | |
"my child belongs to God and God has decided to take him or her back. | 0:34:08 | 0:34:12 | |
"But nevertheless, I can't, I can't stop feeling the way I do." | 0:34:12 | 0:34:16 | |
So the first years of marriage were hard for Mary, | 0:34:19 | 0:34:22 | |
but at least her husband was doing well. | 0:34:22 | 0:34:24 | |
BELL RINGS | 0:34:24 | 0:34:26 | |
His freehold in Henley Street | 0:34:29 | 0:34:32 | |
entitled him to join the town elite. | 0:34:32 | 0:34:35 | |
The corporation had replaced the guild, | 0:34:35 | 0:34:38 | |
which was shut down under Edward in 1547, and they ran the town. | 0:34:38 | 0:34:43 | |
The council books show that John's civic duties range from | 0:34:43 | 0:34:46 | |
ale taster to constable, and charity doles to the poor. | 0:34:46 | 0:34:51 | |
Meeting of the Stratford-upon-Avon corporation, | 0:34:51 | 0:34:54 | |
at the hall held in our garden, the 30th day of August, anno 1564. | 0:34:54 | 0:35:00 | |
Money paid by us towards the relief of the poor - | 0:35:00 | 0:35:04 | |
from the mayor, Mr Wakeley, two shillings and fourpence... | 0:35:04 | 0:35:07 | |
..from John Shakespeare, twelve pence. | 0:35:09 | 0:35:12 | |
He was a man they could trust, | 0:35:13 | 0:35:16 | |
a man of credit. | 0:35:16 | 0:35:18 | |
God bless Queen Elizabeth! Wassail! | 0:35:24 | 0:35:29 | |
But in winter 1558, Mary Tudor suddenly died | 0:35:29 | 0:35:34 | |
and Henry VIII's daughter Elizabeth came to the throne. | 0:35:34 | 0:35:38 | |
In Warwickshire, they greeted her accession with bonfires | 0:35:39 | 0:35:43 | |
and doles of cakes and ale to the poor. | 0:35:43 | 0:35:46 | |
They sang Latin Masses for the new Queen, | 0:35:46 | 0:35:49 | |
but Elizabeth was a Protestant, | 0:35:49 | 0:35:51 | |
and within the year she reversed Mary's return to Catholicism. | 0:35:51 | 0:35:55 | |
We tend to think of the Elizabethan settlement | 0:35:57 | 0:36:02 | |
as a period in which the Reformation finds itself, | 0:36:02 | 0:36:04 | |
it beds down. | 0:36:04 | 0:36:07 | |
It didn't look like that to people in the 1560s. | 0:36:07 | 0:36:11 | |
Everything was up for grabs. | 0:36:11 | 0:36:13 | |
There was a great sense of anxiety on the part of | 0:36:17 | 0:36:21 | |
those responsible for enforcing what is, quite certainly, | 0:36:21 | 0:36:25 | |
in 1558 a minority religion. | 0:36:25 | 0:36:28 | |
The Queen's Protestantism is a minority religion. | 0:36:28 | 0:36:32 | |
It was the fourth change of religion in 20 years, | 0:36:34 | 0:36:38 | |
and at this moment no-one knew how long Elizabeth would live, | 0:36:38 | 0:36:42 | |
or what would happen next. | 0:36:42 | 0:36:45 | |
Soon there were risings against her religious policies, | 0:36:48 | 0:36:52 | |
and in response the government demanded the removal of | 0:36:52 | 0:36:55 | |
all outward trappings of the old faith. | 0:36:55 | 0:36:58 | |
There's a pogrom to get rid of this stuff | 0:36:59 | 0:37:01 | |
because during the rebellion in the north, | 0:37:01 | 0:37:04 | |
the alter stones had reappeared, the mass books had come out, | 0:37:04 | 0:37:08 | |
the holy water pots had come out, | 0:37:08 | 0:37:10 | |
women had started queueing to be churched. | 0:37:10 | 0:37:12 | |
So there is a tremendous determination to remove | 0:37:14 | 0:37:18 | |
these physical anchors for backward-looking sentiment. | 0:37:18 | 0:37:23 | |
In winter 1563, the Stratford council had to do the government's bidding. | 0:37:25 | 0:37:31 | |
Final act in the story is entered into the council minutes | 0:37:33 | 0:37:37 | |
for the winter of 1563. | 0:37:37 | 0:37:40 | |
Among various expenditures is this, | 0:37:40 | 0:37:44 | |
"Item paid for defacing the images in the chapel - two shillings." | 0:37:44 | 0:37:51 | |
That's for the whitewashing of all the paintings | 0:37:53 | 0:37:57 | |
in this chapel, so that "no memory remains", as the government said. | 0:37:57 | 0:38:02 | |
And the person who signed off on it is the chamberlain, | 0:38:03 | 0:38:07 | |
Mary's husband, John Shakespeare. | 0:38:07 | 0:38:10 | |
What Mary thought, we don't know, | 0:38:15 | 0:38:17 | |
but in April 1564 her third child was born, a boy. | 0:38:17 | 0:38:22 | |
They called him William. | 0:38:22 | 0:38:24 | |
And after losing her first two children, | 0:38:24 | 0:38:27 | |
you'd imagine he was the apple of her eye. | 0:38:27 | 0:38:30 | |
Mary would have stayed at home for the first month | 0:38:33 | 0:38:35 | |
to regain her strength before the traditional purification ceremony | 0:38:35 | 0:38:40 | |
at church on the 28th May. | 0:38:40 | 0:38:43 | |
But when Mary's baby was three months old, | 0:38:46 | 0:38:49 | |
the plague came to Stratford. | 0:38:49 | 0:38:51 | |
1564, "Here began the plague". | 0:38:52 | 0:38:55 | |
London was already reeling with thousands of deaths, | 0:38:57 | 0:39:01 | |
when on 11th July the apprentice Oliver Gunn died of the pestilence. | 0:39:01 | 0:39:07 | |
Soon the town was living in fear. | 0:39:09 | 0:39:11 | |
At the end of August, | 0:39:13 | 0:39:14 | |
the town corporation held their meeting out here in the open air | 0:39:14 | 0:39:19 | |
in the garden behind the Guildhall, | 0:39:19 | 0:39:21 | |
to try to lessen the risk of contagion, | 0:39:21 | 0:39:24 | |
because they believed that plague was passed by infected airs. | 0:39:24 | 0:39:29 | |
But by then, seven weeks since the first case, | 0:39:29 | 0:39:32 | |
the situation for the town was becoming desperate. | 0:39:32 | 0:39:35 | |
Over 200 people died in Stratford, a sixth of the town. | 0:39:36 | 0:39:41 | |
Richard Simmons, the town clerk, lost two sons and a daughter. | 0:39:41 | 0:39:45 | |
The Greens, three doors down from Mary in Henley Street, | 0:39:45 | 0:39:49 | |
four children. | 0:39:49 | 0:39:50 | |
With a young baby, it was best to get out if you could, | 0:39:54 | 0:39:57 | |
and Mary you'd guess rode out to her sister in Wilmcote. | 0:39:57 | 0:40:02 | |
Only five miles away, | 0:40:02 | 0:40:05 | |
but here in the country air there wasn't a single death. | 0:40:05 | 0:40:09 | |
So luckily for Mary, and for the rest of us, William survived. | 0:40:14 | 0:40:18 | |
And the next few years were good times for Mary and her husband. | 0:40:18 | 0:40:22 | |
She had more children - Joan, Anne, Gilbert and Richard. | 0:40:22 | 0:40:27 | |
K, L... | 0:40:27 | 0:40:29 | |
She would have had an important role in their pre-school education, | 0:40:29 | 0:40:33 | |
teaching them the alphabet and basic reading at home. | 0:40:33 | 0:40:37 | |
W. P. P. Q... Q... | 0:40:37 | 0:40:41 | |
But of course, like all mothers, she also told stories. | 0:40:43 | 0:40:48 | |
Merrier than a nightingale, that I shall sing. | 0:40:48 | 0:40:51 | |
There's no television, there's no radio, there are no DVDs. | 0:40:51 | 0:40:56 | |
What you do, and especially in the long winter evenings, | 0:40:56 | 0:40:59 | |
is tell stories. | 0:40:59 | 0:41:01 | |
His name, it was Sir Guy of Warwick. Brave and wise. | 0:41:01 | 0:41:07 | |
And years later her son William would remember the tales | 0:41:07 | 0:41:11 | |
of their legendary ancestor, Guy of Warwick. | 0:41:11 | 0:41:14 | |
He came to England, where Athelstan the King he found. | 0:41:14 | 0:41:20 | |
There were a lot of printed texts around of what you might call | 0:41:20 | 0:41:24 | |
the pulp fiction of the Tudor age, | 0:41:24 | 0:41:27 | |
which, indeed, tended to be prints of these old medieval romances, | 0:41:27 | 0:41:31 | |
many of them already well over 200 years old. | 0:41:31 | 0:41:35 | |
And for his love, I understand, he slew the dragon in Northumberland, | 0:41:35 | 0:41:41 | |
full far in the north country. | 0:41:41 | 0:41:45 | |
Coventry kept its mystery cycle going until 1579, | 0:41:45 | 0:41:50 | |
and so plenty of opportunities for both Mary and her children | 0:41:50 | 0:41:55 | |
to have seen them. And I think we can be 90% certain, | 0:41:55 | 0:41:59 | |
95% certain, that Shakespeare had. | 0:41:59 | 0:42:02 | |
And therefore at this ending day, he went to joy that lasteth, eh? | 0:42:02 | 0:42:08 | |
It's speculation, but with evidence, | 0:42:08 | 0:42:11 | |
about where Shakespeare's imagination really got laid down... | 0:42:11 | 0:42:15 | |
Amen, and charity. | 0:42:15 | 0:42:18 | |
Again! | 0:42:18 | 0:42:20 | |
..and it wasn't in Stratford grammar school, reading | 0:42:20 | 0:42:23 | |
Ovid and Virgil, however much influence those had on him, | 0:42:23 | 0:42:26 | |
it was something much earlier and much deeper. | 0:42:26 | 0:42:29 | |
His mum. His mum. His mum. | 0:42:30 | 0:42:33 | |
Yes. I think she was a good storyteller. | 0:42:33 | 0:42:35 | |
John, meanwhile, continued his rise in the council. | 0:42:40 | 0:42:44 | |
All those in favour... | 0:42:44 | 0:42:45 | |
Ale taster, constable, chamberlain, | 0:42:45 | 0:42:48 | |
and in 1568, he's elected Mayor. | 0:42:48 | 0:42:51 | |
Anybody against? | 0:42:53 | 0:42:55 | |
So Mary was now the wife of alderman and high bailiff, Mr Shakespeare. | 0:42:55 | 0:42:59 | |
And now they set out to use John's position to make real money. | 0:43:04 | 0:43:08 | |
And in Tudor England, | 0:43:09 | 0:43:11 | |
that didn't mean hedge funds or commodity futures, | 0:43:11 | 0:43:13 | |
it meant wool. | 0:43:13 | 0:43:15 | |
In those days it was a very valuable commodity. | 0:43:17 | 0:43:20 | |
Everybody wore wool. | 0:43:20 | 0:43:22 | |
And on Sundays if you didn't have a woollen hat on | 0:43:23 | 0:43:25 | |
then you would be in trouble. | 0:43:25 | 0:43:27 | |
And even when you died you had to be buried in a woollen shroud. | 0:43:27 | 0:43:31 | |
Wool was the mainstay of the economy, | 0:43:32 | 0:43:35 | |
so the government controlled it to prevent illegal dealers | 0:43:35 | 0:43:39 | |
undercutting the market - | 0:43:39 | 0:43:41 | |
and that's what John was doing. | 0:43:41 | 0:43:43 | |
There's no big profit in sewing gloves all day. | 0:43:45 | 0:43:49 | |
But buy a sack of wool for ?8 and sell it for ten, | 0:43:49 | 0:43:54 | |
you know, that's ?2 without any work at all. | 0:43:54 | 0:43:57 | |
The sellers won't come to him he'll go to the sellers, | 0:44:03 | 0:44:06 | |
so he'll be travelling around the countryside | 0:44:06 | 0:44:08 | |
John's web of contacts spread out into the Cotswolds, | 0:44:11 | 0:44:15 | |
up to Nottingham and down into Wiltshire. | 0:44:15 | 0:44:18 | |
And would Mary have been keeping his books while he was away travelling? | 0:44:20 | 0:44:23 | |
Well... Did woman do that? Did they have a hand in the business? | 0:44:23 | 0:44:27 | |
Well, it seems to be perfectly normal for wives | 0:44:27 | 0:44:31 | |
and other members of the families to deal with business contacts. | 0:44:31 | 0:44:36 | |
If someone knocked on the door to pay money, for example, the wife | 0:44:36 | 0:44:40 | |
would take it, and perhaps even joining in the bargaining process. | 0:44:40 | 0:44:43 | |
But a risky business from what you're saying, | 0:44:43 | 0:44:46 | |
when it's shady side of the law, | 0:44:46 | 0:44:48 | |
and you're not quite sure that the quality of the wool's going to be | 0:44:48 | 0:44:51 | |
what you thought it would be. Yes. | 0:44:51 | 0:44:53 | |
But it's all very, as you say, it's all very informal, | 0:44:53 | 0:44:57 | |
but what makes it work is that level of trust that people have. | 0:44:57 | 0:45:02 | |
But trust was a big issue in Elizabeth's surveillance society, | 0:45:05 | 0:45:11 | |
where a network of informers - bounty hunters - | 0:45:11 | 0:45:14 | |
snooped on everything from your business and your religion | 0:45:14 | 0:45:17 | |
to your sex life. | 0:45:17 | 0:45:19 | |
And, astonishingly, the details of John's shady wheeler dealings | 0:45:20 | 0:45:26 | |
were discovered not long ago in the National Archives. | 0:45:26 | 0:45:30 | |
Here's the case - early 1571 | 0:45:31 | 0:45:36 | |
and a government informer, | 0:45:36 | 0:45:38 | |
James Langrake of Whittlebury in Northamptonshire, | 0:45:38 | 0:45:43 | |
has done John for illegal wool dealing, he's reported him to the Exchequer. | 0:45:43 | 0:45:48 | |
These informers, working for the government, | 0:45:48 | 0:45:51 | |
and they get a cut of the fines which were imposed on the victims. | 0:45:51 | 0:45:54 | |
And Langrake's got something against John. | 0:45:54 | 0:45:57 | |
He reported him the previous year for illegal money lending | 0:45:57 | 0:46:01 | |
and now he gets him twice for illegal wool dealing. | 0:46:01 | 0:46:05 | |
And here's the key to the document, | 0:46:05 | 0:46:07 | |
it's the amounts involved. | 0:46:07 | 0:46:10 | |
300 tods of wool in these two cases. | 0:46:10 | 0:46:13 | |
That's about 8,000 or 9,000 pounds in weight, | 0:46:13 | 0:46:17 | |
but in monetary terms, ?210 in Tudor money, | 0:46:17 | 0:46:22 | |
when a good house could be bought for 30 | 0:46:22 | 0:46:25 | |
and a wage labourer would earn ?10 a year. | 0:46:25 | 0:46:29 | |
These are enormous sums of money, | 0:46:29 | 0:46:31 | |
which just shows you how deep John was in all this business, | 0:46:31 | 0:46:37 | |
and how dangerous the business was. | 0:46:37 | 0:46:40 | |
This time John was able to pay off the informer | 0:46:44 | 0:46:47 | |
and he got away with it. | 0:46:47 | 0:46:49 | |
Meanwhile, back in Stratford, as an alderman, John was entitled to | 0:46:49 | 0:46:54 | |
send William to grammar school. | 0:46:54 | 0:46:56 | |
The gateway to university and a career in the law or local office. | 0:46:56 | 0:47:00 | |
What a proud mother Mary must have been. | 0:47:02 | 0:47:05 | |
But her husband was now on the government's watch list. | 0:47:07 | 0:47:11 | |
In the late 1570s, | 0:47:15 | 0:47:17 | |
fate suddenly closed in on the family. | 0:47:17 | 0:47:20 | |
The government turned on the illegal wool dealers with the full force of the law... | 0:47:21 | 0:47:25 | |
..and John's whole informal network collapsed. | 0:47:27 | 0:47:30 | |
Suddenly you realise he's got a network of debt everywhere. Yes. | 0:47:32 | 0:47:36 | |
This is a catastrophe for him really. | 0:47:36 | 0:47:38 | |
Well, he's always got a network of debt, | 0:47:38 | 0:47:41 | |
but he's usually got a flow of income, | 0:47:41 | 0:47:43 | |
which can keep on servicing that debt. | 0:47:43 | 0:47:45 | |
When we use the phrase "losing credit", | 0:47:49 | 0:47:54 | |
in the 16th century losing credit meant that you could | 0:47:54 | 0:47:56 | |
no longer function in business, because losing credit would mean | 0:47:56 | 0:48:00 | |
that people had stopped trusting you. | 0:48:00 | 0:48:02 | |
They didn't trust you to pay up, and so they would no longer | 0:48:02 | 0:48:05 | |
deal with you, so your business was ruined. | 0:48:05 | 0:48:08 | |
Then, as their money troubles piled up, | 0:48:14 | 0:48:16 | |
in 1579, Mary's seven-year-old daughter Anne died. | 0:48:16 | 0:48:21 | |
There's a note in the corporation book which gives you another insight | 0:48:29 | 0:48:33 | |
into that moment of tragedy for the family. | 0:48:33 | 0:48:35 | |
"Item for the bell and pall for Mr Shakespeare's daughter." | 0:48:37 | 0:48:43 | |
For her funeral. Eight pence. | 0:48:43 | 0:48:46 | |
As Mary's eldest son would later write, | 0:48:48 | 0:48:50 | |
"When sorrows come, they come not in single spies, but in battalions." | 0:48:50 | 0:48:54 | |
Desperate now to save money, | 0:48:57 | 0:48:59 | |
they take William out of school to help John at work. | 0:48:59 | 0:49:03 | |
So he loses his chance of university. | 0:49:04 | 0:49:06 | |
And soon they are trying to raise money any way they can. | 0:49:07 | 0:49:10 | |
You can imagine John and Mary sitting at their table | 0:49:14 | 0:49:17 | |
here in the parlour, doing the sums as the debts mounted up. | 0:49:17 | 0:49:22 | |
They borrowed money from friends and neighbours, from in-laws and family. | 0:49:23 | 0:49:28 | |
Then they start selling off pieces of their inheritance. | 0:49:30 | 0:49:34 | |
Mary gets rid of her portion of the land at Snitterfield | 0:49:34 | 0:49:38 | |
that had come down to her through the family. | 0:49:38 | 0:49:39 | |
John even divides the house up | 0:49:41 | 0:49:43 | |
and leases out that side to neighbours down Henley Street. | 0:49:43 | 0:49:47 | |
The Burbages, who turned it into a pub. | 0:49:47 | 0:49:49 | |
And, worst of all, Mary has to finally give up the land | 0:49:51 | 0:49:55 | |
that she'd inherited from her father. | 0:49:55 | 0:49:58 | |
The 30 or 40 acres, with the little cottage | 0:49:58 | 0:50:01 | |
that she and John had built on it for their tenant in Wilmcote. | 0:50:01 | 0:50:05 | |
Using the house, called Aspies, as security, | 0:50:07 | 0:50:11 | |
she raises ?40 from her brother-in-law, | 0:50:11 | 0:50:14 | |
but it all went badly wrong. | 0:50:14 | 0:50:16 | |
When Shakespeare's father got into difficulties | 0:50:16 | 0:50:19 | |
and he took out a mortgage on the property with his brother-in-law, | 0:50:19 | 0:50:22 | |
obviously they fell out | 0:50:22 | 0:50:24 | |
or there was some difficulty that | 0:50:24 | 0:50:26 | |
he wanted his money back and Shakespeare's father couldn't | 0:50:26 | 0:50:29 | |
come up with the goods and so | 0:50:29 | 0:50:31 | |
he actually forfeited the property. | 0:50:31 | 0:50:35 | |
They never got it back? No, they never lived here. Ooh! | 0:50:35 | 0:50:39 | |
I wonder what Mary thought about the collapse of John's finances, | 0:50:39 | 0:50:44 | |
depriving her of her inheritance? | 0:50:44 | 0:50:48 | |
Not very pleased, I shouldn't think. No. | 0:50:48 | 0:50:51 | |
But just four months after Anne's death, | 0:50:55 | 0:50:58 | |
Mary got pregnant again, after a gap of more than six years. | 0:50:58 | 0:51:03 | |
She was in her mid-40s. | 0:51:03 | 0:51:06 | |
Her eighth child, Edmund, was christened on May 3rd, 1580. | 0:51:06 | 0:51:11 | |
And a couple of years later | 0:51:13 | 0:51:15 | |
her teenage son, William, got a 26-year-old local girl pregnant | 0:51:15 | 0:51:19 | |
first with a daughter, and then twins. | 0:51:19 | 0:51:22 | |
So the family was now squeezed into a third of the old house, | 0:51:23 | 0:51:26 | |
with William's new wife Anne, and four new mouths to feed... | 0:51:26 | 0:51:31 | |
..and a depressed husband, living in fear of being writs for debt. | 0:51:32 | 0:51:36 | |
Mary, you'd guess, was the one who held it all together. | 0:51:36 | 0:51:41 | |
But worse was to follow. | 0:51:47 | 0:51:48 | |
In the winter of 1583, | 0:51:50 | 0:51:52 | |
the government discovered a plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth. | 0:51:52 | 0:51:56 | |
The would-be assassin was the son-in-law of a Warwickshire | 0:51:56 | 0:51:58 | |
gentleman called Edward Arden, | 0:51:58 | 0:52:01 | |
one of Mary's distant relatives. | 0:52:01 | 0:52:04 | |
The whole story may have been a sting, | 0:52:04 | 0:52:07 | |
but to the Elizabethan state no charge was more grave than treason. | 0:52:07 | 0:52:12 | |
Edward was head of the most important Catholic family in Warwickshire. | 0:52:15 | 0:52:19 | |
He was immediately put into the chamber known as the Little Ease, | 0:52:19 | 0:52:22 | |
where you could neither lie down, nor stand up. | 0:52:22 | 0:52:26 | |
And then all the men were tortured on the rack. | 0:52:28 | 0:52:32 | |
Agonisingly stretched in order to extract a confession. | 0:52:33 | 0:52:37 | |
And eventually the Ardens were shopped by their priest | 0:52:37 | 0:52:41 | |
and condemned to death. | 0:52:41 | 0:52:43 | |
The night before the execution day, | 0:52:49 | 0:52:52 | |
John Somerville, Arden's son-in-law, | 0:52:52 | 0:52:55 | |
who was clearly insane, | 0:52:55 | 0:52:57 | |
was taken to Newgate, where the government announced that | 0:52:57 | 0:53:00 | |
during the night he'd strangled himself. | 0:53:00 | 0:53:03 | |
The next day Edward Arden was hanged, | 0:53:04 | 0:53:07 | |
taken down whilst still alive, | 0:53:07 | 0:53:09 | |
disembowelled, beheaded, quartered - | 0:53:09 | 0:53:13 | |
five days before Christmas. | 0:53:13 | 0:53:16 | |
Around Stratford the secret police interrogated known Catholics, | 0:53:22 | 0:53:27 | |
searching their houses for incriminating books and writings. | 0:53:27 | 0:53:32 | |
And as Mary was an Arden, and married to an ex-Mayor, | 0:53:33 | 0:53:37 | |
her house was surely one of them. | 0:53:37 | 0:53:40 | |
Finally in 1586, | 0:53:46 | 0:53:49 | |
having been protected by his fellow councillors for ten years, | 0:53:49 | 0:53:53 | |
John was struck off the town council for long-term non-attendance. | 0:53:53 | 0:53:58 | |
"At this hall it was decided that William Smith | 0:53:59 | 0:54:02 | |
"and Richard Court should be chosen to be aldermen | 0:54:02 | 0:54:05 | |
"in the place of John Wheeler and John Shakespeare... | 0:54:05 | 0:54:08 | |
"..for that Mr Wheeler doth desire to be put out of the company, | 0:54:09 | 0:54:13 | |
"and Mr Shakespeare doth not come to the halls | 0:54:13 | 0:54:17 | |
"when they be warned or hath not done for long time." | 0:54:17 | 0:54:21 | |
So, nearly 20 years after her husband had been mayor of Stratford, | 0:54:24 | 0:54:28 | |
Mary's family was ruined. | 0:54:28 | 0:54:31 | |
But, like all the best stories, there's one more twist in the plot. | 0:54:40 | 0:54:45 | |
William now goes to London to try to make it in the theatre. | 0:54:45 | 0:54:49 | |
How exactly he did it we still don't know... | 0:54:50 | 0:54:53 | |
..but in autumn 1592, a famous metropolitan critic, | 0:54:54 | 0:54:59 | |
Robert Greene, pours scorn on a provincial newcomer | 0:54:59 | 0:55:03 | |
taking the stage by storm. | 0:55:03 | 0:55:04 | |
An "upstart crow", | 0:55:07 | 0:55:08 | |
who thought himself "the only shake scene" in the country!' | 0:55:08 | 0:55:12 | |
Greene's attack on William was a howl of anger and envy, | 0:55:14 | 0:55:19 | |
but there's no such thing as bad publicity. | 0:55:19 | 0:55:22 | |
The very moment that the family had reached rock bottom | 0:55:22 | 0:55:25 | |
in Stratford, here in London Mary's eldest son had made it! | 0:55:25 | 0:55:32 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:55:32 | 0:55:34 | |
And William's box office earnings restored the family fortunes. | 0:55:38 | 0:55:42 | |
In autumn 1596 he went to the College Of Arms in London | 0:55:43 | 0:55:47 | |
to buy a coat of arms for his father | 0:55:47 | 0:55:50 | |
to make him a gentleman... | 0:55:50 | 0:55:52 | |
..with a few rewrites of the family history on the application. | 0:55:53 | 0:55:56 | |
John, his father, he says, | 0:55:58 | 0:55:59 | |
some 25 years back had been a man of standing in society. | 0:55:59 | 0:56:03 | |
A JP, a Mayor of the town, | 0:56:03 | 0:56:06 | |
and an Officer Of The Queen, which technically he had been as coroner. | 0:56:06 | 0:56:10 | |
And of his mother, William said this, | 0:56:11 | 0:56:13 | |
that Mary had been the daughter and heiress of Robert Arden | 0:56:13 | 0:56:18 | |
of Wilmcote in the county of Warwickshire, esquire and gentleman. | 0:56:18 | 0:56:24 | |
So the family could hold their heads high again | 0:56:32 | 0:56:35 | |
in the streets of Stratford. | 0:56:35 | 0:56:37 | |
William bought the big house by the chapel. | 0:56:37 | 0:56:40 | |
Mary and John lived out their days in Henley Street, | 0:56:40 | 0:56:43 | |
with their daughter Joan and her children. | 0:56:43 | 0:56:45 | |
Mary had lived from Henry VIII's time, | 0:56:51 | 0:56:54 | |
through the reigns of Edward, Mary and Elizabeth | 0:56:54 | 0:56:57 | |
and on into James. | 0:56:57 | 0:56:58 | |
She'd had eight children in this house, | 0:57:01 | 0:57:03 | |
three girls had died young, | 0:57:03 | 0:57:05 | |
so had William's only boy, | 0:57:05 | 0:57:07 | |
so she'd known grief and disappointment. | 0:57:07 | 0:57:10 | |
But she'd steered the family through the "commotion time". | 0:57:10 | 0:57:15 | |
After 44 years of marriage John died in 1601. | 0:57:23 | 0:57:27 | |
Mary followed him in 1608 in her early 70s. | 0:57:27 | 0:57:32 | |
She was buried here in the churchyard in Stratford. | 0:57:32 | 0:57:35 | |
There's one last clue to Mary's life, if it is a clue. | 0:57:37 | 0:57:41 | |
Only a few months after she died, William finally published | 0:57:41 | 0:57:45 | |
a collection of poems that he'd worked on for most of his life. | 0:57:45 | 0:57:49 | |
The earliest of them going back to his teens here in Stratford, | 0:57:49 | 0:57:53 | |
and they'll become the most famous poems about love in the language. | 0:57:53 | 0:57:57 | |
In fact, in the whole world. | 0:57:57 | 0:57:59 | |
And the poems are shot through with a sense of | 0:58:00 | 0:58:04 | |
the destructive power of time | 0:58:04 | 0:58:08 | |
and the redeeming power of love. | 0:58:08 | 0:58:10 | |
Now he learned how to say those things at school... | 0:58:13 | 0:58:17 | |
..but perhaps it was his mother who taught him how to feel them. | 0:58:18 | 0:58:23 | |
When you look at yourselves, | 0:59:01 | 0:59:02 |