Welcome back to your source for Tudor clothing and accessories with a touch of whimsey and silliness!

The Tudor Fair Blog

Tudor Minute July 11: Bull!

Hey, this is Heather from the Renaissance English History Podcast, and this is your Tudor Minute for July 11. Today in 1533 Pope Clement VII issued a papal bull excommunicating Henry VIII and ordering him to abandon Anne Boleyn. After years and years of waiting for a papal answer to…

Continue reading

Throwback Episode 42: Lady Margaret Beaufort

Lady Margaret Beaufort was Henry VII’s mother, so in a sense she gave birth to the Tudor Dynasty.  And now that I think about it, the birth of Henry Tudor is famous because it was so difficult for her…she was young (too young to be having children, and in the…

Continue reading

Black Tudor History

It’s Black History Month in North America, and in honor of that, I am going out of the planned narrative of war with France, and doing this episode on Black Tudors, and the experience of life for black people in Tudor England.  For those of you who prefer reading over…

Continue reading

Elizabeth Tilney: Grandmother to Queens and Mistresses

Five hundred years ago a woman who was born into the gentry (but not one of the leading noblewomen in the country by any mean) became the founding matriarch of England’s premiere family during the Tudor period. Elizabeth Tilney was the grandmother of two different wives of Henry VIII, as…

Continue reading

Richard III: Knave, Fool or Savior?

The great debate continues – no, not Clinton v Trump, or even Creamy v Crunchy (peanut butter, that is), but Richard III: Knave, Fool, or Savior? The History of England podcast, which I adore, is getting close to wrapping up the Wars of the Roses, the civil war that tore England apart…

Continue reading

Old Music Tuesday: Henry’s Musical Court & The Western Wynde Mass

Yep, you read that right. The musical court of Henry VIII. While many of us think of the monarch with six wives as fat and pretty darn corpulent, he wasn’t always this way. In fact, when he was young, he was quite the hottie, impressing women with his jousting feats,…

Continue reading

Tudor Times talks about James I of England

This month’s joint episode with Tudor Times is about their Person of the Month, James I. Here are the resources mentioned. Remember, if you like this show, there are two main ways you can support it. First (and free!) you can leave a review on iTunes. It really helps new…

Continue reading

The Most Surprising Things I Learned about Catherine of Aragon this month

I’ve been podcasting with Tudor Times again, this month about Catherine of Aragon. I have read countless books about Henry’s six wives, and Catherine always takes up a huge proportion of each book simply because of the large role she played in Henry’s life. She was married to him the…

Continue reading

Five Things About Jasper Tudor You Really Will Want to Know (if you don’t already)

In my latest episode of the Renaissance English History Podcast I talked to Melita Thomas of Tudor Times about Jasper Tudor, uncle to Henry VII and perhaps the true Kingmaker of the 15th century.  I hadn’t know much about Jasper, other than what I’ve read in historical fiction (there is a lovely…

Continue reading

How the Protestant Reformation Made Elizabethan Theater

Last week I got podcasty with Elizabethan Theater, which is appropriate considering Shakespeare’s birthday is coming up.  I’ll be doing several episodes on the theater – this was a general introduction to this great Elizabethan institution, and then my next episodes will be more focused on Shakespeare, Marlowe, Burbage, and…

Continue reading

Five Things You Didn’t Know About Mary I (but probably should)

Mary Tudor (aka Mary I, aka Bloody Mary) is the Person of the Month over on the Tudor Times website.  I did a podcast episode on her about a year and a half ago, and I wanted to revisit this much-maligned woman.  So here, for your reading pleasure – some random…

Continue reading

Five Great Albums to Start an Early English Music Journey

It’s been just over 20 years since I first became hooked on early English choral music through singing Byrd’s Ave Verum Corpus in my high school chamber choir.  I talk about that piece a lot – it sums up for me this struggle of humanity; how much do you conform vs…

Continue reading