Hello, I'm Lucy Worsley, chief curator at Historic Royal Palaces.

You're listening to our podcast that explores the history and stories of our six palaces.

These talks are a collection of some of our best live events.

I really hope you enjoy listening.

In this series of talks by renowned Tudor historians, we closely examine the monarch and man himself, Henry D.8.

These talks were recorded live in collaboration with history today to mark the 500th anniversary of the coronation of Henry D. 8.

In this episode, historian Stephen Gunn concludes our series of talks on Henry the 8th

by taking a step back and allowing us to understand the wider social and political context

of Henry VIII's reign.

I think to understand what was going on at Henry the 8th Court, we have to do both the things

that our previous speakers have suggested.

We have to look carefully at the king, the king's psychology, the king's health, the king's

preoccupations, and so on. And we have to look at the context in which the king operated,

the social context, the physical context, palaces like this, the worlds of different people

who surrounded him.

But I think we need to do a third thing as well. And that stand even further back and think

about the social, the political, the intellectual context in which all this went on. After all,

16th century Europe was a society in which everyone accepted that capital

punishment was what you did to people who had committed serious crimes. And that's serious crimes

like murder, robbery, rape, treason, witchcraft, as well as the kind of serious crimes, mostly

involving treason that people were charged with

at Henry VIII's court. And that meant that all 15th and 16th century rulers executed people.

...