Did the Tudors DO April Fools?

Renaissance English History Podcast: A Show About the Tudors

Heather Teysko

History

4.6 • 624 Ratings

🗓️ 1 April 2026

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It's April 1st, and I'm not going to trick you. Instead, let's ask a genuine question: did the Tudors even DO April Fools' Day? The answer is no, not really. But what they did instead is so much more interesting. We dig into the murky origins of April Fools' Day (the most popular origin story is probably itself a myth, which is perfect), the Tudor tradition of licensed misrule, and the story of Will Sommers, Henry VIII's court jester, the only person in England allowed to call the king "Harry" to his face and tell him he was being robbed by his own advisors. He also occasionally had to flee the palace for his own safety. It was a complicated job. No tricks. Just Tudor history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Happy April Fool's Day, my friend, or as I like to call it, the day that I have learned through bitter
0:05.0	experience, and about half of you do not share the same sense of humor that I do. So I have tried
0:10.9	April Fool's episode before. Last year, I did the great codpiece fashion wars. Half of you
0:17.5	loved it. The other half of you sent me very mean emails and comments, and I get it.
0:24.2	You come here for history, not for me to mess with you. So this year I am not going to trick you.
0:30.4	I am going to ask you a genuine question that I find fascinating and the fact that I'm asking it on
0:36.5	April 1st is, I promise, the only joke.
0:40.1	So here's the question. Did the tutors even do April Fool's Day? Like, was Henry the 8th out here in the
0:46.7	1530s taping a paperfish to Thomas Cromwell's back? Was Anne Belin sending her ladies in waiting on
0:52.2	fake errands? I need to know. Okay, so, the origin of April Fool's Day.
0:58.0	This is where it gets immediately interesting because the story most people know is almost certainly wrong.
1:04.3	Let's get into it.
1:31.1	Hey friend, welcome back to the Renaissance English history podcast. I am your host, Heather. I've been podcasting on Tudor England since 2009, and I am, as always, just so delighted that you are here with me today to talk about April Fools. Let's get into it. You have probably heard this one. In 1582,
1:37.2	France switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, and the new year moved from late March to January 1st. People who didn't get the memo kept celebrating New Year's in April,
1:45.6	and they got mocked for it.
1:51.9	And that's where April Fool supposedly comes from. It's tidy. It makes sense. But historians don't really buy it. The problem is there's an unambiguous reference to April Fool's Day in a
1:57.4	1661 poem by a Flemish poet, Edward D' D'Dane, describing a nobleman who sent his
2:03.2	servant on foolish errands on April 1st, and that was before the official calendar change.
2:09.3	So the calendar theory falls apart almost immediately.
2:12.6	In a sense, we've been collectively pranked by history itself.
2:15.9	The most famous story about a day dedicated to
2:18.9	fooling people is itself probably a myth. And I love that so very, very much. The earliest solid
	...

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