Elizabeth I's Doctor - & Poisoner?
Not Just the Tudors
History Hit
4.8 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 26 January 2026
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Why was a Portuguese-born Jewish doctor, who rose to become Elizabeth I’s chief physician, brutally executed for treason in a scandal that shocked England? Was Dr. Rodrigo Lopes truly guilty, or simply caught in the crossfire of anti-Semitism, court rivalries, and empire?
Professor Suzannah Lipscomb is joined by Dr. Samia Errazouki to reexamine Lopes’s fall, tracing a web of diplomacy, espionage, and identity that stretched from London to Lisbon to Marrakesh.
MORE
Elizabeth I & the Sultan of Morocco
Elizabeth I's Conjuror: John Dee
Presented by Professor Suzannah Lipscomb. The researcher is Max Wintle, audio editor is Amy Haddow and the producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.
All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Want to walk the halls of Anne Boleyn's childhood home, or explore the castles that made up Henry the 8th's English stronghold. |
| 0:08.9 | With a subscription to History Hit, you can dive into our Tudor past alongside the world's leaving historians and archaeologists. |
| 0:16.6 | You also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release |
| 0:21.8 | every single week. Covering everything from the ancient world to World War II, just visit |
| 0:28.1 | historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. |
| 0:34.9 | Hello, I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb and welcome welcome to Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, |
| 0:40.7 | the podcasts in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, |
| 0:45.2 | from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to Samarise, |
| 0:49.8 | relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. |
| 0:54.0 | Not in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. |
| 1:02.4 | In an England driven by power struggles and religious suspicion, |
| 1:12.7 | the story of Dr. Rodrigo Lopez stands out as one of the most extraordinary and tragic episodes of Elizabeth I reign. |
| 1:19.8 | A Portuguese-born physician of Jewish ancestry, Lopez rose from the fraught world of forced |
| 1:25.8 | conversion and the Inquisition to become physician-in-chief to Queen Elizabeth I in 1581. |
| 1:33.3 | Brilliant, multilingual and well-connected, he navigated the upper reaches of Tudor Society for more than a decade, |
| 1:40.7 | treating some of the most powerful people in the kingdom, Worsingham, Lester, and even Elizabeth |
| 1:45.7 | herself. Yet in June 1594, he met the grisliest fate imaginable, hanged, drawn and |
| 1:53.3 | quartered for high treason. He remains the only royal doctor in English history to be executed. |
| 2:00.4 | The suggestion to do an episode on Rodrigo Lopez has come from an avid Not Just the Tudors listener |
| 2:05.9 | in New York. |
| 2:07.3 | Hi, Professor Lipscomb. |
| 2:08.8 | My name is Michal Schick, and I'm a big fan of Not Just the Tudors. |
... |
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