Hey, hey, welcome to the Renaissance English History podcast. I am your host, Heather Tesco,

and I'm a storyteller who makes history accessible because I believe it's a pathway to understanding

who we are, our place in the universe, and being more deeply in touch with our own humanity.

This episode is on Elizabeth Stafford, the wife of the Duke of Norfolk.

We've been talking about all of these various families, the Stafford, the Dala Poles,

the Poles, and I thought that it was time that Elizabeth Stafford got her own episode.

She is well known for the lovers of Tudor Drama because she had an absolutely horrific marriage with the Duke of Norfolk.

I actually did an episode, gosh, I want to say it was for Valentine's Day.

That was kind of tongue in cheek called Bad Romances, Bad Tudor Romances, I think it was,

and it showcased or it was about some of the worst marriages in the Tudor period.

And I don't think there's one that's much worse than Elizabeth Stafford and her marriage to the Duke of Norfolk.

It was abusive. It was terrible. All of that. But what I will also say is that there is more to Elizabeth

Stafford than simply her marriage, right? Like, if you were somebody who had been in that position

where your whole legacy seems to just be the fact that your husband was absolutely terrible. I think that if that were me,

I would certainly want to be remembered for something else other than the fact that I just had,

you know, had a terrible husband. So we are going to talk about Elizabeth Stafford and what

made her interesting and not just the fact that

she was in a bad marriage, but really how she advocated for herself and how she tried to get out of

the marriage. The options for a woman at this period were very limited, but she used the resources

that she had and she did what she could to advocate for herself as much as possible.

And so we're going to talk about that.

So let's get started.

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