Henry VII's Impossible Choice: Execute an Innocent Man or Lose Everything

Renaissance English History Podcast: A Show About the Tudors

Heather Teysko

History

4.6 • 624 Ratings

🗓️ 9 May 2026

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1499, Henry VII had two men in the Tower of London. One claimed to be his wife's long-lost brother. The other was an innocent young man who had been locked up since he was ten years old. And the King and Queen of Spain wouldn't send Catherine of Aragon to England until both of them were dead. This is History as an Empathy Machine, a new thought experiment where we lay out the real options historical figures had and ask: knowing only what they knew, what would YOU have done? Today: Henry VII, Perkin Warbeck, the Earl of Warwick, and Elizabeth of York, who grew up with the man in the Tower and was never allowed to see him again. Tell me in the comments what you would have done. Two questions at the end of the episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Some follow the noise.
0:03.0	Bloomberg follows the money, whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion-dollar swings.
0:08.9	There's a money side to every story.
0:11.4	Get the money side of the story.
0:13.5	Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com.
0:18.5	Right, home from work, walk the dog, kids are back,
0:22.9	Up the stairs for something, ugh, back down, no idea what I went up for dinner.
0:30.5	Mom, what's for dinner? Chop, sizzle, done.
0:35.6	Hello, fresh, can't slow life down, but it makes bringing everyone together around the table a whole lot easier.
0:41.9	So its phones down, forks up. Hello Fresh. Bring back dinner time.
0:48.3	It's 1499. You are Henry the 7th, the King of England. You've been on the throne for 14 years, which honestly feels like a miracle given how
0:57.4	many times someone has tried to take it away from you.
1:00.8	You have two men sitting in the Tower of London right now.
1:04.1	One of them claims to be your wife's brother.
1:06.4	The other is your wife's innocent cousin, a young man named Edward Earl of Wark, who has been locked up
1:12.8	since he was about 10 years old. His only crime is the blood running through his veins.
1:18.4	The king and queen of Spain will not send their daughter to marry your son until both of these
1:25.4	men are dead. What do you do? That's what we're going to do today,
1:29.2	but I want to make sure you really feel the weight of this decision before we get there,
1:33.7	because I think most of us sitting in our comfortable modern lives assume we know what we would do.
1:40.1	I thought I knew. And then I really sat with it and honestly, I'm really not so sure anymore.
1:46.6	So grab a beverage, get comfy, settle in. We are going to talk today about what we would
	...

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