Royal Favourites: James I and George Villiers
Not Just the Tudors
History Hit
4.8 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 11 May 2026
⏱️ 64 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How did a relatively humble gentleman become the most powerful man in Stuart England?
Few figures embodied the glamour and instability of the Jacobean court more completely than George Villiers, who rose to become one of the most influential men in England. To some he was charismatic, brilliant, and irresistible; to others, he was reckless, arrogant, and dangerously powerful.
In the second episode of our series on Royal Favourites, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb explores the extraordinary rise and dramatic fall of George Villiers with his biographer Lucy Hughes-Hallett.
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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.
Not Just the Tudors is a History Hit podcast
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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 |
| 0:06.8 | the 8th's English stronghold? With a subscription to history hit, you can dive into our Tudor |
| 0:12.1 | past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You also unlock hundreds of |
| 0:18.4 | 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. |
| 1:01.6 | Whenever we think about royal favourites in history, their stories can feel almost unbelievable. |
| 1:08.5 | Young men or women, who rise from relative obscurity to become the most |
| 1:13.8 | powerful figures in the kingdom, wielding influence not just over a monarch's private life, |
| 1:19.6 | but over politics, war and culture. This month on not just the Tudors, we're looking more |
| 1:26.3 | closely at some of the most famous, |
| 1:28.7 | nay-notorious royal favourites in the Elizabethan and Stuart Courts, |
| 1:33.5 | tracing how their role evolved from trusted companions and kin into something far more volatile |
| 1:39.7 | and publicly resented. |
| 1:42.6 | Last time, we encountered Robert Dudley, |
| 1:45.9 | possibly the only man who truly captured Queen Elizabeth the first heart. |
| 1:50.6 | Do go back and have a listen to that episode if you've not done so already. |
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