The Anarchy: Disruptive Women

Gone Medieval

History Hit

History

4.6 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 7 June 2024

⏱️ 40 minutes

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Summary

The Anarchy is an intriguing and often forgotten period of history. There are fascinating characters and moments of deep political importance to England's development as a state. The involvement of women in the Anarchy is vital to understanding how it played out over almost two decades.

In this episode of Gone Medieval, Matt Lewis talks to Sharon Bennett Connolly - author of Women of the Anarchy - in which she demonstrates how certain women were prime movers in a time of conflict and how their strengths, weaknesses and personal ambitions swung the fortunes of civil war one way - and then the other.

This episode was produced by Rob Weinberg.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval, I'm Matt Lewis. The anarchy is an
0:07.8	intriguing period of England's history for a number of reasons but it's often a forgotten civil war.
0:14.0	There are fascinating characters and moments of deep political importance to England's
0:19.2	development as a state. The involvement of women in the story is vital to understanding how the
0:24.8	anarchy played out over almost two decades. And so I'm delighted to welcome
0:29.1	Sharon Bennett Connolly back to Gone Medieval to discuss her new book, Women of the Anarchy, which draws the
0:34.9	role of women from out of the shadows of history.
0:38.3	Welcome back to God Medieval, Sharon.
0:40.0	Thank you.
0:40.6	Nice to be here.
0:41.5	Lovely to have you back, always a pleasure.
0:43.0	My first question is a slightly facetious question.
0:46.0	How many Matildas is too many Matildas?
0:49.0	Because everybody's called Matilda.
0:51.0	It's 12. I actually looked in the index and there's 12 separate Matilda's and I think there's a couple more who aren't in the index who just get a mention once. But yeah, everybody is called Matilda. It's really annoying because it's very hard to distinguish between them.
1:07.6	Particularly, I guess, when the two main protagonists of the story, the two principal women of the anarchy are both called
1:14.9	Matilda as well. How do you differentiate between them in the book? The thing is you've got Empress
1:18.8	Matilda and Matilda of Boulogne. Empress Matilda was the one whose throne was stolen by Stephen of Bois.
1:25.1	What, controversial call already?
1:26.7	No, he thinks it was the peace throne, it was hers and he promised that she could have it, that
1:32.1	he changed his mind. Yes, he stole Empress Matilda's throne, and he was married to Matilda Bologne.
1:37.4	The way I distinguished was, she was the Empress and Matilda was the Queen, so if I had to refer to them it was Empress Matilda or Queen Matilda
	...

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