Hello, I'm Lucy Worsley, chief curator at Historic Royal Palaces.

You're listening to our podcast that explores the history and stories of our six palaces.

These talks are a collection of some of our best live events.

I really hope you enjoy listening.

In the 1500s, the Tudor Court was the place to be seen.

This series of talks looks into court life in the 16th century during the reign of King Henry VIII.

In this talk, Chris Gidlow from historic royal palaces explores the Eltham ordinances,

the rules that existed to keep the

Tudor Court functioning and in order.

I'm going to be talking about the Eltham ordinances and at base these are quite dull.

These are the kind of health and safety things you find stuck up on walls in any offices. But what they do is they give us an

insight into what it was actually like to be at the Tudor Court. If you weren't like having

an affair with Catherine of Aragon or planning the field of the cloth of gold, if you're just

a normal person at the court, you haven't really left much of a trace

in history. You haven't left any private letters. You haven't written a private diary.

But there were hundreds of these people, and the ultimate ordinances give us an insight into how

that Tudor edifice actually functioned.

It's, as we said, it's like the engine room on the Titanic.

It's the people working down below that produces this grateful and elegant palace,

which we can see over there.

We do know a lot more about, we know a bit more about the Tudor Court than what I'm going

to tell you, but I'm going to stick to the information which is in the Elton's ordinances.

...