It's the morning after Thomas Cremor dies. His wife Catherine is well into her 50s. She's just

lost her second husband. She's grieving. She's managing funeral arrangements. She's going through

papers. And somewhere across the city, the Draper's Company of London, which is the most

powerful cloth guild in England, While they're holding a meeting,

they're electing a new warden the day after Thomas died. They couldn't wait a decent interval.

And then three weeks later, they sent officers to Blackwell Hall to inform Catherine that a Mr.

Peter Starkey would be taking over and she should make arrangements to leave.

Catherine Fenkel did not make arrangements to leave. What she did instead was negotiate.

And at the end of those negotiations, she had secured half of all of the revenues from the wardenship for six more months, which is more than

her husband's original agreement had promised her. She bought herself time, she made proper preparations,

she did not panic, she did not crumble, and she did not get pushed out. The woman is like

almost 60 at this point, recently widowed for the second time, running circles

around the most powerful trade guild in London. And that's what I'm going to talk about today,

because Catherine is not a flute. She's actually part of a pattern. And once you see the pattern,

you cannot unsee it. So, settle in, get comfy, grab a beverage. Today, we are going to talk about the medieval and tutor women who were actually running the show.

Hey, friend, welcome back to the Renaissance English History Podcast. My name is Heather. I've been podcasting on Tudor England for 17 years, which makes me the original Tudor history podcaster. I am, as always, just thrilled that you are here with me today on a beautiful spring day to talk about the Tudor women who broke the mold.

So this past weekend, I was down in Richmond at the Richmond Renaissance Fair.

I was doing history talks in the pump house, which sounds very official.

But one of them was on Tudor Women who ran London. And so this video is inspired by that talk. If this is the kind of history that you want more of, and after all,

you did click the video, subscribe now before you get so deep into Katherine Fenkel's story

that you forget, which, you know, is about to happen. Okay, so first we need to talk about

what Tudor Law actually said about women, because the picture is more complicated than the

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