The Queen Henry V Called a Witch (And Why He Was Lying)

Renaissance English History Podcast: A Show About the Tudors

Heather Teysko

History

4.6 • 624 Ratings

🗓️ 3 March 2026

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1419, Joan of Navarre, dowager queen of England and stepmother to Henry V, was arrested for witchcraft and necromancy. There was no trial. Her income was seized immediately. And Henry V, the king she supposedly tried to murder with wax figures and dark magic, freed her on his deathbed and wrote that he feared for his soul because of what he had done to her. So what actually happened? Joan's story takes us from the court of her father Charles the Bad, through two marriages and a regency, to one of the most cynical financial scams in medieval English history. Henry V needed money for his French campaigns. Joan was sitting on roughly ten percent of the entire Crown's annual revenue. And someone, somewhere, found a way to make that a treason charge. This is the story of a woman history forgot, and the king who made sure she'd be forgotten. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	My name is Sherlock Holmes.
0:01.5	It's an unusual name.
0:03.0	Introducing Young Sherlock, a new Guy Ritchie series.
0:07.0	What game are we playing today?
0:09.0	Discover the origins.
0:10.0	It's cleaving. Those days are truly behind me.
0:12.0	Of crime's most iconic mind.
0:14.0	There has been a break-in.
0:17.0	Astoned. You should be a detective.
0:19.0	Starring Hero finds Tiffin, Donald Finn and Colin Firth.
0:22.5	If you start wearing a hat like that, I will no longer be friends with you.
0:25.9	Young Sherlock, new original series. Watch now only on Prime Video.
0:30.2	So I want to tell you about a woman who was a Duchess, a regent and a queen of England,
0:35.6	and whose own confessor accused her of trying to murder the king
0:40.9	through necromancy. And you have probably never heard her name. Her name was Joan of Navarre,
0:49.0	and the fact that she has been basically erased from the story of medieval England is honestly a little
0:55.1	bit of a crime.
0:56.6	Let me set the scene for you.
0:58.0	It's 1419.
0:59.5	Joan is around 50 years old.
1:01.4	She has been widowed twice.
1:03.3	She has survived the death of two husbands, a rocky political landscape in three different
	...

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