Tudor True Crime: Europe's Most Murderous Dynasty

Not Just the Tudors

History Hit

History

4.8 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 28 August 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

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Summary

The rich and powerful Guise family was one of the most treacherous and bloodthirsty in sixteenth-century France. They whipped up religious bigotry, overthrowing the king. They ruled Scotland for nearly 20 years through Mary Queen of Scots, plotting to invade England and overthrow Elizabeth I. And they unleashed the bloody Wars of Religion, playing a crucial role in the murder of 4,000 Protestants in the infamous Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre.

In this final episode for Not Just the Tudors' Tudor True Crime month, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Professor Stuart Carroll - author of Martyrs and Murderers: The Guise Family and the Making of Europe - about this cultivated, charismatic and violent dynasty.

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Presented by Professor Suzannah Lipscomb. Edited by Stuart Beckwith and produced by Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.

All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb.
0:02.6	If you'd like not just the Tudors ad-free to get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit.
0:10.5	With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries,
0:16.0	including my own recent two-part series, A World Torn Apart, The Dissolution of the Monastries, and enjoy a new release every week.
0:25.2	Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com forward slash subscribe.
0:32.2	Hello, I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb and welcome to not just the Tudors from History Hit, the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to Samarise, relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors.
0:57.0	Hamlet summed it up when he described his dysfunctional family as little more than kin and less than kind.
1:13.9	But there's something that was rotten in the state of Denmark was nothing compared to Europe's
1:18.6	most murderous dynasty. For the last few episodes, I've been delving into the Not Just the Tudor's
1:24.1	archives and revisiting some of the extraordinary true crimes that shook
1:28.7	England in the early modern period. We've already looked at the murders of Christopher Marlowe,
1:34.0	Amy Dudley and Thomas Oberbury. Do go back and take a listen to those episodes if you haven't
1:39.0	done so already. Today, I thought I'd round up this mini-series of murders with an episode that first went out in February 23
1:47.3	and focuses on not one specific murder but an entire family who, intertwined with the Stuarts of Scotland,
1:55.2	were involved in massacres, murders and the French Wars of Religion, as well as seizing the throne of France.
2:01.6	Whether or not you know something about the Gis family of France, today you are in for a treat.
2:06.4	But if you don't, let me set the scene and introduce this powerful and beguiling family.
2:16.7	In 1506, the Duke of Lorraine sent his son Claude to be raised at the French court,
2:22.6	and Claude struck up a close friendship with the heir apparent to the throne, François.
2:28.2	In 1513, Claude was permitted to marry Francois's cousin, Antoinette de Beaubon. And when Francois became King
2:36.0	Francois I in 1515, Claude was rewarded with military commands and household offices, such as the
2:43.3	Master of the Hunt and the governorship of Burgundy, one of France's most important provinces
	...

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