On a remote Massachusetts plantation in 1651, an unpopular local brickmaker was blamed for a wave of animal ailments, children dying and vanishing property. The argumentative Hugh Parsons was accused of being a vengeful witch.
In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Professor Malcolm Gaskill about his research into this dark, real-life folktale of family tragedy, supernatural obsessions and social anxiety in the New World of the Puritans.
The royal wedding of Marguerite de Valois and Henri de Navarre on 18 August 1572, was designed to reconcile France’s Catholics and Protestants - or Huguenots. But six days later, the execution of Protestant leaders led to a massacre by Catholics of thousands more Protestants in Paris and across F...
Philip II of Spain - the most powerful monarch of the early modern period - was married to Queen Mary Tudor from 1554 until her death in 1558. But Philip was not merely Mary's King Consort. Rather he was King of England, co-ruler with Mary. Philip's character and central role in the English monar...
The Spanish infanta Catalina of Aragon was raised to be a Queen, betrothed at the age of three to the heir apparent of the English throne, Arthur Prince of Wales. Eight years after Arthur's death, she became the first of Henry VIII's six wives. Catalina's mother - Queen Isabella I of Castile - wa...
