Empress Matilda: Civil War and the Fight for the Throne

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**Tom Holland** (1:02)
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Hello everyone, and welcome to The Rest Is History, and welcome to St Bartholomew the Great, which is London's oldest medieval church, and a very appropriate setting for what is a new mini-series for club members. As a massive treat, and because on The Rest Is History, we are all heart, we are making this first episode free. If you like it, and you would like to see the next two, then you know what you've got to do. It's an appropriate setting because the theme of this mini-series is the real life Cersei Lannisters, the She-Wolves of medieval England.
And with me to talk about the She-Wolves is the author of a book called She-Wolves. It's my dear friend and erstwhile colleague, Helen Castor. Helen, welcome to The Rest Is History.

**Helen Castor** (3:30)
Thank you for having me.

**Tom Holland** (3:31)
Before we go to the Middle Ages, should we just look at the century that follows the medieval period, the 16th century, because there are a lot of queens in the 16th century. What perspective do all those queens kind of shed on the time that we're going to be talking about today in the series?

**Helen Castor** (3:51)
It's interesting, isn't it, because it goes in two directions. In one sense, we tend to assume, I think, that because there are all these queens in the 16th century.

**Tom Holland** (4:00)
So should we just list them? So Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots, Mary Tudor.

**Helen Castor** (4:05)
There's also this extraordinary moment in the 1550s where there seem to be women everywhere.

**Tom Holland** (4:10)
A monstrous regiment.

**Helen Castor** (4:11)
A monstrous regiment of women, although Knox doesn't quite mean that. We'll come to that. Mary of Hungary has been ruling the Netherlands for her brother. They're all Mary's. For her brother, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Mary Queen of Scots is the Queen of Scotland living in Paris while her mother, Mary of Guise, is regent in Scotland for her. Then we have Mary Tudor in England.
They're all Mary's. They're all Catholic. And in Geneva, John Knox, a fulminating Calvinist Scott with a big beard, is extremely cross about all this. So he writes the first blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regimen of women, saying...

**Tom Holland** (4:52)
And the monstrous regimen is not like a kind of military parade of queens kind of marching, is it?

**Helen Castor** (4:58)
It's easy to see, isn't it, this dreadful battalion of Mary's? No, regiment means regimen, rule, and monstrous means unnatural, abominable. So what he's talking about is the monstrous rule of women, which he thinks shouldn't be allowed. His timing is terrible. He publishes this in the summer of 1558