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Oct 2016
54m 18s

Killing and dying

OXFORD UNIVERSITY
About this episode
This lecture asks what weapons people owned in Henry VIII's England and whether they knew how to use them, some of its evidence drawn from coroners' inquests into accidents with bows, guns and swords. Exhortations to manly valour egged soldiers on to fight, but as in most wars before penicillin, more died of disease than from enemy action. 
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Oct 2016
Kings and peoples
This lecture argues that engagement in war vitally shaped the relationship of Henry VIII's subjects with the king and with his immediate successors. Their idea of national history and their place in it, and their sense of Englishness, Welshness, or Englishness in Ireland. 
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Oct 2016
Trade and tillage
This lecture examines war and the economy in Henry VIII's England: heavy taxation and disrupted trade threatened recession. But, arms traders, fortification builders, privateers and those who raided the Scots for their livestock, often with names familiar to followers of North-Ea ... Show More
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Oct 2016
Noblemen and gentlemen
This lecture explores how military service related to the social power and self-image of lords and gentlemen in Henry VIII's England. While contemporaries complained that they were giving up the knightly ways of their forebears, many still valued their martial honour and found a ... Show More
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