Vulgar History - Author Interview： Vanessa Wilkie (A Woman of Influence： The Spectacular Rise of Alice Spencer in Tudor England)

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00:00:30.000 Hi, Tits Out Brigade. It's me, Anne. I wanted to let you know about a fundraiser that I'm

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00:02:23.400 Hello, and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women's history comedy podcast.

00:02:34.340 My name is Anne Foster, and this is a super special episode. Today, I got to talk with

00:02:39.500 Vanessa Wilkie, who is the author of a new book, which is called A Woman of Influence,

00:02:44.900 The Spectacular Rise of Alice Spencer in Tudor, England. And why this caught my attention when I

00:02:50.640 saw this book announced a while ago is because Alice Spencer is a woman who I've talked about

00:02:55.500 on the podcast in the episode from the Lady Jane Grey season about Anne Stanley, the Countess of

00:03:01.040 Castlehaven. And so because we refer to that a few times in this interview, I just wanted to kind of

00:03:05.920 recap what happened in that episode, if it's been a while since you listened to it, or if you haven't

00:03:10.060 listened to that episode yet. So Alice Spencer's daughter, Anne Stanley, married this piece of

00:03:15.240 shit called Mervyn Tuchet, the Earl of Castlehaven. And he was a sexual predator and a horrific 1.00

00:03:23.360 person. And then for various sort of complicated reasons, but eventually it became apparent that 0.99

00:03:31.160 he had arranged the sexual assault of Anne Stanley, his wife, and he'd also been arranging the

00:03:37.620 ongoing sexual assault of his stepdaughter, Anne Stanley's daughter, Elizabeth. And it all went to

00:03:42.940 court. Mervyn was put on trial as were two male servants who were implicated in all this awful

00:03:49.400 stuff. And part of what happened at the trial was that Anne Stanley herself, and this was

00:03:54.960 unprecedented at the time, she testified against her husband in a rape trial, which was the first

00:04:00.300 time that happened in England. Anyway, so just so you know, if you want to learn more about that,

00:04:07.380 like you can read, there's a whole section on that in this book, A Woman of Influence,

00:04:10.820 But also you could just like listen back to that episode about Ann Stanley from a while ago. So it's called the Castle Haven trial. And that sort of looms large in the story of Alice Spencer, because she was the matriarch. She was the Kris Jenner of this family. And so she was behind the scenes, kind of trying to figure things out, trying to maintain the family's prestige and reputation throughout this trial.

00:04:34.760 So I just wanted to recap that because we are going to mention it several times in the

00:04:38.760 interview that you're about to hear.

00:04:40.480 So anyway, the book is A Woman of Influence.

00:04:43.340 It's a much broader story than just that, but that was a major thing that happened during

00:04:47.780 the life of Ella Spencer was that her daughter and her granddaughter were involved in this

00:04:51.840 horrible situation and this trial.

00:04:53.920 Anyway, setting that aside for a second, I was really excited to talk to Vanessa Wilkie

00:04:58.360 about this new book.

00:05:00.340 So A Woman of Influence, This Particular Rise of Ella Spencer in Tudor England.

00:05:04.100 and I hope you enjoy this chat that I have with Vanessa.

00:05:09.440 So, Vanessa Wilkie, welcome to my podcast.

00:05:13.140 Thank you. Thank you for having me.

00:05:14.720 I was really intrigued when I first saw that your book was coming out because I was like,

00:05:18.480 Alice Spencer, I know. I know that name. Can you explain who Alice Spencer was and why maybe the

00:05:23.660 listeners of this podcast might know that name? Well, the listeners of your podcast,

00:05:28.740 thanks to your podcast, have learned many names of women in the past,

00:05:32.600 But they probably know Alice Spencer as Alice Edgerton, who was the mother of Anne, the Countess of Castlehaven, which is how I first met Alice, too, was through the Castlehaven trial.

00:05:45.440 And we're going to get to the Castlehaven trials.

00:05:47.580 So that was an episode I did a while back in the Jane Grey season, Anne Stanley, the Countess of Castlehaven.

00:05:53.280 But before we get to that part of her story, actually, can you explain to Alice Spencer her beginnings, her quasi-humble beginnings?

00:06:05.020 Sure. So Alice was born at Althorpe, which today is quite famous. It's the palatial estate of the Spencer family.

00:06:17.420 But at the time in the 1560s, Alice was born in 1560, it was a sheep farm and a much smaller

00:06:24.600 manor estate.

00:06:25.720 So her family was kind of on the rise, like an up and coming family, but mostly they were

00:06:30.320 making their money and sheep farming and buying up land to expand their sheep enterprise.

00:06:35.900 And she was the youngest daughter in the family.

00:06:38.300 There were a lot of children.

00:06:39.820 And so it was a period in the Elizabethan era where families like the Spencers were

00:06:46.720 kind of on the rise trying to grow their political and social influence but they didn't have

00:06:53.160 necessarily like ancient aristocratic titles they were doing it with capital which was quite

00:06:59.380 scandalous in feudal england so she was a woman that kind of came along at a moment where her

00:07:06.220 family was really trying to put the family on a higher trajectory and alice was an important part

00:07:12.080 of that that plan so i just want to make it clear for people especially who may not know althorpe

00:07:18.680 but this is like we're talking to spencers this is like lady diana spencer this is like today's

00:07:23.880 the spencers who i've always thought of as an old money aristocratic family but this is kind of like

00:07:31.360 where they at the time when al spencer was young they were upstart sheep farmers yeah this is um

00:07:38.540 you know, before this is the Spencers before they were the Spencers, kind of. Yeah.

00:07:44.340 And so I find it interesting, too, that she's, I forget, you would know,

00:07:47.680 obviously, you wrote this book. She was the youngest of what, like 15 children or something?

00:07:51.960 Like, it's a huge family.

00:07:53.860 It's hard to know. It was a huge family. It was about nine children, probably a little

00:07:59.200 more. It's hard. There's some that we know that they were born, but we don't know their names.

00:08:03.540 we don't know what happened to them. But so we know she was kind of the youngest daughter on

00:08:08.540 record, but she had younger brothers, too, that we are able to trace. So about nine-ish children,

00:08:16.820 probably more. Is it typical that, and you outline this in your book, I will have done

00:08:21.960 an introduction saying like, a woman of influence, this is the book. So in your book, a woman of

00:08:25.780 influence. So you talk about how kind of each daughter, especially like married a bit better

00:08:31.220 than the one before her, leading up to Alice having like kind of arguably the best marriage.

00:08:35.820 Is that typical? Because I would have thought usually the oldest daughter would get kind of

00:08:39.940 the best match. Well, yeah, I think it is kind of typical. There's not a single formula for it.

00:08:46.020 A lot of it just depends on how many daughters, how many kids you have that you have to procure 0.56

00:08:50.420 marriages. You know, daughters, as we learned from the Spencer family, as an example, daughters are

00:08:56.900 really, there's this idea that people only wanted sons, which is not true. Too many sons and you

00:09:02.420 end up with massive conflict in the family and the family gets poorer over time. So daughters,

00:09:08.140 people did want daughters because you could make strong alliances with other families by having 0.67

00:09:13.340 daughters. But if you had too many daughters, then that's too many marriages that you have 0.99

00:09:16.700 to arrange for and have dowries for and so on. So yeah, what we see with Alice and her sisters

00:09:23.000 is that each daughter kind of ratchets up

00:09:28.760 a little bit higher on the social stratosphere.

00:09:33.400 So her eldest sister,

00:09:35.020 the family is still kind of building their reputation

00:09:38.700 and she's arranged to marry a local knight,

00:09:42.560 like a good, on paper,

00:09:44.320 who knows what the personalities here are,

00:09:46.860 but on paper, it was a reasonable match.

00:09:49.700 And then with each of her subsequent sisters,

00:09:51.980 they all kind of clicked up a little higher, a little higher. And so by the time those unions

00:09:56.960 are what helped the family build more and more connections, their kinship networks grew. And

00:10:03.140 as their networks grew, it allowed for more options for people. So by the time you get to

00:10:08.840 Alice, like, oh, their network is much bigger than it was with their, with their eldest daughter.

00:10:14.200 You're just saying about the kinship networks. And again, I'm, I'm trying to like, we're going

00:10:17.960 of go sequentially through Alice's life. But again, like the Castlehaven trial is looming

00:10:21.980 over this. But by the time you get to that, it's like every member of the jury was related to her

00:10:27.020 or was... Not every member, but a lot of them were. Yeah, absolutely. So that's, I mean,

00:10:33.580 that's a big part of this strategy too, for families in the Elizabethan and in Stuart period,

00:10:40.360 the tutor of Stuart period, is thinking about how you can use marriage to not just accumulate like

00:10:46.840 political influence or landed wealth, but also, you know, who it gets you in connection with.

00:10:54.460 So Alice, so can you explain who her husband was, her first husband?

00:10:58.080 Her first husband? Yeah. So her first husband was Ferdinando Stanley.

00:11:02.480 Yeah, you talk about what you are. I'm happy to say not the first person who's pointed out that

00:11:11.120 it's so bizarre that the name Ferdinando is used. And then Alice has a grandson who's also named

00:11:16.120 Ferdinando. But it is an extremely uncommon name. And it's a nice break from all the Johns and

00:11:22.680 Thomases and Edwards and Roberts in the period. It makes me like him inherently more just because

00:11:31.700 that's it. I'm like, oh, it's Ferdinand. But he was kind of also a cool guy. Ferdinando. He was

00:11:35.860 Lord Strange. He had dealings with the theater, with theater companies. Ferdinando, I was so

00:11:42.240 excited because so I read your book and I did the Anne Stanley episode like I don't know a couple

00:11:47.060 years ago so I was just like oh I forgot this is the story with Ferdinando in it so anyway he showed

00:11:52.220 up I mean Ferdinando Lord Strange is kind of the coolest name in in history yeah yeah um so yeah

00:12:00.800 her first husband is Ferdinando Stanley he's a descendant of Henry VII so he's he's royal he's

00:12:08.940 he's a cousin of queen elizabeth and in this period you know because in the um i think you've

00:12:14.680 talked with your audience before about like the wars of the roses and those families and so in

00:12:19.480 this period it's after the wars of the roses and there's a kind of a break in the aristocracy like

00:12:25.780 a division as a result of those those wars and so ferdinando is kind of old an old family but the

00:12:33.280 lord the earls of derby are an older family by elizabethan standards but they're they come out

00:12:38.480 of the Wars of the Roses. So they're kind of new in the period as well. So his family, his father

00:12:46.140 is the fourth Earl of Darby, and they live in the North. And because of their connections and

00:12:53.340 lineage from Henry VII, they have just an excessive amount of power in the North. It's a very,

00:13:01.600 actually, it's one of the things I loved about Game of Thrones, that model that the North is

00:13:07.860 almost like a separate place it's connected to the rest of the kingdom but the people who live

00:13:12.440 in the north have a unique amount of power that really is modeled after the stanley family like

00:13:18.760 the starks there's a lot of parallels you can make between the starks and the stanleys because

00:13:22.960 they do rule the north with a certain amount of autonomy that other aristocratic families in the

00:13:28.640 period don't have so like the isle of man is is a kingdom of their own it's outside the realm of

00:13:36.140 England and the Stanley family ruled it like many kings. So that's the family that Alice

00:13:42.880 marries into. She leaves the pastoral sheep lands of sheep farms of the Midlands in Northamptonshire

00:13:51.440 and she moves up to Lancashire in the north and marries into this extremely well-established,

00:13:58.180 powerful family. And she has to learn what her new station in life is and how to be part of

00:14:06.380 this mechanism that's even bigger than her own family. And that's part of what I find really

00:14:11.860 interesting about her story is the, it's not a rags to riches. She was not starting off in rags,

00:14:18.480 but it's like a person learning a whole new way to be and socially maneuvering and learning to

00:14:24.420 become like during her era, her, her married to Ferdinando era, like she very much stepped into

00:14:30.540 that role. And I think she took to it very well. Right. Yeah. I mean, all, all accounts kind of

00:14:36.100 point to, and we don't actually, that's the interesting thing about the historical record

00:14:40.660 is we don't actually see, hear a lot of Alice's voice in this period, but we can see the influence

00:14:47.620 it had on her later. For example, her father-in-law, the fourth Earl of Darby, had this

00:14:54.480 enormous household, which was not really the fashion anymore by the 1580s when Alice marries

00:15:01.880 into the Stanley family. The elite households are shrinking a little bit. It operates less like a

00:15:10.140 mini kingdom, but up there, because it does operate like a mini kingdom, she learns to be

00:15:15.440 a countess in this gigantic estate. And that is something that we see her try and emulate 1.00

00:15:20.300 throughout the rest of her life. So by the time you get into the 17th century, when most aristocratic

00:15:25.800 households have shrunk down a lot, Alice is still like, no, no, no, I need hundreds of servants and

00:15:32.580 I want extra outbuildings. And like, she really, it's just ingrained in her. This is like, you start 0.74

00:15:39.100 to see that this is her formative education for how to be a noble woman. And she carries on with

00:15:44.560 this, whether it's the trend or not throughout her life.

00:15:48.440 And would you say it's an influence as well of Ferdinando and his patronage of theater

00:15:53.200 that she also really gets into being a patron of the arts and really being interested in

00:15:57.640 throwing her own masks and parties and things?

00:16:00.980 Yeah.

00:16:01.200 So Ferdinando starts off relatively small too.

00:16:04.700 He has a troupe of acrobats that he funds and tumblers that perform at their estate.

00:16:11.820 They travel around.

00:16:12.660 They perform in Queen Elizabeth's court. And then he starts to move on to sponsoring a troupe of players, which are, you know, actors and playwrights.

00:16:22.380 And we know that, you know, Shakespeare comes out of that that circle.

00:16:27.540 So they were not certainly the only family to do this.

00:16:31.980 Probably their other most famous peers would be like the Earl of Leicester.

00:16:36.840 Robert Dudley has a troop of players, Lester's Men. And so there's Stranger's Men and Lester's

00:16:42.320 Men. And there's all these different theater companies that are traveling around performing

00:16:46.140 in private homes and then also performing for Queen Elizabeth in the court.

00:16:51.040 And then she, again, like I'm trying to go sort of sequentially, but later in her life,

00:16:54.700 like she notably like throws these parties that are masks that are plays and she's like acting

00:17:00.940 in them herself. Like it's very, yeah, she's very into that.

00:17:04.320 Yeah, I think she probably we don't we don't know exactly. There's not great records. And there's a couple. It gets confusing because they're all named Elizabeth. And they're all, you know, and it gets confusing because there's multiple countesses of Darby at the same time, like her mother in law. She becomes the Dowager countess. Alice becomes a Dowager countess of Darby. And then her sister-in-law is also the countess of Darby. So we don't always know which which countess they're talking about when there's lists of players.

00:17:31.500 But we do know that certainly later in life, Alice was sponsoring these entertainments, but mostly it was probably her children and grandchildren that were performing in them.

00:17:40.880 And so she also, the length of her life, you know, she starts off in this, correct me if I'm wrong, but like Elizabeth is the queen, right? When she is kicking things off. And then it leads to eventually James is the king and Anne of Denmark, his wife, and like Anne of Denmark is so much into theater as well.

00:17:59.940 So we see, we see that as a commonality.

00:18:03.400 Yeah. And then, you know, and actually there are other literary scholars that have, have

00:18:09.160 written this. It didn't come, I put it in my book, but it didn't come for me. That there's an idea

00:18:15.100 when Anne of Denmark comes, makes the move down to London once James ascends to the throne after

00:18:20.640 Queen Elizabeth's death, that she actually meets Ben Johnson at Althorpe at an entertainment that

00:18:27.800 Alice hosted. So, you know, Alice is not just a patroness of theater, but she's also like making

00:18:34.580 these connections between now the new queen of England and the playwrights and poets that she's

00:18:41.200 been, she and her husbands have been supporting and working with for years. I love that side of

00:18:48.180 your book and of her story that kind of, I love these, anyone who's sort of just coloring in

00:18:54.140 the spaces between it's like well this is the king and this is the queen and this is Shakespeare

00:18:57.860 but it's like but what if there was a person who was kind of like also there kind of connecting

00:19:02.120 them and I like that sort of side story but you mentioned there's not like it's not clear if she's

00:19:06.820 acting in these plays or who is where there are so many records of her is she um sued a lot of

00:19:12.880 people she had a lot of court records can you talk about that that side of things yeah and this

00:19:19.520 is a place where she's so well documented because she was so litigious, but also when

00:19:26.620 we situate her within the existing scholarship, it turns out, you know, this was a really

00:19:32.020 common thing. Women in this period, I should say elite women in this period, were quite 0.82

00:19:38.980 litigious. And so we see this massive influx in lawsuits that are kind of spearheaded by

00:19:45.280 women. Of course, Alice's first encounter with that is after Ferdinando dies, she enters into 0.74

00:19:52.320 this massive inheritance suit against her brother-in-law because Ferdinando's will leaves

00:19:58.620 a lot to Alice and to her daughters and leaves very little to his brother who inherits the title

00:20:05.020 and the primary estate. So they just go at it in multiple court systems, multiple lawsuits for

00:20:13.720 13 years until it settled. And this is the point at which she marries the lawyer, right?

00:20:20.720 Yes. Yes. She marries her second husband is Thomas Edgerton, who at the time was the keeper of the

00:20:28.700 great seal for Queen Elizabeth. And then when King James ascends to the throne, he gets promoted to

00:20:36.400 Lord Chancellor. So he's the head of the chancery courts in England, which is very much to Alice's

00:20:42.940 advantage. And it was sort of, she's in this sort of situation where even though, so she's married

00:20:48.200 to Ferdinando, Ferdinando dies, asterisk, was he poisoned by Jesuits? I talked about that in my

00:20:53.460 previous episode and you talked about it in your book a little bit. Seemingly he was, because he

00:20:58.260 was a threat to, as a potential heir to, he was like the only man on the entire family tree who

00:21:03.660 was potentially an heir to the throne. Everyone else was women. And he was Catholic, right? Or no, 0.99

00:21:08.560 he was not Catholic. He was not Catholic. I don't believe he was Catholic. His father was. And I

00:21:16.240 think that his father and the county where they lived was kind of known for being a safe haven

00:21:24.640 for Catholics in Protestant Elizabethan reform. Again, the North has always been kind of different

00:21:30.660 than the South there. But I think there's no real record to say that he was Catholic,

00:21:37.060 But he wasn't as, he probably wasn't as staunchly Protestant as he should have been in Queen Elizabeth's eyes.

00:21:46.140 So it gave the impression, you know, it's kind of one of those things where it kind of doesn't matter what the truth was.

00:21:52.120 What matters is what people thought about him.

00:21:55.140 And he was, enough Catholics thought that he would at least be, if he wasn't Catholic himself, he would at least be sympathetic to them.

00:22:03.260 And so they thought he would be a supporter of, of theirs.

00:22:08.060 Yeah. I mean, we, we all know there was not a King Ferdinando of England that,

00:22:12.700 that did not occur. Yeah. So he, Ferdinando died, she marries the lawyer.

00:22:17.560 And what I was just going to say before it was this is a period of time where

00:22:20.480 like she needed to marry again. It's not just like, okay, I'm a wealthy widow.

00:22:23.440 Everything's great. It's like, no, in this culture,

00:22:25.300 like she needed a powerful husband. Right. 0.99

00:22:28.160 Well, she, she kind of waited though. She, she weighed,

00:22:31.280 She didn't want a husband right away because by marrying someone right away, she would be giving up a lot of her own legal rights.

00:22:37.720 As a widow, she did hold a lot of, England at this time allowed widows more rights than other places did.

00:22:45.400 So she didn't need a husband for a long time.

00:22:48.000 She really didn't want to give up control over her daughter's marriages, which she would have if she had gotten married too soon.

00:22:55.100 So that was part of what makes Alice so fascinating is she understood the laws and knew when it was the right time for her to get married and when it was the wrong time for her to get married.

00:23:06.340 So she waited six years for the first six years of her lawsuit against her brother-in-law. 1.00

00:23:11.060 She purposefully didn't remarry so that she could maintain control of the wardships of her daughters. 1.00

00:23:17.520 And then once she secured the husband she wanted for them, then she remarried because that was like part of her legal strategy. 1.00

00:23:25.100 of who to marry and when to marry. This is part of what's so fascinating about her. And

00:23:30.780 I'm guessing is probably part of what drew you to want to study more about her and write about her

00:23:35.520 is she was just so savvy. She was so smart. She was. And I, you know, she's so excessively

00:23:43.680 well-documented compared to many other women in the period. So it just begs the question of how

00:23:48.520 many other women were out there like her that we just don't know about because they didn't survive

00:23:53.360 and the records don't survive. We certainly see that her sister, Anne, it's confusing because her 0.94

00:24:00.980 daughter's Anne and her sister's Anne, but Anne Spencer, let's say, she also seems to have had

00:24:07.740 this same kind of shrewdness when it came to strategizing her own marriages after her first

00:24:13.560 marriage. She marries two other times after her first marriage, and she also picks very specific 0.81

00:24:19.700 people at very specific moments where it can help stabilize her, but she waits a little

00:24:26.420 bit in between marriages.

00:24:28.140 So just looking at these two sisters as kind of a microcosm helps us think about like,

00:24:33.880 actually, it wasn't just women go from one marriage to the other because they needed

00:24:37.620 that safety net.

00:24:38.540 It was they opted for marriage at certain times and it allowed them to do certain things

00:24:44.600 that they wouldn't have done otherwise.

00:24:45.960 But in those in between years when they were widows, they actually did have a lot of agency

00:24:49.700 to, to exert, um, too. So it helps complicate the story.

00:24:56.740 Well, and this brings us, um, sort of, okay. So when I, this brings us to Anne Stanley and

00:25:02.420 her choice of husband and an illustration of why it really matters to not marry a horrible person.

00:25:08.400 Um, so I just, I just want to let the listeners know. So when I was reading your book, it made

00:25:14.760 me feel like if I'm watching a new movie version of Romeo and Juliet, let's say, I'm just like,

00:25:19.520 maybe it's going to work out this time. Maybe Romeo and Juliet will get the message and everything

00:25:24.080 will be fine and it's not. So I was reading this book and I was just like, oh no, oh no,

00:25:27.440 she's marrying the Lord of Castlehaven. And I'm just like, but maybe I'm remembering it. Maybe

00:25:34.640 it wasn't as bad as I remember. Maybe it's, oh no, oh no, it's actually worse. I actually forgot

00:25:39.500 some of the horrible details, which we won't get into. But basically, I wanted to ask you,

00:25:44.100 You said that you got to Alice's story through the Castlehaven trial.

00:25:48.040 And what, how did you find out about the Castlehaven trial?

00:25:51.740 And now we're just going to take a break for a word from our sponsors.

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00:27:53.160 welcome to mick unplugged the number one podcast for self-improvement and modern leadership

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00:29:05.100 And we're back. Yeah, I was in graduate school and I was early on, I was taking a research

00:29:11.920 seminar and my advisor said you know you've got to write a research paper for this class so what

00:29:17.940 do you want to write about it and i was working on i wanted i was working on gender history and

00:29:21.480 he suggested i read cynthia harrop's book a house engrossed disorder um sex law and the second l

00:29:28.120 of castlehaven sex law scandal and second l of castlehaven um it's a phenomenal book and it

00:29:34.000 really um you know cynthia is the first person to really the people had known about the castlehaven

00:29:40.560 Charles in the past, but Cynthia really plots out the narrative around them. But she's really

00:29:45.940 focused primarily on the Earl's experience. And her argument in her book is that he had this

00:29:51.800 Catholic title, or this Irish title, and he was pretty Catholic. And those two things counted

00:29:59.720 against him so much that that's what allowed the trials to happen. And I think that she was exactly

00:30:05.240 right from looking at it from his perspective. But I wanted to then re-examine the trials from

00:30:11.340 the Countess's perspective and understand what the role of sexual assault and what the discourses of

00:30:17.320 sexual assault were in the period and how she would have experienced it. And so when I started

00:30:23.040 looking at the trials from the Countess of Castlehaven's perspective, I quickly came to

00:30:28.140 realize like her mother is this powerhouse person and you know she's behind the scenes

00:30:34.900 doing all of this maneuvering and I just wanted to better understand how this operated and I

00:30:41.600 realized I then had to kind of like move out to the next concentric circle and move beyond just

00:30:46.980 the Countess of Castlehaven and start to look at Alice and then once I pulled on that thread I 0.94

00:30:50.980 realized, oh, no, I have to go way back to 1560, just to understand how this family of women

00:30:58.320 knew how to handle the situation the way that they did. And so I kind of started in my research

00:31:05.240 started in the 1630s with the trials, and it brought me back. And then I started to replot

00:31:11.500 that way. And that's what allowed me to kind of reconstruct the story of the trials through the

00:31:16.440 child is this perspective. And that's, I'm always, I don't know, when I'm reading historical things,

00:31:21.900 I, I'm always sort of trying to slot them into things to make me, what today is similar to what

00:31:27.440 a situation might've been like. And the way that Alice, like that she was, so her, her family was,

00:31:33.240 again, you can listen to my previous episode about Anne Stanley to get into the minutiae of this

00:31:37.320 trial, but it was this huge, beyond huge scandal in, in culture in England. And Alice, like the

00:31:45.680 biggest challenge I think she would have faced to you know to her family to their reputation 0.96

00:31:50.440 and so she was just pulling on every um friend every ally she had to try and and kind of make

00:31:57.320 this work and it's it reminds me of like a Kris Jenner type situation yeah that comes up a lot

00:32:03.680 when the um yeah just like a mother and the daughters but she's really pulling the strings

00:32:09.120 because she's solidified so many relationships like if you're looking at Kris Jenner it's like 0.59

00:32:13.240 with TMZ or like with the tabloids or whatever. It's like, so she can really pull it all this up

00:32:17.820 to try and defend whatever scandal her daughters have gotten into lately. But part of it too is

00:32:23.240 that, so Anne Stanley married this guy who Alice Spencer didn't want her to. Oh, Alice Spencer

00:32:29.440 takes wardship, I think of Anne's sons, which is kind of significant. I think she was just like,

00:32:35.320 let's just like make sure that these little boys reputation is not destroyed by being in his

00:32:39.720 household where she kind of, so what do you think Elspencer knew? What did she suspect?

00:32:44.920 Well, first of all, just, just to quickly comment on what you just said about the fact that she

00:32:49.360 takes the wardships of the sons. I want to point out that she left the daughter. She did not go

00:32:53.920 and also had daughters. And, you know, that kind of tells us something about Alice's kind of mode

00:33:02.280 of operations of like, you know, let's secure the sons because that's where, that's where the

00:33:08.100 lineage and the money is. And she really left her granddaughters extremely vulnerable in the 1.00

00:33:13.360 situation. So that part is deeply disturbing. But I think what she knew, there's one letter

00:33:23.740 that survives that Alice wrote to her middle daughter, Frances, who is the Countess of

00:33:29.180 Castlehaven's sister. And in the letter, she says that she's building this new estate and

00:33:33.740 rest lip and she's moving all of her property there to try and keep it out of the Earl of

00:33:37.940 Castle Haven's fingering, which is just so creepy. But really, it seems my impression is that she saw

00:33:45.820 him as, and she was not alone. Lots of other people were writing letters about the Tuchet

00:33:52.420 family, but they were totally inappropriate in that they were, Alice didn't think about people

00:33:59.820 as individuals, Alice thought of people as part of a wider family. So the fact that Castlehaven's

00:34:06.020 sister was, you know, making these wild prophecies and have this terrible reputation at court,

00:34:12.200 and she, you know, got arrested a couple of times, and that his brother was Catholic who was

00:34:19.120 openly plotting against the government. So he was just coming from such, and he was Catholic and

00:34:25.380 had this Irish title, which she would have seen as inferior to her own title and the

00:34:30.700 reputations of her other daughters.

00:34:32.680 So I think she, in the beginning, just thought he was totally inappropriate, like not good

00:34:37.820 enough for her, her daughter.

00:34:40.220 I'm not sure at what point they started to understand what a predator he was.

00:34:46.340 But I think initially Alice's motivation was he's from a, you know, a family that's

00:34:51.340 not good enough for my family and the reputation is so bad.

00:34:54.640 we don't want any of that to get on us and that's why she took the wardships of her son of her

00:35:00.720 grandsons and that's so crucial too um it was interesting to me when i was reading your book

00:35:05.620 and going over the castle haven chapters i was just like oh i think i intentionally made myself

00:35:10.560 forget some of the details of what happened in that because it's just so distressing

00:35:13.900 you mentioned the so ann stanley's daughter alice's granddaughter elizabeth is i mean my

00:35:20.280 heart just goes out like she was just there she's in this horrible situation again listen to my

00:35:24.020 previous episode to learn more about that but after after the trial and she's a young teenager

00:35:29.220 she has no she's 14 years old yeah yeah she's a teenage yeah yeah she's a kid she's a young child

00:35:36.220 these horrible horrible like sexual abuse stuff is happening with her manipulations and things

00:35:41.120 and then when it all comes down and eventually the Earl of Castlehaven is found guilty etc

00:35:46.980 Elizabeth is just hung out to dry like Alice Spencer is just kind of like she does not

00:35:51.980 support her. She does not, she, she's kind of like, let's, the way you described it was really

00:35:56.620 good. It's like, she doesn't see people as people. She sees families and she's just like, how can I

00:36:00.540 make my family come out of this? Okay. And part of that is just to kind of like tuck Anne and

00:36:06.900 Elizabeth away and just like not have them. Yeah. So not to be like, let's fight for the reputation

00:36:12.960 and restore it. It was more just kind of like, she technically got the King's pardon for them,

00:36:16.940 which is a whole other thing. Cause they didn't do anything, but she, I don't know. I, I don't

00:36:21.260 know I don't know I think I was kind of like Ella Spencer yeah she's so smart she's so like 0.83

00:36:24.740 she got these good marriages for her daughter so part of me was like oh she support women

00:36:28.520 supporting women where it's just like no no it's not she's not women supporting women yeah no and

00:36:35.000 there's you know um the Earl of Castlehaven's sister Lady Eleanor Davies Douglas she you know 0.96

00:36:41.420 after the trials publishes all of these horrific pamphlets you know calling the Countess of 1.00

00:36:47.320 Castlehaven ally Satan and Jezebel and just like really trashing these women publicly,

00:36:55.560 which is like, you know, public victim shaming. But it's important, I think, to keep in mind that

00:37:01.980 Alice was also shaming her daughter and granddaughter for their involvement in this

00:37:06.200 too. She just wasn't doing it in public. But that doesn't mean, you know, she wasn't a feminist. 0.74

00:37:12.120 She was not a champion for women in any way. She was a champion for her family.

00:37:17.320 as a whole. And that's one of the things too, like when I was, was spending just so much time

00:37:23.320 thinking, thinking with Alice and thinking about Alice. So she's, I don't, I don't think we should

00:37:29.240 be telling histories to try and make anybody a hero, but Alice certainly, I think we should be

00:37:33.560 looking for like, we should be humanizing people in the past. And Alice is someone that is pretty

00:37:39.360 easy to humanize because she did all of these remarkable things, but she did them at other

00:37:44.900 people's expenses too and you know you really see that in the way that she cheated her daughter and 0.81

00:37:50.640 granddaughter coming out of the castle haven trials but then in terms of like just like the 0.90

00:37:56.500 chris jenner pr strategy of it like after the trial after she had gotten these what anyway she

00:38:03.220 got the pardons for them from the king and then she she's like okay let's put on a big play let's

00:38:08.360 put on a play that shows like this family is strong and united and we're like so she really

00:38:14.380 was just kind of i don't know the the pr strategy of it feels very modern to me that you kind of

00:38:21.760 like let's rebrand the family like we're actually great people well what i would say is that really

00:38:27.940 we want to flip that around and that the modern the modern pr strategy is based on this idea that

00:38:34.740 like you know it's a renaissance idea that you can alice and her family and people in the past

00:38:41.400 there are these whole people. They're not just like political or, you know, courtiers or victims

00:38:49.300 or, you know, that they live these like full lives. And we recognize it in the Jenner Kardashian

00:38:56.480 family. So that helps us recognize it in the Edgerton Stanley Hastings family. But really

00:39:02.460 what the Jenners and Kardashians do is modeled after what Alice's family did. They were like

00:39:08.560 the original like let's distract people with the parties and the shiny and then we just keep

00:39:14.440 and then of course in the 18th century because we don't want to jump from the 17th century to today

00:39:19.400 in the 18th century that takes on a whole other spin as you know theater explodes in a different

00:39:26.040 way but Alice I think Alice and her family really demonstrate that the arts

00:39:31.120 are play an everyday role in people's in elite families lives they're not just something you do

00:39:36.840 on the weekends or like a special event. It's a really important part of how you present yourself

00:39:42.040 and how you present your family and how you communicate with each other and communicate

00:39:46.500 within your peer group. Yeah. Not being able to do like an Instagram post of like, look,

00:39:51.040 it's my family. We're having Thanksgiving dinner and we all get along. It's like you throw a party

00:39:55.200 and you have a play and the play has allegories being like, look, our family's actually great.

00:39:58.820 Like it's kind of, yeah. Let's hire John Milton. Yeah. It's our publicist in a way.

00:40:05.080 Yeah, it's so interesting. Is this the first that you know of like book just about Alice Spencer?

00:40:11.040 Yeah, yeah.

00:40:12.360 Which is interesting, because like you were saying, like, there's so much documented, there's so much evidence of what she did and who she was. So it's, I'm glad that you put it together. Yeah.

00:40:22.300 It's spread out. Thank you. It took a long time. You know, it's, it's, um, these records that I

00:40:30.020 looked at, they're just, they're spread out. They're everywhere. Not, they aren't everywhere,

00:40:35.380 but they're in a lot of different libraries and repositories. And so I think one of the reasons

00:40:39.860 why it's really, um, an obstacle to books like this being written is you just, you need a lot

00:40:46.200 of, you know, I was a graduate student when I started this work. So I had fellowships and I

00:40:49.940 had time. I mean, my job was to do this research. And it just it took years to piece it all

00:40:55.240 together. So it's not that it can't be done. It's just that it takes time. And that means it takes

00:41:01.420 fellowship money and research leave and things like that to be able to do it.

00:41:06.180 That's so interesting. Like even I was just picturing that you were able to go and I don't

00:41:09.460 know into some library. And it's like, well, here's the book of every court case that ever

00:41:12.480 happened. And Ella Spencer is on page three and 45. And no, it's like all different places. Yeah.

00:41:19.040 Yeah, it's all different places. And it's mostly like unpublished manuscript material. So it's digging through archives. I mean, they're processed and they're described. And, you know, a lot of people work to make this material as discoverable as possible.

00:41:33.220 But then, you know, a lot of these manuscripts, you know, they're written in a secretary hand.

00:41:39.500 It's not the same kind of handwriting that we use today.

00:41:42.280 So before I could read any of them, I spent a couple, like about a year studying how to read.

00:41:48.240 It's called paleography.

00:41:49.260 It's a study of old handwriting so that I could actually get into the archive and read the letters.

00:41:54.760 Yeah. Wow.

00:41:56.140 So there are a couple barriers to access.

00:41:59.200 but you know with study and with the help of librarians and archivists and curators then it's

00:42:06.660 possible to do so we've already talked about the parallels with like I think it's unavoidable like

00:42:13.080 with the Kardashian-Jenner family but other other connections like your book coming out I mean

00:42:18.180 today or you know whatever day it comes out whenever this podcast comes out but like coming

00:42:22.320 out in the year 2023 um what are the parallels that you see at this point between her life and

00:42:28.420 story in today's society? Well, I mean, certainly we today still live in a culture of patriarchy

00:42:38.320 and white supremacy. And Alice lived in a culture of patriarchy and white supremacy.

00:42:45.140 There's a lot that feels familiar about the 16th and 17th century, because that's how patriarchy

00:42:51.060 and white supremacy work, is that stranglehold on power. But I think Alice's story and the

00:42:58.400 story of her daughters also show different ways that people maintain the people who on paper

00:43:04.080 wouldn't have any power right but you know 17th century england is an excessively patriarchal

00:43:10.600 hostile environment but alice lives and her family rises and i think we see that happening today too

00:43:17.920 that you know when we look closely we understand the ways that resistance movements are the ways

00:43:22.920 that well the academic term for it is conjugated identities right that um alice's gender should 1.00

00:43:30.260 have relegated her to a spot where she didn't have any power but her class and her race allowed

00:43:36.580 her to have power and she harnessed that in different ways and we see that today too like

00:43:41.840 people who one aspect of their identity would relegate them to a place of less power in society

00:43:47.760 but other aspects of their identity embolden people and give them more power and you harness

00:43:53.240 those channels. So I think we can kind of look and see that Alice and her family is a good example

00:43:59.140 of how people use conjugated identities in complicated ways. And we see that happening

00:44:03.240 today too. And this is not about your book, but I'm just really curious. Can you tell me about

00:44:09.500 where you work, the Huntington Library in California?

00:44:15.180 Yeah. So I am a senior creator of medieval manuscripts in British history at the Huntington

00:44:21.760 Library Art Museum of Botanical Gardens in California, just outside of Los Angeles.

00:44:28.300 And it's one of the largest independent research libraries in North America.

00:44:33.000 Our founder loved libraries and he bought up entire family archives and gigantic libraries

00:44:39.320 And that's why a lot of this material is actually in California, because the Edgerton family papers and the Hastings family papers are in.

00:44:47.280 He purchased them at the beginning of the 20th century.

00:44:50.520 A lot of English families in the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century started selling their libraries to raise money to pay for their estates and pay taxes on their lands.

00:45:02.400 And if you're faced with the choice of, do I sell my land and my estate or do I sell my library, I sell the library. So a lot of material actually circulated around the world at that point. And that's how our library was founded.

00:45:18.840 So we have an enormous research library in lots of different areas and fields and then botanical gardens and an art museum.

00:45:28.740 It was like, I just saw it in your email signature, I think.

00:45:31.860 And I was like, OK, you know, the medieval manuscripts.

00:45:34.440 And then I'm like, wait, in California, what are British medieval manuscripts doing in California?

00:45:39.200 So I was just curious.

00:45:40.140 Yeah.

00:45:40.840 Yeah.

00:45:41.080 So at the time, like these are like railroad magnates that we're buying and steel magnates.

00:45:47.220 like the Morgan Library in New York, right there. He was a peer, JP Morgan was a peer of Henry

00:45:52.160 Huntington, Henry Folger, who, you know, founded the Folger Library in Washington, DC, they were

00:45:57.380 all peers, and they were competitors at auction. And they were kind of industrial capitalists in

00:46:02.720 America. And one of so they were like, extreme new money. And one of the ways that people at

00:46:09.940 that time wanted in the Gilded Age wanted to kind of validate their new money was by buying old

00:46:16.280 world artifacts and art and libraries so it was a it was a trend for a while but that makes more

00:46:23.460 sense to me what you're saying before about to get all the research materials it was in all

00:46:27.440 different places because i would have assumed it's like well you just go to the british archives

00:46:30.580 and everything's there no obviously no that would be so much easier um no it's spread out so for

00:46:37.700 this for my book i did work in it obviously at the huntington um before i worked there i was a

00:46:42.700 graduate student in the area. And I did work there. I went to the Folger Library in DC,

00:46:47.380 and then I went to the British Library, and then a bunch of local record offices all over the UK.

00:46:54.460 Yeah. And I do also want to say that the book itself, to people who've not yet read it,

00:47:00.120 like it's very, it's not written like an academic textbook. It's very much like popular history

00:47:04.980 as a style. And what was that decision like to, that you wanted this to be more accessible?

00:47:10.880 Was that an obvious, an easy decision?

00:47:13.580 No, actually, yeah, it was.

00:47:16.840 Once I became, once I was hired as a curator,

00:47:19.700 you know, originally when I did the research

00:47:21.240 for my dissertation, I'm going to be a professor

00:47:24.160 and I need to write a book to get tenure

00:47:26.200 and that book needs to be an academic book.

00:47:28.460 But once I decided to leave that particular pathway

00:47:32.960 of academia and move into a different sphere of academia,

00:47:35.980 which is, you know, curatorial work,

00:47:38.120 I, working at the Huntington,

00:47:39.340 And I get to talk to so many different audiences that are similar academics and some are, you know, lifelong learners and lovers of history and lovers of art.

00:47:48.280 And so I just decided that I wanted to write a book for those audiences instead that's informed by all of this fellowship, that helps bring these archives and bring these stories and bring these histories to a wider audience.

00:48:01.260 And it feels like such a privilege to be able to share these stories with so many different people.

00:48:07.840 Well, and I would imagine that things like the Princess Diana connection, like people, it gives people a bit of a, and also that it's Tudor England, like, so it's a relatively obscure story. But I think there's some footholds that like the average history fan would be like, okay, Elthorpe. Yeah, for sure.

00:48:25.160 yeah yeah I mean once you start talking about like I know conjugated identities and the

00:48:30.000 chancery courts and all of this stuff it gets it feels like there's a barrier like well I don't

00:48:36.000 know what that means I don't know what that is but all of those things that you just touched upon

00:48:40.660 is exactly right like all of those are pathways into this story and one of my one of the things

00:48:46.100 I'm really devoted to as a historian and as a curator is I want to make this this subject as

00:48:53.080 approachable as possible. And I think it's so much, there are so many ways into it. But oftentimes

00:48:58.560 it's like, no, you have to go to university and you have to study all of these things. And that's

00:49:03.240 a valuable thing to do, certainly. But we can learn so much from the humanities without sitting

00:49:08.360 in a lecture hall. Like history is all around us. You don't just learn history in an academic

00:49:13.900 lecture hall. And my final question for you is whimsical, but I need to know. Which do you think

00:49:20.880 is a better name? Gray Bridges or Ferdinando Stanley? Oh my gosh, I should have been prepared

00:49:27.860 for this question. I haven't listened to your earlier. Gosh, Gray Bridges is a pretty great

00:49:35.460 name. It's an outstanding name. When I was reading your book, I was just like, I forgot about Gray

00:49:41.120 Bridges. Like what? Surrounded by all these people who are just Robert and Edward is just like, oh,

00:49:46.900 okay like Ferdinando Stanley Gray Bridges like yeah I know Ferdinando is definitely you know

00:49:55.820 catchy but the Lord Strange really works too like that's the hook for Ferdinando I think but Gray

00:50:01.520 Bridges just sounds like a soap opera character or something or like a folk singer like I want

00:50:08.260 to create all these alter egos for for Gray Bridges absolutely absolutely yeah and the thing

00:50:13.680 with Ferdinando Lord Strange I I think I took a screen capture of that I was reading your book

00:50:17.700 just as an e-book and where you just mentioned that he had it was like Lord Strange's tumblers

00:50:22.320 like his acrobat team I'm just like really really Ferdinando like Lord Strange's tumblers like

00:50:27.500 yeah it just I mean I don't even need to make this stuff up it's the historical record just

00:50:33.400 gives us so much to play with like Ferdinando had a great name and was also kind of a weirdo

00:50:38.500 and I respect that about him definitely but great I think he was uh you know there's so much

00:50:44.580 less material survives for him than other people like Robert Dudley for example um but I think

00:50:51.820 Ferdinando is a kind of a cool poster child for the English Renaissance like he seemed to have a

00:50:58.780 I don't know I think he would have been a cool a cool Renaissance guy like interested in all

00:51:03.460 these different things, had this very unusual position in the English realm. He seemed like

00:51:12.000 someone that might be quite interesting to know. Yeah. And I think in terms of rank and stuff,

00:51:17.040 like obviously like that marriage elevated Alice to a certain level, but I think she also lucked

00:51:21.100 out that she had kind of maybe a cool husband, like Fernando is a good choice. Yes. And I think

00:51:25.640 they definitely had a fondness for each other, which is, you know, that's kind of the cherry

00:51:29.900 on top that's not why these people got married certainly it you know if you liked each other

00:51:36.180 that's a bonus um and I think that they definitely liked each other which is it's nice to know that

00:51:41.820 you know so much of Alice's life was just kind of cutthroat and partially in large part because

00:51:47.180 she was so cutthroat but it it softened her when I started to think about her when I rewrote the

00:51:51.920 the book from my dissertation um to the book and I started to think about her as a younger woman

00:51:57.440 And it made, it humanized her for me too, to think about her in her twenties and having this,

00:52:02.360 how scary it would be to marry someone that you didn't really know and what it must've been like

00:52:07.120 for her. If it turns out they actually did care for each other. I'm happy that Alice had some

00:52:11.420 love early in her life. Yeah. And that's the thing too, like your book, it's, there's so many,

00:52:15.520 it covers a really wide period of time and there's a lot of people in it, but

00:52:18.780 the Castlehaven stuff is just like, Oh my God. But like, there's, there's delightful things

00:52:24.560 also in your book yes yeah it the castle haven child loomed large like i like even because as

00:52:31.780 you said like you kind of start with that and you know that that's what's what they're headed for

00:52:35.980 and you you wish they could still avert it um but they don't so writing the book um chronologically

00:52:42.440 like this you know i felt like oh god i'm just like it's like the titanic like watching the

00:52:47.660 movie titanic like you just you know where you're headed and you don't want to get there

00:52:51.160 um but it's nice when it's nice when nice things happen for a little while it's nice you know

00:52:56.620 titanic like jack and rose have their connection and that's like a really sweet love story

00:53:01.040 and then the iceberg hits but like before the iceberg hits there's like lots of interesting

00:53:05.840 stuff happening too yeah yeah that was that's funny that was the other thing i was just like

00:53:10.380 how can i describe my experience of reading this book because i'm just like i know this

00:53:14.200 horrible thing is going to happen but i was just hoping like but maybe it won't

00:53:18.940 yeah maybe they won't hit the iceberg oh they will that's and that's not really the i guess

00:53:25.320 the point of writing history is it's the how you get there and why it happens that's that's

00:53:31.940 interesting so even writing this book as much as i wish i could have stopped it halfway through

00:53:36.480 because it's you know the iceberg is looming out there um it's it helps understand what it was

00:53:43.640 like to hit the iceberg when you know what the path was that got you there exactly exactly and

00:53:48.520 And then your book continues on past the trial as well to see what,

00:53:52.160 because everyone kept living except for the people who were executed.

00:53:55.120 The world kept spinning. Yeah. Yeah.

00:53:57.020 Except for the people that were executed.

00:53:59.560 Yeah, exactly. Who arguably deserve to die.

00:54:04.380 Everyone else kept living. Yeah. Well, anyway,

00:54:07.120 thank you so much for talking to me about your book.

00:54:09.060 I just thought it was such a,

00:54:10.220 I was really excited to be able to talk to you about it.

00:54:13.720 And I was excited that this book exists because one.

00:54:16.320 Thank you.

00:54:16.800 Yeah, it pulls together a bunch of things. Obviously, you were saying, I don't have the

00:54:22.240 capability to go to the archives and learn how to read ancient handwriting. So I always enjoy

00:54:28.540 when someone else does that legwork for me, so I can just read the book.

00:54:30.900 I'm happy to do it on your behalf.

00:54:37.380 So again, the book that we were talking about here, A Woman of Influence,

00:54:41.500 The Spectacular Rise of Alice Spencer in Tudor England by Vanessa Wilkie.

00:54:45.160 I really enjoyed reading it. And I think you would as well because of the way what she described,

00:54:51.960 like it's written very much for like the average everyday, you know, Tudor history buff, like

00:54:57.340 somebody who just likes reading a popular history book. It's very accessible. It's written with,

00:55:03.200 you know, it talks about when she mentions Althorpe for the first time in the book,

00:55:06.600 she also mentions like this is where Lady Diana Spencer is buried, you know, like she makes those

00:55:10.360 connections. So you can sort of like really root yourself in, in the time and place and to

00:55:14.600 understand this, this story. Anyway, so you can get this book wherever you get your books from

00:55:20.060 and yeah. And if you want to keep up with me and with this podcast, so I'm on Instagram at

00:55:26.980 vulgarhistorypod. I'm on TikTok at vulgarhistory. I have a Patreon, which is patreon.com slash

00:55:34.100 annfosterwriter. And that's where if you make a little pledge, like if you donate a bit of money

00:55:38.400 every month, then you get early ad free access to all of the episodes, including these like

00:55:43.300 bonus super special episodes that we're coming out with lately. And oh, yeah. And then I also

00:55:48.760 have a shop vulgar history dot store, or you can use code tits out for free US shipping tits out

00:55:54.020 10 for 10% off your order if you're not in the US. And anyway, that's that's the super special

00:56:00.820 episode. Thank you all for listening. And until next time, keep your pants on and your tits out.

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Vulgar History - April 21, 2023

Author Interview： Vanessa Wilkie (A Woman of Influence： The Spectacular Rise of Alice Spencer in Tudor England)

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