Vulgar History - October 28, 2020


How To Lose A Queen In Nine Days, part 9： Anne Stanley, Countess of Castlehaven

How To Lose A Queen In Nine Days, part 8： Lady Mary Grey Queen Elizabeth's Lookalike Younger Cousin And How She Stole The Queen's Man

Episode Stats


Harmful content

Misogyny

41

sentences flagged

Toxicity

74

sentences flagged

Hate speech

26

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hello, and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women's history comedy podcast. My name is
00:00:20.440 Anne Foster. And all this season, the last eight episodes, and today as well, we've
00:00:25.340 been looking at the theme of how to lose a queen in nine days aka the lady jane gray scenario and
00:00:32.760 over the past few episodes or the past eight episodes we've looked at where the gray family 0.71
00:00:38.500 came from how they became powerful and then how they were fairly ruthlessly squashed down by first 0.86
00:00:46.900 mary the first and then by elizabeth the first until there was not a gray option to become the
00:00:53.280 new king or queen except for sort of catherine gray's children but they were technically
00:00:58.400 illegitimate so even even them what we're looking at today is sort of an epilogue to this season
00:01:04.860 is what happened after all of the gray the three gray sisters were taken out of contention to be
00:01:11.720 the new queen because that didn't mean there wasn't anyone else that didn't mean there wasn't
00:01:16.340 anyone else threatening elizabeth's reign what it meant is that suddenly and unexpectedly the
00:01:22.480 other descendants of Mary Tudor came into play and we're going to look at kind of the final
00:01:29.780 possible option who is a woman named Lady Anne Stanley but to get to her we need to do a little
00:01:37.660 parallel family tree exploration so I think we now know from all the previous episodes this season
00:01:45.500 the chain of events that got to the Grey Sisters so we're gonna go and see where Lady Anne Stanley
00:01:51.420 comes from. So it all starts with Mary Tudor, who had two daughters. Her daughter, Frances,
00:01:59.280 became the mother of the three Grey sisters, Lady Jane Grey, Lady Catherine Grey, and Lady Mary Grey.
00:02:05.720 But Mary Tudor's other daughter was named Eleanor. And so once all the Greys were out of the way,
00:02:11.260 then people who wanted to champion this sort of option on the family tree switched over to
00:02:17.600 the descendants of Eleanor Brandon. So we're going to work our way through there. But first,
00:02:23.160 I just want to mention that my sources for this information, which I had to do a bit more digging
00:02:29.120 than as per usual. Lady Anne Stanley, not a lot written about her. I had to actually go to the 0.91
00:02:35.260 university library, log on to one of the free computers to read a really good, I think it's a
00:02:40.000 thesis. So it's a, so first of all, there's a book called A House in Gross Disorder, Sex, Law,
00:02:47.300 and the second earl of castlehaven by cynthia b harrop and then secondly it's a thesis by vj
00:02:54.960 wilkie from 2009 called such daughters and such a mother the countess of derby and her three
00:03:00.000 daughters 1560 to 1647 the links to both of these things will be in the show notes and i do want to
00:03:08.240 also mention that you know in these podcasts in in all of them there's going to be all you know 0.90
00:03:14.560 you can always rely on some bullshit from the patriarchy. Very often there's going to be a 0.98
00:03:18.680 child marriage. There might be, you know, there's unpleasant stuff happening all over the place in
00:03:22.980 all of these stories. But in this episode specifically, I guess I'll just give a content
00:03:27.940 warning that there's going to be discussion of sexual assault and rape. So be forewarned. And
00:03:34.580 I'll also just mention in the podcast when we're going to get to that part of the story. So you
00:03:38.760 could maybe choose to listen to the first part and then peace out when we get to that part.
00:03:43.180 but just so everybody's aware that that's coming I don't want to bring it out of the blue for you
00:03:48.640 so Mary Tudor second daughter Eleanor Brandon now the thing about Eleanor Brandon is that we know
00:03:58.300 almost nothing about her so where Francis Brandon we knew enough about her that I did what I did
00:04:02.980 like a 45 minute episode about her Eleanor Brandon is more shrouded in mystery which is my fun way of
00:04:10.280 saying no one really wrote anything about her and we don't have any of her diaries or letters
00:04:14.560 so this could mean Frances Brandon as the older sister just was a bunch more scheming and took on
00:04:22.120 more of the scheming kinds of stuff and Eleanor just was quote-unquote well-behaved one of the
00:04:28.880 well-behaved women who doesn't make history it could also mean that Eleanor was just so good at
00:04:33.040 scheming that nobody noticed it and nobody wrote about it or she burned all those records but
00:04:37.180 when doing this kind of research that I do into often the lesser known women of history,
00:04:44.060 more often than not, frankly, you come across a person like Eleanor Brandon, where all that we
00:04:49.240 know about her is kind of when she was born, kind of when she died, name of her husband and the
00:04:53.040 names of her children. So I wish there was more I could tell you about her. But all I can say
00:04:58.100 is that Eleanor Brandon married a man named Henry Clifford, the first Earl of Cumberland.
00:05:03.020 and they had one surviving child whose name was margaret clifford so we're now one level down
00:05:11.820 in the family tree eleanor and francis were sisters so margaret clifford eleanor's daughter
00:05:17.220 would be the first cousin of the gray sisters and we know some stuff about margaret clifford
00:05:23.900 specifically so margaret married henry stanley the fourth earl of derby in 1555 and they had
00:05:32.080 a stormy relationship margaret wrote that there were several breaches and reconciliations so aka
00:05:38.400 they were on and off again in a renaissance sort of way and eventually when her husband left her
00:05:45.460 i don't know if that means he died or if he like literally left her i'm gonna assume died anyway he
00:05:51.740 left her with serious debt so she was left over with that when he left however that was that he
00:05:58.180 left. They had two children who survived childhood. Both of them were sons. So for the first time
00:06:04.800 since Catherine Gray, we've got sons in this story because everyone's just always having
00:06:09.260 daughters. And I guess that's the other thing too. If Eleanor had had a surviving son rather
00:06:14.440 than her daughter, Margaret, that probably would have become the person that all the champions 1.00
00:06:18.380 would have wanted to take over from Elizabeth. Anyway, so Margaret had two sons. Her older son
00:06:23.620 was named, and this is inexplicable to me, I'm not sure who he was named after or why, but I love it
00:06:29.660 because instead of being named Robert, Edward, or Henry, he was named Ferdinando. So her older son
00:06:37.080 is Ferdinando Stanley, and her younger son is the less exciting William Stanley. In 1578, Lady Mary
00:06:46.600 Gray died, and that was the end of the Gray Sisters. She was the third and final Gray Sister, which 0.56
00:06:51.160 meant that all of a sudden margaret clifford the daughter of mary tudor's daughter who was in the
00:07:00.420 line of succession but like quite a ways down was suddenly and unexpectedly kind of the heir to the
00:07:06.260 throne which she wouldn't have been raised expecting i don't think and took her by surprise
00:07:11.760 but maybe as part of her way of trying to figure what this meant for her and how it might affect
00:07:18.320 her life, Margaret was overheard discussing the proposed marriage of Queen Elizabeth to the Duke
00:07:25.480 d'Alenzon. So this was Queen Elizabeth I, as I think we all know, never married anybody, but she
00:07:32.800 had a sort of long-term flirtation with a French person whose name was the Duke d'Alenzon. And
00:07:39.420 the sort of thing was like, well, if Elizabeth married him, then he would kind of get power.
00:07:44.440 and if they had a child then that child would have power and perhaps margaret clifford was
00:07:49.760 thinking that would get in her way because maybe she wanted to become queen margaret so apparently 0.94
00:07:56.800 i guess this is what she was overheard doing she was opposed to this marriage because it might
00:08:01.720 threaten her own possible becoming the queen and then apparently or allegedly she went to talk to
00:08:10.320 a sorcerer to predict when elizabeth would die which it itself was an act of treason just on
00:08:19.880 the first hand i think it was technically illegal for anyone to even mention the fact that the queen
00:08:24.280 might die ever there's other stories i've come across where people got in trouble and got arrested
00:08:29.420 for trying to find to learn the future about when the king or queen might die margaret was also
00:08:35.220 accused of planning to poison Elizabeth so she was arrested and then as all the women I guess 1.00
00:08:42.240 except for Ann Askew this season she wasn't put in prison because she was too important but she 1.00
00:08:47.560 was trapped in somebody's house as you know an unwilling house guest in her defense and maybe
00:08:52.500 this is true this is not a Margaret Clifford episode so I haven't done a deep dive into her
00:08:57.460 specifically but what Margaret Clifford said is that the accused sorcerer was actually just her
00:09:03.460 physician. And he was staying in the house with her because he could cure sickness and weakness
00:09:09.900 in her body. And this was a man whose name was William Randall. And he was executed for allegedly
00:09:15.000 making this prediction. No charges were actually brought against Margaret, but she was banished
00:09:19.880 from court and her reputation was ruined. And this kind of sealed the deal that like,
00:09:24.880 she was just not going to be ever the queen ever because she was such a toxic person at this point.
00:09:30.400 Margaret wrote repeatedly to Elizabeth, complaining that she was in a black dungeon of sorrow and despair, overwhelmed with heaviness through the loss of your majesty's favor and gracious countenance.
00:09:42.120 She's also still had lots of bills to pay left over from her terrible husband.
00:09:48.000 And that's kind of the end of what we're going to talk about vis-a-vis Margaret Clifford.
00:09:52.960 But moving on to her son, Ferdinando Stanley.
00:09:56.800 at this level Ferdinando would have been at the same age range as the children of Catherine Gray
00:10:05.500 so Ferdinando Stanley not only did he have the best name thus far in this story but just wait
00:10:12.120 there's going to be an even better name coming up it's very exciting for me there's been so many
00:10:15.660 Edwards and Marys in this season and Catherine's so not only did Ferdinando Stanley have the best
00:10:22.260 name thus far in the story his family was one of the most powerful in england from both sides
00:10:27.360 so we know about his mother's pedigree murger clifford being the granddaughter of mary tudor
00:10:33.840 but the stanleys were old money land magnates whose areas of control included literally the
00:10:42.780 entire isle of man like they were in charge of that entire island so ferdinando is an
00:10:49.760 eligible bachelor. Anyone who managed to marry him, like he was a catch, like he would be married to
00:10:55.860 somebody super important. And his wife was a woman named Alice Spencer. And these are going
00:11:01.720 to be the parents of today's heroine when we get to her and Stanley. So Alice Spencer wasn't as
00:11:07.520 super rich as you might expect, given that she landed Ferdinando Stanley as her husband. But
00:11:13.560 what she was, was brilliant. The Spencers were a noble family, so she had a head start in life
00:11:20.520 in general. But the Stanleys were in such a higher echelon of wealth and influence. It's pretty
00:11:25.440 remarkable Alice managed this marriage. But the thing is, she herself was incredibly ambitious,
00:11:31.580 talented, and successful, and was the youngest of three daughters. And I think you might remember
00:11:36.260 from last time, I'm always a champion for the youngest of three daughters. So this is Lady
00:11:42.660 Mary Gray energy she's bringing to it. Each of her older sisters married someone a little bit 0.88
00:11:48.860 richer than the last one. So each time the one of her sisters married, the whole family's reputation
00:11:53.660 was elevated along with them. So by the time it was time for Alice to get married, the combination
00:12:00.760 of her forceful personality and the Spencer family being sort of like a up and coming,
00:12:06.660 increasingly important family, meant that she got to marry Ferdinando Stanley, the most eligible
00:12:11.320 bachelor. Together, she and Ferdinando had three daughters. This is starting to feel like very
00:12:17.120 fairy tale-esque, the recurrence of three daughters. In this case, Lady Anne Stanley
00:12:22.880 was the eldest. But we're still not going to get to Anne Stanley's story because there's still so
00:12:29.280 much of this wild preamble, prologue stuff. So basically, a bunch of Catholics wanted to get 0.96
00:12:36.220 rid of queen elizabeth the first and make ferdinando the king instead despite like no
00:12:42.260 matter what your level of of knowledge of british history is i think we can all know that there was
00:12:48.560 never a king ferdinando of england and the thing is ferdinando wasn't into the idea either he
00:12:54.880 actually turned them down because they were like hey guess what ferdinando we are the catholic
00:12:58.580 conspirators and we want to make you be the king and he was like pass and they're like okay but if 0.85
00:13:05.440 you don't help us with this plan we will kill you and then and then they did he died after being fed
00:13:12.580 poisoned mushrooms which is like big agrippina energy and so this left alice age 34 a widow with 0.98
00:13:21.500 three young daughters and then on top of that her husband having just been murdered by catholic
00:13:27.860 mushrooms meant that this could affect her reputation and so she had to use alfred charm
00:13:34.660 and resiliency to ensure that the family wasn't brought into disgrace, and that she could continue
00:13:39.720 to exert the power and influence of the Stanley name that she had married into. But again, Alice
00:13:45.680 Spencer knew what she was doing, because even before Ferdinando died, she'd gotten Ferdinando
00:13:50.580 to rewrite his will to name Anne, Lady Anne Stanley, their oldest daughter, as his heir,
00:13:55.880 because if he hadn't rewritten that, then automatically his heir would have been his
00:13:59.260 younger brother William Stanley but the thing is William Stanley was a dirtbag and he ushered in
00:14:06.660 the family's next big drama so Ferdinando dead from mushrooms his younger brother William was
00:14:13.360 like well actually I should inherit the land and money and property instead of Lady Anne Stanley
00:14:17.920 because I am a man and also I'm awful so he filed a lawsuit against Alice Spencer to try and have
00:14:25.520 Ferdinando's will overturned. Alice was like, okay, bring it. And the two of them batted this
00:14:31.200 around in the court system for literally years. And neither of them gave in at all. And they're
00:14:35.480 both rich enough. They could just keep going after each other through lawyers. Until finally,
00:14:40.280 Alice got tired of the whole thing and decided on a genius plan to get rid of William once and for
00:14:44.940 all. And that plan was that she married an extremely powerful lawyer named Egerton. So he
00:14:50.600 became her husband and her lawyer. And then she and Egerton won the lawsuit and William went away
00:14:55.280 forever basically what's important here well other than that was just a great story is that
00:15:01.680 Alice's three daughters bore witness to their mother's strength tenacity and unrelenting strength
00:15:06.960 of character she was a pretty phenomenal role model for her daughters again the oldest of which
00:15:12.540 Lady Anne Stanley I promise we're going to talk about in a few minutes so not only was Alice
00:15:18.360 Spencer brilliant at politics and legal matters but she's also an incredible theater producer 1.00
00:15:23.800 slash party planner. When Ferdinando died, she took over as patron of his theater group,
00:15:29.940 which was called Lord Strangest Men. Oh, because Ferdinando, I think, was Lord Strange. Lord
00:15:35.720 Strangest Men was a group that included a certain William Shakespeare, if you're wondering how
00:15:40.460 culturally relevant this group was. And then to celebrate her victory in court over William,
00:15:46.280 and through a huge mask, and that's M-A-S-Q-U-E, which is like a party slash theater performance 0.52
00:15:52.740 that included members of the family taking on roles in the show this was her way of being like
00:15:57.800 here we are the stanley women unstoppable having persevered through another of life's challenges
00:16:02.500 don't mess with us and also enjoy this party slash play and just as alice herself had benefited from
00:16:08.520 her sister's successful marriages to the point that she's able to marry ferdinando she set out
00:16:14.340 to get the best possible husbands for her three daughters lady anne stanley being the oldest of
00:16:19.600 the three daughters. Alice set her sights as high as possible. Her first choice, and also because
00:16:25.660 Lady Anne Stanley was potentially heir to the throne future queen at this point. So Alice's
00:16:31.620 first choice for Anne's potential husband was the Prince of Muscovy, which was sort of a place where
00:16:38.360 Russia is now. But unfortunately, the negotiations didn't work out. And before she had solidified who
00:16:45.140 anne's husband was going to be queen elizabeth the first died in 1603 and she named as her heir
00:16:50.260 james the first from scotland the descendant of margaret tudor via mary queen of scots
00:16:56.180 so there was a new king he was young he had sons of his own so suddenly lady anne stanley was just
00:17:02.520 no longer really a potential queen she would be some people who didn't like james would maybe
00:17:06.620 back her but most of the people who wanted to get rid of james were backing the sons of catherine
00:17:11.600 Gray. So Alice, she was savvy. She knew it was up. She knew that she needed to readjust her
00:17:16.360 expectations. So she pragmatically refocused her husband hunting to someone non-royal. And
00:17:23.500 eventually in 1607, Lady Anne Stanley was married to a nobleman named Gray Bridges, which is the
00:17:31.060 best name in the story. Gray Bridges. And he had the title Baron Chandos of Sudoli, which because
00:17:38.120 those are british words it's probably pronounced baron chips of sud town but gray bridges was his
00:17:47.780 name so not only did he have the most amazing name i've ever seen ever since ferdinando stanley
00:17:53.580 but gray bridges was also apparently super popular and a seemingly really cool guy his nickname was
00:17:59.640 the king of the cotswolds because he was so friendly to everybody who lived on his lands
00:18:03.680 like he was kind to the poor people and the rich people he was just sort of like he would walk
00:18:08.320 around shaking hands kissing babies supporting local poets and also he wrote his own poems and
00:18:14.460 things he was way older than lady anne stanley but that wasn't a deal breaker back then as we all
00:18:20.860 know all too well especially where he was nice and kind and his name was gray bridges and this
00:18:26.480 just seems kind of like a nice situation for them both there aren't tons of records about the next
00:18:31.040 bit of Anne's life. But we know she had about five children. And we can imagine she and Gray
00:18:36.220 Bridges had a super time together reading books and writing books and choosing which theater
00:18:40.540 groups to sponsor and that sort of thing. In 1621, after 14 years of marriage and five or so
00:18:47.780 children, Gray Bridges tragically died, leaving Anne a widow. And everything started to get
00:18:54.660 this is where i'll like redo the content warning vis-a-vis sexual assault and rape situations so 0.98
00:19:01.200 anne stanley was a young widow just like her mother had been she was 40 years old at this
00:19:06.720 point there were pros and cons to either remaining a widow or to marrying again and i'm sure she and
00:19:11.500 her mother talked through what are the best options so she was now the dowager baroness
00:19:15.980 chandos because remember gray bridges was baron chandos of sudoli so lady anne stanley is the
00:19:23.140 dowager baroness chendos she would have gained control of the bridges family property and would
00:19:28.560 have final say in her daughter's affairs but without a husband she had no political authority 1.00
00:19:33.460 and had to submit to the will of her male relatives when it came to her own affairs 0.97
00:19:37.020 so in this sense taking a husband would kind of bring her more freedom than she would have had
00:19:42.800 as a widow so she looked around to try and find a good husband for herself and i feel like she chose
00:19:48.280 him herself because i don't think alice would have done this the man that she chose to marry
00:19:53.960 seemed like a good match on paper he was a widower with children of his own he was a property owner
00:19:59.520 he lived in a castle and unlike her first marriage which had happened where she was i think late teens
00:20:04.920 early 20s like she wasn't a super young bride but this marriage wasn't about having children
00:20:09.540 or continuing on a family lineage because she already had children this was basically about 1.00
00:20:13.640 property, finances, and security. Her mother had taken care of the negotiations for her first 0.66
00:20:19.060 marriage, but now as a 40-year-old woman, she decided to sort out this match for herself.
00:20:26.320 And from the beginning, her choice of husband was both controversial and terrible. So time to meet
00:20:32.540 Mervyn Touche, the Earl of Castlehaven. And again, with British pronunciations,
00:20:38.620 it's probably like Mervyn Tuckett but we're just gonna call him Mervyn which is spelled just so
00:20:44.180 you know with a y m-e-r-v-y-n the Earl of Castlehaven he was 13 years younger than Anne
00:20:50.220 which is fine and no big deal but he was also way below her in terms of money family influence power
00:20:55.440 and basically everything like he had a castle but it wasn't a very good one and he had a title but
00:21:01.620 it was an irish title and the thing is that king james who'd now been king for a minute he had this
00:21:09.360 thing where to make money or no it wasn't him it was that guy who i did in the mini episode anyway
00:21:15.240 just to make money in during the reign of king james people could buy lordships to things and
00:21:21.480 because all the english places already had lords they started selling irish things so this is where
00:21:27.040 Castlehaven's title came from. Oh, and then also on top of all that, Mervyn had links to people of
00:21:34.860 the Catholic faith, which was one of the worst things to be during this highly contentious 0.96
00:21:39.680 period of English Protestantism. So he was not as rich and powerful as Anne. He had ties to Ireland, 0.64
00:21:45.820 which was kind of iffy at this point. He had ties to Catholic people. So these are,
00:21:50.820 should have been three strikes against him. Alice probably would have seen them as such,
00:21:54.580 But wait, there's more. Because Mervyn was also, he was enough of a gigantic asshole that people back then, like the people of 17th century England, people who threw feces out of their window on top of other people's heads. And then we're like, why are we all dying of dysentery? We're like, oh, that guy. Oh, yeah, he's pretty much a dick. His family basically sucks, especially his sister, who is bananas. 0.99
00:22:18.680 so just to be a rich white man in this period of time for people to even then think you're an 1.00
00:22:25.940 asshole just like how much of an asshole do you need to be is the question his sister i mean just 1.00
00:22:32.240 side note about his sister her name was eleanor davies she was a poet pamphlet writer and prophetess 1.00
00:22:40.900 like a prophet but lady version she was married and her husband didn't like that she did these
00:22:45.900 things writing poetry pamphlets and prophesizing her husband was like eleanor i would appreciate 0.94
00:22:52.040 if you would stop printing poems and prophecies in pamphlets in response eleanor put on a widow's
00:22:57.060 outfit and in front of her husband was like i prophesize that you will die very soon and then 0.99
00:23:03.060 he did eleanor was so intense about her prophecies that she was kicked out of the royal court because
00:23:07.860 her predictions were too disturbing so this is all pretty exciting and i guess as long as she
00:23:14.180 didn't predict that the king was going to die she'd be fine but this is sort of like socially
00:23:18.620 people found her kind of a bit much and so this was just one more reason that people were just
00:23:24.140 kind of like mervyn's family is kind of like do we want to marry into this family e.g to somebody
00:23:30.480 like ellis spencer would have been like daughter of mine is this is this the match you want for
00:23:35.980 yourself like there's the we've got a pros column and a cons column and there's like nothing in the
00:23:41.280 prose column. And yet, Lady Anne Stanley must have seen something in Mervyn Touche that she
00:23:47.420 liked. Maybe his castle, maybe his money, maybe just that she was desperate to marry anyone.
00:23:54.140 For whatever reason, in 1624, she married him. To solidify their new Brady Bunch-style blended
00:24:00.600 family, she then arranged for her 12-year-old daughter Elizabeth Bridges to marry Mervyn's
00:24:06.160 19 year old son james touche which is you know not something we would see happen nowadays too
00:24:14.400 often but it was not an uncommon thing then if two parents married and they both had children
00:24:20.920 to then marry the children to each other so there's like a two generation tie connecting
00:24:26.520 these two families just to sort of cement the union between the families in fact alice spencer
00:24:32.360 had actually done the same thing when she married Eagerton the lawyer one of she had married one of
00:24:36.980 Anne's sisters to Eagerton's son but something about this marriage between the teenage step
00:24:42.940 siblings did not go well shortly after the marriage James Touche abandoned his stepsister
00:24:50.500 slash wife and his whole family and just like ran off to leave the Castle Haven family home entirely
00:24:56.280 and in retrospect this was a clue that something really weird was going on inside of that home
00:25:01.020 and what was going on was basically content warning take a pause okay we're going in 1530
00:25:10.840 six years after ann and mervyn's wedding mervyn's estranged son james so who i was just talking
00:25:17.180 about filed charges against his father and what charges were those well james touche claimed his
00:25:23.200 father mervyn was trying to disown him and to keep him from his inheritance which is just like
00:25:28.160 so much inheritance drama between rich people back then but unlike the court struggles between
00:25:34.040 alice spencer and william the situation was different in his petition to the court james
00:25:42.300 explained or claimed that he had abandoned his stepsister slash wife elizabeth years before
00:25:48.060 so this was six years after he had left her and again feel free to stop listening at this point 0.64
00:25:54.140 if you don't want to get into the rape, sexual assault of it all. So James claimed that his
00:25:59.920 father, Mervyn, had forced then 12-year-old Elizabeth to have a sexual relationship with
00:26:04.960 one of Mervyn's favorite male servants. Allegedly, Mervyn's goal with this was for Elizabeth to 0.81
00:26:10.840 become pregnant with a son and to have that son become Mervyn's new heir so that James wouldn't
00:26:15.760 inherit anything. Now there's a lot to unpack with this, so I'll begin by saying that just
00:26:21.000 because a 12 year old got married back then did not mean that she was expected to have children
00:26:26.140 right away. Usually very young brides hung out with their families until they were in their
00:26:31.720 later teens slash early twenties, because when young girls have babies, both the girls and the
00:26:37.020 babies often died. So James may not have been having sex with his 12 year old stepsister slash
00:26:42.620 wife due to her very young age, but Mervyn really wanted this air to happen, which is why he was 0.97
00:26:47.920 coercing Elizabeth to have sex with Mervyn's male servant. James also alleged at this time 0.54
00:26:53.780 that his stepmother slash mother-in-law, Lady Anne Stanley, was licentious and had sex with
00:26:59.680 servants and took lots of lovers, which like, whether that's true or not, what business of that
00:27:03.980 is James? Basically, James was like, my father is a gross dirtbag who is also trying to steal my 0.99
00:27:09.780 inheritance. I want my inheritance. Please help me out with this oldie time law and order SVU team. 0.99
00:27:15.440 um well actually the people he talked to were the privy council and they were like uh what the fuck 0.98
00:27:20.740 are you talking about this is like really fucked up like never mind your inheritance like what the 0.99
00:27:25.920 fuck so they rode their horses and carriages over to the castle to interrogate a bunch of people and 1.00
00:27:32.740 just to figure out what the fuck and they had no idea what they were going to find out so the svu 1.00
00:27:38.860 squad interviewed all the men they could find including servants and all the noble women because 0.97
00:27:43.860 female servants were thought to be quote unreliable and not worth interviewing because everything
00:27:49.280 about this is awful so they interviewed elizabeth who's now 18 years old and so they were like so
00:27:56.460 elizabeth your absentee husband said that when you were 12 years old your stepfather slash father-in-law
00:28:02.140 forced you to have a sexual relationship with a male servant in order to become pregnant can you
00:28:06.740 confirm or deny and elizabeth was like yes that is what happened and she was like also just by the 0.95
00:28:13.620 way, Mervyn held my mother down and made a male servant rape her too. And they were like, even for
00:28:19.000 us, the oldie time SVU team, this is a bit much. So they brought in Lady Anne Stanley and she was 0.66
00:28:26.520 like, yes, that's all true. When we first got married, Mervyn wanted to watch her having sex 0.97
00:28:32.540 with other men and Anne didn't want to do this. A side note, Anne Stanley claimed that Mervyn had
00:28:38.920 been having sex with male and female servants, aka raping them due to the inherent lack of consent 0.99
00:28:43.900 between an employer and employees vis-a-vis sexual relations. She also alleged that Mervyn has 0.99
00:28:48.780 peepholes all over the castle and just like makes random people have sex with each other so he can 0.93
00:28:53.740 watch them. She also claimed that he forced his own teenage daughter, not Elizabeth, Anne's teenage 0.62
00:29:00.300 daughter, but another teenage girl, to marry one of his secret male servant lover slash victims. 0.97
00:29:06.180 and ann stanley also said right after mervyn forced a male servant to rape her 0.95
00:29:11.440 she tried to kill herself she lady ann stanley but the servant slash rapist stopped her from
00:29:17.680 killing herself and that servant's name was giles broadway now that's a lot for you to take in and
00:29:24.480 that was a lot for the svu team as well they were like okay sounds fake like how could this much
00:29:30.280 horrible stuff all be happening all at the same time so they went to the servant giles broadway
00:29:34.580 to ask, is it true that Mervyn Touche made you rape his wife, Anne Stanley, and then she tried
00:29:41.020 to stab herself to death, but you stopped her? And Giles Broadway was like, yes, that is true. 0.86
00:29:45.540 So the SVU squad were like, okay, we need to charge somebody with something because this is
00:29:50.200 nightmarishly horrendous, but who do we charge and with what? Like, can we call it a crime to
00:29:55.380 just be like a really shitty person who makes people have sex with other people while he watches
00:29:59.320 them they could not that was not a crime in fact the way that being charged with things back then 0.98
00:30:04.720 worked was that nobody was ever charged with just rape like if somebody kidnapped somebody and then
00:30:11.800 raped them they'd be charged with kidnapping and rape or if somebody was somebody raped and then
00:30:16.740 murdered somebody they'd be charged with murder and rape but rape on its own was not seen as
00:30:21.960 an individual crime that could be prosecuted plus at this point rape charges were usually only filed
00:30:28.620 when it was a lower class man assaulting a higher class woman. And then it was more about breaking
00:30:33.380 the laws of class structure rather than violating a woman's body. And even then, when accused rapists 0.97
00:30:38.880 were put on trial, they weren't often convicted for literally the same reasons as now. It's all
00:30:43.780 he said, she said, and men were believed more often than women. So in the instance of this scenario,
00:30:50.720 the first and easiest charge for them to figure out was to accuse Giles Broadway, the servant,
00:30:55.540 for raping Anne Stanley. He was a servant, she was a noblewoman, Broadway had admitted to doing it.
00:31:01.640 They also charged Mervyn Touche with orchestrating this rape, as well as for sodomy. And let's put 0.66
00:31:07.560 that into some context as well. In the 17th century in England, there is no word or understanding of
00:31:14.660 the concept of homosexuality. There was sex that could lead to babies, and sex that was just for
00:31:19.880 pleasure. And sodomy, the legal term at the time, meant having sex for pleasure instead of to make 0.93
00:31:26.120 babies. So anal sex between men was considered sodomy. Oral sex between anyone, anal sex between 1.00
00:31:33.300 a man and a woman, basically anything that wasn't a penis ejaculating into a vagina, was sodomy, 1.00
00:31:39.460 and thus illegal. So the charge of sodomy was basically, you have no self-control and you're 0.99
00:31:45.480 being driven by base and carnal impulses, which is against the law, because the law was very
00:31:49.700 biblical at the time. Similar to rape charges, sodomy was usually added onto something else
00:31:55.940 just to besmirch the character of the accused. So for Mervyn to be charged with rape and sodomy was
00:32:01.860 already pretty rare and unusual. This situation was rare and unusual. So Mervyn Touche was charged
00:32:10.980 with arranging the rape of his wife and for having sex with male servants. Because the law was for 0.99
00:32:15.980 having sex for non-procreative purposes, the men who Mervyn had been having sex with were also
00:32:21.720 arrested for sodomy. I'm sorry, the man. And his name was Lawrence Fitzpatrick, and he's a victim 0.76
00:32:27.540 too. So like so many assholes before, since, even today, Mervyn tried to play the whole thing where 0.98
00:32:35.020 like, I didn't do anything, but even if I did, it wasn't bad. He was just like, yes, my son James and 0.99
00:32:41.960 my wife Anne are conspiring against me, but also when I raped Lawrence Fitzpatrick, there was no 0.84
00:32:46.980 penetration. So it's not actually rape. And also Anne was asking for it because she was so licentious
00:32:52.820 all the time. So when I made Giles have sex with her, it wasn't rape. It was sex, but also there 1.00
00:32:57.220 was no penetration. And also she enjoyed it. So it was just ridiculous. Like none of what he said 0.97
00:33:03.040 made any sense. And God bless them. The judges were like, Mervyn, go fuck yourself. Whether
00:33:07.900 there's penetration or not it's sex and even if a woman is straight up a whore she can still be 0.99
00:33:12.340 raped like they literally said in their findings in 16 whatever like even if someone is a sex worker 1.00
00:33:19.320 she can still be raped which is like impressive so mervyn was like okay but a wife can't testify
00:33:26.780 against her husband in court though right and the judges were like guess what she can't we're
00:33:31.140 setting legal precedent right now and we're going to let lady ann stanley be the first woman to ever
00:33:35.160 testify against her husband in a rape trial in a court in England. This was huge. So remember how
00:33:42.380 female servants weren't questioned because of misogyny and patriarchy. Similarly, women were 1.00
00:33:47.980 not allowed to testify in court, even rich women. But Anne Stanley was so powerful, and her family 0.99
00:33:53.520 was so important, and Mervyn was such a piece of shit, that judges were like, we'll allow it. 0.99
00:33:59.520 And thus, Lady Anne Stanley became the first ever woman to testify against her husband 0.99
00:34:04.060 in a rape trial in england setting precedent for countless women after her which is a shitty sort 0.98
00:34:10.180 of glass ceiling to break but she did and good for her now maybe because women testifying was 1.00
00:34:15.940 still so weird and didn't appear herself in person in the courtroom but rather prepared a statement 1.00
00:34:21.240 that was read out loud on her behalf this was super smart as well because it allowed the all
00:34:27.120 male jury to focus on her words and not to be weirded out by seeing a woman in court her daughter
00:34:33.120 Elizabeth Bridges also prepared a statement which was read out loud and just by having their
00:34:37.940 testimony read out loud this was new precedent being set and speaking of the all-male jury
00:34:43.120 it consisted of 27 noblemen. Remember how many connections Ann Stanley and her family had going
00:34:50.700 back to to Alice Spencer and then even like the tutors of it all the Stanley family being so
00:34:57.320 impressive. So between all her family's various marriages and ancestors Ann Stanley was at least
00:35:02.560 slightly related to something like 10 of the 27 jurors. And Alice Spencer went full Kris Jenner on
00:35:10.560 the situation, manipulating and leveraging every favor she'd ever done for anyone, ensuring that 0.99
00:35:15.020 the jury would side with her daughter and granddaughter. And so while all this had been
00:35:19.080 happening with Ann Stanley, her sisters, the other two daughters of Alice Spencer, had been busy.
00:35:24.900 They were also married to important people. They'd been building up their own portfolios of
00:35:28.940 important contacts and connections and they pitched in too so it was the stanley women against
00:35:33.720 the world and i think we know who's going to win the stanley women meanwhile remember mervyn's
00:35:41.200 sister eleanor the prophetess so she was by now fully into her career as a freelance poet slash
00:35:49.760 prophetess like ever since her husband like mysteriously died after she prophesied that he
00:35:53.880 would die she was just like really leaning into this pamphlet printing career so eleanor got a 0.99
00:36:00.900 bunch of pamphlets made that said basically anne stanley is a whore my brother is innocent wives 0.94
00:36:06.400 shouldn't be allowed to testify against their husbands hashtag not all men is how i interpret
00:36:11.820 what her pamphlets would have said and this didn't help things among the common folk like the non-rich 1.00
00:36:16.800 people so all the noble people all knew that marvin was this horrible asshole piece of shit 1.00
00:36:22.440 But the everyday people who wouldn't have interacted with him and they just had to rely on, I guess, pamphlets to learn about anything were like, and Stanley sounds kind of like a conniving bitch. So public opinion was like not great among the common people at this point, but they weren't on the jury. 1.00
00:36:38.800 so the trial took literally one day the 27 member jury was like we're unanimous in saying that 0.99
00:36:46.820 Mervyn Touche is a piece of shit who is guilty of orchestrating the rape of his wife and is also 1.00
00:36:51.580 guilty of sodomy aka sex for non-reproductive purposes we sentence him to death and then they 1.00
00:36:57.080 all ran off to like bleach their brains or whatever because they had to hear all this 0.90
00:37:00.200 horrible stuff that we're all now hearing as well and so the world became a slightly better place 0.99
00:37:05.020 on may 14th 1631 when mervyn touche was beheaded rest not in peace you piece of shit one month 0.98
00:37:12.460 later giles broadway and lawrence fitzpatrick had their trials for rape and sodomy both men 0.98
00:37:17.920 withdrew their previous confessions claiming they'd been tricked into thinking they had immunity
00:37:21.560 when they didn't but they were servants so nobody cared what they had to say again ann stanley
00:37:26.160 testified this time in person she stood up there in front of everyone and retold what had happened
00:37:30.980 to her and then she was like because i'm a christian woman who is also forgiving i would
00:37:35.260 like to look giles broadway in the eye and show how benevolent i am and the jury was like wow 0.99
00:37:40.300 she's so gracious and wonderful this makes giles seem like such a piece of shit and of course both 0.99
00:37:45.240 men were found guilty because they were servants and nobody gave a shit about them laurence fitz 0.99
00:37:50.320 patrick though is such a victim here and giles is too because they both worked for mervin and had 0.90
00:37:55.180 to do what he said so there's some sympathy there they are victims but on the scaffolds when they 0.97
00:38:02.020 are going to be hanged both of them were like ann stanley is a devious manipulating sex monster this 0.99
00:38:07.320 is all her fault we're innocent and so is mervyn and women are terrible don't trust women they 0.99
00:38:12.820 were both hanged on july 6th 1631 so mervyn is dead the two servants are dead the whole matter 0.67
00:38:21.640 is kind of like sorted i guess except for the long-standing psychological damage and alice
00:38:28.820 stanley was like time to throw a mask to celebrate this victory and to remind everybody that the 0.99
00:38:35.780 stanley women are undefeatable so alice spencer commissioned a playwright named john milton to
00:38:42.440 write a mask called arcades which was performed by her grandchildren lady anne stanley's name had 0.99
00:38:48.460 been dragged through the mud, as had that of her daughter Elizabeth Bridges. But by throwing this
00:38:52.760 party, Alice Spencer was indicating to everyone that everything was back to normal. And with this
00:38:57.800 party, life officially moved on for the Stanley family. In fact, three years later, Anne's brother-in-law
00:39:04.900 was appointed to the prestigious role of Lord President of Wales, showing that this whole
00:39:10.240 Mervyn Touche scenario had not affected the political power of the Stanley women. As ever, 0.96
00:39:16.500 a mask was thrown i just love i love that this family is just like oh something just happened
00:39:21.100 let's throw a giant party where we have a play that we all act in so this mask was thrown for
00:39:26.760 which again the playwright john milton was commissioned to write a play he wrote the play
00:39:31.700 he wrote for this was called comus comu which is apparently a famous play about the importance of
00:39:38.440 chastity so it was sort of like a subtweet to everyone that despite the whole mervyn touche
00:39:43.220 of it all the stanley women were still like proper ladies so not only did alice work to 0.98
00:39:49.880 smooth things over through party planning and just like leveraging all of her political 0.94
00:39:53.580 connections and her personal charm she also ensured that anne stanley and her daughter
00:39:58.020 elizabeth bridges sis reputations were restored so similar to how anne had testified and in so
00:40:05.220 doing demonstrated her personal graciousness alice leaned into her femininity by being like
00:40:11.960 ooh, I would love nothing more than to have my daughter and granddaughter come live with me,
00:40:16.140 but I can't do that until the king grants them both pardons. And like me, you're probably
00:40:21.000 wondering what do Anne and Elizabeth need pardons for? They were literally victims in this whole
00:40:25.940 thing slash heroes. But the thing is that the whole patriarchal system had been upended by
00:40:30.980 allowing Anne and Elizabeth to testify, and Alice knew things couldn't go back to normal until that
00:40:35.700 balance was restored. And because she was a genius, eventually the king agreed, and both Anne and
00:40:41.300 Elizabeth were officially pardoned for not having anything to do with anything, which they didn't,
00:40:46.620 but this was now official. In Alice Spencer's will, she named Anne's son George Bridges as her heir
00:40:54.080 and left instructions to leave a large amount of property and items for Anne. Anne's two sisters
00:40:59.600 died at around the same time, leaving Lady Anne Stanley to live out the final decade of her life
00:41:04.440 as the only remaining Stanley woman from this tightly knit foursome that they had once been.
00:41:09.800 lady anne stanley passed away in 1647 age 67 and her daughter elizabeth bridges passed away in 1678
00:41:18.400 aged about 70 and their final grave sites are unknown and that is the saga of lady anne stanley
00:41:29.460 alice spencer and the castle haven rape trial so it's time to do uh an accounting of this
00:41:40.440 so we talked about alice spencer a lot we talked about marga clifford a little bit
00:41:44.500 but technically this episode is about lady ann stanley so that is who we're going to be scoring
00:41:49.500 on the scandalicious scale so the first category is scandaliciousness and frankly
00:41:55.100 i'm gonna give this a nine for scandalousness like just the whole affair was so it was so
00:42:03.380 scandalous everything that happened like the fact that people back in that time in a time that was
00:42:07.700 like kind of licentious anyway where like people i'm sure were like raping their servants all the
00:42:12.820 time like the extent to what her husband was up to and then like the involvement just all of it
00:42:20.000 do i need to explain this like no like this is a nine for scandalousness whether or not
00:42:25.320 ann stanley was complicit in anything that happened that this was a scandalous situation 0.97
00:42:32.100 scheminess if i was grading her mother i would be tempted to give like 10 out of 10 0.98
00:42:38.480 and herself i feel like i think the smartest thing she did was to let her mother finally 0.96
00:42:45.220 take over after her because when she took made her own scheme to choose a husband that did not 0.69
00:42:50.060 go well she was she was not there's not much record about her being very schemey even even
00:42:56.940 if we were to give her the credit for how she testified and she presented herself as this like
00:43:01.640 very forgiving christian woman like i feel like her mother probably coached her what to do there
00:43:06.860 but i'm gonna give her i think a four for scheminess because there's definitely some
00:43:13.600 stuff there that could have been her but i feel like so much of it was her mother significance
00:43:18.160 this is interesting so usually when i'm looking at significance it's sort of like
00:43:23.000 did the people did their presence um did it help establish a new king or queen like where did their
00:43:32.380 child become the new king or queen like what was their importance to world history and the thing 0.99
00:43:38.380 with anne stanley is that she because of her like she set this legal precedent that wives could
00:43:43.840 testify against husbands that women could testify in court that's huge and that's major and that's
00:43:50.680 i think really significant and i want to recognize that so i'm going to give her an eight for
00:43:57.300 significance i think because it's not like there's a bunch of significant things but there's one
00:44:01.500 and that is real massive and the final category is the sexism bonus so how much
00:44:07.960 was she a victim of the bullshit patriarchy and i feel like everybody was in all these stories 0.96
00:44:14.000 right because that's the world they lived in like she was married at a young age she was a victim 0.98
00:44:19.460 of her awful husband but then the legal system actually ended up like for her for her like we're 0.96
00:44:30.680 looking just at her like the two men servants who were maybe assholes but also victims 0.89
00:44:35.160 the class of it all like got in their way like they didn't get a fair trial at all 0.64
00:44:40.640 and they were put in terrible situations and all that sort of stuff but for lady anne herself
00:44:46.600 the patriarchal structures of like the all-male jury and everything actually came to bat for her 0.98
00:44:54.480 like the judges were like guess what even if she is a whore she can still be raped like it's odd 0.97
00:44:59.140 to me how much the patriarchy was not the main villain in this story so i'm gonna give her just 0.96
00:45:05.520 the basic five bonus for sexism so let's just add this up so this is 26 which is the same score
00:45:14.660 as ann askew one more above katherine willoughby so just to recap for this season how everybody
00:45:22.840 felt on the scandalous scale katherine willoughby had a 25 lady and stanley and ann askew both 0.95
00:45:29.000 both to 26. Lady Mary Gray, 26.5. Catherine Parr and Frances Gray, both 27. Mary Tudor, 27.5.
00:45:38.200 Lady Catherine Gray, 29. And Lady Jane Gray, 29.5. So where that lists them within the whole pantheon
00:45:46.520 of everyone we've ever done, like the highest score anyone's ever had was from season two,
00:45:51.000 Joanna of Naples got a 33. But still, I like, I appreciate how kind of close the different scores
00:45:58.280 where it really shows that all of them were equally impressive and important in their own
00:46:04.140 different ways. So this whole season, How to Lose a Queen in Nine Days, it's been really interesting
00:46:10.060 to get together. And it's sort of choosing which nine stories I would do. It was hard to choose
00:46:15.660 what the stopping point is because everybody kept having children. And we're always talking
00:46:19.400 about women. So I'm just always looking to see when people have daughters. So, you know, the
00:46:23.080 descendants of Catherine Gray, what did they get up to? The descendants of Anne Stanley, what did
00:46:27.720 they get up to there's a lot to dive into but i think nine episodes is perfect for this situation
00:46:33.240 and i've had a really good time putting together this season so just the regular reminders i have
00:46:39.580 for you all i have a patreon if you're like oh my god what the season's over but i need more
00:46:44.940 and talking casually in a comedic way about tutor history while swearing occasionally i do have many
00:46:53.760 episodes available on my Patreon, which is patreon.com slash Anne Foster Writer. So from
00:46:58.280 this season, I added two new mini episodes. So the mini episodes there are all about assholes 0.98
00:47:04.080 from history. It's where I can really dive into just like these dirtbags who fucked up women's 1.00
00:47:09.300 lives. The two that I've just added this season, there's one for Thomas Seymour and there's one 0.99
00:47:13.080 for Robert Dudley. And there's also some older ones from previous seasons as well, like Emperor
00:47:17.520 Nero, for instance. So if you go to patreon.com slash Anne Foster Writer, that's where those
00:47:22.700 live and I have my history writing is at annfosterwriter.com this podcast is on vulgar
00:47:29.880 history on twitter and vulgar history pod on instagram between seasons I still post stuff so
00:47:36.420 you can follow me there too and then as always I have a little shop on teespring where I have
00:47:43.040 items pertaining to the women we talked about this season like we have items for the renaissance
00:47:48.420 reformation girl squad we have stuff for lady jane gray we have stuff for mary tudor just so
00:47:54.100 check it out there it's at teespring.com slash stores slash vulgar history and then also the
00:47:59.440 a full list of all the books that i've read and researched for this season are on the featured
00:48:05.200 page in bookshop.org the list the link to that is in the show notes so i hope i hope this podcast
00:48:12.480 finds you well. Everybody take care out there and stay tuned for news like there's going to be
00:48:18.380 another season. Don't worry about that. Keep your masks on, keep your tits out, and I'll talk to you
00:48:23.980 all next time. 1.00
00:48:39.620 The war is over
00:48:41.940 and both sides lost.
00:48:44.100 Kingdoms were reduced to cinders
00:48:45.940 and armies scattered like
00:48:47.900 bones in the dust. Now
00:48:49.760 the survivors claw to what's
00:48:51.980 left of a broken world,
00:48:53.580 praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight but in the shadow dark the darkness always wins
00:49:00.740 this is old school adventuring at its most cruel your torch ticks down in real time and when that
00:49:07.640 flame dies something else rises to finish the job this is a brutal rules light nightmare with a story
00:49:13.760 that emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make this is what it felt
00:49:18.900 like to play rpgs in the 80s and man it is so good to be back join the glass canon podcast as
00:49:24.540 we plunge into the shadow dark every thursday night at 8 p.m eastern on youtube.com slash the
00:49:29.760 glass canon with the podcast version dropping the next day see what everybody's talking about
00:49:35.000 and join us in the dark do you ever watch a tv show set in a historical time period and think
00:49:44.560 how accurate is this really? But also, does it matter if it's accurate or not?
00:49:49.960 NeferTV is a new podcast about shows set in ancient times.
00:49:56.080 This season, we're recapping every episode of the show Spartacus, Blood and Sand.
00:50:01.220 I'm Anne Foster, and I have never seen this show before.
00:50:04.880 And I'm Gina Berry, and I have watched this show maybe too many times.
00:50:08.780 Join us every other Monday on the NeferTV podcast as we discuss the real history behind Spartacus, Blood, and Sam.
00:50:16.440 Follow NeferTV, that's N-E-F-E-R-T-V, wherever you get your podcasts.
00:50:24.820 Do you love Disney? Do you love Top Ten lists?
00:50:27.840 Then you're going to love our podcast, Disney Countdown.
00:50:30.560 Hi, I'm Megan the Magical Millennial.
00:50:32.520 And Biscuits, I'm Jeremy, a.k.a. Jarendell, and we are the hosts of the hit Disney podcast, Disney Countdown.
00:50:38.380 On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney.
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