00:00:00.000Hello, my name is Anne Foster, and this is the Vulgar History Podcast. This is a feminist1.00
00:00:18.160women's history comedy slash storytelling podcast. And today, I'm really excited about
00:00:24.280the woman who I'm going to talk to you about, not just because there's going to be an unexpected
00:00:28.800crossover moment with a previous person who we've talked about on this podcast, but just because
00:00:34.220this is a woman who so much exemplifies what we've been looking at all season long, which has been0.79
00:00:40.260the phrase that's become an aphorism, really, which is that well-behaved women seldom make history,0.59
00:00:45.860which is, as I've discussed in the other podcasts, but maybe you haven't heard them,
00:00:49.860or just you could use a reminder. The historian, Dr. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich,
00:00:55.440said this statement in a paper she was writing about Puritan burial rituals or something like
00:01:02.620that in the 1970s. And instantaneously, it became just sort of a catchphrase for
00:01:07.880women's history in general. And what she was saying, Laurel Fletcher Ulrich, is basically
00:01:13.340there's been so many people throughout all of history, all different genders, who we don't
00:01:18.040know about for various reasons because of their marginalizations, because of who is in power and
00:01:23.980who was writing things down, but in the Western canon of history, which is what I've been0.54
00:01:30.740researching mostly to this point, women show up far less than men do. And that is because1.00
00:01:38.020it was societally the expectation that women would be quote unquote, well-behaved and just1.00
00:01:45.720kind of stay at home and run the household, which was a big job. And people knew it was a big job1.00
00:01:50.540when you got trained up to do it. That's what you're doing if you were a rich and powerful
00:01:54.740woman. And if you were a less powerful woman, then you were just working all the time and1.00
00:01:58.340raising children. And basically, to be a good woman in this time and place, and the time and
00:02:05.580place we're looking at today is 17th century England, meant that the greatest thing you could
00:02:10.040do is for no one to write about you when you were alive and for no one to write about you after you
00:02:15.020had died because you were just so well behaved. You didn't make a ripple in anything, which means
00:02:20.480that the women who we know about tend to be the ones who did not behave. I mean, quote unquote,0.99
00:02:26.080behave, which is what we've been looking at for the past five episodes and for today's episode as
00:02:31.400well. And we are going to be talking about a woman who was born Lucy Percy, who got married,
00:02:38.300and then she became known as Lucy Hay, the Countess of Carlisle, and she was a spy. Not
00:02:44.560just a spy, a lady spy. What is the distinction I'm making there between the word spy and lady0.62
00:02:50.980spy? Nothing really other than just to say that I think it's worth noting that she was a spy who
00:02:57.440was a woman. We tend to hear a lot more about man spies, and I'm happy to talk about a lady spy.
00:03:04.480She's also literally a lady with the whole family pedigree, etc. And I'm so excited to do this as a podcast, especially there's several moments here that are going to cross over with characters who we know from previous episodes of this podcast slash people from history in what I'm starting to think of as like the Tudor slash Steward England expanded cinematic universe.
00:03:29.480I'm so excited when two people, or more than two people, suddenly reoccur in other people's
00:03:35.340stories. I'm like, they were alive at the same time and place. Mind-blowing to me. And there's
00:03:40.820some great moments like that in her story because she really bridges a bunch of eras that we've
00:03:45.540looked at a bit so far in this podcast. And she's just sort of like on the forefront being
00:03:51.280amazing throughout all of it. One of the things that strikes me about the story of Lucy Percy
00:03:58.100hey is that she was really just like the right person born at the right time to do so much
00:04:05.220interesting amazing stuff to her she might think like this is like you know there's that
00:04:11.420that other aphorism it's like may you live in interesting times and that's like a curse
00:04:15.960because when things are interesting that also means it's chaotic and a mess and it's really
00:04:21.160stressful this is where i think she was born at the right place right time like even if she was
00:04:25.860like, this is a bit much for me. Like, spoiler, I wanted one of the points where she is in the
00:04:31.740Tower of London. She might have thought like, okay, this is a bit much. But frankly, I think
00:04:37.620the amount of chaos surrounding her was like, perfect, because it allowed her to just thrive
00:04:44.160in this amazing way. So to really set the scene of what she was born into, we need to go back
00:04:51.040takeaways to an incident that I am not going to get into in any great detail, but it's the
00:04:58.540gunpowder plot. So the gunpowder plot was a thing that happened in 1605. And just to be super quick
00:05:08.440about it, because this isn't, this is just some background. This isn't the actual story of Lucy,
00:05:13.340but it's important background stuff. Effectively, a group of people involving a person named Guy
00:05:20.500Fox decided that they wanted to explode the houses of parliament and kill the king. And the king at
00:05:27.180the time was James I. James I being the son of Mary, Queen of Scots. And so what the gunpowder
00:05:35.240treason plot people wanted to do is to blow him up because they didn't want him to be king anymore.
00:05:40.180They didn't like him. They also planned to kill his son, the Prince of Wales, who's going to be0.58
00:05:46.900the next king which was prince henry and then their plan was to take james's nine-year-old
00:05:53.340daughter elizabeth and make her the new queen but she would be like a puppet and the conspirators
00:05:59.680would sort of be the ones in charge in a parliamentary sort of setting and they chose
00:06:03.620elizabeth who was nine years old despite the fact that there was also a younger son so they wanted
00:06:09.800to get rid of prince henry because they thought he would probably fight back too much he wouldn't be
00:06:13.420good puppet. Choose the younger brother, even though usually, you know, in this situation,
00:06:20.180boys became kings before girls became queens. Because little baby Charles was just a little
00:06:26.860toddler who just learned how to walk. And because Elizabeth, who 100% I'm going to do an episode
00:06:32.100about at some point later in the future, was just like really poised and had already done some0.99
00:06:36.960events where everyone was like impressed with how much she seemed like a little mini queen,
00:06:41.000even though she's nine years old. The plan didn't work. They did not exploit the Houses of Parliament.
00:06:48.080All the people who were involved were arrested and mostly executed. And one of the conspirators
00:06:56.460who was implicated, but not killed, was the father of Lucy Percy, who was a man named Henry Percy,
00:07:03.440the 9th Earl of Northumberland. So his thing is, he's got a lot of things going on.
00:07:13.240Firstly, he was known as the Wizard Earl because he did a lot of science experiments and was just
00:07:20.360a weirdo. So Dorothy and Lucy were both already born when the whole gunpowder scenario happened.
00:07:27.600Lucy who's our main character today so she's born probably around 1600 so like five years before the
00:07:33.660gunpowder plot she has a slightly older sister Dorothy who was born probably a year or two
00:07:40.260earlier and I mentioned Dorothy as well because the two girls were they weren't twins but they
00:07:46.400were so close in age and their lives were really really connected all the time and there really is
00:07:51.100sort of like Jessica Elizabeth Wakefield situation where Dorothy was very much the sort of like
00:07:57.220quiet, nice person who kind of the well-behaved and Lucy was just sort of like this 17th century
00:08:05.760Jessica Wakefield type person who I'm so excited to tell you about. But basically there were these
00:08:10.620two girls. They also had two younger brothers whose names were Algernon and Henry. But basically
00:08:15.920in the year 1605, gunpowder plot happened. Their father was involved in it, but the thing is that
00:08:23.320he wasn't directly involved in it. So he knew he was charged with knowing about it and not
00:08:30.940notifying the authorities, but not of actually having done anything. So he wasn't executed.
00:08:36.520Instead, he was sent to live in the Tower of London, where he was put in jail for 16 years.
00:08:43.240And he was really rich. This is a sort of situation where we've had a couple of people
00:08:48.460like this in the podcast before, where you're a rich person and you're in the Tower of London.
00:08:51.880it's not like oh no i'm in a jail cell and this is miserable and horrible it's more like okay i'm
00:08:57.620rich i'm in the tower of london so what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna pay off all the guards i'm gonna
00:09:01.380build this all up so it'll be like this luxury apartment for myself i'm gonna have servants i
00:09:07.100get to go stroll around the grounds every day and he's the wizard earl so he's like also doing his
00:09:11.500science experiments etc so this is the situation he's off being the tower of london just kind of
00:09:18.820I don't know, like living his best life. Meanwhile, his four children, so the two daughters,
00:09:24.400Lucy and Dorothy, and their brothers Algernon and Henry are off sort of, you know, being raised by
00:09:29.880effectively a single mother, their mother's name, also Dorothy. Oh, side note. So their mother is
00:09:35.640Dorothy Devereaux, who I need to, just so we get the lineage straight here, was the daughter of
00:09:43.540latisse knowles great grandnieces of anne boleyn and so there's some this family just like every
00:09:51.980family sort of like again to take it back to sweet valley high if you've read or familiar with the
00:09:57.120sweet valley high sagas which are these amazing books i loved when i was a kid i recommend them
00:10:01.800heartily to you now i'll put a link in the show notes but basically they're books about how
00:10:06.820every generation are basically these two twins who are sort of like jessica and elizabeth
00:10:11.720and it's like what were they like in the roaring 20s what were they like during the great fire of
00:10:16.320san francisco just every generation the same situations kept coming up time after time and
00:10:20.960they kept not working out right or whatever sometimes they did in the anne boleyn family
00:10:27.320lineage it's like every generation there was some sort of anne boleyn type person who was just like
00:10:33.240amazing and took the world by storm and in this generation that person was lucy so her father is
00:10:40.580in jail. Lucy and her siblings are just kind of being raised basically free range, which was the
00:10:45.880style at the time. If you were rich, you just sort of like let your children, they go to classes and
00:10:51.160stuff, but their mother wasn't like hands on with them or whatever. And also the thing is that her
00:10:57.940parents did not like each other very much because the wizard Earl was, as it turns out, a nightmare
00:11:05.260person and so his wife Dorothy she was kind of better off without him basically like she
00:11:14.200half-heartedly would sometimes like write some appeals to the to the monarch being like can you
00:11:19.400maybe let him out of jail or whatever but she didn't she was kind of better off without him
00:11:24.420the two of them were were just sort of really the situation worked well for them basically and so
00:11:31.620Lucy and Dorothy would go to visit their father sometimes in the Tower of London slash his luxury
00:11:36.720apartments he had made for himself there. And this is kind of what was going on in the world
00:11:42.540for the first part of everybody's lives. So the thing is that Lucy and Dorothy were sent to court
00:11:48.800to be, you know, presented as young, eligible young women. And the thing is, they were both
00:11:54.960gorgeous. Like sometimes you hear that about people from history and you look up their portraits
00:11:59.760and without the context of their personality or their charisma, you're like, okay, sure.
00:12:04.760But like with Lucy and Dorothy, especially with Lucy, you're just like, oh man, like she is
00:12:09.520gorgeous. And so she totally took everybody by storm. They're all just like, who is this woman?
00:12:16.100She's amazing. She's 18 years old. We all adore her. She was like immediately sort of the queen
00:12:20.480bee. And she fell in love with a man whose name was James Hay, who is older than her,
00:12:26.200but was also like super stylish he was like he would wear the most interesting outfits and this
00:12:32.780was a time when both men and women just wore like huge balloon sleeves like lots of colorful things
00:12:39.100he was just this fashion plate like super popular guy she was this gorgeous 18 year old woman and
00:12:44.900they fell in love and she decided she wanted to get married and her mother was like sure whatever
00:12:49.480because whatever but she needed to get her father's permission so meanwhile dorothy also had a
00:12:55.380man who she wanted to marry both. No, I think Dorothy actually had married someone. So Lucy
00:13:00.640and Dorothy went to their father to just be like, surprise. And the wizard Earl was not a fan of
00:13:07.760what was going on. I mean, Dorothy had already gotten married, so he couldn't really do anything
00:13:11.740about that. But Lucy, he was just like, I don't want her to marry a Scottish person because he0.87
00:13:17.760was racist against Scottish people. There's a quote where he said, I cannot endure that my
00:13:24.000daughter should dance any scottish jig and also he just didn't like her choosing her own husband
00:13:30.760etc so while they were visiting he was like great dorothy can you just like step aside for a minute
00:13:35.460and dorothy did and then the wizard earl was like haha and then he just like grabbed lucy and kept
00:13:41.100her and made her stay with him in the tower of london sort of a prisoner she hadn't been arrested
00:13:47.520for anything but basically he just wouldn't let her leave and he was bribing all the guards and
00:13:51.400so she was basically trapped there with him but get ready for this because do you know who else0.87
00:13:58.600was in the tower of london at this exact same time was francis howard tits out francis howard yes
00:14:05.780from episode two of this very podcast the uh confessed murderess the woman who faked her0.91
00:14:13.160hymen virginity test when she was trying to get extricate herself from this marriage she didn't
00:14:18.580want to be in anymore the woman who assembled a team of like six people to murder a man who0.95
00:14:23.800are getting in the way of her marrying another man Francis Howard necklines to her waist she's
00:14:30.120in the Tower of London at the same time when I read that I was just like what is happening so
00:14:35.680the Wizard Earl is in the Tower of London being rich Francis Howard also in the Tower of London
00:14:40.160being rich they're both just basically living in like luxury apartments they're like roommate
00:14:44.940they're not roommates they're like neighbors in the tower of london and the wizard earl was like
00:14:51.040you know what francis howard is like such a sophisticated gorgeous interesting person i
00:14:57.460like her so much like he would write letters to his wife being like you know who's great
00:15:00.780francis howard this woman who is in jail with me she confessed to murder i really admire her
00:15:06.420so when lucy was there 18 years old and the wizard earl was like okay i really want my daughter to
00:15:11.560like stop being so headstrong and like become like a better more fancy person you know who she0.94
00:15:16.700needs as a mentor is francis howard he got lucy to spend time with tits out francis howard because0.94
00:15:25.460he thought francis would be a good influence on her which is just like great this is like
00:15:34.260passing of the torch from like one it girl to the next so francis howard wasn't like oh lucy
00:15:40.860here's like the rules of society and here's how to be well behaved because that is not the tits0.67
00:15:44.960out lifestyle that we know and love her for instead what francis howard did was she was0.97
00:15:49.800like lucy why don't you come here like she learned about lucy and how she wanted to marry james hay1.00
00:15:53.680and so francis howard would invite lucy to stay with her at her apartment in jail because jail
00:16:00.920apartments and they would invite um lucy's boyfriend over and the two of them could like
00:16:06.240make out or whatever and Francis Howard was like their very godmother it was oh my god I love it
00:16:12.960so eventually Lucy was allowed to leave jail having now learned like from Francis Howard
00:16:20.060just all the skills of how to be like the most amazing person in the world and basically and so
00:16:27.080Lucy left jail and she married James Hay ta-da she probably danced a Scottish jig probably0.99
00:16:32.980screaming, screw you, dad. And instead of just being the daughter of this disgraced gunpowder0.99
00:16:37.620plot person, she was this fancy lady. And so everybody loved her even more for this. The two
00:16:42.700of them, they wore these amazing outfits, like flamboyant, gorgeous. Her personality was written
00:16:49.180about as much as her immense beauty. She was like sassy, sarcastic, just like living it up. James0.99
00:16:55.500Hay was like the most dapper of all the men there. Like everybody just worshiped them. At this point,
00:17:02.080the king had he really liked Lucy's husband James Hay and so James Hay got the job of groom of the
00:17:09.620stool which sounds like not a great job but in fact is a great job because the groom of the
00:17:16.000stool means to be you're alone with the king like you're the most trusted advisor you're with the
00:17:20.060king when he's at his most vulnerable e.g. when he's on the toilet and so only the person who
00:17:25.760the king likes the best gets to be there and that's where you get to talk to him and no one
00:17:28.920else is there to like have their point of view as well the king was so pleased with james as his
00:17:35.880servant that five years after the two after james and lucy got married he made james the earl of
00:17:42.480carlisle which made lucy a countess so james was super good um not just at wearing amazing outfits
00:17:49.480but also at diplomacy and politics stuff and lucy was just like the shining bright star
00:17:57.720of everything. Everybody just like worshipped and adored her because she was so smart,
00:18:03.100so witty, and she was so immensely beautiful. Literally every poet and musician she ever met
00:18:09.820decided, like declared her their muse. And so they all wrote poems and or painted images in tribute
00:18:15.660to her. At one point, Lucy contracted smallpox. And I want to mention at this point too, that
00:18:21.820it seems like Lucy had some ongoing medical concerns. And they're the sort of things
00:18:27.500that today potentially physicians might not be able to say what all was going on with her but
00:18:35.300back then especially they weren't so there's some one biography I read suggested that she had like
00:18:42.260quote-unquote hypochondria which just is like like if you think you're sick if you're having0.99
00:18:48.160symptoms like don't call it hypochondria especially with a woman like back then women
00:18:55.840women's medical concerns weren't understood at all psychological things weren't understood at all
00:19:00.540like she was clearly having some she had ongoing um chronic illness of some sort in her life and
00:19:06.480then at one point this turned into or it didn't turn into but she also got smallpox and so she
00:19:12.080was gorgeous she knew she was gorgeous being gorgeous was like a main part of her personality
00:19:17.300and so she freaked out that she was going to lose her looks and everybody else freaked out she's
00:19:22.560going to lose her looks and so she started wearing a mask to cover while she was still healing and
00:19:28.400then she was really scared to take off the mask but she thought everyone would be grossed out by
00:19:31.860her because she might be slightly less beautiful and so this sort of became a fashion trend I think
00:19:37.260like she was wearing the mask to hide the scars and then other people started wearing masks too1.00
00:19:40.680so she wouldn't feel weird about it like in that scene from Mean Girls where Katie cuts out the1.00
00:19:46.500holes in Regina George's shirt and then Regina George starts just wearing a shirt with holes
00:19:52.060and everybody wears a shirt with holes like lucy was so she was an influencer basically and you
00:19:58.160know much to the relief of all of her fans when she finally took the mask off guess what just as
00:20:03.000beautiful as before not disfigured at all so in 1625 which is so lucy herself is 25 years old now
00:20:13.920king james the first died and if you remember from the gunpowder plot uh the whole thing was
00:20:20.080they wanted to kill the king and then kill his son and then make Elizabeth the queen.
00:20:25.860And meanwhile, toddling around was little baby Prince Charles. But what had happened is that0.89
00:20:30.500in the meantime here, Prince Henry had died. Girls don't take over thrones before boys in0.97
00:20:38.120this situation. And so the new king unexpectedly was Charles, who became known as Charles I.
00:20:44.140And so Charles I, so new, younger king, he was a big fan of Lucy and James because everybody was, because they were like the it couple of the world. He was also indebted to them because James had been part of the negotiating team that had arranged the king's, King Charles I's marriage to a French princess named Henrietta Maria.
00:21:05.600Yeah. So there was an overall change of staff when it went from King James I to King Charles I.
00:21:14.320And one of the only people that carried over from one king to the other was a man named George
00:21:20.200Villiers, who was one of King James's lovers, probably like sort of his final lover after the
00:21:29.740whole Robert Carr situation ended with murder and jail. George Villiers was this, so again,
00:21:35.940it's the sort of person who, um, you hear like, oh, he was so good looking. And you're like,
00:21:41.400look up a portrait and you see, it's like a guy in a wig. And you're like, I guess
00:21:46.440for a guy in a wig, he looks okay. George Villiers, the first Duke of Buckingham,
00:21:51.340super handsome looking i say that objectively because he was a horrific monster garbage0.98
00:22:01.260person he was um awful he was the worst he was horrifying um and he was a lover of king james0.97
00:22:13.340the first allegedly and then even though most of the other advisors sort of like were swept away
00:22:18.840he stuck around because he had sucked up enough to king charles the first that he became king
00:22:23.160charles the first this advisor as well so george villiers the uh duke of buckingham is one of those
00:22:31.260guys he got the title because he the king just liked him enough he was like guess what i'm giving
00:22:35.880you a title hooray everything's amazing okay so he's the sort of guy george villiers first duke0.80
00:22:42.760Buckingham who would be like not just like a womanizer but basically serial rapist situation
00:22:50.780where he would find a woman who he thought looked pretty or whatever or who he wanted or whatever0.96
00:22:58.340and so he would go to her house and then bribe off her servants to go away and his servants would0.97
00:23:04.380stick around and then he would basically rape her and then sometimes make her be his mistress0.97
00:23:11.260was kind of his MO. This is what he did. And so Lucy Hayes' husband, James, was sent away to be0.99
00:23:21.800like an ambassador somewhere. He was sent out of town. And while he was out of town, George Villiers
00:23:26.400was like, oh, she's like the most gorgeous, beautiful woman here. She's like amazing. And
00:23:31.500the two of them become involved. And so I don't want to necessarily say that this was against
00:23:39.040lucy's will but also did she consent to this it's a big old gray area but basically what happens is
00:23:47.920the two of them become involved for several years buckingham is so powerful at this point george
00:23:55.860villiers aka buckingham side note this is what makes it so challenging to me personally to read
00:24:01.000the books about this because everybody has a name a last name and then also a title and you need to
00:24:06.580remember not just the person's name, but also their title. Anyway, George Villiers, Duke of
00:24:11.460Buckingham, was the most powerful person other than the king, basically, because he was so slimy.
00:24:16.860Like, again, it's just like a Littlefinger scenario. He's like a more powerful grosser0.69
00:24:22.420Littlefinger. I can't believe that in the course of doing these stories, Littlefinger is like the
00:24:27.560least gross option. Anyway, so he convinced the king to send James Hay away so that Lucy Hay
00:24:35.920would be on her own and then they became involved. And so this could be a situation where Lucy was
00:24:42.180like, I see how this could be good for me. And she's into it. It could be a situation where Lucy0.52
00:24:47.380is like, well, this is happening. Might as well make the best of it. I'm not sure. But basically0.96
00:24:54.320the two of them become involved. And because of their involvement, Lucy gets some benefits to her
00:25:02.300personal life so she became named lady of the bedchamber to the queen henrietta maria
00:25:09.020and this is like the woman version of groom of the stool so it's basically the highest role a
00:25:14.300woman could have at court and lucy and henrietta maria did not always see eye to eye but they
00:25:21.640became quite quite close and so george wasn't just like doing a solid favor for this woman who he had
00:25:30.280forced to become his mistress, or who had wanted to become his mistress. The woman who is his
00:25:35.620mistress. And now we're just going to take a break for a word from our sponsors.
00:25:40.560The war is over and both sides lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scattered
00:25:48.260like bones in the dust. Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world, praying the
00:25:55.420darkness chooses someone else tonight but in the shadow dark the darkness always wins this is old
00:26:02.840school adventuring at its most cruel your torch ticks down in real time and when that flame dies
00:26:09.040something else rises to finish the job this is a brutal rules light nightmare with a story that
00:26:14.740emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make this is what it felt like to
00:26:19.960play RPGs in the 80s, and man, it is so good to be back.
00:26:23.740Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the shadow dark
00:26:26.720every Thursday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on youtube.com slash the glass cannon
00:26:31.060with the podcast version dropping the next day.
00:26:34.440See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark.
00:26:41.720Welcome to the realms of peril and glory.
00:26:47.060Explore the mechanically magical vistas of Vale,
00:26:50.700the paranormal mysteries of liminal London,
00:28:45.640George basically wanted to put her there because that meant that Lucy could keep an eye on the
00:28:49.980queen and then Lucy could report back to him. So he, George, would know what was going on so he
00:28:55.840could like scheme better. But the thing is that Henrietta Maria, the queen was like, she was no
00:29:02.200fool. She could see what was going on because part of what was going on was also that George
00:29:08.100Villiers was likely setting up Lucy to become the mistress of Charles I and Henrietta Maria didn't
00:29:13.780want that she didn't want to be friends with a woman who's gonna who's basically being sort of
00:29:19.340like sex trafficked to her husband like the whole thing is just like if we just like see this all
00:29:26.620it's like a snow globe of just everyone is terrible and sort of using each other horribly
00:29:34.840but they're all stuck in the snow globe and you have to make do they're all kind of doing the
00:29:42.080best they can except for George Villiers who's just a gross old monster so Henrietta Maria and
00:29:49.020Lucy like they have this like on again off again friendship at one point Henrietta Maria presented
00:29:54.540a petition to her husband to get rid of Lucy which is like very Tracy flick of her but Charles also
00:30:02.640did not take Lucy on as a lover as far as we know and eventually Henrietta Maria was like okay
00:30:10.100she stopped being quite so wildly jealous and she came to become fond of lucy and so you know this
00:30:17.760sort of was only good things for lucy because being the best friend of the queen meant that
00:30:22.040she got to continue to be just like the gorgeous most popular woman at court um inspiring yet more
00:30:28.060poets and musicians to write odes to her and to adore her so we're gonna get to the spy stuff
00:30:34.800real soon but just bear in mind that like this is just lucy hay living her life like she's just like
00:30:41.700so smart and so capable and so interesting and she's not really given any outlet to use her
00:30:47.800talents except just like courtly intrigue and she's being like the best at courtly intrigue
00:30:52.600like she's becoming best friends with the queen she's sleeping with george villiers
00:30:58.700she is with George Villiers and she's making a good deal out of it even if that wasn't what
00:31:05.700she wanted to be doing she's married to James Hay like she's doing well but there's not a lot
00:31:11.800of opportunities for her to really show what she's made of basically because we've gotten past
00:31:20.320the gunpowder plot scenario but if you know your British history you know that we are inching ever
00:31:26.840closer to the whole Oliver Cromwell overthrowing the monarchy scenario. But we need to take just a
00:31:34.780brief detour right now into the land of the Three Musketeers, literally the book,
00:31:40.420The Three Musketeers. So thanks super much, by the way, to my friend Annika for helping to
00:31:45.840explain this plot point to me, because basically what happens is there's a character in the Three
00:31:51.180Musketeers books called Milady de Winter, who is this amazing lady spy. And part of her story was
00:32:00.080inspired. Alexandre Dumas, the author of The Three Musketeers, found some documents that are
00:32:07.080explaining some stuff about Lucy Hay. And so he took little pieces of that to make this badass
00:32:11.880character, Milady de Winter. And the main thing that he borrowed from Lucy's legend is a story
00:32:18.880that because there's already a thing called the affair of the diamond necklace we can't call it
00:32:23.600that um that's a past episode of this podcast you can learn about that that's the whole jean
00:32:28.900de lamotte situation lucy and george villiers are lovers but george villiers is not monogamous0.98
00:32:37.980in his being lovers with her he's also married to someone else he's just like overall scum of0.99
00:32:44.480the earth dirtbag guy. And he also had a huge crush on the French queen who is named Anne of0.99
00:32:50.080Austria. And so Anne of Austria was into it. And so she gave George, this is where it gets a little
00:32:57.620confusing, a diamond necklace, I think. So the French king gave Anne of Austria this diamond
00:33:04.160necklace that was comprised of 12 jewels. And so in some translations, it calls it 12 studs.
00:33:10.700so some people think that they're talking about earrings but i think they're talking about
00:33:14.720individual jewels on a necklace tied together with a ribbon because that is how jewelry was
00:33:19.720put together back then apparently so anne of austria like george villiers she thought he was0.84
00:33:26.120so good looking and he was objectively speaking even though inside he was just like a gross
00:33:31.840monster of a person and so she gave him the diamond necklace her husband had given her
00:33:37.600but I think that wasn't just like here's a necklace George you can wear it I think it was
00:33:41.240like here's some diamonds you can like whatever with them I don't know get money for them or
00:33:46.360something anyway so this part is unclear to me as to what is true and what is just part of the
00:33:53.560Three Musketeers story so I'm gonna like exclude the whole Cardinal Richelieu of it all because
00:33:58.340I don't 100% understand what his dealings were in the actual real life story but in the actual
00:34:03.800real life story what happened is that allegedly lucy was tasked with getting the diamonds back
00:34:10.920from george to return them to the queen so that the king wouldn't find out that the queen had
00:34:16.900given them to george you might need to like diagram that out for yourself or something0.99
00:34:21.600so basically lucy who is just like this kind of bored woman with like these amazing spy skills1.00
00:34:28.900and nothing to do with them. She's like, takes on this job to steal these diamonds back from1.00
00:34:34.340George. So it becomes this whole sort of like jewel thief scenario where Lucy needs to steal0.83
00:34:39.480the diamonds back from George without him noticing and get them back to Anne of Austria so that her
00:34:44.620husband doesn't know that she's given them to George. It's all sort of like she needs to steal0.96
00:34:50.080the diamonds from one place, bring them back to another place. And who knows if it happened or
00:34:55.720knock because this is the other thing about researching a woman in history there's not
00:35:00.260always a lot written about them but when you're researching a woman who's also a spy who's really
00:35:04.620good at being a spy a lot of what she did is actually not written down she allegedly was
00:35:11.240able to return the diamonds back to the queen and this was all a similar thing is a major plot point
00:35:19.740in the novel, The Three Musketeers, which was written like 200 years later. So Lucy's clearly
00:35:26.740keeping herself busy, what with her lover, potentially other lovers. I want that for her,0.96
00:35:32.840but who knows? And then she becomes a widow in 1636. So she is aged basically 36 years old.0.99
00:35:41.580And she is super rich because her husband had been super rich. And now she doesn't have, I mean,
00:35:48.340not that he was really coming her style that much but now not just men looking to be her lover but
00:35:53.840people who wanted to maybe marry her were sort of rolling in and this is where things are um
00:35:59.400like if we're doing a countdown to the whole overthrow of the british monarchy like it's just
00:36:04.440getting closer and closer like all the little chess pieces are all coming in into the right
00:36:09.400places so one of the men who became one of her lovers allegedly was a guy named thomas wentworth
00:36:17.260who is part of the House of Parliament. And so everything was already pretty us or them
00:36:23.340vis-a-vis Parliament at this point. Effectively, and this is not a part of history I've studied
00:36:30.640very much at all, but from what I understand, the royal family to this point in England had been
00:36:40.500very absolute monarchy. Like they got to decide everything and the Parliament just kind of like
00:36:45.140stamped and was like sure that's great but the parliament wanted more and more powers and the
00:36:50.600king wanted to not give them the powers and so there were these two factions so the people who
00:36:54.740supported the parliament and the people who supported the royal family and so at this point
00:37:00.380thomas wentworth lucy's latest lover he had been pro-parliament and then he switched to pro-royals
00:37:08.200and that's the other thing that makes this studying this situation confusing is people
00:37:12.200flip-flopped around quite a bit but basically being pro-royal family became an increasingly
00:37:19.480unpopular way to be and eventually thomas was arrested and sentenced to death lucy kind of
00:37:27.640saw which way the wind was blowing and so she just sort of delicately removed herself from
00:37:31.380the situation because if you remember what happened to her father r.i.p the wizard earl
00:37:36.560he died a bit ago just living his life not gross in the same way as George failures but also just
00:37:44.100like not a great guy anyway Lucy had seen how her father was sent to jail for 16 years just for
00:37:50.940being friends with somebody who did something possibly treasonous so she wasn't gonna let
00:37:54.940Thomas bring her down so she sort of just like backtracked out of Thomas Wentworth's life is
00:38:02.160kind of like Thomas Wentworth what I don't I don't know that man etc and then she took as her
00:38:07.420new lover allegedly I mean her new her new companion alleged lover is basically Thomas's
00:38:15.640arch enemy who was a guy named John Pym who was on the pro-parliament side of things
00:38:21.840and so at this point like you're just like she can't stop herself and it's kind of amazing
00:38:29.860So her career as a secret double agent slash spy kicks into high gear.
00:38:34.620She was sharing information from the king to Pym and the other parliamentarians.
00:38:39.860At one point, crucially, she told them that the king was onto them and he's going to arrest them.
00:38:46.620And her warning them meant that they had time to escape.
00:38:49.620So that was sort of, keep that in mind later when we're talking about her significance.
00:38:54.020So her advance warning allowed them to escape.
00:38:55.360The English Civil War broke out in 1642. And the parliamentarians were against the royal family. And this was like literally a war in England. So Lucy, at this point, was very much caught in the middle of this whole situation. Because of her relationship with Pym, and because of how she just helped him out, like she, it seems like she was more on the parliamentary side than the royal side. But she kind of held her cards close to her chest.
00:39:23.660like even even to this day it's unclear like literally to historians studying her now like
00:39:30.800which side her allegiance was truly on and i kind of think she was just team chaos she just liked
00:39:36.780going back and forth and maybe didn't really have an allegiance either way but basically as the war
00:39:42.860progressed the pro-parliament side which she had been seemingly a member of for a while like
00:39:50.280basically both sides thought she was on their side pretending to be on the other side, but she
00:39:56.080was kind of on both sides, kind of on neither sides. And I mean, she's doing stuff like she
00:40:01.020was writing letters. She was like housing people for secret meetings. She was like writing letters0.98
00:40:06.660code. She was using like invisible ink. Like she was, she was doing amazing stuff and she was like0.88
00:40:12.920fully involved in the whole thing. And so part of why she was able to do as much as she was able to
00:40:18.040do all the men were suspicious of all the other men and no one was really suspicious of the women
00:40:23.220and lucy was known for being clever and beautiful etc but she was also sort of seen as this sort of
00:40:30.060like vain sort of um self-absorbed selfish person you know this woman who wore the mask for so long
00:40:37.760when she had the smallpox scars that no one really took her seriously which she used to her advantage
00:40:43.360like all good lady spies oliver cromwell is this guy who like king charles the first was taken
00:40:51.260his head was chopped off oliver cromwell became the new sort of head of england but not the king
00:40:56.420and his faction was just becoming more and more sort of like fanatically puritan and that was
00:41:01.960just not lucy's style at all and so she seems to have like fully decided at this point to become
00:41:07.500a spy for the Team Royals. And I totally forgot to mention, well before this was all happening,
00:41:14.280just FYI, like this was even before Lucy was widowed. George Villiers was, in fact,
00:41:22.240murdered by a disgruntled army officer. So if you're just wondering why he isn't in the story
00:41:28.780anymore, he basically was killed for being a horrible person. FYI. So English Civil War is
00:41:35.800happening. Lucy is doing stuff like she's raising funds for the royal family by selling jewelry,
00:41:42.180but she also took on a role as sort of a messenger between her frenemy, Queen Henrietta Maria in
00:41:49.260exile and the royalists who supported their side. So with the king being dead at this point, oh,
00:41:55.740and side note, the children of Charles I were being raised by Lucy's sister, Dorothy, for a
00:42:04.880because she was like a trusted person. So Dorothy is still, like I mentioned before,
00:42:10.060they were so close to each other and they were, and there's not a lot of space in this podcast to
00:42:13.060get into that whole situation. There's another book I'll recommend to you that talks about that
00:42:17.000a bit more. But basically Lucy, every time something tragic happened to her in her life,
00:42:21.660she gave birth to a child who died. She fell ill a number of times. She always went back to be with
00:42:28.640her sister Dorothy. She and Dorothy were super tight, super close. And Dorothy was sort of
00:42:33.100like keeping the home fires burning while Lucy was just running around being an amazing lady1.00
00:42:37.040spy. Anyway, so about two months after Oliver Cormel became the head of the new England,
00:42:45.880Lucy was arrested for her work, working for the royal family. And she was imprisoned in,
00:42:50.740guess where? Tower of London, the same place where she had been held by her father when she
00:42:55.340was 18 years old. But now it wasn't, things were different now. She didn't have like a luxury
00:43:00.760apartment situation not like when she was being mentored by tits out francis howard she was just0.97
00:43:06.360sort of there it was depressing it sucked and she had had these health problems for a while0.93
00:43:12.540quote-unquote hypochondria which could be so many various different health problems that can occur0.63
00:43:19.280to a woman and being held in a shitty jail cell in this kind of stressful situation where you might
00:43:26.440be killed at any point didn't really help with her health problems so even in there even though0.83
00:43:32.680she's having these health problems um she still toughed it out she was interrogated but she never
00:43:38.760gave up any information because she was tough as nails she wrote secret letters in code back and
00:43:45.160forth with uh the new with prince charles who was the kind of the figurehead for the royalist cause
00:43:51.240because King Charles I had been executed. His son, Prince Charles was in exile. And so Lucy
00:43:57.040was communicating with him. She used her brother as an intermediary and some of the other guards
00:44:01.520as well, because she was able to charm them. Even the jailers who were like, oh, we're totally
00:44:07.000Puritans. And Lucy was like, I'm also totally a Puritan. And they're like, we totally believe
00:44:11.420you. And she's like, can you take this blank piece of paper to this other person? And in return,
00:44:15.880bring me back a blank piece of paper. And they did. And, but it was invisible ink. And you just
00:44:19.860like, like in Knives Out, you just put like flame behind it and you can read, read the letters. Is
00:44:25.480that a spoiler for Knives Out? Sorry. She was in jail for 18 shitty months, but she kept scheming
00:44:31.840even while she was in there. And she was released from prison, basically on parole at the end of0.77
00:44:36.600this. She was actually released to go and stay with her sister, Dorothy. The country was still
00:44:41.800under the control of the parliamentarians, but Lucy was at this point just seemingly, seemingly
00:44:47.060think i don't know she's a spy but she seemed to be supporting the restoration of the monarchy
00:44:53.800and so she became an like even though she just got out of the tower of london where she'd been
00:44:58.200for 18 months and she was having like even worse symptoms she wasn't able to do so much you know
00:45:04.640like in the field running around lady spy work but she did a lot of work behind the scenes
00:45:09.940i'm helping arrange things for people writing letters etc and she was instrumental in helping
00:45:15.620to eventually restore Prince Charles to the throne, where he became King Charles II. So
00:45:22.620on May 1660 was when the restoration of the monarchy officially happened. And then six months
00:45:29.640later, Lucy passed away, aged about 60 years old. To learn more about this whole situation,
00:45:39.360which there's so much I didn't have time to get into here, because this is just one little,
00:45:43.880little podcast, but just trust me, there's lots to know. So there is a book that is called
00:45:48.500Court Lady and Country Wife by Lita Rose Betterman, which is where I learned a bunch
00:45:54.920about Lucy and also her sister, Dorothy. And then the book about lady spies is called Invisible
00:46:02.440Agents, Women and Espionage in 17th Century Britain by Nadine Ackerman. So it's literally
00:46:08.180about women spies in 17th century Britain. And it talks about Lucy Hay quite a bit, obviously.
00:46:14.560And it's time to get into the scoring of it all. So Lucy Hay, Scandaliciousness.
00:46:23.920This is interesting. We've got the 18 years old going to get married. Her father keeps her in
00:46:32.020jail, mentored by tits-out Frances Howard, gets married, takes a lover, or is taken as
00:46:39.360a lover, or somehow is able to co-use George Villiers and not be destroyed by him, but actually
00:46:47.840to use it to her advantage to spy on the queen, then takes the two parliamentary lovers. Her
00:46:55.080scandaliciousness is pretty high. I have to say, I'm going to give her, I think a seven0.92
00:47:02.140for scandaliciousness, for scheminess, flat out 10. I mean, she hatched even more schemes than1.00
00:47:11.080we'll ever know about because she was so good at them. She was a spy and we'll never find out what0.98
00:47:16.020she did because she was so good at it. I mean, like all of her schemes, like at first it was
00:47:20.000just sort of like high school-ish stuff just like scheming about like who will be her lover or like
00:47:25.700spying on the queen and stuff and just like wearing the best outfits etc I want to mention also I in0.81
00:47:31.940part of my research I found out that during in around 1620 there was a fashion craze of women
00:47:36.840dressing sort of masculine to the point where some women even like chopped off their hair
00:47:41.920in sort of like a 1920s moment like a bob moment like they were wearing like leather like to the0.58
00:47:49.340elbow sort of like workman's gloves with her dresses and Lucy Hay was all over it. Anyway,
00:47:55.560she was amazing. Style is not one of the things, but anyway, her scheminess was unsurpassed. I think1.00
00:48:00.860she had countless numbers of schemes and it seems like they were all amazing. Significance.
00:48:07.560Like all good spies, we don't know exactly how many things she did. We do know that she passed
00:48:14.100along that message to Pym that made it so that he, so the parliamentarians weren't arrested by
00:48:19.580the king, which ultimately isn't what she wanted because she seemed to switch sides to the royalists.
00:48:25.500But if she hadn't passed along that message, the royalists could have been stopped. And then the
00:48:29.960whole Oliver Cromwell situation might not have happened, which was like a pretty substantially
00:48:35.660important thing that happened in English history. At the same time, she wasn't like the queen of a
00:48:41.500country who like took over another country or something, but the significance, I think we don't
00:48:47.500know exactly what she did, but the behind the scenes significance feels pretty high to me.
00:48:52.840I'm going to give her a six for significance. And then the last category is the sexism quote
00:48:59.840unquote bonus, or how much did being a woman hold her back? And this is like similar to some of the
00:49:07.320other woman we've looked at, I feel like she saw that she's living in this misogynistic,
00:49:13.420patriarchal culture. And she was like, okay, this is what's going on. And I am going to find a way
00:49:21.240to like lean into this and twist it around and use it to my advantage. Like she was sort of like a
00:49:26.440Scarlett Pimpernel situation where if she just like played out the fact that she was a sort of0.96
00:49:30.880like vapid, silly person, nobody would suspect she was secretly this amazing spy. So it's almost0.73
00:49:36.040like she used sexism to her advantage. I don't know if it was a detriment to her except for the0.99
00:49:42.600whole father putting her in jail thing. When the whole George Villiers potentially forcing her
00:49:49.640to be his mistress. I am going to give her a five for the sexism bonus. So the total then,1.00
00:49:58.760This looks pretty good for her. Let me see. 28 is her score, which actually is the second highest
00:50:07.420score of the whole season. Elizabeth Bathory got 29, Lucy Hay 28, Jean de Lamont 27, Francis Howard
00:50:16.08026, and then Carolina Brunswick and Mary Toft both tied at a 20. These have been some scandalous
00:50:23.160of stories we've been looking at this season. So I want to let you know that this is the sixth and
00:50:31.380final episode of season one of Vulgar History, but don't be sad because season one, like season0.72
00:50:38.580one, the theme was Will Behave Women Don't Make History Podcasts. There is going to be season two,
00:50:44.400numerous more seasons after that, each with their own fun theme, but we're going to take a little
00:50:48.960break now for the holidays, but I do have some announcements to give you, including the fact
00:50:56.820that, um, if you join the Patreon, I'm going to be doing, I think between now and the next now
00:51:02.240in season two, I'm going to be posting some mini episodes. And so they're going to be called,
00:51:06.820I think they're going to be called. So this asshole, and they're going to be sort of like1.00
00:51:11.820five, 10 minutes, just looking at some of the assholes from some of the stories that we've1.00
00:51:17.020been looking at this season for instance from this one it'll be like a little look at george0.90
00:51:21.420villiers monster human maybe also looking at the wizard earl what was his deal if we're looking0.98
00:51:28.340back at some other episodes nathaniel saint andre thirsty bitch who lived for drama basically0.59
00:51:33.400there's gonna be short episodes because i'm not i'm not a men's historian there's lots of people0.96
00:51:37.880who do that i'm a women's historian but some of these assholes like just explaining kind of what0.75
00:51:43.660their deal was, I think sort of helps fill out the story of these women and what they were up0.96
00:51:48.940against. But the women, they get the full hour episodes. So this asshole, five, 10 minutes,1.00
00:51:54.720many episodes. And so you can find my Patreon, which is at patreon.com slash and foster writer.0.99
00:52:02.200There's other places where you can find us. So vulgar history is on Instagram. We are on Twitter.
00:52:08.300both of them are at vulgar history or vulgar history pod this podcast is now on i think
00:52:13.540most of the podcast apps so it would be awesome if you could subscribe and rate and review as
00:52:19.660people say on other podcasts and i'm going to be working on the mini episodes i'm going to be
00:52:27.420finalizing plans for season two coming up pretty soon so if you follow me on social media or on
00:52:32.240the patreon you can get updates on that sort of stuff i also do lots of writing you can find my
00:52:36.840writing at annfosterwriter.com. And then I've also made some merch. I made a different product
00:52:44.760for each episode this season. The one for the Lucy Hay episode is just a picture of her. And then
00:52:51.020just sort of covering her eyes, it says, Lady Spy, because she was just an amazing lady spy.
00:52:58.800And I love the fact that we'll never truly know everything about her because
00:53:30.560and endless adventure. Welcome to the Realms of Peril and Glory.
00:53:39.000Explore the mechanically magical vistas of Vale,
00:53:43.780the paranormal mysteries of Liminal London, and the cyberpunk chaos of Cyborg.
00:53:53.560fall in love with our core cast or be awed by our incredible guests from familiar shows
00:54:03.460like oxventure three black halflings and no roles barred ignite your imagination and discover the
00:54:13.120realms of peril and glory today go to realmspod.com or search realms of peril and glory wherever you
00:54:20.860listen to podcasts. Reality TV is messy. Pop culture is louder than ever. And the internet
00:54:30.760completely unhinged. Welcome to Roxanne and Chantel, the podcast where cousins Roxanne
00:54:36.620and Chantel break down reality TV, celebrity drama, and the stories everyone's texting about.
00:54:41.680We recap the shows, spill the headlines, and sit down with the stars themselves.
00:54:46.400No filter. No boring takes. Just the tea. New episodes every week. If it's trending, we're talking about it. This is Roxanne. And Chanteau. Let's get into it.
00:54:58.840For eight years, we've been asking the same question over and over again. How did this happen? My name's Mandy.
00:55:06.420And I'm Melissa. And we're the hosts of Moms and Mysteries, the true crime podcast with over 55 million downloads.
00:55:12.760We're two Florida moms who are obsessed with mysteries.
00:55:15.740Each week, we do deep dives into fascinating true crime stories.
00:55:19.160We cover everything from infamous cases like Casey Anthony
00:55:22.260to the bizarre and complex crimes right here in our home state,
00:55:26.080like the shocking murder of FSU professor Dan Markell.
00:55:29.060We bring you the facts, but with warmth and width,
00:55:31.420you'd only get from two friends who have been hooked on mysteries since childhood.
00:55:34.640Join us for new episodes of Moms and Mysteries every Tuesday and Thursday.
00:55:38.120Listen to Moms and Mysteries on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.