Why Thomas More -- Henry VIII’s Hatchet Man and Heretic Hunter -- Was Himself Executed For Heresy After the English Reformation

Why Thomas More -- Henry VIII’s Hatchet Man a...

Up next

From Bronze to Blood: How the Sword Became Humanity's First Murder Weapon

For nearly two thousand years, swords reigned as humanity's weapon of choice—the first tools designed exclusively to kill other humans rather than hunt animals. When archaeologist Paul Gething rediscovered a rusty blade forgotten in a suitcase for thirty years, he unknowingly hel ...  Show more

Scientists Who Were Ridiculed, Exiled, and Imprisoned for Being Right

Science progresses through breakthrough discoveries, but behind many of the field's greatest advancements lies a darker history of scientific dysfunction—hostile competition, information hoarding, and criticism that has silenced revolutionary thinkers. From Alexander Gordon being ...  Show more

Recommended Episodes

What did Henry VIII Believe?
Not Just the Tudors

The execution of six martyrs—three Catholics and three Protestants—on the same day, was unprecedented in Henry VIII's England. What led to this transformative event?


Professor Suzannah Lipscomb explores the fascinating and tumultuous period of the 1530s and 1540s und ...

  Show more

Thomas Cromwell: the triumph and tragedy of Henry VIII's right-hand man
HistoryExtra podcast

In the spring of 1540 Thomas Cromwell was at the height of his power, but just a few months later he found himself at the scaffold on Tower Hill preparing to be executed for treason and heresy. What had gone so badly wrong for Henry VIII's right-hand man? As the BBC drama Wolf Ha ...  Show more

Henry II & Thomas Becket: A Doomed Friendship
Gone Medieval

It's 1163; Thomas Becket has cast off the shackles of his working class roots to become King Henry II's right-hand man. He is appointed to the highest position in the land next to the Crown; Archbishop of Canterbury. But Church and state are at loggerheads, with Henry and Thom ...

  Show more

Fall of Thomas More
Not Just the Tudors

In the second of our special episodes exploring the rise and fall of Sir Thomas More, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb and Dr. Joanne Paul chart the great Tudor statesman's demise. Despite his silence about Henry VIII's self-proclamation as Supreme Head of the Church of England, Mo ...

  Show more