Growing Up in 1485 — A Childhood as the First Tudors Took the Throne | History for Sleep

1485. This was the year the world turned for those living in London, marking the end of the wars and the rise of Henry Tudor. For a newborn child in Botolph Lane, it meant entering a city where the crown was found in a hawthorn bush and a mysterious sweating sickness killed two Lord Mayors in a single week. In this video, we go inside the life of Agnes Collier, known as Nan, a girl born into the first years of Tudor England. We follow her through the streets of London, from the gutters of Pudding Lane to the shop of Mistress Isabelle Rowe, a wax chandler on the corner of St. Mariette Hill. We experience the strict rule of the curfew bell and the precarious life of a bound apprentice working to pay off a family debt from the winter of 1495.The cost of a single bruised candle in a twelve-pound parcel could be tuppence, an amount that represents two days of a child's life in labor. This financial pressure is set against the backdrop of a city where a silver groat of Richard III could be bent as a vow to St. Anthony. Such small sums dictated whether a girl would find a place in a proper craft or end up rendering sheep-fat with the tallow-melters past Aldgate. What emerges is a portrait of survival in a city of timber and thatch, where the stability of a new dynasty is mirrored by the fragile security of a warm meal and a straw pallet in an attic.