Welcome to the History of English Podcast, a podcast about the history of the English language.

This is Episode 148, a Marital Union.

In this episode, we're going to revisit the theme of marriage.

It's a theme we've explored before, but this time we're going to focus on an interesting

aspect of political marriages in the early 1500s.

These types of marriages were nothing new, but in the early modern period they were being

used to unify previously independent realms under one monarch or one ruling family.

That process had significant consequences for the history of Europe and for the history

of England, but political marriages were not always happy marriages, and as we turn our

attention to the early reign of Henry VIII, we'll encounter a king who is famous for

as many unhappy marriages.

And in the same way that political marriages could bring people together, Henry's reign

showed that political divorces could tear people apart.

So over the next couple of episodes, we'll look at Marital unions and messy divorces,

and along the way we'll see how these events shaped the English language.

But before we begin, let me remind you that the website for the podcast is historyofenglishpodcast.com

and you can sign up to support the podcast and get bonus episodes and transcripts at patreon.com

slash historyofenglish.

Now let's turn to this episode and let's examine the intersection of marriage and politics

in the early 1500s.

Last time we looked at the impact of the Renaissance and the humanist movement on the development

of English.

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