Tudor Children - Nicholas Orme

The first history of childhood in Tudor England

What was it like to grow up in England under the Tudors? How were children cared for, what did they play with, and what dangers did they face?

In this beautifully illustrated and characteristically lively account, leading historian Nicholas Orme provides a rich survey of childhood in the period. Beginning with birth and infancy, he explores all aspects of children’s experiences, including the games they played, such as Blind Man’s Bluff and Mumble-the-Peg, and the songs they sang, such as “Three Blind Mice” and “Jack Boy, Ho Boy.” He shows how social status determined everything from the food children ate and the clothes they wore to the education they received and the work they undertook.

Although childhood and adolescence could be challenging and even hazardous, it was also, as Nicholas Orme shows, a treasured time of learning and development. By looking at the lives of Tudor children we can gain a richer understanding of the era as a whole.

Nicholas Orme is emeritus professor of history at Exeter University. He has written more than thirty books on the religious and social history of England, including Medieval Children, The History of England’s Cathedrals, and Going to Church in Medieval England, which was shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize.

“Tudor Children is social history at its best. . . . By connecting with our own history as children, Orme invites us to embrace a new way of engaging with the past.”—Joanne Paul, Times (UK)

“Tudor Children is the first general study of the subject. It is crisp and factual and, with lots of enlivening illustration (prints, portraiture and pages of illuminated manuscript), beautiful to regard. . . . Mr. Orme has . . . done a yeoman’s job here of sleuthing out the details of childhood from an epoch that doesn’t seem to have been terribly interested in recording them.”—Meghan Cox Gurdon, Wall Street Journal

“Lavishly illustrated and beautifully produced by Yale for a non-specialist audience, it was the product of 50 years’ research, drawing on Orme’s many earlier books.”—Ian Sansom, The Telegraph

“As Nicholas Orme shows in this elegant and hugely enjoyable book, once Tudor youngsters stepped out of the frame and into real life, they could be as cheeky and inappropriate as their modern counterparts.”—Kathryn Hughes, Sunday Times

“That sense of the ordinary seized by strangeness—or, conversely, of strangeness punctured by recognition—captures exactly the experience of Tudor Children. . . . Encountering his subjects feels like time traveling in a double sense: they are versions of ourselves five hundred years ago and yesterday. Telling their stories takes enterprise, imagination, and tact—a capacity for hovering on the verge of childhood, looking as closely, sympathetically, and unsentimentally as possible without disturbing the scene. Orme does it beautifully, and he allows us to join him at it.”—Catherine Nicholson, New York Review of Books

“Orme paints a vivid picture of every aspect of 16th-century children’s lives.”—Ian Sansom, The Telegraph, Summer reading list

“Nicholas Orme’s book sets a precedent: historians overlook children to their own loss.”—Anna Parker, Times Literary Supplement

“I loved this book for its pin-sharp glimpses of what really went on in the daily lives and minds of children.”—Ysenda Maxtone Graham, Daily Mail

“The content [is] endlessly eye-opening . . . precise and colourful details . . . rich and compelling study.”—David Robinson, Country Life

“Generalities regarding Tudor children are problematic: a child’s life chiefly depended on their status. . . . Yet Orme paints an intriguing world in flux.”—Bess Twiston Davies, The Tablet

“Tudor Children is that rare thing: a book that will delight specialists and generalists in equal measure.”—Elizabeth Goldring, Literary Review

“Orme’s is the first—and much overdue—survey of the period. His succinct and readable style and far-reaching scope will make the book an obvious choice for future undergraduate reading lists.”—Gabriel Bynge, Church Times

“A captivating and visually stunning account, embellished with beautiful illustrations that enhance the reader’s understanding of the subject matter.”—Marc Daniel Rivera, KristiyaKnow

“An endlessly fascinating and impeccably researched exploration of what it was like for children of all ages and backgrounds to grow up in sixteenth century England. This brilliant book provides the missing piece of the Tudor jigsaw.”—Tracy Borman, author of The Private Lives of the Tudors

“Lavishly illustrated, this book is a joy to dip into or fully read. Professor Orme draws on a wide range of written and visual sources to give us vivid and varied descriptions of children’s lives from their birth to early deaths or adulthood.”—Susan Doran, author of Elizabeth I and Her Circle



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