If you enjoy a good bit of gossiping, England in the 15th century would have been a great place to live. The kingdom was awash with rumours and conspiracy theories, some true, some false. Given the century witnessed several instances of popular unrest and civil war, this is unsurprising since conspiracy theories have a tendency to spring up during times of societal crisis.
Discussions of conspiracy theories often lead into questions of where they came from, who believed them and how they were spread. Today, the term “fake news” is often used about content used to spread deliberate misinformation. As the tales heard in England’s 15th-century court attest to, such stories have been around for a long time.
As a team of historians, we were fascinated by this modern concept in a historic context and wanted to understand how fake news operated in the middle ages. We decided to look particularly at rumours associated with queens of that period.
