## Intro [00:00] God hi everyone welcome back to the history in 20 podcast and today I've got a very special guest with me you can see Mr mock O'Keefe here who you might know better on social media as the gay Aristo um he's an excellent guy fellow historian and I am going to call you a historian because you are you you are a historian you're great at what you do um more than qualified to be so a great fact about mock is he lives in a baby Castle in Wales um which is awesome I think so I've actually got a guy who lives in a castle in an actual castle on the podcast with me so who better to discuss five key LGBT plus figures through history than mock himself welcome to the podcast mock thank you very much it's very nice to be here as you said I'm in my what I call Baby Castle Country Life called it a baby Castle it's an Elizabethan building originally Elizabethan Hall h-a-l house gotta be careful how you say that with um with a Victorian turret and I'm currently in what is known as the Great Hall I've joined you here today and it's freezing one of the things they don't tell you when you own a historic house is just how cold it can be and this is the dedication that we expect from all of our guests coming forward so uh to make a start the first figure is everyone who's watched this podcast listen to this podcast probably knows I'm a huge Edward the second fan he's even on my historical uh Kings mug I've got here he's over there somewhere um and Mock and I discussed him on our Instagram live a while ago um obviously one of the most sort of scrutinized Kings in English History largely because a lot of people think he was gay he was a homosexual King so Moka just like yo if you could give us a quick overview on on Edward II and particularly a guy called Piers Galveston what doing their relationship ## Edward II [01:55] absolutely well I mean I I come to this subject relatively recently as you know I'm doing a PhD now in Country House studies and and focusing on the country house as a refuge for lgbtq plus people and I thought I'd write about cushions or I'd write about you know fireplaces or something but actually as I started to delve more into history and particularly the history of castles and great Country Estates I realized there are so many lgbtq plus people maybe they wouldn't have turned themselves gay or lesbian or bisexual those turns weren't available to them in their day but people who would say now are part of the LGBT TQ plus community and I think Edward II probably the good one to start with the one that you know Christopher Marlo wrote his play about him lots of rumor and inuation oh innuendo about Edward II um and we've got an episode on our YouTube channel called bad boyfriends cost me the crown and I think the reason that I'm so drawn to Edward II is because all of us have been in a bad relationship whether it's a boyfriend or girlfriend someone in the past perhaps we had a toxic relationship that had a negative impact on our lives and I think Edward II made such bad choices in his favorites which is often I think a euphemism for partner boyfriend girlfriend that ultimately it cost him the crown so but we didn't always have terrible relationships you're right peers Galveston was his kind of first true love his first favorite and you know Chronicles at the time said when they when they first laid eyes upon each other they felt such a Brotherhood of love together they were bounded Only onto each other so definitely you know from you've all had it when we've seen someone across the river and fireworks and I think that's what he had with peers even when he married you know in those days obviously marriages were about strategic alliances with other countries marriage you know princess from France Piers carried the crown into Westminster Abbey he literally held the kingdom in his hands at the wedding breakfast it was Piers family emblems that were up around the room not not France so he was making a point there and piercing him seemed to have a very positive relationship however whether it was homophobia or whether it was about you know having a second king having another man who had such close access to the king and you know at this time you're pecking order in the court was really important if you agree with the stool you were there at the king's most intimate moment if you agree with a bed chamber you had the chance to have a chat with him uh pursue someone's political career drop something in his ear whether as Othello said poor pestilence in his ear or make a nod to you really should think about the Duchess of so-and-so's um application I think she's rather cut great um and so the Barons the Nobles saw appears as a second king and potentially didn't like the idea of their King the Monarch carrying on with a man you have to understand in these times you know Christian morality was certainly talked about if not always practiced you know the Bedrock of society was that kind of Christian principles and ultimately if Edward II was sleeping with a man he was committing a sin and as Edward was the representation of the country if he had a sickness then the country was sick as well so whether it's around someone else was so close to the king and we'll talk about his next boyfriend at the moment and how that didn't play out so well that actually being so close to the King was a threat to the other Nobles and Barons or whether it was just homophobia they were determined to end this relationship and do away with peers and what's really sad is Peters was incredibly loyal to Edward he was off fighting on his behalf in the north he was captured and again not quite clear what happened but he was killed by the Barons um whether it was you know he was killed in self-defense whether or not they hacked his head off because of his relationship with the King he was done away with and that supposedly would end the problem get rid of the King's favorite and then all would be well but you're not going to change someone overnight simply because they lose a partner and Edward II did find someone else the disgraceful and the Despicable hula depencer and he who came as a bit of a double act he also came with with his very strong and overwhelming you know very manipulative father um and Edward II really this was a toxic relationship so he basically did whatever hula depencer and his father said and who then did carry on to some extent like a second king he he banished Nobles that he didn't like he sees people's land he took people's money he even and this is I think incredibly horrible he even stopped the queen from seeing her children so really not a very very nice man you know pretty much a coercive relationship and the King basically did whatever Hugh and his father said now obviously you know the Nobles and the Barons again were up in arms probably this time quite rightly that somebody else was basically ruling the country through their King but the queen was very clever she went to pay homage to her brother in France and managed to persuade Edward that the heir to the throne should come with her and when she was there she refused to return Edward you know then come back come back why should why should she come back to you know I don't think people in those days expected love in marriage but certainly it was a pretty horrific setup for her denied access to her children seeing her husband carrying on even if they were horrific rumors carrying on with someone else so what she did is she was a clever strategist she then as well as getting into bed literally with one of the Barons in France he'd been he'd been exiled from from England uh she raised an army and she invaded the country intent on getting rid of her husband his favorite and putting her son on the throne and she was successful um Hugh and Edward fled to Hughes lands just not far from where I live actually in Wales they were captured um and uh hula de Panzer was hung drawn and quartered whilst the queen had dinner so she certainly I think enjoyed that moment ultimate Revenge really isn't it in that yeah and her husband uh you know it's still unclear what happens to Edward he probably just starved to death in a prison cell however about 50 years later this rumor started to circulate that he was impaled on a red-hot poker and that killed him and that probably again is another example of homophobia something that is so horrific making a reference to the the sexual act and again the last kind of damning way of humiliating the king and making sure that his Legend and his history was always tainted so I've got real empathy I've had some bad boyfriends in my life I'm sure we've all had some bad part I'm very happily married now but um to a lovely man Joe but um I think he made bad choices in men and therefore that ultimately cost him the crown definitely I completely agree agree with you and that was such an interesting overview and it's a side of the king that we don't often see because people who might have heard of Edward II just think oh wait monarchy lost at Bonnet burn his father was much better and his son was twice as good so that's a really I love seeing that side of uh and you've got to understand where does the legend around weakness come ## Queen Anne [10:00] from I think we might be talking about Queen Anne later on I'm not sure but you know again people say she was a weak Queen actually she brought Scotland into and created Great Britain yeah he scratches to do that more she had because she was Ill she probably had lupus she brought key people around her Sarah Churchill's husband John you know Jacob mobile who got Blenheim Palace as a thank you for defeating the French she defeated a huge foreign army and created Great Britain but again weak Queen because potentially she you know had relationships with both Abigail and with Sarah Church special ed with the second weak King because he had same-sex relationships these stories about weakness I think actually when you look at them could in fact be homophobia yeah I I completely agree and that's why I think it's a good point to move to our next king now our next person who just happens to be a king um is James the first of England because I noticed you did a little feature on him uh on Instagram not so long ago which your username is gay Aristo if anyone doesn't already follow you I'll put that on the screen and links and everything um so James was King of England from 16 or 3 to 25. famously targeted in the Gunpowder Plot uh Guy Fawkes but yeah if you could just tell us a bit about him and why he's including this list of lgbtq plus figures that would be a real interesting yeah so I think James the ## James the First [11:25] first of England or James is sick of Scotland I believe he was well I think is ironic about him being a king and I love I love how history ultimately has its ironies and kind of plays fools with all of us is it as flies to wanted men are we to the gods they kill us for their Sport AS King Lear said you know his mother was Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth the first was so intent on not having you know of the threat of her cousin Mary Queen of Scots that she first had her you know imprisoned up in Hardwick house and famously best of hardwood used to her needlework with her until she thought her husband was carrying on with Mary Queen of Scots and then had her beheaded but because the queen never married she had no issue she had no air ultimately was her biggest rival son who took the throne and I think that in of itself is very interesting now you know we again we applaud Elizabeth the first for her defeat of the Spanish we don't applaud Queen Anne for her defeated the French we don't really question the fact that the Queen Elizabeth the first didn't do her Duty by producing an heir to the throne we just applaud her as a strong Monarch now there are some arguments that actually if she married that her position her Authority her strength would be undermined because she would have been the property of her husband and I get that argument I really do but I find it horrific when we say that we criticize Anne and we don't actually criticize Elizabeth who didn't do her Duty and at least tried she was the last of the student Monarch she was the last of James's line however she did try I think she had 11 or 15 children I mean she really tried she miscarried or or they were born and died in childbirth or very soon afterwards but anyway James the first so he is a very instrument very very Gruff man not great in public um I think he would have been a really good fan in the pub he was pretty rough of his language there was one Court here who was presenting himself and he gave all these lists about I'm here when I'm from there and from this and he went oh Jesus I didn't know you would descended from Adam another time it was um you know he was out there was some sort of wonderful parade or whatever and he was supposed to sit in this box and kind of gently wave at people and he kind of didn't really fancy and kind of wandered back inside and one of the courtiers very polite he said you know I think your majesty we should maybe have you out front so that people could see you and he said I would like to see my ass too I mean he was really pretty Gruff man but a good sense of humor I think it'd be quite fun on a Friday night down the pub but yes he himself you know whether or not he was bisexual whether he was gay again those terms wouldn't have been recognized and actually it's only kind of in the Victorian days if you start to get this real linear 1869 the term homosexual you know was invented was written in pamphlet for the first time but he definitely had a very close relationship with Villa as the Duke of Buckingham the first Duke of Buckingham and there are some correspondents that remain now interestingly because of legal discrimination or fear of persecution at the time often personal letters were just destroyed by descendants because they might damage the reputation of their ancestor they might find out that they were hopping into beds with some people that people might not approve of so we it's quite rare that we have these correspondence between the Duke of Buckingham George Villiers and and James the first they refer to each other as husband and wife you know James the first says I have no joy in this life except for I'm paraphrasing but except for when I'm with you this life is only bearable when I'm with you he talked to his courtiers about Jesus had his John I have my Duke of Buckingham and there's an incredible uh come a letter that remains that uh where George Williams it writes to the king about a night they spent together uh when he talks about you know even a hair's dog come between our dead posts and the King very excited he sort of says let's do that again so I think there's definitely again some some indication there is a real closeness in that relationship I believe it probably was a a physical relationship but even if it wasn't if you take the broader idea of a queer relationship something that's slightly out of the ordinary that close relationship between those two men is extraordinary now you can excuse It Away by saying oh language was different in those days and it was very you know people were very florid in their address they absolutely were but I don't think men refer to each other as husband and wife and this is the challenge that we look at on our YouTube channel and on Instagram and gay Aristo where we say lgbtq plus history the great women and men of history who may have had LGBT be part of the lgbtq plus Community have had their their existence almost edited Out and because most of our lgbtq plus history is a history of criminology and court cases you have to peer into the cracks of History you have to look for those unusually close relationships you have to look at Chronicles at the time and see what they were saying and what they're insinuating now when people talk about the court being full of a bunch of effeminate harlots they might have been doing that just to kind of run the king down but why was the court filled with all these pretty boy men why did Frederick the great have you know a huge homoerotic art collection never marry call why did Leonardo da Vinci call the act of pre-creation absolutely disgusting and get arrested for potential for supposedly sleeping with one of his male models you have to look at these little chinks in history and say what might be going on there because you know what I don't really care if James the first was gay I don't really care whether or not Queen Anne was lesbian bisexual whatever all I care is just about asking the question and making sure that everyone is represent entered in history absolutely that's the most inclusive way we can look at things and I think I mentioned to you as well on on this channel the whole idea of it is that history is inclusive for everyone everyone every type of person every race every gender every sexuality anything that anyone has all the people have existed throughout time it's all about representation and people but history is written by the winners though history is ## Casanova [17:54] written by the winners and actually traditionally they are white men who are straight and there is an overarching assumption that the great women and men of history are straight because that fits the narrative someone like Casanova the great Seducer of women for example Casanova was kicked out of the Seminary when he's trying when he was training to be a priest because he wasn't found in bed with a man um he in his life story mavi he wrote about two same-sex relationships he had but again because that doesn't fit the great Narrative of History which the winners have written it's edited out and so on the gay Aristo I just want to shine a bit of a loving light on that side of History I don't necessarily take the argument which I had the other day on a YouTube video when I had some comments of people saying well what do you care about Lord pass away being potentially gay and committing suicide because he was being blackmailed I care because if you think about you are in one role for life like a king or a queen and people have these expectations of you but you have feelings that are outside what the narrative is accepted for you in that role I believe the mental health implications for those individuals would be huge and if you try and think about these people as humans as opposed to just the role that they play think about the humanity of not being able to love the person that you loved and feeling trapped in a role that meant you couldn't be your true authentic self and I don't think whether you are rich whether you are poor whether you are a monarch or whether you're a peasant in the field everyone has a right to live their true authentic life no one can doubt that no matter how rich or how poor you are if you're rich not living out your true authentic life I imagine it's pretty horrendous yeah I I completely agree with you I absolutely agree yeah and uh the next sort of thing we're going to jump on to next key figures are two ladies actually and I'm gonna get the pronunciation wrong the ladies of langerland sort of 17. yeah I might not get it right as well I'm new here in Wales ladies of clangolin I think right because Double L is in Wales these are two of my favorite historical characters again people don't people there's some debate whether or not they were actually lovers people talk about a romantic friendship okay so Sarah and Eleanor ## Sarah and Eleanor [20:22] were Irish Aristocrats once described as um typical Iris Aristocrats in that they were the cream of society rich and thick which is a bit of a put down but I don't think it's necessarily true but they uh they fell in love when they were very young in Ireland and they tried to escape twice together and their families you know found them brought them back you know there's stories of one hiding in the in the wardrobe for two days living in the other's bedroom all these sorts of things Incredibly Close vowing we'll never get married we'll be bound into each other for life why would you do that if you didn't have you know romantic feelings and sexually romantic feelings for this other person So eventually their families capitulated and said okay okay you know you don't have to marry so and so the Squire down the road you know you can leave Kilkenny Castle but you have to leave the country so they were banished and forced to leave the country and they made their way to Wales just across the water uh to clangolin up in the north of Wales and they built a little hat well they had a house there which they renovated over the years and they called it plus new Ed which is new place and I love the idea that they started their new life in a new place um and uh eventually they became celebrities they were visited by the royal family Wordsworth wrote a poem about them they were celebrated throughout the kingdom they LED parades in their Village and they just lived quietly with a housekeeper together in a very intimate quiet life one of love which is what they wanted and I was talking about on my Instagram page on National Girlfriends Day because I think they're a lovely example of just a committed quiet relationship they weren't making any huge political statements they just loved each other but I love the fact that they they left their riches they left you know their titles they left they left the castles behind and they came to live in a small house in Wales to spend the rest of their life together in loving Harmony I think it's a brilliant example that you've managed to find these like lgbtq plus figures from history that aren't just kings and queens they are just like yeah they're all from the upper echelons of society but there were just two two ladies who loved each other that's it and I think that's brilliant that in that period you just don't expect well not that you don't expect it but you don't hear about it so well I mean ultimately the kind of the below the ## Keep Your Own Life [22:52] stairs you know people out in the rural communities their lives aren't recording the way that perhaps you know that the lab called Gentry Aristocrats monarchs lives are recorded I would love to find out more about you know stable boys and chauffeurs from the 50s and 60s but there's less recorded about that there is there's some stuff in Georgia and England about that and obviously you know with Oscar I think we'll talk about in a moment probably you know some of the boys that he had relationships with which are incredibly problematic because of their age but actually that's a challenge in history um that we don't have really the history of everyday folks am I please anyone is listening to this podcast is keep everything your own life is a personal archive for historians in the future whether it's your bill from Asda whether it's your the letter that came from your local church asking you for money for the steeple whether it's your marriage certificate your civil partnership certificate whatever it is keep it because we want to make sure that the lives of Ordinary People Like Us are recorded and represented in the future yes it's great that we know all about you know um Queen Elizabeth II and well certainly history will certainly have a lot to say about Prince Harry but we should be as interested as in somebody who lives in a semi and Newcastle as somebody lives in a palace at winter yeah I completely agree and uh we'll just just before you mentioned Oscar Wilde there just before I move on to him we've got one more guy just before that I thought we'd cover him Horace Walpole what Horus I say Horace is my boyfriend we're gonna get too sheep here in our Paddock outside I'm going to call one Horus and one war Pearl brilliant um I've said it out loud my husband has to agree now so Horace Walpole uh was the ## Horace Walpole [24:44] son of the first Prime Minister of England Robert Walpole an incredibly masculine man lived in uh Houghton Hall neoclassical structure very masculine you know really I'd say an alpha male and Horus was his youngest son incredibly effeminate a man of literature and words um he had very close relationships with men right back from an Eaton he had a cottery of men who were around him when he went on his Grand Tour he went on a grand tour with gray the poet who wrote elegy and an English churchyard they had a huge falling out on The Grand Tour I think it was The Lover's Tif um and great and gray disappeared for a while he was interested in Beauty and gossip his letters are incredibly acerbic incredibly when he met the Chevalier Dion who presented as a man for the first part of it of their life and then uh in their in their in their middle age presented as a woman was a French spy swords person lady in waiting to Marie Antoinette um when the Chevalier met Horace Walpole Horace was very about the Chevalier and said uh the chevalier's hands were more suited to carrying a chair and then fine so you get the idea from the person he was and he built this beautiful a beautiful Gothic fantasy in Strawberry Hill just outside London we've just done an amazing video on it on our YouTube channel um where he brought together all of his men the company of the Aesthetics he used to call them Society of the Aesthetics I think he called them and they designed this complete Gothic fantasy now he was outed um he was called a finger twirler he was called a feminine and in those days again you know you could be punished you could be put you could be put in jail can you put to death in some extent you could be put in the stocks people used to throw cats at you if you were put in the stalks I don't quite know why so he ran away to Strawberry Hill his country house on the river and he descended into kind of alcohol and drugs um and got Gout and really was kind of afraid for his life but there at Strawberry Hill he had a vision of a gaunted hand at the top of the staircase case and this inspired him to write the first Gothic novel The Castle of atranto and without Horus and his high theatrical and high camp outlook on the world we'd never have Jane Eyre we'd never have Wuthering Heights we'd never have Dracula so absolutely fascinating man and never married surrounds himself with men all his life lived with men as I said was was you know was kind of outed by Society but interesting once the castle of atranto was published he was able to come back into society because he was uh you know incredibly famous again because of this amazing book that he had written and you know if anyone is near London you should go and check out Strawberry Hill it's a trust it's a charity that now maintains the house they do lgbtq plus tours as well she can go and see all the detail um around horus's life or also you can check out my YouTube channel uh there's a lovely video on there about Horace Walpole and Mark who's the guy who does the house tours takes me around on that excellent I'll make sure to link that video at this part in the podcast episode so you can go and check out it is a good video I've watched it it's really good and you know what's interesting Horace he invented he really and at that point everyone was into classicism you know Doric columns and and very masculine and he chose the complete opposite it's very twirly this very fancy Gothic to some extent it was a rebellion against his father it was a completely different kind of house and it wasn't in Vogue or in fashion he thought that it was the true English style kind of from the medieval times and he was going back to the true English architecture it then became incredibly fashionable and we have things like Saint Pancras Station and the houses of Commons afterwards but he was completely a Trailblazer in the aesthetic of Gothic architecture brilliant and what a guy like what a sassy guy as well um so I'm quite sure I've only got a few like sort of five or so minutes left um so obviously the last character we want to discuss is the world famous Oscar Wilde who lived from 1854 to 1900 so what can you tell us about him and why is he on this list as our father yeah probably the most famous homosexual in history although he wouldn't have called it homosexuality would have called it Uranian love um Irish uh minor sort of minor Aristocrat Gentry came over here and was incredibly successful as a poet as a playwright as a writer short story he was the the celebrity of his day with this acerbic wit um but he had a dark side he was married to Constance had two boys lived in Chelsea London but he was was gay uh and he met Lord Alfred Douglas the son of Lord Queensbury and they had a passionate on off Affair for many many years but he wasn't in any way quiet or discreet about it Queensbury um left a card for Oscar at his Club saying that he was posing as a sodomite Oscar rather foolishly sued Queensbury all you have is your reputation he believed his reputation was being tarnished by Queensland he lost and then he was arrested and tried what's in and put you know after one court case didn't you know was thrown out or out there the second one and he was convicted and had two years hard labor in Reading jail the lovely thing is he did kind of meet up with bozie when he got out of jail and they spent the rest most of their life together um in Italy there were some other people around him who supported him but he went from being like as famous as the Kardashians to being a nobody and living on a living on a very very frugal income now he was rather foolish why he decided to to sue Queen spree it's been interpreted now that he was kind of a martyr for the cause I think there's an element of ego in there that he couldn't stand to see his reputation tarnished he did carry along with a lot of rent Boys on a very working class boys young men that he picked up in Mayfair and Piccadilly and that is problematic now a lot of them are 14 15 years old very poor probably it was well it is it's abuse I think we have to see that as well we might see on lots of films you know Oscar wandering around with a frock coat being very witty there was a dark side where he abused children um and yes he had an incredible love with bozie again a very toxic relationship with bozie but when we hold him up as the prophet and the champion of homosexuality there's a dark side to him and that's why I think we're also still talking about Oscar whilst he now has become the champion of the homosexual cause and the Martyr there's also a dark side to him and light and dark makes history more interesting I completely agree with you and I really respect that as well that while we're looking at these LGBT Figures it's not all like rose tinted glasses it's we are looking at the real life people and there are those boys who ultimately did suffer yes Oscar Wilde championed the cause for the greater part but you've just provided such a balanced side of it there that that he did have a dark side as well I think that's really you can't sugarcoat people just because they were ## Conclusion [32:16] algae btq a lot of these people that I talk about on Instagram or YouTube were involved in slavery were involved in atrocities you know James the first in Ireland absolutely have aren't things that they can't that They carried on and that they supported so we can't just because they were gay they shouldn't be given a free pass we have to understand them in the whole recognize an element of them was their sexuality but also recognize some of the injustices and some of the atrocities that they are responsible for and that to me means you're getting true history as opposed to rose-tented history just because you're gay doesn't mean you're not a bad person yeah I completely agree so I'd just like to play some record my thanks to mock for coming on this episode I hope you enjoy it go and check out his Channel all his social medias they're all linked below um I'll link put links in the video as well to certain videos that were stuff that's been mentioned is relevant so thanks for coming on mock I really appreciate it you're welcome it's been great to talk to you keep doing what you're doing I love it thank you