Lucy Worsley Investigates Season 2 is yet to be announced by BBC Two

How did George III's mental illness change Britain? Lucy Worsley uncovers Royal papers and explores how the assassination attempt on his life by a mentally ill subject changed psychiatry forever.

What really happened to the Princes in the Tower? Lucy Worsley uncovers the story of the two boys whose disappearance in 1483 has led to centuries of mystery and speculation. 

For centuries it was uncertain what caused the pestilence of 1348, until a vast plague pit was uncovered in Smithfield, London in the 1980s. The find revealed the bones of hundreds of victims of the 14th century pandemic.

Now stored in the basement of the Museum of London, Lucy learns how DNA extracted from the skeletons enabled scientists to finally identify a bacteria called Yersinia Pestis - a pathogen to which the mediaeval population had no immunity.

In little more than a year, almost half the population had been wiped out by the Black Death. Lucy investigates what this sudden loss of life meant for the church, landowners and for the those who survived.

Exploring the social structure of mediaeval England, made up largely of rural peasants indentured to landowners, Lucy discovers a rare and remarkable set of documents: the Court Rolls of the Suffolk village of Walsham the Willows, providing a perfect microcosm of life across the country before, during and after the pandemic.

Lucy discovers how, despite the unfolding apocalypse, rather than shaking people's belief in God, it entrenched their faith. Many went on devotional pilgrimages to sacred sites like Canterbury Cathedral.

Despite the devastation, the plague propagated a shake-up of the status quo. Workers were in short supply and could demand higher wages, shifting the balance of power. Women occupied professions and roles that were previously closed to them and acquired an independence and status that would previously have been impossible.

Lucy begins her investigation in North Berwick, a seaside town near Edinburgh where the first witch hunts began. The story goes that in 1590 a coven of witches gathered here to cast a spell to try to kill the King of Scotland, James VI. Viewing an account from the time, called Newes From Scotland, and other first-hand sources, Lucy uncovers a web of political intrigue that led to a woman called Agnes Sampson, a faith healer and midwife, being investigated. Agnes is accused of witchcraft and interrogated at Holyrood Castle by King James himself, before being tortured and executed.

Agnes was caught in a perfect storm - hard-line Protestant reformers intent on making Scotland devout, a King keen to prove himself a righteous leader, and a new ideology which claimed the Devil was actively recruiting women as witches. Under torture Agnes gave the names of her supposed accomplices, some 59 other innocent people, making hers the first successful large-scale witch hunt in Scotland. Its brutal success became the model for witch trials rolled out across Scotland and England for the next 100 years.