HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: The official website for BBC History Magazine
date: 2025-04-15T16:43:19.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: "Tyrant, traitor, murderer and public enemy": was Charles I really that bad?
items: How people power fuelled England's century of chaos
items: Century of chaos: people & power in the 1600s
items: Taxing the rich to feed the poor in the 17th century: the world's first welfare state
items: What sparked the Civil War?

"Tyrant, traitor, murderer and public enemy": was Charles I really that bad?
type: item
date: 2025-04-15T16:43:19.000Z
creator: Dr Jonathan Healey
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Stuart
description: The reviled king was condemned to death as a “Tyrant, Traitor, Murderer and Public Enemy”. But on the 400th anniversary of his accession, how fair does that judgment seem today?
encoded: On 9 July 1637, King Charles I chaired a meeting of his Privy Council at Greenwich Palace. Among the business was the case of two draymen, William Willis and John Collins, who had been involved in a road-traffic collision. They had allowed their cart to crash into that of the Earl of Exeter, a member of the powerful Cecil family. A local jury had cleared Willis and Collins of any wrongdoing, but the king was not happy with that outcome. Charles and his council overturned the verdict, ordering that the two men be “whipped publicly through the town” as a fearsome example to others. After this, the draymen would be sent to prison, and there kept at work until further notice. Charles I was a man who liked order. He organised his political thought around certain maxims, one of them being: “It is better the subject suffer a little than all lie out of order.” Willis and Collins certainly suffered: they were flogged and locked up. After all, one couldn’t have lowly draymen crashing into nobles’ coaches and then being acquitted: it was indecorous and subversive. Charles was a fussy man. His government regulated everything from the lengths of taxi journeys to the wearing of fake jewellery. He once even tried to ban swearing. Bookish, thoughtful and sensitive, Charles was possessed of a heightened sense of his own honour and dignity. By the time he ascended the throne in 1625, he was also politically active, well read and fully capable of forming his own opinions – a bit too much so, perhaps, for a king. When Charles came to power in 1625, it was a highly unusual event. He was the first adult to ascend the Scottish throne since 1390, and only the second adult male to take the English throne since Henry VIII in 1509. Read more | When was the last battle between England and Scotland? He left his thrones in a strange way, too. In 1649, he was put on trial for treason against his own people, and executed publicly. His statue in London’s Royal Exchange was defaced with the Latin wo…

GettyImages-629463815cmyk-a8f916e.jpg
width: 4189
height: 2790

How people power fuelled England's century of chaos
type: item
date: 2023-05-22T07:08:37.000Z
creator: Dr Jonathan Healey
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Stuart
description: King Charles I’s clashes with parliament, the decades of bloody civil war, and the spell of republican government followed by the restoration of the monarchy – these are the major events that dominate the chapters about the 17th century in the history books. But, as Jonathan Healey explores, behind the turmoil lay something deeper: a political awakening of the people
encoded: Listen to a version of this article: On an autumn day in 1640, poor Arthur Duck found himself caught between rocks and a wet place. On the north bank of the Thames in London, he faced a hostile and rapidly swelling throng. Hastily boarding a boat, he fled across the heaving river to the safety of Lambeth Palace as his assailants hurled stones at him, chanting and making cacophonous quacking sounds. This assault marked the nadir of a particularly fraught period for the unfortunate Duck – and also reflected rising tensions that defined the 17th century. Born in the Devon countryside, Duck had by 1640 reached the venerable age of 60. A church lawyer, he had held legal posts in several of England’s great bishoprics. Indeed, he’d made an ally of the prickly archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, who found Duck’s expertise useful in a litigious age. By the later months of that year, though, Duck was in the service of another prelate: William Juxon, bishop of London. It was on Juxon’s orders that Duck embarked on a “visitation”: touring the diocese to assess the state of things. Were parishioners behaving themselves? Were the church laws being obeyed? What Duck found was very worrisome. Anger at religious reforms Far from complying with the laws, people were angry about recent religious reforms. Supported by King Charles I, Archbishop Laud had pushed a policy of “beautifying” churches, enforcing strictly hierarchical forms of worship, and exalting the clergy. These Laudian reforms had some support, but plenty of people – especially in the more religiously radical areas near London – saw them as authoritarian, and too close to Catholicism. Passing through villages around London and in the rolling cornfields of rural Essex, Duck was accosted by jeering crowds. Parishioners, youngsters and “amazons” (angry women) jostled his entourage and chanted against him and Bishop Juxon. When some of the rioters that assailed Duck in London were prosecuted in Convocation House next to S…

https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/05/BAL294092webready-766d59d-e1683639001637.jpg
width: 607
height: 406

Century of chaos: people & power in the 1600s
type: item
date: 2023-04-12T06:49:30.000Z
creator: Dr Jonathan Healey
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Stuart
description: Jonathan Healey delves into the turbulent 17th century, which witnessed not only regicide and civil war, but also the political awakening of society as a whole
encoded: The 17th century was a turbulent time for England, overshadowed by a civil war, a coup and a regicide, not to mention the looming threats of terrorism, plague and witch panics. However, in the coffee shops and on the street corners of growing cities, the common people finally had their voices heard – and those voices were loud. Speaking with Emily Briffett, Jonathan Healey illuminates a revolutionary society that helped forge modern Britain. Jonathan Healey is the author of The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England (Bloomsbury, 2023) Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Waterstones Related content: Taxing the rich to feed the poor in the 17th century: the world's first welfare state What sparked the Civil War?

Pod-Jonathan-Healey-WL-939ca1f.jpg
width: 620
height: 413

Taxing the rich to feed the poor in the 17th century: the world's first welfare state
type: item
date: 2019-08-08T06:26:59.000Z
creator: Dr Jonathan Healey
subject: Elizabethan
subject: Membership
subject: Stuart
subject: Period
description: In Queen Elizabeth I’s reign, parliament took a radical decision: to force the wealthy to support their impoverished neighbours. The result, writes Jonathan Healey, was the world’s first national welfare state, releasing thousands from the grip of starvation
encoded: In the summer of 1674, Jane Shaw left her tiny hamlet of Thrang, and headed south. She passed through the green pastures of north Lancashire, skirting the edge of the sandy expanse of Morecambe Bay. Arriving in Lancaster, she trudged up the hill to the castle – a medieval fortress and prison that stood solemn guard over the ancient town. She passed through the tall, forbidding castle gates, and waited her turn. For she had come to attend court, and she had come with a petition. She was, she said, a poor widow, left in debt by her late husband. She had five children; some were too little to look after themselves, others were unable to find work. If she wasn’t given support, she claimed, then she couldn’t maintain her family “in any comfortable manner”. Seven of her neighbours added their names. Amazingly, Shaw’s petition survives. Although she almost certainly didn’t write it, it allows her to tell her story, or at least a version of it: a story of poverty, hardship, and the difficult life of a single mother in an unforgiving world. But she got her dole. A note at the bottom of the petition, added by a clerk of the court, gives the details: she was to receive 12 pence a week. It was probably enough to ensure she survived. Shattered charity The origins of the English Poor Law, the system to which Jane Shaw turned for support, lay well before 1674. Perhaps the first piece of the jigsaw was the development of an idea, from the late Middle Ages, that the state should work to improve society – that it should have a social policy. The Reformation was another factor: the monasteries had provided charity, and the chantries and gilds (abolished under Edward VI) had supported hospitals, schools and almshouses. It’s been estimated that half of these foundations collapsed as a result of the Reformation – an irreversible shattering of the medieval landscape of charity. 10 terrible taxes in history What did Magna Carta mean to the English in 1215? Worse was to come. In the 16th ce…

Woodcut-c181ff4.jpg
width: 1024
height: 678

What sparked the Civil War?
type: item
date: 2018-07-12T05:00:47.000Z
creator: Dr Jonathan Healey
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Stuart
description: Was it religious turmoil? Financial meltdown? Or Charles I's seemingly unique ability to alienate his subjects? Jonathan Healey reveals what really propelled king and parliament into conflict in the 1640s
encoded: Was it religious turmoil? Financial meltdown? Or Charles I’s seemingly unique ability to alienate his subjects? Jonathan Healey reveals what really propelled king and parliament into conflict in the 1640s Late on 10 January 1642, King Charles I, his queen and his eldest three children left the palace at Whitehall and slipped quietly into the night, away from London, away from Westminster and away from parliament. Arriving at Hampton Court, they found it unprepared, so they slept – the five of them – all in one bed. Charles wouldn’t see London again for seven years. The next few months were given over to preparations for war. Charles’s wife, Queen Henrietta Maria, was told to pawn the crown jewels and sail to the continent to raise money. In April, Charles tried to seize the arsenal at Hull, but was rebuffed by its governor. In the summer, he issued ‘Commissions of Array’, ordering his people to muster and fight his enemies. Finally, on 22 August, on a rainy day in Nottingham, King Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland raised his royal standard to call his people to arms. He had declared war on his own parliament. Charles had, in fact, seen all this coming. The slide to war had started in Scotland. The Stuarts were of Scottish origin. Charles had been born in Dunfermline Palace, in 1600. But before his fourth birthday, he moved to England. The northern kingdom had become profoundly alien to Charles. Scotland and England were still separate states, had separate parliaments, and crucially had separate state churches. The Reformation in Scotland had taken a more radical turn and, to many Protestants, its Kirk was among the most advanced churches in Europe. Managing these two churches required diplomatic panache, not Charles’s fabled stubbornness. He desired uniformity in his realms and so, in 1636, he tried to bring the Kirk in line, imposing on it a new, Englishstyle Prayer Book. The first real trouble came on 23 July 1637: James Hannay, dean of Edinburgh, tried t…

18104-1aa8055.jpg
width: 9449
height: 6282