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The lie of succession: did James I steal Elizabeth I's crown?
Did James I ‘steal’ Elizabeth I’s crown? Tracy Borman considers evidence that the transition from Tudor to Stuart dynasties may not have been quite as seamless as we’ve been led to believe
Richmond Palace, 22 March 1603. Elizabeth I – the self-proclaimed Virgin Queen who had ruled England for 44 years, seeing off the Armada, healing religious divisions and creating a court so magnificent it was the envy of Europe – lay dying. Her anxious advisers clustered around her bedside, urging her to do the thing she had resisted throughout her long reign: name her successor. Rousing herself from her stupor, the 69-year-old queen declared: “I will that a king succeed me, and what king, but my nearest kinsman, the king of Scots?” Wanting to make completely sure, her chief minister, Robert Cecil, asked whether that was her “absolute resolution” – to which she irritably retorted: “I pray you trouble me no more, I’ll have none but him.” That “kinsman” was James VI of Scotland, son of Elizabeth’s old rival Mary, Queen of Scots. Her closest surviving blood relative, he had emerged as the front runner in the race for the English crown. He had the support of Cecil and most of his fellow privy councillors, who had been working behind the scenes to smooth James’s path to the throne. The queen, too, had shown him favour, sharing the pearls of her monarchical wisdom during their 20-year correspondence, as if grooming him as her successor. But she had always flinched from actually naming him as such. Now, almost with her last breath, she had. Elizabeth died two days later – and the Tudor dynasty gave way peacefully to the Stuarts. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/GettyImages-544183312webready-e7c6f5b.jpg" width="3727" height="2485" alt="A portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots. She had the strongest blood claim to Elizabeth's throne, but her son would go on to be the next monarch (Image by Getty Images)" title="A portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots. She had the strongest blood claim to Elizabeth's throne, but her son would go on to be the next monarch (Image by Getty Images)" /> This dramatic depiction of Elizabeth’s last-gasp naming of the Scottish king as her heir is based solely on an account by the contemporary historian and antiquarian William Camden. He had begun writing his monumental work Annales: The True and Royall History of the Famous Empresse Elizabeth (first published in Latin in 1615) during Elizabeth’s lifetime. Camden was close to some senior members of the queen’s court, and had access to the voluminous state papers of her reign, so historians have relied on his manuscript as one of the most important and accurate sources for the period. However, none of those present at Elizabeth’s deathbed testified that she had spoken the words Camden quoted in his account, only that the dying queen had raised her hand to her head when James’s name was mentioned – an ambiguous gesture at best. Rewriting history Now, groundbreaking new analysis of Camden’s original manuscript by a team at the British Library has revealed that key passages were covered over and rewritten after Elizabeth’s death to make them more favourable to her successor. No fewer than 200 pages have been pasted in, 65 of which replaced original text with a new version. The use of imaging technology has enabled researcher Helena Rutkowska to see the words underneath for the first time in 400 years. Among the findings are that Elizabeth’s naming of James as her heir was a work of fiction, designed to make his accession appear more predetermined than it had been. In fact, she had been the only monarch in English history not to make provision for the succession. Read more | The Virgin Queen? Elizabeth I's forbidden love If this had been more widely known at the time, it might have had profound repercussions for the Stuart dynasty. Rather than welcoming James as the king to whom ‘Good Queen Bess’ had given her blessing, the people of England might have refused to accept him. After all, England and Scotland had been bitter enemies for centuries, with fleeting periods of peace cut short by the clash of arms or threat of invasion. And James was by no means the only candidate with a strong claim to Elizabeth’s throne. Holding on by his fingertips Camden had first been commissioned to write his history of Elizabeth’s reign in 1596 by William Cecil (Robert’s father), Lord Burghley – Elizabeth’s most trusted advisor, whom she dubbed her ‘Spirit’. It was not a task that the author had embraced with any alacrity, grumbling about the “piles and heaps of papers and writings of all sorts” that had been placed at his disposal. He made only a faltering start during Elizabeth’s lifetime and, as soon as she died, he quietly set down his quill, hoping that the idea would be forgotten. Fast forward to 1607 and James VI & I had been on the English throne for four years. The initially peaceful transition from Tudors to Stuarts had given way to turbulence and uncertainty, conspiracy and persecution, witchcraft and gunpowder. With the accession of England’s first Stuart monarch, everything had been transformed – from court culture to royal ceremony, religious tolerance to parliamentary authority, morality to witch-hunting. Two countries that had been fierce rivals for centuries were now forged into an uncomfortably united kingdom. The fleeting popularity that James had enjoyed as the “bright star of the north” had been extinguished, and he was holding onto his new crown by his fingertips. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/William-Camden-MMTP8W-a7d2cb2.jpg" width="938" height="1302" alt="A painting of a bearded man dressed in dark clothing with a grey ruff, sitting against a black background" title="A portrait of William Camden, based on a work of 1609, the year after James ordered him to finish his history of Elizabeth’s reign (Image by Alamy)" /> It was at this moment that James heard about Camden’s stalled biography of his predecessor, and spied an opportunity. To have a published account of Elizabeth’s reign – and, in particular, the succession – written by one of the most esteemed historians of the age would help silence any whispers of usurpation. If, that is, the author was prepared to write it to the king’s satisfaction. It was with good reason that Camden expressed reluctance when first approached by the king to restart his history of Elizabeth. Quite apart from the heavy burden of research it entailed, writing the history of a queen who, even in death, was eclipsing her unpopular successor was fraught with difficulty. Camden knew that James would not want an unbiased appraisal but one written in his favour. Only the previous year, the king had ordered an account of the gunpowder plot to be rewritten so that it was even more complimentary towards him. Restarting the history of Elizabeth was the very definition of a poison chalice, and Camden tried everything to avoid drinking from it. But James gave him no choice. At the king’s command, work on the book resumed in 1608. Camden was his subject to command, and the succession was his to rewrite. Reviving the queen By the time Camden again took up his quill, rewriting sections to James’s benefit, the cult of ‘Gloriana’ was already in full swing. Elizabeth’s former subjects were quick to forget that they had grown tired of “an old woman’s government” and had longed to have a king ruling over them. One contemporary reflected that, a few short years after Elizabeth’s death, “when we had experience of the Scottish government, then… in hate and detestation of them, the queen did seem to revive. Then was her memory much magnified.” It was not long before praising the last Tudor queen became a powerful weapon used to attack her Stuart successor. Donning their rose-tinted glasses, her former subjects harked back to a halcyon time when England had enjoyed decades of peace and prosperity, triumphed over the might of Spain, and was presided over by a glorious queen and her court. The anniversary of Elizabeth’s accession day, 17 November, began to be celebrated each year with “joyful ringing of bells, running at tilt, and festival mirth… in testimony of their affectionate love towards her”. Read more | Why was King James VI and I obsessed with witch hunts? But this sentimental reverence masked the intense uncertainty that had been generated by the persistent refusal of ‘Good Queen Bess’ to name her heir. It’s worth revisiting the history of this reticence and the concerns it had fomented among court and populace. On 10 February 1559 Elizabeth had told the first parliament of her reign that “in the end this shall be for me sufficient: that a marble stone shall declare that a queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin”. She then declared that God would provide for the succession and would name an heir “peradventure more beneficial to the realm than such offspring as may come of me”. This was all very well but, without the wisdom of hindsight, Elizabeth’s subjects had no idea that she would reign longer and more successfully than any of the other Tudor monarchs. Her three predecessors, Edward VI, Lady Jane Grey and Mary I, had reigned for six years, nine days and five years, respectively, and there was no reason to suppose Elizabeth would escape the ill health that dogged the Tudor dynasty. Indeed, nearly four years into her reign she almost died of smallpox. This catapulted the succession to the forefront of people’s minds and, once there, it would not be forgotten. “Now all the talk is who is to be her successor,” reported the Spanish ambassador, Bishop Álvaro de la Quadra, in 1562. Elizabeth’s determination not to name her heir was born of direct experience. Being heir presumptive during her sister Mary’s brief, bloody reign had placed her in great jeopardy, including a spell in the Tower under threat of execution. “I stood in danger of my life, my sister was so incensed against me,” she told a delegation from parliament in 1566 that had been sent to persuade her to settle the succession. Elizabeth feared that, as soon as she named her heir, the individual chosen would be the focus of plots and rebellions, just as she herself had been during Mary’s reign. “Think you that I could love my winding-sheet?” she demanded to an ambassador, likening a named heir to a shroud. Fierce rivalry In remaining tight-lipped about the succession, Elizabeth gave rise to fierce rivalry between the blood claimants to her throne. Principal among them were Mary, Queen of Scots and her son James VI; his cousin Arbella Stuart; Lady Katherine Grey and her descendants; Henry Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon; and the Infanta Isabella, daughter of Philip II of Spain. As Elizabeth’s reign progressed, most of the rival claimants fell by the wayside, either through natural death, disinheritance or execution. In the race for Elizabeth’s throne, it was less a case of ‘who dares wins’, more ‘survival of the fittest’. In 1600, the English government official and keeper of records Thomas Wilson opined: “This crown is not like to fall to the ground for want of heads that claim to wear it.” Although he admitted that it was “straightly prohibited” to discuss the succession, he went on to give an account of at least 12 people with some kind of claim to the English throne who, in his words, “gape for” Elizabeth’s death. Of these, eight were home-grown candidates and four were from overseas. James VI might have emerged as the odds-on favourite, but his accession was by no means certain. As her long reign wore on, Elizabeth showed through her subtle, steady guiding of the king of Scots that he was, if not her ideal candidate, then at least the best of a bad lot. In the years leading up to her death, she did as much as she could to secure the succession without placing herself in danger by naming an heir. For all the anxiety, intrigue and rivalry that this engendered, the wisdom of her policy was proved by the fact that, to her last breath, her personal power in England had not been challenged by any “rising sun”. But the ultimate success of Elizabeth’s plan depended on James following the advice she had drip-fed him over the years. And that is where it fell apart. It soon became clear that the king had paid only lip service to Elizabeth’s guidance, and proceeded to flout it altogether when he took her throne. He refused to “play the king”, as she had urged, by investing in the magnificence of his court and public appearances, and instead spent most of his time in private with just a handful of favourites. Parliamentary revolt More ominously, James had no intention of sustaining the delicate relationship between crown and parliament that had been the cornerstone of Elizabeth’s success. Instead, he stood firmly by the Stuart belief in the divine right of kings, which in his view gave him the right to ride roughshod over the wishes of his people and his parliaments. This soon sparked resistance from his new English subjects. After a series of bad-tempered exchanges, parliament refused to agree to James’s plan for a formal union between his two kingdoms. Undeterred, he announced that a shared currency would be issued – a 20-shilling piece known as the ‘unite’ – and commissioned a new flag, the ‘Union Jack’ (for Jacobus, or James). Thereafter, rather than working in partnership with his government, he abandoned it altogether, spending his days hunting and cavorting with his favourites. One contemporary noted that this was “the cause of indescribable ill-humour among the king’s subjects, who in their needs and troubles find themselves cut off from their natural sovereign”. Read more | King James VI and I: your guide to the first Stuart monarch of England Meanwhile, growing popular resentment against the king erupted in numerous conspiracies to remove him from the throne. In June 1603, just three months after his accession, the ‘Bye’ plot came to light, involving a group of Catholics who planned to kidnap the king and secure concessions for the practice of their religion. More serious was the ‘Main’ plot to oust James and replace him with his cousin Arbella Stuart. The most dangerous conspiracy of all came in 1605, when a group of Catholics led by Robert Catesby schemed to blow up the king and his parliament. It was only thanks to an anonymous tip-off that Westminster was searched by the royal officials, and Guy Fawkes was discovered with a huge cache of gunpowder beneath the Houses of Parliament just hours before he was due to light the fuse. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/GettyImages-51245104webready-cdc8473.jpg" width="2844" height="1896" alt="A black and white woodcut shows a young man kneeling down, being embraced by an older man, who is the king. Behind them, there is a group of men and" title="Prince Charles is welcomed by his father, James VI & I, in a 1623 woodcut. The second Stuart monarch of England took seriously the divine right of kings, and alienated his people and parliament (Image by Getty Images)" /> Lessons not learned All of this might have made James pause to consider that perhaps he ought to follow his predecessor’s advice after all. Instead, he doggedly continued his preferred style of monarchy, no matter the cost. Worse still, in preparing his son and heir, Charles, for the throne, James passed on none of the lessons that Elizabeth had tried to teach him. Charles would be a king in the mould of his Stuart father, not his Tudor predecessor. He took his divine right to even greater extremes than his father, and dissolved parliament whenever it refused to carry out his will. As Charles’s turbulent reign wore on, the spectre of uncertainty over the Stuarts’ right to the Tudor throne – uncertainly that, we now know was all too valid – was thrown into sharp relief. By 1642, he had pushed the supremacy of the royal will too far on both sides of the border. The kingdom was plunged into bitterly fought civil wars that culminated in Charles’s execution and the destruction of the monarchy. In the space of half a century, the crown that had glittered so brightly on Elizabeth’s head had been consigned to the flames. CONTENDERS FOR THE CROWN There was no shortage of people with designs on Elizabeth I’s English throne. But who had the best chance of success? The Scottish thorn Mary, Queen of Scots had the strongest blood claim to Elizabeth’s throne. She was the granddaughter of Henry VIII’s elder sister, Margaret, who married James IV of Scotland. As a Catholic, she enjoyed considerable support among those in England who opposed their queen’s Protestant faith. But Henry VIII’s will had barred his Scottish relatives from inheriting the crown of England. Furthermore, a law passed in 1350, during the reign of Edward III, decreed that “aliens” (those not born on English soil) could not inherit any land there. Nevertheless, Mary campaigned tirelessly to be named heir, and was executed for trying to take the English throne by force. (Contender rating: 6 out of 10) The front runner James VI of Scotland, son of Mary, Queen of Scots, succeeded to his mother’s throne when she was ousted from it in 1567. He also inherited her claim to Elizabeth’s throne, though Mary’s execution in 1587 threw that into jeopardy, because those related to a convicted traitor were tainted by association. In his favour was the fact that by the time of Elizabeth’s death he had a proven track record of ruling a kingdom and, even better, was male. He also enjoyed the strongest support within the English government, and the tacit support of Elizabeth herself – though Henry VIII’s and Edward III’s statutes meant that James’s accession in 1603 was technically illegal. (Contender rating: 7 out of 10) The arrogant orphan Like James, Arbella Stuart was the great-granddaughter of Henry VIII’s elder sister, Margaret, but had the advantage of being born on English soil. Team Arbella was also bolstered by the efforts of her two indomitable grandmothers, Lady Margaret Douglas (Henry VIII’s niece) and Bess of Hardwick, who promoted the claim of “poor orphan Arbella”. Arbella, though, was her own worst enemy. Haughty and arrogant, she alienated Queen Elizabeth, and her unstable temperament made her ill-suited for the throne. During James’s reign, she secretly married another blood claimant, William Seymour, grandson of Lady Katherine Grey (see below), and spent the rest of her life a prisoner in the Tower. (Contender rating: 5 out of 10) The marrying type Henry VIII had decreed that, in the event that his three children died without issue, the crown would pass to the descendants of his younger sister Mary. This gave Katherine Grey (Mary’s granddaughter) and her descendants the strongest legal basis for their claim, strengthened by the fact that Edward VI had made the Greys his primary heirs. Katherine sought to boost her chances further by secretly marrying Edward Seymour, the nephew of Henry VIII’s third wife, Jane Seymour. But this backfired: Elizabeth condemned Katherine to life behind bars, and had her two sons declared illegitimate. However, they and their descendants continued to be seen as strong contenders for Elizabeth’s throne for years afterwards. (Contender rating: 6 out of 10) The "nearest in blood" Lady Margaret Stanley was the daughter of Eleanor Brandon, younger daughter of Henry VIII’s sister Mary. Margaret alleged that her cousins were debarred from the succession because of Lady Jane Grey’s treason, leaving her next in line by Henry VIII’s will and “as the nearest in blood… legitimately of English birth”. Also in her favour was the fact that she had two living sons, Ferdinando and William. She was, though, Catholic. (Contender rating: 4 out of 10) The uninterested Yorkist Henry Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon was of the old Yorkist line. His great-great-grandmother was Lady Margaret Pole, niece of King Edward IV. His grandfather had for a time been a close personal friend of Henry VIII. In stark contrast to all the other contenders, though, Hastings showed no interest in the crown, and spent his life in loyal service to Elizabeth. Still, she didn’t trust him, and it was only after years in the political wilderness that she finally appointed him to office. (Contender rating: 5 out of 10) The Spanish princess When his own attempts to seize Elizabeth’s throne by force failed, Philip II of Spain promoted those of his daughter, the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia. She was said to be “of the ancient blood royal of England” through her mother, Elisabeth of Valois. As such, she was a legitimate descendant of John of Gaunt, the fourth son of Edward III, whereas the Tudors were descended from his illegitimate line. But the people of England were notoriously xenophobic, viewing even James of Scotland as an “alien”, and unlikely to ever accept a Spanish queen. (Contender rating: 3 out of 10)
Jonathan Healey: “A connection was made between the rarefied world of the royal court and the politics of the street”
Jonathan Healey tells Ellie Cawthorne about the dramatic moments that sparked the breakdown of Charles I’s relationship with parliament and the outbreak of the Civil War
Ellie Cawthorne: Why was the winter of 1641–42 such a pivotal time in British and Irish history? Jonathan Healey: In the heart of that winter came one of the most iconic moments in English political history. On 4 January 1642, angry at dissent from parliament, King Charles I marched down to the House of Commons and tried to arrest five MPs. I wanted to tell the backstory of that dramatic, divisive moment. The lead-up had been a really intense period of political strife, popular protest and gradually growing disorder, all of which fed into a very frightening political crisis. Afterwards, the country descended into civil war. Often when we read books about great revolutions or political events, we look at the deep, long-term causes. However, though that’s important, we also need to recognise trigger moments. Day-by-day or minute-by-minute, it’s often incredibly difficult to see which way things will go – but, as a historian, it’s important to immerse yourself in those turning points. Can you give us a sense of how parliament functioned at the time? In the early 17th century, parliament didn’t sit regularly – it was called only when the king needed it. Its role was essentially twofold: to grant taxes, particularly for war, and to propose legislation. That legislation would then get signed off by the king, which was how new laws were made. But increasingly, in the 17th century, parliament started discussing issues of high politics such as foreign policy. In the view of the king, this went beyond its remit – monarchs in this period believed that they alone had the right to decide on foreign policy. However, because they represented the taxpayers who had to pay for the wars, members of parliament felt that they should have a say. That created a flashpoint. In the 1620s, a series of conflicts had erupted between parliament and the monarchy over issues such as tax, religion and the crown’s right to imprison people without charge. The relationship between king and parliament had broken down. Understandably peeved at this situation, Charles decided that, as far as possible, he would rule without parliament. However, over that period of personal rule, a series of serious grievances and difficulties emerged. Read more | "Tyrant, traitor, murderer and public enemy": was Charles I really that bad? When Charles was forced to call parliament again in 1640 because of a rebellion in Scotland, all of these issues came back to the fore, and there was a sudden ferment against royal rule among MPs. By November 1640, the beginning of the so-called ‘Long Parliament’ saw a broad consensus for reform and an intention to get rid of some of the perceived abuses of the previous 11 years but, over the next 12 months, the reformists pushed things too far. They argued for reform of the bishops, and began to engage with a much broader political constituency – both of which were controversial moves. By the beginning of winter 1641, a backlash against these reformists had started. Would these tensions have emerged regardless of the monarch, or was there something about Charles in particular that antagonised parliament? There were lots of things about Charles that antagonised people. He had a preference for a High Anglican form of worship, which many people in England didn’t like very much. Above all, though, he was someone who really liked order, traditional social hierarchies and the aristocracy. He didn’t like bottom-up political engagement when it came to the church, and he definitely didn’t like it when it came to the state. That view was not unusual at the time: lots of people were worried about popular protest and the perceived dangers of the mob – that was one of the factors that led them to rally around the king. But Charles took this view to quite an extreme level. The other thing that proved difficult about Charles’s personality was his innate sense that, as king, he was right. He thought that the choice of methods he employed to get his way didn’t matter as much as the end result – and that created a sense of fear about what he might be willing to do next. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/08/MNXB20cmyk-4ed0c59.jpg" width="1158" height="772" alt="A man in black clothing stands against a dark background. He has shoulder-length grey hair and a goatee and wears a black hat" title="Sir Edward Nicholas asked Queen Henrietta Maria to identify key players who might join a royalist party supporting the king – ultimately, to no avail (Image by Alamy)" /> Who were the other key figures at the time, and how did they swing the pendulum? Charles’s queen, Henrietta Maria, was a really important operator behind the scenes. By the end of 1641, one of Charles’ administrators called Sir Edward Nicholas (imagine a Thomas Cromwell-type figure but with a bigger diet) was trying to pull together a royalist party, but he didn’t know the key aristocrats. So who did he go to? The queen, because she knew everyone. On the parliamentarian side, there was John Pym. He was an incredibly sophisticated operator – a real political magus – but some of the tactics he used in parliament were incredibly devious and cynical. On 1 December 1641, a great list of grievances and demands called the Grand Remonstrance was presented to Charles. It was passed by parliament, albeit by the skin of its teeth, but Pym and his reformists failed to secure agreement to get it printed. So, in the Commons a few weeks later, proponents of the Grand Remonstrance waited until late, after a lot of the royalists had gone home. With the members struggling to see by candlelight, they suddenly introduced a motion to overturn the earlier vote and have the Grand Remonstrance printed. And the strategy worked – it was devious, but clever. We’re all familiar with that kind of political tactic today, but that was the first instance when we can really see it in action. It feels like something out of a 21st-century political drama... Yes, or The Thick of It [Armando Iannucci’s acclaimed 2005–12 spin-doctor television sitcom]. After all these years of tension, what was the spark for the events of 4 January 1642? Up until that point, Charles had been regaining the initiative. He was building up a royalist party, and there was a real possibility that he would be able to command a majority in both houses. He’d given a proclamation summoning back to Westminster all of the MPs who’d gradually drifted home because they were fed up of sitting in parliament. The theory was that these were moderates and royalists, and that their return would stifle the simmering trouble. However, street protests prevented the bishops (who were all royal appointments) from attending the House of Lords, and the balance tipped. By around 28 December 1641, Charles had lost the majority in both houses. He felt he had to do something to slow things down – to disrupt things. For a long time, Charles had wanted revenge against certain key players he thought had stabbed him in the back at the time of the Scottish rebellion. So he had his attorney general draw up prosecutions against five particularly troublesome MPs and one member of the House of Lords. Read more | The siege of Basing House: how the Civil War was won How did things unfold on that fateful day? News of these intended prosecutions had emerged on 3 January 1642, so parliament was incredibly tense the following morning. Everyone was very worried, and a lot of shops in London were shut. But lunchtime came and went with no developments, so parliament started sitting again for the afternoon. Meanwhile, after pacing about the whole morning, in the mid-afternoon the king suddenly appeared from Whitehall Palace and commanded a group of soldiers to follow him. After requisitioning a coach in a ‘follow that taxi’ moment, Charles arrived at Westminster with around 500 armed men. A group of about 80–100 of those men climbed the stairs and banged on the door of the House of Commons. The debate stopped, and the king entered; the MPs all stood and removed their hats. Charles then told the speaker, William Lenthall, that he had arrived to arrest the five members, asking where they were. There was silence. The missing MPs had been warned about what was going to happen by Lucy Carlisle, a courtier close to the queen – and it became clear to Charles that they weren’t there. Then followed a key moment: Lenthall declared that he couldn’t help Charles, because he was just the voice of the Commons. Essentially, he was expressing the point that, despite having been appointed by the crown, he was there to represent the people, not the king. Extremely angry, Charles stormed off, followed by the soldiers. It was a really dramatic moment that could so easily have ended in a massacre. Was this a ‘crossing the Rubicon’ moment in the lead-up to civil war? A lot of people said so at the time, and I do think that Charles took things too far. His action was quite clearly an armed threat against parliament. But the crucial thing about this incident is that it destroyed a huge amount of trust in the king. The parliamentarians saw Charles gathering soldiers around himself, and concluded that they couldn’t trust him – they needed to be able to protect themselves. So they decided to take control of the county militia. They passed a bill to make this happen, but it wouldn’t become law unless it was signed off by the king – and of course the king was never going to sign this bill. Parliament was then forced to argue that their bill had legal force anyway. That led to a constitutional fissure: in a state of emergency, could parliament legislate without the king? This became the dividing issue. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/08/0088128-Topfoto-e6c9fae.jpg" width="1041" height="694" alt="A painting shows Charles I standing under a large arched doorway. He is dressed all in black with a white collar. Standing around him is a large group of people, including a priest dressed in red robes. In the background, there are several large buildings" title="Charles I leads armed followers into the Commons on 4 January 1642 on a fruitless mission to arrest five MPs – the moment that arguably sparked the Civil War (Image by TopFoto)" /> How much was the wider public aware of what was going on in parliament at the time? Increasingly quite well aware, because this was an era when the politics of Westminster were becoming more accessible to those on the street. England was very well connected, people knew who their MPs were, and letters were flying back and forth across the country. Scurrilous pamphlets were published in long-running battles between reformists and royalists, and the first proper political English newspaper was also launched around this time [Head of Several Proceedings, first published by John Thomas in November 1641] – a kind of weekly digest of events in parliament. After his attempt to arrest the five MPs on 4 January 1642, Charles was passing through St Paul’s when a radical parliamentarian journalist called Henry Walker ran up and threw one of these pamphlets into his coach. Called To Your Tents, O Israel, it implored the English people to resist tyrants – so you can imagine Charles’s response when he read it. In that moment, a great connection was made between the rarefied world of the royal court and the politics of the street. And it was that incident, more than anything else, that encouraged Charles to flee London. How was this all connected with events in Ireland? In late 1641, there was a massive uprising in Ireland, which was predominantly Catholic. A lot of Irish people were fed up with rule by English Protestants, but in particular they didn’t want to be ruled by English parliamentarian Protestants, who were especially anti-Catholic. It was a very violent rebellion, with atrocities committed in Ulster. However, reports of the violence were wildly exaggerated, creating a panic in England that there would be an Irish invasion, and that English Catholics would rise up. One of the immediate consequences of this intense paranoia was that someone in England had to raise an army to put down the rebellion – and neither parliament nor the king could trust the other side to do so. Eventually, an army was raised, but not before months of wrangling between king and parliament – and by the time it left, relations between the two were already descending into hostility. Did people sense that war was coming by this point? By the spring of 1642, I think there was a real sense that war was on its way. Records reveal that some ordinary people saw this as an opportunity to settle local scores. For example, one man in Salisbury basically said: “I’m going to support the king, and I’ve decided that my neighbour is for the parliament so, when the war comes, he’s the first person I’m going to bash on the head.” Read more | 8 reasons why the Civil War broke out Was there any way that the king and parliament could have found a compromise and avoided war? I don’t know if compromise is the right word. By early 1642, there was a group of very serious reformists who didn’t trust the king, and a king who hated them in return. It’s very hard to see how those two sides could have been reconciled. But what could have happened quite easily is that the day-to-day workings of politics could have gone the king’s way. Those reformist politicians could have been isolated, and found themselves in a sticky situation. Those people really did go through this political crisis on an absolute knife edge, with a real sense of dread that they could be prosecuted and beheaded. I think that dynamic of fear helped push things towards civil war. So I don’t think there could have been a compromise as such, but there might have been a different outcome. There were lots of moments when things could have gone in another direction. One potential counterfactual could ask: what might have happened if, when Charles got to parliament, the five MPs were still there and decided not to go quietly? You would have seen a gang of about 100 angry cavaliers, all with pistols, trying to drag people out of parliament. Would that have ended peacefully? Probably not. Did this era determine how the relationship between parliament and royal rule played out in the longer term? When the Restoration of the monarchy happened in 1660, interestingly it was the settlement of late 1641 that was restored. What happened in 1642 was a parting of the waves, with the radicals on the parliamentarian side headed in a much more constitutionally extremist direction. That was jettisoned after the Restoration, and parliament instead returned to a reformed position. But there were also lots of long-term consequences of this period. It emphasised the importance of the crown working with parliament, rather than being antagonistic to it. In the later 17th century, there were very few periods where parliaments weren’t held – parliament had become an accepted part of the constitution in a way that it hadn’t been before. So that turbulent era is part of the reason why the UK became the constitutional monarchy it is today. Jonathan Healey is associate professor in social history at the University of Oxford. His previous book is The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England (Bloomsbury, 2023) This article was first published in the August 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
How to build a radical: what the Gunpowder Plot can teach us about extremism today
The experiences that shaped Guy Fawkes and his Gunpowder Plot co-conspirators into violent extremists seem all too familiar today. Lucy Worsley tells a story of religious clashes, state-sanctioned torture and comrades-in-arms willing to die for the cause
Towards the end of 1605, a man was being interrogated in a smallish building deep within the fortress of the Tower of London. It was here, in the most secure place in Britain, that the state dealt with its enemies. This particular enemy of the state was named Guy Fawkes. The records of that interrogation are today among the treasures of the National Archives, and going there to film them for the new series of Lucy Worsley Investigates was an unbelievable thrill. It’s evident that a secretary recorded Fawkes’s words, and that the conspirator was asked to sign his name to verify that the record was accurate. On one page, his signature is clear and confident: Guido Fawkes. Two days later, though, his name is no more than the faintest of scrawls. Historians generally agree that this difference is because, in the time between scribbling the two signatures, he’d been tortured and had lost the use of his hands. A few weeks later, he would also lose his life. Guy Fawkes and his Gunpowder Plot conspirators It’s quite extraordinary to think that, 400 years later, this tale of violence has morphed into an annual occasion for family-friendly fun. The reason for lighting bonfires and fireworks on the fifth of November is now largely forgotten. Technically, we’re celebrating the foiling of a plot against King James VI & I, planned by Catholic extremists whom many would call terrorists. Read more | Remember remember the 5th of November: why Bonfire Night is a 400-year-old political hot potato If you step off a London Underground train at Charing Cross, you can admire an enormous tiled image of the gunpowder plotters that takes up the whole height of the platform wall. Seen by thousands of commuters, tourists and schoolkids on a London day out, the image of the conspirators – with their tall hats, flowing locks and furtive body language – makes them look like a rather stylish rock band. But with violence and religious extremism wreaking havoc round the globe today, it seems timely to revisit what might be mistaken for a cosy old story of plots and plotters. Because when we compare our knowledge of radicalisation in the modern world with what happened to Fawkes and his fellow conspirators, many similarities become clear. Perhaps because the name of Guy Fawkes is so well known today, many people don’t realise that he wasn’t the most significant of the conspirators. The plot’s mastermind was actually a Warwickshire gentleman called Robert Catesby, whose role has been rather overshadowed by the dramatic circumstances of Fawkes’s capture and subsequent torture. What the Charing Cross tube picture does do accurately is give the sense that the group felt a strong social connection – like a band of brothers, which some of them were, literally: among the conspirators were two sets of siblings, including Christopher and John Wright. Read more | Why did the 1605 gunpowder plot fail? 9 big questions about the conspiracy to blow up parliament They were among Fawkes’s fellow plotters who had known each other during their childhoods in the city of York. There, the Catholic faith was alive and well – and subject to intense persecution – in the later years of the reign of the Protestant queen Elizabeth I. Guy was himself baptised a Protestant in 1570 but in his teens, it seems, he embraced Catholicism with all the fervour of a convert. His journey towards radicalisation could have begun as early as 1586, when he may have witnessed the appalling public execution of a York woman, Margaret Clitherow. Having been caught sheltering priests of the outlawed Catholic faith, she was crushed to death with heavy weights. In the eyes of her fellow Catholics, her death turned Margaret into a martyr. A brown and shrivelled hand, purportedly one of Margaret’s, is venerated today in the Bar Convent in York as a holy relic. It seems likely, then, that Fawkes and the Wrights would have realised early on that life would not be easy for them unless they gave up on Catholicism – or on the government. Guy Fawkes: an extremist abroad In his early twenties, Fawkes made a big life change. He sold his possessions near York and travelled to mainland Europe to fight as a paid soldier for the Catholic cause. Many modern-day extremists make similar life choices. Learning the trade of warfare abroad, surrounded by young men with the same beliefs and removed from the calming influence of family and community at home, the world view of a soldier fighting in the name of faith often narrows to black and white. Jason Burke, The Guardian’s international security correspondent, knows all about this process. An extremist fighter, he explains, is ‘best’ trained over several weeks in a special camp. It’s vital to prevent the wannabe soldier from going home each evening to see mum. Read more | Guy Fawkes “is like a modern-day jihadist,” says counter-terrorism expert In Europe, Fawkes was soon on the payroll of Catholic Spain, learning skills that would, in time, make him attractive to the plotters. In particularly, he became familiar with gunpowder and explosions. Meanwhile, another young man was also being radicalised – Robert Catesby, whose idea it later was to blow up the House of Lords in order to kill the king, some of his family, his members of parliament and the whole seat of power. Catesby had long been dissatisfied with the way England was governed. Under Elizabeth, his family had paid the fines exacted for refusing to attend Protestant church services. More dangerously, he got himself caught up in the Essex Rebellion of 1601. This wasn’t specifically a Catholic plot but, rather, involved a grouping of disaffected people of various stripes who aimed to change the power constellations at court. That uprising was unsuccessful, and Catesby was forced to pay a huge fine for his part in it. Then, in 1603, Elizabeth died and James VI of Scotland inherited her crown. It seems that Catesby had high hopes of the new regime. England under James VI & I The new king knew that his succession as James I of England might well be challenged – so, being a clever politician, he tried to appeal to a wide base of potential supporters in England, hinting strongly that he’d be more sympathetic than Elizabeth to those of his future subjects who were Catholics. After all, he had a Catholic wife, Anne of Denmark. When James came to the English throne, though, those who knew him best perhaps weren’t surprised to find that the hinted-at new policy of tolerance never materialised – quite the opposite, in fact. Catesby and other Catholics were chagrined to find the new king proclaiming in parliament that he was never going to tolerate their religion. Another staging post on the journey towards direct action was passed. Catesby did not know Guy Fawkes at this stage, but they had one key thing in common: Fawkes’s new friends, the Spanish. Spanish archives contain correspondence from Fawkes, reporting from the European mainland on what he understood about the situation in England. The new king’s regime was not stable, Fawkes claimed, arguing that it was justifiable to use violence to promote the ‘right’ kind of religion. Fawkes was clearly ripe for recruitment as a Catholic conspirator. And so we come to vital documents for the history of the gunpowder plot: the records of the confessions made by the surviving conspirators after it was all over. I looked at one set, held at Hatfield House Archives, which take us right into the room during some of the plotters’ meetings, allowing us to overhear those dangerous conversations. Read more | Traitor or Faithful: British history's most notorious treason cases One of the conspirators, Thomas Wintour (sometimes spelled Winter), described the moment when Catesby told him that he’d thought of a way of restoring Catholicism to England. His idea was to blow up parliament on the day of its opening session, killing the king and all of the MPs who had passed unjust laws against Catholics. Chillingly, Catesby believed that those actions were reason enough for them to die. Catesby had a task for Wintour. He was to travel to Europe to find some “confident” gentleman – meaning one in whom they could have confidence – to act as the plot’s technician. He’d heard that a certain Guy Fawkes might be a suitable candidate – and one who also offered another important advantage. Having lived abroad for so many years, few people in England would remember Fawkes’s face. Catesby was already on the authorities’ radar, but Fawkes might walk down the street in Westminster without being recognised. To further obscure his identity, Fawkes also did something common in modern-day extremism: he adopted a war-name. He would now go by the moniker John Johnson. The failure of the Gunpowder Plot The plot was taking shape. After the planned explosion in Westminster, Catesby intended to take advantage of the chaos. With James’s regime in disarray, a great uprising would be launched in Catesby’s native Midlands, and Catesby would snatch James’s daughter, Elizabeth, to place her on the throne as a puppet queen. But time ticked on. There was a delay when the opening of parliament was postponed, and soon there were just too many people in on the secret. Then there was a leak. One plotter, anxious that Catholics present in parliament on the key day would also lose their lives, wrote an anonymous warning: the Catholic Lord Monteagle received a letter telling him not to attend. Read more | Alternate history: what if… the gunpowder plot had succeeded? This missive, known as the Monteagle Letter, made its way into the hands of the authorities, where it caused much concern. Was the threat real? Many questions remain about how much the authorities already knew at that point, but certainly an extra patrol was laid on in Westminster. As every schoolkid now knows, Fawkes was found hiding in a cellar with his dark lantern, his barrels of gunpowder and the fuse to ignite an explosion that would very likely have transformed Britain’s religion. Interrogation and torture of Guy Fawkes Captured and taken to the Tower, Fawkes next experienced something else still common worldwide: interrogation. I asked psychologist Laura Farrugia, assistant professor at Northumberland University, who helps to train police in carrying out ethical and effective interviews, to assess the techniques used on Fawkes. She noted that the initial questions posed by authorities at the Tower, who were accustomed to interrogating suspects, were concise, targeted, comprehensible. Whenever Fawkes knew or guessed that the authorities already knew the answers, he gave them freely. Read more | 9 places associated with Guy Fawkes and the gunpowder plot However, Fawkes didn’t name his fellow conspirators. So the king himself stepped in, drawing up a list of less-successful, more ‘clever’, complicated questions that would have been difficult and confusing for any suspect to answer. Unsurprisingly, this approach failed. Nevertheless, Fawkes did say something that provides perhaps the first and the last piece in the jigsaw of his radicalisation: he would not betray his friends. Extremists were, and are, social creatures. They rely on friendship and camaraderie. This, as well as their political and religious beliefs, keeps them going. The king ordered torture, and Fawkes did eventually crack. Ironically, though, the authorities didn’t need his information. They had followed other leads, tracking Catholics who had left London suddenly just before the attack, and eventually caught up with the key plotters in a safe house in the Midlands. Thomas Wintour’s confession recounts a scene, just before the authorities stormed in, that would have been romantic – if it were not acted out by men who’d been willing to take hundreds, if not thousands, of lives. They agreed to die together. And when the local sheriff entered, guns blazing, Catesby did just that, taking a bullet that killed him. Fawkes and a few other surviving conspirators were hanged, drawn and quartered in London. The plotters would perhaps have been mortified to know that their plot not only failed in its aims but even helped to secure James’s regime. It turned him into a survivor – someone with God on his side. He insisted that his personal achievement in defeating this plot be commemorated on its anniversary every year. Four centuries later, many Britons are still obeying him – even though most have forgotten exactly why. This article was first published in the January 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Why was King James VI and I obsessed with witch hunts?
The witch hunts that swept across Europe between 1450 and 1750 are one of the most controversial and terrifying phenomena in history, resulting in the trial of around 100,000 people (most of them women), a little under half of whom were put to death. Here, Tracy Borman explores the most notorious royal witch-hunter of all time: James VI and I...
A holocaust of their time, historians have long attempted to explain why and how the European witch craze that spread around Europe between the 15th and 18th century took such rapid and enduring hold. One of the most active centres of witch-hunting was Scotland, where up to 4,000 people were put to the flames. This was striking for such a small country, and was more than double the execution rate in England. The ferocity of the Scottish persecutions can be attributed to royal witch-hunter James VI and I. James’s obsession with witchcraft can be traced back to his childhood. The violent death of his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, seems to have inspired a dark fascination with magic. “His Highness told me her death was visible in Scotland before it did really happen,” related Sir John Harington many years later, being, as he said, “spoken of in secret by those whose power of sight presented to them a bloody head dancing in the air”. Two years after Mary’s execution, another dramatic event deepened James’s growing obsession with magic and witchcraft. In 1589 he was betrothed to Anne of Denmark, but she almost lost her life in a violent tempest when she set sail across the North Sea to meet her new husband. In an uncharacteristic show of chivalry, James resolved to sail across to Denmark and collect her in person. But on their return voyage the royal fleet was battered by more storms and one of the ships was lost. James immediately placed the blame on witches, claiming that they must have cast evil spells upon his fleet. As soon as he reached Scottish shores, James ordered a witch-hunt on a scale never seen before. No fewer than 70 suspects were rounded up in the coastal Scottish town of North Berwick on suspicion of raising a storm to destroy James and his new bride. Most of the suspects soon confessed – under torture – to concocting a host of bizarre and gruesome spells and rituals in order to whip up the storm. They included binding the severed genitalia and limbs of a dead man to the legs of a cat and then tossing it into the waves, whereupon “there did arise such a tempest in the sea, as a greater hath not been seen”. On another occasion, Satan himself was said to have appeared to the witches and “promised to raise a mist, and cast the king into England, for which purpose he threw into the sea a thing like a foot-ball”. They were swiftly convicted and put to death. Read more | Witches in the dock: 10 of Britain’s most infamous witch trials As soon as the North Berwick trials had ended, James commissioned Newes from Scotland, a pamphlet that relayed the whole saga in scandalised language aimed at intensifying popular fear of witches. But he did not stop there. With all the passion of a religious zealot, James set about convincing his subjects of the evil that lay in their midst. King James VI and I's Daemonologie In 1597 James became the only monarch in history to publish a treatise on witchcraft: Daemonologie (literally, ‘the science of demons’) was the result of painstaking and meticulous work on James’s part and must have taken years to complete. As well as to convince the doubters of the existence of witchcraft, the purpose of Daemonologie was to inspire those who persecuted witches with new vigour and determination. James described witchcraft as “high treason against God”, which meant that all manner of horrors were justified in wringing confessions from the accused. The fact that the treatise had been written by a king made it enormously influential. It is no coincidence that cases of witchcraft multiplied at an alarming rate in his kingdom thereafter. Upon the death of Elizabeth I in March 1603 with no direct heirs, her throne passed to James. When he travelled south to take ownership of his new kingdom, the king of Scots was dismayed to find that his English subjects were far from sharing his witch-hunting fervour. By the end of Elizabeth’s reign, the number of witchcraft trials and executions in England had declined significantly. There was also a growing scepticism about the existence of witches. This was anathema to the new king, who was determined to drown out all dissenting voices within his new kingdom. During the first year of his reign, Daemonologie was reprinted twice. This prompted a rash of similar pamphlets aimed at whipping up popular fear of witches. As part of a state-controlled printing industry, they became one of the most valuable means by which James and his government could manipulate public opinion. But these publications were just the tip of the iceberg as far as James’s crusade against witches was concerned. In his view, the English law was by no means strict enough in prosecuting the crime. Barely a year after his accession, James therefore ordered that the Elizabethan statute on witchcraft be replaced by a much harsher version. Until now, those who practised witchcraft were severely punished only if they were found to have committed murder or other injuries through their devilish arts. However, James wanted the practice of any form of magic to be severely punished, regardless of whether it had caused harm to others. The Witchcraft Act of 1604 The Witchcraft Act of 1604 made hanging mandatory for a first offence of witchcraft, even if the accused had not committed murder. And if the suspected witch was found to have the devil’s mark on their body, this was enough to condemn them to death. The act stipulated: “If any person or persons... shall use practise or exercise any invocation or conjuration of any evil or wicked spirit, or shall consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, feed, or reward any evil and wicked spirit to or for any intent or purpose... [they] shall suffer pains of death”. James’s determination to stamp out witchcraft in all forms was brutally apparent: “All manner of practise, use or exercise of witchcraft, enchantment, charm or sorcery should be from henceforth utterly avoided, abolished, and taken away.” James’s new subjects were eager to curry favour with him by echoing his hatred of witches. In the same year that the new Witchcraft Act was passed, Christopher Marlowe’s dark morality play, The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, was published. This had first been performed in around 1588, five years before the playwright’s death, and was one of the most shocking portrayals of witchcraft ever to be performed. Audiences were so aghast at the horrors that unfolded before them on stage that some claimed to have been driven mad by it, and on occasion real devils were said to have appeared on stage, “to the great amazement of both the actors and spectators”. As well as terrifying people into avoiding any dabbling with necromancy, the play also intensified their hatred and fear of witches. It can have been no coincidence that it was published in the very year that James I began his crusade against witchcraft in England. Other playwrights were quick to follow suit. Ben Jonson devised a number of masques for the entertainment of the king and his court. The ‘antimasque’ to his Masque of Queens included the presentation of a group of witches who represented “the opposites to good fame”. The playwright had clearly done a great deal of research, for he referenced a range of current and classical demonological works as his sources. He set out detailed instructions for the staging of the antimasque, describing the entering on stage of 11 witches “some with rats on their head; some on their shoulders; others with ointment pots at their girdles; all… making a confused noise, with strange gestures”. One of their number was “naked armed, bare-footed, her frock tucked, her hair knotted, and folded with vipers; in her hand a torch made of a dead man’s arm, lighted; girded with a snake”. How Shakespeare's Macbeth was influenced by King James's witch hunts But the most famous of all the literary works inspired by witchcraft, winning widespread acclaim in its day and ever since, was William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Deliberately short in length (James was known to have little patience for sitting through long plays), it is significant that the occasion of its inaugural performance was a visit by Queen Anne’s brother, the king of Denmark, in 1606, given that it was James’s voyage to his wife’s native land that had prompted his obsession with witchcraft. Shakespeare wove in several references to this voyage in the play, such as when the First Witch claims that she set sail in a sieve, just as one of the North Berwick witches was accused of doing. The line “Though his bark cannot be lost/Yet it shall be tempest-tossed” almost certainly alluded to James’s near-death experience in 1589. All the leaders of the English judiciary would have been present at this important state occasion, and this was exactly the sort of play that would inspire within them the same witch-hunting fervour as their royal master. The drama centred around Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, who murdered King Duncan to seize the throne of Scotland after three witches prophesied Macbeth’s succession. Whether the witches thus caused the overthrow of the natural succession or merely brought out Macbeth’s inherent evil was left to the audience’s imagination. Either way, the play both confirmed and introduced new elements to the stereotypical view of a witch, with her spells, familiars and inherent evil. It also spawned two of the most-quoted lines in English literary history: “Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.” Macbeth instilled fear among those watching that witchcraft was not just a satanic confederacy, but a conspiracy against the state. The latter notion was all too readily accepted in England at this time because the play was performed just a few months after one of the most notorious conspiracies in history: the gunpowder plot. Within the space of three short years, England had been catapulted from the ‘golden age’ of the Virgin Queen into one of the darkest and most dangerous periods of its history. This article was first published by HistoryExtra in 2016
Killers of the king: the men who dared to execute Charles I
"It would have been better to have let the king try to run and shot him in the back" – Charles Spencer talks to Matt Elton about his book on the men who tried and executed Charles I, and the vengeance wrought by the king's son Charles II on his return to England after the Civil War
What were the circumstances that led to Charles II returning from Europe? The lack of a strong leader following the death of Oliver Cromwell led the British almost to revert to default, thinking: ‘Well, we’ll have the monarchy back.’ So almost out of nowhere Charles II came back to England from Europe in 1660. He had given up hope, and nobody was paying him any attention apart from a few diehard royalists. But he was told that he would be allowed to return, so long as he conceded on various points – including not seeking vengeance against those who had fought on parliament’s side in the Civil War. He agreed, and returned to a tumultuous welcome. This was a problem for 50 per cent of the country, who had to pretend that they had never really meant to be parliamentarian. As a result, scapegoats had to be found: the regicides – the men involved in the trial and execution of Charles II’s father, Charles I. What impression did you get of Charles I and Charles II? My natural leanings would have put me on the parliamentarian side, so I considered the kings with critical eyes. I found Charles I to have been a very decent human being – intelligent, devout, but so weak. He always took the last word of advice, which is not good in a crisis such as a civil war. But, as is well known, he died bravely. So you have to admire him at the end, however much of a mess he made of the last 10 years of his rule. I’d always assumed that Charles II, meanwhile, was just a pleasure-loving man, albeit a fairly intelligent one. But he showed quite a focus when it came to revenge: he was still calling for the deaths of those responsible for his father’s demise right to the end of his life. I was worried that we wouldn’t be able to do justice to Charles II in the book’s illustrations, but we found a great portrait of him sitting in splendour on his throne, looking out at you with a rare steeliness. You think: ‘Yes, that’s the man.’ He had power he never thought he’d have, and he was going to use it. People who had upset him were going to suffer. Was there a genuine popular desire to see vengeance enacted? Some people were obvious targets. Thomas Harrison, for instance, had been a prominent figure under Oliver Cromwell and was known to have been unpleasant to Charles I in the final months of the king’s life. Many people saw him as a religious fanatic. He was a hated man who wouldn’t apologise for anything, and there was real excitement when he was taken to his execution. So at the start there was a thirst for revenge. But it quickly dissipated as people got to know Charles II better. When he sold Dunkirk to the French, he was seen to have betrayed public interest to fund his own extravagance. And as his stock fell, the thirst for the most vicious revenge fell away. Of the figures involved in Charles I’s trial, who particularly stands out? Henry Marten was a very interesting character. He was a scandalous womaniser and a genuine republican. Some people thought that they had to do something drastic to end a civil war that had cost some 200,000 lives, but others – including Marten – were philosophically determined to kill the king. He was a very intelligent lawyer, and put together the various constructs of the trial. For instance, he thought of the name of the body that would face the king: ‘the Good People of England’. That’s a very clever construct, because to take a king to trial you had to set up something fairly worthy. Obviously, Oliver Cromwell’s hand was everywhere in the run-up to Charles I’s trial. You can understand why people saw him as the mastermind: he was very keen to have the key people in place. But there was also Cromwell’s son-in-law, Henry Ireton, who I think of as a Peter Mandelson figure: he had a lot of influence but didn’t want it to be shown. What really intrigues me about this period, and this story in particular, is that there are so many gigantic figures. I don’t know of other parts of English history in which there was such a confluence of interesting people – and they tended to be on parliament’s side. They all came together in this unbelievably bold move to put a king on trial for his life. Their religious conviction was what made it okay for them to do this. You could contemplate killing a king if you believed that God expected you to. The regicides kept referring to a chapter in the Book of Numbers that essentially said that if you want to purify a country that’s had terrible bloodshed, you have to spill the blood of he who caused it. You can probably find a Bible verse to suit any occasion, but this is a very handy one if you’re thinking of killing a king. How did the men react when they realised they were being hunted? Some were disbelieving. Others thought that no more than a handful of people would be held to account. You have to remember that the Restoration happened so quickly that things unravelled for the regicides very fast. John Hutchinson, for instance, was a Nottinghamshire landowner who was very involved in the trial but pretended at the time of the Restoration that he wasn’t. He grabbed his chance and went to the House of Commons, and said that he had nothing to do with it. But he was undone by the fact that the parliamentarians had kept records of everything – down to who had been in charge of the committee choosing the cushions at Charles I’s trial – and he would go on to die in prison. About 28 others stood trial soon after Charles II’s coronation, thinking that they would be forgiven because they’d handed themselves in on time. Others knew that things were going to be very unpleasant. They were kept in incredibly poor conditions, manacled the whole time, and not allowed legal advice or even pens and paper. Others ran for it, to Europe and America, which turned out to be the right thing to do. The accounts of the trials and executions are extraordinary… Yes – it was clear what result was expected. The men arrived in a state of shock, because they didn’t know that the charge was going to be high treason. Because they’d had no legal advice, they quite logically said that they had carried out their actions on the authority of the highest power in the land at the time: parliament. Well, to hide behind that wasn’t considered a defence, and in fact was seen as aggravating the offence. So it was quick. You had to plead guilty or not guilty, and weren’t allowed to offer any justification. If you said guilty, that was the end of it; there was a chance that parliament might reprieve you, but it was unlikely. If you said not guilty – well, then you had to prove it later on. That was very hard, because the documents were there, with signatures on. You were guilty of high treason if you just thought about the king’s demise, so the fact that you’d actually signed his death warrant took it several stages beyond that. The accused were also undone by the well-meaning wife of one of the regicides, who had kept the execution warrant as proof that her husband was only obeying orders. Well, that has never worked as a defence through the centuries, and it handed the royalists this unbelievable document with the men’s signatures and seals all over it. The executions were terrible, too. A lot of these people were very serious fighting men, as hard as nails. Harrison, for instance, showed tremendous courage. After he had been hanged, resuscitated and castrated, and while he was being gutted, he managed to swing a punch at his executioner. The crowd thought that was magnificent, which it was. It was incredibly brave – and also very clever: it led to a quick death afterwards because the executioner was so humiliated. Did the accused stand a chance of avoiding death? They stood a chance of not being killed, yes, and of not having their property confiscated. That was one of the surprises in my research: how incredibly important the property side was. Now of course, I get it – no one wants their property confiscated – but this was an entire family’s wealth. Because men owned the wealth of a family, if a man had his property confiscated there was nothing left. By showing genuine sorrow and seeking a pardon you might spare your life, and you might just spare your property, but you were still going to prison for life. It was such a heinous crime; there was no way around that. Were there any accounts that made a particular impression? Two of the men who should never have been executed were the colonels who were on the scaffold when Charles was killed. There’s a very touching scene in which the two of them are on a wagon, and hug each other just before they’re killed. You can imagine being up there with your friend, thinking: this is really unfair. I kept coming across such stories that made me so upset. Some of these men were beheaded after they had surrendered on the guarantee of their life, and that’s just not okay. If you could travel back to this period, what question would you ask? It wouldn’t be very popular, because they were so religiously convinced, but I’d say to the regicides: you justified all of this with one verse in the Bible. Couldn’t you find another verse that says it’s really not okay to do this? If I were them – if I believed the king had to die – I personally think that they should have murdered him. They would have been better off letting him try to escape and shooting him in the back, as some parliamentarians planned. It wouldn’t have been noble, and I’m not saying murder is ever a great thing, but there was no chance of putting a king on trial successfully in that era – especially a king to whom you have sworn allegiance as an army officer or MP. They chose the one method that didn’t work: it was completely wrong for the job. Killers of the King: The Men who Dared to Execute Charles I by Charles Spencer (Bloomsbury, 352 pages, £20) This article was first published in the October 2014 issue of BBC History Magazine
Oliver Cromwell: the secret of his military genius
In just two years, Oliver Cromwell made the journey from little-known MP with no experience of armed combat to brilliant, battle-winning leader. Martyn Bennett, author of Cromwell at War: The Lord General and His Military Revolution reveals how a military novice became one of British history's greatest warriors...
In the early evening of 2 July 1644, two powerful armies faced each other across an expanse of wild meadow eight miles west of York. On one side was gathered a royalist force led by King’s Charles I’s German nephew, Prince Rupert, and the Marquis of Newcastle. On the other, occupying a ridge known as Bramham Hill, stood an allied army of parliamentarians and Scottish covenanters. At about 7pm, with a storm approaching and light slowly beginning to fade, the royalists decided that there was no prospect of a battle that day, and started to stack arms, find food and unsaddle horses. Yet, just as they began to settle down for the night, their enemies struck. On the western fringe of the battlefield, Lieutenant General Oliver Cromwell led three lines of horse regiments down from the hill towards the royalists camped on the low ground in front of them. The front line advanced at a trot, then a canter, a gallop and a charge. Each man was pressed up against his colleagues with his sword drawn, ready to smash into the enemy. Caught unprepared on rough ground, those royalists who had managed to mount their horses in an attempt to launch a counterattack were driven back. Read more: No Christmas under Cromwell? The Puritan assault on Christmas during the 1640s and 1650s 12 facts about the Stuarts <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2017/02/Christmas-Cromwell-62bb1cb.jpg" width="801" height="801" alt="Vintners in an ale house, 1642. From a broadsheet titled ‘Health to All’, artist unknown. (Photo by Historica Graphica Collection/Heritage Images/Getty Images)" title="Vintners in an ale house, 1642. From a broadsheet titled ‘Health to All’, artist unknown. (Photo by Historica Graphica Collection/Heritage Images/Getty Images)" /> As Cromwell introduced more men into the fight, the royalist right flank broke and began to flee. But not all the royalists had such a bad experience. On the opposite flank, they caused such chaos that the three parliamentarian commanders – Lord Fairfax and the earls of Manchester and Leven – fled, thinking the day was lost. However, so devastating was Cromwell’s attack that these royalist advances were to no avail. Parliament had won a famous victory. “We never charged but we routed the enemy,” he later wrote. “God made them as stubble to our swords.” Oliver Cromwell was well on his way to becoming the most powerful man in Britain and Ireland. Remarkable journey Oliver Cromwell’s battle-winning intervention at Marston Moor was remarkable enough in itself. But what made it even more extraordinary was the fact that, just two years earlier, at the outbreak of the Civil War between the forces of parliament and Charles I’s royalists, he was a little-known MP who had never taken up arms, let alone led men into battle. His journey from obscure country gentleman to great warrior is among the most remarkable in British military history. That journey began when Cromwell became MP for the Cambridgeshire market town of Huntingdon in 1628. The 29-year-old entered parliament at a fraught, feverish moment in its history, when Charles I’s relationship with his MPs was becoming increasingly strained. There’s a great deal we don’t know about Cromwell at this time, but it seems that he was alarmed by the Catholic drift of the king’s religious policy, and repelled by the notion of Charles’s personal rule (as the king chose to govern without recourse to parliament). It’s little surprise, then, that when war broke out between king and parliament in the summer of 1642, he was quick to join the parliamentarian cause under firstly Lord Grey of Wark and then the Earl of Manchester. Read more: Killers of the king: the men who dared to execute Charles I Charles I's lost paintings <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2017/02/Cromwell-Charles-0d9d214.jpg" width="799" height="799" alt="A painting depicting Oliver Cromwell gazing at the body of Charles I, after the execution of the king. (Photo by Museum of London/Heritage Images/Getty Images)" title="A painting depicting Oliver Cromwell gazing at the body of Charles I, after the execution of the king. (Photo by Museum of London/Heritage Images/Getty Images)" /> Cromwell began the war as a captain of horse, but it wasn’t long before his sharpness of mind – one that could quickly take in the nature of a landscape and the military opportunities that it provided – had won his superiors’ admiration (particularly during the Edgehill campaign of autumn 1642). In January 1643, with both sides seeking to promote proven soldiers to create regional officers, he was made a colonel. As a captain of horse, Cromwell had raised 80 men and chosen officers from his extended family or social and religious connections. His men were harquebusiers, the only heavy cavalry on the Civil War battlefield. Clad in a buff coat, a back and breastplate and a triple-barred lobster-tail helmet, they were armed with a heavy, straight-bladed sword and a short musket or carbine and two pistols. Now, as a colonel, Cromwell could turn his single troop of harquebusiers into a regiment by recruiting five more troops from scratch or amalgamating them from elsewhere. Self-help guides Contemporary military manuals suggest that it took years to acquire the experience and the skill to be a captain of horse – let alone a colonel. However, Cromwell had managed it in a matter of months. But how? Part of the answer may lie in the very manuals that insisted that his meteoric rise wasn’t possible. The late 16th and early 17th centuries was a boom time for such ‘self-help’ military guides, offering both personal and professional tracts on battlefield acumen. Military greenhorns like Cromwell could learn rapidly from texts such as John Cruso’s Militarie Instructions for the Cavallrie (1632), William Barriff’s Military Discipline or the Young Artillery Man (1635) and the Swedish Intelligencer, which gave accounts of large battles on the continent. Read more: 8 of Britain’s best battlefields Murder, conspiracy and execution: six centuries of scandalous royal deaths If Cromwell did indeed read these manuals, then it was soon paying dividends, for at a skirmish near Grantham in Lincolnshire in May 1643 – part of an ultimately vain attempt to capture or weaken the key royalist garrison at Newark, north-east of Nottingham – he used his learning to brilliant effect. At one point in the engagement, Cromwell found himself being chased towards Grantham by a force of royalist horse and dragoons. But then, having held an on-field council with Captain John Hotham, he decided to turn on his pursuers, using the so-called Swedish method. The parliamentarian horse advanced on their enemies, steadily increasing their speed to a charge. All the while, Cromwell’s front line was linked together, with each rider’s right knee lodged behind the left knee of the rider to his right. This formed a solid wall of horseflesh and armoured trooper at the point of impact. The royalists did not charge to meet Cromwell’s troops – instead “standing firm to receive us”, as Cromwell later wrote – possibly confident that their carbine and pistol fire would deflect the attackers and force them to swerve to the flanks. Their confidence was misplaced. “Our men charging fiercely upon them, by God’s providence they were immediately routed, and ran all away,” he later recalled. “His men then chased the broken enemy, inflicting most casualties during the royalists’ flight. Read more: Putting words into Cromwell’s mouth Podcast: Female spies of the Civil War era <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/09/Mouth-2-a4a13c0.jpg" width="800" height="800" alt="An accurate record of Oliver Cromwell's utterances is badly needed, says John Morrill. (Photo by Museum of London/Heritage Images/Getty Images)" title="An accurate record of Oliver Cromwell's utterances is badly needed, says John Morrill. (Photo by Museum of London/Heritage Images/Getty Images)" /> Under siege Cromwell met with similar success two months later while advancing towards Gainsborough, in an attempt to break a royalist siege of the Lincolnshire town. As the parliamentarian troops advanced along what is now the A156, they were met by several royalist horse regiments and dragoons or musketeers, led by Sir Charles Cavendish. Cavendish’s men were stationed on a plateau on top of what is now known as Foxby Hill, presenting Cromwell and General Sir John Meldrum with the prospect of launching an attack across steep and broken ground. It was a risky move. Had Cromwell’s men been forced back down the hill, they would have run into marshy ground near the river Trent. Undeterred, they went on the offensive anyway – with spectacular success. The royalists were unable to prevent Cromwell’s men from cresting the hill. (We know from the fatal injury suffered by royalist John Hussey that the shooting was at close quarters.) Now, with both sides having formed a battle order on the plateau, they started to charge each other. Cromwell’s account noted that the fight was protracted before the royalists began falling back and breaking up. There then followed a fast pursuit, but Cromwell kept tight control of part of his regiment: “[I] kept back my major, Whaley, from the chase, and with my own troop and another of my regiment, in all being three troops, we got into a body.” It was just as well he did, for Cavendish, employing his own reserve, attacked the parliamentarian reserve and was meeting with some success – until Cromwell rammed into them from behind. The royalists were propelled into a headlong plunge down Foxby Hill across the nearby Lea Road into the marshes beyond, where they became literally bogged down. Cavendish himself was killed as he foundered in the wetlands. Read more: What sparked the Civil War? 10 things you (probably) didn’t know about the Great Fire of London <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/09/Civil-War-2-976607e.jpg" width="800" height="800" alt="The battle of Marston Moor, the largest clash of the Civil War, depicted in a 19th-century painting. Preventing a slide into chaos required "diplomatic panache, not Charles's fabled stubbornness", writes Jonathan Healey. (Photo by A 16th-century portrait of Bess of Hardwick. Bess's talent, ambition and eye for a well-connected husband elevated her to dizzying levels of wealth and power in Tudor England. (Photo by Bridgeman Art Library)" title="The battle of Marston Moor, the largest clash of the Civil War, depicted in a 19th-century painting. Preventing a slide into chaos required "diplomatic panache, not Charles's fabled stubbornness", writes Jonathan Healey. (Photo by A 16th-century portrait of Bess of Hardwick. Bess's talent, ambition and eye for a well-connected husband elevated her to dizzying levels of wealth and power in Tudor England. (Photo by Bridgeman Art Library)" /> These were only minor battles and in no way did they change the course of the Civil War. The parliamentarian retreat from Newark continued after the fight at Grantham, and Gainsborough fell to the royalists within hours of the clash on Foxby Hill. Yet in both engagements, Cromwell demonstrated considerable foresight and ability. He understood the need to charge the enemy head-on and to keep up the pressure after the initial clash. He also showed that, while a bloody close-quarter pursuit is of great value in wrecking an enemy force, keeping a reserve and simultaneously retaining tight control of front-line troops were equally important. As well as being a brilliant tactician, Cromwell had a keen eye for strategy. Probably more than any other commander in the region, he recognised that possession of the royalist garrison at Newark was the key to regional control, and determined that those who worked with him were dedicated to the goal of capturing or at the very least neutralising it. He pressured superior commanders into taking a more aggressive line and, when they failed, he criticised them publicly. In doing so, he contributed to the reputational destruction of the Lincolnshire commander Lord Willoughby of Parham and eventually the Earl of Manchester himself, after he failed to tackle Newark in autumn 1644. It was harsh but Cromwell was right. Newark would act as a major bugbear right until the end of the war. While the royalist garrison there was active, no parliamentarian commander could turn his back on the area. Fierce loyalty Cromwell’s tactical acumen, strategic foresight and gifts as a leader of men (he demonstrated great care for his soldiers – troubling over their training, their pay and their wellbeing – and fought with administrators and paymasters on their behalf) made him a truly formidable opponent. By the time he was appointed lieutenant general of horse under the Earl of Manchester in 1644, all he needed was experience of a major battle. Marston Moor would provide him with exactly that. Early that summer, Manchester’s Eastern Association army joined Lord Fairfax and the Earl of Leven in besieging the Marquis of Newcastle in York. When Prince Rupert dramatically rescued the marquis on 1 July, the three besieging armies withdrew south-westwards before turning to face the pursuing royalists. When Cromwell and the Eastern Association horse arrived on the ridge of Bramham Hill, he saw that at the Tockwith end of what would be the battleground of Marston Moor, the royalists had begun to take possession of ground from which they could gain the upper hand over any force that positioned itself on the ridge. Despite facing artillery and horse regiments, Cromwell attacked and forced the royalists back onto the lower ground of the moor. At one stroke, he had ensured not only that the ridge’s western end was secure but that the royalists were at a disadvantage, confined as they now were to the lower ground. He also effectively defined the western end of the battlefield as abutting two tracks, one running north from the Tockwith to Long Marston road and one running south from it to Bilton. From here, Cromwell and the Scottish cavalry officer David Leslie led the allied army’s charge on the royalists’ right flank, an attack so devastating that it offset any success the royalists had on the battlefield. Cromwell’s intervention cost Rupert and Newcastle the battle. More crucially still, it forced King Charles to effectively abandon the north of England. Read more: Henrietta Maria: Charles I’s warrior queen 7 forgotten monarchs Podcast: Black British history and Charles I’s children Cromwell’s brilliance at Grantham and Gainsborough had forged him a formidable reputation – but on a regional level. Marston Moor changed all that. Now he was a national player – one who the 17th-century soldier and author Lionel Watson hailed as “the great agent in this victory”. Marston Moor had seen Cromwell build on the lessons of Grantham and Gainsborough. His success was based around careful use of the available landscape, tightly knit charges, a reserve force capable of delivering a second blow, and a front line able to remain in tight order even after hard-won victories. Oliver Cromwell would go on to even greater heights over the following years – most notably in the spectacular Worcester campaign of 1651. But it was the military insights honed on the battlefields of the east Midlands that set him on a trajectory to becoming Britain’s most brilliant general. Martyn Bennett is professor of early modern history at Nottingham Trent University and author of Cromwell at War: The Lord General and His Military Revolution. The countdown to Marston Moor The first 15 years of King Charles I’s reign were marked by growing disaffection across his kingdom at his religious policies – some Protestants feared that he intended to restore the Catholic faith to England – and his apparent determination to rule without recourse to parliament. By the early 1640s, the gulf between the king’s royalist supporters and his parliamentarian opponents had become a chasm, and conflict appeared inevitable. When war broke out, in August 1642, a broadly royalist north and west of England was ranged against a chiefly parliamentarian south and east. Neither side gained a decisive advantage in the early months of the war, with the first pitched battle – at Edgehill in Warwickshire – proving inconclusive. But in 1643, directing the royalist war effort from his base in Oxford, the king appeared to gain the upper hand, seizing Yorkshire and Bristol. Then, in the autumn of 1643, the tide turned again – the royalists were forced to raise the siege of Gloucester and the Scots threw their weight behind the parliamentarian cause. By the time two large armies lined up against one another at Marston Moor just outside York, on 2 July 1644, the scene was set for Oliver Cromwell to make an intervention that would all-but secure parliament the north of England. This article was first published in the February 2017 issue of BBC History Magazine
History quiz – witchcraft and superstition
How much do you know about the superstitions surrounding witchcraft in the 16th and 17th centuries? Historian Tracy Borman, author of new novel The King's Witch, puts your knowledge to the test
View Riddle on the source website How did you do? Share your result on social media to see how your knowledge of the history of witchcraft compares to other History Extra readers! Tracy Borman’s debut novel, The King’s Witch, is set in the court of King James VI and I and is published by Hodder & Stoughton on 14 June 2018.
From Nell to Meghan: 10 romances between actors and royals
On 19 May 2018, the American actress Meghan Markle married into British royalty when she wed Prince Harry in a ceremony at St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle. The wedding was the latest in a long tradition of romances between members of royal family and the acting profession. There are 10 such relationships from the 17th century to today, from all across the world – though not all of them ended happily…
Writing for History Extra, Catherine Curzon examines 10 famous relationships between actors and royals… Margaret ‘Peg’ Hughes (c1630–1719) Better known as Peg, Margaret Hughes holds the distinction of being one of the first recorded actresses to grace the London stage, appearing as Desdemona in Shakespeare’s Othello on 8 December 1660 at the Vere Street Theatre. Up until this point, women had been forbidden to act on stage at all, and it wasn’t until King Charles II issued a royal warrant declaring that female roles must be played by women in 1662 that actresses became a common sight, as opposed to young men dressed up to look like them. Peg was no young man though, and she not only bewitched her audience, but managed to steal the heart of Rupert of the Rhine, cousin to Charles II. Read more Royal wedding traditions through history: etiquette, menus and the dress code When royals marry 'commoners': a brief history <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/05/Elizabeth-II-wedding-2-5136340.jpg" width="1200" height="730" alt="The future Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, at Buckingham Palace following their wedding, 20 November 1947. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" title="The future Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, at Buckingham Palace following their wedding, 20 November 1947. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" /> After Rupert’s death in 1682, Peg gambled away much of his bequest to her and sold off many valuables, including a necklace which was bought by the infamous Nell Gwynne. Peg died in 1719, having never regained the lifestyle she once enjoyed. Nell Gwynne (1650–1687) Perhaps the most famous of all England’s royal mistresses, Nell Gwynne began her career selling oranges to the patrons of a theatre on London’s Brydges Street, Charles II’s royal playhouse. By the time she was 14 years old, Nell was treading the boards as an actress and she found her niche as a leading light of Restoration comedy, soon becoming one of London’s most celebrated comediennes. George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, was unofficially appointed to arrange suitably impressive lovers for Nell. Seeing a chance to increase his own influence as well as her caché, he attempted to install her as the king’s mistress. Though Charles was married to Catherine of Braganza, the queen had long since learned to put up with his many mistresses, recognising them as a fact of royal life. Nell was amenable to duke’s scheme, but informed him that she expected a retainer of £500 a year for the privilege. However, the role of king’s mistress was a privileged one, filled with luxury and opulence, and Charles had plenty of willing candidates to choose from – even without paying them £500. When he heard the figure Nell was demanding, Charles rejected the idea, but when he met her in 1668, he was smitten. Despite plenty of rivals and other mistresses snapping at her heels, Nell bore two children by the king. The actress and the monarch were a couple until his death in 1685, often sharing Nell’s silver bed, upon which the couple’s images were engraved. On his deathbed, the king begged “let not poor Nelly starve”, and she certainly didn’t. Awarded a fat payment, she lived on for two more years before she succumbed to a stroke, possibly the result of syphilis. Mary ‘Perdita’ Robinson (1757-1800) Mary Robinson knew all about reinvention. When her father abandoned his family in 1764, Mary’s privileged childhood ended with a bump. Married in her teens, she survived a spell in debtor’s prison thanks to her dissolute husband and took to the stage in a need for cash. Mary became known for her so-called ‘breeches roles’, in which she played men and flashed her famed legs, a part of the female anatomy that weren’t often on display in the Georgian era. It was as Perdita in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale that she caught the eye of the young and capricious George, Prince of Wales, the future King George IV. The prince offered Mary a huge payment if she gave up the stage to become his official mistress and she accepted. However, the money was not forthcoming and soon he had moved on to new lovers, leaving Mary high and dry. With her reputation in tatters, Mary took up her pen and began a new career as a poet and novelist, earning herself the nickname ‘the English Sappho’. Partially paralysed by a later illness, Mary died in 1800 aged just 43. Dorothea Jordan (1761-1816) While Prince George was romancing Mary, his younger brother William made a play for Dora Jordan, a celebrated Anglo-Irish comedienne with a long list of lovers in her past. William and Dora lived together as man and wife for 20 years and had ten children. However, the couple never married and – with Princess Charlotte of Wales likely to remain the only child of his elder brother and his bitterly estranged wife – William found himself closer to the throne than he had ever expected to be. Perhaps more importantly, William was desperately in need of money to settle his debts and knew that an official marriage might do wonders for his allowance. He dropped Dora with a bump and promised her an annuity and custody of their daughters on the understanding that she wouldn’t go back to the stage. Unfortunately, when her financial situation led Dora to return to the theatre, William kept his word. He took the girls from her care and slashed her allowance accordingly. Dora died in poverty in 1816 and left a heartbroken William to rue his decision. Ironically, even when he later made an official marriage, he and his wife, Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, failed to produce any surviving heirs. Marguerite Bellanger (1838-1886) Marguerite Bellanger was born into abject poverty but thanks to a modicum of acting talent and a whole lot of charm, she wouldn’t stay there. She started her performance career as an acrobat and equestrienne and soon progressed onto acting, while establishing herself as one of the most popular courtesans in Paris. Marguerite’s most famous patron was undoubtedly Napoleon III (the nephew and heir of Napoleon I), whom she met whilst sheltering from the rain in Paris’s Parc de Saint-Cloud in 1863. From that romantic beginning, the couple were together for a decade until his death and they had a son. Though Marguerite still had other lovers, Napoleon awarded her a generous pension and even a castle in which she and his son could live. After Napoleon’s death in 1873, Marguerite moved to England and married an army officer. The couple eventually settled in France and it was there, in 1886, that she died. Lillie Langtry (1853-1929) Anglo-American music hall star Lillie Langtry was a bona fide megastar of the Victorian and Edwardian era,and she had a love life that would keep any modern tabloid in material for years. As one of many mistresses to the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII), Lillie was even presented to his mother Queen Victoria. During their three-year relationship, Lillie was happy to share her lover with both his wife and his other mistresses, seeming to enjoy not being tied exclusively to the prince. Though the couple separated amicably, Edward wasn’t Lillie’s last royal fling. While still in a relationship with the Prince of Wales, she fell pregnant by Prince Louis of Battenberg(1854-1921). He was the son of Prince Alexander of Hesse and had been naturalised as a Briton, eventually changing his name to Mountbatten. Louis was a member of the Royal Navy, so when news of the pregnancy came out, the horrified Prince Alexander had his son sent to sea aboard the HMS Inconstant. The Prince of Wales, meanwhile, paid for Lillie to spend her pregnancy in Paris, where she gave birth to a daughter. Lillie died in 1929 and to this day her name remains synonymous with the glory days of the British music hall. Rita Hayworth (1918-1987) In 1948 Rita Hayworth, one of Hollywood’s most popular and celebrated actresses, gave up the silver screen for life as the wife of Prince Aly Khan. The prince was the son of Sultan Mahommed Shah, Aga Khan III, the Pakistani ruler of the Nizari Ismalis, one of the largest Shia Muslim communities in the world. Sadly for Rita, her new husband had a weakness for actresses and two years later he was back in the very club where he and his princess first met, this time romancing Hollywood star Joan Fontaine. Rita took their daughter, Yasmin, and filed for divorce, convinced that Aly Khan would abduct the little girl if she wasn’t kept under guard. The couple’s divorce was a tabloid favourite: as lawyers argued over whether Yasmin should be raised as a Christian or a Muslim, she played in the courtroom and even settled on the judge’s lap. Ultimately the court found in Rita’s favour and she was awarded custody of her daughter. Grace Kelly (1929-1982) <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/05/GettyImages-51613536-2570f82.jpg" width="4686" height="3154" alt="Prince Rainier of Monaco and American actress Grace Kelly (1929 - 1982) sit before the altar during their wedding ceremony at the Cathedral of Saint Nicholas, Monte Carlo, Monaco, April 19, 1956. Kelly's gown was designed by costume designer Helen Rose. (Photo by Thomas McAvoy/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)" title="Wedding Of Prince Rainier & Grace Kelly" /> As Hollywood royalty, Grace Kelly was beloved by cinema-goers across the world. Having earned an Academy Award for her performance in The Country Girl (1954), and starred in hits from High Noon (1952) to Rear Window (1954), it seemed the perfect fairy-tale ending when she married Prince Rainier III of Monaco in 1956. In fact, Princess Grace’s life was anything but a fairy tale. Her marriage at the age of 26 marked the end of her Hollywood career. She was forced to turn down the title role in Alfred Hitchcock’s psychological thriller Marnie (1964) when the people of Monaco reacted with outrage to the idea of their princess playing a criminal. Further rumoured returns to the screen were similarly rejected as a result of Rainier’s wish for his wife to remain in professional retirement. Instead, Grace dedicated herself to philanthropy and her three children. She also struck up a friendship with Diana, Princess of Wales. Sadly, Grace died at the age of 52 as a result of a car accident in 1982. Koo Stark (1956-present) <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/05/GettyImages-104171057-9b8a68a.jpg" width="3008" height="1960" alt="UNITED KINGDOM - JANUARY 27: Prince Andrew & Koo Stark, Hong Kong Fanancier Andy Wong And His Wife Pattie Throw Their Annual Chinese New Year Party. In Fancy Dress The Dress Code Was Mystery Vamp And Seduction And Most Of Londons Society Turned Up To A Mysterious Event In The Same Theme As 'Eyes Wide Shut' With Masked Young Women With Very Little On, As Prince Andrew Found Out.! (Photo by Dave Benett/Getty Images)" title="Andy Wong Annual Chinese New Year Party" /> Before he married Sarah, Duchess of York, Queen Elizabeth II’s second son Prince Andrew was known to date American photographer and actress Koo Stark. The prince and the actress met in 1981 and were together for two years. Their relationship came under intense public and press scrutiny, and the pressure of this ultimately caused the couple to go their separate ways. More recently, Prince Andrew became godfather to Koo’s daughter and the couple remain friends today. Clotilde Courau (1969-present) <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/05/GettyImages-2535601-b1092eb.jpg" width="3000" height="1954" alt="ROME, ITALY - SEPTEMBER 25: French actress Clotilde Courau looks over the shoulder of her new husband Emanuele Filiberto, the head of the Royal House of Savoy leave their wedding held at Rome's elite Santa Maria degli Angeli church September 25, 2003 in Rome, Italy. (Photo by Franco Origlia/Getty Images)" title="Johnny Halliday" /> In 2003, Vittorio Emanuele, Prince of Naples, had to swallow his pride according to Italian royal gossip, when his son, Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy, Prince of Venice, married politically outspoken left-wing French actress Clotilde Courau, a woman who had once been described by Rome’s La Repubblicanewspaper as “a militant anarcho-Communist". Unlike many of the other actresses in this list, Clotilde refused to give up her career but continued to act, while using her official title of Clotilde of Savoy to pursue charitable activities. Though the couple declared that they didn’t want to be treated as royalty but hoped to lead normal lives, Clotilde’s marriage to the grandson of Italy’s last reigning king continued the long history of relationships between members of the acting profession and royal houses. It is a tradition that will continue in Windsor this spring.
The treasures of Charles I’s art collection, which were sold off after his death on the orders of Oliver Cromwell, are to be reunited for the first time since the 17th century, at a Royal Academy of Arts exhibition. Assistant curator Lucy Chiswell tells Charlotte Hodgman what eight of these artworks reveal about the king
This article was first published in the January 2018 edition of BBC History Magazine A mythological masterpiece Cupid and Psyche by Anthony van Dyck, 1639–40 “Portraiture was perhaps the most common genre of art in 17th-century England, particularly at the royal court,” says Lucy Chiswell. “This was reflected in the career of Flemish artist Anthony van Dyck, who became court painter to Charles I in 1632.” Van Dyck created several portraits of Charles and the royal family. But his true artistic love was of the mythological and narrative paintings of the Italian Renaissance. So he would have particularly relished painting this interpretation of the legend of Cupid and Psyche for the Queen’s House at Greenwich. “This work is a beautiful mix of Italian and English influences,” Chiswell explains. “The oak tree that dominates the piece places the painting firmly in England, but the reclining nude, Arcadian landscape and billowing drapery is reminiscent of one of Charles and Van Dyck’s favourite Renaissance artists, Titian.” Cupid and Psyche is the only surviving mythological painting from Van Dyck’s employment as Charles’s court artist. It fetched £110 when the collection was broken up and sold off between 1649 and 1651. The human monarch Le Roi à la Chasse (Charles I in the Hunting Field) by Anthony van Dyck, 1636 This painting of Charles I at the hunt is arguably Van Dyck’s most personal portrait of the king. Set against a traditional English landscape, Charles has dismounted from his horse and looks directly out at the viewer. He is dressed for the hunt, rather than in full royal regalia, which makes him appear softer – an altogether more human figure. “Little is known about the provenance of this painting,” says Chiswell. “It is not listed in the inventory of artworks at Whitehall Palace, drawn up in 1639 by Abraham van der Doort, keeper of Charles’s pictures, so we don’t know where it hung. But we do know that it ended up in France. “Given its personal nature, it was perhaps painted for Charles’s wife, Henrietta Maria, who may have taken it to the continent when she fled England in 1644 during the Civil War.” The lure of the strong man The Triumph of Caesar: The Vase Bearers by Andrea Mantegna, c1485–1506 In the late 1620s, Charles I’s art collection was given a huge boost when he acquired a large proportion of Italy’s famous Gonzaga art collection. The works had been amassed by six generations of Mantuan dukes but financial difficulties forced them to sell many of the collection’s finest pieces. “The Triumph of Caesar – a series of nine canvases depicting the Roman statesman returning from an imaginary campaign – was considered the cream of the Gonzaga collection,” Chiswell notes. “Charles sent an agent to Italy and bought all nine pieces – as well as works by Raphael, Caravaggio, Titian and others.” Ownership of Mantegna’s masterpieces set Charles up as a true connoisseur of art and he became the envy of European collectors. But the purchase was not celebrated in England – for, while Charles was spending thousands on Gonzaga artworks, he was imposing a loan of £250,000 on his own people, following parliament’s refusal to grant him taxation in 1626. “Caesar was seen as the archetypal ruler and both the Gonzagas and Charles I attached a great deal of significance to Mantegna’s work,” says Chiswell. “The ceremonial scenes of elephants and trumpeters, chariots and crowds seem to have struck a chord with Oliver Cromwell, too, and so he retained them for the nation at the Commonwealth Sale. All nine will be on show in the Royal Academy of Arts exhibition, on loan as a full set for the first time.” Love at first sight The Supper at Emmaus Titian, c1534 This painting, which depicts Jesus breaking bread with two disciples after his resurrection, also came to England as part of the Gonzaga acquisition. It hung in the First Privy Lodging at Whitehall, in a room containing only works by Titian. Charles I fell in love with European art – and, most especially, the works of Titian – in 1623 during a visit to Spain to discuss a possible marriage with the Spanish princess, Maria Anna. Charles failed to win the Spanish princess, but during his time in Madrid, he was introduced to the magnificent Habsburg art collection. “Charles’s time in Spain opened his eyes to the art of the Italian Renaissance – rare in England at this time – and kickstarted a life-long love of Titian,” explains Chiswell. “The Supper at Emmaus sold for £600 at the Commonwealth Sale. Later, it was purchased by Louis XIV of France.” A vision of beauty Aphrodite (‘The Crouching Venus’) Second century AD Another important piece in the Gonzaga acquisition was this Roman marble statue of Aphrodite, the ancient Greek goddess of love and beauty. “This is one of several Roman copies of a now lost Hellenistic sculpture,” says Chiswell. “It was described by Charles’s agent, Daniel Nijs, as the most beautiful of all [the Gonzaga antiquities]. “During his time sourcing artworks in Mantua for the king, Nijs recorded some as drawings to send back to Charles in England (we still have Nijs’s rather crude interpretation of Aphrodite). These will also be on show in the exhibition.” Peter Lely – future court painter to Charles’s son, Charles II, who was restored to the throne in 1660 – acquired the statue soon after the Commonwealth Sale. However, it was eventually returned to the royal collection in 1682. A projection of power Charles I on Horseback with M. de St Antoine by Anthony van Dyck, 1633 Van Dyck’s most famous paintings of Charles depict him on horseback, portraying a mighty ruler, ready for battle. “This huge painting hung floor-to-ceiling at the end of the gallery at St James’s Palace,” says Chiswell. “The dramatic impact of the king beneath a triumphal arch, striding towards the viewer, would have made quite an impact on visitors. “Equestrian paintings were a motif of power that can be traced back to portraits of [the Roman emperor] Marcus Aurelius. Charles was keen to portray himself as a strong ruler but, in reality, he had been a weak, sickly child who was never meant to be king [his elder brother had died when Charles was 11].” Naked temptation Adam and Eve by Jan Gossaert, c1520 In 1636, the Dutch states sought to curry favour with Charles I, whom they deemed to be too sympathetic to their enemies, the Spanish. That same year, they sent the king this depiction of Adam and Eve by Jan Gossaert, a French-speaking artist from the Low Countries. “Charles’s art collection boasted a number of northern European works,” says Chiswell. “Many of these were gifts, or inherited from his predecessors, and aren’t necessarily indicative of his own taste in art. “Gossaert’s painting was very different to the billowing drapery and sensuous nudes of Italian works of the same era. It sold for £50 at the Commonwealth Sale.” Hunting queen Henrietta Maria with Sir Jeffrey Hudson by Anthony van Dyck, 1633 Of all the artworks in the Royal Academy exhibition, none capture the importance of Charles’s wife Henrietta Maria better than this beautiful portrait by Van Dyck. The queen, dressed for the hunt, is shown with her servant, the dwarf Jeffrey Hudson, and monkey, Pug. “Henrietta Maria had strong ties with the papal court, which sent several paintings to the king and queen in 1637,” remarks Chiswell. “She was also an important patron of art, employing influential painters such as Orazio Gentileschi, who came to England in 1626, bringing with him a new style of Italian baroque painting.” Lucy Chiswell is assistant curator at the Royal Academy of Arts Exhibition: Charles I: King and Collector is on show at the Royal Academy between 27 January and 15 April royalacademy.org.uk Television: Treasures Reunited: Charles I at the Royal Academy is due to air on BBC Two soon as part of a Royal Collection season that also includes a BBC Four series entitled Art, Passion & Power: The Story of the Royal Collection
Benjamin Woolley explores the relationship between James VI and I and his favourite the Duke of Buckingham
Author and broadcaster Benjamin Woolley explores the very close relationship between James VI and I and his favourite the Duke of Buckingham. He also considers what role Buckingham may have played in the king’s demise.