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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
The Restoration: everything you wanted to know
Everything you wanted to know about history (podcast series)
Dr Clare Jackson tackles listener questions on the reestablishment of the monarchy in 1660, after 11 years of Republican rule
How did the Restoration of the monarchy come about, after a period of civil war and 11 years of Republican rule? How smooth was the transfer of power? And what did it mean for the everyday person? Speaking with Elinor Evans, Dr Clare Jackson tackles listener questions and popular internet search queries on Charles II’s ascension to the throne, in the latest episode in our Everything you wanted to know series.
Part fourteen in our 20-part series looking at decisive moments of the last 1,000 years in British history explores 1650–1699. Charles II had been on the throne since 1660 and civil war scars were fading. But now, says John Morrill, attempts to restore a national church set the scene for 200 years of political turmoil
The year 1662 was a warm, bright year: the warmest winter and spring of the whole half century and one of the warmest overall – only dwarfed by the scorching summer of 1686. The scars of civil war, the buildings burned and wrecked by war, were being repaired and replaced. Carpenters and masons were reconverting churches from whitewashed auditoria into sacramental spaces and theatres were being built at an unprecedented rate. Samuel Pepys was able to see a new show most weeks, including The Knight of the Burning Pestle, The French Dancing Master and the first recorded Punch and Judy show. The king was to be seen at many of these plays with his pregnant mistress, a casual insult to the reformation of manners at the heart of Interregnum high-mindedness. A grimmer kind of theatre was enacted at Tyburn where the procession of Regicides dragged there to be half-hanged, eviscerated and cut into pieces was completed. The Restoration made an example of those who took part in Charles I’s trial and execution but passed a wide-ranging indemnity that protected everyone else from prosecution for what they had done over the past 20 years. Read more | Your ultimate guide to the Restoration period But a series of parliamentary acts revealed an on-going neurosis: in late 1661 an Act “against tumultuous petitioning” required all but the humblest petitions to be initiated by JPs and grand juries at quarter sessions; the Licensing Act of 1662 brought in a tougher regime for the control of the press than had existed even before the Revolution – one of its results was effectively to drive newspapers off the streets for most of the next 30 years. Later in 1662, “an Act for the relief of the poor” allowed local officials to forcibly remove all newcomers from a parish if they were “likely to be chargeable” to the poor rate and to return them to their previous place of residence. This was motivated as much by fear of sedition as of vagrancy. But for the better off, 1662 was a good year. The shops were full of goods, the King’s wife introduced the English to tea and the Great Turk coffee house opened in London. In 1662 what Pepys called “the college of virtuosos” (the Royal Society for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge) was established by Royal Charter, and its meetings were one of the few things to distract the king from pleasures of the chase (human and animal). In 1662, Isaac Newton was in his first year at Cambridge, but Christopher Wren was designing weather-clocks, and Robert Boyle was announcing his discovery about the inverse relationship of volume and pressure in gases. In Derby John Flamsteed, later to be the first Astronomer Royal, made his first ever recording of the partial solar eclipse. 1662 in context The country was still recovering from Puritanism and revolution, while the restoration of church and king brought its own problems In 1662, The peoples of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland were coming to terms with the effects of 20 years of civil war and political and religious violence. In the course of the 1640s and 1650s, parish churches were purged of all “monuments of idolatry and superstition”, Christmas and Easter were banned, the Prayer Book was proscribed, bishops, church courts and trappings of hierarchy were swept away. A variety of religious sects sprang up with more (Baptist) or less (Quaker) state encouragement. In 1649 Charles I was put on trial and beheaded for treason against his people, and monarchy and the House of Lords were abolished. A godly army set up and then pulled down various constitutional experiments, the most long-lasting of which made the Lord General Oliver Cromwell Lord Protector. The most contentious of his achievements was the military subjugation of Ireland and Scotland. In Ireland, the Commonwealth governments took almost half the land from Catholics born in Ireland, and gave it to Protestants from England. The population shrank by one third. The proportion of British adult males who died as a result of the fighting was higher than in the First World War. The revolutionaries made many enemies and few friends. By 1660, there was an overwhelming desire for Restoration – for a return to hereditary monarchy, to bishops and Cranmer’s prayers, to Christmas pies, maypoles, sport on Sunday afternoons. But the revolution cast a long shadow. There were enough supporters of the Puritan way – freedom of conscience, the imposition of strict moral codes, plain dealing, plain dress – for the celebration of old and new freer ways to cause political polarisation. All kinds of enthusiasm were discredited. A new spirit of dispassionate, sceptical inquiry challenged the claims of all churches and churchmen. So Church and King were restored, but had to face their critics. And the alliance was fatally wounded by the fact that none of the three monarchs in this half-century was a supporter of the Established Church. Charles II hid his private beliefs so deeply behind a protective marshmallow coating (he was all things to all men) that historians are still not sure whether he was a secret Catholic or an early Deist. James II and VII was a Catholic with an extreme case of convertitis, and William III would do whatever was necessary to ensure that English politicians would underwrite his crusade against Louis XIV. And so the central instabilities of the Restoration, so evident in 1662, created crisis after crisis in 1672, 1679, 1688, 1701. It took Louis XIV of France, threatening to impose popery and arbitrary government on the country, to persuade the political elite to convert the country into a fiscal-military state capable of dominating Europe and claiming a lion’s share of the world’s commerce. That threat was an indirect result of the instabilities of the 1662 settlement, but without those, the trajectory of later 17th-century politics would have been very different. A peaceful year in Europe Internationally, 1662 was a quiet year. There was no European war, although the Chinese seized Formosa (Taiwan) from the Dutch. Charles II married Catherine of Braganza, a Portuguese princess on 3 May, bringing Bombay and Tangier as part of her dowry. To cover some of the costs of setting her up with an appropriate household, Charles sold Dunkirk, occupied by Cromwell’s troops, back to France for £400,000. In 1660, Charles II had made it clear that he wanted an inclusive settlement. He gave more office, more patronage and more financial rewards to his father’s enemies than to his father’s friends: his friends would not send him on his travels again. He attempted to achieve this breadth in both secular and religious affairs; but he succeeded only in the former. The forces of religious reaction were too strong for him in each of his kingdoms, and in 1662, legislation was passed in each kingdom privileging those who embraced the spirit of the Elizabethan and Jacobean settlements. In England, the Act of Uniformity of 1662 restored a church both Catholic and Reformed, which looked Catholic and sounded Protestant, with a prayer book little changed from that of Elizabeth, with lordly bishops in their medieval palaces. Read more | A timeline of the Restoration period Membership of this state church was made mandatory, with fines and other minor penalties on those who would not attend; and with heavier penalties on those who tried to worship, even in private, according to their experience and conscience. For the next 200 years, the position in English law was that only communicating members of the Church of England could hold public office, or attend university or an inn of court. Charles had wanted to loosen up the terms of membership of his national church, believing persecution would breed far more sedition, than tolerating separation would. But since he never relished a fight, and since his Parliament and many of his advisers were adamant the Church needed to be true to its pre-war traditions and that tolerance would allow sedition to fester, he gave in. As a result, more than one in ten of the clergy resigned, and a similar proportion opted out of regular church attendance and into attendance at conventicles – meetings of dissenters for worship. This created a fundamental instability in English political culture: between those who believed that monarchy needed to be underpinned by a hierarchical, narrow, national church; and those who wanted a different kind of national church or no national church at all. In time, these tensions congealed into the two great parties: Tory (strong church equals strong monarchy equals security of life and property); and Whig (religious pluralism as a hallmark of personal liberty as a hallmark of economic and social prosperity). Expulsion of Scottish clergy Much the same happened in Scotland. A ruined nobility were more ruthless in reclaiming social power and happy to see the power of the Kirk broken and its ministers humbled, and a settlement made that was both erastian (advocating the doctrine of state supremacy over the Church in ecclesiastical affairs) and episcopalian (governed by bishops). The purge on the uncompromising led in 1662 to the expulsion of one third of the clergy. Such men remained convinced they were instruments of God’s will; this made them more seditious than English dissenters. The more seditious they became, the more brutal the reactions of the Scottish establishment: a dark era of torture, massacre, assassination and fanaticism ensued. In 1689 the Revolution was not to be the peaceful fudge that it was in England, but violent, counter-vindictive, partisan. In Ireland, too, religion was the crunch issue. There was spasmodic persecution of clergy, but little attempt to compel Catholics to attend Protestant worship, let alone to convert them. But the big problem was land. In England and Scotland, compromises between the purchasers of confiscated land were usually possible (the purchasers of the land surrendering the title but staying on as tenants on low rents), but in Ireland the problem was unmanageable. More than 40 per cent of the land of Ireland had been confiscated and redistributed to those who had bankrolled English armies to put down the Irish rebellion of 1641 and to 30,000 soldiers who had effected the reconquest. In Ireland, unlike the king’s other kingdoms, in 1662 those confiscations were deemed legal. Charles II promised in 1660 to restore those who had not been directly implicated in the massacres of 1641 and who had supported his Lord Lieutenant against the Parliamentarians. He also promised to compensate those who had to surrender land to that group. These were unrealisable promises. In 1662, the Irish Act of Settlement set up a Court of Claims to examine all these issues. It was overwhelmed by the volume of work and lack of land to square the circle. It left almost everyone dissatisfied except those with family connection or clout with the Irish administration to get their claims to the head of the queue. The 80 per cent of the population who were Catholic were left with 20 per cent of the land. It left England with a permanent problem of garrisoning Ireland and facing a low-level insurgency of “Tories” and “Rapparees” (brigands). It ensured that the Revolution of 1688 in Ireland was not in the least Glorious. It was another bloodbath. 1662 was a year of deceptive calm. Everywhere there is evidence that in the face of a grieving Puritan minority, the peoples of England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland set out to enjoy the pleasures forbidden them for 20 years, and engaged in febrile efforts to silence or intimidate those who might try to start the conflict all over again. Charles II talked of religious liberty but ordered the assassination of his most implacable opponents as they plotted against him in exile. The Puritan minister Adam Martindale gave up his pulpit in Rostherne, Cheshire, and invited his parishioners round of a Sunday evening to criticise the sermons given earlier in the day by his successor. He was one of many. What was not restored at the Restoration was peace of mind. History facts: 1650–1699 Number of inhabitants in England 1650: 5.2m Inhabitants in England 1700: 4.9m Number of sick given “royal touch” (cure) by Charles II 1660–85: 51,236 Average age of marriage in England 1650–1700: male 27.7, female 25.9 Tobacco imported into Britain 1675: 2,000 tons Gin distilled in Britain in 1684-5: 533,000 gallons Key years: other important events in the second half of the 17th century 1653 – Cromwell as Lord Protector. Cromwell – wearied by the failure of the Rump Parliament to come up with a new constitution, a new religious framework, more social justice – used his troops to disband it (20 April) and established a Nominated Assembly of godly men with a mandate (4 July) to find long-term solutions. It failed completely and in December Cromwell reluctantly agreed to become Lord Protector under a constitution drawn up by General John Lambert. 1657 – Cromwell refuses the crown. Cromwell was put under great parliamentary pressure to become King. Since the Protectorate was not “known to the laws”, he had more discretionary power than many MPs thought wise; and they thought King Oliver would broaden his support among the many who admired monarchy but not the House of Stuart. But his fear that because God had “blasted the family and the name” it meant He did not want any monarch, made him decline. 1660 – The death of Puritanism. After Cromwell’s death in 1658, there was political meltdown and the Army too fell into factions. In February George Monck, the general in charge of Scotland, marched south and ordered free elections. Parliament recalled the king, but even before they did so, Easter was celebrated in thousands of parishes, and maypoles sprang up on village greens, both symbols that the Puritan experiment had failed. 1672 – The Test Acts. Charles went to war with the Dutch in alliance with the French but chickened out of a deal with Louis XIV to declare himself a Catholic. He did however attempt, by prerogative action, to give full rights of religious assembly to both Protestant and Catholic Dissenters. This backfired, however, and Parliament used the power of the purse to force Charles to accept new restrictions on practising Catholics (the Test Acts). 1679 – Failure of Exclusion Bill. Charles II had no legitimate children, and, as he aged, many Protestants feared both his authoritarianism (bribing of MPs, excessive use of discretionary power, closeness to Catholic France) and the prospect that he would be succeeded by his Catholic brother, James. The Whigs tried (but failed in the House of Lords) to break the hold of “divine right theory” by promoting an Exclusion Bill making Parliament the arbiter of the succession. 1685 – Accession of King James. In February Charles was replaced by James II and VII, who easily saw off rebellions in England by Charles’s bastard son, the Duke of Monmouth, and in Scotland by the rabidly Presbyterian Earl of Argyll. Initially James tried to coax the Tory-Anglicans into working with him to give equal rights to his Catholic coreligionists. They defied him. 1688 – Glorious Revolution. By 1688, James was trying to work with Whigs and Dissenters to promote his Catholic cause. The birth of a Catholic heir and the sheer scale of his attack on Anglican privilege provoked a section of the elite to invite William of Orange to invade to protect Protestantism, the succession rights of his wife (James’s daughter Mary) and to bring English arms and cash into the international coalition against Louis XIV. 1689 – William and Mary. After James fled to France, there was vicious civil war in Ireland, political blood-letting in Scotland and a painful set of compromises in England that allowed William and Mary to rule jointly on terms which some at the time (and since) believed to have changed the nature of monarchy and which others denied. The most important change was the 25 years war with France (1688–1713) that transformed the finances and governance of Britain. 1697 – Peace in Europe.The treaty of Ryswick brought a fragile peace to Europe, although everyone knew that a war between rival claimants to the Spanish succession was imminent. In Ireland, Parliament reneged on the promises William’s generals had made to the Catholics and began a process of sectarian measures (the Penal Laws) that enshrined social and religious injustice. It was also the year St Paul’s Cathedral (rebuilt after the Great Fire of London) reopened for business. More turning points in British history Read next: 1745: The Jacobite rebellion Go back: 1638: The Scottish Revolution <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2007/05/TP-Images-with-overlay15-a4b3be8.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Part fifteen in our 20-part series looking at decisive moments of the last 1,000 years in British history explores explores 1700–1749. (Image by Getty Images)" title="Part fifteen in our 20-part series looking at decisive moments of the last 1,000 years in British history explores explores 1700–1749. (Image by Getty Images)" /> Further reading: The Restoration: A Political and Religious History of England and Wales 1658–1667 by Ronald Hutton (Oxford UP, 1985); The Restoration: England in the 1660s by NH Keeble (Blackwell, 2002); Restoration: Charles II and his Kingdoms by Tim Harris (Penguin, 2004) This article was first published in the May 2007 issue of BBC History Magazine
Coffee, plague and the Great Fire: the pleasures and perils of living in Restoration London
What was life like for a 17th-century Londoner? From avoiding the plague to coping with the Great Fire, Londoners in the Stuart period had a lot to deal with. Here, author Nick Rennison investigates the perils and the pleasures of living in the nation's capital...
Two of the greatest disasters in London’s history both occurred in the 1660s: plague and fire struck the city in successive years. Neither was a novelty. The bubonic plague was endemic – there were outbreaks in 1603 and 1625 that killed tens of thousands – but neither was as bad as the Great Plague of 1665. By some estimates it caused the deaths of a quarter of London’s population. Fire, meanwhile, was a permanent danger in a 17th-century city but it is difficult to exaggerate the damage caused by the Great Fire. “In three days the most flourishing city in the world is a ruinous heap,” one official wrote, and he was right. More than 13,000 houses were gone and so too were 87 parish churches, St Paul’s Cathedral, 44 Livery Company halls and three of the city gates. Almost miraculously there was only a handful of deaths recorded – less than 10 according to most authorities. If you were a Londoner in the 17th century, however, death was an ever-present possibility. All sorts of things could carry you off. Examination of just one of the weekly ‘bills of mortality’, the official death statistics of the day, for 1665 is revealing. Given the year it is no surprise that by far the greatest number of fatalities – more than 7,000 – were caused by the plague. Other diseases, however, also took their toll. Just over 100 deaths were ascribed to ‘spotted fever’; 134 to ‘consumption’; 64 to ‘convulsion’ and 51 to ‘griping in the guts’. Three unfortunates were so troubled by ‘wind’ that it proved fatal to them. Some 43 women died in childbirth. In addition there were the one-off accidents: one man was “burnt in his bed by a candle at St Giles Cripplegate”; another was “killed by a fall from the belfry at All-Hallows-the-Great”. Read more | Your ultimate guide to the Restoration period Disease in 17th-century London Plague was only the scariest of an assortment of diseases that might befall you. Smallpox was prevalent, killing thousands and disfiguring many more. The unmistakable ‘pockmarks’, signs that a person had survived the disease, would have been visible on the faces of a remarkably high proportion of London’s citizens, perhaps as many as half. Tuberculosis was another prolific killer, its symptoms exacerbated by the smoke and poor air of the city. It is easy to forget just how many of the medical advances we take for granted today were made in the past 150 years. Three-and-a-half centuries ago physicians were largely helpless in the face of most illnesses. It is little wonder, then, that people resorted to remedies and ‘cures’ that now seem bizarre. The London Pharmacopoeia, or list of drugs, issued by the College of Physicians in 1618 and reprinted several times later in the century, suggested such dubious ingredients for its prescriptions as dog excrement, moss from a recently buried skull and the saliva of a fasting man. Smog in 17th-century London The city itself was not a healthy place. Pollution of all kinds was ever present. Smog was not just a consequence of the Industrial Revolution. The burning of sea-coal in domestic fires meant that 17th-century London was as foul-smelling and filled with sulphurous smoke as the Victorian city. John Evelyn claimed that nearly half the deaths in the city were caused by it and that “the inhabitants are never free from coughs and importunate rheumatisms, spitting of impostumated and corrupt matter”. Read more | The Great Smog of London: what caused the 1952 crisis? The city streets were mostly narrow, packed and filthy. A 1662 Act of Parliament admitted that “the common highways leading unto and from the cities of London and Westminster” were “miry and foul” and were thus “noisome, dangerous and inconvenient to the inhabitants”. Drainage was poor – in some areas non-existent – and faeces, both human and animal, befouled the roads. The dangers of being deluged by filth and rubbish thrown from windows were such that the wise pedestrian strove to walk under the projecting upper storeys of the houses. Jostling for the best positions next to the walls could lead to fights and even, on occasions, deaths. Crime in 17th-century London The streets were also ill-lit and dark, perfect for footpads and robbers. Although their heyday was in the following century, highwaymen (muggers) had begun to demand that travellers on the edges of the city should stand and deliver. One of the most famous was Claude Duval, who began his career as a ‘gentleman of the road’ in 1666. Many of the stories told of Duval are later inventions by writers with a romantic imagination, but it may well be true that he once invited the wife of one of his victims to dance a coranto with him on the roadside and then charged her husband £100 for the entertainment the dancing had provided. He was captured in January 1670, drunk, in a pub called the Hole-in-the-Wall in Chandos Street, found guilty of robbery and, despite attempts to persuade the king to pardon him, was hanged at Tyburn. Duval was an aristocrat of crime. More typical were the petty pickpockets who stole purses and handkerchiefs or the housebreakers who ran off with bed linen, clothes and anything else they could carry. Punishment for such crimes was draconian. In theory at least, if the value of stolen goods exceeded 12 pence, theft was punishable by death. In practice, many judges and magistrates found reasons to avoid the letter of the law but plenty of people – men, women and even children – were condemned to “dancing on air” at Tyburn largely because their poverty and desperation had driven them to theft. Read more | Crime and punishment through history Unexpected pleasures in 17th-century London And yet, despite all the perils of 17th-century London, life in the great city was not all gloom and doom. Its citizens found much to amuse and delight them. Pleasures that had been banned under Cromwell’s Commonwealth returned with Charles II’s restoration. John Aubrey reported that “Maypoles which in the late hypocritical times ‘twas forbidden to set up now were set up in every cross-way” and “the tallest maypole ever seen” was erected in the Strand. Read more | Your guide to Charles II, the 'merry monarch' The late hypocritical times had, of course, not been kind to the theatre but the stage enjoyed a renaissance under Charles. The king loved plays in general and, in particular, some of the actresses who appeared in them. (Nell Gwyn famously began her career selling oranges to theatregoers, progressed to roles in comedies and ended up in the royal bed. And she was not the only actress to catch the king’s eye.) A new theatre was built in Drury Lane and another was created in Lincoln’s Inn Fields by converting an old tennis court. Music was another source of entertainment, from street musicians and strolling ballad-singers to makeshift concerts at gatherings of friends. The diarist Samuel Pepys was passionately fond of music, which he called “the thing of the world I love most”. He played the flageolet, a kind of early flute, and was possessed of a fine singing voice. Even he, however, drew the line at the bagpipes which, he reckoned, produced “mighty barbarous music”. He paid for his wife to take dancing lessons, although he grew very jealous of Mr Pembleton, the dancing master, who was, he decided, becoming far too friendly with his pupil. Eventually, he himself also took lessons from Pembleton and was soon reporting merry evenings when the three of them “danced three or four country dances”. Cruel entertainment in 17th-century London Cruder and crueller entertainments than country dancing could be found in Southwark, the centre of the theatrical world in Shakespeare’s time and also home to less attractive pursuits. Bear-baiting, in which a hobbled and occasionally blind bear was set upon by a pack of dogs, was enjoyed by many. So too was bull-baiting. In his diary entry for 14 August 1666, Pepys records his visit to the Bear Garden with his wife and a friend where they saw “some good sport of the bull’s tossing of the dogs”. The diarist did have the grace to admit that it was “a very rude and nasty pleasure”. Four years later another great diarist of the period, John Evelyn, “went with some friends to the Bear Garden where was cock-fighting, dog-fighting, bear and bull-baiting, it being a famous day for all these butcherly sports”. While he was there, “one of the bulls tossed a dog full into a lady’s lap as she sat in one of the boxes”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/01/Bear20Garden2C20London-6bbf96d-e1681725402265.jpg" width="620" height="411" alt="Bear Garden, Southwark, London, after its third rebuilding, 1648. By this time plays and prize-fighting had been added to the original entertainment of bear baiting. Woodcut based on a detail in the Bohemian etcher and engraver Wenceslas Hollar's (1607-1677) view of London. (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)" title="Bear Garden, Southwark, London, after its third rebuilding, 1648." /> Perhaps the lady was not too bothered. After all, this was an age in which the average Londoner necessarily had a strong stomach. Executions provided a form of public theatre, as they were to do for nearly 200 years to come. In the years after Charles II’s restoration, those who had condemned his father to death were pursued relentlessly by the regime. Many were executed and the heads of some of these regicides were stuck on top of the city gates, often remaining there for years. Oliver Cromwell was posthumously disinterred from his supposedly final resting place in Westminster Abbey and his skull placed on a spike above Westminster Hall, where it stayed for more than 20 years. Many citizens and visitors to the city flocked to see it. Read more | A timeline of the Restoration period More edifying excursions could be made to outlying villages like Islington and Highgate, to New Spring Gardens (later Vauxhall Gardens) south of the river and to the royal parks. For those with an inquisitive mind, cabinets of curiosities were the museums of the day. One, advertised as open for business in the Strand in June 1661, offered the sight of “an entire Egyptian mummy with all the hieroglyphics”. The collection of the botanist John Tradescant included a deerskin cloak that had once supposedly belonged to the Native American chieftain Powhatan, father of Pocahontas, and which is now in Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum. Another magnet for visitors was the royal menagerie, housed in the Tower of London, which was home to the city’s more exotic animals. Pepys took a party of women and children there in May 1662 and “showed them the lions”. Want to learn more about the Great Fire of London? Your guide to the Great Fire of London (+ 10 surprising facts) How the Great Fire of London revealed the city’s Roman past Alternate history: what if the Great Fire of London never happened? Great Fire of London quiz – how much do you know? Food and drink in 17th-century London For those who could afford it, food was rich and plentiful. One meal for 12 persons from 1663 consisted of “a fricassee of rabbits and chicken, a leg of mutton boiled, three carps in a dish, a great dish of a side of lamb, a dish of roasted pigeons, a dish of four lobsters, three tarts, a most rare lamprey pie, and a dish of anchovies”. Vegetables are not mentioned, either because they were not on the table at all or because they were considered too ordinary to describe. The poor, of course, could only dream of dining so lavishly. They would have rarely eaten meat at all, although oysters, today considered rather upmarket, were then so plentiful that they were a staple food for Londoners of all classes. In pre-refrigeration days, it was difficult to keep food fresh. Pepys was mortified when he invited a colleague to dinner, and a sturgeon was brought to the table, “upon which I saw very many little worms creeping”. Read more | A drink for the devil: 8 facts about the history of coffee New drinks had recently arrived in town. Hot chocolate came from the New World via Spain, but the most successful novelty was coffee. The first coffeehouse in London was opened in an alley off Cornhill in 1652 by a Greek man named Pasqua Rosee (who was originally from Sicily and had lived in Smyrna). Ten years later there were nearly 100 of them. They were used almost exclusively by men. One of the unfortunate consequences of the fashion for this “newfangled, abominable, heathenish liquor”, according to The Women’s Petition Against Coffee, a pamphlet published in 1674, was the sapping of the nation’s virility. “Our gallants,” the pamphlet’s writer claimed, “are become mere cock-sparrows” who “are not able to stand to it, and in the very first charge fall down flat before us.” Better, perhaps, to stick to more traditional drinks like beer and ale, which were consumed at home and in the hundreds of taverns that catered to the city’s thirsty population. The Londoners of the 1660s had to face crises unmatched in the city’s history until the Second World War. They struggled to survive in a dangerous world, one in which life was cheap and death could be just around the corner, but they did so with the energy and capacity for enjoyment for which the inhabitants of this great city have always been known.
The Stuart dynasty immediately succeeded the Tudors, and the period witnessed some of the most monumentally changeable times in British history – civil war, rebellion, the beheading of a king, plague outbreaks, the Great Fire of London and a successful foreign invasion – and seven monarchs of Britain. But how much do you know about the Stuarts?
When was the Stuart period? The Stuart period in Britain was between 1603 to 1714, and witnessed some of the most monumentally changeable times in British history – civil war, rebellion, the beheading of a king, plague outbreaks, the Great Fire of London and a successful foreign invasion. There were seven Stuart monarchs of Britain: James VI and I (1566–1625); Charles I (1600–1649); Charles II (1630–1685); James II and VII (1633–1701); William III and II (1650–1702); Mary II (1662–1694); and Anne (1665–1714). Two lord protectors interrupted this dynastic line in the middle of the 17th century: Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658), followed by his son, Richard (1626–1712). But how much do you know about the Stuarts? Here, writing for History Extra, Andrea Zuvich shares 12 lesser-known facts about the Stuart dynasty… The Stuarts had a nasty habit of losing their heads Mary, Queen of Scots, was beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire, in 1587. She was Queen Elizabeth I’s cousin, and when Mary was found guilty of treason [after being accused of involvement in a plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth], the English queen agonised over the signing of the execution warrant. Mary was not the only Stuart to lose her head. Her grandson, Charles I, lost his to the executioner’s axe in the winter of 1649 after two devastating civil wars. Charles I’s grandson, the dashing but doomed Duke of Monmouth, was the eldest illegitimate son of Charles II. In 1685, he led an invasion of England, seeking to overthrow his uncle King James II, in order to take the throne for himself. Monmouth’s rag-tag army suffered a substantial defeat in early July, when their leader was captured, brought to London and imprisoned in the Tower of London. Monmouth’s grisly execution was botched, and remains one of the ghastliest in British history: the executioner's axe was said to have struck several times before Monmouth’s head was severed. And it wasn’t just the executioner’s axe that cost leading Stuarts their heads – Monmouth’s cousin, James FitzJames, Duke of Berwick, was decapitated by a cannonball at the Siege of Philipsburg (aka Philippsburg) in 1734. Murder, conspiracy and execution: six centuries of scandalous royal deaths Deadly Rivals: Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots Who betrayed Mary, Queen of Scots? Witchcraft was a serious matter, but science and reason began to take hold In the 17th century, a substantial portion of the population believed that witchcraft was real and dangerous. The hysteria surrounding the Salem witch trials in 1692 Massachusetts is undoubtedly the best-known example of this, but there were many other notable events. James VI and I, whom historian Tracy Borman refers to in her book Witches: James I and the English Witch Hunts as “one of the most famous witch hunters in history”, was indeed very much concerned with witchcraft and demonology. It was during James VI and I’s reign, in 1612, that two important witch trials took place: that of the Samlesbury Witches and the Pendle Witches. Throughout the chaos of the Civil Wars in the 1640s, Matthew Hopkins, the self-appointed ‘witchfinder general’, terrorised East Anglia with the cruel methods he used to ‘find’ witches: according to some sources he would fling the accused bound into water to see if they would float or sink (a witch, having denied his or her baptism, would be repelled by the water so that he or she would float). Another test was to “force the accused to walk about all night, because only when at rest could a witch summon his or her familiars, who would terrify the accusers away”. Yet at around the same time, science was progressing to amazing new heights. William Harvey discovered that blood circulated around the body – an astonishing leap for medical science – and later in the period mathematicians and scientists such as Isaac Newton, Robert Hooke, Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle and other gifted men formed the Royal Society. The extremes of both superstition and scientific endeavour during the Stuart age made for a remarkable dichotomy. A brief history of witches by Suzannah Lipscomb A spell-binding history of witches History quiz – witchcraft and superstition The Stuarts knew how to have fun The Stuart era coincided with a period of global cooling known as the ‘Little Ice Age’. As such, winters were incredibly cold, and the river Thames sometimes became so frozen solid that people were able to go out onto the ice and take part in frost fairs. These must have been magnificent, for there would have been ice-skating, music playing and hot food being sold and eaten on the ice. Theatres were very popular in the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, but were done away with under Oliver Cromwell. At the restoration of the monarchy, however, theatres were re-opened, and then something even more remarkable happened – women were allowed to act on stage, and the first actresses (Elizabeth Barry, Peg Hughes, Nell Gwynn, Moll Davis etc) stole the show. Executions were another popular entertainment of the day: vast crowds of people would gather to see a nobleman beheaded or a common thief hanged from the Tyburn tree. Akin to, say, a football match today, street vendors would sell food, and people would cheer. The monarchy was abolished, but then restored In 2015, Britain saw Queen Elizabeth II break the record set by her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, to become the longest-serving monarch in British history. Although we have a constitutional monarchy (in which the sovereign is mostly a ceremonial figurehead), the fact that Britain has a monarchy at all was something that might not have been possible had the ‘Roundheads’ continued to have their way. By 1649, Parliament had won: Charles I was executed, and the monarchy and the House of Lords were abolished. It transpired, however, that living under a Cromwellian Protectorate was less than ideal. After Oliver Cromwell died in 1658, his son Richard became the second lord protector, and to cut a long story short, he was not very good at the job. Soon after, General Monck invaded London at the head of the army, and it was decided that England would welcome King Charles II from his exile. Upon the Restoration in 1660, and then much more substantially at the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688 when William of Orange invaded and seized James II’s throne, monarchy became rather more constitutional. There were three Mary Stuarts you should know about From the late 16th century to the end of the Stuart dynasty in 1714, there were three royal ladies with the name of Mary Stuart. The most famous of these was, of course, Mary, Queen of Scots, who lived from 1542 until her execution in 1587 (after nearly 20 years of imprisonment). Mary’s son would be the sixth King James of Scotland, but the first of England. Next, there was Mary Stuart, Princess Royal, the eldest daughter of King Charles I of England and Queen Henrietta Maria of France. At a very young age, Mary was betrothed and married to Prince Willem II of Orange, with whom she had a son (who became King William III of England/II of Scotland). Sadly for the young family, Willem II contracted smallpox and died about a week before his son’s birth. Mary herself followed her husband to the grave 10 years later, again from smallpox. Finally, there was Mary Stuart, daughter of James II, then Duke of York, and his first wife, Anne Hyde. Following the Glorious Revolution of 1688, it was this Mary who became Queen Mary II and ruled together with her husband, the aforementioned William III. Has history been unfair to Charles I? The downfall of Mary, Queen of Scots Britain was successfully invaded by a foreign power, again The best-known successful invasion by a foreign power was the Norman Conquest of 1066, which saw William the Conqueror seize power. Fast-forward to 1688, and Britain was once again successfully invaded – this time by the Dutch, and by invitation. Prince William of Orange, Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic, had a reputation for being one of the great heroes of Protestant Europe. He was always battling it out with his arch nemesis, King Louis XIV of France, whose megalomaniacal attempts to conquer more territories made him a constant force to be reckoned with. When Louis’ cousin, King James II of England (James VII of Scotland), became king following the death of his elder brother Charles II, concern spread that the new king would return his kingdoms to Roman Catholicism. When his wife, Mary of Modena, gave birth to a healthy son in the summer of 1688, rumours and fears of a Catholic succession pushed the kingdom to the verge of rebellion. The so-called ‘Immortal Seven’ – seven of the most powerful men in the kingdom – invited William of Orange to invade England. Why? William had royal blood connections (his mother was a Stuart) and he was married to James’s eldest daughter, Mary. William landed in Torbay in November 1688 (pictured below), James II fled, and in early 1689, William and Mary became the first diarchy [a form of government in which two individuals – diarchs – are joint heads of state] in British history. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/01/William20of20Orange20landing20with20his20army20at20Torbay20Devon20520November201688-6438ac0.jpg" width="2400" height="1552" alt="William of Orange landing with his army at Torbay, Devon, November 1688. (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)" title="William of Orange landing with his army at Torbay, Devon, November 1688. (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)" /> We tend to forget about the consorts With the exception of Henrietta Maria, Charles I’s strong-willed consort (who remains a controversial figure), many tend to forget about the other royal consorts. Anne of Denmark, James I’s wife, was a stylish Catholic woman whose tastes influenced pastimes such as masques – the formal entertainments so beloved by the Stuarts. Meanwhile, Catherine of Braganza, Charles II’s wife, a Portuguese princess famed for putting up with her husband’s public adulteries, is often credited with making tea fashionable. Anne of Denmark: a killer queen? Stuart Britain: what was life like for ordinary people? Kings and Queens in profile: Queen Anne Mary of Modena, James II’s wife, was a highly educated Italian princess who was, if her Catholic religion could be overlooked, the perfect queen consort. When James went into exile, she followed, and under the patronage of Louis XIV, they retained an exiled court at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Although all of the aforementioned consorts were women, there was one male consort: Queen Anne’s husband was Prince George of Denmark. George was devoted to his wife, but has retained a somewhat boorish reputation. Charles II is believed to have said of him: “I’ve tried him drunk and I’ve tried him sober and there’s nothing in him.” The Stuart monarchs were rarely faithful King James I is known for his male favourites (rumoured to have been his lovers), especially Robert Carr and, most infamously, George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham. James’s son, Charles I, although having been the soul of fidelity for the many years of his marriage to Henrietta Maria, ended up seeking physical solace in the arms of Jane Whorwood, a loyalist conspirator, during his imprisonment. Charles II, meanwhile, is better known for his bevy of mistresses (Nell Gwynn, Barbara Villiers, Louise de Kerouaille etc) than any of his actual policies – with perhaps the exception of the 1670 Treaty of Dover [a pact by which Charles promised to support French policy in Europe in return for a French subsidy that would free him from financial dependence on parliament]. James II, Charles’s brother, engaged in adultery but then was saddled by a guilty conscience. This, however, did not stop him from carrying on long-term affairs with several women, most notably Arabella Churchill and Catherine Sedley. James’s nephew and son-in-law, William III, had a mistress as well, though he was much more private about it than his uncles. His wife, Mary II, was considered to be one of the most beautiful women of her time, but William sought the stimulating intellectual companionship (and perhaps more) of his wife’s lady-in-waiting, Elizabeth Villiers. William only broke up with Betty after Mary’s death, for that was what the latter had asked of him on her deathbed. Samuel Pepys published one thing in his life, and it wasn’t his diary While his diary is the work with which Samuel Pepys is most associated, it was not published during his lifetime. Of course, being a diary, it was intensely private – so much so it was written in what at first appears to be undecipherable code. In reality, this code was actually shorthand (created by Thomas Shelton in the early 1600s). Shorthand not only kept things private, but also made writing faster – once you got the hang of how to use it. 7 things you (probably) didn’t know about Samuel Pepys 10 facts about the Great Fire of London Coffee, plague and the Great Fire: the pleasures and perils of Restoration London Pepys did, however, publish what we know as the Memoires Relating to the State of the Royal Navy of England. This was because there had been accusations of negligence in relation to ships during his time as secretary of the Admiralty. The Memoires, published in 1690 during the reign of William and Mary, was Pepys’ way of fighting back against his accusers. Historian JD Davies, writing in the introduction to a 2010 publication of this work, states that the Memoires provide not only “a vivid insight into the state of the navy in the 1680s, but…(is) one of the best memorials to the ingenuity and sheer political cunning” of Pepys. The Stuarts knew the value of propaganda Several days after Charles I was executed on a bitterly cold January morning in 1649, a royalist work was printed. Eikon Basilike was an extremely popular piece, and the deceased king became seen by some as a martyr. This work, however, was countered by parliamentarian propaganda from the very able hand of John Milton in the form of Eikonoklastes. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/01/Title20page20from20Eikon20Basilike2C20an20autobiography20attributed20to20King20Charles20I-7fa0a00.jpg" width="2400" height="2174" alt="Title page from Eikon Basilike, an autobiography attributed to King Charles I. It depicts the king as a Christian martyr. (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)" title="Title page from Eikon Basilike, an autobiography attributed to King Charles I. It depicts the king as a Christian martyr. (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)" /> During the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688, William III sent his propaganda printers ahead of him, and they printed his manifesto and circulated it widely. Propaganda wasn’t just limited to the printed word, though. William gave due consideration to his image as well. Although he was physically rather puny and sickly, most of the images depicting him have a strong, martial air about them. In William III’s state apartments in Hampton Court Palace, William chose to identify with the mythological hero Hercules, and the glorious staircase that leads to his apartments, painted by Antonio Verrio, powerfully convey this imagery. Is it Stewart or Stuart? Often a source of some very heated debate in online history groups, the spelling of this surname is rather contentious, to say the least. There are some who swear it must be spelled Stewart, as it comes from the word “steward”, while others insist it must be spelled Stuart. So, which is correct? Truth be told, they are both acceptable, but it makes it easier to stick to the Gallicised (French) version to help differentiate between the Stewart line in Scotland, and those Stewarts who became monarchs over both England and Scotland, beginning in 1603. Mary, Queen of Scots used Stuart, and she was both a queen of Scotland and a queen of France, so using the Gallicised spelling makes sense because the letter ‘W’ is rarely found in French. Since it was her son, James VI of Scotland, who became James I of England, this continued usage of this spelling is appropriate. That being said, on the death warrant for James’s son, King Charles I, in 1649, his name was written “Charles Stewart”. The early modern period, in which the Stuart era firmly lies, was significantly more relaxed when it came to spelling than it is in the present day. It wasn’t always safe to be the ‘favourite’ Throughout British history, the royal favourite was lavished with titles, estates, money and above all, power. These things would, unsurprisingly, arouse envy and hostility in those who were not the favourite. The real history behind Queen Anne film, The Favourite Accidental explosions: gunpowder in Tudor and Stuart London George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, did just that when he was initially King James I’s favourite, and then the favourite of King Charles I. He became so hated a public figure that when he was eventually assassinated by John Felton in 1628, the general population seemed to have been very well pleased, and they spat and cheered as his coffin was wheeled to Westminster Abbey. English courtiers at William III’s court became resentful when the Dutch-born Arnold Joost van Keppel became the king’s favourite. Van Keppel, although a blatant womaniser, was the subject of rumours involving him with the king. During the reign of Queen Anne, the last Stuart monarch, Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, had become used to treating Anne badly. Sarah thought her position of power would last, but Anne rightly put her in her place after Sarah publicly told her to “be quiet!”, leading to a row at Kensington Palace and an end to a lifelong friendship. Andrea Zuvich is the author of The Stuarts in 100 Facts. You can follow Andrea on Twitter @17thCenturyLady or visit her website www.andreazuvich.com. This article was first published by History Extra in December 2015
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.
David Armitage explores how internal conflicts have changed through history, while Ian Mortimer guides us through life in the late 17th century.
Harvard professor David Armitage explores how internal conflicts have changed through history and considers what lessons can be learned for the wars of today. Meanwhile, bestselling popular historian Ian Mortimer guides us through life in England following Charles II’s Restoration – a time of sweeping changes throughout society.
Dr Ronald Hutton and Daniel Cossins visit Banqueting House in London to explore the overthrow of the British Commonwealth and Charles II's perilous path to the throne in 1660...
This article was first published in the December 2014 issue of BBC History Magazine The road from Blackheath to London was lined with people. Tapestries hung from windows, trumpets parped and church bells peeled, and wine flowed freely. It was 29 May 1660. Charles II, turning 30 that day, rode at the front of a great procession heading for the political heart of the capital. He had come to reclaim the thrones of three kingdoms after more than a decade of republican government, and he was welcomed as a redeemer by a restless public that had seen the Commonwealth collapse from within. “The public was tired of years of political insecurity, crushing over-taxation and military rule,” says Ronald Hutton, professor of early modern history at the University of Bristol. “They imagined that, whatever the king stood for, he was bound to be better than that.” The press of the crowd was such that the cavalcade took seven hours to get through London. Finally, at 7pm, Charles reached the Palace of Whitehall, where English royalty had resided for more than a century before the monarchy was swept away following the Civil War. In the opulent surroundings of Banqueting House, both houses of parliament declared their loyalty to the king. In response, Charles made a promise: “I find my heart set really to endeavour by all means for the restoring of this nation to freedom and happiness; and hope by the advice of my parliament to effect it.” Commissioned by James VI and I and completed in 1622, Banqueting House was the first major classical building in England – and, with its Palladian facade, it certainly stood out from the Tudor-style brick buildings that made up the rest of the palace. It was designed by Inigo Jones to provide the setting for banquets and court masques, extravagant mélanges of poetry, dance, music and song performed for (and often involving) kings, queens and their courtiers. By the time Charles II was resident at Whitehall, Banqueting House no longer played host to masques. It had been decided that the flaming torches used to light such productions would damage the magnificent ceiling canvases painted by the Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens for Charles I. Instead, it was now the setting for state occasions such as royal proclamations and receptions for foreign ambassadors. “It was the stage – the public arena of royalty,” says Hutton. Today, Banqueting House is the only surviving part of the old Palace of Whitehall, which was destroyed by fire in 1698. Climbing the stairs and entering the cavernous main hall, with its two tiers of enormous windows set between towering white columns, it’s easy to imagine the royal occasions held here. In December 1662, for example, the diarist Samuel Pepys was present at Banqueting House to witness the visit of the Russian ambassadors. “I saw all the presents, being rich furs, hawks, carpets, cloths of tissue, and sea-horse teeth,” wrote Pepys. “The king took two or three hawks upon his fist, having a glove on, wrought with gold, given him for the purpose. The son of one of the Embassadors was in the richest suit for pearl and tissue that ever I did see, or shall, I believe.” At the far end of the main hall stands the modest throne, upholstered in red velvet, where Charles II ennobled worthy subjects and performed ‘healing ceremonies’ for the less fortunate. The throne is out of bounds but visitors can lounge in beanbags on the floor and gaze up at the nine ceiling paintings by Rubens, each contained in an ornate golden frame. It was this masterpiece under which Charles I passed in January 1649 as he walked out to face his execution. “The point of the paintings is to illustrate the classic doctrine of the divine right of kings,” says Hutton. “So to have to walk across the hall, right underneath this portrait of the invincibility and triumph of monarchy, must have been pretty bitter. Still, I would guess that if you’ve lost three kingdoms and you’re about to have your head cut off, the presence of paintings doesn’t make an enormous amount of difference.” Today, a bust of Charles I above the entrance marks the approximate location of the window (now gone) from which he stepped onto the scaffold and to his death. “It was freezing cold, with occasional snowflakes,” says Hutton. “Charles wore two shirts underneath his clothes to avoid shivering with cold and giving an impression of being afraid. When the king’s head fell – and it fell at one blow – an enormous groan rang out. People rushed forward to dip their handkerchiefs in his blood as souvenirs.” Charles II was in exile in the Netherlands when he heard of his father’s death. He was crowned king of Scotland in January 1651, and later that year marched into England, only to be crushed by Cromwell’s forces at Worcester. Forced to flee, Charles made a dramatic escape, hiding out in royalist households and even an oak tree before getting away to France and exile once more. Hope for royalists returned in the late 1650s when the republican regime began to unravel. “The Commonwealth was always sitting on a time bomb, which was financial and ideological,” says Hutton. “Financial in that, in order to hold down the conquered British Isles, the government needed a huge army.” The regime downsized the army and reduced taxes to keep the people happy, but the income wouldn’t suffice. “The result was a slow slide into arrears, with too many soldiers now chasing too small a treasury,” says Hutton. Then there was the ideological problem. The Civil War had shattered the Church of England into competing Protestant creeds. Cromwell’s government opted for toleration but it didn’t work, says Hutton: “The tension between those who wanted a Church of England and the new radical minority who wanted to let it go altogether was growing, and we seemed to be heading for a new civil war.” When Cromwell died in 1658, his son, Richard, succeeded him as lord protector. Richard’s plan was to throw out the radical reforms demanded by the army – reformed parliaments, toleration of unorthodox religious beliefs, a broader Church of England – in return for parliament’s acceptance of his government and funds for the army. But his attempt to rally his supporters in the army failed, and in May 1659 Richard was forced to resign. “Richard was overthrown, his parliament thrown out and the Protectorate abolished,” says Hutton. “In its place the army, after an awful lot of argument, called back the one parliament from the previous 10 years that had seemed most receptive to its reform programme.” That was the purged parliament, or the Rump Parliament – the rump of the Long Parliament that in 1648 had been purged of MPs unlikely to support the army’s goal of punishing Charles I. It took just four months for old enmities to flare. In October, the army dismissed the Rump and seized power. As a result, the winter of 1659–60 was one of agitation, with the people demanding a return to constitutional propriety. “There was a clamour for a freely elected parliament that wasn’t told what to do by an army, and whatever that parliament decided, the majority of people in England and Wales were happy to accept,” says Hutton. Into the confusion strode General George Monck, commander of the army in Scotland. On hearing the news that the Rump had been thrown out, Monck ordered it restored, and marched into England in January 1660. Starved of pay, the English army gave up and submitted to Monck as he marched on the capital. Having seen the discontent in London, Monck went with the will of the people, ordering the dissolution of the Rump and the free election of a new parliament. All the while, he was in secret contact with the exiled king. And on 1 May, the new Convention Parliament received a letter from the king in which he promised to grant a general pardon for traitors. A week later, parliament proclaimed England a monarchy once more, and invited Charles to return. Though no legislation could be passed without the king’s consent, Charles had to accept the central role of parliament. Two months after his glorious return, the Convention Parliament pardoned almost everyone except those involved in the trial and execution of Charles I who did not immediately surrender themselves. It also confirmed that all legal actions of the past 20 years were binding, and granted the king money to disband all the armies. “This was pretty healing,” say Hutton. “But then, in 1661, a very different parliament arrived: the Cavalier Parliament, far more embittered and vengeful and old royalist.” It proceeded to pass a series of measures designed to ensure that the nobility held all the power, preventing anyone – including the Crown – from ever again overturning law and order. It also ordered the exhumation of Oliver Cromwell and two of his comrades, to be hanged and decapitated at Tyburn. Ultimately, Charles II learned that old animosities die hard. “England struggled to recover from the mauling of the Civil War,” says Hutton. Three great problems remained: whether ultimate power should lie with the king alone or with the king and parliament; what to do with religious sects that refused to worship within the Church of England; and how to address the balance of power between England, Scotland and Ireland. “It took another reign and another revolution, that of 1688, to settle those questions,” says Hutton. Five more places to explore Moseley Old Hall, Staffordshire Where the escaping Charles II hid from Cromwell’s troops Having marched from Scotland in 1651, Charles II’s forces were crushed at Worcester. He narrowly evaded capture, hiding at Boscobel House in Shropshire, then at Moseley Old Hall, before fleeing to France. At Moseley Old Hall, the best preserved of Charles’s hideouts, visitors can see the priest hole in which he hid. Visit nationaltrust.org.uk York Castle Museum, York Where visitors can see one of Cromwell’s death masks When Oliver Cromwell died, in 1658, the Protectorate began to fall apart. In the days after Cromwell’s demise, several death masks were sent around the country as evidence. One of the masks can be seen, warts and all, at York Castle Museum. Visit yorkcastlemuseum.org.uk Edgehill, Warwickshire Where General Lambert tried to prevent the Restoration In April 1660, die-hard republican Major-General John Lambert rallied supporters to the hamlet of Edgehill, site of the first pitched battle of the Civil War in 1642. Monck’s forces easily saw off the few hundred mounted parliamentary troops, and Lambert was sent to the Tower. Visit battlefieldstrust.com White cliffs of Dover, Kent Where the returning Charles II stepped ashore On the morning of 25 May 1660 a 20-strong fleet carrying Charles II approached the white cliffs of Dover, where crowds cheered the return of the king. As cannon fired in celebration from Dover Castle, General Monck greeted Charles on the beach. Visit whitecliffscountry.org.uk Westminster Abbey Where Charles II was crowned king On 23 April 1661, Charles II was crowned in the magnificent surroundings of Westminster Abbey, the setting for coronations since 1066. The abbey was packed with spectators, including diarist Samuel Pepys, all desperate to catch a glimpse of their returning king. A stone tablet in the abbey’s RAF Chapel, normally covered by a carpet, marks the spot where Cromwell was buried before he was exhumed in January 1661. Visit westminster-abbey.org Ronald Hutton is author of The Restoration: A Political and Religious History of England and Wales, 1658-1667 (OUP, 1997).
Rebranding Rule: The Restoration and Revolution Monarchy, 1660-1715
Daniel Szechi has high praise for a study of the bond between England’s monarchy and subjects in the 17th and 18th centuries
Reviewed by: Daniel Szechi Author: Kevin Sharpe Publisher: Yale University Press Price (RRP): £45 Very sadly, this book will be the late Kevin Sharpe’s final contribution to our vision of early modern England. It is a sombre finale in another sense, too, for it was the last volume in his great trilogy of works exploring the presentation of the English monarchy from the 16th to the 18th century. Like many works not yet in the publication pipeline at the time of the author’s death, it could easily have been lost to us if Sharpe’s friend and colleague Mark Knights had not seen it through its final stages. We all owe Knights a debt of gratitude, both because of the book’s quality and the fact that it is a fitting monument to one of the foremost British historians of the early modern world. In typically down-to-earth vein, Sharpe explains that he was moved to explore the presentation of the English monarchy in the early modern era by watching New Labour’s spin doctors at work. The grand question that he has now addressed is a fundamental one: how did the English monarchy engage effectively with its subjects? Put more coarsely: how did successive monarchs persuade them to be loyal and obedient? There is no doubt that this is a hugely important issue for historians, especially given the massive breakdown in loyalty and obedience that characterises both the mid- and late 17th century. The English were a damnably obstreperous lot and the three kingdoms were a volatile and unstable conglomeration of polities, yet they were all internally at peace most of the time. Although Sharpe does not shy away from the moments when the bond between ruler and ruled dissolved, he is far more interested in the way in which it was created and sustained over the long term, and this book offers some profound insights into the process. Manufacturing and shoring up allegiance was nothing short of a major cultural industry. Sharpe writes beautifully, and the book is a long, lush walk through the public rituals of monarchy, the depiction of monarchs by artists and hack engravers, wordsmiths and preachers. Sharpe clearly enjoyed exploring the nuances of this world of physical and allegorical spectacle and offers a wealth of examples to illustrate his argument. And it is a convincing one. Sharpe’s thesis is that whereas Charles II grasped a fundamental truth – that he needed to work at rebuilding the effective ties between monarch and subject by being a public, popular monarch – James II and VII reverted to their father’s more aloof approach, assuming that his people knew and humbly accepted their duty to love and obey him. This failure to understand the limitations of his subjects’ obedience, massively reinforced by his Catholicism, quickly brought on a hugely popular (in England) revolution against him and precipitated the final crisis of the Stuart monarchy. Mary II tried to rebuild the old sacral ties, but William III and II was impatient with the pomp and circumstance of English monarchy. Sharpe sympathetically acknowledges William’s strategic and political problems and his belated attempts to reconnect with his people, but there is no escaping the conclusion that William the soldier was only interested in the men and money that England could provide for the Grand Alliance against Louis XIV. Anne tried to retrieve the situation when she followed William in 1702, and in many respects succeeded in doing so for her lifetime. Yet although Sharpe argues trenchantly against the image of a stupid and docile woman so long retailed by our historiography, Anne, like Mary and William, was hampered by the implications of the Revolution of 1688. The conditions of monarchy had changed fundamentally: allegiance was due to all three only because of a grand uprising supported by a foreign invasion. The sacral vision of monarchy, painstakingly resurrected by Charles II, was eviscerated – yet not entirely vanquished. Not all historians will agree with Sharpe’s interpretation. This reviewer (a nasty old-fashioned social-political historian) was left dazzled and admiring of the wonderful scholarship that he displays and the insights that he offers, but still convinced that the more brutal machinery of power (taxmen, soldiers, judges) produced a stronger grip on the people than pictures or sermons. Nonetheless, for all its prodigious length and depth, this book (and the trilogy as a whole) is to be recommended to any student of the period. It will be the starting point for any consideration of the cultural presentation of the early modern English monarchy for the foreseeable future. Daniel Szechi, the University of Manchester
Paper talk: a newspaper's take on the Restoration
Andrew Green is producer of a Radio 4 Random Edition programme on the Restoration. Here he explains how a newspaper, published in 1660, informed its readers of the imminent return of the future king from exile
This article was first published in the April 2010 issue of BBC History Magazine Restoration 1660 Archive newspapers allow us to sniff history in a unique way. The sense of immediacy they invariably convey allows us to fully grasp that events in the ever-receding past actually happened. Over its many Radio 4 series since the mid-1990s, Peter Snow's Random Edition has explored stories of all kinds found in individual newspapers, dating as far back as the 1650s. A Parliamentary Intelligencer newspaper (or 'newsbook') from the spring of 1660 is the subject of a Random Edition special to mark the 350th anniversary of the Restoration of Charles II to the throne, 11 years after his father lost his head. On its pages we see the work of some of the very first professional journalists in Britain. Yet there's no sophisticated computer page-setting here – the news tumbles onto the printer's tray as it arrives. Somehow, that very rough-and-readiness helps give the events the Intelligencer relays a particular authenticity, even if the slant of the paper (Printed by John Macock and Tho. Newcomb) is clearly royalist at a time when the country was still far from drained of radical political sentiment. The key scene reported is the appearance before both Houses of Parliament of Sir John Grenville, who had just hopped across the North Sea from Breda in the Netherlands, Charles’s place of continental residence after a decade in exile. The House being informed that Sir John Greenvil [sic], a Messenger from the King, was at the dore, it was resolved that he be called in, who being called in accordingly, at the Bar after obeisance made, said, “Mr Speaker, I am commanded by The King my Master, to deliver this Letter to you, and his desire is that you will communicate it to the House”. Enclosed within the letter was what we know as Charles's 'Declaration of Breda', offering guarantees should he be restored as king: a "free general pardon" for (almost) all those deemed to have offended against the monarchy in the years of civil war and revolution; freedom of religious expression ("liberty to tender consciences"); payment of army arrears; and a modus operandi for dealing with all property claims. Says Random Edition contributor John Morrill of Selwyn College, Cambridge: "Grenville's handing over of the declaration is the moment when the members of a newly elected parliament, having had no idea how the chaos of the years since the killing of Charles I was to be resolved, see that suddenly an answer is available. They grab that moment and declare Charles king." With parliamentary motions for the Restoration carried, the Intelligencer takes us out onto the streets of London: …the people throughout the whole city and suburbs… this day made bonfires everywhere and the Bells were generally rung, and the great Guns went off at the Tower. Elsewhere we read of the enthusiasm of the navy stationed at Deal in Kent, via letters sent from the flagship, Naseby, which was about to undergo a major and rapid refit for its journey to bring Charles home as king. Then might you see the Fleet in her Pride with Pendants loose, Guns roaring, Caps flying and loud Vive le Roye received from one ship's company to another. Military opposition However, despite the political leanings of the Intelligencer, clues on its pages point to the fact that at least one major military figure utterly opposed to the Restoration had been willing to take up arms to defend republicanism. A dispatch from Hereford states that: Lambert’s party are all dispersed in these parts, there is onely a nest of them left in Red Castle [probably in Shropshire]. The man referred to here is General John Lambert, one of the outstanding military leaders of the period, but at odds with fellow general George Monck over high politics. The latter’s forces had swept those of Lambert aside earlier in 1660, allowing Monck to set in motion the sequence of events that were to lead to the Restoration. Lambert, meanwhile, went to the Tower, from which he nonetheless escaped, thereafter rallying republican sympathisers to take up arms at Edgehill, symbolic site of the first great battle of the Civil War. Alas, most of Lambert’s supporters preferred to stand on the sidelines for the moment, rather than risk their lives in battle at Daventry (where the opposing forces finally clashed). “Only 350 troops turn up to support Lambert,” says Lambert’s biographer, David Farr. “They’re vastly outnumbered by government troops. Lambert’s forces disintegrate. The story is that Lambert’s fine Arabian steed gets bogged down in the muddy ground, and he’s easily rounded up.” Lambert was to spend the rest of his days a prisoner. Other reports in the Parliamentary Intelligencer reveal that the new administration's words weren't always matched by its actions. We read that: The House ordered the thanks of this House to be given to Mr Calamy… and Mr Baxter for their great pains in carrying on the works of preaching and praying before the House at St Margaret’s Westminster. Edmund Calamy and Richard Baxter were leading Presbyterian members of the reformed Anglican church, Puritans devoted to preaching and scripture, while loathing bishops, cathedrals and ceremony. The cruel irony is that their subsequent stories reveal the fragility of Charles II’s promises of “liberty to tender consciences”. “That statement in the Declaration of Breda wasn’t worth the paper it was written on,” says Restoration historian Ronald Hutton. “Most of the nation was tired of Puritanism. A thoroughly intolerant new House of Commons was to outlaw all forms of religion that weren’t High Anglican. Calamy and Baxter attempted to carry on preaching, but ended up in prison as a result.” Pragmatic prison sentences There was more pragmatism in the Restoration regime's treatment of the regicides – men who had signed the death warrant of Charles I. One of them, Sir Hardress Waller, turns up on the pages of the Intelligencer. Having until now been engaged in "managing the affairs of Ireland" he is reported as having… …the leave of the Council [of State] to follow his private occasions, provided he shall appear before the Council when they shall desire the same. In fact, Waller fled to France before surrendering in the hope that repentance would save his head (and guts). Though condemned to death, his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. The treatment of the regicides wasn’t uniformly savage, says Penelope Corfield of Royal Holloway, University of London, even if the executions that were effected proved indescribably gory. “The general idea was to encourage the bitterness of divisive civil war to die down. If individual regicides were ready to express regret and play within the system in future, they didn’t suffer the extreme penalty. The authorities only went after the regicides that fled or wouldn’t accept the authority of the king as restored. Amazingly, one plan suggested for Charles while he was in exile was that he should marry the daughter of John Lambert, the stalwart of the republican cause!” Weighty issues, then, at a dramatic and hugely significant turning point in British history. However, the great thing about newspapers is that there are usually unobtrusive corners that show life going on as normal even in stirring times. In the Intelligencer, the ads say it all. How's this – all you master chefs – for a cookbook surely worth restoring to favour: The Accomplisht Cook, the Mystery of the Whole Art of Cookery, revealed in a more perfect method than hath been publisht in any language; expert and ready ways for dressing Flesh, Fish and Fowl… with other a la mode curiosities … approved by the many years experience of Robert May. Andrew Green is producer of Random Edition on Radio 4, in which the stories are provided by archive newspapers.