Dan Snow's History Hit - Charles I Reconsidered

Episode Date: August 21, 2020

On 22nd August 1642, Charles I raised his standard at Nottingham marking the start of the English Civil War. It was the result of years of ongoing tensions which could no longer be resolved with diplomacy and negotiation. But what was Charles' role in this disastrous turn of events - tyrant or victim of bad timing? Lianda de Lisle joined me on the pod to review Charles' reign, discussing why and how various reputations have emerged.Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. Thank you to the 422 million of you who pointed out that when I was getting excited about the 2,500th anniversary of the Battle of Thermopylae it wasn't in fact the 2,500th anniversary because the year zero isn't a year. So in fact it's the 2,499th anniversary of the Battle of Thermopylae.

So that's great. So I'm going to have to redesign t-shirts, push back the party, take myself back to school. Anyway, it's a remarkable event. It's worth commemorating, even if it's not exactly a big round number, as is the subject of this podcast. This is one of the podcasts where you reach back into the archive. We reach back and we bring out some of the gems and we decide to bring you Leander de Lyle. She's a historian. She's written about King Charles I. We had a robust discussion about whether King Charles I was a total muppet. He raised his standard on the 22nd of August 1642 at Nottingham. It said on it, render unto Caesar. It's a pretty bold play given his opponents accused him of behaving in a kind of generally dictatorial way. You just unravel a big banner

with the word Caesar on it. It doesn't give your kind of defenders anywhere to go. It's like when Trump comes out in public and says he's trying to stop people voting because he'll lose if everyone gets to vote. Similar to that, really. Anyway, this is a discussion about Charles I. Enjoy. If you want to listen to the back episodes of this podcast, which are no longer available on the free platforms, we've put them on History Hit TV.

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So I would go and do that if I were you because we've got all sorts of fun stuff coming up. Also, we've been sent pictures of people making waves at the moment, wearing their historical face coverings. There are very drab face coverings out there, everybody. Very drab. Get a reusable, rewashable, historical cloth face covering with Queen Victoria on it. Genghis Khan. Alexander the Great. Tutankhamen. It's a lot more interesting than walking around a crowded shop, a crowded store, with a nasty throwaway surgical one over your face.

So go and check out historyhit.com slash shop. I've been asked a lot recently, do they deliver to North America? The answer is yes, we do deliver to North America. If the postal service is still standing, it'll arrive at your house in the United States of America. We also ship to Canada Mexico you name it so check it out historyhit.com shop in the meantime everyone here's Leander DeLisle talking about Charles I Leander thank you so much for coming on the podcast I'm going to put my cards right down here on this table I I think Charles I was the most useless, incompetent man.

Actually, no, I'm going slightly superlative here, but he was a pretty rubbish king. And you're about to tell me he was great, aren't you? I'm not going to say he was great, but I'm going to say, look, there were ups and downs. I mean, people remember the end. They remember that he was executed at the hands of his own subjects. And this is just read back across his whole life as if he was doomed from birth. And that just wasn't the case. I mean, things might

have been so very different. Ah, if the Battle of Edge Hill had gone a bit differently. We'll get on to that in a second. Okay, so finally, you're saying he's been hard done by. Let's talk about his, his father wasn't easy. And he wasn't the oldest son, was he? No, no, he had an elder brother. And you do hear a lot about, oh, the marvellous elder brother. If only he had lived. But the fact is he died at 18, just old enough to have raised great hopes without living so long enough as to have had the chance to disappoint them. That's the point.

And also the kind of people who had lots of nice things to say about Henry, who was the name of his elder brother, they were the heirs to other people who had said all these lovely things about Elizabeth I, to use it as a stick to beat King James with. But actually, during Elizabeth's lifetime, hadn't been that loyal to her. So in short, it's all balls. Okay, well, that's good and clear. James I, probably a difficult father, heavy drinking, opinionated, possibly gay. Yes, yes. I think Charles did find it a bit tricky in his early teens when his mother was still living and his father was clearly in love with the Duke of Buckingham or the later Duke of Buckingham. Yes, I think he did find that a bit

embarrassing, but you know, he could have been a lot worse. I mean, I think Charles enjoyed the kind of family love his father had never known. I mean, his father had never known his own father. His own father had been murdered. James, aged five, had seen his grandfather die. No, Charles had a relatively easy childhood, and James was a relatively loving father for a monarch. OK, how old was Charles when he ascends to the throne?

24, so young still. And to be fair to these feckless Stuarts who I'm being so rude about, to be fair to them, the English monarchy was in a dire position in the 1620s, wasn't it? Well, it was broke. And, you know, the Tudors, that was partly the consequence of the way the Tudors had ruled. I mean, they had sold a lot of land, they'd spent a lot of money, they had left a lot of debts. And James was by nature extravagant, and those debts had accumulated. So when Charles came to the throne, he had a lot of debts. He was keen to take Britain into war in Europe, in support of the Protestant cause, and his sister and the Winter Queen, who had lost the crown of Bohemia with her husband.

And there was really no money to pay for it. So that was tricky. But was he keen? Because is he not accused of being insufficiently zealous in sort of pursuing Protestant blue water policies like sort of Elizabeth I is supposed to have done? Yes. Well, yes and no. At different stages, people sort of switch tack on this because, of course, he did actually take, as I said, he took Britain into the Thirty Years' War as soon as he became king.

But he then found Parliament weren't actually prepared to pay for this war. And so he then made peace. And then there was a lot of sort of people sitting around whining that he wasn't fighting the Habsburgs after all. So, you know, he couldn't win really either way, poor man. And what about that? So you've already highlighted, of course, this central theme, perhaps, of his reign, which is his relationship with his parliament. I mean, was that always tricky right from the start? Was there a kind of inability to accept his position in relation to parliament? Yes, I think that he understood that parliament was extremely useful and it was a good thing for kings to get on with parliaments. But two things, I think that he understood that Parliament was extremely useful and it was a good thing for kings to get on with Parliament. But two things, I think Charles, like his father, didn't really

understand the importance of Parliament in English culture. I think I was part of it. And also, he didn't have a good instinct for dealing with people, particularly for opponents. He wasn't good at divide and rule. He tended to lump all his enemies together. He just wasn't good at reading people generally. He didn't have that instinct and that made him slightly insecure, which was unhelpful in his dealings with Parliament, amongst other things. Did he have friends and allies within the British ruling class or was he always quite isolated? No, he did definitely have friends and allies. And as things became increasingly bitter before the civil war, I mean,

the whole point is it was a civil war. There were two sides to it. So yes, he had supporters. And as the war went on, many of the people who'd begun by supporting Parliament, and I put Parliament in inverted commas because it was only always a section of Parliament, then in time, many who I said who started fighting for Parliament moved to his side as Parliament became increasingly radical. Okay, so let's fighting for Parliament moved to his side as Parliament became increasingly radical. OK, so let's talk about the decline in his relationships with Parliament. As you say, they got off to a rocky start. They fell out of a spending on war, which seems to be very common in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Did things go downhill from there? Was there ever an attempt to patch it up with Parliament? Yes, there were attempts. But unfortunately, for one reason or another, they all went pear-shaped. I think there was just great mistrust on both sides. And part of this was to do with religion. The Church of England was essentially a Calvinist church, but with a Catholic structure. Charles thought this made the Church of England the best in the world, but others disagreed, and they felt it was just just half reformed, a dangerous mingle-mangle

of a popish government and pure religion. And they were appalled when they saw Charles reforming the Church of England on more ritualistic ceremonial lines. They felt it was a threat to the Calvinist credentials of the Church of England. And there was a sort of massive falling out about that. Was England, and of course Scotland and Ireland, was it almost ungovernable in the 17th century? I mean, even if the amazing Elizabeth I had been there, I mean, would she have struggled to deal with the complexity and the lack of cash that the English monarchy had in that period?

Yes, I think the Tudors would also have struggled. But they did two things which Charles didn't really. One was each of the Tudor monarchs from Henry VIII introduced dramatic and very unpopular religious change. But they all used Parliament to give their actions legal force on the one hand. And the other thing is, is they cut the testicles, heads and various other body parts off their enemies. And that was something Charles didn't do. During his so-called 11 years tyranny, which were the 11 years he ruled without parliament, there were no political or religious executions. He would cut the ears off Puritan dissenters, but they kept their testicles and

their heads. Which are two of the most important bits. So you're saying Charles was too soft on the opposition? Well, certainly many royalists said later that the 11... essentially said the 11 Years' Tyranny hadn't been nearly tyrannical enough, and that was the great problem. So was Charles neither collegiate enough to work with Parliament nor tyrannical enough to rule by himself? I think there's an element of truth in that, yes. OK, so let's go back.

So he tries to work Parliament, then taught me how do we enter this 11 years tyranny bit? Well, it's a sort of accumulation of hideous disasters. There are military failures in Europe. There are sections of Parliament who are desperate to get rid of his leading minister, the Duke of Buckingham. Charles resists this.

Buckingham is then assassinated. This is an opportunity then to possibly rebuild trust between King and Parliament. But in fact, there's just a sort of further deterioration in trust between the two sides, partly because Charles's religious reforms continue. And it ends up with a sort of virtual riot one day on the sort of floor of the House of Commons. And Charles then decides to dissolve Parliament. And he decides that it's been taken over by radical elements. And he's going to rule without it for as long as he can. But Charles wasn't just a passive victim. And there must have been something about Charles's character. We talk a lot about divine right monarchy. I mean, did Charles, was Charles

instinctively unable to understand that rule involved compromise with these nasty people in Parliament? No, I think he did understand that it involved compromise, and he was willing to compromise. But I think that he did lack confidence in a way. He couldn't read, he was a highly intelligent man, but he was one of those people who can't read people well. He didn't have an instinct for that. So as I said, he he tended to lump his enemies together rather than being able to have the confidence to divide and rule and to know when he could afford to back down, when he needed to make a stand, who he needed to, you know, eliminate,

who he needed to make friends with, however briefly. He didn't have those sort of natural political instincts or human instincts even. So now we've entered a period of rule without Parliament. How is he able to keep the government running? Where's his money coming from? Ah, well, actually, he does rather well. He makes peace, because he can't afford wars in Europe anymore. So he makes peace, and he begins to rebuild royal finances. He raises taxes without parliamentary consent, prerogative taxes, which are those taxes which he's permitted to raise without parliament, but they're vastly increased and

expanded. So, for example, you have ship money, which used to be raised on coastal ports in time of war. He now brings these taxes inland in time of peace, but raises an enormous amount of money. The judges back him. He starts building a huge navy because he foresees that naval power is going to be, you know, the source of Britain's future greatness. So he's not just spending it on silk stockings. He is doing something purposeful with it. And in his church reforms, too, although they're also opposed,

just as his taxes are opposed, many people like it. Many people like his church reforms. A lot of his opponents are old men, dying off, middle-aged. He's by now got a brood of children to succeed him. I mean, it was possible that things were going to go quite well, that he could have been a kind of Louis XIV, a British Louis XIV. And that's a good paradox. He did sort of see himself in that mould, even though Louis wasn't

alive yet. Yes, he did. Absolutely. But unfortunately, he overextended himself. He decided he wanted uniformity of religion, which his father hadn't achieved across the three kingdoms. And he begins looking at Scotland, brings in this anglicised prayer book to impose on the Scots and Scots get very annoyed. And whereas English school children were always taught this was a war between king and parliament, of course the war was started because of the complexity involved in ruling these three kingdoms simultaneously but which were distinct and yet joined by the personal union of the crowns. Yes, which of course the Tudors didn't have to deal with. Yes, absolutely. So you had Scotland to deal with. And when he tried to impose the prayer book there, it triggered

a riot. And again, his supporters later said what he should have done, he should have rounded up the ringleaders to the riot and had them executed, but he didn't, and this emboldened his enemies, who then decided they didn't just not want this prayer book, they also wanted to abolish episcopacy, that's church government by bishops in Scotland, and, you know, ended up with an invasion. His opponents and his detractors in history have sort of drawn a link, haven't they,

between his fondness for extra-parliamentary taxation and his religious ideas about the importance. So it's kings and bishops as these central figures at the very top of these very fixed hierarchies. I mean, do you see those parallels? Yes, he saw them. His father saw them, that belief in hierarchy, a deferential society. But this wasn't about sort of simple sort of megalomania. It wasn't sort of Charles or James thinking, oh, you know, I want to wander around with a sort of crown on my head thinking I'm marvelous 24-7 or whatever. The point of divine right kingship is that it was an argument against religious justifications for violence. After the Reformation, obviously, you had Catholics, Protestants, you had all sorts of different kinds of Protestants as well.

And then you started to have arguments, which began in Britain, in fact, that monarchs drew their authority from the people, and therefore the people had the right to overthrow any who were of the wrong religion. Then you have, well, who are the people? Am I the people? Are you the people? Are we going to agree on everything? I think not. And what is the right religion? And you had a sort of free-for-all, basically, of people saying, right, well, now we're going to rebel because we don't like this king, or we're going to blow him up with gunpowder, or we're going to stab him like they stabbed Henri Carte in France, or we're going to shoot him, you know, and so forth. And James argued against this with the divine right of kings saying, no, kings draw their authority from God and only God has the right to overthrow a monarch. So divine right monarchy was a bulwark

against anarchy. Exactly, against instability and religious violence, religious justifications for violence, which is something we should understand now. It doesn't seem so loopy now. It didn't seem so loopy in the 1640s, huh? No, it didn't seem so loopy then, that's very true. And in a way, you know, it is a kind of sort of arrogance, really, when we look back in the past, we think, oh, those people, they must have been so stupid, you know,

believing these sort of idiotic things. You know, they weren't idiotic. There were reasons for them. They were products of their time and place. They weren't idiotic. There were reasons for them. They were products of their time and place. Okay, so his Scottish subjects are rebelling against Charles because of his religious reforms. Why does that lead to what is now regarded as per capita the bloodiest war in the history of the British Isles? Well, that's a good question. Well, the Scots had allies in England, members of the nobility like Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, who was the greatest privateering

peer of his day, and his ally John Pym in the House of Commons. And these men had formed a secret treasonous alliance with the Scots. So when Charles was forced to call what became known as the Long Parliament to raise the taxes to buy off the Scots to get them out of England after they'd invaded. So you've got a Scottish invading army and Charles's attachment to peace without Parliament collapses because he's got to have money for an army. Exactly. The one thing he can't afford, he cannot afford wars, he cannot afford to fight without Parliament. And so now he has to call Parliament. But the opposition now, particularly the extreme end of it, are no longer willing just to get from Charles guarantees that the Parliament will be recalled, or that, you know, the guarantees, as they would see it, for the Calvinist credentials of the

Church of England. They want more than that, because they are fearful. They need to take away from Charles any power that might allow him to revenge himself on them in the future and to essentially execute them for their treason. And so what you then have is they need to push through radical legislation. To push through this radical legislation, they have to persuade a lot of people who are more conservative than they are, both in the country and in Parliament, to back them. And to do this, they raise the political temperature. And they do this in the way that demagogues have always done, really. They sort of raise a sense of national threat. You know, we're under attack. Catholics are about to kill us all in our beds. A rebellion broke out in Ireland. Atrocities. You get these atrocity stories

repeated and greatly inflated. The Queen is blamed as the sort of papist-in-chief. She started this rebellion. And also she's foreign, which is... She's foreign. God, she's French. I mean, it could hardly be worse. So they sort of send soldiers into Catholic homes. There are about three Catholics in England,

but into Catholic homes to search for weapons. 80-year-old Catholic priests are being hung, drawn and quartered again suddenly. All really to sort of raise this, you know, raise ethnic and religious tensions and a sense of threat. But why this assault on the king's prerogatives? Was there something in the water in the 17th century or in culture that was happening? Or was it Charles himself? Or did his enemies just fear that they were going to get their heads chopped off

and just cooked up this whole idea of reducing the ability of the king to punish them? Well, there are two different parts to that. Yes, there had been something in the water for a long time. When Elizabeth, I mean, it really goes back to when Elizabeth became queen, English Protestants did not think that women should rule. They felt there were biblical things against female rule. So how do you justify the fact they have a queen? And so they argued, for example, that the sovereignty didn't really reside in the person of the monarch, The sovereignty didn't really reside in the person of the monarch.

It resided in the crown in Parliament, for example. So it was all part and parcel of the same thing. So, yes, these things had been in the water for a long time. But then at this sort of key time in sort of 1641, you do have a more radical change happening. But partly, first of all, because there had been a real serious danger to Parliament from Charles, because if he can raise his own taxes, if he can support himself without Parliament, it was very possible there would be no Parliament. And in France, the last Parliament had been called in 1614. It had been awkward about taxes, and it wouldn't be recalled until late in the 18th century,

until the French Revolution. So Parliament faced an existential threat as well. It did, it did, yes, it did, absolutely. And was, again, this is the great what-if of British history, but do you think Charles could have done away? I mean, what was, before the Scots invaded England, the Covenanters, it was unpopular, the fact he hadn't called Parliament. But, I mean, how unpopular?

Would it have forced him to change? Would that unpopular eventually have forced him to change direction and call Parliament, do you think? It might not have done. I think it's difficult to know because I think the English were extremely attached to Parliament. But it's possible that, you know, passage of time, people would have forgotten.

I think if they were sort of comfortable, they had money in their pockets, then who knows? Or, you know, Charles might have felt in due course, or one of his sons might have felt they could afford to recall Parliament, and things could have got back on an even keel, because actually, Parliament did serve a very useful purpose. When a king worked with Parliament, you know, he had the country with him, which is obviously extremely helpful. So it's actually much better. One royalist said that no king in the Orient was as powerful as an English monarch working with his Parliament. You could do anything. Good for your credit rating. Good for your credit rating, good for all sorts of ratings. I mean, look at the Tudors, look what they did. I mean, as I said, they sort of went, the dramatic religious changes,

all the dramatic changes they made, they had Parliament to help them do that. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows

or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. So, Parliament is agreeing to pay for to defend england from this scottish covenant army but they're demanding all sorts of concessions from charles is this this is the key moment really in in charles's career and it's his failure to get through this crisis that leads ultimately to his death, doesn't it? Yes, there is a sort of terrible period over the winter of 1641-2 when he puts out an order in December,

I can't remember the actual date off my head, orders all MPs to return to Parliament because Parliament is just packed with sort of radical MPs and all those sort of slightly more moderate ones are all in the countryside because London is full of sort of mobs which have been raised by the sort of more radical elements and have been kept away. And so Charles wants the moderate MPs to come back essentially

so he can then crush the radical opposition and all be fine and dandy. But it all goes pear-shaped and all goes horribly wrong. And before the 30 days are up, which he said they have to be back in London in 30 days, after 28 days he's driven out of London and doesn't return to his execution. It all goes horribly wrong. Why is he driven out of London?

This follows his attempt to arrest, you know, the members in the House of Commons. And, you know, they're not there. That's the whole Birds of Flone story. He bursts into the House of Commons to arrest people, isn't he? He does, he does. History hasn't been kind to him about that. No, it hasn't.

But, you know, he wasn't entirely wrong. I mean, they were, you know, a number of them were traitors. So, you know, he wasn't entirely wrong. I mean, a number of them were traitors. So, you know, they were traitors. But yes, unfortunately, he didn't succeed and just ended up making an arse of himself and ended up having to flee London. So he flees London, which is a terrific strategic setback and raises the standard in Nottingham. Is it clear once he flees London that he's going to come back at the head of an army or try to? Yes, although I think both sides pretend it's all going to be fine, it'll all be sorted out somehow, but they're both sort of behind the scenes of furiously sort of trying to, I mean, Henrietta Maria goes to Holland and acts as his chief

diplomat, Charles's chief diplomat and arms buyer in Europe. And, you know, increasingly over the following months, Parliament and royalists are sort of going around the villages of England, raising men and looking for support. It must have been the most remarkable period that. Do you think people, were they talking? I mean, was compromise still possible at that stage? No, I don't think so. I suppose we'll never say never, but no, I don't think so. I think both sides were... Both sides believed as well they would all begin and end with one great battle.

It's the old story, isn't it? It'll all be over by Christmas. And it was one of those things. It'll all be over by Christmas. And of course it wasn't. Yeah, the sort of the cult of the decisive battle has got soldiers in trouble throughout history. What was Charles unwilling to compromise on with Parliament? What was the fundamental sticking point at that early stage, just before the fighting started?

Well, one of the things he argued about was the militia that Parliament wanted to take from him the right to raise the militia. Because what they were supposedly doing is, as I said, they had this rebellion in Ireland to face. So the English needed to raise an army to deal with the rebellion, the Catholic rebellion in Ireland. So who was going to be in charge of this army? Technically, it would be the king, but obviously the opposition didn't want the king in charge of this army. And so there was a big row about that. And Charles said it was a power he wouldn't even give to his wife and his children. So he certainly wasn't going to give it to Parliament, the right to raise the militia. That was really the sort of major sticking point at that particular time.

I mean, that's heady stuff, isn't it? Refusing to allow the king to command and lead an army in a war. I mean, it's the first duty of the sovereign, really, wasn't it, in this period? So was there a kind of intellectual ferment where people, did they realise just how revolutionary they were being? Or were they seizing on examples from 17th century Europe and thinking they were within that intellectual sort of mainstream? I think many people did realise how radical it was. And again, that's why there was a civil war. I think many people were, I mean, because they wanted to take away from him the rights to choose who his children married, all sorts of things,

Parliament began the radical element in Parliament. In a way, I hate calling them Parliament, because it was only ever a portion of Parliament. but for ease, we'll call it Parliament. Yes, so people were aware that they were making very radical demands, but equally those who supported Parliament would say that it was necessary that Charles himself was behaving radically by denying, by having been prepared to rule without Parliament all these years, by raising taxes without parliamentary consent, by his religious changes, and so forth. And indeed, he was radical. So you had two radical sides. The connection to Europe is interesting, because the Thirty Years' War was fought by Protestant German, and it starts with Protestant German states and statelets,

trying to, well, rejecting the authority to a certain extent of their Catholic Habsburg overlord. Was this a time in the early 17th century where this was becoming normalised in Europe, across Europe? What, religious war? No, the idea that it was, you could throw off your divinely appointed overlord. Yes, they've been doing that since, essentially, as I was saying, since the Reformation, and that was hence the need for the sort of divine right of kings. I mean, James, of course, had seen his mother had been overthrown in Scotland, a Catholic monarch overthrown by Protestants.

He himself had faced problems in Scotland at the hands of fellow Protestants, and he'd come to England, he'd faced the gunpowder plot at the hands of Catholics, you know, and so forth. I think the Thirty Years' War had an enormous impact in Britain because English Protestants who were, as I said, Calvinists, saw themselves as a part of a wider Calvinist church. I mean, people think of Henry VIII's Reformation as being a kind of Brexit, I mean, people think of Henry VIII's Reformation as being a kind of Brexit, but his form of sort of nationalised Catholicism had not survived him.

And what you saw afterwards was this Protestant church, which was introduced under Edward VI, which was a Calvinist church fundamentally. And British Calvinists saw themselves as a part of a European Calvinist church. So what happened in Europe mattered enormously to them. And Calvinism and Protestantism in general was in retreat by this time. In 1590, Protestants had held half the land area of Europe. A hundred years later, they only held a fifth. So you can see. And of course, the other thing is they were aware of is that

Protestantism had only really survived where it was imposed or permitted by monarchs. And this is another reason they felt they needed to have control over monarchs and who the monarch was. That's a nice point. Yeah, I hadn't thought about that. Okay, so we've got when war breaks out, let's move to Charles. Charles, the failed political negotiator, to be fair.

How is he as a general commanding men in battle? Well, he's personally extremely brave, and he inspires great loyalty. Parliament has control of London and the South East, and with it, the majority of England's wealth and population. And navy. Yes, and the navy, actually, under Warwick, absolutely. And for a time, they also have an alliance with the Scots. Nevertheless, it takes many years to defeat Charles militarily. As I said, everyone expected things to be over with one battle, which they expected the king to lose. When he raised his standard at Nottingham, it was a sort of pathetic scene of, you know, sort of a couple of hundred sort of measly, sad looking people in the rain. So, you know,

and then, you know, he had to fight the Battle of Edge Hill, which ended in a sort of bloody draw. He almost won. He almost won. And the general, you know, the parliamentary general, Essex, was in a sort of suffering from a battle shock at the end of it all. So maybe he was just sort of shocked the fact that he hadn't won. But you know, they didn't defeat Charles for many years. I mean, you know, drove Cromwell doughty. And then, but where was Charles's money and support coming from during the Civil War? I mean, is it a case of, you know, magnates who would, who would raise sort of the local levies to fight whether they liked it or not for the king? Or were these committed volunteers signing up to fight for a cause they believed in? Both, both. I think there was definitely arm twisting. And Henrietta Maria

actually did a pretty good job in Europe, raising money right to the end. She was sort of, you know, going around, you know, raising money and arms for her husband's cause. You know, she was a very powerful supporter for him. So Battle of Marston Moor, Battle of Naseby, it all becomes a hopeless cause for the king. But it wasn't certain that he would be executed, was it? I mean, when does actually regicide come into people's minds? Well, it certainly come into people's minds during the Second Civil War,

the kind of royalist rising of 1648. Many people in the New Model Army are thoroughly fed up having to sort of fight another, fight again, lose more people, and they decide, you know, well, some of them, a group of them decide that he should be tried, that man of blood. Is Charles imprisoned at the end of that? I can't remember. Yeah, he gives himself up to the Scots. He thinks, he believes that the Scots will be prepared to negotiate with him,

as indeed they are, but he becomes their prisoner, not their guest, that he hadn't expected. They then, because he won't compromise with him, as indeed they are, but he becomes their prisoner, not their guest, that he hadn't expected. Because he won't compromise with them, what he won't do, they want him to be prepared to say that episcopacy is wrong, innately wrong. Charles will never do that. They don't understand that. They don't understand it's a core religious belief for Charles. And so when they realise that, they sell him to Parliament. And then he's with Parliament, and then he's snatched by the New Model Army. And then, you know, while he's imprisoned by them,

you have this royalist rising in... It's a royalist rising, it's the Second Civil War, effectively. Yes, effectively, yeah, the Second Civil War. And it's brutally put down by the New Model, rising in the royalist rise that's the second civil war effectively effectively a second civil war and it's brutally put down by the new model the english parliamentary army exactly exactly um and also involves the scots and so there's a lot of very fed up people and so he's going to be tried he has to be put on trial um but the it's still not certain that he's going to be executed. Because Parliament, again, it's even more absurd to call it Parliament at this stage, because it's been purged by the new model army. So it's just a sort of rump. But they don't know how people in Europe are going

to react, how the great powers are going to react. They don't know how people in this country... It's a risk chopping off a king's head, as you can imagine, and difficult on many levels. So what they really want is Charles to recognise the court. If he does that, he's essentially recognising the supremacy of the commons, which means that he is admitting that he has no negative voice, that he cannot prevent the passing of any legislation. He has to say yes to whatever the Commons wants. But Charles doesn't do that. Charles won't recognise the court and therefore won't recognise the supremacy of the Commons. And so they're left with really no choice but to chop off his head. Did Charles lose his life but save the monarchy

by doing that? Again, it's a counterfactual yes i don't know i think that certainly um i i think the way the man he that he the way he died very bravely he managed he had by this stage learned the value of the printed media and propaganda and the icon basilica which was this purportedly autobiographical work which um argued you, that he had done sort of been right all along or whatever, and argued that he was dying essentially a martyr for the English people and for the English law and for the Church of England, did help keep the royalist cause alive until the restoration of Charles II. But there was certainly no guarantees that there would be ever the restoration of Charles II, but there was certainly no guarantees that there would be ever, that the restoration of Charles II would ever happen. I mean, luckily for the monarchy, I suppose the Commonwealth was enormously unpopular. I mean, I am sitting here, I'm

thinking, and annoyingly you're slightly convincing me, that if you look at where Parliament and its almost military dictatorship had gone, and you look at where Charles was in the late 1640s, the one that appears to have departed most from the historic norm is probably Parliament and the army. Yes, and then, of course, they tried to retreat in a way because they tried to make sort of Cromwell king. And he was a king, if not in name. He did become a... He ruled like a monarch.

He even had a mace and he even had a sort of coronation. His wife and his daughters were called princesses. It was extraordinary. He had a sort of court. And he was succeeded by his son. And he was succeeded by his son, but it just didn't work. It just didn't quite work. But, yes, they tried to imitate the old system land a viking longship on island shores scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we

uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits.

There are new episodes every week. And so why... So Charles is executed. Yeah. Lots of wonderful stuff. Wears two shirts so he doesn't appear to shiver. He says goodbye to his children, that's the best bit. Well, I mean, it's the worst bit, but also, you know, it's a very moving bit.

Does he say goodbye to them in person? Yes, to his two youngest. One is 13, his daughter Elizabeth is 13, and his son Henry is five. It is very difficult to either read or write about those scenes without, you know, getting sloppy and blubbing, to be honest. Well, everyone can read about that in your book. And then he's executed. So you argue that people have been particularly harsh on him because he was on the losing side.

Yes, I think that's it. As I said, instead of remembering the ups and downs, the good and the bad, they read the end, the failure, across his whole life. And one of the things I find very striking is even into his childhood, when he was born, you know, a frail infant, he had weak legs, he had this lingual deformity. And in the past, people thought of disability as a mark of sin,

of, you know, man's fallen nature. So you have Shakespeare, you know, Richard III with his crooked spine and being a sort of reflection of his crooked soul. And you still have people talking about Charles's weak legs as if they were somehow symptoms of weakness of character and unlovability and his lingual deformity, some kind of sort of dumb stupidity. And we do still, these old patterns of thought are very strong.

So if anybody went to see Wonder Woman last year, which bizarrely I saw on Skybox often as a slow moment, you'd see that Wonder Woman was very beautiful and glamorous and physically perfect. And her opponent,

who's also a woman, Dr. Poison, is disfigured. We still think in these same ways. Strange. I took my daughter to one who is incredibly age inappropriate but we had a great time it's a great movie uh how did we get there from charles oh i know yes exactly okay so you're saying charles so you've rescued charles from the the bottom of the uh of the league table of english and british monarchs yes because i see

him as a sort of tragic figure he's like like the protagonist of a Greek tragedy, really, because he's a man who's brought to ruin, not by wickedness, because he's a man who's of great courage and a high principle, but he's brought to ruin simply by ordinary human flaws and misjudgments. So we have empathy for him.

We have empathy with him. I've got a bit more empathy for him now. But also. So we have empathy for him. We have empathy with him. I've got a bit more empathy for him now. But also I've got more empathy for him because I've just read Geoffrey Park as an extraordinary book about the 17th century. Which one? The Global... Oh, yes.

The one with the weather and everything. Fantastic. So he argues that a combination of volcanoes, sunspots and various other things. It's a wonderful book. It's very large. It's a very large book, extraordinary book. And he argues that in the 17th century, there was violence from

North America, but particularly Britain, right the way across through South Asia to China and Japan. And he argues that one third of the globe's population was killed in the 17th century. So it was the backdrop to which Charles was desperately wrestling with these big issues was pretty, the environmental backdrop was awful as well. Yes, and actually the weather is a sort of notable feature. It's always freezing cold or pissing with rain at almost every sort of moment when you have a sort of weather report, it's something terrible and the bad harvest and plague. But the war itself was the really was the really terrible thing here and there was a description um and unfortunately those annoying things when you come across something a source

then you lose that source which i then of course immediately lost um but it's a wonderful description of these european and before the war they'd come and you know uh how how striking it'd be in england an agriculturally rich society and everyone would seems sort of quite sort of fat and happy and he comes back after the war and everyone just is so not is it so embittered and angry and and it had a it had a huge psychological impact as well on on everyone here as you could understand because more people well as many people died as a percentage of population as was killed in the trenches of first World War. So it's not surprising. And in a way, worse war, because it's your friends, your neighbours, your members of your own family. No, thank you very much. You've painted a grim picture of that.

What is the book called? It's called White King. Why? Why? Because it was a sobriquet that was used about Charles during his lifetime. He was said to have been the only king of England ever to have been crowned in white. This was in fact fake news. And it was first used by his enemies. They said he was the white king of the prophecies of Merlin, a doomed tyrant. But it was then taken up by his friends who said, oh no, that his white robes had been the sort of vestments of a future saint.

And then there was a famous description of his burial in which, you know, which took place at Windsor and it describes his coffin being taken from the Great Hall at Windsor to St George's Chapel. It had as a snowstorm and the snow covers the black velvet pool with white, the colour of innocence. And the witness says, and so went the white king to his grave.

But that too was fake news. The man who spanned this story was a professional liar who had been actually employed by Parliament to spy on Charles and his captivity. And then, of course, had been quite keen to suck up to Charles II and so sort of span this romantic story about Charles, the innocent Charles, being buried.

Well, we think we've got it living in an era of fake news now. The 17th century made this era look like a palace of reason, I'll tell you. Thank you very much, Leanne de Lisle. White King, available now. Go'll tell you. Thank you very much, Deanne de Lyle. White King, available now. Go and buy it. Thank you. I feel we have the history on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone, and finished, and liquidated. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. Just before you go,

bit of a favour to ask. I totally understand if you don't want to become a subscriber or pay me any cash money. Makes sense. But if you could just do me a favour, it's for free. Go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you give it a five-star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review, purge yourself, give it a glowing review, I'd really appreciate that. It's tough weather. The law of the jungle out there. And I need all the fire support I can get.

So that will boost it up the charts. It's so tiresome. But if you could do it, I'd be very that. It's tough weather, the law of the jungle out there, and I need all the fire support I can get. So that will boost it up the charts. It's so tiresome, but if you could do it, I'd be very, very grateful. Thank you. you