The Rest Is History - 12 Days: Alfred the Great and Pepys' 'Fanatiques'

Episode Date: January 6, 2022

A key battle in the history of England and a forgotten uprising in 17th century London round off our 12 (13) Days of Christmas. Back with to our regular schedule next Monday 10th January. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Hello, welcome to The Rest Is History. And if I sound unusually jolly this morning, it is because today is the last of our 12 or 13 days of Christmas marathon. A marathon that Tom Holland was entirely your idea. I'm delighted that we did it. Yeah, I was right. But I'm even more delighted

that we are now approaching the finish line. But what a brilliant pair of anniversaries we have to mark this day. So it's 6th of January. And we've been having quite a few downers, haven't we, recently? It's been very grim. The Dreyfus case, lots of death,

Albert Camus dying. Slavery. Slavery. Slavery, yeah. Great stuff. But today is, well, it's not a great day, but the upshot of it is splendid. Excellent. That is the ambushing of Alfred the Great at Chippenham by the Vikings in 878. And it's probably today.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that it took place in midwinter after Twelfth Night. So probably today, 6th of January. And he was obviously, he'd probably been celebrating Christmas in Great Hall in Chippenham in Wessex. And the Vikings, like the treacherous dogs that they are, launch an ambush on him. So the backdrop to this, Dominic,

it's a thrilling one, is it not? I don't know. You're going to tell me. Of course you do. You know this. I remember this from The Last Kingdom, no doubt. And from the Lady Bird book. Oh, yeah.

There's a fabulous illustration in the Lady Bird book. They've been celebrating Christmas, haven't they? Yeah. So take us through this. So the backdrop to this is the invasion of the Great Heathen Army, this terrifying Viking invasion force that lands in 865 and basically just goes around kind of smashing up Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Is this Guthrum?

Yeah, it's Guthrum. guthrum guthrum is this that fellow in uh poor japanese anglia who ends up being um shot with arrows say edmund so first of all northumbria gets uh toppled um and then um yes edmund the king of the east angles gets captured and shot with arrows uh gets beheaded um and his head gets guarded by a wolf and a peasant is going through the wood and the wolf says hick hick hick latin of course for yeah here here here and the peasant goes over and there is the head i love a latin speaking a joke and in um the very st edmunds is a wonderful statue of the wolf of the wolf not of edmund yeah there's a statue of edmund as well but okay statue of the wolf anyway so um so that happens and that's not good and that leaves mercia the kingdom of the

midlands and wessex the south um and uh alfred is the is the youngest of five brothers had never expected to become king, but it's a really bad time to be a king of Wessex at the moment. So 871, Alfred becomes king and absolutely, you know, the eye of the storm. He has a good track record as a warrior. He's, you know, a seasoned Viking fighter, but his reign gets off to a terrible start when he gets beaten up at Wilton,

the town closest to which I grew up. Yeah, Wilton is very, this is very much a personal mistake of this, yes. So he gets defeated in his, the very first engagement as king and he has to buy the Vikings off. The Vikings withdraw to London, then to Torxie in Lincolnshire

because there's been a revolt in Northumbria against them. A puppet king, they get rid of him. That's the end of the Anglo-Saxon monarchy in Northumbria. Then 873, the Vikings decide it's time to move in on Mercia. And the king of Mercia is a guy called

Burgred, who is closely... You know, the Mercians and West Saxons have had an uneasy relationship. But in the face of this Viking threat, they've become quite close allies. Burgred has married Alfred's elder sister, Athelswith, actually in Chippenham. So Chippenham is, you know, this wedding was a kind of marker of West Saxon Mercian friendship. The Vikings in 873 move in. They occupy Repton, which is the great kind of burial place for the Mercian kings. And that essentially symbolizes the fall of Mercia.

Burgred and Athelswith flee abroad. The Vikings are left in complete control of Mercia. They adopt a, well, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle describes him as a foolish thane. Foolish thane? A foolish thane, a man called Caolwulf. And so there's been some debate recently as to whether this guy Caolwulf really was a foolish thane. Perhaps he was, you know, revisionist takes because coins have been found in which he and Alfred are shown as paired kings. But I think he clearly, I mean, I think, you know, this is a Viking puppet on the throne.

That probably was a foolish thing to do. So basically, East Anglia and Northumbria by this point have been completely decapitated. Mercia, there is this foolish thing on the throne. Alfred is, you know, Alfred's Wessex is the last kingdom completely decapitated mercia there is this foolish thing on the throne alfred is really you know alfred's wessex is the last kingdom in the formulation of burner cornwall and the attacks keep coming so 875 they move in on wareham in dorset uh then exeter um probably the only thing that saves wessex at this point is that when the Viking fleet are

leaving Wareham for Exeter, there's a great storm and they all get wiped out. So that's, you know, a few for that. But 877, again, a great invasion. Alfred draws up terms, they swap hostages, the Vikings withdraw from Wessex. And Alfred is sufficiently trusting of this treaty that this I think is what enables him to feel that he can celebrate the festive season because Christmas is not just Christmas Day it is the 12 days that follow Christmas as well that's all part of the

the season and so the Vikings know this they're treacherous and so that's why they launch their ambush. And Alfred is caught absolutely sitting. And this is one of the, I mean,

this is a, this is a kind of a seismic moment because if, if Alfred had been killed, we probably wouldn't be doing this podcast. Humanity would have descended into the abyss, Tom. That's a big claim. So Alfred's life is the thread by which the survival of an independent Anglo-Saxon kingdom survive.

Yeah. If Alfred had died, if Alfred had been killed, the Vikings would have taken over Wessex. I mean, it's not to say that Anglo-Saxon civilization would have been over Wessex. I mean it's not to say that Anglo-Saxon civilisation would have been completely extinguished but it's likely that the English speaking kingdom

of England that emerges chiefly thanks to Alfred's efforts would probably not have emerged. So in the long run we'd be a kind of Franco-Danish society do you think? I suppose it kind of Franco-Danish society, do you think? I suppose it would be Anglo-Danish, wouldn't it?

I mean, but you could imagine. Well, the French would have come eventually. But the influence of the Kingdom of England on British history, on European history, and on world history is so profound. You think there'd be, I mean, you seem to imply that you didn't believe there would be podcasts if Alfred had been captured. Well, but we're doing

this podcast in English. We would, I think, you know, and the reason that we can do this podcast and be listened to people in America, in Australia, you know, in non-English speaking countries where English is the lingua franca owes a huge

amount to the fact that... So there's some parallel universe in which we're doing this, in which we are massive in Scandinavia. Yes, exactly. Right? Well, we're speaking in some Anglo-Scandinavian dialect. And the only people who are listening to us are people maybe in Mercia and Wessex.

No, but I we when we go to our live tours in in uh norway great crowds greet us at the airports all right and the anglo-danish realm of newfoundland right uh norse brethren they're famous i can't do a danish i can't do a danish accented t the rest is i'm not even gonna try it i'm not gonna try it but i i mean who knows what but but i do think that that world history might have been significantly different because without the emergence of england is it are we about to get to the the the great moments in alfred's life are they about yes so alfred does escape uh he takes refuge on the isle of Athelney, which is in the Somerset levels and is literally an island because at that point it's surrounded by marshes and swamps.

And so he's basically secure there. It's famous for the story of the burning of the cakes. Yeah. And also people who've listened to our episode on St. Cuthbert may remember that St. Cuthbert turns up as well and supplies him with lots of fish. Yes. So that enables Alfred to hold out. He sends out messengers across Wessex to meet him at a place called Egbert's Stone on the border between Somerset and Wiltshire. He then leads them and they meet

with the Viking army at a place called Eddington. And it's a thumping victory. And the measure of how thumping it is, is that the Vikings run away. They, Alfred besieges them in their camp, presumably at Chippenham. And after two weeks, the Vikings have to surrender.

And for the first time, it's the Vikings who have to hand over hostages. It's not a mutual swap of hostages. And they're forced to convert to christianity and guthrum takes on the name of athelstan he does not the athelstan not the champion not the champion but it shows that the name is kind of in the ether yeah alfred stands as his godfather and by terms of this treaty uh alfred gets london and he has recognized that london is the kind of the key to controlling the south uh so he moves in he fortifies it um you can still see the the outlines

of the dock it's the only part of the the lineaments of the anglo-saxon city that still survives um and in due course a further treaty is agreed whereby Mercia, basically, it's kind of like France after in 1940 gets divided in two. And you have this line running from the Mersey down to the Thames Estuary. And on the west side of that, Alfred basically takes over. Although, as we talked in the Athelstan episode, he's careful not to brand it as a West Saxon takeover. His daughter Athelflad marries the leading elder man of, the leading Earl of Mercia, Athelred and first Lord of the Mercians,

first lady of the Mercians and the Vikings take the other side. And Alfred's determination to secure Wessex is what provides the launch pad for his son, Edward, and his daughter, Athelflaed, in the great year of 917 to launch the conquest of East Anglia and the Viking half of Mercia. You're almost 50 years away now from your original date. I know, I know. But I'm just saying that this is, you know this is a we have we have the moment of darkness and then everything it's a good it's a great story and i know i'm a stuck record on this but the uh the depiction of the the the sort of setback the comeback and the triumphant victory at eddington or wherever it is in the bernard cornwell tv series the Kingdom, is splendid. I can't recommend it too highly. Have you seen that, Tom?

Yeah, I have. It's good, isn't it? It's very good. Alfred goes up to the top of the hill. He doesn't know whether anyone's going to join him. And then he hears the hoofbeats in the distance. And England has risen. Oh, it's a great moment, Tom.

But it's filmed in the Czech Republic, I think. Yeah, but it doesn't matter. No, it did matter because it wasn't Wiltshire. If they filmed it in England, that would have been the car park of an Asda. But it didn't look anything like Wiltshire. Well, it looked more like Wiltshire. Surely it looked more like Wiltshire then than

Wiltshire now does. Maybe it should look like Wiltshire now. It shouldn't look like Wiltshire. I mean, Wiltshire now is like, in my experience, the A303. Isn't it? Isn't that Wiltshire? No nonsense. No. Right. Let us reconvene after the break with Samuel Pepys, my favourite diarist.

Well, him and Tony Benn. We will reconvene with Pepys after the break. See you in a minute. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip, and on our Q&A,

we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes, and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Hello, welcome back to the very last segment of our 12 Days of Christmas special. We're on the 6th of January.

Alfred the Great has just been sent running into the marshes of Athelni. And Dominic, now your choice. And we are in 1661. Monday, the 7es of Athelney. And Dominic, now your choice. And we are in 1661. Monday, the 7th of January. This morning, news was brought to me to my bedside that there had been a great... The 7th of January? Yes. Yes.

Have ye of little faith. You think I'd have got the wrong date. Okay. All right. Yeah, go on. Monday, the 7th of January. This morning, news was brought to me to my bedside that there had been... Ah.

How could I have doubted you? News was brought to me to my bedside... The blue perfect case kicking in. ...that there had been a great stir in the city this night by the fanatics, who had been up and killed six or seven men, but all have fled. My lord mayor and the whole city had been in arms above 40,000. To the office, and after that to dinner, when my brother Tom came and dined with me,

and after dinner, leaving twelve pence for the servants to buy cake with at night, this day being kept as twelfth day. Then Samuel Pepys, this is Samuel Pepys' diary. He goes up to the theatre, and he says, And in our way home we were in many places strictly examined, more than in the worst of times, there being great fears of these fanatics rising again. For the present, I do not hear that any of them are taken.

So what's happened, Tom, is that the previous day, the 6th of January, the fanatics have risen in London to try to start an uprising uprising do you want to know what happens to them how it ends i'll tell you who the fanatics are in a second so thursday so this that's thursday the 8th 9th uh 10th uh peeps meets his friend mr davis who's a civil servant mr davis says the fanatics have been, they routed all the trained bands they met with. They put the King's lifeguards to the run.

They killed about 20 men. They broke through the city gates twice. And all this in the daytime when all the city was in arms. And do you know how many of them were? There were only 31 of them. And Mr. Davis says, we did believe that there were at least 500 of them because they were charging around the place, but there weren't many. Well, that's nothing for you, isn't it?

A thing that never was heard of, that so few men should dare and do so much mischief. Their word was, so their sort of motto was, the King Jesus and the heads upon the gates. Few of them would receive any quarter, but such as were taken by force and kept alive, expecting Jesus to come here and reign in the world presently and will not believe yet but their work will be carried on though they do die so who are these fanatics who've been rampaging through london well they are the fifth monarchists or the fifth monarchy men so they're a kind of extreme puritan kind of sect who have, um, they've got, they've got, um, they've got going in the sort of 1650s after the assassin, after the assassination, after the execution of them,

I believe he would, he would say master after the execution of, uh, Charles the first, and they've got very carried away because they think that the end times are near and they have been, they've been perhaps over reading the book of daniel um yes which which as you will know tom i says that there were going to be four great monarchies four beasts come out of the ocean right and they're the four beast it's the

greatest of the lot the fourth beast is rome isn't it well um during the judean revolt um yes they people the judeans think that rome is the fourth beast but um then during the seventh century they think it's the arabs all right i didn't know they thought it was basically they keep having to change it yeah according to which is the superpower so anyway the book of daniel people basically have got their this idea that there are four great monarchies one is babylonian one is Persia, one is Macedonian, Alexander, and the other one is Roman or Arab or whoever. And then the fifth monarchy will be the kingdom of Christ. Yeah, Jesus.

No king but Jesus. And this becomes very popular in the 1650s with some people in the New Model Army. The chief guy's a are called General Harrison, General Thomas Harrison, but he's executed after Charles II is restored. Isn't that the one that peeps? He watches his execution.

That's right. I think he looked as cheerful as any man could do in that condition. Yeah. Very impressive. So the leadership. That's a chariot cross, I think. Is it?

Yeah, I think so. I think it's on the spot where um where the statue of charles i is now but is that so we should have talked about this in our statues yeah so the leadership then passes to a man called thomas venner thomas venner is a cooper so he's a barrel maker and he has spent 20 years in america New England, and he's returned fired up. He's full of all mad American ideas. Exactly.

He's Meghan Markle. He's come to England with all his fancy American ideas. Causing the end of chaos. And he has just become the leader of the fifth monarchy men. And they are absolutely certain, you know, Jesus is coming. It could be hours away hours away um they're very down on um charles ii yeah they their main a lot of them are sort of new model army

veterans they fought for the good old cause and they think it's all going to waste now and they meet in a tavern um in swan's alley off coleman street i don't know where that is but you probably do with all your walks somewhere in the the city anyway. And basically what happens is that they decide to launch an uprising. Very foolish. There's only about 50 of them. They start by going to St. Paul's and they go to a bookshop run by a man called Mr. Johnson. He has the keys to St. Paul's Cathedral and they ask for the keys.

And he doesn't give them the keys. They break into St. Paul's and they just sort of rampage around. Somebody says to someone comes up and says, what are you up to? And they say, who are you for? Who do you support? This fellow says, well, King Charles, of course. Do you know what they do to him? They shoot him through the heart. Very harsh.

So the authorities keep sending musketeers to sort of dislodge them and drive them off, but the fifth monarchy men are so fired up with religious enthusiasm that they're always beating back the sort of the trained bands, as they're called, and then they usually have,

they'll sort of do a little attack and have a rampage to the city, and then they sort of scuckle off to a wood outside the city, so they're always going to a high gate and stuff, lurking in woods. And then next day they come back and do some more damage. And there's just a series of sort of shambles

and then eventually, on the Wednesday, they are sort of rounded up by some king's lifeguards. There's very fierce fighting. Venner himself, he's got a halberd and he kills three men in Threadneedle Street with his halberd. It's amazing, isn't it?

Yeah, I mean, they're just an absolute ragtag cult, basically. But because sort of nobody knows who they are, and also people have got it into their heads there's more of them than there are, so people are sort of frightened and run away. And they just sort of rampage about. Eventually, General Monk,

who is obviously the man who had caused the restoration, he manages to pursue them, and they make their last stands in two pubs, the Helmet Tavern on Threadneedle Street and the Blue Anchor on Coleman Street, and they're surrounded by royalists to kind of break through and drag them out and stuff. So a lot of them are shot.

Venner himself, this Cooper, is captured. That's bad. You don't want to be captured. Well, you know what? I mean, he was hanged, drawn and quartered. But he obviously wasn't sent to Devil's Island. Would you rather be sent to Devil's Island or hanged, drawn and quartered? I'd rather be sent to Devil's Island, actually.

Wouldn't you? Yeah. You might get a pardon. You might. Yeah, you might. Emile Zola might take up your case. Little stone hut, yeah. That wasn't going to happen to Venner. Although... I mean, a hand-drawn quartering, I mean, that's proper castration.

Yeah, it's bad. It's bad. So that's what happens to Venner. And he says, according to the writer Tobias Smollett, Venner at the end affirmed, his followers affirmed to the last that if they had been deceived, the Lord himself was their deceiver. I think that's a terrible excuse, actually.

Yes. Basically all God's fault. It's Jesus' fault. Yeah. So it's an odd one because, of course, you normally think... What's interesting I like about the Fifth Monarchy men's uprising is that it slightly offends our sense of...

our slightly childish sense of periodisation. Yes. Because we sort of think the 1650s is all lunatics and religious maniacs and major generals. Then King Charles comes back and it's all kind of, you know, dancing and parties. Well, it's like the joke in 1066 and all that about Walter Raleigh being executed for having been left over from the previous reign. Exactly. Well, it's like the joke in 1066 and all that about Walter Raleigh being executed

for having been left over from the previous reign. Exactly. Yes, exactly. Because they really have been left over from the previous era. But I think the kind of interesting thing about that is that obviously it's a kind of, it's the last gasp of that idea

that religious enthusiasm is something that should be acted on, even at the cost of violence i suppose i mean i suppose you have the gordon riots don't you which is i mean a terrible explosion of right anti-catholic rioting but but that idea of a kind of a small group of religious fanatics convinced that they're doing god's will and bringing mayhem to the streets of london i mean you don't really see anything like that until 2005, the two bombs. I suppose that's true.

And actually, this sense of atrocities occurring around the city, it's very like the terrible night in Paris with the Bataclan. And people not knowing what's happening and the rumors and the swirl of it. Yes, exactly. Why are these people doing these terrible things? I mean, what's the kind of inability to comprehend the motivation? And what I also like about this is something that's always puzzled me since I did the sort of civil war in its aftermath as a teenager

is where all that religious and political enthusiasm went. So, you know, people are prepared to fight massive wars, pitch battles, and in this case, you know, attempt coups and all the rest of it. And yet within a couple of decades, it's kind of coffee houses and, you know, newspapers. And something has been – the sort of tone of public life has changed and lost its radical energy. And I always sort of think I'd love to read something about why,

how is it that Britain was able to put the civil wars behind it? I think that radical energy is there. I mean, I think the impact of dissenters, which is what they become, because Charles obliges everyone to, you know, enter the Church of England. And those who don't are officially marked as dissenters. That dissenting energy is absolutely profound. But they're not running around with halberds and shooting people

through the heart, are they? I mean, they're kind of having Baptist services. They're not, but they're kind of, you know, gearing up to abolish slavery and play a key role in the American War of Independence and launch the Industrial Revolution. And I mean, you know, those energies.

I agree. Early 18th century. Yeah, I agree. England is a much more complacent, self-satisfied, quiescent place than it was 50 years ago yeah yeah but but but the violence of those energy i mean they they're they're not turned into kind of military activity but they are really i mean they have a really convulsive impact i think on

on the cultural social economic history they do but public public life under let's say i mean if you fast forward a couple of generations to the age of warpole or something public life has a completely different flavor from how it did in the exclusion crisis or in the 1650s or something it does because because the 1650s you know it's it's kind of people who make barrels who feel that they have a right to contribute to what the state of the nation should be. I mean, that's what changes. It goes back to the assumption

that only great aristocrats should do that. But bubbling underneath, these people are getting ready to change the world. Well, do you know who would be good on this? Friend of the show, Magna Carta expert, Ted Vallance. And is he by any chance signed up to do the execution stroke martyrdom he's going to be coming on to talk about charles the first

in the new year this is a very exciting link for it now throwing forward to all the delights we have in store we have a an episode coming about 1922 we have the crossing of the Rubicon. The execution of Charles I. And further forward, in 2022, we can look forward to the Falklands War, the history of the pigeon. I think you've got that lined up.

America's holy wars abroad. Fall of the Roman Empire. We've got all kinds of fun subjects so keep your suggestions coming if you haven't already do consider joining up to the Restless History Club

at restlesshistorypod.com where you can abuse Tom on the Discord chat and request impersonations because you know Tom loves to do an impersonation and we shall see you when are we seeing them next tom uh we are seeing them next week with 1922 the year that the modern age was born and the crossing of the rubicon splendid we shall see you then bye thanks for listening to the rest is history for bonus episodes early access ad-free listening