The Rest Is History - 124. World Cup of Kings and Queens part 2

Episode Date: November 23, 2021

Elizabeth II. Henry V. William the Conqueror. All pretenders, according to our twitter poll to find England’s greatest monarch, which has been running over the last week. Dominic and Tom discuss those who fell at the final hurdle, as well as finding room for a rather queasy anecdote about Henry VIII’s personal hygiene. *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. When I was growing up in 1970s Britain, one of my favourite possessions was my two-part set of the Lady Bird, Kings and Queens of England, the narrative structure on which my entire knowledge of history was built. And that's true, isn't it, Tom, of lots of people. So kings and queens are the sort of, they're still the kind of idiom. Yeah, they're the scaffolding, aren't they? Yeah,

they are. But certainly you kind of work out English and then British history. Absolutely. The Elizabethan age, the Georgians, the Victorians, you know, the Plantagenets, they are the sort of foundational, they're the foundation stones, aren't they? Absolutely. Which is why i think that um this world cup that we've been doing so we should explain people who haven't caught up with all the fun and excitement uh we've been running a world cup of uh kings and queens of england uh so from athelstan all the way through to elizabeth ii um we uh in the in uh in our very first episode we looked at the the unexpected champion it was actually athelstan the yes the first king who can probably i think be called the king

of of england so a lot of people commented tom that uh were we basically saying that it had all been downhill uh since then i think i mean i think that's a reasonable conclusion to draw isn't it yeah you should uh you should write that article for unheard there's a reasonable conclusion to draw, isn't it? Yeah. You should write that article for Unheard. They get a bit of extra promotion. Yes. I hope they give us a bonus for that. Yes, I should. Well, I haven't been asked, actually.

That's shocking. I can't believe that. Well, no, actually, we were, weren't we? They did ask us. They asked us to write about Athelstan and Elizabeth I, and we couldn't because we were too busy. And we were too busy or too lazy depending on I think too

but we were genuinely too busy I think we were genuinely too busy anyway so that was that was the first episode we did and then we did the one that went out yesterday was on the the losing contestants

in the Super 16s round yeah so now we come to the quarterfinals and the semifinals and the quarterfinals were Henry V against Elizabeth II, Henry VIII against William I, the conqueror,

Charles II against Elizabeth I, and Edward III against Athelstan. Some big games there. Massive games. Well, I mean, you'd expect that, wouldn't you, in the quarterfinals of a major global tournament? You would. So the first match,

Henry V against Elizabeth II. global tournament you would um so the first match um henry v against elizabeth ii henry v a very proactive dashing charismatic king yeah smites the french against elizabeth ii who's who's basically in this contest because essentially she's done nothing that's very harsh she's done nothing but in a very politically savvy way yes she, she's done nothing very well. I mean, we'll come on to Elizabeth II and the way that 20th century, 21st century monarchy differs very radically, obviously, from, say, medieval exemplars. But Dominic, Henry V is absolutely the model

of a warrior king. The issue is how much he's been created by shakespeare isn't it so most people's image of henry v comes from well it comes from sort of children's book illustrations with his bowl haircut yeah his bowl haircut and he's waving a sword and he's got always always the leopards the lions of england and the fleur-de-lis yeah he's sort of scaling the walls at harfleur he's in the mud with all his bowmen at Agincourt. He's receiving a gift of tennis balls from the French. And does he throw them back?

Or he says, because they say to him, stay in England and play tennis, you wet weed. And he says that I will serve such a game as has never been seen in France before. And so he does, to be fair to him. Now, there are... One issue with Henry V is the trajectory of the story, which is irresistible, which is the sort of... In the popular imagination, he goes from this sort of laddish rogue

hanging around with Falstaff, or indeed Sir John Oldcastle, who's the character that Falstaff is based on, to this sort of stern, rigorous, very pious, martial warlord. Yes. And that's kind of an invention, isn't it? It's apparently a complete invention. So he was never the sort of Royster Doyster

who was falling out of taverns and consulting the ladies. Buffeting the ears of the Lord Chief Justice. Yeah, that didn't happen, did it? No, it didn't. And obviously Falstaff didn't exist. So that no it didn't and and obviously full staff didn't exist so that whole i know the not old man banishing he's become a responsible leader banishing the follies of his youth all of this is a myth and i think as you said i mean it absolutely points to the way in which shakespeare has shaped and so you talked about um the the

ladybird books and i agree that those kind of children's books that go through the kings and queens of England are massive, massive influences. But I think also that on the 15th century in particular, Shakespeare is an absolutely outsized influence on the way that people understand the kings of that period. So Henry V and Richard III, they're the kind of polar opposites, aren't they? Yeah. So Richard III is the villain. Henry V is the absolute hero. But having said that, I mean, Henry V was clearly a very, very, if you're saying martial success and ability to defeat the French is the measure of effective kingship, he was a very, very effective king. Although you could argue he wastes a lot of resources in a war that ultimately england loses well you know that i think that so it avails us nothing in the long run i mean he wasn't to know that though was he i mean he wasn't

to know that in the 1410s because he dies young at the age of 35 and 1422 of a combination of dysentery and heat stroke, having apparently subdued the French and secured his own claim to the French throne. When the French king dies, Henry will succeed him and unite France and England. But then he dies and it's all for nothing. But I suppose he wasn't to know that. I mean, he could have lived to the age of 55 and maybe who knows, you know, a Franco-Anglo-French union of crowns. Or do you think that's just utterly laughable and implausible? I don't think that would ever have happened. I mean, I just don't think the French would have accepted it.

And I think that the resources of France were so vastly greater than those of England. I mean, it was like those images you occasionally get from Australia or something, of a snake trying to swallow an improbable kangaroo or something. And for a while it looks good, but then the kangaroo bursts out. It does happen, though. Some listeners will remember, for example, our Alexander the Great podcast, in which a small group of adventurers... Yeah, but that didn't work, did it?

The whole thing fell to pieces and disintegrated. Well, but it changed the course of history. I mean, who's to say that France would have emerged as it did in the 16th and 17th centuries as such a superpower if it had been ruled by the English for longer? Well, there were two options. Either the French, you know, in the reign of Henry VI,

you know, if he succeeds when he's 40 or something, he'd still have been useless. They would have thrown English rule off. Yeah. Or you would have had a kind of thrown english rule off yeah or uh you would have had a kind of anglo-french condominium but because france was so much richer so much more sophisticated so much classier um england would have ended up kind of supernumerary i think oh dear tom well that's terrible so essentially i i think there was no way that it that it would

have been good uh you're down on Henry V generally, aren't you? I do think he's the most overrated figure in English history. Why? Well, because I think that he squandered money. I think it was essentially a vainglorious episode. Shakespeare in his play, Henry IV's dying advice to Henry V, busy giddy minds with foreign troubles. That's basically what he's doing.

Because the Lancastrian house, Henry IV, Henry of Lancaster, has deposed his cousin, Richard II, the son of the Black Prince, the grandson of Edward III. And that's a terrible thing to do. You can't go around deposing kings, because these are anointed, anointed of God. So Henry IV labours under a kind of nagging anxiety that he has offended against God. Yeah. And I think Henry V is heir to that as well. So when Henry V becomes, when Henry becomes king, he brings Richard II's body to Westminster Abbey

and buries it with all due splendour. And again, Shakespeare on the eve of Agincourt has him kind of say, think not upon the fault my father made in compassing the ground, words to that effect. So there's this sense that even Henry has that God is going to punish the House of Lancaster at some point. And basically, it's a squalid campaign that goes vastly that goes vastly better than than anyone could have anticipated i mean he's running enormous risk he very nearly gets captured

that would then have bankrupted england because they would have had to pay his ransom yeah i mean it was absolutely irresponsible risk but he won but he won he does win but in the long run england doesn't and okay the blowback from their defeat in France is a crucial part. And, of course, the blowback of the original Lancastrian usurpation results in the Wars of the Roses. So I think that Henry V is essentially putting a rather flamboyant sticking plaster on some rather deep wounds there. Golly, that's harsh. However, having said that, I think he's, I mean, let's play devil's harsh. However, however, having said that, having said that, I think he's, I mean, let's pay devil's advocate.

He's very dashing. So, yes. So, Tom, just one quick question before we move on. I remember reading a book by the historian Ian Mortimer talking about Henry V and his road to Agincourt. And he painted Henry V as an ultra-pious, almost a kind of a religious, you know, sort of a very kind of ascetic figure very

almost a religious kind of fundamentalist or something is that a bit overdone do you think or is that is that no i think i think he was very i mean i think i think he was absolutely and this is an awful story of him um that you know it's the age of the lolards yes um kind of so that's a protestant yeah and and one of them is is being burnt and he cries out to god and henry v hears him crying out to god so orders the fire the flames to be put out and asks if he's repented and the lolard says no so henry v orders the fires to be lit again wow re-burning. Yeah. Yes. So robust attitude. However, I mean, to play devil's advocate, clearly he is a magnificent warrior. And one of the reasons why we know that he's not hanging out with Falstaff is that, I mean, basically he's been fighting since a very, very young age.

He fought at the Battle of Shrewsbury, didn't he? Well, he's born in Monmouth, so he's on the Anglo-Welsh border. Yes, he fights at the Battle of Shrewsbury against Owen Glendower, who is a kind of, I suppose, a kind of proto-Welsh national leader, and against the Percys, who are the overmighty subjects from the north. And then, of course, he does, you know, I mean, there's no getting away from that. He's very effective at fighting the French, which is, you've got to give him some credit for that I suppose

he's also the first he's the first king to use English in his private correspondence since oh that's nice since 1066 that's a nice detail

so we'll give him that yeah and he's been the hero of some fabulous films I mean I think the Olivier film is brilliant it still holds up

the Branagh film is yeah very good I'll tell you a terrible film uh it's the timothy chalamet one have you seen that no i haven't came out that got quite laudatory reviews as i know it was awful uh so it got re they rewrote shakespeare and they kind of basically and um john falstaff in that one doesn't die and he accompanies hen V to France. And at some point, Henry, Timothy Chalamet,

turns to John Falstaff and says, John, John Falstaff says, yes. And Henry V says, John, I just want to thank you for being you. Oh,

you're kidding. He's serious. Yeah. That's what they got rid of Shakespeare's. Immortal first. Oh, my word. I don't want to sound old-fashioned, but that's not an advance, is it? That's definitely not an advance.

All right, so that's Henry V. Let us move on to another larger-than-life character. The larger-than-life character in all English history. Probably the monarch. I mean, I think we said this the other day on yesterday's podcast, that this is the monarch who is best known around the world, and that is, of course, Henry VIII. Six wives, gargantuan appetite, break with Rome, capricious, charismatic, magnetic personality,

a great lover of tennis, of music, of dressing up in hoods, a great Bullingdon man. So hopefully you'll be doing your impersonation. So yeah, a tremendous... And the hero of a top book. A top children's book. A top children's book.

Well, you say the hero. You see, Henry VIII, I think in a funny way, I think he's a little bit underestimated. Because I think the one thing people never appreciate with Henry VIII, who is, of course, the king at the beginning of the first part of the 16th century, the great Reformation king, is how insecure his position is when he takes over. Because you're talking about being the son of a usurper.

I mean, he too is the son of a usurper in Henry VII, who's won the crown on the battlefield, and Henry VIII and his stuff with his six wives and all the sort of beheadings and whatnot. That only makes sense if you understand it against the background of the Wars of the Roses and the insecurity of his position. Family tree shenanigans is, I think, the phrase he used yesterday. Family tree shenanigans.

Yeah, so I think Henry VIII, I think he gets a bit of a bad press i mean obviously he was terribly fat he was capricious all these things but he becomes fat doesn't he but yeah but all king i mean i was only reading that we will be discussing edward the third later on he becomes very fat and old and capricious so with henryIII, I think what people underestimate is the extent to which people at the time thought he was the model of a king. Don't you? Or am I being too kind? I think that the reason for Henry VIII's celebrity is clearly partly his wives. We've done a whole episode on them. And it's this kind of idea of him as a blue beard, a wife murderer.

And that gives him the quality of an ogre. I mean, literally an ogre. And we don't actually have many ogre-ish kings. I mean, we've had frightening kings. So Edward I is clearly a frightening king. Richard I is a frightening king. Cromwell in his own way is a kind of a frightening, intimidating figure. But Henry VIII is, I mean, he's a proper tyrant, but he's a glamorous tyrant.

And I think it's that blend of glamour and tyranny. I mean, he's the one that's closest to a Nero or a kind of, you know, that model of a Roman emperor. It's the charisma, isn't it? It's the charm and the charisma. It's the charisma and the bloodiness that combines. And I think that that, so Froissart, who we'll probably come on to when we talk about Edward III, the great French historian of the 14th century, says of the English that basically they're very, very disrespectful towards their kings and they

expect their kings to do what they want them to do. And that kings exist on sufferance in England, you know, which is a striking thing for him to say, you know, three years, three centuries before execution of Charles I. Henry VIII, you know, you've said how precarious his position is when he begins, but he really rests it round. And what he does to, you know, to the Roman church, what he does to the aristocracy, what he does to anybody who dares to stand up to him. I mean, he is a tyrannical figure. But the contrast to that is obviously the previous century. So the Wars of the Roses and Henry VI.

So, yeah, for a 16th century monarch, you look back at the recent at the recent past you say well we had this dreadful drip in henry the sixth he was very kind um who who thought about god who was very nice to small children and animals and he was an absolute dead loss the barons were completely out of control there was anarchy and civil war and all this sort of stuff and you have to be formidable and also henry's living in an age henry the eighth is living in an age of as we talked about before of incredibly formidable kings so francis of um france king francois or charles v the emperor the holy roman emperor the king of spain i mean they are titanic figures but it's a tribute to henry isn't it that he can even be measured in the same mentioned in the same breath i mean england is is such a kind of second division power yeah compared to france or the empire that the very idea of comparing them is

is kind of comical so it's that also is a tribute to his charisma i think and he's also consequential in a way that is not true of all the monarchs on this list i mean you mentioned elizabeth we'll come to elizabeth ii let's be frank even the greatest admirer of the Queen could not possibly claim that she is a really consequential monarch. She's a uniting figure and she's consensual and all that stuff, but she hasn't changed anything. Henry VIII changes the entire destiny of the country because, of course, given that France had been a hotbed of Protestantism, but ends up as a Catholic country, ends up as the exemplar of sort of Catholic absolutism. It's not inevitable that England will be Protestant.

I mean, it could easily have remained loyal to the Roman Church. No, no. And England was famously devoted to the Church of Rome, to of the key symbolic moments in Henry's reign is when he orders the desecration of the Shrine of Thomas Beckett, who we talked about in reference to Henry II. Played by some absolutely top-class actors. Yes, some top actors who missed their vocation. I mean, Beckett posthumously is the victor over Henry II. But Henry VIII, you know, he smashes up Thomas Beckett's tomb, has his relics, you know, burnt and chucked into the river. I mean, Henry triumphs over Beckett.

I met an American Jesuit who was over in England, I think for a year or something. And he was telling me that he'd been to Windsor and he'd been to the chapel where Henry VIII is buried um and there was obviously kind of ropes around the the tomb and he said that when no one was looking he jumped over the ropes and danced on Henry VIII's tomb that's a bit much so so um there are still deeply felt wounds um yeah of course, another paradox of Henry's role is that in the long run, his reign proves to be a turning point in the relationship of the monarchy to parliament.

Yeah. Or it's an old fashioned view. I think, well, that's controversial among historians. I know it's controversial, but I mean, I think it's indisputable that Henry's reign does not damage the reputation and the potency of Parliament.

Yeah, that's true. I mean, let's phrase it like that. And also, Henry, he's an ambiguous figure because he is himself, deep down, theologically still quite Catholic, isn't he? So when we were doing the World Cup on Twitter, I posted a facetious tweet that Henry had invented tennis, music, and Protestantism. And lots of people replied saying, he wasn't even a real Protestant. He didn't actually invent music either. Well, I mean, Luther thought he was – I mean, obviously,

he had had a bust up with Luther because he'd written a defense of the papacy, of the Church of Rome, which is why Defender of the Faith remains the title of the British monarch to this day. But even once he'd broken with Rome, I mean, Luther thought that he was mad, that Henry had basically proclaimed himself God.

Yeah. Well, he proclaims himself God's vicegerent in his own kingdom, doesn't he? And then gets Cromwell to smash up the monasteries for him because he wants the money. So the fascination of Henry's reign is that, to me, the fascination is that perfect combination of kind of opportunism, of avarice, of political calculation in the context of genuine evangelical fervor. And it's the interaction of those things

that makes it such a fascinating story. And then you put the wives on top of that and the court machinations and stuff. And it becomes this, you can understand why Hilary Mantel, why Shakespeare, why legions of kind of novelists have found all this so fascinating.

Because I think more than any other monarchical story in our history, it has a cocktail of every possible ingredient. It's interesting that some of our greatest writers have detested him. So Charles Dickens in his children's history, the plain truth is that he was a most intolerable ruffian, a disgrace to human nature and a blot of blood and grease upon the history of England.

And Jane Austen, and Jane Austen, Henry VIII, his only merit was his not being quite so bad as his daughter, Elizabeth. Oh, golly, that's harsh. Tracy Borman wouldn't like that. Tracy Borman would be absolutely outraged. But you see, Hilary Mantel, one of the things I think that was really good about Hilary Mantel's

Warfall trilogy, which I do think actually, like a lot of people, went on a bit too uh is that it it captures the magnetism of henry he is an attractive person to be around particularly at first he's an exciting person and i think that's absolutely how he must have seemed he was a giant wasn't he and he's he's brilliant at all these things he's he's brilliant at sport he is he speaks five languages he's fascinated by scientific instruments yeah he but i mean he that obviously he's a renaissance prince yeah he's an absolute renaissance prince but um but isn't it a bit like victoria that we were talking yesterday about how she goes from jemma coleman to yes this kind of judy dench

judy with no intervening period yes and it's the judy dench period that dominates yeah and with henry i suppose because of holbein so again dickens is brilliant on this and he says that he's talking about when he was 18 he said people said he was handsome then but i don't believe it he was a big burly noisy small-eyed large-faced double-chinned swinish looking fellow in later life as we know from the likenesses of him painted by the famous hans holbein and it is not easy to believe that so bad a character can ever have been veiled under a prepossessing appearance so he went from maybe the way to think of him as having gone from kind of jude law to jude law to johnny vegas yes

but it's johnny vegas it's that incarnation that we imagine, isn't it? It is. I mean, it's the kind of fat. And Dominic, did... Was there perhaps a treatment that his physicians gave him that has been mentioned in a top children's book? A top podcast, I think we talked about. Didn't we talk about it in the podcast?

Yeah, we did. But I wondered whether perhaps you'd like to well listeners some listeners may remember that Henry's doctors had to insert a silver tube into his bottom and squirt him

with a mixture of herbs and milk and honey from a pig's bladder yes a treatment that I've never tried but some some listeners we could do it live

on the podcast we could when we do our top 10 enemas that we can culminate with a live... A live squirting from our pig's bladder. Maybe we'll invite the worst guest we've had. We'll choose our worst guest and subject them to this treatment.

That's a lovely image. Right, let's move on. Tom is laughing too much to talk, so I will take command of the podcast. We should take a break and we'll come back with Charles II after the break. Again, we're in a Rachel Morley situation because we've only done two and we've got to do four more. That's because we got sidelined by ludicrous… Top ten enemas.

Yeah, right. Okay, well, we won't do that in the second half. We'll be much more responsible. Bye-bye. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. Bye-bye. to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Welcome back to The Rest Is History.

Now, while you were listening to the ads, Tom was actually trying out that enema treatment and he's back now. He looks refreshed, cleansed. Yes, purged, I think is the word. He's purged, exactly. So, Tom, a great character. The third quarterfinal, Charles II against Elizabeth I. Elizabeth I absolutely murdered Charles II.

She did. Elizabeth I did to Charles II what Cromwell would have liked to do. Yeah. Dispatched him. So, Charles II was a seed, mainly thanks to your advocacy and Tracy Borman. I would not have had him as a seed. I would have had Cromwell as a seed, I think. But he's a kind of an attractive figure.

He's a great character. He's a character, isn't he? So he's the son of Charles I. Civil War, at the end of Civil War, he goes into exile. He comes back, to um launch an invasion of england from scotland uh gets defeated at the battle of worcester by cromwell has to rush around hiding in oak trees and things um sails away from shoreham uh spends the rest of the of cromwell's protectorate in uh in the netherlands and then in 1660 is restored. Yeah, and issues the Declaration of Breda,

so he comes back promising kind of relative... Limited, tender consciences. Yeah, relative tolerance and sort of... Although it is relative, isn't it? Because 1662, the Act of Uniformity is a kind of... Yeah, exactly. There is the Clarendon Code, which is seen as a sort of an attempt to institute Anglicanism

and to be a bit more intolerant to people who are outside the society. To dissenters, exactly. And then he's involved in a series of, I mean, a series of very high profile events. Obviously, there's the Great Fire of London. There's a plague. traditionally have seen as the birth of politics with the exclusion crisis when uh parliament tries to get rid of his to exclude his brother james duke of york from the succession because he's catholic and you get the first sort of the first vestiges of kind of of factional of factions coalescing into wigs and tories um but it's also char is and also I should mention

because our Dutch followers are always going on about this but apparently there was some war between England and the Dutch Republic that the Dutch won

but that sounds very improbable I think we should give that no thought at all listen we'll just draw a veil over that and not even mention it but he

but you've been to the Writes Museum I have yeah I've seen all those paintings of naval victories that I've never heard of. I know, you go in, it's just full of paintings of the Dutch beating the English. Yeah. It's absolutely shocking.

It should be allowed, isn't it? They're just minor skirmishes, aren't they, in English waters, I think. Ludicrously overinflated. So we don't know what the Dutch are going on about. Anyway, so let's focus on more important things because, of course, the most famous thing about Charles II is that he had lots of mistresses he did nell gwynn um he had who was as i recall from 1066 and all that was she selling oranges she was and she was one of the top 10 mistresses was she that you missed because you were malingering yeah yeah there's

barbara villius lady cast. Yeah, she's great. And Peep sees her underwear. He does. He's very excited by it, isn't he? Yes, he is. There's Louise de Kerouac. Yeah, the Duchess of Portsmouth. And there's Francis Stewart, who resists his importunities.

And she then becomes the model for Britannia on the coinage. That I didn't know. That's a good fact. He's also a great scientist. So he's very interested in science. He's instrumental, instrumental obviously in the royal society and in the royal observatory in 1616 in january 16th there's a great entry in peeps's diary tom uh peeps meets uh charles the second in the park on going for a walk with his brother james and they go afterwards to the king's little elaboratory so a place where you elaborate yes so that's where

that's where the laboratory comes from which i didn't know so you go and elaborate there did you know that no that's the great thing about this podcast i'm learning new things we're learning all the time so peep said it was a pretty place and he there saw a great i saw a great many chemical glasses and things but understood none of them which is exactly how i felt as a teenager yeah Yes, science lessons. Yes. And Prince Rupert was a keen chemist as well. Very well, absolutely.

The Stuarts, they're great scientists. Great scientists, but also, and we should mention this, also a great enthusiast for the slave trade. Yes. So Rupert was definitely involved in it. Was Charles II involved in the slave trade? I think he was. I think he was an investor in... An investor, but let's face. Was Charles II involved in the slave trade? I think he was. I think he was an investor in... An investor.

But let's face it, if you're in the Stuart Court in the mid-17th century, everyone's an investor, right? Okay. But I think just mention that because that was something that I saw kind of bubbling up. Did you? I didn't see that. I don't follow that part of Twitter. It may amaze you to... Well, I was just scanning through seeing what people were saying about all the various kings.

So looking at the negatives as well as the positives and that's I guess it's kind of up there with wiping out Irish towns expelling the Jews and investment in the slave trade are still black marks

the big thing at the time of course so he signs a secret treaty with Louis XIV, in which Louis XIV basically says he will pay him £230,000 if Charles, A, joins that war with the Dutch, which is a shambles, which you mentioned earlier. Which we're crossing a veil over. Secretly, if he converts to Catholicism and will come out as a Catholic and lead England towards Catholicism,

something that Charles actually has no intention of doing. But he does on his deathbed, doesn't he? Supposedly he does on his deathbed, exactly. So clearly Charles had, shall we say, papal sympathies, and he takes this money from the French. And this has sometimes been held against him by kind of Protestant Whiggish historians, but who also see him as conniving and weasel-like

and not setting a clear direction and stuff. I i would say he's a brilliant politician who in very troubled times is actually a very popular king and manages to hold on to his position and yeah i think he actually he faces the same problem that his father had which is that he doesn't have the money yeah exactly which is why he takes the money from the french yes and so rather than kind of you know fight a civil war over it because he's learned from his dad that possibly not the best policy yes and and that's the thing that um that rochester the earl of rochester who's a fabulously scabrous have you got a quotation have you got a quotation i've got the famous one um i mean this is a a poem by Charles II that Rochester wrote, which is so rude that I can't read it because we'll lose all our sponsors. But the concluding

line has the famous phrase, restless he rolls about from whore to whore, a merry monarch, scandalous and poor. And people always remember the merry monarch and the whores and the scandal and things, but it's the poverty, isn't it, really? That underpins a lot of these decisions. But, Tom, he is a merry monarch. I mean, we haven't talked massively about what it is to be a king. And so much of it is about presentation, spectacle, performance, iconography. Charles II ticks all of those boxes.

Like Henry VIII, I suppose, or Henry V, you immediately know who he is when you see him. Absolutely. Looks like a Spaniel, basically. Spaniel, yes. Yeah. Well, like a King Charles II Spaniel. Indeed.

But he plays the part brilliantly. He's a very canny politician. He doesn't allow his opponents to outsmart him. There's a brilliant book by Jenny Uglow called A Gambling Man, where the motif is about cards and playing cards. And Charles II is a brilliant book by Jenny Uglow called A Gambling Man, where the motif is about cards and playing cards. And Charles II is a brilliant card player. He knows what card to play at the right time. He always stays in the game, unlike his brother James, who was kicked out after only three years, and unlike his father. So of all the stewards, to me, he's, I mean, I know we're fans of James I on this podcast, but he is the most magnetic and in many ways the most impressive.

Did he not say about James II, about James, that no one would murder him, Charles, to make him king? I mean, that's quite... Yeah. Quite waggish. Would you say that of all the monarchs

we've talked about, he's the one who's most like Boris? That's very good. Yes, I hadn't thought of that, but he is very Boris-like. But I was just about to say he's probably, of all the monarchs on this podcast, who would you go for a drink with? Charles II's got to be up there.

Yeah, you'd be frightened to have a drink with Edward I, wouldn't you? I wouldn't have a drink with... Spill his pint. I wouldn't go for a drink with Richard the Lionheart or something. I mean, he wouldn't even tell me. Smacking you on the... That'd be terrifying. Yeah.

Or knoot. I mean... I don't terrifying. Yeah. Or knoot. I mean... I don't know. A beachside cocktail. Beachside barbecue. Yeah. Anyway, we're waffling. Charles II, I think quarterfinals is about right.

I actually expected him to reach the semis because of the sheer magnetism of the Mary Monarch, but he didn't. Crashed out to Elizabeth I. Maybe with a different draw, he could have gone further. However, he didn't get a different draw. So the next monarch to crash out was Edward III. Against Athelstan.

Beaten by Athelstan. So Edward III, he was king for 50 years. I mean, by medieval standards, a colossal, absolutely colossal reign. Well, he was 14 when he became king. He was, wasn't he? So his mum and her partner, her lover. Do that again? That was very good.

Her lover had disposed of dad, Edward II. Yes, horrifically. Unpleasantly. So we won't go on about it. Oh, you were just about to. Yeah, I was. I was about to say. Well, it's a poker, isn't it?

It's the insertion of a poker. That's the claim. But I think that a lot of more serious scrupulous historians say that probably is just a total invention. So we'll say it happened. Yeah. So they're Roger Mortimer and Isabella. And Edward basically turns against them when he grows up a little bit more, doesn't he? And gets rid of them.

And Roger Mortimer is hanged, I think. So I always loved Edward III. I think we talked about this before the um Conan Doyle's novels about chivalry and the white company white company so Nigel which at the time didn't seem funny to me at all um I absolutely loved them and Edward III is such a kind of dashing figure in them he's a model of heroic king. Do you not think he's slightly, to people who are not experts on the 14th century, Edward III just seems like a slightly

generic, bearded English king. He fights the French. He's very chivalrous. Yes, but what's wrong with that? Nothing is wrong with that. Surely you're not complaining about that. I'm not complaining, but I find him quite hard to pin down what's distinctive about him.

Well, so he lays claim to the French throne. Yeah. Again, absolutely unjustifiably. But what the hell? They've confiscated Aquitaine, haven't they, the French? That's the pretext for all this, or that's the trigger. Well, no, he's claiming it's all to do with the Salic law. Well, there's a bit of that as well, yeah.

It's said through the female line, which according to French law doesn't count. And he says it does. Anyway, it's all just an excuse to have a massive romp. So the English defeat the French at the naval battle of Sluis. And then they have the battle of Crecy where they unleash the longbow. Great moment. And it's kind of heartwarming. And then they have the Battle of Crecy where they unleash the longbow. Great moment. So, and it's kind of heartwarming. It's the union between stirring chivalrous knights and kind of horny handed Sandbrook figures.

Yeoman. Yeoman, I think is the word. With their longbows. And it's all utterly chivalrous. And the Black Prince, his son's it's his first big battle he's coming under pressure people come and ask edward the third should we go to his rescue and he says no let the boy win his spurs and he does win his spurs great moment and and um he he kills the blind king of bohemia uh and takes his um his uh, his motto, which is still the Prince of Wales motto to this day.

And it's all utterly chivalrous. And then due course, the Black Prince wins the Battle of Poitiers as well in exactly the same way. And he actually captures the French king. Edward III has captured both the Scottish and the French king. You know, it's all, you know, what's not to like? It's all utterly chivalrous and heroic. However, there are two massive downsides. One is the black death

which obviously is not good news that's not really his fault though i mean you can't no it's not you know he should have locked down earlier well but i mean it's like covid kind of interrupting the sports fixtures that it interrupts the hundred years war so they have to kind of stop the hundred years war um you know we'll play it in kind of empty stadium behind closed doors yes behind closed doors so the battle of cressy's before the black death and battle party a comes you know, we'll play it in kind of empty stadium. Behind closed doors. Yes, behind closed doors. So the Battle of Crecy is before the Black Death and Battle of Poitiers comes, you know, they're emerging out of lockdown.

But the other thing that stands against Edward III is that he ends up very kind of senile and under the thumb of a sinister mistress called Alice Peres. Alice Peres. Is she sinister or is that just put about by her? Yeah, it's all put

about i don't know i mean but um there's the definite sense that actually a bit like with henry v the whole idea of invading france is basically a disastrous idea and that no matter how successful some of the battles might be the whole thing in the long run will lead to a kind of meltdown which is what happens in England, because peasants revolt, misery. But, Tom, it's a very important reign, isn't it, because it sees the triumph of chivalry, it sees English being used in law courts and in Parliament. Chaucer. Chaucer, of course.

So it feels like, is it wrong to see it as a, well, how can it be a golden age when a third of the population has been killed by the Black Death? But people do see it as, I mean, obviously, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle saw it as a bit of a golden age, didn't he? I mean, I think it kind of merges with a vague, hazy idea of King Arthur. Yes. Prasar said, didn't he, that Edward III was such a king

as had not been seen since the days of King Arthur. Yes, and there's the whole... He establishes the Order of the Garter. Yeah. Oni, swaki, mali, pons, evil be to he who evil thinks. Honey, you've lost your garter, as 1066 transcribes it. So I think there's a kind of a general, a bit like Henry V, there's a kind of aureate glow around it.

But also when I think of it, I think of it as, so if I'm kind of imagining Edward III's reign, I'm thinking a bright, sunny morning, glorious midday, and then the clouds start to roll in. And plague. And plague, and it all goes wrong. So the historian Norman Cantor said of Edward III, he was an avaricious and sadistic thug.

I'm sure he was. But that's what people wanted, isn't it? That's the mark of great kingship in the medieval period, to booty for your mates and bashing the French. Which, again, I think kind of highlights the way that in this World Cup, every monarch has to be judged by the standards of the age in which they rule. And I suppose ultimately what's being judged is whether they're iconic. Yeah, that's probably true.

So talking of avaricious and sadistic thugs, we're now onto the semifinals. And the first semifinals for Athelstan, it was a sort of, you know, it was an Anglo-Saxon-Norman rematch, wasn't it? It was Athelstan against William the Conqueror. At that point, when I saw Jonathan Wilson make the draw, it was blindingly obvious to me that Athelstan would make the final because William the Conqueror is a man who is respected but I think fair to say not loved

no and I'm amazed actually that he got this far and I think it's really interesting the fact he did get this far what it says about um well about how Hastings is viewed, actually. But he's been rewarded here. Nobody, I mean, if you asked English people in the streets, do you wish the Anglo-Saxons had won the Battle of Hastings? They would probably say yes, wouldn't they? The Anglo-Saxons are romantic. They are the underdogs in the Battle of Hastings.

But he is being, he's the sort of Margaret Thatcher of this competition. Yeah, but if you said, we lost the Battle of Hastings. Yeah. I don't think people would say that. I mean, you might say, you know, an English person might say, we won the Battle of Waterloo or we won the Battle of Britain. But would we say we lost the Battle of Hastings? I don't think we would because I think we recognise that actually what William brought was so formative for England that it's become a part of what it is to be English. And obviously that's the case with the monarchy.

The monarchy is more Norman, perhaps, than it is Anglo-Saxon. You mean because the Anglo-Saxon monarchy was more, what, was more elective, more consensual, more low-key? No, no, no. The antiquity and the dignity of the Anglo-Saxon monarchy is very, very important to William. It's part of the loot of England. It's part of what he wants. The fact that it is, dare I say, sacral.

You become an... As Duke of Normandy, he's not an anointed ruler. As King of England, he is. So that's very important. But the fact that basically we date kings from 1066. Yeah. So we've said that, you know, there are three King Edwards before Edward I, but he is the first Edward. Yeah.

I think it reflects the fact that essentially we see William as the founder of the English monarchy in a way that obviously is ahistorical, but reflects a kind of deep truth of just how significant William's reign is. And that therefore, in a sense, he is seen as not just a kind of alien invader, perhaps in the way that Cnut is, but as a legitimate king of England. Yeah, I think that's true. It's partly because of the Doomsday Book, isn't it? Because the Doomsday Book is seen as one of the foundational texts of English government and of English identity, actually. Also, I think, I mean, he, yeah, he, the kind of the castles that he and his followers planned across England, they've kind of also become representative of the Middle Ages for people. Yeah.

So if you have a castle and the great cathededrals of which darren would be the the kind of the first that these for people these for most of us i think are kind of visual symbols of what england is and because we don't have anglo-saxon equivalents that's another reason i think why the anglo-saxon period is so much more shadowy yeah i'm sure i think that's a that that's very true i think there's also with william though there's the issue of his should we say his bastardy so he was called william the bastard because he was illegitimate and he seemed to have behaved like a bastard as a bastard wasn't yeah exactly harrying northerners um smiting people well again so so so um a definite sense from from twitter engagements that people in the North have not forgotten. Yeah.

I mean, it was a kind of near-genocidal repression of rebellion in the North. I mean, can you make a case for him and say he's ruthless and that's what he has to be? I mean, he lives in a ruthless age where you win by the sword and if you don't, you die. I mean, that's surely the case you'd make, that he's a strong leader, and any successful regime in the 11th century, you have to be really stern. Yes, I think so. But even his own followers, so Audre Vitalis, who's very admiring of him generally,

says of the harrowing of the North that with this, I cannot justify this. This was a terrible thing. So even by the standards of his own time, he's seen as repressive, autocratic. Yeah, and I think the great abbey he builds on the site of Hastings, the Battle of Hastings, is also a monument to that because that's built as a way to try and expiate the crime that he committed in killing so many people.

So I think that kind of strain, which you also have in Henry V, the strange combination of kind of martial brutality and piety you absolutely get in William. And neither of those are very popular qualities. But that's why the story that everybody enjoys about William is his funeral. So he's died in Normandy and his body is sort of expanded with gas, hasn't it? Isn't that right? That he's sort of swollen.

They're trying to shove his body into the coffin. It's basically too small for it. He's become an enormous fellow. They shove him in and he bursts and his entrails fall out with a terrible stench. That's right. And everybody doesn't really run out of the church in horror or something? So it's a very undignified end.

Harold Godwinson's Revenge, I think we can call it. And he's buried next to his wife, Matilda, who everyone says is very small, but actually wasn't. Wasn't she? No, she wasn't, apparently. Why do people say it then?

Because their graves got rifled in the French Revolution. And I think bits have got kind of lost. So people thought she was basically four foot, she was absolutely midget. Well, they just don't realise that the rest of her is missing. Well, they've kind of gone back and worked out that actually she was of absolutely average height.

Okay, well, this is fascinating stuff. An average-heighted woman, not a small one. Right. So we have one other semi-final loser, don't we? So we had the Elizabeth Derby, Elizabeth I against Elizabeth II. Yet again, Elizabeth I won an absolutely crushing victory.

And Elizabeth II... Now, you said that she'd done nothing. I mean, she hasn't done nothing, but she's done little by comparison with her previous... But she's done nothing in a positive way. hasn't done nothing, but she's done little by comparison with her previous. She's had to make fewer choices. She's done nothing in a positive way. Hasn't she? She's been positively boring.

Yes. She's been very canny in her boringness, I think. And she has, you know, God, I mean, I do so many kind of Channel 5 talking head things about the 20th century monarchy. My heart really isn't in saying yet again. Well, just what's your take on that? Saying yet again, you know, saying yes again you know she's managed the she's navigated the shoals oh yeah great friends with harold wilson you know silver

jubilee i could do it to be honest i just hit my own voice droning in my sleep seeing this stuff my agent will be absolutely livid with me for saying this uh doing myself out of you know 101 top elizabeth the second moments on Channel 4 in 2027 or whatever. Anyway, do you want to talk about the Queen, Tom? Well, I think – so if we say we have to judge monarchs by – if we're judging their success by the standards of the age in which they live, I would say that it's a case for saying Elizabeth II is the most successful monarch Britain's ever had. But you're judging by such different standards, aren't you?

Yeah, of course. So she hasn't changed the course of English history. She hasn't defeated the French, hasn't changed the religion or anything like that. But her role as constitutional monarch has been to serve as a figurehead

for the nation. You should do these documentaries instead of me. I know I should. Because for me, I haven't actually really thought about this before. So for me, it's all fresh. You can just kind of barrack me from the side. But what you'd say about the decades of her reign is that they have been remarkably convulsive. It's hard to think of a time where people's understanding of of say morals or ethics have changed so radically no we've discussed that before i mean that's that's culturally convulsive come on i mean the reformation attitudes to sex to gender yeah to race

have have changed so profoundly and i think also what's interesting is that they have changed so profoundly. And I think also what's interesting is that they have changed in ways that objectively should be very destabilising to the idea of a hereditary monarchy. Because the idea of a kind of authority and privilege oppressing those who historically have been underprivileged has become an absolute no-no i

mean that's what kind of has driven the feminist revolution the um uh the giving to to uh gay people of you know basically rights equivalent to heterosexual people the um anxieties about racism um that all of these you would thought would be threatening to the idea of uh racism, that all of these you would have thought would be threatening to the idea of the fact that our head of state rules by virtue of her descent from a long line of monarchs who ultimately go back to Woden. There's nothing obvious about the fact that people would continue to accept this. And I think by and large people people do and so by that standard i would say that that elizabeth's achievement has been astonishing and i think the reason why she's been successful isn't just because she's you know she's accepted that being boring is basically what her job has been but also that she really

believes it she takes it very very seriously and i think that that it's absolutely essential for the success of monarchy that monarchs themselves take what they're doing very, very seriously. You couldn't be a flippant monarch, could you? You couldn't be a kind of Charles II type monarch now. You have to take it seriously. You have to be earnest about it. And Elizabeth II really does. She really does think that she's been appointed by God, I think. And that's what makes me wonder whether the institution will last very long after her.

I always think it will. I think, well, let's not get into prognostications of the future. Well, what I would say is one of the other things that we've talked about is how children can be problematic for reigning kings. I think Charles is fine but i think for instance andrew is a shocker i think he's like a kind of great cancer at the heart of people's acceptance of monarchy because a kind of thick entitled perv is not a good look for any king you know even i think even has been littered with thinking titles. I know, but generally they haven't gone down well. So I think Andrew is a kind of reminder to people

of what monarchy can serve up to you. Yeah. I think what I would say in sort of agreement with you is, first of all, the Queen is probably the most popular monarch Britain has ever had because by her, she's not divisive. I mean, she hasn't had to make the divisive choices that a previous, more powerful monarch would have had to have made.

So her prime ministers have been divisive, but she hasn't. And she probably leaves the monarchy on firmer foundations than would have seemed possible under any other post-1950s monarch. It's hard to imagine how somebody could have left it in a better state, as it were. So, yes, but she is boring.

I mean, you were saying this is partly a tournament about iconography and about are you iconic? I think the Queen is iconic. Well, she is iconic, but she's iconic for stability, for seriousness, for responsibility, for duty. All admirable things, but not sexy things. But she's globally iconic. She is.

I mean, if you say the queen, you know, there are lots of things. Well, as you and I were talking about just the other day, not on the podcast, the fact that this, the Athelstan result was being reported in kind of Indonesian news websites saying, you know, the queen didn't win. I mean, why would they care? They care because the Queen is iconic and is seen as a symbol of Britishness.

And actually becoming a symbol of the nation is what the monarchy... I mean, that's the sign of success, isn't it? And I think also that she has served as a kind of living reassurance to people that, you know, the country is still the country, that Britain is still Britain, even as people worry that they're not.

We're in danger of degenerating into a Channel 5 royal documentary. Yeah, we are. So let's move on. So we've got, so they were the two semi-finalists and then the final was Elizabeth and Athelstan, Elizabeth I. We did do a podcast about Elizabeth I

with Tracy Borman earlier in this series, but let's just talk a bit about that clash the athelstan against elizabeth i so that's i mean there's their symbols they're both symbols of englishness athelstan was obviously a slightly sort of connoisseur's choice of you know people who are really interested in history kind of like the anglo-saxons partly because they're not well known because they are bit different, they're not part of the general sort of slightly tiresome clichés of English history, whereas Elizabeth I is absolutely the centre of all the clichés of English history, isn't she? Defying the Spanish Armada, Shakespeare, Drake,

all of this sort of stuff. But ultimately, I think if this poll had been done by the general public rather than the rest of its history listeners, surely Elizabeth I would have won, wouldn't she? I think so, yeah, I think so. I mean mean you can sort of tell that in the incredulity with which news outlets some news outlets reported it i mean all i would say is that um that i i i don't think that anyone has any reason to hate athelstan vikings i don't i mean i it's it's all such ancient history that even, you know,

the Welsh aren't going to complain that he kind of bossed them around. The Scots aren't going to complain that he invaded Scotland. I mean, this is all so long ago. No one feels strongly enough about him, I think, to dislike him. There have been people who have quite strongly disliked Elizabeth. But that's surely a bit sort of performative, isn't it? I mean, Elizabeth I is not, by and large, a terribly divisive monarch. Well, again, I was Jane Austen.

Yeah. Huge fan of Mary Queen of Scots. Yeah. A disgrace to humanity, she called Elizabeth. The destroyer of all comfort. The deceitful betrayer of trust reposed in her. At least that's not massively overstated. No. Well, Jane Austen, famous for her excessive language.

And she is a queen during a period of radical religious upheaval, of division. Her great achievement is to joinantism with patriotic english identity uh that is that is something i think that is fading now in a reasonably unifying way actually tom at a time of enormous turmoil i mean you consider that would have proceeded and then what was to follow in the next hundred years completely completely but i'm just saying that that it is possible if you are say i don't know catholic or irish uh or both that you don't necessarily see elizabeth first as necessarily a great figure no you don't but you cannot deny she's a colossally effective figure i'm not i'm not denying it but i'm just saying that there are reasons no no no but i'm saying

even her critics even her critics couldn't deny that she is a brilliant opportunist, a brilliant political survivor. The challenges facing her are absolutely colossal as a woman in a time of such religious turmoil, with Spanish hostility, the hostility of the greatest superpower, certainly in the Western world. She is up against it. And playing the Virgin Queen part and sort of Gloriana and the incarnation of Englishness is a brilliant, brilliant propaganda coup.

Well, we've said that this is all about whether you're iconic. I mean, she's literally iconic. She kind of replaces the Virgin Mary in the affections, you know, the symbolism. The Virgin Queen, exactly. England was famously devoted to Mary. She was, you know, the devotion of the English to the Virgin Mary was celebrated. Is it Walsingham Church?

Yes, yeah, Our Lady of Walsingham. And Elizabeth brilliantly, brilliantly kind of usurps that role. She steps into the Virgin's shoes, if you like. So she's absolutely literally iconic in that sense yeah um which is why she reached the final why she was the number one seed and why i think it was a big you know global press attention focused on the stunning result of this what i think has been our best world cup well it's certainly been uh the one that uh people have got most excited about i have a little bit of a soft spot for the Prime Minister's World Cup.

I have to say I enjoyed that one. But do you think these things have – they're an interesting insight into the minds of history buffs, I think. Don't you think that's fair? I guess so, yeah. Yeah, certainly an interesting insight into the minds of our listeners on whom we so depend. That's very nice to end on a...

But I don't think we particularly influenced it. Oh, come on. What, you were plugging your book on Athelstan from start to finish? No, I wasn't. I might have mentioned it once, I think. I think you mentioned it more than once. I wasn't as partisan as I was in the notorious ISIS anubis.

No, well, that was nice that we didn't have a repeat of that. Because at the end, I was torn about Athelstan. On the one hand, I didn't massively want to promote your book more than you did. It must have been agony for you. But on the other hand, I sort of wanted him to win. Though I do think Elizabeth I, I'm not dissing Elizabeth I. I think she's deservedly a titanic figure in English history in a way that Athelstan actually isn't.

No, of course. Yeah. And that's why it's a big story, isn't it? Yeah. Anyway, it's all been great. We need, at some point perhaps, we'll do another historical World Cup. Are we definitely?

American presidents, perhaps, or Caesars, or the worst kings and queens of England. Yeah. And the worst kings, how would that vote? I mean, would you be voting for the least worst or the genuinely worst? Today we'd have to decide. I mean, obviously, as presidents of this board of sport, that's up to us. Yeah.

But something to look forward to. Definitely. World Cups to come and great podcasts to come. We've got CIA coming up, haven't we? We've got Neanderthals. We've got Napoleon in Egypt. We have the Burgundians. And then we've got Christmas.

We've got Dickens. We've got some more churches. We've got it all. Don't go away. No. See you then. Goodbye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History.

For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com.