1. The English Civil War: How it Started

Episode 1/2. King Charles I's decision to rule without Parliament was just one of the many reasons that England found itself embroiled in a bloody civil war. In this first episode, we learn how subtle religious and political differences upset the balance of power in England, and plunged the kingdom into chaos. For this, Dan is joined by Minoo Dinshaw, author of 'Friends in Youth: Choosing Sides in the English Civil War'. He explains this tumultuous period from the perspective of Bulstrode Whitelocke and Edward Hyde, two close friends who reluctantly found themselves on opposing sides of the conflict that split England in two. Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Max Carrey. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. We'd love to hear from you. You can email the podcast at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 0:00Dan Snow?

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• 1:55Dan Snow?

  Hello everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. Got another short series for you today, first of two episodes on the English Civil War, a period in British and Irish history where families and friends were pitted against one another, fighting for opposing visions of the country's future. Joining me is the brilliant Minoo Dinshaw, who just published Friends in Youth: Choosing Sides in the English Civil War. And he's written a book about two very close friends who joined opposing sides in the war and tried to navigate their country back to peace. And I thought what we're going to do for this series is embed his story of his two friends in the wider tale of the war. So this first episode is all about the backdrop, the context, the build-up to civil war, why

• 2:38Dan Snow?

  it happened, how something apparently unimaginable came to be. And there's a lesson in there for all societies. Episode two is out on Wednesday, that takes us through the First Civil War itself. We sketch out the main battles, where the Royalists and the Parliamentarians, the Roundheads and the Cavaliers went head-to-head. Make sure you tune in to listen to that one as well. This series was another listener request, it was a request from Sarah Wright, so thank you Sarah for reaching out. And everyone else, please keep on sending in those suggestions. One day, day two, might become an episode of the podcast. But for now, here is our first ep on the Civil War. Enjoy.

• 3:35Dan Snow?

  Minoo, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Thank you for having me. Well, we're going to try and do the impossible here. It's mission impossible, we're going to try and tell the story of what we could loosely call the First Civil War, the little period leading up to it, and then its outbreak. And we're going to do it over two episodes, it's going to be very, very exciting indeed. Thanks for joining me on this adventure. Total pleasure. Now, the hardest question that I have ever wrestled with is sort of religion in the mid 17th century and then politics as well. So a bit of a warning coming up, folks. But what is the political context here? What is going on with the English monarchy? And of course, we're going to remember the fact that he's also King of Ireland and King of Scotland at the same time. So what's going on with the sort of British and Irish monarchies at this time?

• 4:19Dan Snow?

  That makes them vulnerable to this kind of rebellion. Or was it just bad luck? Was it just a bit of bad personality and a bit of bad bit of timing? Is there something more substantial going on beneath the surface?

• 4:29Speaker 04

  Well, of course, it's always all of the above, isn't it? And I suppose in the story that I've been inhabiting through these two friends, the politics takes precedent over the religion. And the religion at times comes across almost like a political pretext. Nonetheless, it is a fact, as you implied, that we have here three kingdoms, different in their religious natures. We have England with a dominant established church, but a substantial and growing dissenting wing. We have Scotland with the Kirk, the Montplain hot Protestant Kirk, and also Catholic dissenters. We have Ireland with a minority state church ruling over a Catholic population. So each of these kingdoms are innately different,

• 5:14Speaker 04

  but in a way that leads us back to politics. Insofar as religion is important, it is important for political reasons. And it certainly became my contention, seen through the eyes of my two protagonists, that religion was an instrument, a weapon, often in unscrupulous hands.

• 5:31Dan Snow?

  Well, that's interesting. That makes one think about the Thirty Years' War that was raging in Europe at the same time, when things are said about some of the protagonists in that particular war as well. So, okay, so let's talk about the politics. First of all, off the back of Elizabeth's glorious, quote unquote, reign, there were profound problems, weren't there, with the English state? In particular, the money. They were quite poor, weren't they, the English monarch?

• 5:54Speaker 04

  Yes, and also the way in which they had garnered fiscal liquidity was by using Parliament, something that, on the whole, went smoothly under the Tudors and began to go less smoothly under the Stuarts, to the point where legitimate taxes were raised through Parliament. And if the king and Parliament fell out, then you reach this critical impasse. For instance, where control of the army was associated by law and tradition, by definition, with the crown. But if the king was not being given any money to pay the army by Parliament, you ended up with this sort of rock, paper, scissors situation, where both Parliament and king unable to force a compromise that would make the country's military capacity,

• 6:39Speaker 04

  the country's security, run normally.

• 6:41Dan Snow?

  And you talk about legitimate taxes. So is it just increasing sort of convention, a tradition that all taxes have to be approved by Parliament? Or are there certain taxes that only Parliament can choose, but certain that are connected with the Crown? For example, regulation of trade or exile or something like that? Or is it becoming now the norm that every piece of money raising has to be done with the approval of Parliament?

• 7:05Speaker 04

  It's certainly the norm. The primary form of taxation is subsidies granted to the King by Parliament. And when the King's relations with Parliament go south to such a very extreme extent, the King is resorting to what many people view as archaic or legally overreaching expedients that predate this level of power in Parliament: to medieval commissions of array, to raise troops, and famously to ship money, which was a coastal tax that the King could raise to deal with pirates and so on, but is extended, possibly illegally, to the inland regions of the country.

• 7:42Dan Snow?

  So that's the new Stuart Kingsdo, particularly Charles I. Let's just come on to the Stuarts. Why are relations between Parliament and James I and his son Charles I, why do they just seem more fraught than under Elizabeth? What's happened there?

• 7:53Speaker 04

  I think it is, to some degree, a case of culture shock. Scottish Parliament was far less important and powerful. In Scotland, I suppose, the most powerful part of the body politic had for some time been the nobility and the Kirk. The King was trying his best to control his nobles and his rather frightening clerics, but not worrying about Parliament too much. He was used perhaps to regarding Parliament as upper servants, whereas the irony was that the English Parliament had been such useful upper servants to the Tudors that it had gained a great measure of power. And therefore, they weren't quite speaking the same language. However, I would say that under James, things did not approach complete breakdown. And under Charles, you started...

• 8:37Speaker 04

  Getting almost changes in the very definition of what Parliament was. The origins of our ideas of government versus opposition, of parties, of governing party, all emerged in this period. Parliament was supposed to be a theoretically unanimous body that always gave the king united advice. It was treasonous to suggest that Parliament could break down in schism. And yet, this was the time where this polite fiction could no longer be perpetuated, especially over a critical debate that will come to the grand remonstrance, where you very clearly have Parliament dividing into two factions.

• 9:12Dan Snow?

  I've always thought religion is, it helps to explain that, that sort of schism. But let's put the individuals back in. What about the character of Charles the First? There's such a debate over whether he was just a man struggling to deal with this kind of evangelical, almost religious extremism that was suddenly breaking over him like a wave, or other people to say he was absolutely bloody useless. Where do you come down on sort of his role in deepening in this conflict that would eventually lead to war?

• 9:38Speaker 04

  Well, one of the many things that draws me to my two protagonists is that I found that attitude to the king fascinatingly united. They both see him as a conscientious, attractive, theoretically decent and able and intelligent monarch who is badly advised. Of course, the ancient trope of the wicked advisers. But in, in Hyde's case, he very much sees the king as led astray in particular by his Catholic wife. But they both find the king a decent character doing his best. When it comes to Charles, they don't fault his character. They do, however, see him as easily influenced by wrongons. And in terms of was he dealing with bad faith extremists? Yes, I think he was.

• 10:23Speaker 04

  I think in the case of leaders in the Commons, like John Pym, their situation politically, financially, and in terms of their physical peril was going to be pretty bad unless they could force a proper break with the king and wrench power off him. Their interest was very much not in reaching a compromise.

• 10:44Dan Snow?

  People talk about a lot about the divine right of kings, this theory of absolutist monarchy that was very attractive to the Stuarts and particularly Charles the First. Again, trying to make Charles more of an active participant in, in the breakdown of relations. Did he believe that he'd been divinely ordained? Did he believe this any more than the Tudors or the monarchs that would come after him?

• 11:05Speaker 04

  I think the answer is that he did sometimes. Neither of our main friends, protagonists, saw monarchy in that way. And both of them tried to influence him away from that doctrine. It was, of course, quite a recent doctrine. It had been codified, among others, by the king's father, James. It was not of indigenous or ancient English or British origin. It was a sort of product of the Reformation. Sometimes you found that the divinely sanctioned monarch was a Protestant idea even, and denied by Catholics. It's a complex question. But both Hyde and Whitlock were much more attracted to the older idea of the mixed monarchy. The free estates of the realm, the king, the lords, the commons, working together in harmony.

• 11:50Speaker 04

  And that was the sort of more traditional idea that they both worked and hoped to restore.

• 11:56Dan Snow?

  And so Charles I comes to the throne. He attempts, doesn't he, to rule without Parliament. How does he do that?

• 12:06Speaker 04

  Well, initially, he comes to the throne on a wave of Bellicos enthusiasm about fighting the Spanish, about the failed marriage arrangement with the Spanish. His father's favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, is still his favourite. And Charles and Buckingham are very popular, warlike Protestants, also riding to the rescue of Charles's dethroned Protestant sister in Central Europe. It goes terribly badly. They find themselves at war with both Spain and France. It's a disaster. And Charles realises that he just doesn't have the ability to make Parliament biddable and to have money and to wage war successfully.

• 12:50Speaker 04

  And so the best thing to do is not to bother with Parliament, with it as a source of cash, or with war. And there infuses this long period of renowned peace, which even my parliamentarian protagonist Whitlock can't help being rather attracted to. A time where there are all kinds of things simmering under the surface. But the country is peaceful, elites enjoying an extraordinary cultural life of poetry, masks. There's a sort of general tranquility and prosperity and such a relief after two very badly managed wars.

• 13:26Dan Snow?

  So Charles almost kind of calls the bluff of Parliament, says, well, if you're not going to vote me the tax I want, then I won't engage in the sort of swashbuckling Protestant interventions to save our allies on the continent and elsewhere. And actually, both sides are sort of reasonably happy with this. But I mean, there must be a parliamentary critique of Charles's determination not to even summon Parliament.

• 13:47Speaker 04

  I think it's very much a subterranean river of ambition and dissatisfaction, one that you can see definitely affects our two bright, upper-middle-class, pushy, ambitious young men, who both want to have a slice of the sort of power and voice in the nation's senate that their fathers and uncles had access to, but find themselves locked out by this strange historical anomaly of extended rule without Parliament. So both of them, you see this contradictory impulse where they're both enjoying and appreciating the long peace, but also feeling that sense of civic frustration and ambition. Absolutely. They represent a huge body of intelligent, busy, locked-out gentry wanting to have more influence.

• 14:32Dan Snow?

  Let's talk about those two men now. You've mentioned them a couple of times. Let's get into it. They're both upper-middle-class. I mean, where are they from and how do they know each other?

• 14:40Speaker 04

  So Whitlock's from just outside London, in Henley, where his father amasses estates. He's from a legal family, but crucially, his father is quite a brilliant young son who has made a fortune and become a judge. So although there are lots of lawyers on both sides of the country, the father is very much a sort of meritocratic, brilliant prodigy. Hyde is also from a legal family, in his case, from Wiltshire. His father is quite the opposite of Whitlock's father, never got on with the law, but took any means he could to escape from his profession, eventually settled down happily in the country, married a rich heiress. And Ned Hyde, although forced to become a lawyer by the death of an elder

• 15:21Speaker 04

  brother, rather shares his attitude to the law initially. He's much more drawn to poetry, to literature, to history, and he's a more reluctant lawyer. However, the two friends, Whitlock, who like his father is a brilliant, gifted lawyer by nature, and Hyde, who is perhaps more drawn to culture, literature, history, theology, they do meet at the inns of court and for whatever reason become inseparable. They have a good amount of friends and eventually ideals in common.

• 15:48Dan Snow?

  Where do they start to diverge in those ideals? Are they in agreement during the long period of Charles I not summoning Parliament?

• 15:56Speaker 04

  Well, my feeling became that the central tragedy of this story was that, to the extent that they ever disagreed, they didn't, in a way, diverge more and more. The situation divided them. But there were subtle political and religious differences between them throughout, but those differences remained subtle. Fundamentally, they were on the same side. They continued to be on the same side. They hated the Civil War. They wanted to stop it. It was an atrocity and a sort of act of national self-harm.

• 16:25Dan Snow?

  Okay, interesting. So let's say, early 1630s, they want Parliament to be called, they want to take their place in it and argue and win eternal renown.

• 16:34Speaker 04

  Exactly. You're so right. And I think we both glimpse them together in a fascinating moment in history, in the summer of 1628, not long before the assassination of the royal favorite, the Duke of Buckingham, which will change everything. But we see Whitlock and Hyde and their friends at the house of a mysterious landlady on Fleet Street, where Whitlock was born, incidentally, Mrs Percy. And what these friends are doing are they're having a satirical debate, pretending to be members of the hated Star Chamber extra parliamentary judicial court, which was regarded as handing out very harsh punishments. It was an instrument of the Crown to oppress the people in the eyes of many. And Whitlock, Hyde and their

• 17:15Speaker 04

  friends were making joking speeches, pretending to be lawyers acting in the Star Chamber at Mrs Percy's. That's how we first see them. Almost, you could imagine them as a pair of sort of Richard Ingram's types, minor public school gut boys running private eye, making jokes about the government, that kind of thing.

• 17:32Dan Snow?

  How does that turn into serious political crisis, let alone war? Armies crisscrossing English soil. What's the process?

• 17:42Speaker 04

  Well, a lot of blame or credit has traditionally been given to a figure who may never have existed, a herbs woman in Edinburgh called Jenny Geddes. Who threw a stool at the dean of St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh, where the king's prayer book, an Anglican Church of England, high church, prayer book was being imposed on the Scots. And I suppose that that leads us to the figure of Archbishop Lord, the king's favourite prelate, closely connected to both Whitlock and Hyde, at whose feet arguably a lot of the intensification of this drama should be put. But yes, that led to a Scottish rebellion, a need for the king to have some money and

• 18:26Speaker 04

  recall Parliament and knock on results.

• 18:31Dan Snow?

  Yes, so this riot that begins with these women in the centre of Edinburgh, you can still go to where it all began today. It turns into a full rebellion against these religious reforms the king's introducing, the high church Anglican style prayer book in Scotland, which the Scots absolutely hated. And because you've now got war, war's expensive. And so the king, who's been tinkering around and inventing these rather unpopular, but sort of reluctantly obeyed taxes all over the place, like shit money and things, they're no longer able to cover the cost of this serious outbreak of violence.

• 19:03Speaker 04

  Yes, the king also makes poor decisions about his commanders. Of course, we go back to the personal and the political. The king decides, rather than putting the dodgy, prostent, rather popular, continentally experienced Earl of Essex in charge, to put the Earl of Holland in charge, who's a sort of very slippery, charming character who gets on with his wife. The Earl of Holland completely falls for a Scottish trick and retreats, even though he possibly had the numbers to prevail. But all this is also with an army that's ill-equipped and with low morale because of the lack of parliamentary cash. There are two major bishops' wars before the civil war breaks out.

• 19:46Speaker 04

  One thing I find interesting about it is that a close, an important mutual friend of my two main characters, Lord Falkland, who will emerge as the key moderate royalist, fights as a volunteer with Lord Essex against the Scots. And a real sense of division in England. On the one hand, a lot of people don't really see the point of a war with the Scots over an unpopular religious cause. But on the other hand, many people, including Essex, despite his later parliamentary career, including both our characters, despite Whitlock's parliamentary allegiance, they regard the Scots as foreign rebels against their natural prince, and they think they should be put down. So you have a genuinely divided country about what to do about the Scots.

• 20:27Dan Snow?

  But it is true that Charles could have broken the tradition of the king's dependence on parliament, had he not futaled around with religious reforms at the same time. If he just tried to be a little bit passive, let things run on, then slowly, people would have, potentially, would they, like as happened in France, have almost forgotten about the parliamentary tradition?

• 20:46Speaker 04

  I don't disagree, and I think the key comparison here is with his father, who, if you like, had much worse bark than bite. He taught to go to a bad game about the divine right of kings. He wrote books about that, among other things, about witchcraft, about tobacco. You know, he was a gobby chap, but he was actually a wise old bird who'd survived a very tough childhood and a long reign in Scotland, who knew when not to push things too far. And Charles, and particularly Lord at his elbow, lacked this sense of tact and prudence.

• 21:17Dan Snow?

  So they drive through these religious reforms, drive Scotland into open revolt. Scotland invades north of England, and the king's armies are unable to stop them. So, cash is the sinews of war. He's got to ask for some money.

• 21:31Speaker 04

  Yes, and our friends are absolutely thrilled at their recall of parliament. Despite, as I say, that they had appreciated the long peace, this for them is the real thing, the moment to enter history, to put their country right, and to help get their king and parliament unkinked, working together, and themselves doing very well in the process.

• 21:51Dan Snow?

  Yeah, absolutely not imagining that you're on the brink of civil war, presumably?

• 21:55Speaker 04

  No. In fact, they're thinking, this country has a few problems, it could be so much better with a more sympathetic ministry, including us, and a better ruled king. We can improve things. We can improve the religious settlement, the political settlement, the judicial settlement. Both of them are lawyers, of course. We can stop all these abuses by corrupt courts getting around parliament. We can make everything splendid and dandy. That's what they're thinking at this point, absolutely.

• 22:25Dan Snow?

  Few little tweaks, reorder things in a way more conducive, more aligned with our views, and we'll advance the Sunday uplands. Feels very, very relatable. So at 1640, you've got a foreign occupying army, the Scots are occupying bits of North East England. Charles is out of options. He's got to go and ask his people, he's got to ask Parliament for money. What happens then?

• 22:46Speaker 04

  Well, the leader of Parliament emerges as this man, John Pym, who's a master of procedure, very experienced, rather low on cash and high on debt, not perhaps an orator of style or flair, but one of immense stamina. And to young cubs like Hyde and Whitlock, Pym is an obvious leader. They all get on with him, especially Hyde, interestingly of the two of them, is personally close to Pym and his very rich right-hand man, John Hampton. So Pym very much sets the agenda, and as a result, the King is frustrated by this Parliament and soon crucially dismisses it. Hyde is horrified by the dismissal of this first Parliament.

• 23:30Speaker 04

  He goes to his friend Archbishop the Lord and pleads, saying, "You'll never get a more loyal Parliament than this one. This is the best that the King is likely to expect."

• 23:41Dan Snow?

  And why does the King dismiss it? Because they want to give him the money without lots of annoying strings attached. They want to seek redress for various things that have gone on and do the things that Parliament does.

• 23:51Speaker 04

  Exactly. So to take one small example, the one in which Hyde first comes prominent in that prominence in that short Parliament, he goes after one of these corrupt extra-parliamentary courts, the Earl Marshals Court. Now, the Earl Marshall is an ancient noble, Earl of Arundel, who Hyde gets on badly personally, as luck would have it, a very distinguished collector of art, but in political terms, racking up enormous fines and lots of corrupt cash by quibbling about people's heraldry. And Hyde makes a very amusing speech about sort of boatmen being punished for having a swan rather than a goose on their banners and stuff like that. And it goes down very well with the House. And Pym sees Hyde as a starry young performer on his side. So they've got grievances like this. Hyde in

• 24:36Speaker 04

  particular is after the extra judicial courts. But there is one big grievance that will wait for the next Parliament, which is that they all both hate and crucially fear the King's most effective minister, the Earl of Stratford.

• 24:50Dan Snow?

  Oh, yes. So, poor old Stratford. So, this parliament is dismissed quite quickly by the king, but he's forced to call another one. Why?

• 24:58Speaker 04

  Well, it's still an insoluble Rubik's Cube that Scots are wreaking havoc. There's no other answer. He also has the example of Stratford, who's been an excellent henchman, first in the north of England and then crucially in Ireland. And Stratford has succeeded in producing in Ireland a beatable parliament and a surplus of money. So Stratford, among others, but crucially Stratford, is urging the king to keep going with the parliament option and saying that between them they'll sort out parliament and get a decent measure of cash and obedience out of it.

• 25:33Dan Snow?

  Well, instead Stratford gets something very different from parliament. So, this second meeting of parliament, what happens in that one?

• 25:41Speaker 04

  Well, I find this fascinating because this is, I think, the moment where you see our friends absolutely united on what will later be, come to be seen as very much their anti-royalist cause. Because Hyde and his equally royalist friend Falkland, their fingerprints are all over the prosecution of Stratford, often for quite petty and personal, factional reasons that date back to the ascendancy of Buckingham. Essentially, Hyde, Falkland, a lot of their friends, and indeed Whitlock and a lot of his friends, are leftovers from the Buckingham faction. And Stratford came to power as a chief minister as an anti-Buckingham sort of chap. So there are a lot of scores being settled here. And it's actually a case

• 26:24Speaker 04

  of seeing good men do something more important and consequential than they realise for ambitious and petty reasons. I think it's the moment where, I find my protagonists attractive, but it's the moment where they let their own ideals down in the way in which they dispose of Stratford.

• 26:41Dan Snow?

  And they do dispose of Stratford. They do not like that they, as you say, that's the ancient cliche, we like the king, but we don't like his advisers. And so Stratford becomes the conduit for everything that's gone wrong over the previous few years, or nearly everything. And Parliament have him executed, basically.

• 26:56Speaker 04

  They have him executed by a tinder, which does not require a guilty verdict proven in court after a farcically collapsed prosecution presided over by none other than our friend Bulstrode Whitlock. Bulstrode Whitlock himself feels lastingly guilty and uneasy about this prosecution for the rest of his life, and always avoided prosecuting another capital case. But Hyde is also involved in an attempted compromise that would have seen Stratford escape with his life and maybe escape into banishment without any offices. But that also falls through with the Earl of Essex incredibly memorably saying, "Stone dead hath no fellow" about Stratford.

• 27:37Dan Snow?

  Elizabeth Dan snows history yet? We're talking about the Civil War. More coming up.

• 27:46Dan Snow?

  This episode is brought to you by TikTok. I never thought about the history of coffee. You make it, you drink it, nothing more to it. Then I've had a TikTok video about how people in the 1700s would pour their coffee into saucers to let it cool before drinking it. I love that sort of discovery, a detail. But suddenly you're imagining how people lived and drank and socialized. Now I wonder what all baffled historians about us: mugs. It's a ceramic vessel, but crucially, it has a handle. Well, that's the joy of TikTok, folks. You look for one thing and find yourself somewhere completely different. Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok. Learn more at tiktok.com/discovermore.

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• 29:20Speaker 05

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• 30:16Dan Snow?

  What begins as a grievance, a bit of political wrangling, trying to sort of outmaneuver Stratford for ideological reasons, but also, as you point out, because of personal, almost tribal reasons, you end up killing the man. Is that a symbol that things are spiraling, are positions hardening up?

• 30:34Speaker 04

  Absolutely. I think you can see it in the rhetoric in Stratford's extraordinary speeches in his defense, where he points out that some of the very feeble evidence being used against him is based on private conversations. He says society would become a wilderness, a hermitage, if everyone was afraid to speak in private to each other over matters like that. And Oliver Sinjan, one of his chief prosecutors, describes finishing off Stratford as being like finishing off savage beasts of prey, foxes, you know, sort of wind in the willows, storks and weasels type thing. Annoying Bevan, he compares Stratford to vermin. So there's a coarsening of rhetoric and a deficit on mercy, absolutely.

• 31:13Dan Snow?

  Okay, course, Neil, rhetoric, that seems strangely familiar. What else is going on, as well as trying to sort of isolate and neutralise Stratford? What is this Parliament doing? And you've hinted at earlier, but what is this big sort of other list of grievances that they're presenting to Charles? Before, are they going to give him any money to deal with the Scots?

• 31:30Speaker 04

  Well, shit money is absolutely dealt with. And again, all of our main characters, Hyde, Whitlock, Faulkland, are intimately involved with that. No more shit money, no more extrajudicial courts, including the Court of the North, which Stratford came to prominence as the president of. And not all of the extra parliamentary courts are got rid of, but most of them are. There's a strange survival in Wales, for instance, the Court of Marches. But I think that that lasted the late 17th century or something, but it's just an oddity. But most of them are got rid of.

• 32:02Dan Snow?

  And so these are these strange bodies that have been reanimated and used by Charles and Stratford to try and sidetrack Parliament and raise money through taxation, to give the Crown independence from Parliament?

• 32:15Speaker 04

  Yes, and also in other matters as well, most notably the case of William Prin, who was tried in the Star Chamber for his libel of the Queen. It was felt that he'd implied she was a, quote unquote, notorious whore because of his fondness for amateur dramaticals. This is an interesting case because it's one in which Hyde and Whitlock emerge literally on stage, because they both arrange the mask which lawyers put on to say sorry, essentially, for the outrageous behaviour of a brother lawyer, William Prin, in calling the Queen a notorious whore.

• 32:46Dan Snow?

  Yes, as well as raising money, it's almost a sort of shadow, an alternative administration where the King is able to harass political enemies, raise money, all of it outside that traditional institutions of judiciary and Parliament.

• 33:01Speaker 04

  Absolutely. And especially because of Hyde, interestingly, rather than Whitlock, many of these courts are now no more, after the good work done, which Hyde is very proud of, early in 1641. In fact, on the day where he fails to broker the compromise to spare Stratford is also the day when he oversees the final abolition of the Court of the North.

• 33:23Dan Snow?

  Okay, so from the parliamentary point of view, there's some much needed clarifying, really, about how Britain is to be won. Charles is not enjoying this experience. What's he objecting to most? Just being told what to do, full stop? The fact that his advisers are being stripped from his side and executed, dragged out and had their heads chopped off? What's Charles's thinking during all this?

• 33:43Speaker 04

  Even worse than the execution of Stratford, I think, for him, is the case of church reform. And this is what causes Hyde to begin to drift back over to the king's side and ultimately Falkland. With Stratford gone, the attention of Parliament shifts to the question of church reform and especially issues such as whether bishops should be allowed to vote in the Lords. They've essentially been functioning as a pro-crown trade union, a block vote that enables the king to get his will in the Lords. And again, for political reasons buttressed by religious concerns, bishops are associated with old Catholic hierarchy, with popery. Now,

• 34:26Speaker 04

  good old Queen Elizabeth, loved by all these Puritans, had no problem with bishops. But even though we have plenty of evidence that Pym, for example, was not, in his religious preferences, particularly concerned about bishops, for political reasons, it's very successful for the parliamentarian leaders to amp up anti-bishop animus among the Puritan populace of the City of London and go after the bishops. And this is what proves too much for the king and increasingly for many more moderate, royalist-leaning MPs such as Hyde.

• 34:58Dan Snow?

  So this is an interesting example, where are we slightly reaching outside the very, very senior elite of the kingdom here? You talk about the population of London. What do we mean by the people of London? And so it was seen as useful, was it, to have the street on your side, to generate a little bit of energy, a little bit of noise?

• 35:19Speaker 04

  Well, of course, we're in an era where printing has become newly important and Well, there's no real way of knowing fundamentally what the majority of people in the country at large thought. It is clear that the majority of people in the city tended towards religious puritanism. That said, even the city did go back and forth. You got a royalist resurgence, a royalist lord mayor after Charles went to Scotland to try and sort things out diplomatically, then returned to the city. He was greeted with great joy and the royalist election swung to his side. But the city did tend towards the parliamentarian and perhaps small p, puritan cause.

• 36:02Speaker 04

  The city's allegiance continues to be an open question actually into the civil war, which we can return to.

• 36:07Dan Snow?

  But it was thought by some of those in Parliament, so exploiting this anti-bishop sense, they felt, oh, it's quite nice to have a bit of energy on the streets of London, that the wind are back as we're having these debates within Parliament, for example.

• 36:21Speaker 04

  Well, they could certainly impose a measure of pressure and fear the minority that was against them. For instance, the defenders of Stratford were completely character assassinated as Stratfordians, enemies of their country. And it's very interesting to see the minority that did dare to stand with Stratford. Hyde was not among them. And some unexpected people were. For instance, the great lawyer, authority, parliamentarian, John Seldon, mentor of both Hyde and Whitlock, was firmly a Stratfordian because he could see in legal terms that was no case against Stratford. And he spoke the truth. He wasn't going to be intimidated by some mob. But often you find future royalists stayed quiet and voted for Stratford's death, while

• 37:03Speaker 04

  future parliamentarians in a few cases pointed out the problems of the case.

• 37:07Dan Snow?

  But you mentioned the mob, you might get a few windows broken if you were on the wrong side of that argument, according to the street.

• 37:14Speaker 04

  I think it would have been terrifying, yes. I mean, your name would have been known and shouted. You would have been identified with popery, this sort of nebulous concept, a slightly aestheticising high church with some vaguely more Catholic resembling doctrine becomes conflated with allegiance to the actual pope. A lot of tarring with rather unjustified brushes going on.

• 37:40Dan Snow?

  Okay, so Charles is willing to compromise on some of these things and talk to them about tax raising measures and his ability to prosecute people etcetera, but he's getting increasingly annoyed. But their list of grievances seems to be expanding, does it? Because they're now moving into church reform. And at some stage, Charles, what, he just draws the line, saying, "I'm no longer prepared to keep giving up parts of my power."

• 38:04Speaker 04

  I think it's not so much Charles drawing the line, but even more interestingly, a large section of the Commons itself drawing the line. Now, many lords are already on the king's side, but the Commons is the crucial question here. We get to this point where the Commons essentially splits halfway down the middle. There's also a rebellion in Ireland now, caused, among other things, by the death of Stratford, an effective governor of Ireland. So there are two rebellions going up, even more need for troops to repress these rebellions. No question of how to pay for them, a question of who should command troops, whether the generals should be nominated by the crown or by parliament. So much is going on, and at this point, Pym is trying to burn further bridges by dredging

• 38:48Speaker 04

  up more old grievances in this document called The Grand Remonstrance, which is a huge list of complaints about the king's misgovernment, put in a very tactless, blunt, aggressive fashion. And there's a crucial debate where Hyde emerges and is sort of talent-spotted, almost, by the king and his advisers, as the leader of the members of the Commons who are sympathetic to the king. And it's only won by Pym's side by 11 votes, so it's really a handful that could go either way. And so the point is, in a way, the king has achieved a propaganda victory here. The extremism of Pym and his friends has led almost half of the Commons, of what was

• 39:30Speaker 04

  once a pretty united, reforming Commons, to think that the king's case has some merit.

• 39:34Dan Snow?

  And one of those men is Hyde.

• 39:36Speaker 04

  Absolutely. In fact, arguably the most consequential. Yeah.

• 39:40Dan Snow?

  But his old buddy has gone the other way.

• 39:43Speaker 04

  Yes, but it's a very narrow thing. And in the case of the Grand Remonstrance debate itself, although we can't know for sure, it seems to me fairly clear that Whitlock and Hyde voted on the same side, both against the Grand Remonstrance. It's another later debate that by an absolute wafer thin degree gets Whitlock back onto Pym's team. And that debate is the debate over the militia, who should ultimately nominate commanders to deal with Irish rebellions and so on, whether the nation's sword should be in the royal hand or the parliament's hand. And in this debate, Whitlock actually attempts to engineer a compromise answer. So even in that debate, he doesn't firmly nail his colours to Parliament's marks. He tries to come up with a peaceful option that will please everyone. He fails very honorably.

• 40:28Speaker 04

  Whereas Hyde commits to the king and to the tradition whereby the king has always had control by definition of his office over the nation's armed forces.

• 40:42Dan Snow?

  It isn't Dan Snow's history here. We're talking about the Civil War. More coming up.

• 40:52Speaker 01

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• 41:37Speaker 01

  Salt Lake City branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 41:43Speaker 05

  What started the Civil War? What ended the conflict in Vietnam? Who was Paul Revere? And did the Vikings ever reach America?

• 41:54Speaker 05

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• 42:37Dan Snow?

  When you're talking about who's in charge of the armed forces, you are beginning to get into some pretty dangerous territory, aren't you?

• 42:42Speaker 04

  Absolutely. I mean, you mentioned the Thirty Years' War earlier. We're talking about a kingdom, a militarily inexperienced kingdom. We've got a few ramshackle sailors who've had bad times in wars with France and Spain, but basically the kingdom has been at peace for an awfully long time. And the Thirty Years' War, meanwhile, has been not yet called the Thirty Years' War. A nameless religious monstrosity of a war has been blazing throughout Germany. And now people like Wetlock conjure in their speeches, they conjure the ghosts of ancient Rome through texts like Lucan, the Roman civil wars, and also they're always aware of the Continental Civil Wars. They warn of what will happen if this is imported to England.

• 43:24Speaker 04

  They warn with extraordinary and a depressing prophecy of mercenaries burning down your farmsteads and ravishing your wives.

• 43:33Dan Snow?

  But hang on, why has this escalated so quickly? At what stage do you think they opened their minds to the fact, I mean admittedly, there was a war game on British soil, the Scots were occupying the northeast of England, but the idea of a civil war, where does that really, can you identify where that begins?

• 43:49Speaker 04

  The civil war within England itself is a remarkably late development, I think. I think very late into the summer of sixteen forty-two, parliamentarian politicians and MPs are still claiming that they don't see any real prospect of conflict with the king, that they think it's all a game of poker, that the king will surely back down. So you have the king issuing his medieval archaic commissions of array on the one hand, you have parliament pushing through technically illegal militia ordinance with no consent from the king on the other. So they both have these incomplete legal instruments to raise forces. Whichever side you're on, you're illegal, according to how things have always been done.

• 44:34Speaker 04

  There's certainly no talk ever of getting rid of the king, with the exception of one extraordinary and eccentric man, oddly enough, a close friend of Hyde's initially, called Harry Martin, who's a sort of notorious free-thinking drunk and says, "One man is not wise enough to govern the kingdom", but everyone writes him off as a maniac. Everyone else is just talking about how we get the king and parliament to work together.

• 44:59Dan Snow?

  Well, you took us the summer of sixteen forty-two. I'm just going to drag you slightly back now because after the grand remonstrance, you know, the huge debate, we do have the king dashing into parliament itself to arrest people, which is usually seen as one of the great milestones. What happens there?

• 45:12Speaker 04

  That's quite right, and it's fascinating because the king had just taken the step of making Hyde's a close friend, the extremely moderate and reluctant royalist Falkland, and another ally of theirs, Culpeper. He'd made them ministers underneath him, and yet, at the same time, he embraced this course that they considered disastrous and detestable of attempting to arrest five members of the Commons and also one member of the Lords. A totally cack-handed operation. If it had gone well, it would have still been outrageous, but it might have strengthened his position. In fact, he had the worst of all worlds. He failed to get what he called his birds. They were allowed to escape partly by the cunning contrivance of the speaker, Lenthal,

• 45:55Speaker 04

  who I think is a fascinating figure, who arguably continues to assist people he likes on both sides. I think he might have slightly winked at Hyde's escape from parliament later. I see him as a brave, human and undoceran figure. But the birds were allowed to fly. The king played his hand, he played it badly. Why did he play that hand? Rumours are extremely contorted. There are many possible culprits involved. One is an extraordinary character, in many ways the Boris Johnson of the age called Lord Digby. Another is the Queen and the circle around her. Another is the King's drunken Scottish childhood friend, Will Murray. We don't quite know how the story leaked and the arrest

• 46:39Speaker 04

  was frustrated, but there are a dozen explanations.

• 46:41Dan Snow?

  So the King gallops into Parliament. Is it right, no sovereign has ever stepped foot in the House of Commons since that moment?

• 46:48Speaker 04

  Yes, I believe it is.

• 46:50Dan Snow?

  So he dashes in, he says, I see the birds have flown. He fails to arrest them. But for those who argue that the King is behaving autocratically, like a sort of someone getting a bit high on their own supply of divine right ideology, then does play into their hands. I mean, he does look like, he looks pretty autocratic, dashing in at the head of soldiers to arrest members of Parliament.

• 47:09Speaker 04

  Well, of course, Oliver Cromwell would do it many times in the future, but crucially successfully. Isn't the problem less that he appears autocratic, but that he actually fails to be autocratic?

• 47:20Dan Snow?

  Yes, that's always the killer.

• 47:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 47:23Dan Snow?

  It's the worst of both worlds, to be an ineffective autocrat. I mean, that's terrible. Okay, so even after that, Summer 1642, so this is the point at which both sides are sort of trying to govern, I suppose. They're both issuing, I can't say legislation, whatever they're both issuing, ordinances.

• 47:41Speaker 04

  Yes, and there's a lot of propaganda war going on, in which Hyde and Whitlock, from their by now opposing camps, are both intimately involved. And again, it's a propaganda war that the King arguably is successful in, very much not preaching divine right, but instead preaching mixed monarchy tradition, the way things have always been done. And he manages, despite an innate disadvantage in men and ammunition and money, to gain enough of a party to keep a stalemate of victory civil war in action.

• 48:18Dan Snow?

  But what's interesting, the Summer 1642, events on the ground seem to start accelerating. For example, just near me, in Portsmouth, the garrison famously declare for the King. I mean, is the political centre starting to sort of lose control of events in the kingdom?

• 48:34Speaker 04

  I certainly think this strange situation of Commissions of Array and the militia ordnance and the deputy lieutenants appointed by Parliament does cause abundant events of local interest, shall we say. The one which gets most attention in my book perhaps is Bulstrode Whitelocke's role as a deputy lieutenant. He's a slightly unlikely soldier as a rather delicate lawyer, but quite an enthusiastic one. And as deputy lieutenant, he arrests a royalist notable, the Earl of Berkshire, in the act of trying to have a Commission of Array read out, raise some royalist troops in Watlington.

• 49:14Dan Snow?

  And so, sorry, deputy lieutenant, this is a sort of a shadow chain of administrators all over the country, separate from royal government, basically.

• 49:21Speaker 04

  Deputy lieutenants are the military men for Parliament at this point, and they are mostly MPs.

• 49:25Dan Snow?

  Right, and they are seeking to wield executive power in areas of the country.

• 49:29Speaker 04

  They are raising troops to deal with the king's, in their view, illegally raised troops via the Commissions of Array. And their job is also to stop these Commissions of Array, to nip them in the bud, to stop them being read out. The Earl of Berkshire wasn't the only royalist noble or notable who was simply essentially kidnapped. Before he could read out his scroll and call out a group of stalwart county adonis, he was, you know, hoisted onto a horse and taken off.

• 49:55Dan Snow?

  Are your two protagonists, do they have an official break? Do they say farewell to each other?

• 50:00Speaker 04

  That's such an interesting question. I think they have several, in a way. But also their relationship is unbroken, even when they're on opposite sides. There is a letter, a rather rueful, and in a way almost dryly amusing and deeply ambiguous letter, that Hyde writes to Whitlock at the point where he is in the midst of a rather deceptive scheme for deserting to the king and also getting the Great Seal, for which normal government requires the Great Seal as an object to function. Hyde gets that removed from Parliament in a heist while running after the king, all while claiming to have a medical note. To recuperate in the country. But at the same time, he's up to all these tricks.

• 50:45Speaker 04

  He writes Whitlock a friendly valedictory letter in a rather understated way. They continue to meet, but increasingly they meet in the context of diplomats negotiating on opposite sides, both in public and in private. And it does seem eventually that their correspondence tails off, if we believe Whitlock as well.

• 51:06Dan Snow?

  So it's a strange summer of both sides trying to demonstrate their control, that they are in fact in charge. It's a proper old fashioned battle for running the country, I suppose, and dispersing patronage. But when does Charles raise his standard?

• 51:21Speaker 04

  He raises it at Nottingham in August, I believe. Charles has a sort of array of not quite capitals, all of them rather depressing. There's York, which is filled with controversy because the Court of the North has just been abolished by Charles's now friend Hyde. And a lot of the local notables are pissed off about this and furious to find Hyde at the king's side, having just abolished their court. That's a strange paradox. And then later on Nottingham, the raising of the standard is a uniquely depressing affair. The banner sort of flops in the wind. The motto is extremely uninspiring, give unto Caesar his due. Later on, there's Shrewsbury, which they managed to sort of bustle into with the help

• 52:04Speaker 04

  of a friendly Anglican cleric that Hyde gets on side. But it's not exactly a grand entrance. There are a lot of makeshift capitals with Oxford, of course, laying in the future.

• 52:14Dan Snow?

  And we should say the reason there are all these slightly depressing and satellite capitals is, we should have said, Charles flees London, he worries for the safety of himself and his family, and then can't get back into the capital. And the capital is a big, powerful, rich place and hugely important port. It is the centre of the money. It's a great loss to Charles.

• 52:36Speaker 04

  The navy is essentially on Parliament's side, most of the commerce, as you say. I found one interesting aspect, the sellers and larders. It seems that the Royalists, once they'd got hold of Oxford, at least the more elite among them, could lead a fairly pleasant life, though expensive, with game, fish and college sellers while they lasted. But also, the Parliament would emphasise that they could still import expensive wines from abroad. Their diplomats would throw wonderful feasts and invite all the Royalist courtiers to see what they were missing, in a way. But, yes, the King loses London permanently. He will return to it only as a man under prosecution.

• 53:17Dan Snow?

  And the navy is so important. I don't need to tell listeners this podcast my love of maritime history, but the fact that the Parliament controls navy will prove arguably ultimately decisive. But our two gentlemen have chosen opposing sides. The King has raised his banner, as you say, with his unbelievably tin-eard motto. I love that render of the Caesar. England is at war in the second half of 1642. It's amazing how us humans adapt to things. I mean, do either of your two gentlemen express incredulity, amazement? Or do we just move on? Do we just accept new realities? And suddenly, these two men find themselves as part of opposing war machines?

• 53:55Speaker 04

  I think Whitlock is, by common consent, author of the most articulate expression of amazement about the process you described. He makes a little speech that he, obviously rightly thought was so great, that he repeated it in a letter to his wife, word for word.

• 54:11Dan Snow?

  Who has not been so pleased themselves that when they got home, quoted themselves at length to their partner?

• 54:16Speaker 04

  Exactly. Here it is. "It is strange to note how we have insensibly slid into this beginning of a civil war by one unexpected accident after another, as waves of the sea which have brought us thus far. And we scarce know how, but from paper combats..." By declarations, remonstrances, protestations, votes, messages, answers and replies. We are now come to the question of raising forces and naming a general and officers of an army.

• 54:46Dan Snow?

  Amazing. It's such an extraordinary story. So our two protagonists have decided where their loyalties lie. England is at war. There are years of violence ahead and you will join us in the next episode of this podcast. Tell us how that war goes.

• 55:00Speaker 04

  Indeed.

• 55:01Dan Snow?

  And we'll find out about not only the fate of England and the fate of the kingdoms, but also the fate of our protagonists as well. But in the meantime, people need to go and buy your book so they can spoil it for themselves. Tell us what your book is called.

• 55:13Speaker 04

  Ah, yes, Critical. My book is Friends and Youth: Choosing Sides in the English Civil War.

• 55:19Dan Snow?

  So people can get that and do a bit of background reading before the next episode. Minoo, see you next time. Thank you very much.

• 55:24Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 55:26Dan Snow?

  Well, folks, that brings us to the end of this episode. We are in a state of war. The king has raised his banner. Render unto Caesar. What a rallying call. It's the autumn, it's the fall of 1642. War has been declared and we're getting ready for some fighting. Episode two is coming out Wednesday. We'll be hearing about how the fighting went, what happened to our two protagonists and how that first civil war eventually came to an end. So make sure you tune back in. Remember to like and subscribe wherever you get your pods.

• 56:13Speaker 01

  This is a paid partnership with Apple Card. The coolest flex at brunch these days is not the Bloody Mary with the bottomless gold flake caviar topping. It's not whipping out your wallet to pay. It's not having a wallet at all. Jack's been an Apple Card user since 2019. That's the same year he tossed his wallet in the trash. Because Apple Card holders earn 2% daily cash back on purchases made using Apple Pay. It's the only credit card designed for the iPhone. I tap to pay with Apple Card at the grocery store, at the gas station, at restaurants. And yes, I use it at my second home, the farmer's market. Jack tapping to pay with his Apple Card with Apple Pay is his favorite thing to do. And the pleasant vibration and chime sound? Means I just got 2% daily cash back on my latest purchase. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval.

• 56:56Speaker 01

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• 57:05Dan Snow?

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