The English Civil Wars, Part 2 of 2

The First English Civil War ended with King Charles I defeated, his armies broken, and his cause apparently lost. But military victory for the Parliamentarians brought no real peace. Instead, the months that followed saw an even more volatile struggle, as Parliament turned on itself, and the captive King continued to bargain, delay and deceive. As the search for settlement gave way to renewed fighting, the conflict evolved into outright revolution. And when the extraordinary solution to the problematic monarch was finally enacted, it would shock even many of those who fought against him. Why didn’t the military defeat of Charles I bring the kingdom back to peace? How did Parliament’s victory give rise to deeper division and more radical politics? And why did a war fought to limit the power of the monarchy end with the King on trial for his life? This is a Short History Of The English Civil Wars, Part 2 of 2 A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins. With thanks to Mark Stoyle, Professor of History at the University of Southampton, who specialises in the English Civil War. Written by Sean Coleman | Produced by Kate Simants | Production Assistant: Chris McDonald | Exec produced by Katrina Hughes | Sound supervisor: Matt Peaty | Sound design by Oliver Sanders | Assembly edit by Dorry Macaulay | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Cody Reynolds-Shaw Unlock the next two episodes of Short History Of… right now by subscribing to Noiser+. You’ll also get ad-free listening and early access to shows across the Noiser podcast network, including Real Survival Stories and Sherlock Holmes Short Stories. Just click the subscription banner at the top of the feed, or head to www.noiser.com/subscriptions to get started. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 0:45Speaker 02

  It is the 20th of January 1649 in London.

• 0:51Speaker 02

  At the south end of Westminster Hall, a guard stands at his post. The cold from the stone floor seeping through his boots. Before him, the vast chamber has been cleared for an unprecedented purpose.

• 1:08Speaker 02

  Upon a raised chair, sits the Lord President of the Court, John Bradshaw. Nearby stand the lawyers for the prosecution in their black gowns. Across from them, before the assembled commissioners and the watching crowd, a single red chair waits for the accused.

• 1:27Speaker 02

  Everyone else is merely here to be a witness to this extraordinary trial.

• 1:37Speaker 02

  The door opens and a murmur goes around the cavernous ceremonial hall, before fading to whispers as the prisoner is brought in. The guard straightens, the gravity of the moment unmistakable.

• 1:51Speaker 02

  King Charles is not dragged or manhandled as other prisoners may be. Though he walks in under guard, he is dignified as he does so and takes his place on the red seat with grave composure.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  He is dressed in dark sober clothes and still wears his hat. In one hand, he carries a paper, in the other, a silver tipped cane.

• 2:17Speaker 02

  Once the most powerful man in the kingdom, he is now defeated, captured, and about to be brought to judgment by his own subjects. From his post, the guard watches the king settle, eyes defiant, as he assesses the room.

• 2:34Speaker 02

  The court is called to order and the indictment begins. Yet, almost at once, the king pushes back. As John Cook, the prosecuting lawyer, reads the charge, Charles leans forward from his chair and taps him sharply on the shoulder with his cane, trying to halt him in mid-flow. Cook carries on, Charles touches him again, harder this time. The gesture, brief, sharp and incredulous. Even now, the monarch refuses to accept that such an accusation can lawfully be spoken against him.

• 3:09Speaker 02

  In the tension of the moment, the silver tip of his cane comes loose and clatters onto the floor.

• 3:16Speaker 02

  For an instant, the sound hangs in the hall and the guard stifles a smile.

• 3:22Speaker 02

  But the proceedings continue and the charge is read in full.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  Charles is accused not merely of failure or bad counsel, but of tyranny and of making war upon his own people.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  Before the words can settle, he cuts in again, demanding to know by what authority this court presumes to sit in judgment on him, a crowned king and anointed by God.

• 3:51Speaker 02

  Around the hall, surprise registers in a rustle of bodies and a few uneasy whispers. Then silence again, as Bradshaw insists the proceedings continue. The prosecutors press on, Charles continues his disruptions and the atmosphere darkens. The court will not yield. Charles will not submit.

• 4:15Speaker 02

  Watching on, the guard understands that this is larger than one man's fate. If the court succeeds, the sacred distance that has always separated a king from his subjects will be gone. The monarch will have been brought inside the law like any other man. And if it fails, then all the bloodshed of the past years may yet lead only to more war.

• 4:53Speaker 02

  The first English civil war ended with King Charles I defeated, his armies broken and his cause apparently lost.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  But military victory for the parliamentarians brought no real peace. Instead, the months that followed saw an even more volatile struggle as Parliament turned on itself and the captive king continued to bargain, delay and deceive.

• 5:20Speaker 02

  As the search for settlement gave way to renewed fighting, the conflict evolved into outright revolution. And when the extraordinary solution to the problematic monarch was finally enacted, it would shock even many of those who fought against him.

• 5:39Speaker 02

  But why didn't the military defeat of Charles I bring the kingdom back to peace? How did Parliament's victory give rise to deeper division and more radical politics? And why did a war fought to limit the power of the monarchy end with the king on trial for his life?

• 6:00Speaker 02

  I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is the second in this two-part short history of the English Civil Wars.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  As 1647 dawns, technically, the first civil war is over. The royalist armies have been beaten, their strongholds are falling, and Charles has surrendered to the Scots before being handed over to the English Parliament. The king is now effectively powerless.

• 6:35Speaker 02

  But the war's end brings no real peace. And England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland are left reeling from a conflict of extraordinary violence and upheaval.

• 6:47Speaker 02

  Mark Stoyl is professor of history at the University of Southampton and specializes in the English Civil Wars.

• 6:53Speaker 03

  This is completely uncharted territory for Englishmen and women. What's going to happen now with the king defeated and Parliament suddenly calling the shots across the whole of the country in a way that it's never done before?

• 7:05Speaker 02

  The war has left the kingdoms demoralized and deeply scarred. Families and communities have been torn apart and the scale of the bloodshed is immense. As a percentage of population, in England, the civil war has exacted a heavier death toll than the First and Second World Wars combined. In Ireland and Scotland, the devastation is greater still.

• 7:30Speaker 02

  But Parliament is already struggling to turn victory into peace. And the alliance that held its side together during the war starts unraveling. It splits into two broad factions, the Presbyterians and the Independents.

• 7:47Speaker 03

  The Independents are religious radicals who want a much sort of freer form of Protestantism established here in England. The Presbyterians are more conservative Protestants. They're not as conservative as the king supporters, the Andelicans, but they want some sort of state church. And there's this big divide now in the triumphant parliamentary camp between the radical Independents on one side, who are particularly influential numerous in the New Model Army, and the more conservative Presbyterians on the other hand, who are not so strong in the New Model Army.

• 8:23Speaker 02

  In Westminster, MPs are split over what kind of settlement should now be imposed. Though Charles has lost the war and is no longer free, he remains king. And many in Parliament still intend to bring him back under strict conditions rather than abolish monarchy altogether. The question is, how much power he should be allowed to keep and whether he can be trusted to honor any agreement.

• 8:48Speaker 02

  The Scots, who have helped secure victory, are determined to secure something that protects both their political influence and the Presbyterianism they have fought to defend. Meanwhile, the New Model Army, hardened by war and increasingly conscious of its own strength, also wants a say in how the land will be governed.

• 9:08Speaker 03

  Everybody wants peace, obviously. But the problem is that they all want peace on their own terms. So those groups have all got different agendas and motivations. And the king, for his part, he feels that he's appointed by God. His father had told him repeatedly, you're appointed by God. Your duty is to protect the throne, protect the country and to protect the church. And so Charles feels that he must do those things and that, you know, he can't give those things away in terms of compromising too far.

• 9:39Speaker 02

  Even in captivity, Charles refuses to accept that he is truly beaten. Passed between different custodians and cut off from direct power, he continues to believe that his opponents are too divided to act decisively without him.

• 9:55Speaker 03

  He's still hoping to kind of play these sides off against each other and hoping eventually, by aligning myself with one of these groups, I might be able to restore myself to a position which is strong enough that I can reconcile it with my duty to God and my office. I mean, that may have been an absolutely hopeless premise, but that's what he's constantly striving to obtain.

• 10:20Speaker 02

  His best chance, as he sees it, is with the Scots. Though they fought against Charles, they did so to defend their Presbyterian church, not to destroy the monarchy altogether.

• 10:32Speaker 02

  As the independents and the New Model Army gain power in England, many Scots fear that the religious promise they had fought for is slipping away.

• 10:41Speaker 02

  Charles' hope is that, though weakened, if he offers enough on religion, the Scots will see him as a less dangerous option than an England dominated by radical independents. So, rather than making the kind of meaningful concessions that might secure a lasting settlement, Charles negotiates separately with the Scots, with Parliament, and with elements inside the army.

• 11:06Speaker 02

  But his reputation for scheming runs deep, and many doubt whether he can be trusted at all. And as the search for peace falters, the New Model Army goes from being Parliament's military instrument to a political force in its own right.

• 11:21Speaker 03

  The New Model Army is an army of a type which England has never seen before. It's a standing army at this time, it's been kept in being. What the Presbyterians want to do, of course, is to dismantle the New Model Army so that their independent rivals no longer have a military force at their disposal. But of course, the leaders of the independent faction are very unwilling to see the New Model Army dissolve. And particularly when the soldiers haven't yet been paid.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  With its soldiers awaiting their wages, the New Model Army suspects that the politicians in Westminster, who were eager to use them in war, will cast them aside unpaid in peace.

• 12:02Speaker 02

  But material grievances are only part of the story. Years of conflict and sacrifice, as well as intense religious conviction, lead many within its ranks to demand some influence over how the kingdom should now be run. Commanders like Sir Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell become central figures. But the army's political energy also comes from within the rank and file. Ordinary troopers and officers are now petitioning, debating, and spreading radical religious and constitutional ideas.

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• 15:23Speaker 02

  By 1647, the New Model Army is not just a powerful armed force, but an organization that sees itself as separate from Parliament, a guardian of the cause for which it has fought. And that is deeply unsettling for political authority.

• 15:40Speaker 02

  In the autumn, discussions over the future are held with remarkable openness at St. Mary's Church in Putney, just outside London. Known as the Putney Debates, these are not parliamentary meetings, but gatherings of the New Model Army's general council, bringing together senior officers, soldier representatives, and radical voices to argue over the future of the kingdom.

• 16:05Speaker 02

  Though the debates don't settle anything, they expose the differences now in play. Some want a more limited settlement that preserves hierarchy and property, while others press for sweeping reforms of political and individual rights.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  Meanwhile, with his wife by now having fled to France, Charles is in the custody of the army at Hampton Court. It's a strange confinement in which he's still treated with ceremony and surrounded by attendants, but cut off from power.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  But even within the opulent prison walls, he may not be totally safe. Among the most outspoken of his opponents are the Levelers, a loose political movement pushing for revolutionary constitutional change and a broader voice for ordinary men.

• 16:54Speaker 03

  The Levelers, a very sort of radical, independent group. And there are rumors flying that the Levelers are actually seeking to assassinate Charles and get rid of him.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  The rumors may or may not be true, but they act to the sense of danger surrounding the king's position. In November 1647, he slips away from Hampton Court and makes for the Isle of Wight, just off England's south coast, hoping its governor might offer protection, or at least prove sympathetic to his cause. But the gamble fails.

• 17:26Speaker 03

  Now again, if Charles had been a weaker character, or perhaps if he'd just been someone who thought, well, my wife's on the continent, why don't I just go into exile, get back with Henrietta, just live my life out there and just escape from all this trauma? But he refuses to do that. He makes his way to the Isle of Wight. He is then sort of semi-arrested by the governor of Carisbrook Castle.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  Though confined again, Charles is not so completely cut off that he can't continue to bargain. Through letters, intermediaries, and secret negotiations, he continues exploiting the divisions among his enemies to try to recover his position.

• 18:02Speaker 03

  So he knows there's this huge rift between the Presbyterians and the independents. He knows that there's all this uncertainty in London, and he knows that many former royalists hate this new parliamentary rising, want to see the back of it. And he also knows that the Scots are very, very worried about what's happening in England, and they don't like the fact that the independents are gaining all this power. So essentially, the king, by sort of promising or offering to promise all sorts of things to different factions, he's able to kind of summon up a second civil war.

• 18:35Speaker 02

  Still refusing to accept meaningful limits on his power, the king reaches a secret agreement with the Scots, promising to support Presbyterianism in England for a limited period in return for their military backing. And Scotland is not his only possible source of support. The old royalist armies may have been beaten, but their loyalty hasn't disappeared.

• 19:00Speaker 02

  In parts of England and Wales, the king's allies remain bitter, ready to move if the chance comes.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  Some Presbyterians are also increasingly alarmed by the power of the New Model Army and the independents. Fighting reignites, and the Second Civil War begins in earnest.

• 19:20Speaker 03

  Lots of former royalists rise against the Parliament. Some Presbyterians also rise in favor of the king and against the Parliament. And the Scots actually barrel over the border once again. This time, the idea is that if they support the king and they are able to place him back on the throne, that he would agree to establishing a kind of Presbyterian form of church across the whole of the three nations, so that would be a massive win for them.

• 19:47Speaker 02

  For a brief while, it looks as though the king may actually succeed in his bid to recover power. But his opponent has changed considerably since the beginning of the First War.

• 19:57Speaker 03

  What throws all of his calculations out, and those of all of his allies, is that by this time, the New Model Army is simply the most powerful military force that England has ever seen. There is no other force in these islands that's able to defeat it. And the New Model Army is able to gradually pick off all of these different groups, one by one. They crush the royalist risings, they crush the risings in Wales.

• 20:21Speaker 02

  Although the king's supporters are eventually suppressed, the outbreak of a Second Civil War has enormous political consequences.

• 20:30Speaker 02

  For many in the New Model Army, it proves that the king is not a partner in peace, but the persistent author of war, willing to plunge his kingdoms back into conflict to avoid compromise.

• 20:42Speaker 02

  The decisive moment comes when the New Model Army turns on the largest remaining threat, the Scottish invasion.

• 21:01Speaker 02

  It is August 1648, near Preston, Lancashire.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  A teenage drummer boy in the New Model Army tries to stay resolute despite the driving rain. He focuses on the dull weight of the drum against his hip as he marches forward through the wet Lancashire lanes.

• 21:23Speaker 02

  Around him, Cromwell's army moves in a column. Perhaps eight or nine thousand men are converging on Preston to drive back the Scots who are pushed deep into England in support of Charles. Amid the tramp of so many boots, the horses snorting clouds into the cold air, and the rolling of his drum, the teenager hears officers shouting orders and the rising crack of gunfire ahead.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  He is young enough to remember when drums meant fairs, parades, and church days. Now, every beat he gives is a command, carrying orders to halt or advance to men who could well be dead by dusk.

• 22:04Speaker 02

  The road churned to filth by hooves and wheels, the army closes in on the town.

• 22:12Speaker 02

  Shots snap through the rain, and voices call out that he continues his rhythm, trying to keep shape and purpose in the confusion. Soon, they're inside the town, and the fighting gets closer and more jagged. Sound ricochets off stone and timber as muskets are fired from windows. There are men yelling in the streets, horses skidding on the slick ground. The steady sound of his drum is swallowed by the din.

• 22:41Speaker 02

  The boy sees soldiers ahead of him hesitate, fire, reload, push on. One man spins and drops in the muck. Another crashes into him from the side and keeps running.

• 22:54Speaker 02

  Smoke hangs low in the damp air, mixing with rain until the whole town seems to steam with battle.

• 23:02Speaker 02

  His hands shaking now, he senses the change in the fight. The Scots are giving ground. Their line is fraying under the pressure, turning from order into collapse as they retreat.

• 23:15Speaker 02

  By the time the day begins to fail, the drummer boy knows the Scots have been broken. The king's last, serious military hope is being driven back towards the border. Charles's war flared back into life briefly. But here, in the rain and smoke of this northern town, it has been crushed by the New Model Army.

• 23:47Speaker 02

  At Preston, Cromwell's forces defeat the Scottish army in a hard-fought three-day campaign that effectively breaks the back of the invasion. Militarily, the rising is contained. Politically, however, the effect is explosive.

• 24:03Speaker 02

  For the army, Charles's betrayal in driving them back into war is the very last straw.

• 24:10Speaker 03

  The fact that Parliament or the New Model Army win such a stunning victory at Preston, I think everyone now realizes that the army is completely dominant in military terms. And I think that the people within the army realize that as well and think, well, look, this is the second time we've had to go through this and sort of wade through blood to get here. Many people, the more radical Puritans, believe that God has spoken against the king. You know, he lost once in the First Civil War, that was God's judgment. And by stirring up a second civil war and imbuing the kingdom in blood again, he's kind of gone against God.

• 24:42Speaker 02

  But though Preston breaks the back of the Scottish invasion, it doesn't instantly silence every royalist threat.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  Around 50 miles northeast of London, Colchester survives 11 weeks under siege and does not surrender until the end of August 1648. Royalist-held castles on the Kent coast are retaken only after further fighting. Up in Yorkshire, Pontefract Castle remains a dangerous royalist holdout into 1649. And beyond England, Ireland is still largely outside Parliament's control.

• 25:18Speaker 02

  The king's military cause has been gravely wounded, but the wars across the three kingdoms have not yet burned themselves out. And outside the army, England is not quite ready to abandon the monarchy. Most MPs still hope that some form of agreement can be reached with Charles and that the old political order can somehow be steadied rather than destroyed.

• 25:41Speaker 03

  Most people in England at this time, the great majority, whether they'd fought for the king or the Parliament during the Civil War, they couldn't envisage England without a king.

• 25:50Speaker 02

  The army, though, have by now reached a far more radical conclusion.

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• 27:54Speaker 02

  On the 6th of December 1648, Colonel Thomas Pride, a parliamentarian officer acting on behalf of the army's leaders, stations soldiers outside the House of Commons.

• 28:06Speaker 02

  Presbyterian MPs, believed to be likely to support continued negotiations with the king, are barred from entry. Some are arrested, though many more are turned away or simply leave in protest.

• 28:19Speaker 03

  This is really the point at which blunt military power is absolutely exerted to completely take control in England. What the New Model Army and its supporters do, they essentially purge the Parliament of everyone who will not support them and their much more radical view of the future.

• 28:37Speaker 02

  Known as Pride's Purge, it is one of the most shocking moments in the entire crisis. Functioning essentially as a military coup, it precipitates a collapse of the old framework of constitutional bargaining. What remains is a reduced Commons, the so-called Rump Parliament.

• 28:58Speaker 03

  So you're left with this small number of MPs, the rump of MPs in the Parliament, who do support the New Model Army and the kind of independent agenda. And it's that diminished or reduced Parliament that is the one that passes the act for the trial of the king.

• 29:14Speaker 02

  In January 1649, England enters entirely uncharted political territory. Only a month has passed since Pride's Purge. In that short time, the remaining MPs have moved with extraordinary speed, pressing for the king to be brought to trial.

• 29:32Speaker 02

  Since the idea of trying a monarch has no proper precedent in English law, the House of Lords refuses to endorse the trial of the king or help create any legal basis for it.

• 29:44Speaker 02

  Undeterred, the Commons pushes on, declaring that it acts in the name of the people. It creates a special High Court of Justice and orders that Charles Stewart, King of England, be brought before it.

• 29:59Speaker 02

  For the first time in history, a reigning European monarch is to be placed on trial by his own subjects, accused of being a tyrant, a traitor, and an enemy to the people. If the court finds him guilty, the penalty will be death.

• 30:15Speaker 03

  This is an earth-shattering event. Nothing like this has happened in Europe before. And you know, kings have been killed and done away with in the past, but to actually be tried in open public, that's something completely new. So this is absolutely shocking. I mean, it's hard to overstate how shocking it is.

• 30:33Speaker 02

  By now, Charles has been brought back under close guard from the Isle of Wight to the mainland. From Windsor, he is taken to London to face trial in Westminster Hall, the great ceremonial heart of royal and legal authority.

• 30:49Speaker 02

  The trial opens on the 20th of January 1649 before a packed audience. A special court of commissioners has been appointed with the lawyer John Bradshaw presiding as Lord President. The prosecution is led by John Cook, who demands that Charles answers for the bloodshed of the kingdoms.

• 31:07Speaker 03

  From the king's point of view, everything that's happened is just monstrous, you know, from his perspective. None of this is what he expected. He genuinely believes that he's tried to rule as a good king, following his father's footsteps, following very carefully his father's advice, which had been left for him. So he simply doesn't recognise the court. He sees this as a kangaroo court that's been created out of nothing by rebels.

• 31:33Speaker 02

  Charles refuses to accept the court's authority, insisting that no lawful power on earth can sit in judgment on a divinely appointed king. He doesn't enter any plea in the normal sense, because to plead would be to admit that the court has jurisdiction over him. Again and again, he interrupts to challenge the tribunal itself, demanding to know by what authority it sits and refusing to answer any of its charges.

• 32:01Speaker 02

  That makes the trial strange to modern ears. There is no full adversarial contest in which Charles answers the accusations and the court weighs his defence. Instead, the prosecution presents the charge, witnesses are heard to establish that Charles has directed war against Parliament and the kingdom, and the king persists in eloquently refusing to recognise the whole process.

• 32:27Speaker 03

  Something that's very interesting about the king is that he'd always suffered from this stammer. He'd never been a good public speaker, and he'd often seemed very awkward and hesitant in public. It's fascinating to note that during his trial, that stammer disappears, and many people say, many contemporaries say that they'd never seen him speak so well or so clearly.

• 32:51Speaker 02

  In the courtroom, Charles seems to grow in stature. His refusal to bend and the clarity with which he defends the principle of kingship lends him an unexpected authority. Even many who oppose him are struck by the dignity of his bearing.

• 33:07Speaker 03

  What he's actually hoping at this time is really hard to say. Some people believe that he already knows that he's doomed, and he simply wants to go out in the most dignified and courageous way he possibly can.

• 33:22Speaker 02

  Over several days, the court hears its case and moves steadily towards judgment. And Charles's refusal to cooperate largely only serves to stiffen his enemies' resolve.

• 33:33Speaker 02

  To them, he is proving once again that he will concede nothing, learn nothing, and place his own conception of monarchy above the peace of the kingdom. Charles, for his part, sees no honourable course except to go on resisting the court and let the process run its course.

• 33:51Speaker 02

  On the 27th of January 1649, Charles Stuart is found guilty. He is condemned to death by the severing of his head from his body.

• 34:03Speaker 02

  Three days later, on the 30th of January, he is led out to a scaffold erected outside the banqueting house at Whitehall.

• 34:12Speaker 02

  On the platform, Charles remains calm and controlled. It is bitterly cold, and he is dressed carefully, wearing extra clothing so that no one will mistake a shiver for fear.

• 34:25Speaker 02

  He speaks briefly, insisting that he dies a Christian king and not a tyrant, and when the moment comes, he faces it with remarkable composure.

• 34:36Speaker 02

  Before the thousands gathered at Whitehall, Charles lays his head on the low block. A masked executioner steps forward, and the axe falls.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  One eyewitness writes of "a dismal, universal groan from the crowd", while others tell of people rushing forward to dip handkerchiefs in the king's blood as a trophy, a relic, or as a curative elixir from a godly source.

• 35:08Speaker 02

  It is one of the most extraordinary and shocking moments in British history. A reigning king, defeated in war, judged in public, and now put to death by the state he once ruled.

• 35:20Speaker 03

  Someone said about Charles that nothing in his life became him like the ending of it, and most historians see this in some ways as his finest hour, because, you know, he shows great courage, he shows great dignity, and he goes to his eventual death with the kind of demeanour that was expected in a king.

• 35:40Speaker 02

  At the time of his execution, his wife is in exile, and some of his children are in Parliament's custody. But his eldest son, eighteen-year-old Charles, is safely abroad and now becomes the focus of royalist hopes. The king may be dead, but the royal line has not disappeared.

• 36:01Speaker 02

  In the months that follow, the monarchy is abolished, the House of Lords is swept away, and England is declared a Commonwealth. Now it is a republic, which at least in theory, will be governed without a monarch.

• 36:15Speaker 03

  With the king gone, it becomes very clear what the situation is. Essentially, England is being ruled, and it's a kind of military dictatorship. It's a regime that's been set up based on the naked power of the New Model Army. And the great majority of English and Welsh men and women do not agree with this regime, you know, whether they're diehard royalists or Presbyterians. This is a government which they feel has been imposed on them by force. So there's no sense of huge majority of people being enthusiastically behind this, but equally, people are even more exhausted by this time, even more demoralised. Most people just don't want to return to war, and they can also see that there is no hope of defeating the New Model Army. It is an ungovernable force as far as everyone else is concerned.

• 37:01Speaker 02

  The political transformation is immense, but it rests on shaky foundations. The New Model Army may dominate England, yet the new regime commands little real enthusiasm across the wider population. And beyond England, the problem is greater still.

• 37:20Speaker 02

  War has by now been raging across the British Isles since 1642. The royalist uprisings of the Second Civil War have been put down, but the authority of Westminster still doesn't reach cleanly across the three kingdoms.

• 37:35Speaker 02

  In Ireland, English control has long since broken down. In Scotland, outrage at the execution of Charles I strengthens resistance to the new regime. In Wales and parts of the Far West too, loyalties to the old monarchy and the old church remain strong.

• 37:53Speaker 03

  Cromwell and the other leaders of the New Model Army, the other sort of army officers, they've now created this republican regime. So they know that there's a huge amount of opposition to them in the country as a whole, and they also know that from the moment that Charles I was executed and his head fell from the chopping block, his son, his eldest son, Charles, is instantly accepted as king by diehard royalists and also by many in Scotland and Ireland.

• 38:24Speaker 02

  In Scotland, many who are appalled by the execution rally to the new king at once. In Ireland too, resistance to the English Commonwealth begins to gather around his name. The army leadership knows that if this opposition is left to coalesce, the wars could begin again in earnest. The struggle now becomes a wider campaign to impose the authority of the New Republic across the whole of the British Isles.

• 38:52Speaker 03

  So now, although the army is firmly established in England, there are still all sorts of threats from Charles II and the exiled royalists on the continent. There's also now this sort of Scottish threat, and of course, there's Ireland, which has for now for a long time been out of English control. English Puritans and parliamentarians, they're determined to re-exert English control over Ireland, and so that's really the first thing that they do.

• 39:18Speaker 02

  In Ireland, Cromwell leads a harsh and deeply controversial campaign against Confederate and royalist resistance, beginning with the notorious sack of Drogheda in September 1649, in which large numbers of defenders and civilians are killed.

• 39:35Speaker 02

  The memory of that campaign will cast a long shadow of Irish history, but Cromwell's men have no intention of stopping until they have total control.

• 39:44Speaker 03

  Eventually, with the New Model Army at the helm, English dominance over the archipelago is gradually restored. So during 1645-6, the New Model Army reconquers Wales and Cornwall. 1649, 15 onwards, they reconquer Ireland, and then Scotland is really the last sort of independent power in these islands still holding out against them.

• 40:07Speaker 02

  In September 1650, Cromwell defeats the Scots at Dunbar, a mortal blow that shows once again the superiority of the New Model Army in the field. But to them, the dead king's eldest son is already Charles II, even if the English Republic refuses to recognise him. On the first day of 1651, he is crowned King of the Scots at Scoon near Perth. He now offers opponents of the English Republic a living, legitimate monarch around whom to rally.

• 40:42Speaker 02

  Charles and his supporters still believe there is one last chance. If they can carry the war into England itself, gather royalists on the March South, they just might be able to reignite resistance to the Commonwealth. So in the summer of 1651, Charles II leads his army across the border and into England. It is a final gamble, both bold and brave, especially considering the fate of his father just two and a half years earlier. He hopes that English royalists will rise and old loyalties will be revived. Against all evidence to the contrary, he is optimistic that the Republic will crack under the strain of his great invasion.

• 41:25Speaker 02

  But the support he needs never materialises in sufficient strength. Cromwell moves fast to counter the attack, and on the 3rd of September 1651, the two sides meet at Worcester.

• 41:38Speaker 02

  The battle that follows is decisive. Charles II's army is overwhelmed, his cause broken, and his hopes of restoring the monarchy by force shattered. Worcester will prove to be the last major battle of the civil wars. All Charles can hope for now is flight, concealment, and survival.

• 42:07Speaker 02

  It’s September 1651 in Boscombe Wood, Shropshire, a short distance to the north-west of Birmingham. Charles II is a king on the run. Only days ago, he marched south at the head of an army. But that army was broken in the Battle of Worcester, and now the 21-year-old monarch is stumbling through fields and woodland with mud on his boots and fear tight in his chest. Around him, the men, still loyal enough to risk their lives for his cause, speak in urgent whispers. They can’t stay together. It’s too dangerous. Too many in one place will draw attention, and too many horses leave tracks.

• 42:51Speaker 02

  They can’t afford for the king to be caught, so one by one, the company breaks apart. A servant is sent one way, while a companion disappears into the trees with a last hurried instruction to draw hunters away. Charles keeps moving forward into the wood, no longer a king with attendants, but a hunted man being passed from hand to hand through a country full of patrols and informers. Behind him, he knows parliamentarian soldiers are searching the roads and lanes, checking houses, questioning locals, looking for the fugitive who only days before had still been a crowned hope for the royalist cause.

• 43:36Speaker 02

  Charles stops beneath the trees and listens. For a moment, all he can hear is his own breath and the faint stir of leaves. But then, unmistakably, comes the dull rhythm of hooves approaching through the wood. With the last of the men, he stands close to an oak, its trunk perhaps broad enough to hide one or two of them. There is no time to run further. The ground is too open and the road too close. But above them, the branches of the tree, spread thick and low, leaves shifting in the late summer air. Charles looks up, then back towards the sound of the road.

• 44:19Speaker 02

  The final hope of the royalist cause has come to this: a defeated king in a wood searching for a hiding place. With no time to lose, he makes his decision and reaches for the trunk. Bark scrapes against his palms. His boot finds a notch, slips, finds it again. Hardly daring to glance towards the road, he begins to climb into the safety of the old oak.

• 44:56Speaker 00

  Everyone’s got a hard question about AI: your job, your kids, where it’s going. Anthropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way, because there’s hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai/spotify and keep thinking. That’s claude.ai/spotify.

• 45:22Speaker 01

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• 45:47Speaker 02

  Charles escapes and eventually reaches the relative safety of the continent. To royalists, he remains the rightful king. But after Worcester, he has no army and no kingdom securely under his control. In England, the men who overturned the old order are left with a harder task: how to govern with the power they have gained. Oliver Cromwell now stands at the center of that experiment. Yet, the Republic proves fragile, depending heavily on the army and increasingly on its persuasive and charismatic leader himself.

• 46:24Speaker 03

  In a way, it seems as if the New Model Army is all dominant by the late 1650s. The Republic has been set up. The government is functioning well. There is this very, very powerful army in place to support it. Things look good, but essentially by this time, Cromwell has kind of recreated himself as a quasi-monarch, that he is at the center of this government and he’s the one man that can hold it together, because everything about the Republic is so opposite to what had happened in England before.

• 46:55Speaker 02

  When Cromwell dies in 1658 of complications arising from malaria and a kidney complaint, the system he has held together begins to falter.

• 47:05Speaker 03

  It is a flower that has not had time to put down very deep roots, if you like. And with Cromwell gone, there is simply no one else who can hold the whole thing together. And so gradually, the Republic begins to collapse into confusion. More and more people are beginning to look across the channel to Charles, and eventually, certain officers and men within the New Model Army itself begin to hold out a hand to him. And at that point, it’s sort of curtains. But essentially, the Republic had been an attempt to uphold a very unpopular Puritan regime, almost at the point of the knife. And once that military threat is removed, the great majority of English men and women, I would argue, are actually quite happy to see the return of the monarchy

• 47:47Speaker 03

  and restoration of what seems like normality in many ways.

• 47:52Speaker 02

  In 1660, Charles II returns and the monarchy is restored. On the surface, it might seem as though England has come full circle, back to kings, bishops, and the traditional forms of rule. But the journey through civil war, regicide, and republic has changed the kingdoms too profoundly for any true return to the Old World. And that leaves the great question hanging over the whole conflict. After so much bloodshed, upheaval, and destruction, what in the end was it all for? The English Civil Wars are difficult to explain, because the conflict was never just one thing. At its heart were struggles over the power of the monarchy

• 48:36Speaker 02

  and the rights of parliament. But those constitutional battles were inseparable from fierce disputes about religion, sovereignty, the use of armed force, and the nature of political obedience. Who had the right to rule? By what authority? God or the people? And to what extent could ordinary subjects resist a king whom they believed had broken faith with them? The wars transformed the relationship between ruler and ruled and shattered old assumptions about sacred kingship. Briefly, ideas that had once seemed almost unthinkable now appeared possible, like religious tolerance, broader political representation,

• 49:19Speaker 02

  and the right to challenge authority. They also left behind a more powerful army and a new awareness that politics could be fought not only in palaces and parliaments, but in pulpits, through pamphlets, and on the streets.

• 49:34Speaker 03

  I think first of all, we should remember the terrible impact it has on everyone living here in England, and Wales, and Cornwall. For everyone who lived through the Civil War, it was the biggest event of their lives. And for the rest of their lives, they would refer to it as “the war” or “the wars,” just as our grandparents referred to the Second World War as “the war.” You know, this was the big event. Nobody ever forgot it. So its impact on its own time is enormous.

• 49:59Speaker 02

  Even after the monarchy was restored in 1660, the Old World order was not simply reinstated. The memory of civil war, regicide, and republic continued to shape British politics for generations.

• 50:13Speaker 03

  Kings would never be so powerful again. Charles II and those who followed him would never enjoy the power that Charles I or Henry VIII had. And in some ways, what happens in 1660 is a classic sort of English compromise, that, you know, kings are back, but they’re nothing like as powerful as they’d been before. Parliaments are still effectively an advisory body, but they have much more ability to advise and control than they’d had in the past. So that’s a huge change. It’s impossible to overstate that.

• 50:43Speaker 02

  And the impact of briefly being a republic released energies that transformed society.

• 50:49Speaker 03

  The Republic and the whole period of the Civil War, it lets all of these things out of boxes which can never really be pushed back again. So all sorts of amazing things happened during the Republic. You get women preachers. You get women writing and publishing in a way they’d never done before. You get all sorts of ordinary men doing so as well. All sorts of new ideas and thoughts are unleashed. And in religious terms as well, a very interesting compromise is arrived at.

• 51:18Speaker 02

  After the restoration, as Charles II’s installation on the throne of England is known, the Church of England returned as the established church, broadly in the shape its defenders had been trying to preserve all along. But the old dream of a single national church had been damaged beyond repair. The state was increasingly forced to recognize that some people would follow other Protestant paths and that nonconformity could not simply be crushed out of existence. Over time, England found ways to make room for people who worshipped differently. And the same was true in politics. Though the armies disbanded and Charles II was installed on the throne,

• 52:01Speaker 02

  the old divisions did not vanish. The concept of the parliamentarian Roundhead and royalist Cavalier became more than labels from a battlefield. They became identities and traditions, ways of thinking about power, religion, monarchy, and parliament that would echo long after the fighting stopped.

• 52:21Speaker 03

  Really, all of our political groupings after 1660 are kind of descendants of the Roundheads and Cavaliers. So those who fought for the king, the royalists, they have actually become the Tories, very much High Church. Those who fought for parliament, they eventually become the Whigs, the nonconformists. They eventually blend into the sort of the more liberal English political tradition. And eventually, we end up with sort of Conservative and Labour, which until quite recently were very much the kind of spiritual descendants of the Roundheads and Cavaliers. So the resonance of the Civil War is still all around us today, and it’s kind of baked into our political system. To me, it’s probably the single most important conflict we’ve ever been involved in for all sorts of reasons,

• 53:05Speaker 03

  apart from possibly the Second World War and the defeat of Hitler.

• 53:17Speaker 02

  Next time on Short History of, we’ll bring you a short history of Mary Shelley.

• 53:22Speaker 06

  I think Mary Shelley continues to fascinate because she’s got it all. I mean, she has got the double whammy of having written something astonishing, which has entered not just the mainstream of reading or even not just the mainstream of film and entertainment, but, you know, has passed into the language. And then there’s her story. Both the work and the life. It’s an extraordinary combination.

• 53:47Speaker 02

  That’s next time. You can listen to the next two episodes of Short History of right now, without waiting and without adverts, by subscribing to Noiser Plus. Just hit the link in the episode description or head to www-noiser.com/subscriptions to unlock more episodes today.

• 54:06Speaker 00

  Everyone’s got a hard question about AI: your job, your kids, where it’s going. Anthropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way, because there’s hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai/spotify and keep thinking. That’s claude.ai/spotify. Everyone’s got a hard question about AI: your job, your kids, where it’s going. Anthropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way, because there’s hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai/spotify and keep thinking. That’s claude.ai/spotify.