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King vs parliament: the moment that sparked civil war
00:43:19
Jonathan Healey reveals how the relationship between king and parliament broke down over the winter of 1641-2, leading England towards civil war
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- [00:02]
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- [00:28]
Jonathan Healey
Foreign.
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Ryan Reynolds
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Jonathan Healey
Now.
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Ryan Reynolds
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Ellie Gawthorn
Of $45 for three month plan equivalent to 15 per month required new customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes of networks busy taxes and fees extra. Cementmobile.com welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. Over the winter of 1641-1642, England stood on the precipice of civil war. In his new book, the Blood in Winter, Jonathan Healey charts how the relationship between the King and Parliament disintegrated during those months, leading England down the road to a bloody conflict. I spoke to Jonathan to find out more about why tensions arose between Charles I and the MPs and the and whether anything could have been done to avoid war. Jonathan, why don't we start with the title of your book, Blood in a nation descends 1642. Let's focus in on that winter then of 1641 into 1642. Why was this such a pivotal time in British and Irish history?
- [02:44]
Jonathan Healey
Well, I mean, I started with, I think it was fair to say one of the most iconic moments. The word iconic gets overused, but this time I Think it's right in English political history, which was the time when King Charles I, angry at the sort of dissent that he was getting from Parliament, marched down into Parliament and tried to arrest five MPs in the House of Commons. It's one of those moments that, you know, most people who know a bit about English history know about. So I wanted to sort of tell the backstory of that big, big, dramatic, divisive, important moment. But also in the lead up to that, there had been this incredibly intense period of political strife, popular protest and sort of gradually growing disorder in London, which sort of fed into this crisis and led to this moment that many of us know about. And then after that, of course, what happened was that the country then descended into civil war. And often when we read books about great revolutions and great political events, we go back and we look at the deep long term causes and that's very, very important. But also there's a trigger moment. And that trigger moment is often day to day, it's often minute by minute. It's often incredibly difficult to see in that moment where things will go. So sometimes as a historian, it's really important to immerse yourself in those moments. So that's the two things I was trying to do that really was to a kind of explain why this famous moment was so important, but also immerse ourselves, immerse, you know, my readers in the political crisis. Very frightening political crisis which led up to it.
- [04:26]
Ellie Gawthorn
And there are so many strands to this, aren't there? As you say, there's the political wrangling which is quite involved. There's wider unrest on the streets and there's also this vast cast of characters that you bring together in the kind of unfolding action plot. I mean, this has a reputation, I think, the Civil wars for being quite a complex, quite a complicated era. Do you think that's fair? And if you do, how do you aim to make it accessible to people?
- [04:51]
Jonathan Healey
Yeah, I mean, it's an incredibly complicated era and, you know, you've got all these different parliaments, all these different political factions, you know, you've got various people who, you know, have the same title and that changes. And it's, you know, and one of the sort of classic ones that I always end up in a fight with my publishers about is Thomas Wentworth, the King's most sort of notorious Minister in the 1630s, who becomes the Earl of Strafford and then gets his head cut off. And publishers always want you to call him Strafford all the way through, but the pedant in me is only ever willing to do it once he has actually got the earldom, which is the end of the 1630s. So it is difficult. I mean, it's difficult to tell those stories. There are a lot of barriers. And also, fundamentally, one of the problems with the 17th century is it's very, very hard to find people that we agree with that, you know, everyone is a complex product of a very complicated set of circumstances that they live in. And that means that we might be following someone and think, oh, I really like that person. They really kind of chime with me, and then they do something that we see as terrible or we really can't get our heads around. And that's quite a challenge as well. It doesn't give us easy heroes and villains. And I think the way that I'm trying to tell this story is, you know, partly kind of tell the narrative and look at the structures and all that kind of really, really important stuff, but also characters through and allow them to breathe, allow them to tell us who they are, and really allow us to empathize with the position that they ended up in. And, you know, I'd hope that in many cases, these are characters that we can sort of empathize with, but at the same time look at them and go, ooh, you know, I don't like that element of your personality. And I think actually, if we as readers and as we as historians can see these people as, you know, fully fleshed out characters, I think that really helps us understand the period. And.
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Ellie Gawthorn
And you're able to draw on this huge amount of documentation as well. So, like you say, you really can draw these characters out, but at the heart of all of this, essentially, is Parliament. So for people who don't know anything about Parliament in this period, can you give us the rundown? You know, who was there? What were some of the divisions? What were the kind of main factions and parties? What do we need to know?
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Jonathan Healey
So Parliament was the legislative body in England in the early 17th century. It didn't sit regularly. It was only ever called when the king needed it. And its role was basically kind of twofold. It was supposed to grant taxes, particularly for war, and it was supposed to pass legislation. So it would propose legislation which would then get signed off by the king. And that's how new laws were made. Increasingly in the 17th century, it started to take a kind of a role of discussing high politics, which became controversial, and certain things which it started discussing because they were pertinent to tax and all that kind of stuff, which Kings sort of thought, well, actually, no, this is not your remit, this isn't something that you should be talking about. So one of the most important ones is foreign policy. The kings in this period believed that they had the right to decide on foreign policy. But Parliament, of course, because they represented the taxpayers who had to pay for the wars, felt that they should have a say. And that became a kind of flashpoint. And in the 1620s, there have been a series of kind of conflicts between Parliament and the monarchy about things like tax, about things like the right of the Crown to imprison people without charge, which Parliament didn't agree with. And about religion. There was a sort of different kind of take on the Protestant Anglican faith between Crown and many in parliament in the 60s, 20s. And so what had happened is that that relationship between King and Parliament, which was supposed to be sort of, you know, harmonious and for the good of the country, had broken down. And it had ended in these kind, wonderfully disorderly scenes in March 1629, when the king had wanted to dissolve Parliament. But when the messenger arrived to tell them to get on their way, progue, in this case, a group of MPs, a group of kind of dissident MPs had held the speaker down in his chair and passed a load of resolutions which were quite antagonistic to the Crown. So sort of understandably, a little bit peeved at this situation. The King, Charles I, who was a man who liked order, let's put it that way, decided that as far as possible for the next period time, he would rule without Parliament. And he did. And then over that period, there sort of developed a series of grievances and difficulties and debates. So when Charles was then forced to call parliament again in 1640 because there'd been a rebellion in Scotland, all these things came to the fore. And there was this sudden kind of ferment amongst the MPs against the royal government. So the King responded by dissolving Parliament again, as was his right, and then trying to quashed the Scottish rebellion again. It failed. So he had to call Parliament again. And by November 1640, he's forced to call Parliament and then live with it, because he has to keep sending money up to the Scots. So he doesn't have the capability to just say to Parliament, just go away. So he has to kind of live with it. And what you get at the start of that Parliament, we call it the Long Parliament, because it lasted for a very long time. At the start of that Parliament, there's this kind of broad consensus for reform and passing legislation which says that Parliament has to sit regular, getting rid of some of the perceived abuses of the previous 11 years. But what happens then over that kind of next 12 months, setting up the beginnings of my book, is that the reformists kind of push things too far. They start to argue for reform of the bishops, for example, which is very, very controversial. They start to engage with a much broader political constituency. They start to sort of appeal to the people and say the people should be part of this kind of process. Probably most of all, most controversial of all, they have Thomas Wentworth, the Earl of Strafford, executed. And in the process of doing that, they use the people as a tool to kind of push for that agenda. So by the start of the period that I'm looking at, you're starting to see a backlash against these reformists.
- [10:56]
Ellie Gawthorn
So tell us a bit more about Charles himself in this period that you look at these tensions that have arisen and become really, really problematic. Would they have emerged whoever the monarch was, or was there anything about Charles in particular that really antagonized the Parliament and this relationship?
- [11:14]
Jonathan Healey
It's a great question. And I remember when I was first writing this book, I kind of wanted to de emphasise Charles a little bit because a lot has been written about him. He's a very interesting character, he really is. And I wanted to sort of tell other stories. But, you know, as I wrote it, you sort of realize that there is really no way that you can write the story without having a significant emphasis on him and his personality. And there are lots of things about Charles which, which do antagonise people. One of which is that he has a preference for a very kind of high Anglican form of worship. And a lot of people in England didn't like that very much. But perhaps most of all, I think he is someone who really likes order. He likes the traditional social hierarchies, he likes the aristocracy. He doesn't like bottom up political engagement in the church and he doesn't like it in the state. Now, there's an awful lot of people around the country who have that view. It's not unusual at the time, but he takes it to quite an extreme level in that he, you know, anytime there is any kind of attempt at sort of popular engagement with politics, Charles really, really doesn't like it. And the other thing that I think is, is quite difficult about his personality is that he has this kind of innate sense that he is right. And what that means is that the methods that he employs to get his way don't really matter quite so much as the ends. So there's a few times in this period, including, of course, the sort of famous moment where he marches on Parliament with an armed force, where he basically does things which everyone looks at and says, that's duplicitous, that's unconstitutional, that's wrong. But because he believes that the end is justifiable, and, you know, because he's the King, he believes he can do it. And that creates a sense of conflict and a sense of fear, I think.
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Ellie Gawthorn
If we look at everybody else, then is it as simple as divisions between those who support Charles and those who don't? Or are the waters more murky? What are some of the key divisions between?
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Jonathan Healey
I mean, the waters are very murky. There are shifting sands. And one of the things that I try and do with the book is I try and tell the story of someone who is quite famously royalist, which is a guy called Sir John Banks, who was the Attorney general in the 1630s. Now, he's most famous because in the Civil War, his wife, Mary Banks, held onto Corfe Castle, you know, one of the most famous castles in England, for the royalists against the Parliament of. So he's sort of famously royalist, but even he has a very sort of, you know, complicated journey towards royalism. And in the end, it sort of gets to a point where Charles literally had to write to him and say, come to York. Come to my side. You've really got to come along. And he sort of said, oh, you know, okay. And eventually he does. So even someone as famously royalist as him has this kind of very complicated backstory. And one of the kind of really challenging things about writing this is that, you know, you get these kind of allegiances which shift, and you get people who come at these questions with very, very complicated points of view. And, you know, one of the things that a lot of people in the sort of political sphere are worried about is they're worried about the impact of popular protest. And that's one of the things which causes them to rally behind the king because they see the sort of danger of the mob as they see it. So there's things like that. But at the same time, you know, you've got people who sort of look at Charles in the 1630s and think he's constitutionally dodgy. But then you get to 1642, when the radicals or the reformists in Parliament are trying to take control of the royal government in a way that had never happened before, then the same people are looking at that and saying, well, who's the dodgy ones now? Who are the ones who are attacking the ancient constitution now? Well, it's the other guys. So quite understandably, they then rally behind the King and, you know, they're complicated questions and intelligent people come at them from different angles, and that's what's so exciting and interesting about this period.
- [15:11]
Ellie Gawthorn
Yeah. And in your book, you give time for these kind of complicated characters to unfold. You say in the book that this was a battle not just of ideas, but of personalities. So we've got Charles, obviously, towering over this whole thing, but who were some of the other key figures that might be lesser known in this story? And how did they swing the pendulum?
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Jonathan Healey
The Queen was really, really important. Henrietta Maria. And one of the things I try and emphasize, you know, because this kind of high political history, often it's a men's game, isn't it? You know, or at least the way that historians write about it, it's a men's game. But one of the things I try and emphasise is the way that by the end of 1641, when you've got this kind of backlash against the reformists, and Charles is trying to build a royalist party, and he's using one of his administrators called Sir Edward Nicholas, who's a sort of rather portly, very, very competent administrator, almost like a kind of descendant of Thomas Cromwell, but with a slightly bigger diet, and he's trying to put together this royalist party, but he doesn't know the aristocrats. So who does he go to? He goes to the Queen, because she knows who the aristocrats are, who they can sort of put together. So, you know, she's sort of behind the scenes, kind of pulling this royalist party together. On the parliamentarian side, you've got people like John Pym, who's this incredibly sophisticated political operator. I mean, just, you know, one of these sort of real political maguses. You know, you see some of the tactics that get used in Parliament, and it's incredibly devious, it's incredibly cynical. Like, there's a bit where there's this great sort of protest against Charles called the Grand Remonstrance. And it had only passed by the skin of its teeth in late November 1641. Very controversial. And the reformists, you know, with Pym and his lot, had failed to get Parliament to agree to having it printed. They'd said it could be published, but not printed. So what they did is, a few weeks later, they were debating something else, and then someone introduced it again to say, oh, we should print this. But they waited until it was really, really late and the sun had gone down, and a lot of people had, you know, realized that they couldn't see. And there were big debates about whether to bring in candles and that, you know, went to a vote. And a lot of the royalists had gone home because they thought, oh, nothing's going to happen. And then they spring this kind of, oh, oh, by the way, we're going to overturn the vote that we did two weeks ago. And they did. And it's devious. It's really devious, but it's clever. And that's, you know, that's sort of how politics work. We're all familiar with it now, but this is the first time we can really see it. And I think that's so. It's so fascinating.
- [17:41]
Ellie Gawthorn
It feels like something out of, you know, a political drama from the 21st century to that, doesn't it?
- [17:46]
Jonathan Healey
Or the thick of it.
- [17:47]
Ellie Gawthorn
Yeah, yeah, I was thinking that, too. On that point of printing, that's an interesting question here. So if I'm an ordinary person living on the streets of London, how much am I aware of. Of what is going on in Parliament at the time?
- [18:02]
Jonathan Healey
Increasingly quite well aware. And again, it's one of these moments where I'm trying to bring together the political and the social history, because I think they all sort of fit together in a wonderful way. I focus a bit on this sort of backstory of authors, basically. And there's one with the very unfortunate name of John Thomas, who prints lots and lots of stuff. And in the end, out of that debate about the Grand Remonstrance, you know, they're told that they can't print it. So one of the things that they do, and again, this is very clever, is they go to this guy, John Thomas, and say, well, why don't you write up a kind of digest of what has happened in Parliament every week? And so he does. And the first week that he did it was the week of the Grand Remonstrance. So people, even if they haven't been able to read the thing because it's huge, they know that it's there because it's been printed in this newsbook or newspaper because it's the first ever proper English political newspaper. And the other sort of story, which kind of runs as a sort of backstory throughout the book, is the story of a guy called. He's another John, the water poet, John Taylor, who's a royalist. And he's great fun. I mean, he runs these kind of just scurrilous pamphlets about religious radicals and all this kind of stuff. And a lot of it's quite xenophobic and sexist and stuff. You know, he's not a very nice man by our standards. There's no. No two ways about it. But he's an entertaining writer and he has this kind of long running battle with a guy called Henry Walker who's, you know, on the other end of the spec. He's a radical parliamentarian. And it sort of runs through the history of 16. But it comes to a really crucial end, which is that after Charles I tried to arrest the five members, he then went to London the next day to try and get them again. And as he went through London, as his coach was sort of going through St. Paul's this guy Henry Walker ran up to him and threw a pamphlet into his coach. And it was a pamphlet which basically called upon the English people to resist tyrants. So you can imagine Charles's response when he read this. And so in that moment, there's this kind of great connection between the rarefied world of the royal court and the royal coach and the politics of the street. And it's that moment, I think, more than anything that encourages Charles to flee London and, you know, go and set up a new court elsewhere eventually in York. So, yeah. So in answer to your question, I think they would have known a lot. And that's one of the great things about this period because it's a moment when the politics of parliament and Whitehall is becoming more accessible to those on the street.
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Jonathan Healey
Come on.
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- [21:58]
Ellie Gawthorn
So let's focus in, actually on that key moment, the kind of crux of your book, where, as you say, Charles does come to Parliament and tries to arrest these five members, as you've described. We've had months of tension, years of tension, decades of tension even. What is it? What's the kind of spark that lights this particular incident in January, on the 4th of January, 1642, whenever.
- [22:20]
Jonathan Healey
So I think Charles had wanted revenge against certain key players for a long time. I mean, he saw them, I mean, quite correctly, actually, in all fairness, as being people who had kind of stabbed him in the back when the Scottish rebellion had happened. Because a lot of these people were in connivance with the Scottish rebels and Charles knew about it and eventually he wanted to prosecute people for it, which he's got a point, really. But I think the specifics of that moment come from a time when Charles was really sort of regaining the initiative and he was building up this royalist party in Parliament and there was a real possibility that actually he would be able to command a majority in both Houses of Parliament. But the trouble is, there'd been all these kind of street protests, and what had happened as a result of the street protest was that the bishops had not been able to attend the House of Lords. And that meant that the balance was.
- [23:15]
Ellie Gawthorn
Tipped because the bishops were in the Royals camp.
- [23:17]
Jonathan Healey
Yeah, I mean, the bishops are all royal appointments, so they're all basically kind of royal supporters at this point. And so if they can attend the House of Lords, then the King has a majority in the House of Lords. But there's been protests in the street and the bishops have been prevented from attending. So there's a short window from around about 28 December 1641, there's a short window whereby Charles has basically kind of has lost control of the Houses of Parliament. Now, the context is that a few weeks earlier, he'd given this proclamation which had basically said to all the MPs who'd sort of gradually drifted home because they were a bit fed up of sitting in Parliament, because they've been doing it for like, nine months, he told them to come back to Westminster. And the theory was that these were basically Moderates, they're more likely to be royalists. So the theory was that on the 12th of January, he would have this majority in both Houses and things would have died down, the bishops would be able to come back, etc, etc. But there's this short period where he's lost the majority in both sides. So he had to do something to kind of really slow things down, to disrupt things. And so what he did was he had his Attorney General, a guy called Edward Herbert, draw up prosecutions against five MPs and then one member of the House of Lords. And then that was supposed to sort of slow things down. I think that's the kind of logic. Unfortunately, the House of Lords was really cross about this and they sort of said, instead of saying, okay, yes, fine, we will set up this committee and we'll investigate, they said, we don't actually think it's constitutional for you to do this. The Attorney General should not be prosecuting people in the House of Lords. That's just not right. And the Commons were angry about it too. And that was on the 3rd of January. So on the 3rd of January, the plan had basically kind of gone wrong. So Charles was forced to sort of decide what to do next. And eventually he decided that he would force the issue.
- [25:01]
Ellie Gawthorn
So take us to that day, the 4th of January. Charles comes into Parliament, set the scene for us. How does it unfold?
- [25:07]
Jonathan Healey
That morning, Parliament had been incredibly tense because the day before there'd been beginnings of prosecutions against these five members and Member of the Lords. So they're very, very tense in the morning. And they were hearing, you know, they'd sent a delegation to Whitehall to the King. They come back and they were reporting. And there'd been these sort of tensions in the night with, you know, sort of strange movements of people in London, and everyone was very, very sort of very worried. Shops, a lot of shops were shut. And at Whitehall, which is the Royal palace just a little bit down the road, the King was sort of, you know, pacing around, basically, and sort of waiting for stuff to happen. And lunchtime came. Someone was sent to Whitehall from Parliament to sort of see what was going on. And they saw that there were lots and lots of soldiers milling around. They've been told to, you know, follow the orders of this one guy. And then, you know, Parliament goes and starts sitting again for the afternoon, and you get to sort of mid afternoon. And then suddenly the King appeared and then told a group of those soldiers to follow him. And they went out into the street and they didn't Have a coach, because it was a bit impromptu, so they had to kind of requisition this coach. It's either one that was parked there or one that was going past. It's almost a sort of follow that taxi kind of moment. Anyway, so the King got into this coach and they sort of trundled down the street with this about 500, probably soldiers behind them or armed men. And they got into palace of Westminster. About, you know, three quarters of the soldiers are left behind. A group of about 80 to 100 went up the stairs and outside the House of Commons and they sort of bang on the door. So the debate stopped. And, you know, someone went to the door and said, you know, what's going on? They said, well, the King's outside. And they said, okay. So they opened the door and then the King came in. They all stood up because that's what they do. Took their heads off. And that's when the King went in and he said to the Speaker, William Lentil, he said, you know, I've come here and I would like to arrest these five members. And so he sort of looks around and says, you know, is. Is John Pym here? Silence. Denzel Hollis here? Again, silence. So eventually it becomes clear to Charles that they'd all gone and. And Lentil at this point has sort of said, well, I can't say anything because I'm just here to voice the desires of the House. It's a really important moment because he's saying that he, as speaker, who's actually appointed by the Crown, he says, as Speaker, I am the voice of the House of Commons who represents the people. I'm not the voice of the Crown. Go away. And by this point, Charles is extremely angry and sort of, you know, storms off and says, oh, I can see my birds have flown. And as he went out, all these soldiers are sort of, you know, when can we shoot them? And Sparl says, no, no, no, we're not going to do that today. And then they all go. And he said that he's. He looked very angry as he went out. So it's a sort of really dramatic, humiliating moment, actually, for Charles, which could so easily have ended in a massacre. I don't think Charles wanted to massacre anyone, but he definitely wanted to threaten, I think. And I think, you know, that at that moment, he took things too far. I mean, that was quite clearly an armed threat against Parliament.
- [28:11]
Ellie Gawthorn
It's often cited, isn't it, as this kind of key moment, pivotal moment in the lead up to the Civil War, Was it A kind of crossing the Rubicon moment. Once it had happened, there was no going back.
- [28:21]
Jonathan Healey
A lot of people said so at the time. Yeah. And if you like, the kind of tragic coda to my book is that, you know, there's this kind of period after January where there are people who try and kind of bring the two sides together, one of whom is Sir John Banks, who goes up to York eventually, but he writes to all these kind of parliamentarian figures saying, well, look, you know, how can we sort this out? How can we stop the civil war? Because they knew a civil war was coming. In fact, arguably it already had. But the thing with the five members moment is that it really did kind of destroy a huge amount of trust in the King. And essentially what it did to the other side is it forced them to say, well, you know, if he's gathering soldiers around him, these cavaliers, as they were called, if he's doing that, then we need to be able to protect ourselves because we can't trust him not to attack us again. So what we need to do is we need to get control of the county militia. They're called the trained bands. They're sort of amateur soldiers. And historically, the county militia had always been controlled by people appointed by the Crown, the Lord's lieutenant. But what Parliament did is they said, okay, Parliament should appoint the commanders of the militia. And that was, you know, what they were trying to do is they're trying to get protection for themselves. And so they passed, you know, they passed this bill. It went through the House of Commons, it went through the House of Lords, and it went to the King. And a parliamentary bill does not become law unless it is signed off by the King. But, of course, the King is never going to sign this one. So Parliament is then forced to say, well, the King is incapacitated and it has legal force, even though it's not been signed off by the King. And that then is this kind of constitutional fissure, which is that in a state of emergency, can Parliament legislate without the King? They said they could. The King quite understandably said he couldn't. That then becomes the dividing issue.
- [30:18]
Ellie Gawthorn
So it's essentially a kind of escalating arms race almost.
- [30:21]
Jonathan Healey
Yeah, I mean, that's the way to think about it. There's this kind of. Yeah, there is a. There's an escalating arms race. Eventually, you know, they start off by sort of calling out defensive arms, like the militia, but eventually they take it the step further and Parliament creates a marching army. And then, you know, Charles does around about the same time. Although he's, you know, in actually creating a large army, he's. He's a bit later, actually. And. Yeah, so an arms race is a good way of thinking about it, or, you know, just descending down the plug hole of violence. Is that a plug hole of violence? I'm not sure I like that, but you know what I mean.
- [30:55]
Ellie Gawthorn
So at this key moment, then this pivotal moment, how did the ripples spread beyond London to the rest of England, but then also to touch on Ireland, Scotland and Wales as well?
- [31:07]
Jonathan Healey
One of the sort of critical things that happened in late 1641 was there was a massive uprising in Ireland. And the context here is the Scottish Rising of 1637, because Ireland was predominantly Catholic and they, you know, a lot of Irish people were kind of fed up with rule by English Protestants, but particularly they didn't want to be ruled by English parliamentarian Protestants because the English parliamentarian Protestants were. Were more anti Catholic. So members of the Irish political class and, you know, all across Irish society looked over to Scotland and thought, well, Scotland rebelled and basically got what they wanted, which is exactly what had happened, so why don't we do the same thing? And so they did, and very, very quickly. And there were kind of. There were atrocities which were committed in Ulster and, you know, it's very violent rebellion. And then reports of that, which were wildly exaggerated, but, you know, still based in a kind of kernel of truth, then came through to England and then created this kind of massive panic that there was going to be an Irish invasion, that, you know, the Catholics in England were going to rise up and, you know, it'd be another Gunpowder Plot and all this kind of stuff, real sort of paranoia. And one of the immediate consequences of that is that it means that someone in England has to raise an army to put down this rebellion. And at that point, it's very difficult to see how both Parliament and the King could trust the other side with this process of raising an army. But also, I mean, you know, England was a very connected country at this point. And there were people, there were letter writers writing back to the country. They knew who their MPs were. They got reports, you know, all these newspapers, they weren't just read in London, they were passed around the country. So there was connection. And, you know, I think, you know, if you look at the situation in, say, summer 1641, if you live in the countryside, things are kind of peaceful. The Irish rebellion happens suddenly, you know, all the local castles are rearming and, you know, there were watches placed on the on the church towers and all this kind of stuff and suddenly you getting into a state of really quite serious invasion panic.
- [33:12]
Ellie Gawthorn
So it sounds to me like there was a sense, a widespread sense that war is coming. Everybody's aware of that fact certainly by.
- [33:20]
Jonathan Healey
The spring of 1642. I think there's a real sense that war is coming. I mean, it's kind of sad, but it's also kind of funny in a way, is that one of the records we have of this is people who use it as an opportunity to settle local scores. So there's a guy in Salisbury who basically says, well, you know, I'm gonna be for the King. I've decided that my neighbour is for the Parliament. When the war comes, the first person I'm gon go bash on the head is my neighbour. And you know, people kind of use it to settle local scores. But I think one of the things that really kind of, I don't know, struck me when I was doing some of the writing for this is just how connected everything is. And there's this kind of, you know, moment towards the end where the judges are sent out on circuit and they're told by the King to gather grievances because they want to know what's going wrong. And you get people who go to the, you know, the assize courts, which is sort of big criminal courts in the county, and you get two sets of petitions and one says the King needs to go back to London and we need to deal with the Catholics and we need to deal with the Cavaliers. And then on the other side you've got a petition which says Parliament needs to toe the line and we need to deal with the religious radicals, with the independents, we need to stamp them out. You know, this whole exercise of kind of gathering grievances just encourages people to say I'm a parliamentarian or I'm a royalist. And it just doesn't help.
- [34:37]
Ellie Gawthorn
Jonathan, I know historians don't always like alternate histories or the idea of things being inevitable, but I can't resist in this case. So by the time that we get to January 1642, was there any way, do you think that Parliament and the King could have found some kind of compromise, could have avoided war? Was there any moment where that looked possible?
- [34:58]
Jonathan Healey
I don't know about compromise. I think that might be the wrong word. I mean, I kind of like, you know, I'm a dyed in the wool social historian. I love seeing deep structural stuff. I'm very, I'm very cynical about counterfactual history. Nonetheless, good.
- [35:13]
Ellie Gawthorn
That's what I wanted you to say.
- [35:15]
Jonathan Healey
When you're writing narrative history. I think one of the real glories of narrative history is that it does really force you to sort of place yourself in a particular moment and look at the different potential outcomes and things very rarely from the perspective of a narrative historian. Things very rarely look as if they are sort of set in stone. I think the problem in early 1642 is that there is a group of very serious politicians on the reformist side who don't trust the King and there's a king on the other side who really doesn't like them. And so it's very, very hard to see how those two sides could be reconciled. But what could have happened quite easily, I think, actually, is that the sort of day to day workings out of politics could have gone the King's way. And those reformist politicians on the parliamentarian side, the sort of real leadership of the Junto, as they're called, could have been isolated and found themselves in a very, very sticky situation very, very quickly. So that's how I think it could have ended. And I think, you know, for those people, they really do go through this political crisis on an absolute knife edge. You know, real kind of sense of fear that they could be prosecuted and beheaded, whatever. And I think that dynamic of fear really kind of helps push things towards a civil war. So I don't think a compromise, but maybe a different outcome. Yes.
- [36:30]
Ellie Gawthorn
Well, for example, if Charles had gone into parliament that day, he'd found the five members that he wanted to, he'd arrested them, is that the kind of thing you were imagining that could change things?
- [36:39]
Jonathan Healey
I think so. And I think again, that's where one of the great characters in the book comes through, which is Lucy Carlisle, Lucy Haight. And she was again, a sort of incredibly interesting character who, from a really kind of rich aristocratic family, connected to the reformists through her brother, the Earl of Northumberland, but in the 1630s had been a, you know, a courtier, really important courtier, very close to the Queen, but for whatever reason, and it's very, very unclear exactly what it was, but I think it probably connects to the position of her family and the fact that her brother, who, you know, she wanted to look out for was a reformist, and probably also because of her own opinions about, you know, these things, because, you know, people, people did have opinions about the relationship between Church and state or the relationship between King and Parliament, or about religion and all these kind of things. Anyway, for whatever reason, by late 1641, she's alienated from the Queen and was acting as a spy for the reformists. And somehow, and it's quite unclear how, but somehow, basically, on the night before Charles went to Parliament, probably the Queen let slip that that was his plan. And then Lucy Carlisle went and warned people who she thought were threatened, one of whom was her friend, Lord Manderville. So by the morning of the fourth, when it's all going to happen, the people who need to know already knew that something was going to happen. And, you know, if she hadn't done that, maybe they wouldn't have left. You know, they had other warnings, but maybe that's why. So, you know, there's lots of kind of potential moments where things could have gone in different directions. And I do think that is one of them. Yeah, it would have been very violent, I suppose. I mean, that's the other thing about that potential counterfactual is that if Charles got to Parliament and the MPs were there and they decided not to go quietly, you've got this kind of gang of about 100 very, very angry cavaliers, all with pistols, and they're then trying to drag people out of Parliament. So what happens? Does that go peacefully? Probably not.
- [38:33]
Ellie Gawthorn
Could have ended up in the same situation. But of course, the way that things did end up is England goes on the path to civil war. As a kind of concluding question, obviously, within two decades later, the monarchy had been restored. But did this era determine how the relationship between parliamentary and royal rule played out in a much longer term?
- [38:58]
Jonathan Healey
Yeah, I mean, I think so. I think. I mean, you know, you've got to look at the whole period. You've got the regicide, which happens in 1649, where the king was put on trial and executed. But it is quite interesting that when the Restoration happened, it was the settlement of late 1641 that was restored. So things like the Triennial act, which basically said that Parliament had to sit once every three years, were kept. Some of the reforms about. Well, most of the reforms about the 1630s were kept. So in a sense, what you have in 1642 is you have this kind of parting of the ways, really. And what happens is the radicals on the parliamentarian side go in a much more constitutionally radical direction. And when the restoration happens in 1660, that's what's jettisoned. They sort of go back to this reformed position. There's lots of long term consequences. It emphasizes the importance of the Crown sort of working with Parliament and not being antagonistic to it. But also, I mean, in the later 17th century. There are very few periods. There's like three years in the 1680s where there aren't parliaments. You know, it had become an accepted part of the Constitution in a way that it hadn't been in, say, the 1610s or the, you know, the 1630s. So, yeah, I mean, it has very, very important long term consequences. It's part of the reason that England became and the UK became a constitutional monarchy rather than something else.
- [40:21]
Ellie Gawthorn
That was Jonathan Healey speaking to me. Ellie Gawthorn. Jonathan is associate professor in Social History at Kellogg College, University of Oxford, and his book on this subject is the Blood in a nation descends 1642. Thanks for listening. This podcast was produced by Jack Bateman. This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sunny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts.