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England and Scotland. Two realms divided, until now.

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In 1603, they had come together in one person -

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James VI of Scotland and I of England.

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He wanted to be known as the king of Great Britain.

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But what was this new thing in the world, this Great Britain?

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In the first years of the 17th century, only the map makers could tell you.

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One of them, an ex-tailor called John Speed, published his atlas of 67 maps

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called The Theatre Of The Empire of Great Britaine,

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covering every inch of Scotland, Wales, Ireland and England.

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What lay behind Speed's atlas was an optimistic vision

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of happy, harmonious Britannia coming together under a king who was determined to bring unity

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after centuries of war and hatred. In the Vale of the Red Horse in Warwickshire,

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John Speed had a glimpse of what this British heaven on Earth might look like.

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The meadowing pastures with the green mantles so embroidered with flowers

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that, from Edgehill, we might behold another Eden.

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On October the 23rd 1642, another man, King Charles I,

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surveyed the same landscape from the same ridge.

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The meadows were now full, not with cows and harebells, but cannon, pikes and musketeers.

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By nightfall, there would be 3,000 British corpses lying in the freezing mud.

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Here at Edgehill, Eden had become Golgotha.

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Over the next long years, the nations that both James and Charles yearned to bring together

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would tear each other apart in murderous civil wars.

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Hundreds of thousands of lives would be lost in battles, sieges, epidemics and famine.

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A raw body count fails to measure the full enormity of a disaster

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which reached into every part of Britain, from Cornwall to County Connaught, from York to the Hebrides.

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It tore apart communities of the parish and the county

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which, all through the turmoil of the Reformation, had managed to agree

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on how the country should be governed and who should do the governing.

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Men who had broken bread together now tried to break each other's heads.

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Men who had judged together now judged each other.

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At the end of it all, there would be a united Britain, as the Stuarts had hoped,

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but it would not be a united kingdom. It would be a united republic.

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The civil wars were not just an accident, or an occasion to dress up as Cavaliers and Roundheads.

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They were that most un-British event - a war of ideas, ideas that mattered deeply to contemporaries

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because at the heart of them was an argument about liberty and obedience.

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That argument became lethal here at Edgehill and it would echo for generations through British history.

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As a matter of fact, that argument has never really gone away.

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To the survivors, looking back, the issue was simple.

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Whether the King should govern as a god by his will and the people governed by force as beasts,

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or whether the people should be governed by their own consent.

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Yes, that's the voice of a republican in exile - Edmund Ludlow.

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That same voice, that same memory,

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would be heard through the centuries and in revolutions far beyond our shores -

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in America in 1776, in France in 1789.

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It goes against the grain. A bit embarrassing - not to say painful -

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to be thought of as the fountainhead of revolutions. Not very British.

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All that shouting, all that Bible waving, all that killing. So was it all an aberration, then?

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Well, no, actually.

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These wars were the crucible of our modern history.

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Out of the fires of these wars came, eventually, a genuinely parliamentary monarchy.

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But no-one understood it at the time. There was no script which commanded, "Go forth and be democratic."

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When the 24-year-old Charles became King,

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no-one in their right mind could possibly have imagined a war between Parliament and the Crown.

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No succession in over two centuries had been as settled or as unthreatened.

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Charles may have been smaller than life, long-faced, painfully formal,

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private to the point of being secretive, a stickler for decorum, as cool, as still, as pallid as marble,

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but, to many, this was a welcome contrast with his father James

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who'd been loud-mouthed, pedantic and uncouth.

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But, from the beginning, for those who were paying attention,

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there was something ominously distant about this small man on a big horse -

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too lofty to bother with a coronation procession, a man who believed that kings were little gods on Earth.

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Charles saw himself as the father of the nation and, like any 17th-century father,

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he thought he was responsible for the wellbeing of his family.

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In return, he expected to be strictly obeyed.

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Of course, like James before him, he would listen to the people through their representatives in Parliament,

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but only when HE chose and only on matters HE saw fit to be discussed.

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But the House of Commons was filled with historians and lawyers

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and, for them, Parliament was not simply a matter of royal convenience.

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Ever heard of Magna Carta?

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For these men, parliamentary history, the history they were reading and writing,

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was an ongoing epic of liberty and THEY were the keepers of the flame.

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The countdown to the civil wars started now, though nobody heard it.

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It was a countdown that could have been stopped time and time again.

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But the ticking grew louder and louder until, by 1642, it would be deafening.

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And what triggered that countdown? Money.

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One of the first things this young King did was declare war on Spain.

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Nothing was more ruinously expensive than foreign war. There was the added complication that, in England,

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even little gods on Earth had to go cap in hand to Parliament for the money to fight.

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For Charles, the issue was personal.

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Wars of religion were tearing Europe apart.

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Protestants and Catholics were killing each other from Sweden to Hungary with unspeakable cruelty.

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They'd forced his own sister, the queen of Bohemia, into exile.

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In his quiet way, Charles burned to be a Christian warrior.

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There was also the matter of his older brother Henry.

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A champion of the joust, celebrated by the poets as a Protestant hero, Henry was supposed to have been King,

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but he had died when Charles was a boy and his armour had passed on to him.

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It was too big.

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All his life, Charles would try and fit the steel,

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try to become the gartered Charlemagne beneath the British oak.

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This war against Spain would be his big chance.

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Surely Parliament would cough up the money for the great Protestant crusade?

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"Oh, yes," was the answer, "but..." And it was a big but.

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"..with all due respect, we don't much care for your choice of commander, the Duke of Buckingham.

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"So, while we are happy to fork over subsidies,

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"we rather think we'll make it a short-term contract, renewable IF he turns out all right."

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But Parliament knew perfectly well it wouldn't. From the start, Parliament had Buckingham's number.

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To them, he was an upstart nobody, a peacock with a pretty face

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who'd been promoted, outrageously, above the great earls of the land.

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He'd been James' favourite - well, actually, more than a favourite if court scandal was to be believed -

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and now he'd wormed his way into Charles's favour, too.

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The pair of them had travelled incognito to Spain in a bid to woo the Spanish infanta for Charles.

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They returned from their escapade empty-handed.

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But, to the young, insecure Charles,

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glamorous, worldly Buckingham had become his idol.

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To the rest of the court, however, Buckingham was a parasite, a viper.

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Why would one give HIM a blank cheque?

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It was obvious what would happen to the money, and it did.

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Buckingham blew a cool 240,000 pounds in a raid on France so botched,

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it seemed the act of a saboteur, not a supremo.

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So, if Charles wanted a penny more, then his darling had to go.

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Presume to talk to the King about HIS choice of trusted generals and ministers?

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Presume to tell the King? Presume to lay down the law? That was an end of kingship itself.

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So, in 1626, Charles did what he assumed kings worth the name were perfectly entitled to do.

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He would dismiss Parliament and collect the money himself through a forced loan.

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It was the politest bullying. Charles was always polite.

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The gloves were off. Loan refusers were threatened, prosecuted.

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Two of them - Sir Francis Barrington and Sir Edmund Hampden - died, either in prison or shortly afterwards.

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Many did pay up, but their compliance spoke of fear as much as loyalty.

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They'd always been professional grumblers when it had come to tax,

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but these country gentlemen were now speaking a new and dangerous language.

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No tax could be lawful without the consent of Parliament, they said.

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The money ran out again in 1628

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and Charles was forced to call another Parliament.

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Speaker after speaker rose to the rostrum in defence of the liberties of England.

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They drafted a formal list of their grievances in a petition of rights

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which Charles graciously conceded as the price for saving his beloved Buckingham.

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Any slight chance of Charles honouring it, and it was slight enough to begin with, disappeared

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when, later in 1628, Buckingham was assassinated, to national cheering.

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Convulsed with grief and hardened by rage, Charles shut Parliament down.

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As the doors were being closed, one MP, Sir John Eliot, stood up

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and roared that anyone imposing a tax without Parliament's consent

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would be a capital enemy to this kingdom and commonwealth.

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Charles disagreed - Eliot was the traitor.

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So off to the Tower of London he went where he died in 1632.

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But, for Charles, the rainstorm of words had now mercifully stopped.

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In their place beamed sunlight from the heavens.

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Triumphantly, too, the war with Spain was now over,

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so no more begging for money. No more of THAT aggravation.

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So in 1630, as far as Charles was concerned, peace had broken out in Britannia.

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His father James had always preached peace, and James was now much on Charles's mind.

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Charles decided his father's memory deserved something special

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and, courtesy of the Flemish Catholic painter Peter Paul Rubens, he would get it.

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Not one but three huge painted tributes. A go-for-broke manifesto for the Stuart dynasty.

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They would be placed way up high on the ceiling of the building he had inherited from James -

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Inigo Jones's masterpiece, the Banqueting House in Whitehall.

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In 1636, they were triumphantly hoist aloft for all the world to see.

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There are three visions here of James' benevolent rule.

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In one panel, James is depicted as the bringer of peace and prosperity.

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In the central panel, Rubens gives us James being carried to heaven as a god.

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In the third,

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he is Solomon being offered the two crowns of England and Scotland.

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The banqueting house in Whitehall simply takes your breath away

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by the sheer cheek with which it ignores the English Channel.

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It's a piece of Italy in Britain - classical columns, tall windows,

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the ultimate architectural light box designed to flood the Stuart monarchy with brilliance.

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It was also meant to pin any unbelievers to the floor

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through the power of its allegories, singing the virtues of the godlike king.

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When you walked in and remembered that the Stuarts had described kings as little gods on Earth,

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you realised they were not kidding.

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The Banqueting House was Charles's absolutist dream land.

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It was here that Charles could act out the grandest of his fantasies,

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that his three kingdoms - England, Scotland and Ireland -

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were yoked together in harmony under the ruler who was firm, but just.

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What better way to give this new British court a European make-over

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than to turn it into a byword for Baroque gorgeousness?

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There would be a stunning, new, royal art collection gathered from Europe

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of the quality to make popes and emperors moan with envy - Mantegnas, Titians, Rembrandts.

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Charles's unprepossessing French queen, Henrietta Maria, with her sallow skin and discoloured teeth,

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was airbrushed into stardom by the glossiest glamorist of them all - Anthony Van Dyck.

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And, beyond the palace, the King was satisfied to see his will being done.

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People he disapproved of being made to desist.

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I like not this.

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Out in the Shires, his taxes were being collected,

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his justice was being carried out and the skies had not fallen in.

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Who missed the talkers, the Parliament, now? Surely, nobody.

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Sooner or later, Charles was going to have to come down to earth.

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When he did, he'd be bound to notice that his earthly kingdom was ruled, not by images, but by words.

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Now, unlike the invitingly soft scenery of Rubens's fantasy kingdom,

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words were hard things, black and white things.

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In the hands of wordsmiths - lawyers, preachers, printers - they were razor sharp

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and would cut through the Stuart mush about British union

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and bring the playground of the gods crashing to the ground.

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The nay-sayers had not gone away and they had not shut up.

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The men who, in 1625, declared taxes without Parliamentary consent to be illegal still thought this in 1635.

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Yes, they reluctantly forked up, but it didn't stop them smouldering with rage.

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Typical was a Buckinghamshire landowner called John Hampden.

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John Hampden was not some abrasive, unworldly hothead.

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He was a well-respected and important member of the county community.

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Hampden had been deeply moved by the plight of Sir John Eliot in prison.

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He'd visited him and looked after his teenage boys.

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Now he would inherit the mantle of tax resistor - against ship money,

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the tax that paid for the upkeep of the navy.

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Why should counties with no coastlines pay this?

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It may only have been a few shillings and Hampden lost his case,

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but he won the argument. The embers were hot again.

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Alongside the lawyers in Parliament, Charles now faced another group of intransigent critics

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who had something even more unanswerable than Magna Carta - holy scripture. They were the Puritans.

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For the hotter kind of Protestants, the Puritans,

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the Stuart obsession with harmony and unity was, at best, meaningless claptrap

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and, at worst, it was a plot to delude the gullible into bending the knee to Rome again.

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For them, the reality was conflict, the unbridgeable division between the saved and the damned.

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There was an endless battle going on between the saints and the legions of the devil.

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The fires had already been lit in Europe.

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The Reformation was a war, and that war had not yet been won.

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The Puritans looked around them. But all they could see from this King was a betrayal of the godly Reformation.

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Peace with Catholic Spain abroad

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and, at home, even worse - a church ruled by bishops who were little better than Papists,

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bishops who berated the Puritans for having taken the Reformation too far.

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In the face of this cosmic battle, to stay still, to keep silent was a sin and a crime.

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For the Puritans, Charles I ought to have been a custom-built king - austere, decorous and chaste.

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But the fact was, his religion still seemed to need Protestant mumbo jumbo, all those signs and mysteries.

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Even this would have been palatable had he not wanted to foist it on everyone else,

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to force everyone to kneel at its shrine.

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The Puritans declared war against any creeping signs of Romanism in the church.

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Paintings and statues, crucifixes and altar rails.

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And it escaped nobody's notice that Charles was married to a Catholic.

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These men were very much in a minority,

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but, of course, being the elect, they expected to be in a minority, the party of redemption.

219
00:22:07,240 --> 00:22:11,360
In fact, they glorified in the slightness of their numbers,

220
00:22:11,360 --> 00:22:15,120
the self-purifying troop of Gideon's army.

221
00:22:17,920 --> 00:22:22,320
Men like the London wood-turner Nehemiah Wallington

222
00:22:22,320 --> 00:22:29,720
would be in the front line of this battle, a storm-trooper of the Reformation, always ready to fight.

223
00:22:31,800 --> 00:22:36,520
You may see now how Antichrist doth plot against the poor church of God.

224
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But so long as we put our trust in the Lord, let us once again take note of his great deliverances

225
00:22:43,440 --> 00:22:47,240
from those great and devilish, bloodsucking Papists.

226
00:22:47,240 --> 00:22:54,200
Of course, Charles was not going to lose any sleep over the Nehemiah Wallingtons of this world,

227
00:22:54,200 --> 00:22:59,080
but Puritanism was not just the faith of merchants and artisans.

228
00:23:00,840 --> 00:23:07,360
Plenty among the gentry and the nobility believed as passionately in the word of scripture

229
00:23:07,360 --> 00:23:12,120
and, for all of them, it was an article of faith that nobody -

230
00:23:12,120 --> 00:23:16,920
neither Pope nor King - would ever be allowed to flout the word of God.

231
00:23:20,400 --> 00:23:24,440
And Charles would never be allowed to forget it.

232
00:23:28,760 --> 00:23:32,480
Yes, finally, they were a minority.

233
00:23:34,760 --> 00:23:41,800
But it was one of Charles's most costly errors to let so many in the Protestant middle of the country

234
00:23:41,800 --> 00:23:47,920
come to regard HIM as a greater threat to their church than the Puritan militants.

235
00:23:47,920 --> 00:23:51,920
For this fatal error, Charles had one man to thank -

236
00:23:51,920 --> 00:23:56,480
William Laud, whom he made Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633.

237
00:23:56,480 --> 00:24:03,000
Poor old Laud. Is there anything good to be said for Laud and the principles he stood for?

238
00:24:03,000 --> 00:24:10,360
He's remembered as an arrogant and destructive man. But put yourself in his vestments and it looks different.

239
00:24:10,360 --> 00:24:16,880
Far from being an elitist, Laud thought it was the Puritans who were the authoritarians.

240
00:24:16,880 --> 00:24:21,000
Thou shalt smite them and utterly destroy them.

241
00:24:21,000 --> 00:24:26,600
Thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them.

242
00:24:26,600 --> 00:24:33,120
The Puritans with their obsession with reading and preaching and their gloomy fatalism

243
00:24:33,120 --> 00:24:39,560
deprived the ordinary people of what they needed from the church - colour, spectacle,

244
00:24:39,560 --> 00:24:44,240
a sight of the saviour in the form of his cross upon the altar,

245
00:24:44,240 --> 00:24:51,080
the comforts of ritual, sacrament and ceremony, a fence to keep dogs off the communion tray

246
00:24:51,080 --> 00:24:57,760
and, most of all, the consoling possibility that sinful souls might at the end be received into Christ.

247
00:24:57,760 --> 00:25:00,520
What was so very wrong with that?

248
00:25:02,200 --> 00:25:09,320
Well, what was wrong was that Laud was not presenting his programme as an option, but as an order.

249
00:25:09,320 --> 00:25:14,640
Believe this, worship like this, pray like this or take the consequences.

250
00:25:19,960 --> 00:25:25,560
Anyone who defied him found himself before his special tribunal.

251
00:25:25,560 --> 00:25:31,440
Dissidents like Prynne, Burton and Bastwick became Laud's highest profile victims.

252
00:25:33,640 --> 00:25:36,520
They had their ears cut off.

253
00:25:41,480 --> 00:25:44,400
Laud's iron fist went unopposed,

254
00:25:44,400 --> 00:25:47,000
for the time being.

255
00:25:54,040 --> 00:25:56,560
By the mid-1630s,

256
00:25:56,560 --> 00:26:03,600
Charles could see no obstacle to consummating the great Stuart plan of harmony across the three kingdoms,

257
00:26:03,600 --> 00:26:06,560
whether they wanted it or not.

258
00:26:06,560 --> 00:26:09,240
England was under control

259
00:26:09,240 --> 00:26:14,200
and, thanks to the brutal tactics of his Lord Deputy in Ireland -

260
00:26:14,200 --> 00:26:18,960
Charles's other right-hand hard man, Thomas Wentworth - so was Ireland.

261
00:26:24,800 --> 00:26:27,720
That just left Scotland

262
00:26:27,720 --> 00:26:33,680
and, in particular, its obstinate, cantankerous, Presbyterian kirk.

263
00:26:34,840 --> 00:26:41,800
It had a galling and, to Charles, completely unacceptable contempt for the authority of bishops.

264
00:26:41,800 --> 00:26:44,320
Charles was determined to break this.

265
00:26:44,320 --> 00:26:48,960
Then the whole realm could pray and worship as one.

266
00:26:48,960 --> 00:26:54,560
But the obsession with union which so consumed both James and Charles

267
00:26:54,560 --> 00:27:00,920
would, in the end, turn out to guarantee nothing but hatred and division.

268
00:27:04,120 --> 00:27:11,360
Charles, born in Dunfermline, was himself Scottish, so, surely, there could be no problem with this.

269
00:27:11,360 --> 00:27:13,960
Well, yes, there could.

270
00:27:13,960 --> 00:27:21,080
It had taken Charles eight years to bother travelling to Edinburgh for his Scottish coronation.

271
00:27:21,080 --> 00:27:25,240
He'd become Scotland's very first absentee king,

272
00:27:25,240 --> 00:27:27,960
and there would be a price to pay.

273
00:27:41,320 --> 00:27:48,560
Charles was completely incapable of appreciating Calvinism's call for a great moral purification.

274
00:27:48,560 --> 00:27:54,720
As far as he was concerned, Scotland and England were not all that different.

275
00:27:54,720 --> 00:28:01,040
If one kingdom had been bent to his royal will by a show of firmness, so would the other one.

276
00:28:01,040 --> 00:28:05,480
But the Scottish Reformation had been nothing like England's.

277
00:28:05,480 --> 00:28:11,600
South of the border, changes had happened in the church at a slow and fitful pace.

278
00:28:11,600 --> 00:28:18,320
In Scotland, Calvinism had struck in great, electrifying bursts of charismatic conversion,

279
00:28:18,320 --> 00:28:25,240
backed up by teachers and ministers and only forced into a reluctant and periodic retreat by James I

280
00:28:25,240 --> 00:28:29,280
who, unlike his son, had known when to stop.

281
00:28:33,040 --> 00:28:39,280
So when Charles announced the introduction into Scotland of the new prayer book,

282
00:28:39,280 --> 00:28:45,360
he would discover just how little he understood of the kingdom of his birth.

283
00:28:45,360 --> 00:28:50,080
The royal council had, very obligingly, let it be known

284
00:28:50,080 --> 00:28:56,240
that the prayer book had to be introduced, at the latest, by Easter 1637.

285
00:28:56,240 --> 00:28:58,840
Then there was a printing delay.

286
00:28:58,840 --> 00:29:05,640
This gave ample time for the Calvinist preachers and lords to organise exactly what they'd do.

287
00:29:05,640 --> 00:29:12,680
Archbishop Laud, the King, the council, the bishops, everyone fell straight into the trap.

288
00:29:12,680 --> 00:29:18,560
Now, whoever thought a little thing like this would start a revolution?

289
00:29:18,560 --> 00:29:24,520
The British wars began here in St Giles's Cathedral, Edinburgh,

290
00:29:24,520 --> 00:29:28,480
on the morning of July the 23rd 1637.

291
00:29:28,480 --> 00:29:34,880
The first missiles that were launched were not cannonballs. They were footstools.

292
00:29:36,520 --> 00:29:43,440
They were launched straight down the nave and their targets were the dean and bishop of the cathedral.

293
00:29:43,440 --> 00:29:48,440
They had just started to read from a royally authorised new prayer book,

294
00:29:48,440 --> 00:29:55,480
and this attempt to read from the liturgy had triggered a deafening outburst of shouting and wailing,

295
00:29:55,480 --> 00:30:00,120
especially from the many women gathered in the church.

296
00:30:01,360 --> 00:30:05,520
The prayer book riots, though, were just the fuse.

297
00:30:05,520 --> 00:30:12,160
Those who lit it wanted to blow up the bishops and the whole Royal church establishment in Scotland.

298
00:30:15,800 --> 00:30:22,800
On February the 28th 1638, a national covenant was signed in a four-hour ceremony,

299
00:30:22,800 --> 00:30:29,600
along with sermons and psalms, exhorting the godly to be the new Israel.

300
00:30:29,600 --> 00:30:35,280
Next day, the covenant was brought to the open churchyard at Greyfriars,

301
00:30:35,280 --> 00:30:39,920
where hordes of ordinary Scots added their signature.

302
00:30:39,920 --> 00:30:44,840
Copies were made and distributed the length and breadth of Scotland.

303
00:30:44,840 --> 00:30:47,400
For countless thousands of Scots,

304
00:30:47,400 --> 00:30:53,360
signing the covenant was just an extension of the vows they took in kirk.

305
00:30:53,360 --> 00:30:58,800
But, rapidly, the document assumed the status of a patriotic scripture,

306
00:30:58,800 --> 00:31:05,720
determining who and who was not a real Christian, who and who was not truly a Scot.

307
00:31:07,200 --> 00:31:12,400
For Charles, there was no question of negotiating. They were all rebels.

308
00:31:12,400 --> 00:31:15,240
They must all be punished.

309
00:31:15,240 --> 00:31:17,720
There was just one snag.

310
00:31:17,720 --> 00:31:22,160
It wasn't Charles who had the formidable army, but the Scots,

311
00:31:22,160 --> 00:31:25,920
veterans of the wars of religion in Europe.

312
00:31:25,920 --> 00:31:28,560
Facing his first really crucial test,

313
00:31:28,560 --> 00:31:34,960
Charles, the British Charlemagne, found he couldn't raise money and he couldn't raise men.

314
00:31:35,960 --> 00:31:43,440
It took one bruising skirmish for Charles to see the folly of further fighting. A truce was hastily signed.

315
00:31:45,680 --> 00:31:48,360
But he wouldn't back off.

316
00:31:50,400 --> 00:31:54,400
By now, Charles was desperate enough for men of money

317
00:31:54,400 --> 00:31:59,440
to do what he'd hoped he'd never have to do again - call a Parliament.

318
00:31:59,440 --> 00:32:02,000
After 11 years of gathering dust,

319
00:32:02,000 --> 00:32:08,280
the House of Commons would once again be full of passionate argument and legal fury.

320
00:32:09,360 --> 00:32:15,840
If Charles thought that 11 years meant the old quarrels had been forgotten,

321
00:32:15,840 --> 00:32:19,720
he was ignoring a force new to British politics - the news.

322
00:32:19,720 --> 00:32:26,960
For the great political dramas of the last 20 years had been hotly consumed by a reading public

323
00:32:26,960 --> 00:32:33,640
addicted to newspapers, pamphlets, woodcuts and the so-called sixpenny separates,

324
00:32:33,640 --> 00:32:39,520
recording debates and controversies, and dispatched around the Shires.

325
00:32:41,120 --> 00:32:48,280
The 1640 Parliament took up exactly where it had left off in 1629 when Charles had closed it down.

326
00:32:50,320 --> 00:32:54,240
It must have come as an unpleasant surprise, then,

327
00:32:54,240 --> 00:33:01,480
when this new Parliament, instead of laying imagined grievances aside, immediately began to resurrect them.

328
00:33:01,480 --> 00:33:08,240
This Parliament lasted only three short weeks before, once again, Charles suspended it.

329
00:33:12,440 --> 00:33:19,360
But his list of options was getting shorter by the day, and they were all bad.

330
00:33:19,360 --> 00:33:24,480
He wasn't going to cave in to the Scots or reopen Parliament.

331
00:33:24,480 --> 00:33:31,080
But there was a third way, courtesy of his Lord Deputy in Ireland, Thomas Wentworth.

332
00:33:31,080 --> 00:33:36,440
Why not use an Irish Catholic army to crush the Presbyterian Scots?

333
00:33:36,440 --> 00:33:39,320
Grateful for his advice,

334
00:33:39,320 --> 00:33:43,520
Charles made Wentworth Earl of Strafford, but hesitated.

335
00:33:43,520 --> 00:33:50,440
Charles knew that Protestant England was unlikely to approve of a Catholic army attacking their brother Scots.

336
00:33:52,160 --> 00:33:59,480
What followed in 1640 was a breakdown of deference of frightening magnitude.

337
00:33:59,480 --> 00:34:03,800
Officers were being attacked by their own men.

338
00:34:03,800 --> 00:34:09,040
The latest round of fighting with the Scots was a disaster.

339
00:34:09,040 --> 00:34:16,520
Newcastle, with its priceless coal, was captured. To get the Scots out of England, Charles needed cash, fast.

340
00:34:19,880 --> 00:34:24,360
He had no choice now. He would HAVE to reopen Parliament.

341
00:34:26,200 --> 00:34:28,920
There'd never be a better opportunity

342
00:34:28,920 --> 00:34:34,720
for John Pym and his fellow Parliamentary leaders to rein in the King.

343
00:34:37,360 --> 00:34:43,320
Pym had discovered, whether he understood the word or not, the elixir of revolution.

344
00:34:43,320 --> 00:34:48,320
Yesterday's truism - obey the King - is tomorrow's bad joke.

345
00:34:48,320 --> 00:34:51,960
Yesterday's unthinkable - abolish all bishops -

346
00:34:51,960 --> 00:34:54,920
seems to be tomorrow's necessity.

347
00:34:56,320 --> 00:35:01,600
All round London were enormous seething crowds,

348
00:35:01,600 --> 00:35:05,160
practically laying siege to Westminster.

349
00:35:05,160 --> 00:35:08,680
John Pym's demands were simple and blunt -

350
00:35:08,680 --> 00:35:12,800
no taxes, ever, without Parliament's say-so,

351
00:35:12,800 --> 00:35:16,320
Parliaments to be elected every three years

352
00:35:16,320 --> 00:35:20,920
and most decisively of all, looking right into Charles's eyes,

353
00:35:20,920 --> 00:35:27,040
no Parliament, especially not this one, could be dissolved without its own consent.

354
00:35:27,040 --> 00:35:33,760
When Charles, through gritted teeth, conceded, it was the destruction of the absolute monarchy. Or was it?

355
00:35:33,760 --> 00:35:37,880
The King did still have one card he could play -

356
00:35:37,880 --> 00:35:43,760
that Catholic army that Wentworth, the Earl of Strafford, had raised in Ireland.

357
00:35:44,760 --> 00:35:51,600
Pym now knew he would have to annihilate Strafford if he was to defend Parliament from this threat.

358
00:35:51,600 --> 00:35:56,160
So, in the spring of 1641, Strafford was impeached.

359
00:35:56,160 --> 00:36:02,360
Sick and grey haired, he proved frustratingly impossible to convict of treason.

360
00:36:02,360 --> 00:36:06,520
So Pym resorted to an act of attainder instead.

361
00:36:06,520 --> 00:36:09,840
This merely required a burden of suspicion.

362
00:36:09,840 --> 00:36:17,040
When Strafford had spoken of an Irish army reducing the kingdom, hadn't he meant England, argued Pym?

363
00:36:17,040 --> 00:36:23,080
But there was one problem. The act of attainder needed the signature of the King.

364
00:36:26,600 --> 00:36:32,000
Poor Charles. Memories of Buckingham must have flooded back into his mind.

365
00:36:32,000 --> 00:36:38,680
For a king obsessed by loyalty, how could he abandon Strafford, his most faithful ally?

366
00:36:38,680 --> 00:36:43,360
It was Strafford himself who spared Charles the agony of indecision.

367
00:36:43,360 --> 00:36:49,800
He knew that only his own death could save the King and the country from further upheaval.

368
00:36:49,800 --> 00:36:56,240
In a final letter written to Charles, Strafford begged the King to do what had to be done.

369
00:36:56,240 --> 00:37:03,640
May it please Your Sacred Majesty, I understand that the minds of men are more and more incensed against me

370
00:37:03,640 --> 00:37:09,840
and, to set Your Majesty's conscience at liberty, I do most humbly beseech Your Majesty,

371
00:37:09,840 --> 00:37:14,680
for preventing evils that may happen by your refusal, to pass the bill.

372
00:37:14,680 --> 00:37:17,880
Weeping, Charles signed the warrant.

373
00:37:17,880 --> 00:37:25,240
Strafford was led out onto Tower Green, surrounded by jeering crowds, and beheaded.

374
00:37:32,120 --> 00:37:36,800
Charles never forgave himself for this act of betrayal.

375
00:37:36,800 --> 00:37:43,840
It had never occurred to Strafford that his death would actually make things worse for Charles, not better.

376
00:37:43,840 --> 00:37:47,760
What happened next was the worst that could happen -

377
00:37:47,760 --> 00:37:50,320
Ireland erupted.

378
00:37:50,320 --> 00:37:56,480
With Strafford executed, Irish Catholics felt unprotected against Protestant reprisals.

379
00:37:56,480 --> 00:38:00,360
In a pre-emptive strike, they attacked first.

380
00:38:09,320 --> 00:38:15,560
Late in 1641, news of Irish killings began filtering through England,

381
00:38:15,560 --> 00:38:20,080
graphically illustrated by a campaign of atrocity prints.

382
00:38:20,080 --> 00:38:22,880
Now, bad things did happen,

383
00:38:22,880 --> 00:38:26,960
but the usual fantasy pictures of impaled babies

384
00:38:26,960 --> 00:38:31,000
tripped the wire of Anglo-Protestant paranoia.

385
00:38:32,480 --> 00:38:39,360
Even worse, it was rumoured that the Catholic rebels claimed to be acting on behalf of the King.

386
00:38:39,360 --> 00:38:43,800
The Puritan press hit the streets screaming, "We're next."

387
00:38:43,800 --> 00:38:50,200
Charles was painfully aware of how costly his dream of a united Britain had become.

388
00:38:50,200 --> 00:38:54,760
First, the Presbyterian Scots had brought down his personal rule.

389
00:38:54,760 --> 00:39:01,520
Now the mass panic triggered by the Catholic Irish threatened to finish off his power altogether.

390
00:39:01,520 --> 00:39:06,200
With events now spiralling out of control,

391
00:39:06,200 --> 00:39:13,680
Pym saw this was the moment to try and strip the King of his authority. Charles tried to arrest him.

392
00:39:13,680 --> 00:39:21,320
But Pym, and four others, had been tipped off that the King was marching on Parliament with an armed guard.

393
00:39:21,320 --> 00:39:28,160
They waited till the last moment and slipped out at the back. Charles was left empty-handed.

394
00:39:29,480 --> 00:39:32,240
It was an unmitigated fiasco.

395
00:39:32,240 --> 00:39:38,640
The gamble had only been worthwhile so long as Charles was sure of absolute success.

396
00:39:38,640 --> 00:39:43,520
Exposed now, just as Pym had wanted, as a naked, abject failure,

397
00:39:43,520 --> 00:39:49,920
Charles appeared to be something worse than a despot - a blundering despot.

398
00:39:51,400 --> 00:39:56,160
Both sides were moving fast beyond any point of reconciliation.

399
00:39:56,160 --> 00:40:02,600
Pym made it clear that Parliament now needed to protect itself and England from the King.

400
00:40:02,600 --> 00:40:05,200
It set about raising an army.

401
00:40:05,200 --> 00:40:12,520
In July 1642, Bulstrode Whitelock thought out loud about the abyss facing the country.

402
00:40:12,520 --> 00:40:19,240
It is strange to note how insensibly we have slipped into this beginning of a civil war

403
00:40:19,240 --> 00:40:23,280
by one unexpected accident after another,

404
00:40:23,280 --> 00:40:29,680
as waves of the sea which have brought us this far and which we scarce know how.

405
00:40:29,680 --> 00:40:37,360
What the issue shall be, no man alive can tell. Probably few of us here may live to see the end of it.

406
00:40:39,800 --> 00:40:44,720
What's amazing and very touching about the spring and summer of 1642

407
00:40:44,720 --> 00:40:48,760
is the abundance of evidence we have about the agonies of allegiance.

408
00:40:48,760 --> 00:40:53,800
The real soul-searching that people went through when they were pondering

409
00:40:53,800 --> 00:40:59,680
the most painful decision of their lives - which side to join themselves to -

410
00:40:59,680 --> 00:41:05,760
and how earnestly and how honestly they tried to justify that decision

411
00:41:05,760 --> 00:41:09,320
to their families, their friends and themselves.

412
00:41:09,320 --> 00:41:13,360
Cruellest of all, it tore fathers away from sons.

413
00:41:13,360 --> 00:41:18,680
The sad history of one Buckinghamshire family says it all.

414
00:41:18,680 --> 00:41:25,160
The Verneys had been the very model of a loving, companionable, gentry family.

415
00:41:25,160 --> 00:41:32,240
But they were torn apart in this crisis. Ralph had sat next to his father during the 1640 Parliaments,

416
00:41:32,240 --> 00:41:36,840
but now he not only expressed support for the Parliamentary cause,

417
00:41:36,840 --> 00:41:41,760
but swore the oath required of all members after the militia ordinance.

418
00:41:41,760 --> 00:41:45,880
Now, oaths were very serious things in the 17th century.

419
00:41:45,880 --> 00:41:53,320
Taking this one split Ralph not only from his father, but from his hothead younger, Royalist brother Edmund

420
00:41:53,320 --> 00:42:00,360
who absolutely failed to see why Ralph should not be honouring not only his father, but the King.

421
00:42:00,360 --> 00:42:04,480
And yet, and yet, the Verneys did remain a family.

422
00:42:05,600 --> 00:42:08,560
Ralph had made his vow to Parliament,

423
00:42:08,560 --> 00:42:12,840
but his father felt under no less an obligation to Charles.

424
00:42:12,840 --> 00:42:19,560
This bond of personal loyalty held despite Edmund having little enthusiasm for the King's actions.

425
00:42:19,560 --> 00:42:26,440
I do not like the quarrel and do heartily wish the King WOULD yield and consent to what they desire

426
00:42:26,440 --> 00:42:33,560
so that MY conscience is only concerned in honour and gratitude to follow my master.

427
00:42:33,560 --> 00:42:38,160
I have eaten his bread and served him near 30 years

428
00:42:38,160 --> 00:42:43,600
and will not do so base a thing as to forsake him.

429
00:42:46,760 --> 00:42:53,440
In the third week of August 1642, Charles raised his standard. The Rubicon had been crossed.

430
00:42:53,440 --> 00:43:00,240
The honour of holding Charles's personal flag in the battle fell to Sir Edmund Verney.

431
00:43:00,240 --> 00:43:04,640
He swore only death would prise it from his hands.

432
00:43:13,400 --> 00:43:19,640
By the time the Royalist army arrived at Edgehill, its prospects had been transformed.

433
00:43:19,640 --> 00:43:22,320
It was now about 20,000 strong,

434
00:43:22,320 --> 00:43:29,000
about 14,000 of whom took up position on the ridge in the early afternoon of October the 22nd.

435
00:43:29,000 --> 00:43:33,040
At the top of the hill were the King and his two sons -

436
00:43:33,040 --> 00:43:37,920
Charles, the Prince of Wales, and the nine-year-old James, Duke of York -

437
00:43:37,920 --> 00:43:41,960
along with Prince Rupert and his toy poodle Boy.

438
00:43:41,960 --> 00:43:46,320
It was here that Charles I planted his flag.

439
00:43:51,240 --> 00:43:56,520
In mid-afternoon, the commander of the Parliamentary army,

440
00:43:56,520 --> 00:44:00,960
the Earl of Essex, began to cannonade the Royalist infantry.

441
00:44:00,960 --> 00:44:05,160
Balls thudded and hissed, taking a life here, a limb there.

442
00:44:06,160 --> 00:44:10,880
Then Prince Rupert led his cavalry forward down the hill.

443
00:44:10,880 --> 00:44:17,520
For the men in the Parliament lines, watching a distant trot turn into a canter and then a charge

444
00:44:17,520 --> 00:44:23,000
and seeing their own muskets have no effect on the hurtling horsemen,

445
00:44:23,000 --> 00:44:26,680
the moment of truth had arrived.

446
00:44:31,400 --> 00:44:34,200
War slammed into them.

447
00:44:34,200 --> 00:44:39,720
Big, dark horses. Bright, deadly steel. They panicked and broke,

448
00:44:39,720 --> 00:44:44,280
Rupert's horsemen following fleeing troopers.

449
00:44:44,280 --> 00:44:49,080
Rupert must have thought this was going to be easy.

450
00:44:49,080 --> 00:44:53,520
But by now the Parliamentary infantry had crawled forward,

451
00:44:53,520 --> 00:44:58,720
the two great phalanxes of pikemen heaving and pushing at each other

452
00:44:58,720 --> 00:45:01,960
until they dropped of exhaustion.

453
00:45:03,360 --> 00:45:07,520
Somewhere, amidst the smoke, fire and steel was Sir Edmund Verney.

454
00:45:07,520 --> 00:45:12,200
The Royal standard clenched in his hand made him an obvious target.

455
00:45:12,200 --> 00:45:15,000
They never even found his corpse.

456
00:45:15,000 --> 00:45:18,040
# There lies a knight

457
00:45:18,040 --> 00:45:20,920
# Slain under his shield

458
00:45:20,920 --> 00:45:24,480
# With a down... #

459
00:45:29,000 --> 00:45:34,520
In the following months, the war broke down into grim, grinding local conflicts.

460
00:45:34,520 --> 00:45:42,080
Parliament held onto London. The King tried to nail down bases of strength in the north and south-west.

461
00:45:42,080 --> 00:45:46,240
The south-western campaign was especially savage.

462
00:45:46,240 --> 00:45:53,120
Towns like Exeter and Taunton changed hands. Local families were divided between brothers and cousins.

463
00:45:53,120 --> 00:46:00,120
Old friends became new enemies. Two such opponents, men in every other respect virtually indistinguishable,

464
00:46:00,120 --> 00:46:05,960
were William Waller, a Parliamentary general, and Ralph Hopton, a Royalist.

465
00:46:05,960 --> 00:46:10,680
In a lull in the fighting, Hopton wrote to Waller asking for a meeting.

466
00:46:10,680 --> 00:46:18,440
Waller felt he had to turn him down, but wrote back of the deep sorrow he felt at their broken friendship.

467
00:46:18,440 --> 00:46:22,640
It's the classic lament of this terrible civil war.

468
00:46:22,640 --> 00:46:25,440
To my noble friend Sir Ralph.

469
00:46:25,440 --> 00:46:29,400
Sir, My affections to you are so unchangeable

470
00:46:29,400 --> 00:46:35,440
that hostility itself cannot violate my friendship to your person.

471
00:46:35,440 --> 00:46:39,560
But I must be true to the cause wherein I serve.

472
00:46:39,560 --> 00:46:46,360
That great God which is the searcher of my heart knows with what a sad scene I go upon this service

473
00:46:46,360 --> 00:46:51,160
and with what a perfect hatred I detest this war without an enemy.

474
00:46:51,160 --> 00:46:58,200
But I look upon it as an opus domine, which is enough to silence all passion in me.

475
00:46:58,200 --> 00:47:05,200
We are both upon the stage and must act those parts that are assigned to us in this tragedy.

476
00:47:05,200 --> 00:47:11,680
Let us do it in a way of honour and without personal animosities, whatsoever the issue be.

477
00:47:11,680 --> 00:47:19,000
I shall never relinquish the dear title of your most affectionated friend and faithful servant,

478
00:47:19,000 --> 00:47:21,720
William Waller.

479
00:47:21,720 --> 00:47:29,240
The scythe of mortality, always busy, never fussy, swept up all kinds and conditions of men.

480
00:47:29,240 --> 00:47:33,960
Officers and rank and file. Musketeers and troopers.

481
00:47:33,960 --> 00:47:36,640
Camp whores and sutlers.

482
00:47:36,640 --> 00:47:42,400
Young apprentices who put on a helmet for the very first time

483
00:47:42,400 --> 00:47:45,920
and hardened old mercenaries who had grown rusty.

484
00:47:45,920 --> 00:47:52,440
Soldiers who had no idea where to get a pair of boots or anything to fill their bellies

485
00:47:52,440 --> 00:47:56,480
and peasants who had absolutely nothing left to give them.

486
00:47:56,480 --> 00:48:00,360
Drummer boys and buglers. Captains and cooks.

487
00:48:00,360 --> 00:48:04,400
By the autumn of 1643, Parliament was utterly demoralised.

488
00:48:04,400 --> 00:48:07,240
Bristol had fallen to the Royalists.

489
00:48:07,240 --> 00:48:13,400
The King had established a court and a military government in Oxford.

490
00:48:13,400 --> 00:48:19,920
Many Parliamentarians, weary of the poverty and slaughter, were making noises about peace.

491
00:48:19,920 --> 00:48:22,600
Bulstrode Whitelock wrote...

492
00:48:22,600 --> 00:48:29,080
Women are weary of their being robbed of children, of their chastity and their parents.

493
00:48:29,080 --> 00:48:35,840
Is it not time for us to be weary of these discords and to use our utmost endeavours to put an end to them?

494
00:48:40,360 --> 00:48:43,600
This was not what John Pym wanted to hear.

495
00:48:43,600 --> 00:48:48,280
Even as he was dying, tortured by cancer of the bowel,

496
00:48:48,280 --> 00:48:54,440
to squash a peace movement, he pulled off a last coup which would transform the war.

497
00:48:59,040 --> 00:49:05,640
On September the 25th 1643, an alliance was struck between Parliament and the Scots -

498
00:49:05,640 --> 00:49:08,400
the Solemn League And Covenant.

499
00:49:08,400 --> 00:49:12,760
In 1637, Scotland had begun the resistance against Charles I.

500
00:49:12,760 --> 00:49:17,480
Seven years later, the Covenant would all but finish him off.

501
00:49:20,400 --> 00:49:25,760
At Marston Moor outside York on a wet afternoon in July 1644,

502
00:49:25,760 --> 00:49:31,440
the full force of the Anglo-Scots alliance hammered the Royalist army.

503
00:49:31,440 --> 00:49:37,880
It was the bloodiest battle of the war. The cream of Charles's army was annihilated.

504
00:49:37,880 --> 00:49:44,080
Among the victors was the MP for Cambridge, a cavalry officer with iron in his soul.

505
00:49:48,920 --> 00:49:51,960
His name was Oliver Cromwell

506
00:49:51,960 --> 00:49:55,720
and he was, he thought, doing the Lord's work.

507
00:49:55,720 --> 00:49:59,720
Cromwell was himself an East Anglian country gentleman,

508
00:49:59,720 --> 00:50:05,320
but he knew that gentility was no use in THIS war, only effective fighting men.

509
00:50:05,320 --> 00:50:09,120
After Edgehill, he had told John Hampden...

510
00:50:09,120 --> 00:50:15,680
I had rather have a russet-coated captain that knows what he fights for and loves what he knows

511
00:50:15,680 --> 00:50:20,400
than that which you call a gentleman and is nothing else.

512
00:50:20,400 --> 00:50:23,320
In the winter of 1644-45,

513
00:50:23,320 --> 00:50:29,800
Cromwell and a Yorkshire general Sir Thomas Fairfax set about to make a new kind of army,

514
00:50:29,800 --> 00:50:36,800
prepared to accept discipline in return for decent supplies of food, boots and shelter.

515
00:50:36,800 --> 00:50:41,160
And it would be an army that knew what it was fighting for.

516
00:50:41,160 --> 00:50:46,160
I fight for the preservation of our Parliament, in the being whereof,

517
00:50:46,160 --> 00:50:50,400
under God, consists the glory and welfare of this kingdom.

518
00:50:57,400 --> 00:51:00,760
At Naseby, in June 1645,

519
00:51:00,760 --> 00:51:07,760
the two wings of the New Model Army closed in on a Royalist force about half their size.

520
00:51:07,760 --> 00:51:12,600
At the end of the fighting, nothing was left of the Royal army,

521
00:51:12,600 --> 00:51:15,800
except the dead left strewn across the fields.

522
00:51:20,120 --> 00:51:25,760
The last Royalist strongholds were taken one by one. Bristol. Carlisle.

523
00:51:25,760 --> 00:51:31,720
At Basing in Hampshire, one of the most vicious sieges in a war full of them

524
00:51:31,720 --> 00:51:35,040
came to a long, drawn-out, bloody conclusion.

525
00:51:36,840 --> 00:51:40,200
The war was over and Parliament had won.

526
00:51:40,200 --> 00:51:43,600
So, finally, God HAD spoken.

527
00:51:47,000 --> 00:51:50,080
Surely, even Charles could see that?

528
00:51:50,080 --> 00:51:56,840
Surely, that would be an end to the bloodshed and the country could return to reasonableness?

529
00:51:58,760 --> 00:52:02,920
There were many in Parliament aching for just this,

530
00:52:02,920 --> 00:52:07,480
a settlement that would allow Charles to keep his throne,

531
00:52:07,480 --> 00:52:12,200
some kind of return to what had been on the table back in 1642.

532
00:52:16,800 --> 00:52:23,480
Surely, after all the blunders and bloodshed, the botched coups and the futile slaughters,

533
00:52:23,480 --> 00:52:27,920
he would do the right thing, he would share power?

534
00:52:27,920 --> 00:52:34,080
But Charles was constitutionally incapable of being a constitutional king.

535
00:52:34,080 --> 00:52:40,720
He gagged at the idea of being reduced to a subaltern monarch, taking, not giving, orders.

536
00:52:40,720 --> 00:52:45,680
The war might be over, for now, but for Charles the plotting was not.

537
00:52:45,680 --> 00:52:52,760
For the next two years, in a bid to reverse his defeat, Charles tried to play off Parliament against the army,

538
00:52:52,760 --> 00:52:57,160
the army against Parliament and the Scots against both.

539
00:52:58,160 --> 00:53:02,920
Oliver Cromwell finally realised that, as long as Charles was around,

540
00:53:02,920 --> 00:53:09,600
he was always going to be a rallying point for the discontented, and there were bound to be a lot of them.

541
00:53:09,600 --> 00:53:16,040
But Cromwell was also enraged by Charles's presumption at defying the verdict of God,

542
00:53:16,040 --> 00:53:20,120
so clearly revealed at Marston Moor and Naseby.

543
00:53:20,120 --> 00:53:26,840
It was evident then that King Charles had to go. Whether or not he had to die, well, that was another matter.

544
00:53:29,400 --> 00:53:37,200
A second civil war flared up, once more requiring from Cromwell all his military ruthlessness.

545
00:53:37,200 --> 00:53:42,320
With his annihilation of the Royalist Scottish army in 1648 at Preston,

546
00:53:42,320 --> 00:53:45,040
Charles's final hope had gone.

547
00:53:47,120 --> 00:53:52,000
Any thought of conciliation with the King was now purest folly.

548
00:53:53,840 --> 00:53:59,640
Those MPs who persisted in the idea that Charles could be reasoned with

549
00:53:59,640 --> 00:54:04,040
now had a furious and vengeful army to answer to.

550
00:54:04,040 --> 00:54:10,920
When Colonel Thomas Pride used his troops to weed out any MPs suspected of going soft on Charles,

551
00:54:10,920 --> 00:54:14,960
the country realised there was a new power in the land.

552
00:54:17,400 --> 00:54:23,720
This was the soldiers' show now. Britain belonged to them, and they belonged to God.

553
00:54:23,720 --> 00:54:30,720
They had no desire to go back to a country of princes, lords and gentlemen. They wanted Jerusalem now.

554
00:54:39,600 --> 00:54:45,840
And they wanted the biggest sinner of them all, the man of blood, Charles Stuart,

555
00:54:45,840 --> 00:54:48,440
to feel the fire of God's wrath.

556
00:54:48,440 --> 00:54:52,720
The final question could be addressed.

557
00:54:52,720 --> 00:54:55,360
What should happen to Charles?

558
00:55:01,400 --> 00:55:07,840
Cromwell agonised, prayed and wept, beseeched the Lord of Hosts to give him an answer.

559
00:55:07,840 --> 00:55:15,480
In the end, politics not prayer decided it. The King would have to die if the country was ever to heal.

560
00:55:15,480 --> 00:55:18,920
But not done away with in some dark corner.

561
00:55:18,920 --> 00:55:24,120
No, Charles was going to be tried in the open and then beheaded in public.

562
00:55:24,120 --> 00:55:27,800
Cut his head off with the crown on it.

563
00:55:27,800 --> 00:55:32,560
This would be THE great turning point in British history.

564
00:55:32,560 --> 00:55:37,560
The trial would kill one kind of Britain and give birth to another -

565
00:55:37,560 --> 00:55:40,880
a republic, a kingless state of God.

566
00:55:40,880 --> 00:55:48,480
For both Charles and Oliver Cromwell, the final act would become a theatre, a classroom, a debating chamber.

567
00:55:48,480 --> 00:55:53,000
Charles would play the classic Stuart part of holy martyr -

568
00:55:53,000 --> 00:55:58,760
as his grandmother Mary Queen of Scots had done - imposing, dignified, tragic.

569
00:55:58,760 --> 00:56:06,200
But he knew as well as Oliver Cromwell did that the outcome was never in doubt. The King would die.

570
00:56:06,200 --> 00:56:10,640
The only question was as what? Martyr or traitor?

571
00:56:10,640 --> 00:56:15,720
What had he learned? In the end, the answer was nothing.

572
00:56:19,600 --> 00:56:24,640
On January the 30th 1649, he was led out through the Banqueting House

573
00:56:24,640 --> 00:56:29,120
onto the scaffold erected right outside in Whitehall.

574
00:56:29,120 --> 00:56:31,680
The windows were all boarded up,

575
00:56:31,680 --> 00:56:38,360
so Rubens's great anthem to the godlike omnipotence of kings was invisible in the gloom,

576
00:56:38,360 --> 00:56:40,920
the light gone out of it.

577
00:56:45,400 --> 00:56:50,120
But Charles didn't need the pictures. He had the script off by heart.

578
00:56:50,120 --> 00:56:56,240
A subject and a sovereign are clean different things.

579
00:57:12,280 --> 00:57:17,840
So the last words out of Charles I's mouth were...the truth.

580
00:57:17,840 --> 00:57:22,840
With nothing left to lose for himself and everything to gain for his son,

581
00:57:22,840 --> 00:57:29,320
he was not about to confuse anyone about the nature of the kingdom that God had ordained.

582
00:57:29,320 --> 00:57:33,880
It was the same kingdom that Rubens had painted on that ceiling.

583
00:57:33,880 --> 00:57:38,400
The anointed sovereign, answerable only to the Almighty,

584
00:57:38,400 --> 00:57:42,320
laying down laws for the benefit of his subjects.

585
00:57:42,320 --> 00:57:46,240
He offered justice and he expected obedience.

586
00:57:46,240 --> 00:57:48,920
That was it. Take it or leave it.

587
00:57:48,920 --> 00:57:52,320
It had always been about that, really.

588
00:57:52,320 --> 00:58:00,120
All the pious hopes of turning Charles in to a parliamentary monarch were just so many castles in the air.

589
00:58:01,360 --> 00:58:05,400
# There were three ravens

590
00:58:05,400 --> 00:58:08,520
# Sat on a tree

591
00:58:08,520 --> 00:58:14,880
# Down a down, hey down, hey down

592
00:58:14,880 --> 00:58:21,280
# They were as black as they might be

593
00:58:21,280 --> 00:58:26,120
# With a do-own... #