1 00:00:37,120 --> 00:00:42,200 On January the 30th 1649, the English killed their king. 2 00:00:42,200 --> 00:00:45,400 It had happened before, of course, 3 00:00:45,400 --> 00:00:50,040 all those Edwards and Richards violently done in by their subjects, 4 00:00:50,040 --> 00:00:52,880 but this WAS different. 5 00:00:52,880 --> 00:00:56,360 Now the British monarchy itself had been exterminated. 6 00:00:56,360 --> 00:01:00,320 Now there was just the people and its Parliament, 7 00:01:00,320 --> 00:01:04,120 the keepers of the liberties of England. 8 00:01:04,120 --> 00:01:09,000 But what was the point of freedom when you were frightened? 9 00:01:09,000 --> 00:01:13,800 What the people really wanted to know was - who would keep them safe? 10 00:01:16,920 --> 00:01:21,760 Who would stop the soldiers from burning and pillaging, 11 00:01:21,760 --> 00:01:25,720 allow people to sleep quietly in their beds? 12 00:01:25,720 --> 00:01:32,280 Who would protect them from the wars of religion and politics which seemed to go on and on and on? 13 00:01:32,280 --> 00:01:34,800 Would it be Parliament? 14 00:01:34,800 --> 00:01:39,440 Or would it be a great general, like Oliver Cromwell? 15 00:01:40,760 --> 00:01:46,800 It doesn't matter, said the hard-headed philosopher Thomas Hobbes, 16 00:01:46,800 --> 00:01:50,640 a royalist who'd come back to Cromwell's England. 17 00:01:50,640 --> 00:01:55,680 "What the country needs is a strong ruler who embodies all of the people. 18 00:01:58,560 --> 00:02:02,880 "Whatever or whoever can save the country from anarchy, 19 00:02:02,880 --> 00:02:06,920 "whatever can save you from yourselves. 20 00:02:06,920 --> 00:02:13,720 "Never mind about what's right or wrong - put yourself in the hands of the power that protects, 21 00:02:13,720 --> 00:02:16,480 "the all-powerful leviathan. 22 00:02:21,600 --> 00:02:28,480 "If that's Oliver Cromwell, then so be it. It's the reasonable thing to do." 23 00:02:28,480 --> 00:02:33,320 But the Scots, English and Irish were not about to be reasonable - 24 00:02:33,320 --> 00:02:36,760 because they were too busy being righteous. 25 00:02:36,760 --> 00:02:41,600 Over the next 50 years, righteousness would kill a lot of the British. 26 00:02:41,600 --> 00:02:47,960 At the end, reason would appear, but not before a lot of tears had been shed, 27 00:02:47,960 --> 00:02:50,680 tears of rapture and tears of grief. 28 00:03:28,720 --> 00:03:35,400 Not everyone was lying awake at night, biting their nails about the plight of kingless Britain. 29 00:03:35,400 --> 00:03:39,880 For many, this was the dawn of a new age. 30 00:03:39,880 --> 00:03:45,240 It's true no-one had foreseen this during the civil wars, 31 00:03:45,240 --> 00:03:51,720 but, in giving them victory, the Almighty had shown them that Albion must be turned into Jerusalem. 32 00:03:51,720 --> 00:03:55,480 He had lain the Stuart kings in the dust. 33 00:03:55,480 --> 00:03:58,960 The only king to follow now was King Jesus, 34 00:03:58,960 --> 00:04:02,720 and the only true government that of his saints. 35 00:04:09,760 --> 00:04:12,200 Let them sing aloud upon their beds! 36 00:04:12,200 --> 00:04:18,280 Let the high praise of God be in their mouths and a two-edged sword in their hands! 37 00:04:24,120 --> 00:04:26,800 The Kingdom of God was at hand, 38 00:04:26,800 --> 00:04:29,520 the most blessed revolution of all, 39 00:04:29,520 --> 00:04:37,160 and no-one was more convinced of this than Albion's holy warrior, Oliver Cromwell. 40 00:04:39,080 --> 00:04:43,560 "Religion is not at first the thing contended for, 41 00:04:43,560 --> 00:04:50,120 "but God brought it to that issue at last and at last it proved that which was most dear to us." 42 00:04:53,760 --> 00:04:56,800 Cromwell called himself a seeker, 43 00:04:56,800 --> 00:05:04,120 and what he sought all his life was God's destiny for himself and for his country. 44 00:05:04,120 --> 00:05:07,520 At first, he'd been innocent of the Lord's design. 45 00:05:07,520 --> 00:05:13,840 For years, he'd just led the life of an obscure East Anglian country gentleman. 46 00:05:13,840 --> 00:05:18,520 Just as Cromwell was beginning to make his way in the world, 47 00:05:18,520 --> 00:05:22,080 some sort of crisis happened to his modest fortune. 48 00:05:22,080 --> 00:05:28,880 But what the world might have seen as misfortune was, through the cunning of the Almighty, 49 00:05:28,880 --> 00:05:31,320 his saving grace. 50 00:05:31,320 --> 00:05:34,720 He underwent some kind of religious conversion. 51 00:05:34,720 --> 00:05:39,400 The vanities were stripped away so he might be opened to the light. 52 00:05:42,080 --> 00:05:46,480 "Oh, I lived in and loved darkness and hated the light! 53 00:05:46,480 --> 00:05:52,040 "This is true. I hated godliness, yet God had mercy on me. 54 00:05:52,040 --> 00:05:55,640 "Oh, the riches of his mercy!" 55 00:05:59,320 --> 00:06:06,000 The sense that God had some special service for him made a new man of Cromwell. 56 00:06:06,000 --> 00:06:10,000 He knew where he was going and what had to be done. 57 00:06:10,000 --> 00:06:17,280 What had to be done was to tear the sword out of the hands of the untrustworthy, Papist-loving king. 58 00:06:18,320 --> 00:06:25,200 He went to war as a complete novice, with no military experience whatsoever, 59 00:06:25,200 --> 00:06:29,040 but his sense of divine appointment was his armour. 60 00:06:29,040 --> 00:06:33,320 It made him supremely confident, cool under fire, 61 00:06:33,320 --> 00:06:35,560 but never reckless. 62 00:06:36,600 --> 00:06:41,320 An aura of invincibility began to cling to him. 63 00:06:41,320 --> 00:06:46,320 He became the driving force of the godly revolution. 64 00:06:46,320 --> 00:06:51,160 When the vanquished king defied God's judgment, 65 00:06:51,160 --> 00:06:55,480 his blood was needed to expiate the crime. 66 00:06:55,480 --> 00:07:02,720 But it was obvious that doing away with the monarch was no guarantee of doing away with the monarchy. 67 00:07:02,720 --> 00:07:08,840 For if Charles couldn't be among his subjects in person, his proxy could. 68 00:07:11,840 --> 00:07:16,400 The Greek word "eikon" means both an image and a copy, 69 00:07:16,400 --> 00:07:23,080 and the Eikon Basilike, the spitting image of the king, appeared within a week of his execution. 70 00:07:23,080 --> 00:07:28,160 It was an instant bestseller, going through 35 editions in a year, 71 00:07:28,160 --> 00:07:31,840 and it made Charles an imperishable martyr, 72 00:07:31,840 --> 00:07:37,880 a latter-day Christ, sacrificed for the sins of his people. 73 00:07:37,880 --> 00:07:44,280 Like Christ, Charles too would be resurrected wearing his heavenly crown, 74 00:07:44,280 --> 00:07:48,240 and made flesh in the person of his son Charles II, 75 00:07:48,240 --> 00:07:51,920 awaiting the call from exile in France. 76 00:07:51,920 --> 00:07:59,560 The poet John Milton, an ardent champion of the Parliamentary Commonwealth, 77 00:07:59,560 --> 00:08:06,200 was hired to attack the cult of the king-martyr as "so much wicked idolatry", 78 00:08:06,200 --> 00:08:12,720 to persuade the fearful and the gullible they didn't need a Charles I, nor any Stuart monarch. 79 00:08:12,720 --> 00:08:19,160 "Look," he wanted to say, "Just stop worrying about the dead king. You're the sovereign now. 80 00:08:19,160 --> 00:08:25,600 "Come to think of it, you've always been the sovereign. Kings have been yours to hire or fire." 81 00:08:25,600 --> 00:08:33,000 But when Cromwell and Milton told the people that it was time for them to govern themselves, 82 00:08:33,000 --> 00:08:37,040 they didn't, of course, mean to be taken literally. 83 00:08:37,040 --> 00:08:43,440 What? Every jumped-up weaver or ploughman with some sixpenny-book learning 84 00:08:43,440 --> 00:08:49,760 announcing he'd just appointed himself magistrate, granting himself the vote? 85 00:08:49,760 --> 00:08:52,480 Heaven forbid! That way lay chaos! 86 00:08:52,480 --> 00:08:56,400 No, the people should put the government of the state 87 00:08:56,400 --> 00:09:01,240 into the hands of the kind of men God saw fittest to exercise it - 88 00:09:01,240 --> 00:09:05,600 incorruptible men of substance and piety. 89 00:09:05,600 --> 00:09:10,160 "Oh, I see," said freeborn John Lilburne, the Leveller, 90 00:09:10,160 --> 00:09:16,480 an ex-army officer who wanted to level the distance between the mighty and humble, the rich and poor, 91 00:09:16,480 --> 00:09:21,000 "You mean the same kind of people who got us into this mess?" 92 00:09:27,480 --> 00:09:34,320 We've all known a John Lilburne, haven't we? Some of us have even been John Lilburne - 93 00:09:34,320 --> 00:09:39,000 first to the barricades, first to be arrested, won't shut up, 94 00:09:39,000 --> 00:09:43,560 but, love or hate him, you know he won't go away. 95 00:09:45,360 --> 00:09:52,720 To Squire Cromwell, he was a pain in the neck, a dangerous loudmouth, capable of wrecking army discipline. 96 00:09:54,200 --> 00:09:59,200 Lilburne, for his part, detested the new regime. 97 00:10:01,280 --> 00:10:05,120 "All you intended when you set us a-fighting 98 00:10:05,120 --> 00:10:11,800 "was merely to unhorse and dismount our old riders and tyrants so that you might ride in their stead." 99 00:10:11,800 --> 00:10:16,200 The soldiers read freeborn John and believed they should have the vote. 100 00:10:16,200 --> 00:10:21,520 Give them an inch and they'd take a mile. 101 00:10:21,520 --> 00:10:28,520 Pretty soon, the men would start believing their officers were the tyrants Lilburne said they were. 102 00:10:28,520 --> 00:10:34,560 They had to be stopped. An army was not - repeat, NOT - a commune. 103 00:10:37,920 --> 00:10:45,200 I tell you, you have no other way to deal with these men, but to break them or they will break you, 104 00:10:45,200 --> 00:10:52,080 yea, and bring and all the guilt of the blood and treasures shed and spent in this kingdom 105 00:10:52,080 --> 00:10:54,480 upon your heads and shoulders, 106 00:10:54,480 --> 00:10:58,120 and frustrate and make void all that work 107 00:10:58,120 --> 00:11:03,120 that, with so many years' industry, toil and pains, you have done! 108 00:11:03,120 --> 00:11:07,720 I tell you again - you are necessitated to break them. 109 00:11:07,720 --> 00:11:11,320 Off to the Tower went the Leveller leaders, 110 00:11:11,320 --> 00:11:14,800 like so many traitors. 111 00:11:14,800 --> 00:11:18,760 But then something astounding happened... 112 00:11:18,760 --> 00:11:25,400 A petitioning campaign to demand the release of the Levellers was mobilised by Leveller women. 113 00:11:25,400 --> 00:11:31,440 Now, for the Puritans, the cardinal virtues of women were silence and meekness, 114 00:11:31,440 --> 00:11:36,160 but these women were shameless, obstinate, loud-mouthed 115 00:11:36,160 --> 00:11:39,080 and, it has to be admitted, brave. 116 00:11:39,080 --> 00:11:45,200 Leveller women had always been involved in the movement's political campaigns. 117 00:11:45,200 --> 00:11:52,800 Elizabeth Lilburne was politicised through her efforts to spring her husband from various prisons. 118 00:11:52,800 --> 00:11:59,480 Mary Overton had been brutally punished for printing and distributing her husband's tracts, 119 00:11:59,480 --> 00:12:05,520 tied to the end of a cart and dragged through London's streets with her six-month-old baby, 120 00:12:05,520 --> 00:12:08,320 pelted like a common whore. 121 00:12:08,320 --> 00:12:14,560 But the most impassioned and articulate of the sisters was Katherine Chidley. 122 00:12:14,560 --> 00:12:17,080 She started as a charismatic preacher 123 00:12:17,080 --> 00:12:23,880 and turned to politics in an attempt to make the Commonwealth understand the particular sufferings of her sex. 124 00:12:23,880 --> 00:12:30,560 "Considering that we have an equal share and interest with men in the Commonwealth, 125 00:12:30,560 --> 00:12:33,440 "and it cannot be laid waste, 126 00:12:33,440 --> 00:12:42,080 "and considering that poverty, misery and famine like a mighty torrent is breaking in upon us, 127 00:12:42,080 --> 00:12:46,440 "and we are not able to see our children cry out for bread 128 00:12:46,440 --> 00:12:52,920 "and not have wherewithal to feed them, we had rather die than see that day." 129 00:12:55,920 --> 00:13:00,720 This was not what Oliver Cromwell had expected from Jerusalem. 130 00:13:00,720 --> 00:13:03,360 It got worse. 131 00:13:08,360 --> 00:13:11,960 In May 1649, some hundreds of soldiers mutinied 132 00:13:11,960 --> 00:13:16,200 and tried to combine forces in Oxfordshire. 133 00:13:16,200 --> 00:13:23,440 Cromwell rode hell for leather, 50 miles in a day, and caught them in the middle of the night at Burford. 134 00:13:27,320 --> 00:13:33,640 One of the prisoners, Anthony Sedley, locked in the church, expecting the worst, 135 00:13:33,640 --> 00:13:36,720 carved his name into the font. 136 00:13:36,720 --> 00:13:44,720 The next morning, three of his comrades in arms were led out into the churchyard and shot. 137 00:13:45,880 --> 00:13:51,120 Then Oliver went off to get an honorary degree in law from Oxford. 138 00:13:54,560 --> 00:13:59,600 He made sure the mutinous soldiers were shipped off to a place 139 00:13:59,600 --> 00:14:04,360 where they could vent their frustration on someone else. 140 00:14:04,360 --> 00:14:07,040 "Angry, are we?" was his line. 141 00:14:07,040 --> 00:14:11,960 "Want to know who's to blame for prolonging the civil wars?" 142 00:14:11,960 --> 00:14:16,800 "Say hello to the Antichrist across the Irish Sea." 143 00:14:16,800 --> 00:14:23,800 The target of Cromwell's march through blood was an army of royalists holding out in Ireland 144 00:14:23,800 --> 00:14:26,320 in the name of King Charles's son. 145 00:14:26,320 --> 00:14:31,000 In fact, it was as much Protestant as Catholic, 146 00:14:31,000 --> 00:14:38,160 but in his conviction they were the legions of the devil, Cromwell was not about to make nice distinctions. 147 00:14:38,160 --> 00:14:43,800 At Drogheda, on the main road between Dublin and Ulster, 148 00:14:43,800 --> 00:14:48,240 he made it only too clear what he had in mind. 149 00:14:48,240 --> 00:14:52,000 There is no point sidestepping this horror. 150 00:14:52,000 --> 00:14:54,320 This was Cromwell's war crime. 151 00:14:54,320 --> 00:15:00,120 This great atrocity has contaminated Anglo-Irish history ever since. 152 00:15:00,120 --> 00:15:04,160 But we need to get right just what this atrocity was. 153 00:15:04,160 --> 00:15:08,720 It wasn't indiscriminate butchery of women and children. 154 00:15:08,720 --> 00:15:13,280 No eyewitnesses ever claimed to have seen any such thing. 155 00:15:13,280 --> 00:15:18,280 What Cromwell DID order, unhesitatingly and without any mercy, 156 00:15:18,280 --> 00:15:22,800 was, in any case, an act of unspeakable murder. 157 00:15:30,640 --> 00:15:35,960 At least 3,000 royalist soldiers were butchered at Drogheda. 158 00:15:36,960 --> 00:15:41,960 The vast majority after they had surrendered and disarmed. 159 00:15:50,680 --> 00:15:56,840 At St Peter's Church, Cromwell's soldiers burnt the pews beneath the steeple, 160 00:15:56,840 --> 00:16:01,720 to smoke out the defenders, who were incinerated in the flames. 161 00:16:01,720 --> 00:16:06,240 The general saw no need to hang his head about the massacre. 162 00:16:06,240 --> 00:16:12,080 "We have come to break the power of a company of lawless rebels... 163 00:16:12,080 --> 00:16:19,880 "..Enemies to human society, whose principles are to destroy... all men not complying with them. 164 00:16:19,880 --> 00:16:27,760 "We come by the assistance of God to hold forth and maintain the lustre and glory of English liberty 165 00:16:27,760 --> 00:16:31,800 "in a nation where we have an undoubted right to it." 166 00:16:32,800 --> 00:16:39,840 This is absolutely authentic Oliver Cromwell, and today it makes for unbearable reading. 167 00:16:39,840 --> 00:16:43,960 No, it's not the confession of a genocidal lunatic, 168 00:16:43,960 --> 00:16:51,000 but it IS the confession of a narrow-minded, pigheaded, Protestant bigot and English imperialist, 169 00:16:51,000 --> 00:16:53,760 and that, surely, is bad enough. 170 00:16:56,760 --> 00:17:02,120 Cromwell treated Ireland like the primitive colony he thought it was, 171 00:17:02,120 --> 00:17:07,400 moving the Irish off their farms and using the land to pay his soldiers. 172 00:17:07,400 --> 00:17:12,800 Before he could finish pacification, if that's what he thought it was, 173 00:17:12,800 --> 00:17:17,960 another piece of unquiet Britain rose up to mock him. 174 00:17:17,960 --> 00:17:24,960 For the Scots had invited the 20-year-old Charles II to come and be their king, 175 00:17:24,960 --> 00:17:27,920 and went to war on his behalf. 176 00:17:30,320 --> 00:17:34,600 Cromwell lured them into England in the summer of 1651, 177 00:17:34,600 --> 00:17:40,320 where the Scottish army found itself caught between two bigger forces. 178 00:17:42,280 --> 00:17:47,000 At the Battle Of Worcester, on the 3rd September, 179 00:17:47,000 --> 00:17:51,800 it went down to a ruinous and irreversible defeat. 180 00:17:54,360 --> 00:17:57,200 Charles went on the run, 181 00:17:57,200 --> 00:17:59,960 hidden by royalist sympathisers 182 00:17:59,960 --> 00:18:03,960 until he could get smuggled out of the country. 183 00:18:09,800 --> 00:18:14,840 So when Oliver Cromwell returned to London in the Autumn of 1651, 184 00:18:14,840 --> 00:18:17,000 it was as an English Caesar - 185 00:18:17,000 --> 00:18:22,240 the like of whom had not been seen since the days of Edward I. 186 00:18:23,240 --> 00:18:25,880 If Cromwell was God's Englishman, 187 00:18:25,880 --> 00:18:31,200 it was because he felt that England was God's true promised land, 188 00:18:31,200 --> 00:18:37,000 and it was best for Britain to become as English as possible. 189 00:18:37,000 --> 00:18:43,320 The Stuart dream of a united Britain had been what had started the civil wars. 190 00:18:43,320 --> 00:18:47,960 Now Cromwell had ended them by making that dream a reality, 191 00:18:47,960 --> 00:18:53,160 not as a united kingdom, but as a united republic of Great Britain. 192 00:18:56,240 --> 00:19:00,040 But what kind of republic was it supposed to be? 193 00:19:00,040 --> 00:19:06,680 Cromwell knew the country was exhausted from almost 15 years of war. 194 00:19:06,680 --> 00:19:10,440 It was time, as he said, to heal and settle. 195 00:19:12,520 --> 00:19:15,240 This didn't mean business as usual. 196 00:19:15,240 --> 00:19:20,120 Surely God didn't mean for so much blood to have been spilled 197 00:19:20,120 --> 00:19:25,280 only so that ungodly lawyers and money brokers could get richer? 198 00:19:25,280 --> 00:19:30,080 That was the way things were under the government of the Parliament - 199 00:19:30,080 --> 00:19:35,040 the keeper of the liberties of England, as it styled itself. 200 00:19:36,480 --> 00:19:43,520 It sat as it had when its members had been purged by the army to allow the trial of the king to proceed, 201 00:19:43,520 --> 00:19:46,640 ridiculed by enemies as the "Rump". 202 00:19:47,640 --> 00:19:50,960 To Cromwell, the Rump was a monstrosity - 203 00:19:50,960 --> 00:19:56,880 a bastion of selfishness and greed, more like Sodom than Jerusalem. 204 00:19:56,880 --> 00:20:02,680 Worst of all, it showed no signs at all of wanting ever to close down. 205 00:20:02,680 --> 00:20:08,400 When it came up with a bill designed to keep itself going indefinitely, 206 00:20:08,400 --> 00:20:10,960 this was the last straw. 207 00:20:15,640 --> 00:20:18,040 On April 20th, 1653, 208 00:20:18,040 --> 00:20:24,120 Cromwell marched down to Westminster with a troupe of musketeers. 209 00:20:30,720 --> 00:20:34,480 Moses was descending from the mountain, 210 00:20:34,480 --> 00:20:37,680 and he was not a happy prophet. 211 00:20:41,000 --> 00:20:46,200 At first, it seemed as though the Member for Cambridge would behave. 212 00:20:46,200 --> 00:20:50,400 Cromwell sat in his usual seat, he doffed his hat, 213 00:20:50,400 --> 00:20:53,840 he asked if he might address the house, 214 00:20:53,840 --> 00:20:58,280 and he commended the Rump for its care of the public good. 215 00:20:58,280 --> 00:21:02,320 But, as he warmed up, the niceties were tossed aside, 216 00:21:02,320 --> 00:21:09,280 and he began to berate the astounded members for their indifference to justice and piety. 217 00:21:09,280 --> 00:21:13,720 "I expect you think this is not parliamentary language," he said. 218 00:21:13,720 --> 00:21:16,320 "Well, I confess, it is not, 219 00:21:16,320 --> 00:21:21,040 "and neither are you to expect any such from me." 220 00:21:22,040 --> 00:21:25,360 The hat went back on - always a bad sign. 221 00:21:25,360 --> 00:21:29,000 And Cromwell started to march up and down, 222 00:21:29,000 --> 00:21:36,080 shouting that the Lord had done with them and had chosen instruments more worthy of their calling. 223 00:21:36,080 --> 00:21:39,320 Someone tried to stop him in full spate, 224 00:21:39,320 --> 00:21:45,680 but, by this time, Cromwell was in exterminating-angel mode and brushed him aside. 225 00:21:45,680 --> 00:21:50,520 "You are no parliament!" he bellowed. "I say, you are no parliament!" 226 00:21:50,520 --> 00:21:53,040 Then he called in the musketeers. 227 00:21:53,040 --> 00:21:56,680 The boots entered heavily, noisily. 228 00:21:57,640 --> 00:22:00,560 Parliament was shut down. 229 00:22:06,240 --> 00:22:11,600 It was a depressingly modern moment - a classic coup d'etat, in fact. 230 00:22:11,600 --> 00:22:17,280 Cromwell had crossed the line from mere bullying to dictatorship. 231 00:22:17,280 --> 00:22:22,160 In so doing, he undid at a stroke the entire point of the war 232 00:22:22,160 --> 00:22:27,360 that HE had fought against the King's unparliamentary conduct. 233 00:22:27,360 --> 00:22:33,000 Cromwell claimed he was striking a blow against ambition and avarice, 234 00:22:33,000 --> 00:22:38,440 but what he wounded, and fatally, was the commonwealth, itself. 235 00:22:47,440 --> 00:22:52,280 This is the point at which Cromwell could have seized power, 236 00:22:52,280 --> 00:22:54,840 and everyone expected him to. 237 00:22:55,960 --> 00:23:00,480 But he wasn't working for himself - he was working for God. 238 00:23:01,920 --> 00:23:08,560 In Parliament's place, he would set up an assembly of men chosen for their piety. 239 00:23:08,560 --> 00:23:11,160 It would be an assembly of saints. 240 00:23:11,160 --> 00:23:18,120 His language was very different as he exhorted them to go about their business. 241 00:23:21,200 --> 00:23:24,240 "Love all the sheep, love the lambs, 242 00:23:24,240 --> 00:23:26,480 "love all, 243 00:23:26,480 --> 00:23:29,320 "tender all." 244 00:23:29,320 --> 00:23:36,000 But mystical rapture and politics don't go well together - at least, not in Britain - 245 00:23:36,000 --> 00:23:43,400 and in a few months the unworkable assembly collapsed - its leaders begging Cromwell to end it. 246 00:23:46,240 --> 00:23:49,160 He duly obliged. 247 00:23:49,160 --> 00:23:55,280 Now there seemed no alternative but to take the crown - to become Oliver I. 248 00:23:56,280 --> 00:24:03,800 But this was still a step too far for a man whom God had told to punish the haughtiness of kings. 249 00:24:03,800 --> 00:24:07,520 Instead, he chose to become a lord protector. 250 00:24:07,520 --> 00:24:11,720 That had a good ring to it. Authority but not tyranny. 251 00:24:13,040 --> 00:24:17,600 He was king in all but name, but a constitutional sovereign, 252 00:24:17,600 --> 00:24:22,040 ruling with a council and a newly elected parliament. 253 00:24:24,040 --> 00:24:27,040 His great hope was for a settling, 254 00:24:27,040 --> 00:24:34,840 but the Protector himself was unsure in his own mind about the direction he should take the country. 255 00:24:34,840 --> 00:24:38,960 Should Britain be righteous or reasonable? 256 00:24:38,960 --> 00:24:44,680 It was a civil war that he fought over and over again in his own head. 257 00:24:44,680 --> 00:24:50,000 Squire Cromwell saw the virtues of a reasonable state of affairs. 258 00:24:50,000 --> 00:24:56,760 Given a little breathing space, the old world of the counties was coming back to life. 259 00:24:56,760 --> 00:25:01,320 Magistrates were sitting at courts, gentlemen riding to hounds, 260 00:25:01,320 --> 00:25:06,360 war-damaged houses being repaired, children being married off, 261 00:25:06,360 --> 00:25:09,760 friends and neighbours asked to dinner. 262 00:25:10,760 --> 00:25:16,320 And when some gentlemen were elected to the Protectorate parliaments, 263 00:25:16,320 --> 00:25:23,240 the old connections between Westminster and the counties - the secret of English government - 264 00:25:23,240 --> 00:25:26,560 were at last being put back together. 265 00:25:27,560 --> 00:25:30,520 The righteous Cromwell fretted. 266 00:25:30,520 --> 00:25:38,080 This return to older methods was only too successful. It was not so much healing as backsliding - 267 00:25:38,080 --> 00:25:40,960 royalism by the back door. 268 00:25:42,080 --> 00:25:47,960 So, in 1655, Cromwell turned his mastiffs loose. 269 00:25:49,280 --> 00:25:51,720 The major generals. 270 00:25:54,040 --> 00:26:01,400 It was their job to take righteousness out into the shires - the Protestant Taliban on horseback. 271 00:26:01,400 --> 00:26:03,440 Muffle the bell ringers, 272 00:26:03,440 --> 00:26:05,480 snoop on the ale houses, 273 00:26:05,480 --> 00:26:07,520 lock up fornicators, 274 00:26:07,520 --> 00:26:09,560 cancel Christmas. 275 00:26:14,320 --> 00:26:18,200 John Evelyn, royalist and gentleman of letters, 276 00:26:18,200 --> 00:26:22,520 who endured the leviathan of the Cromwellian state, 277 00:26:22,520 --> 00:26:28,560 was one of many who found themselves the victim of the general's bullying. 278 00:26:29,520 --> 00:26:36,680 "My wife and I went to London to celebrate Christmas Day - Mr Gunning preaching in Exeter Chapel. 279 00:26:36,680 --> 00:26:42,560 "As he was giving us the Holy sacrament, the chapel was surrounded by soldiers. 280 00:26:44,240 --> 00:26:48,520 "All the assembly surprised and kept prisoner by them - 281 00:26:48,520 --> 00:26:51,320 "some in the house, others removed." 282 00:26:55,520 --> 00:27:00,000 It was a public relations disaster for the Protectorate. 283 00:27:00,000 --> 00:27:07,040 Cromwell reasserted himself over the pious, and got rid of the major generals in a hurry. 284 00:27:09,000 --> 00:27:16,360 There were some places, though, where the two instincts worked together and changed Britain as a result, 285 00:27:16,360 --> 00:27:21,480 and this is one of them - the synagogue of Bevis Marks in London. 286 00:27:22,800 --> 00:27:30,000 Historians claim it's difficult to find hard evidence of any good at all that came out of the Protectorate. 287 00:27:30,000 --> 00:27:33,240 This is hard enough evidence for me. 288 00:27:33,240 --> 00:27:37,440 It was on these unforgiving, backless oak benches 289 00:27:37,440 --> 00:27:45,040 that the first Jews to be admitted since the expulsion 360-something years before parked their behinds. 290 00:27:45,040 --> 00:27:51,760 It was under the Protectorate that Jews were allowed finally to worship openly and to live openly 291 00:27:51,760 --> 00:27:55,520 in what became a piece of multi-cultural London. 292 00:27:55,520 --> 00:27:58,640 Cromwell is to thank for that - 293 00:27:58,640 --> 00:28:04,240 for opening a new chapter of Anglo-Jewish history - MY history. 294 00:28:17,400 --> 00:28:20,120 His apocalyptic timetable told him 295 00:28:20,120 --> 00:28:25,160 that the conversion of the Jews would herald the coming of the last days. 296 00:28:25,160 --> 00:28:30,800 But he saw that with a network in the Dutch and Spanish trading world, 297 00:28:30,800 --> 00:28:37,480 the Jews could be a priceless source of commercial and military intelligence. 298 00:28:37,480 --> 00:28:44,160 Piety and pragmatism - those twin qualities so often at odds inside Cromwell's personality - 299 00:28:44,160 --> 00:28:50,800 this time came together to make him, as far as the Jews were concerned, a true lord protector. 300 00:28:51,800 --> 00:28:53,840 But not king. 301 00:28:53,840 --> 00:29:01,760 In the end - and so unlike the king he had destroyed - Cromwell could not lose his sense of unworthiness. 302 00:29:01,760 --> 00:29:06,560 It was what saved him and Britain from a true dictatorship. 303 00:29:07,560 --> 00:29:13,760 Cromwell believed he worked for God - real dictators think they ARE God. 304 00:29:13,760 --> 00:29:20,120 It was THOSE men who fancied themselves as little gods - Charles I or the republican oligarchs - 305 00:29:20,120 --> 00:29:23,120 who most aroused Cromwell's contempt. 306 00:29:23,120 --> 00:29:29,960 Simplicity was a word he used about himself, and it was the highest of moral compliments, 307 00:29:29,960 --> 00:29:36,400 but to prolong the Protectorate, Cromwell needed to be more of a leviathan than he could stomach. 308 00:29:36,400 --> 00:29:41,280 And that is both is exoneration and his failure. 309 00:29:41,280 --> 00:29:46,200 It's one of the most extraordinary ironies of British history 310 00:29:46,200 --> 00:29:52,680 that Cromwell's Protectorate, demonized by both royalists and republicans alike, 311 00:29:52,680 --> 00:29:57,600 ultimately formed the blueprint for our constitutional monarchy. 312 00:29:57,600 --> 00:30:04,720 A chief executive chose his government, but both were answerable to a regularly elected parliament. 313 00:30:04,720 --> 00:30:09,480 But Cromwell himself would not live to see this happen. 314 00:30:12,000 --> 00:30:18,680 On September 3rd 1658, the anniversary of the Battle of Worcester, Cromwell died, 315 00:30:18,680 --> 00:30:23,320 while an immense, black tempest was raging over England, 316 00:30:23,320 --> 00:30:29,120 ripping out trees and sending belfries crashing to the ground. 317 00:30:35,320 --> 00:30:40,360 It was, the old wives said, the devil coming for his soul. 318 00:30:44,120 --> 00:30:50,640 What Oliver Cromwell left behind was not a workable political system, but a vision. 319 00:30:50,640 --> 00:30:57,240 He may have been an angry, ruthless, overbearing man, perhaps even a manic depressive, 320 00:30:57,240 --> 00:31:03,280 but that vision was something of startling sweetness, a sighting of Jerusalem, 321 00:31:03,280 --> 00:31:08,320 a place where everyone would be free to receive Christ in their own way, 322 00:31:08,320 --> 00:31:13,360 provided they did not disturb the peace and conscience of anybody else. 323 00:31:13,360 --> 00:31:19,880 After all his marches and slaughters and fits of table-pounding, red-faced fury, 324 00:31:19,880 --> 00:31:25,360 what it turned out Oliver Cromwell wanted for everyone was a quiet life. 325 00:31:26,680 --> 00:31:33,480 But Catholics were excluded from this vision because for Cromwell, and the country at large, 326 00:31:33,480 --> 00:31:36,120 Catholicism meant tyranny. 327 00:31:36,120 --> 00:31:41,120 The Protector left the country safe from despots, but not from anarchy. 328 00:31:41,120 --> 00:31:48,560 After his death, it returned - power swinging between the soldiers and the politicians, sleepless nights, 329 00:31:48,560 --> 00:31:52,040 the nagging questions from ten years before. 330 00:31:52,040 --> 00:31:59,080 "Who will keep us safe?" "Who do we obey?" "Where do we find a sovereign to protect us?" 331 00:31:59,080 --> 00:32:03,680 It took another hard-headed soldier to see the only way to restore order. 332 00:32:03,680 --> 00:32:08,320 General George Monck had been a royalist in the Civil War, 333 00:32:08,320 --> 00:32:14,840 and a Cromwellian when it seemed that only the Protector could keep the peace. 334 00:32:14,840 --> 00:32:22,280 Now he realised that with the Lord Protector gone, there was only one person who could take his place. 335 00:32:22,280 --> 00:32:24,840 That was a new king. 336 00:32:27,360 --> 00:32:31,400 Ironically, Charles II came to the throne 337 00:32:31,400 --> 00:32:35,960 not because England needed a successor to Charles I, 338 00:32:35,960 --> 00:32:40,880 but because England needed a successor to Oliver Cromwell. 339 00:32:47,680 --> 00:32:52,200 There was universal rejoicing, bonfires and feasting. 340 00:32:52,200 --> 00:32:56,640 The chaos brought by Cromwell's death was ending. 341 00:32:56,640 --> 00:33:03,280 This new Charles seemed just what everyone had hoped for, a model of sweet reason. 342 00:33:03,280 --> 00:33:06,440 That was what Samuel Pepys thought. 343 00:33:06,440 --> 00:33:10,680 Pepys was a pure product of Cromwell's England. 344 00:33:10,680 --> 00:33:15,520 He was present when the new king boarded his flagship home. 345 00:33:15,520 --> 00:33:22,960 On route, the tall, dark-haired man told the story of his escape after the Battle of Worcester. 346 00:33:22,960 --> 00:33:25,520 Here was a king full of charisma. 347 00:33:27,600 --> 00:33:30,200 He had magic. 348 00:33:36,000 --> 00:33:41,080 But would his reason survive the emotions stirred by his return? 349 00:33:41,080 --> 00:33:48,120 The diarist John Evelyn recorded, with unrepentant royalism burning in his breast... 350 00:33:48,120 --> 00:33:53,160 "This day came in His Majesty to London after a sad and long exile. 351 00:33:53,160 --> 00:33:57,400 "With a triumph of above 20,000 horse and foot, 352 00:33:57,400 --> 00:34:02,240 "brandishing their swords and shouting with inexpressible joy, 353 00:34:02,240 --> 00:34:06,280 "the ways strewn with flowers, the bells ringing. 354 00:34:06,280 --> 00:34:10,840 "I stood in the Strand and beheld it and blessed God. 355 00:34:10,840 --> 00:34:17,880 "And all this without one drop of blood, and by that very army which had rebelled against him." 356 00:34:17,880 --> 00:34:23,000 The King was crowned at Westminster on 23rd April 1661. 357 00:34:23,000 --> 00:34:28,720 His reign was backdated to the day after his father had been beheaded. 358 00:34:28,720 --> 00:34:36,000 But even before the coronation, there were those with long memories who were looking for revenge. 359 00:34:38,320 --> 00:34:41,160 On January 30th 1661, 360 00:34:41,160 --> 00:34:46,480 exactly 12 years after Charles I's severed head dropped into the straw, 361 00:34:46,480 --> 00:34:51,960 the remains of Cromwell and the regicides were taken from the tombs 362 00:34:51,960 --> 00:34:59,000 and hanged from the common gallows at Tyburn before being buried in a deep pit. 363 00:34:59,000 --> 00:35:05,840 Over the next months, eleven other king killers were hanged, drawn and quartered. 364 00:35:11,480 --> 00:35:16,520 The old Cromwellians watched this in tactful, furtive silence. 365 00:35:16,520 --> 00:35:21,560 They wondered just how reasonable this new regime might actually be. 366 00:35:23,040 --> 00:35:28,800 Killing the kill-joys, Charles knew, would not damage his popularity. 367 00:35:28,800 --> 00:35:36,800 Given a free vote, the people would, especially after the major generals, vote for pleasure over piety. 368 00:35:37,880 --> 00:35:42,400 # Lavender's green, dilly dilly... # 369 00:35:42,400 --> 00:35:47,040 And leading the dance, of course, was Charles himself, 370 00:35:47,040 --> 00:35:51,080 constitutionally incapable of being so churlish 371 00:35:51,080 --> 00:35:57,600 as to spurn any woman generous enough to invite him into her bed. They all did. 372 00:35:57,600 --> 00:35:59,800 # ..I love you. # 373 00:35:59,800 --> 00:36:02,560 This was the golden age of ogling. 374 00:36:02,560 --> 00:36:09,200 If Puritan England had been governed by the ear, wide open to receive the Word of God, 375 00:36:09,200 --> 00:36:13,560 the Restoration restored the sovereignty of the eye. 376 00:36:15,040 --> 00:36:18,040 Its ruling passion was scopophilia, 377 00:36:18,040 --> 00:36:20,600 the addiction of gaze. 378 00:36:20,600 --> 00:36:28,120 Whether eyeballing an outrageous wig, a plunging neckline, a louse caught in the lens of a microscope, 379 00:36:28,120 --> 00:36:30,960 or the constellations of the stars. 380 00:36:30,960 --> 00:36:35,760 # Lavender's blue, diddle diddle 381 00:36:35,760 --> 00:36:40,440 # Lavender's green... # 382 00:36:40,440 --> 00:36:45,160 Charles's boyish enthusiasm with the latest optical instruments 383 00:36:45,160 --> 00:36:48,800 suggested he might be a new kind of Stuart. 384 00:36:48,800 --> 00:36:55,440 One whose vision dwelt not in cloudy realms of absolutism, but which was precisely focused, 385 00:36:55,440 --> 00:37:00,040 concerned to observe reality, political as well as physical. 386 00:37:00,040 --> 00:37:05,120 He might even turn out to be a reasonable Stuart king. 387 00:37:06,120 --> 00:37:13,360 This was the Stuart for whom the physical world was his alpha and omega, who was earthy in his realism. 388 00:37:14,840 --> 00:37:19,520 All too earthy, some thought, as they looked down in disgust 389 00:37:19,520 --> 00:37:26,320 at the theatre of indolence punctuated by debauchery that had become the court. 390 00:37:26,320 --> 00:37:33,480 They were not SO worldly, as to be free of the fear that some day there would be a reckoning. 391 00:37:33,480 --> 00:37:36,440 Some day soon, as it turned out. 392 00:37:40,480 --> 00:37:45,520 In the summer of 1664, a comet appeared in the skies over England. 393 00:37:45,520 --> 00:37:52,560 Its sallow tail could be seen with unprecedented clarity through the lens of the new telescopes, 394 00:37:52,560 --> 00:37:55,120 owned among others by the King. 395 00:37:55,120 --> 00:37:59,640 What most people saw was disaster in the offing. 396 00:37:59,640 --> 00:38:02,280 They had all read their almanacs. 397 00:38:02,280 --> 00:38:07,320 They knew the Apocalypse would be heralded by pestilence, fire and war. 398 00:38:12,000 --> 00:38:19,280 A year later, thousands of bodies, killed by bubonic plague, were being tossed each week 399 00:38:19,280 --> 00:38:21,920 into the great pit of Aldgate. 400 00:38:21,920 --> 00:38:29,480 And there was nothing that science could do about it, except count the dead with a care demanded 401 00:38:29,480 --> 00:38:32,000 by modern statistics. 402 00:38:34,440 --> 00:38:37,960 # My part of death 403 00:38:37,960 --> 00:38:42,320 # No-one so true 404 00:38:43,760 --> 00:38:48,160 # Did share it 405 00:38:49,280 --> 00:38:52,240 # Come away 406 00:38:52,240 --> 00:38:55,520 # Come away 407 00:38:55,520 --> 00:38:58,960 # Death... # 408 00:39:02,800 --> 00:39:07,520 One-sixth of London's population perished. 409 00:39:07,520 --> 00:39:13,880 The infection ebbed with the onset of autumn, but the trepidation hung around, 410 00:39:13,880 --> 00:39:18,200 for the number of the beast was 666. 411 00:39:22,000 --> 00:39:26,440 And sure enough, up from the smoky regions of hell, 412 00:39:26,440 --> 00:39:29,520 in the first week of September 1666, 413 00:39:29,520 --> 00:39:32,480 came the diabolical fire. 414 00:39:37,200 --> 00:39:41,320 In the early hours of Sunday, September 2nd, 415 00:39:41,320 --> 00:39:45,360 the Lord Mayor of London was woken from his sleep 416 00:39:45,360 --> 00:39:50,360 to be told that a fire had started in a baker's shop in Pudding Lane. 417 00:39:50,360 --> 00:39:52,880 His response was... 418 00:39:52,880 --> 00:39:55,560 "Pish! A woman might piss it out." 419 00:40:03,680 --> 00:40:11,200 As he snored on, the flames reached the warehouses flanking the Thames between the Tower and London Bridge, 420 00:40:11,200 --> 00:40:14,520 brimful of tallow, pitch and brandy. 421 00:40:15,520 --> 00:40:21,160 A monstrous fireball came roaring and sucking out of the narrow streets, 422 00:40:21,160 --> 00:40:25,200 feeding on the overhanging bays and gables. 423 00:40:27,240 --> 00:40:32,480 In another hour, 200-300 houses had been swallowed by the flames. 424 00:40:37,400 --> 00:40:44,920 John Evelyn, who'd been saying for years that overcrowded London was a disaster waiting to happen, 425 00:40:44,920 --> 00:40:49,440 took no joy in the fulfilment of his prophecy. 426 00:40:50,720 --> 00:40:55,080 "Oh, the miserable and calamitous spectacle! 427 00:40:55,080 --> 00:40:59,680 "God grant mine eyes that I never behold the like again, 428 00:40:59,680 --> 00:41:04,280 "who now saw 10,000 houses all in one flame. 429 00:41:04,280 --> 00:41:09,000 "The noise and crackle and thunder of the impetuous flames. 430 00:41:09,000 --> 00:41:11,560 "The shriek of women and children. 431 00:41:11,560 --> 00:41:18,600 "The hurry of people. The fall of towers, houses and churches, like a hideous storm. 432 00:41:18,600 --> 00:41:21,480 "London was, but is no more." 433 00:41:33,320 --> 00:41:35,880 THUNDER CRASHES 434 00:41:37,760 --> 00:41:44,800 When the rain started, a week after the outbreak of the fire, allowing an early stocktaking, 435 00:41:44,800 --> 00:41:49,600 the scale of the devastation horrified even the pessimists. 436 00:41:49,600 --> 00:41:56,680 13,200 houses had been destroyed, along with some of the most famous buildings of the city. 437 00:41:58,680 --> 00:42:01,240 St Paul's Cathedral was in ruins. 438 00:42:01,240 --> 00:42:06,160 The new leviathan, it seemed, had no fire insurance. 439 00:42:06,160 --> 00:42:13,760 Still, there were those who were determined that London would rise as a Phoenix from its ashes 440 00:42:13,760 --> 00:42:18,600 and, like the reborn, rebuilt Rome, astonish the world. 441 00:42:18,600 --> 00:42:23,520 This sort of thing had long been on the mind of Christopher Wren, 442 00:42:23,520 --> 00:42:28,560 mathematician, architect and prodigy of the Royal Society. 443 00:42:28,560 --> 00:42:33,560 So when Roman antiquities were found in the debris around St Paul's, 444 00:42:33,560 --> 00:42:40,280 one of them a tablet bearing the Latin inscription, "Resurgam" - "I shall arise," 445 00:42:40,280 --> 00:42:42,920 Wren took the message to heart. 446 00:42:42,920 --> 00:42:46,960 London had once been a great Roman city 447 00:42:46,960 --> 00:42:49,520 and now would outdo the ancients, 448 00:42:49,520 --> 00:42:56,920 with great piazzas, broad avenues, calculated to afford geometrically satisfying vistas 449 00:42:56,920 --> 00:42:59,680 and up to 50 new churches. 450 00:42:59,680 --> 00:43:03,720 And at its heart would be a new St Paul's, 451 00:43:03,720 --> 00:43:08,760 a cathedral the like of which had never been seen in northern Europe. 452 00:43:08,760 --> 00:43:15,880 He even built a giant wooden model to show the King and clergy just what they would be getting. 453 00:43:17,240 --> 00:43:24,280 How could they not be awestruck by the huge dome that used the same technology as a microscope 454 00:43:24,280 --> 00:43:26,880 to flood the interior with light? 455 00:43:54,000 --> 00:43:56,560 But there was a problem. 456 00:43:56,560 --> 00:44:00,600 Wren had designed his cathedral as a Greek cross, 457 00:44:00,600 --> 00:44:08,120 sacrificing the traditional design of a Protestant church in favour of perfect acoustics and light. 458 00:44:08,120 --> 00:44:13,120 You can almost hear the mystified, angry complaints of the reverends, 459 00:44:13,120 --> 00:44:20,160 "And where exactly is the choir supposed to go? And how do we process up a nave which isn't there?" 460 00:44:20,160 --> 00:44:27,240 Most of all, they said, "Call us old-fashioned, but this looks to us like a Catholic basilica. 461 00:44:27,240 --> 00:44:34,600 "We'll be, if you pardon the phrase, damned, if we're going to let St Paul's turn into St Peter's." 462 00:44:34,600 --> 00:44:39,640 When the King joined critics, telling him to go back to the drawing board, 463 00:44:39,640 --> 00:44:44,480 Wren's normally very dry eyes are said to have filled with tears. 464 00:44:44,480 --> 00:44:48,520 He would have his chance to build his domed cathedral, 465 00:44:48,520 --> 00:44:54,720 but only when it was joined to a long nave, something like a traditional church. 466 00:44:54,720 --> 00:45:03,000 The irony was that, for all his Roman enthusiasm, Wren believed he was building a truly Protestant church, 467 00:45:03,000 --> 00:45:06,320 but his timing was terrible. 468 00:45:06,320 --> 00:45:13,440 Ever since the days of the Reformation, Britain had been victim to anti-Catholic fear. 469 00:45:13,440 --> 00:45:17,240 And once again, in Charles's reign, it erupted. 470 00:45:20,040 --> 00:45:26,960 Not all of it was misplaced - Charles was suspected of having secret Catholics in his government, 471 00:45:26,960 --> 00:45:29,480 and so he did. 472 00:45:29,480 --> 00:45:35,720 He was also suspected of making secret treaties with the militantly Catholic Louis XIV of France, 473 00:45:35,720 --> 00:45:37,920 and so he had. 474 00:45:37,920 --> 00:45:40,280 But there was worse... 475 00:45:40,280 --> 00:45:42,440 much worse. 476 00:45:42,440 --> 00:45:48,480 The King's own brother, James, Duke of York, had actually converted to the Roman Church, 477 00:45:48,480 --> 00:45:50,880 and he made no secret of it. 478 00:45:50,880 --> 00:45:58,280 With no children born to the King, the first Catholic ruler since Bloody Mary was an imminent prospect. 479 00:45:58,280 --> 00:46:01,200 They were shivering in the Shires. 480 00:46:01,200 --> 00:46:06,320 A century before, England's Queen Elizabeth had been threatened 481 00:46:06,320 --> 00:46:08,760 with Catholic assassination plots. 482 00:46:08,760 --> 00:46:15,120 The Jesuit lurking in the shadows was a permanent fixture in the popular nightmare. 483 00:46:15,120 --> 00:46:22,400 So when an ex-Jesuit called Titus Oates concocted a pack of lies about a plot to murder the King, 484 00:46:22,400 --> 00:46:27,120 invite a French invasion and create a Catholic state under James, 485 00:46:27,120 --> 00:46:29,920 he tripped the Guy Fawkes alert. 486 00:46:29,920 --> 00:46:37,280 And when the magistrate investigating the charges was found mysteriously murdered on Primrose Hill, 487 00:46:37,280 --> 00:46:42,120 it seemed obvious that Oates knew what he was talking about. 488 00:46:42,120 --> 00:46:46,840 It sent the jittery country right over the edge. 489 00:46:58,520 --> 00:47:03,120 Anti-Catholic violence swept the country - 490 00:47:03,120 --> 00:47:07,920 riots, burnings, lynch mobs, kangaroo courts. 491 00:47:10,720 --> 00:47:18,240 For some politicians, the country's ugly mood was a golden opportunity to press their favourite cause - 492 00:47:18,240 --> 00:47:25,280 James, Duke of York, should never be allowed to sit on the throne. He HAD to be excluded. 493 00:47:25,280 --> 00:47:31,440 Anything to stop the cycle of religious wars from breaking out again. 494 00:47:31,440 --> 00:47:36,160 It was an extraordinary crisis in the history of the British monarchy, 495 00:47:36,160 --> 00:47:42,320 for at stake were not only the lives of hundreds of those victimised by all the lies and hysteria, 496 00:47:42,320 --> 00:47:44,880 but the fate of the polity itself, 497 00:47:44,880 --> 00:47:49,920 because to concede exclusion was to accept that Parliament had the right 498 00:47:49,920 --> 00:47:54,400 to judge who was fit or unfit to occupy the throne. 499 00:47:54,400 --> 00:47:59,240 And THAT was a concession Charles II was absolutely not about to make. 500 00:48:00,280 --> 00:48:07,840 But Charles met the most serious crisis of his reign with his most powerful weapon - reason. 501 00:48:07,840 --> 00:48:10,280 He offered a compromise. 502 00:48:10,280 --> 00:48:16,320 His brother would be allowed to succeed IF he agreed to be a private Catholic 503 00:48:16,320 --> 00:48:19,840 and not to lay a finger on the Church of England. 504 00:48:19,840 --> 00:48:26,600 Riding the wave of paranoia, the newly elected Parliament, summoned to Oxford, turned him down. 505 00:48:26,600 --> 00:48:30,120 They assumed that memory was on their side, 506 00:48:30,120 --> 00:48:34,840 that this Charles would remember the fate of his stubborn father, 507 00:48:34,840 --> 00:48:40,880 who had triggered a war when he, too, had been suspected of being soft on Catholicism. 508 00:48:40,880 --> 00:48:44,560 But historical memory is a double-edged sword. 509 00:48:44,560 --> 00:48:47,160 FANFARE 510 00:48:47,160 --> 00:48:51,240 When the Commons filed into the Great Hall of Christchurch 511 00:48:51,240 --> 00:48:55,400 to hear what they THOUGHT would be the royal capitulation, 512 00:48:55,400 --> 00:49:00,960 they found themselves instead confronted by a leviathan in ermine. 513 00:49:02,960 --> 00:49:06,960 "This is the King's will," he said, in effect. 514 00:49:06,960 --> 00:49:09,320 "Take it or leave it." 515 00:49:11,320 --> 00:49:14,000 It was a breathtaking gamble. 516 00:49:14,000 --> 00:49:16,480 Backed up by the House of Lords, 517 00:49:16,480 --> 00:49:23,000 Charles had left the Exclusionists in the Commons no alternative but to go to war. 518 00:49:25,680 --> 00:49:31,160 And he was betting that the memory of the last round would be a deterrent. 519 00:49:31,160 --> 00:49:33,320 He was right - 520 00:49:33,320 --> 00:49:40,680 the granite and marble tombs of the dead from Edgehill, Marston Moor and Worcester were still being carved. 521 00:49:40,680 --> 00:49:46,160 That war had begun as a parliamentary protest and ended in Puritan crusade. 522 00:49:46,160 --> 00:49:50,400 Who wanted that back? Not the Exclusionists. 523 00:49:50,400 --> 00:49:52,920 THEY blinked first. 524 00:49:53,920 --> 00:49:59,600 James did get the keys to the kingdom when his brother died, in 1685, 525 00:49:59,600 --> 00:50:05,080 and he inherited a new parliament with a massively royalist majority, 526 00:50:05,080 --> 00:50:08,600 along with widespread public sympathy. 527 00:50:08,600 --> 00:50:13,160 Within three years, though, he had squandered it all. 528 00:50:17,160 --> 00:50:21,920 James never had any intention of hiding his faith. 529 00:50:21,920 --> 00:50:28,800 His Catholicism wasn't just a private comfort to be celebrated away from the public gaze. 530 00:50:28,800 --> 00:50:33,320 No, James was going to be a visible Catholic king, 531 00:50:33,320 --> 00:50:35,840 but he was playing a dangerous game. 532 00:50:37,400 --> 00:50:42,520 When James tried to reverse anti-Catholic laws, 533 00:50:42,520 --> 00:50:49,560 the pillars of the Establishment - the country gentry in the Church of England - were horrified. 534 00:50:49,560 --> 00:50:56,800 When the bishops complained, the King declared, "I shall find a way to do my business without you." 535 00:50:56,800 --> 00:51:02,120 The protesting bishops were locked up in the Tower. 536 00:51:06,680 --> 00:51:09,480 James's timing was disastrous, 537 00:51:09,480 --> 00:51:15,920 for he was doing all this when Louis XIV, the militantly Catholic King of France, 538 00:51:15,920 --> 00:51:19,200 was threatening Europe. 539 00:51:19,200 --> 00:51:24,880 By January 1688, James had managed to alienate all his natural allies, 540 00:51:24,880 --> 00:51:30,920 and to turn himself into an even more dangerous version of his father, Charles I. 541 00:51:30,920 --> 00:51:36,280 He was even filling the officer ranks of the Army with Irish Catholics. 542 00:51:38,440 --> 00:51:43,800 The only consolation was that, at 52, he had no son. 543 00:51:43,800 --> 00:51:48,000 The next in line to the throne was his daughter Mary, 544 00:51:48,000 --> 00:51:52,560 a staunch Protestant who'd married the Dutch Prince William of Orange, 545 00:51:52,560 --> 00:51:55,560 hero of the resistance to Louis XIV. 546 00:51:56,960 --> 00:52:00,760 On June 10th 1688, all this changed. 547 00:52:00,760 --> 00:52:04,680 James's wife, Mary of Modena, gave birth to a boy, 548 00:52:04,680 --> 00:52:09,680 who was duly baptised with Roman rites. 549 00:52:09,680 --> 00:52:12,160 Now not only was the king Catholic, 550 00:52:12,160 --> 00:52:14,480 so was his dynasty. 551 00:52:14,480 --> 00:52:19,520 What could be done? Well, something quite extraordinary. 552 00:52:20,640 --> 00:52:27,240 A group of seven leading statesmen sent a message to Holland with an explosive request. 553 00:52:27,240 --> 00:52:34,560 "Prince William," they asked, "would you mind invading Britain and saving us from a Catholic king?" 554 00:52:35,600 --> 00:52:41,400 William wanted to save his country from Catholic despots all right, 555 00:52:41,400 --> 00:52:47,480 but the country HE had in mind, first, foremost and always, was the Dutch republic. 556 00:52:47,480 --> 00:52:52,440 English politics were a sideshow, for William, to the main event - 557 00:52:52,440 --> 00:52:55,960 the great European war against Louis XIV. 558 00:52:57,520 --> 00:53:02,560 What choice did he have? There would be British troops in that war. 559 00:53:02,560 --> 00:53:07,160 To make sure that they'd be fighting for him, not against him, 560 00:53:07,160 --> 00:53:11,880 exactly 100 years after the Spanish Armada failed to do the same thing, 561 00:53:11,880 --> 00:53:14,320 William set out to conquer Britain. 562 00:53:18,440 --> 00:53:22,320 He was nothing if not thorough. 563 00:53:22,320 --> 00:53:26,400 60,000 copies of William's manifesto blanketed England 564 00:53:26,400 --> 00:53:29,920 in an effort to present the planned invasion 565 00:53:29,920 --> 00:53:34,640 as a response to a spontaneous uprising against the Catholic tyrant. 566 00:53:34,640 --> 00:53:41,200 It was so persuasive that he succeeded in making James seem the foreigner in his own land 567 00:53:41,200 --> 00:53:43,560 and the Dutchman the TRUE Brit. 568 00:53:46,480 --> 00:53:50,000 The fate of the Armada was a sobering thought, 569 00:53:50,000 --> 00:53:54,840 so his Dutch invasion force made the Spanish one seem puny. 570 00:53:54,840 --> 00:53:59,920 This time there were 600 vessels and up to 20,000 troops. 571 00:54:14,280 --> 00:54:18,880 He landed at Torbay on November 5th - Guy Fawkes Day. 572 00:54:18,880 --> 00:54:21,400 Obviously, God was a Protestant. 573 00:54:21,400 --> 00:54:27,840 When he realised that this Protestant invasion was really going to oust him, 574 00:54:27,840 --> 00:54:30,640 James' courage failed him. 575 00:54:30,640 --> 00:54:37,240 His resolution in melt-down, his nights haunted by the ghost of his beheaded daddy, 576 00:54:37,240 --> 00:54:39,760 he fled the kingdom. 577 00:54:45,200 --> 00:54:50,080 William claimed that he'd come just to restore English liberties, 578 00:54:50,080 --> 00:54:54,400 but now he had Dutch soldiers in the streets. 579 00:54:54,400 --> 00:55:00,800 And if he'd decided to be king after all, who was going to say otherwise? 580 00:55:06,000 --> 00:55:13,360 In February 1689, William of Orange and Mary Stuart were proclaimed King and Queen of England. 581 00:55:15,360 --> 00:55:20,120 But during the ceremony, something profoundly novel happened. 582 00:55:20,120 --> 00:55:23,120 A declaration of rights was read out, 583 00:55:23,120 --> 00:55:30,440 listing the conditions under which the new monarchs would be allowed to sit on the throne. 584 00:55:30,440 --> 00:55:34,520 Parliament had changed the job description of the ruler. 585 00:55:34,520 --> 00:55:38,120 It turned out the country did not need leviathan. 586 00:55:38,120 --> 00:55:40,880 It wanted a chairman of the board. 587 00:55:40,880 --> 00:55:45,800 Dutch William fitted that role to a T. 588 00:55:45,800 --> 00:55:50,240 William III would fight HIS wars by asking, not demanding, 589 00:55:50,240 --> 00:55:54,760 funds from the elected representatives of the people. 590 00:55:54,760 --> 00:55:57,280 And ruling together with Parliament, 591 00:55:57,280 --> 00:56:04,600 his government looked remarkably like a reasonable version of Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate. 592 00:56:05,600 --> 00:56:09,960 History has called this a Glorious Revolution. 593 00:56:09,960 --> 00:56:12,400 It was probably neither. 594 00:56:12,400 --> 00:56:17,360 But afterwards, the British monarchy would never be the same again. 595 00:56:23,040 --> 00:56:29,000 But the old monarchy had one last, desperate, play to make. 596 00:56:29,000 --> 00:56:33,320 In March 1689, James landed in Ireland 597 00:56:33,320 --> 00:56:36,000 with 20,000 French troops. 598 00:56:36,000 --> 00:56:40,160 The Catholic Irish flocked to their king. 599 00:56:40,160 --> 00:56:46,040 Like the English, they had become pawns in someone else's chess game. 600 00:56:51,640 --> 00:56:57,680 Outside Drogheda, two armies - two worlds - faced each other across the River Boyne. 601 00:56:57,680 --> 00:57:01,320 One belonged to the old world of faith and fervour. 602 00:57:01,320 --> 00:57:07,560 The other - Dutch and German professionals - were part of a modern war machine. 603 00:57:17,200 --> 00:57:20,360 No prizes for guessing who won. 604 00:57:21,360 --> 00:57:23,320 Nobody. 605 00:57:34,480 --> 00:57:38,640 It is the patriotic duty of Irish men and Irish women 606 00:57:38,640 --> 00:57:42,400 to engage in that legitimate armed struggle. 607 00:57:42,400 --> 00:57:45,120 WE WILL NEVER SURRENDER! 608 00:57:45,120 --> 00:57:46,960 NEVER! 609 00:57:46,960 --> 00:57:48,560 NEVER! 610 00:57:48,560 --> 00:57:50,320 NEVER! 611 00:57:50,320 --> 00:57:52,960 - Never... - CHEERING 612 00:57:52,960 --> 00:57:59,000 I would appeal to Unionists to engage fully in the search for a lasting peace. 613 00:57:59,000 --> 00:58:01,360 I, too, am an Ulster man, 614 00:58:01,360 --> 00:58:05,160 and we don't need British ministers to rule us... 615 00:58:05,160 --> 00:58:08,880 # ..By Christ and Saint Patrick 616 00:58:08,880 --> 00:58:13,000 # The nation's our own 617 00:58:13,000 --> 00:58:17,160 # Lilli burlero 618 00:58:17,160 --> 00:58:24,200 # Bullen a la. #