In the early 17th century, the British Isles were engulfed
by bitter religious and political conflict.
The people divided into two warring tribes,
The Roundheads -
radical parliamentarians led by Oliver Cromwell,
fighting to create a more egalitarian church and state -
SHOUTING AND SWORDS CLASHING
and the Cavaliers - royalists led by Charles I
fighting to preserve the political and religious hierarchy
and the King's authority.
SHOUTING AND HORSES WHINNYING
The conflict came to a head in civil war
that would revolutionise the culture and politics of Britain.
MEN SHOUTING AND GALLOPING HOOVES
'It shattered unified society forever.'
And ever since then we've had,
essentially, some kind of two party system.
The division of Roundhead and Cavalier
got perpetuated, in many ways, into Whig and Tory,
Liberal and Conservative,
Conservative and Socialist.
The Civil War was more than a battle for political power.
It was also a struggle between two conflicting attitudes to life
and that struggle continues to this day.
I think we subconsciously divide ourselves into Roundheads and Cavaliers.
It's not a mark of wealth, it's not a question of class distinction,
it's a, sort of, cast of mind.
The Cavalier is a flamboyant, a person of a grand gesture,
they're not particularly interested in the nitty-gritty
of organising life and politics.
They probably don't have a huge overall plan.
Rather vainglorious but also terribly affable and very friendly.
Beautiful, beautiful style, not much substance.
Roundheads I would say, more austere,
more careful, more organised.
Dour, Godly, sincere, determined, thoughtful...
People of principle, people of purpose...
Very militant, power hungry, rebellious...
The battle between Roundheads and Cavaliers
continues to shape our national life.
In architecture...
..in the press...
..on the sports field...
..and in the kitchen.
To understand the origins of this great divide
is to understand what it means to be British.
Prepare to march. March on!
August Bank Holiday, Godalming, in Surrey.
And The Sealed Knot -
the Roundheads and Cavaliers of 21st Century Britain -
are on the march.
They regularly gather to re-create battles
from a civil war that forged our national character.
Very definitely pleased to say that I'm a royalist
and definitely a Cavalier as well.
And me now, you get Daddy!
'Cavalier means that a gentleman of the royalist ranks, really.'
'I'm a Roundhead and I'm proud of it. Parliament for me.'
One voice, one people, one vote.
Without it where'd we be today?
We'd all be living in the gutter, king'd still be living in castles.
The first people to be called Roundheads
were bands of apprentices rioting in London in 1641
in protest against the power of the King and the Church of England.
'Roundheads is a name that appeared out of the blue almost.'
There was a short-lived fashion for people,
Parliamentarians and Puritans in particular,
to wear their hair very short
and this made their heads look almost naked and bald or round.
And the name stuck, even though the fashion itself did not last very long.
The Roundheads were campaigning for a radical transformation
of Britain's political and religious hierarchy.
Radical Puritans had, in their day, a very advanced view of equality.
That view came from their religious beliefs,
where they were all equal before God,
they were all going to be saved.
And if they were all equal in religion
they should be equal in politics
and so the religion fed into the political demands.
The Cavaliers were determined
to stop this Puritanical Roundhead revolution.
Cavaliers were fighting to protect the authority of the King
and to protect the old established Church of England,
and they saw the Roundheads as fanatics, essentially,
who would bring down the church, bring down the state
and bring down law and order itself.
- ALL: - King Charles!
'The origin of the term Cavalier comes from the Spanish, "caballero,"
'and it's used particularly to identify Royalists.'
Royalist courtiers on horsebacks
with their swords, with their honour code
and as the propaganda campaign kicks off
it also has connotations of drunkenness,
rowdy behaviour, and can be used, also, as an insult
as well as a way of identifying the enemy.
As the conflict spread across the British Isles,
the two tribes expressed their political and religious differences
in the way they dressed.
Cavaliers were flamboyant and extravagant.
Some even sported ribbons on their codpieces.
Roundheads valued simplicity and modesty as signs of Godliness.
'Puritans, seeing someone dressed in fine silk clothes'
showed exactly how morally degraded they were.
A puritan believed you displayed your own moral integrity
by quiet, modest dress.
So seeing those individuals in court full of their fine silks
really exposed their fundamental moral depravity.
The war of the wardrobes was fought out in sharply-worded pamphlets -
precursors of the newspaper.
One Puritan pamphlet raged against the Cavalier's long hair -
The Unloveliness of Lovelocks.
John Lilburne, a radical Roundhead and pamphleteer,
was a model for the puritan values of modesty and restraint.
'John Lilburne had an engraving done of him'
and it promoted this image of the man in plain clothes,
in black dress, unadorned, plain,
just a little bit of ruff collar and a very simple hairstyle -
the classic Roundhead with a few curls around the ears.
The Cavaliers defended their exuberant exhibitionism
with pamphlets of their own -
and it wasn't just the men.
'There is one wonderful pamphlet, by a woman, denouncing what she called,
' "The ill-bred plebeian zealotry of Puritans," '
and insisting that it was entirely up to women
to wear hair as long as they liked,
to wear beauty spots and cosmetics,
and denounced religion as just as fickle as fashion had ever been.
The English Civil War dropped a pebble into our pond
and those ripples keep coming, keep coming.
MUSIC: "Vogue" by Madonna
'I think if we look at modern fashion then, obviously,'
a sense of permissiveness, and pleasure, and glamour,
and extravagance has won out.
So the cavaliers have definitely won.
# Vogue
# Let your body groove to the music
# Hey, hey, hey!
# Vogue... # What are you looking at?
'I do think that the exposure,
'which goes on in our streets at the moment, is plain immodest.
'And I did use to say to some of the girls on Strictly,'
"Are you feeling a bit cold?"
Because they weren't really wearing very much and I do disapprove.
And I do think that people should conduct themselves modestly.
I mean, just the sense of disapproval of everything
still happens today.
The idea that dressing up is wrong, anything indulgent is wrong.
It's about distracting you away from your core value,
which, you know, obviously, for the Roundheads was God, was religion.
In the early 1640s,
the Roundheads stepped up their parliamentary campaign
for democratic reform of church and state...
but the Cavaliers refused to compromise
the supremacy of the monarchy.
'By the summer of 1642, their differences are irreconcilable.'
They can only be decided on the field of war by the use of the sword.
And that's what happens,
both Parliament and the King set up their standards in August 1642,
and the English Civil War is underway.
On October 23rd 1642, at Edgehill, in Warwickshire,
Roundhead and Cavalier armies faced each other for the first time.
The King's Cavalry were crack troops led by his nephew,
the 23-year-old Prince Rupert of the Rhine.
One of the most experienced cavalry commanders in Europe,
he was the very image of a Cavalier.
'He was so dashing, he was definitely romantic.'
And I love the fact he used to ride into battle with his standard poodle,
which the parliamentary forces thought was his familiar,
running along beside him.
How do you train a poodle to take somebody's throat out
if they're trying to hamstring your horse, I don't really know!
'This the saddle belonging to Prince Rupert of the Rhine.
'An extremely posh saddle.'
The most expensive accessory which a household can have is tapestry
and this is a miniature piece of tapestry.
It's also extremely comfortable
by the standards of saddles of that day and most.
Instead of the usual hard leather thing,
what you have here is velvet plush,
really deep, and maximum comfort.
At Edgehill, Rupert launched the Cavalier's secret weapon...
..a manoeuvre he'd learnt on the battlefields of Europe...
MEN SHOUTING
..the thunderbolt charge.
'You hear the sound of thousands and thousands
'of horses hooves striking the ground at once'
and it's louder than thunder.
It's an extraordinary cacophony of noise,
which sweeps you along with it,
as finally the canter turns into the all-out charge.
Horses encourage each other,
so as one moves faster the whole mass begins to go,
and it's rather like something being released from a bow or from a gun.
'Prince Rupert knew the shock value of cavalry.'
He went straight in and hard.
He knew if he broke the enemy cavalry they would never reform.
He could then dominate the field.
MEN SHOUTING
The Cavalier Thunderbolt scattered the Roundhead cavalry
but then Prince Rupert and his high-spirited horsemen
continued charging...
..off the battlefield and toward the Roundhead encampment.
'And one of the most glorious things about old-fashioned warfare'
is your ability to loot the defeated enemy.
And here in the wagons were not just the food stuffs, and the drink,
and the cloth for the ordinary soldiers
but all the valuables of the officers.
And so what Rupert's troopers did
was set about plundering for hours -
behind them the battle was largely being lost.
The Cavaliers' lack of self-discipline
allowed the Roundheads to regain the initiative.
As darkness fell, the battle of Edgehill ended in stalemate.
'Cavaliers don't do self-discipline at all,'
that's, the absolute antitheses of Cavalier thought is self control,
it's all about letting it go.
You know, about just enjoying the moment.
It's carpe diem, it's gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
all of that kind of stuff.
'A Cavalier person, in a way, reflects Cavalier principles,
'which are they don't care too much. They are there for the moment.'
They are dazzling rather than detailed,
they are, they are there to entertain and to move life along
but they're not there, really, to do the nitty-gritty.
Over the next three years, as the civil war swept through the country,
the radical Parliamentarian Oliver Cromwell
emerged as the Roundhead's most effective military leader.
Open your order from the centre!
In 1644, he began building
Britain's first full-time professional fighting force...
Port your pike!
..the New Model Army.
Double your files!
It became a show-case for the Roundhead values
of Godliness and discipline.
Without discipline you get nowhere in life
and that's very true of today, nevermind the 17th century.
You think this is your birthday, don't you, Josh?
You have to have discipline,
you have to have order
and Cromwell was very good at instilling order into his troops.
We believe, "Work hard and play hard."
It wouldn't be unfair to say Ruperts believe,
"Play hard, and play a bit harder."
So, that's the main difference between the two units.
Discipline was absolutely essential.
And we know that the Parliamentary troops were far better disciplined.
Everything from drunkenness and fornication
being punished severely.
The penalty for blasphemy was particularly severe.
Somebody who was a persistent blasphemer
would have his tongue drawn out of his mouth with pincers,
and borne through with a red hot iron,
so he ended up with a hole in his tongue.
Cromwell now set out to improve the performance
of the Roundhead cavalry.
He trained them, and trained them, and trained them,
until they would charge home,
the thunderbolt charge, like Prince Rupert's men,
but after the charge,
they would regroup, return to the battlefield,
and be good for another charge.
And that, of course, was a tremendous advance.
The Roundheads also introduced a military uniform for the first time.
The famous redcoat,
worn by the British army for the next two centuries.
The New Model Army recruited according to military competence,
not aristocratic birthright.
Britain's feudal hierarchy was being replaced by the newly-emerging
Roundhead state.
You have new institutions. The committee for the army,
The committee for the navy. And so, the state bureaucracy
is inevitably increasing to a size previously unheard of.
I think a good case can be made that the modern state begins
in the 1640s, with the Civil War and these new bureaucratic institutions.
Roundhead bureaucracy introduced a new spirit of professionalism
into British life, that still endures.
We work all the hours that God sends,
and if you don't die of a heart attack,
you might make a nice profit in your old age,
when you're too old to enjoy it.
But certainly that "Cavalier joy", as it's called,
has gone in our attitude to work.
We've definitely become the Roundhead state.
Undoubtedly there is a more austere
and professional attitude in British life.
The great cult of the amateur, the great cult of the eccentric,
the person who sort of organised life from the seat of their pants
has rather gone, I think.
I think we certainly do expect people to have a plan,
to stick to it, and to understand the detail of the machine.
Deep in the Cavalier heartlands of modern Britain,
the cult of the amateur lives on.
Henley of course started as the Regatta in 1839,
and amateur sport was absolutely at the heart of it.
There was something fundamental about the way you looked at sport.
The amateur was not all about winning,
it was about playing the part. It was about the whole man.
The professional was about the prize.
Ready for the contest, boys? Come on.
The flower, it's all dying on you.
I think I am more a Cavalier.
Cavalier, sir. Cavalier attitude and mannerism. Cavalier.
And that's all abut team spirit and enjoying yourself.
It's not about winning.
It's just about taking part.
The buttonholes at the veterans'
National Flower Day Competition would humble any 17th century dandy.
These are calla lilies, Asiatic lily and estrelicia,
the bird of paradise flying in and taking nectar from it.
This is plucked from the garden this morning.
These are all hand-reared. and smelling delightful.
But even in this Cavalier stronghold,
there's been a Roundhead incursion.
Two British Olympic hopes, Andy Triggs-Hodge
and Pete Reed have brought Roundhead professionalism onto the water.
Rowing is 24 hours a day for us.
I pressurise myself in training, to make sure I'm improving
on a daily basis. I feel that that's a decent Roundhead attitude.
And it's finding anything we can do.
It's all the little things that help you through the day.
If you can reduce the amount of hours you drive, if you can sleep longer.
The quality of your bed, it all makes a difference.
It's applying how we execute our finest 2km race in the Olympic Games,
and how every bit of life affects that in the four years prior.
At the end of the day, it is all about winning.
But Olympic success still calls
for a touch of the old "Cavalier" spirit.
When I get on the water,
there's got to be a bit of me that's a bit of a loose cannon,
and you've just got to go out and do crazy things,
cos if you don't, you'll never achieve your personal best.
I think it's fascinating the way most sports teams require
a combination of Roundhead and Cavalier.
The England rugby team, for example, requires the Roundhead,
Jonny Wilkinson, to kick the ball through the post
with metronomic efficiency, but it also needs those extraordinary,
flamboyant figures on the wing, who can suddenly carve through.
I think it's the same of all sports, and perhaps it's true of all teams.
You need a Boycott, but you also need to have a Kevin Pietersen.
On June 14th, 1645,
Roundhead discipline was put to the test at Naseby, in Northamptonshire.
The New Model Army prepared to confront the Cavalier forces.
Prince Rupert began the battle with another thunderbolt charge.
At Naseby, Prince Rupert was on the Royalist right wing.
He charged and scattered the Parliamentary left wing.
But made the same mistake as at Edge Hill.
His men scattered off in all directions,
plundered the baggage train,
and were not much use for the rest of the battle.
Cromwell's new, well-drilled cavalry were now ready to be deployed
with devastating effect.
On the right wing, Cromwell charged home,
scattered the Royalist left wing,
and then got his men to come to the assistance of the cavalry,
and then charge into the flank of the Royalist infantry,
and win the Battle of Naseby.
Naseby annihilates the King's own army,
It destroys a body of men he had built up over three years.
And he never manages to rebuild it.
It is the knockout blow of the English Civil War.
By October 1647,
the King was imprisoned,
and the Cavaliers were in disarray.
Roundhead forces were camped just outside the capital, here in Putney.
The more radical Roundheads were now demanding their reward
- a more equal society.
They became known as the Levellers.
These people wanted reform of the law,
religious toleration, reform of election procedure.
They wanted the soldiers who fought for parliament
to be rewarded in some way.
These were not mercenaries.
These were, in the language of the day, developing "citizens".
- Second colour, yes? - ALL: Yes.
- Who's going to be second colour? - Alex. - No, we'll sort that out...
Today, the 21st century Roundheads are following tradition,
by voting for their commanding officer.
You've got advice.
It's important to have democracy,
because the Royalists had dictatorship,
- and it didn't work. - ALL: Aye.
Inspired by radicals like John Lilburne,
the Levellers published their demands for human rights
and democratic reform
in a manifesto called The Agreement Of The People.
It's a radical vision of England.
It's an England, eventually, in which he would like to see
a greater extension in democracy. Voting rights for certain men.
Men, not women, one should add. Not servants, not beggars.
Religious toleration.
This is the type of England Lilburne would like to see.
It was a fascinating and fabulous moment in British history.
The Levellers, by The Agreement of the People
were proposing a bill of rights
that would give individuals,
autonomous individuals, certain rights against government.
So that is a very important, profoundly important idea today.
But the Roundhead forces were divided.
Even a committed Parliamentarian like Cromwell
feared the Levellers' egalitarian demands would lead to anarchy.
For 13 days, here in the Church of St Mary in Putney,
the two sides took part in a great debate
about the future of the nation.
The position of the generals was put by Cromwell's son-in-law,
Henry Ireton, who said the vote should be restricted
to those who traditionally had it.
To the people who had a stake in the country, who owned a piece of land.
From his point of view, this was only right and proper.
Why should you have a say in government
if you don't own anything, if you're poor?
If you're beholden to a people who are more powerful than you,
they will influence the way that you vote.
This is a profound moment.
There had been popular rebellions before in English history.
These had been about particular issues - food, taxation -
but not about a right to have a say in how government is chosen.
The Levellers began a debate about citizenship and democracy
that continues in modern Britain, and across the world.
It was John Lilburne who said famously,
that although we may die, our ideas will live on,
and it will be for later generations to implement them.
And, after all, this is what we are about today.
I always laugh about the Conservatives who dismiss
the European Convention on Human Rights,
because it goes back to these times
when torture was abolished,
when religious freedom - comparatively - was permitted.
When parliament was sovereign, When we were working out democracy.
These rights go back to Cromwell and the Levellers,
who argued them in this little Putney church.
With the King in prison, the Roundheads could now
set about moulding the nation in their own image.
But playful Cavalier traditions were deeply rooted in British life.
Give me an 'O'. ALL: O! Give me an 'N'. ALL: N!
Give me an 'I'. ALL: I!
And an 'O'. ALL: O!
- And an 'N'. ALL: N! Onion! - CHEERING
Here in Newent, Gloucestershire, the Roundhead struggle
to crush the town's Cavalier spirit has never been forgotten.
There still remains a Cavalier/Roundhead rivalry.
Gloucester being a Roundhead stronghold,
and the rural area surrounding, being Cavalier.
There was fighting going on.
There was a battle around here,
and it can take hundreds of years for that to wear off.
SHOUTING
Every year, the people of Newent reaffirm their Cavalier spirit
with the pleasures of the 850-year-old Onion Fayre.
- CHEERING - Who won?
ALL: Five, four, three,
- two, one. - Go!
The climax of this festival is the World Onion-Eating Championship.
Put your hands in the air when you're finished, lads,
and open your mouths for the judges.
CHEERING
LOUD CHEERING
I've been practicing nearly all week.
This is the fourth year now I've won it.
That was my slowest time ever.
Thank you very much. See you all again, hopefully, next year.
I have got be Cavalier without a doubt.
You have only got to look at today. The party atmosphere, the fun everybody is having.
I couldn't imagine that under Cromwell.
Puritans were not really in favour of fun.
The Puritans felt that a lot of popular behaviour
was bad for the people themselves, even if they liked doing it.
Their approach was to do what was good for the people,
not necessarily what the people merely wanted.
But the Roundheads were confronted by a pleasure-loving people.
And they were never happier than when they were getting drunk.
Puritans pretty much find drunkenness a despicable
form of immodesty.
Drunkenness allows your sins to come to the fore.
Drunkenness means you're out of control,
and you can't act in a godly way.
So, for the Puritan, the alehouses are these great sites of sinfulness,
and have to be policed and disciplined.
I don't know what makes the English a nation of binge drinkers.
There is something about the inhabitants of this island
which means we want to drink too much,
and not just get amusing with it, but actually pick a fight with it.
Of course, the Roundheads were terribly disapproving
about alcohol, because it is fundamentally pretty anti-social.
Drunken British people are absolutely appalling.
Where the Cavaliers have won,
is that, I think, most of the British population,
whatever their political beliefs, actually,
feel they have the right to get drunk if they want to.
They have the right to eat what they want to,
even if it makes them fat, they have the right not go for a run.
That's their business.
They're perfectly happy with the government saying,
"You can't get drunk and then drive."
That's absolutely fine, but not, "You can't get drunk."
Perhaps that's the line between Roundhead and Cavalier.
In 1648, the Roundheads turned their attention
to one of the most popular forms of public entertainment,
the theatre.
Parliament issued an order for the "utter suppression
"and abolishing of all stage-plays."
Puritans were very suspicious of the theatre,
and almost everything involved with it.
They thought some of the plots were dealing with unsuitable subjects.
Violence, or bawdy comedy, they didn't like that.
They strongly disapproved of the actors -
the fact that all the female roles were taken
by young boys in drag, essentially,
and they said the emotions being created on stage were, of course,
artificial and false emotions - that was bad.
And finally they disapproved of the audiences,
that different ages and sexes were jumbled together,
and that theatres attracted pickpockets and prostitutes.
The Roundhead mission to control the people's pleasures
unleashed a culture war between high-minded Puritans
and populist Cavaliers.
It continues to this day.
The Cavalier culture has absolutely won out, as far as the arts go.
It is sort of pushing out high art by popular art.
I feel deeply oppressed at what I see
when I run through the programmes on the television.
Oh! Watch it!
What I suspect about the drama is that it's facile, mostly.
It's designed to please.
It knows that it has to please
the greatest possible number of the population.
Oh, that dirty, disgusting monster!
There's a kind of run of repeated gestures,
and repeated emotions, which people satisfy themselves on,
like sausage in a bun, or ice cream.
Those things are OK, but too much of them isn't good for your life,
I feel, being a Roundhead.
I think that this is a very old contest
between the Roundhead critic of frivolity
and the Cavalier enjoyer of it.
- Welcome to Downton. - Lady Grantham, this is so kind of you.
Not at all, Duke. We're delighted you could spare the time.
Very popular shows, of any kind,
bring out a sort of anger
among a certain kind of journalist.
I don't know what it is, quite.
Sometimes, you could say it's envy of the fact that their message
is reaching so few, and this other message,
which they consider worthless, is reaching so many.
That may be a good part of it.
Certainly, there is a Roundhead anger
at the extent of popular culture's reach.
But I don't think that's ever going to change.
Mama, may I present Matthew Crawley and Mrs Crawley.
My mother, Lady Grantham.
What should we call each other?
We could always start with "Mrs Crawley" and "Lady Grantham".
As the Puritan revolution unfolded,
the Roundhead parliament was still being challenged by Cavaliers
demanding the King's release from prison.
In 1649, Cromwell took action to assert Parliament's supremacy.
He put the King on trial for treason and war crimes against the people.
Putting the King on trial was almost inconceivable.
It is unthinkable.
Kings have been killed on the battlefield,
kings have been assassinated.
But trying a monarch - a divinely appointed king,
the power that exists by God's authority -
trying a king by authority of the people is almost unprecedented.
On the morning of January 20th, 1649,
Charles I was marched into Westminster Hall.
Up to 10,000 people watched
as the Roundhead Solicitor General John Cook and his team
prepared to make legal history.
What they do is make an argument that separates the office of King
from the person of the King,
and what they are prosecuting is a wilful, wicked tyrant -
an individual not a king.
Everyone was aware of what an ominous moment it was
and what an iconic moment it was in British history.
It was the symbol of the end of absolute power.
And there's a telling moment. This is the King,
the man who is used to having his every whim served.
At some point, the silver top of his cane
falls off and rolls to the floor.
The King expects somebody else to pick it up
but he's instructed to pick it up himself.
And at that little moment, I think,
we can see the theatre of power that's going on.
These days, we've found a way
to put heads of state on trial
for a particularly heinous crime,
a crime against humanity,
against which their immunity does not operate.
And so Milosevic, Saddam Hussein,
Charles Taylor, Karadzic, and so forth,
will be prosecuted
on the basis that John Cook took the first nervous step
to bring down an all-powerful head of state,
namely on the grounds of their commission
of a crime against humanity, a crime against their own people.
After a seven-day trial the King was found guilty.
He would be executed here,
outside the banqueting hall of Whitehall Palace.
So January 30th, just before two o'clock,
a very nervous, anxious Charles I stepped out onto the scaffold,
having said farewell to his family.
And a few moments later, the axe fell.
SCREAMING
Around the gathered crowd, people reacted by fainting,
women miscarried. There was tremendous horror.
But that horror reverberated around the kingdom.
It was as if a great cataclysm in a sense of order had happened.
Like the twin towers, like those planes smashing into them,
there's a sudden horror and chaos.
The Roundheads now abolished the monarchy and the House of Lords.
An English republic was established.
The Roundhead revolution intensified.
The King had encouraged
the installation of ornate stained-glass windows
in churches all over the country.
The Roundheads were now determined to smash them
as they imposed their own austere form of Protestantism.
Charles loved ritual,
he loved beauty,
he loved holiness as a sort of experience
that brought someone closer to God,
whereas Puritans loved the idea of plain, unadorned, simple -
no stained glass in their churches.
In 1651, the Roundheads went into action
here at Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford.
The orders from the newly-installed dean
are written in the church records.
"All pictures representing God, good or bad angels, or saints,
"shall be forthwith taken down out of our church windows."
Well, when the windows were taken out,
they were laid out on the floor
and one of the canons who was appointed by Cromwell
was so against them being preserved
that he furiously stamped up and down on it,
destroying most of the glass.
Only one out of the 20 stained-glass windows
survived the Roundhead assault,
perhaps because it contains a powerful Roundhead message.
The prophet Jonah is on his way to warn the people of Nineveh
that they must give up the pleasures of the flesh
or face the wrath of God.
It's fantastic. I think it's got so much more detail
than any other stained-glass window in the cathedral
and every time you look at it, you see something new,
there's always something that sticks out that you've never seen before.
For centuries, the smashed stained-glass windows
were thought to have been totally destroyed.
But 13 years ago, the verger spotted something in a pile of rubbish
that was being cleared out of a coal hole.
It was like discovering buried treasure.
It was amazing.
You think, "What have I found?"
If you look at the glass without light behind it,
it looks just like a piece of slate, almost.
But then when I show it to the light...
This is the first piece of glass I found.
You can imagine my surprise!
We've probably most likely got Christ
disputing with the Doctors of Divinity
and all we have here are some of the doctors in that scene.
The central figure, which will have been Christ,
will have been destroyed at the time.
So it's very unlikely that there'll be any images of Christ left.
ALL CHANT: Rooster! Rooster! Rooster!
In 1653, Cromwell was confirmed as head of state,
Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland.
His government intruded ever more deeply into people's lives
and passed a law to make Sunday
a day of worship and quiet contemplation.
Sunday should be hanging out with the guys, having a good time,
drinking a few drinks, watching some football.
There are enough things we're not allowed to do during the rest of the week,
so we deserve to do something we want to do on the Sunday.
Definitely not sitting in church and thinking.
BELL CHIMES
The Puritans wanted the whole of the Lord's day, as they called it,
to be devoted to religion alone, exclusively,
and they pushed through a series of ordinances and parliamentary acts
banning all the things of which they disapproved,
so that every conceivable activity pretty much was prohibited.
Hundreds of activities were banned.
It was forbidden to ride a horse...
sit on your own threshold...
or even to knit on a Sunday.
Where Puritans were in control locally,
they enforced these restrictions very tightly indeed,
and one remarkable case in a village not far from here -
Barnsley in Gloucestershire -
two village women were put in the stocks merely for having gone for a Sunday afternoon stroll,
even though they had already attended
two church services that morning.
Roundhead values would define the British Sunday
well into the 20th century.
Strict licensing laws, shops closed,
no sporting fixtures - an obligatory day of rest.
Sunday...
Without a doubt, the worst day of the week
Everything was shut and the transport didn't run very much.
You were not allowed to do anything.
Church in the morning, walk to the zoo - wow -
Sunday lunch, nothing.
My father said he had to read books
about the holy deaths of little children
and the little children would lie in their beds and die
and the angels would come down and take them to heaven.
And my father said it was absolutely awful, but this was how it was.
Just like hell.
So I can't really support Cromwell and the repression of Sunday sports.
In August 1994, the Sunday Shopping Act
brought 300 years of Roundhead Sundays to an end.
I think if our Roundhead forbearers
could see what we've done to Sundays,
they'd be spinning in their graves like fury.
You can hear their bucket top boots hitting the top of the coffin, just like this.
Because we have 100% ruined Sunday
compared to everything that they believed in.
I would like Sunday to be a quiet day.
I would like everything to stop on a Sunday, as it used to,
for people to be able to spend the day with their families,
for the church bells to ring out across the land,
and for there to be an active interest in the church.
That is what I would like to see.
It's not what I'm going to see in my lifetime.
We fear Sunday, I think.
That's the problem that we've got -
we fear Sunday because it is a void.
If we're not careful, we might have to sit still,
be quiet and think about stuff, and this is the thing that none of us
let ourselves do any more.
And, of course, for the Puritans
that's exactly what you should do on a Sunday.
You should use it as an opportunity to explore your mind,
explore your spirituality.
Sunday had now been claimed for the Roundheads.
At the same time, they also passed a law
to abolish the celebration of Christmas.
Puritans strongly disapproved of Christmas.
They pointed out that there was no evidence that Christ was born on that particular day.
They pointed out too
that it had its origins as a Pagan mid-winter festival
and they strongly disapproved of the fact
that it had been turned into a general occasion for feasting,
merry-making, drinking, general profanity.
All those things were wrong in their eyes.
How miserable can you be?
How miserable can you be
that you do away with Christmas?
That should say it all about Oliver Cromwell!
I don't know how people can admire Cromwell!
# Have a holly jolly Christmas
# It's the best time of the year
# I don't know if there'll be snow... #
The Cavaliers fought back.
They circulated pamphlets
attacking the Puritan assault on the old Christmas.
People hated the fact Christmas was abolished
and even more hated the idea that they were supposed to treat it simply as another working day,
and, for the most part, they refused to accept that new regulation.
Despite the full force of the Roundhead state,
Cromwell failed to crush the Cavalier spirit of Christmas.
What you see now is a Christmas which is almost entirely Pagan.
Bringing in Christmas trees, giving of gifts, lighting candles,
all of that - this is the very much older history
that Cromwell couldn't eliminate.
The Roundheads have been absolutely defeated on Christmas.
I think Jesus may have been defeated on Christmas.
HUNTING HORN SOUNDS
It's like a cavalry charge, and it's every man for himself.
You have to be an adrenaline junkie to do it. You really do.
In the early 21st century,
there was a new standoff between Roundheads and Cavaliers.
In 2004, demonstrators invaded Parliament
to protest against the passing of the Hunting Act,
which outlawed hunting foxes with hounds.
And the two tribes went to war once more.
I think very much that those of us who support hunting see themselves,
and probably rightly, as the descendants of the Cavaliers.
Certainly, the rank and file of the Parliamentarians,
if they were alive today, they would be hunt saboteurs.
The Atherstone Hunt in Leicestershire
is one of the oldest in Britain.
A loophole in the law permits them to continue running with hounds,
but only if a bird of prey is used for the kill.
Parliament has set out to ban hunting,
and that makes us a criminal. Should we kill a fox, we are a criminal.
Here we are.
There's absolutely loads of kit in this little bag.
From hats to gloves to nets...
Members of the League Against Cruel Sports
are now keeping close watch on hunts across Britain.
If the hunt is breaking the law, then with a bit of luck
we'll get good evidence, to catch them, possibly,
with their pants down, you know, by being hidden.
I think it's important that Parliament's will is upheld,
simply because if you believe in democracy, the law is the law.
And if we start choosing which law we want to abide by,
then we will soon slip into anarchy and civil unrest.
HUNTING HORN SOUNDS
A Roundhead Britain? Haven't we just lived through it?
People being told what they can and cannot do,
limitations on all our activities.
And I don't just mean hunting - there are plenty of other activities
that were limited by Mr Blair and his friends.
I'm afraid I think that modern Britain is decidedly Roundhead
because I measure that by,
"How much intrusion do we have from the state in our daily lives?"
Oh, and they try to protect us against ourselves
like very good Roundheads.
To play conkers, you must put goggles on,
don't do the backstroke in swimming baths in case you crack your dear little head at the end of it -
all with the force of law!
Oh, Cromwell would have loved it.
He would have loved it.
# And he will the right
# To be a pilgrim. #
For all men and women of good will,
and especially for thy servant Oliver Cromwell...
ALL: We give thee thanks, O God.
For all associated with him in the struggle for liberty,
justice and truth...
ALL: We give thee thanks, O God.
Oliver Cromwell ruled as Lord Protector for nearly five years
until his death on September the 3rd, 1658.
Every year on this day,
the Cromwell Association gathers to mark the anniversary.
Cromwell is one of the great Britons
and, indeed, at the end of the last millennium
when they had various polls, he did make the top ten.
He didn't come first, unfortunately,
but he is one of the formative influences
in English and British history, for good and ill.
He's still a controversial person. He should still be remembered.
Cromwell was a great man. A greatly great man.
He bestrides English history like a colossus.
I mean, the time of his rule is usually whited out,
because he's the only non-royal,
which makes him, of course,
enormously important and infinitely superior to any of the royals.
I have no instinct towards vandalism at all
except when I pass Oliver Cromwell's statue outside the House of Commons
and I dearly wish I could push it over.
The conflict goes on.
But even the Cromwell Association
has called a truce with the monarchy.
We pray for our Queen and for all who are called at this time
to serve the state and lead the people.
'I don't think there is a contradiction in having prayers for both,'
the protector who was a regicide
'and having a prayer for the reigning monarch.'
Amen.
The impact of the Civil War,
the tide of blood, the regicide, all the overturning,
had a lasting effect on the British and the English psyche.
It makes us shy away from civil war, it makes us shy away from extremism.
So we're a broad church, and we're inclusive.
Within two years of Cromwell's death, the monarchy was restored.
MUSIC: God Save The Queen
A Cavalier triumph.
But the new constitution placed significant limits on royal power.
The Roundheads had put Britain on the road to parliamentary democracy.
If we look at the 21st century, I think we are a republic in all but name.
Of course, we have a Queen,
we will soon have King Charles III...
..but in fact they have no power
and I think this is the legacy of the Roundheads.
Over 350 years after the Civil War came to an end,
Roundhead values have even infiltrated the Royal Family.
The Queen herself, it seems to me, is by instinct a sort of Roundhead -
dutiful, she knows the rules,
she abides by a code of behaviour that is very precise
and very austere, in some ways.
I mean, she lives a sort of very careful life.
Whereas Prince Charles, it seems to me, is sort of King Charles again.
There is somebody, we understand, to put toothpaste on his toothbrush.
This is a man who probably does deep down believe
in the divine right of kings.
Centuries of conflict
have had a surprising effect on the British character.
It now seems there's a little bit of Roundhead and Cavalier in us all.
In some ways, it's a strangely self-defining aspect
of our politics that people feel they are slotted into one or the other
and then spend quite a lot of time trying to break the mould.
I think fascinatingly at the moment we probably have
a prime minister who is, by instinct, a Cavalier,
but realises that the whole Bullingdon Club,
"let your hair down" person who is kind of born to rule
is a very dangerous aspect of his perhaps unfair public persona.
So Cameron spends a great deal of his time,
I think, trying to play down the Cavalier aspects of his image
and trying to play up the Roundhead ones.
Conversely, Ed Miliband seems to me to be probably a natural Roundhead.
He is somebody who seems to me to have a very clear and crisp set of ideas
of where he wants to go.
On the other hand, he's fighting the perception
that actually he's very boring.
I think the Cavaliers did win.
We have a society which is a pyramid of snobbery and wealth.
That seems to me a Cavalier Britain.
We are definitely getting more Cavalier.
We are now getting more Cavalier.
And that's not a good thing.
There are no Roundheads telling you what to do and what not to do,
you are encouraged to be a Cavalier and just get on with it on your own.
But, actually, most people are now suddenly realising
that you've got to have a bit of Roundhead backbone
in your Cavalier existence
or else it all implodes.
Over the last few decades
we've probably become a more Roundhead society.
I think we are much more carefully controlled,
there are many more CCTV cameras around
that I think Oliver Cromwell and his like would certainly have approved of.
On the other hand, I think, as a reaction to that,
when the Cavalier spirit breaks out, it breaks out with all feathers on.
And so I think in a way we've probably become more extreme
in both aspects of the national character.
Roundhead...
..or Cavalier?
The battle continues.
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