- 20 minutes ago
Tells the story of the British Civil Wars, seen from the perspective of the people right across the British Isles. In Dublin, Cornwall and the Black Country, he finds evidence of how the conflict split communities and cost people their lives, but also gave rise to the seeds of modern democracy.
揭示了工业革命那段非凡的历程，正是这场革命将英国转变为世界上第一个工业社会。
揭示了工业革命那段非凡的历程，正是这场革命将英国转变为世界上第一个工业社会。
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TVTranscript
00:07The story of the British is a tale of invention and creativity, but also of constant struggle.
00:16The tale has been told many times and in different ways, but this is about the people's experience,
00:23told with the help of communities right across the British Isles.
00:30The real makers of our story were the people themselves, for it was they, often in the face of great
00:36adversity, who created our rights and our freedoms.
00:42And in that story, the next great turning point is the 17th century.
00:49Then the ordinary people fought their rulers for democracy itself.
00:54And for the first time in our story, the tales of all the peoples of Britain come together in one
01:00common narrative.
01:02It's the next chapter of the Great British Story.
01:07MUSIC
01:08MUSIC
01:20At the start of the 17th century,
01:22The British Isles were poised between the Old World and the New.
01:28In 1603, Elizabeth I dies childless.
01:32And the English invite the King of the Scots, James VI, to come down here to London and to rule
01:39the Kingdom of England and Wales, and Ireland too.
01:42And of course, James' perspective is not an English one. He's a Scot.
01:47MUSIC
01:50He sees the British world from the north.
01:54In his lifetime, he'd seen the terrible divisions that had afflicted the island.
01:58And in his mind, crystallises the idea of Great Britain, a single kingdom under one monarch and one law, encompassing
02:08the whole of the Isles.
02:15MUSIC
02:15A new flag to symbolise this union of what James called North and South Britain.
02:24Now, there were many, of course, north and south of the border, who vehemently disagreed with that vision of the
02:30future, but at that moment, it's a time of optimism.
02:36MUSIC
02:42A typical English community then was Hales Owen in the Black Country.
02:47It was a metal working place.
02:50There had been cutlers and blade makers here since the 1200s.
02:54Back in the Reformation, they'd survived the Tudor religious crises in relative calm.
03:02MUSIC
03:02Like most of the country by now, the people here had accepted the new Protestant religion.
03:08But fatefully, it would be their metal working skills that would draw them into war.
03:151618, here in Hales Owen, must have seemed a year like any other day.
03:20The wars and revolutions, the violence which would engulf the British Isles in the 17th century,
03:27and sweep across the Black Country, turning neighbour against neighbour, wasn't even a cloud on the horizon.
03:34We know about life here from the church warden's books, which show us the time through the people's eyes.
03:41MUSIC
03:43When you open the church warden's accounts for those years, it's the simple record of an English community rubbing along
03:52together.
03:56MUSIC
03:59The charitable donations, church festivals, King James' holy day at the end of July.
04:10MUSIC
04:11But the great event for the village was the decision taken by the parish to cast a new Great Bell.
04:19Paid for ale at the Black Boy Tavern in Hales Owen, when we agreed for the casting of the Great
04:27Bell.
04:29Paid in earnest of the bargain.
04:35To cast their Great Bell, the villagers dug a casting pit in the churchyard.
04:40Here the bell-maker worked, with the villagers' help.
04:50Puritans then saw church bells as a superstitious hangover from the old Catholic religion.
04:58But Hales Owen wasn't a fanatical place.
05:02And they threw themselves into the project with energy and enthusiasm.
05:10In a proud metal-working town, every detail mattered.
05:16MUSIC
05:16Paid to John Hadley for fetching the bell metal from Birmingham, 12 pence.
05:22Paid for oil to the bells, 3 pence.
05:26Paid for leather to make the boldrics, 4 pence.
05:33Paid to John Hadley for fetching the clay to make the moulds, 4 shillings.
05:40Paid for the fetching of horse muck to make the moulds, 16 pence.
05:49Paid for men to help us out of the ground with the bell on the morrow after the casting, 4
05:55shillings.
05:59This is how it's been done since Taylor's was here, kind of thing.
06:04And if this method works, why change it?
06:09Paid to the bell caster for casting our great bell, 4 pounds and 10 shillings.
06:30And so there we've got the date it was made.
06:33And then round the other side we have the inscription.
06:36Even in 2011, these things matter to people.
06:41This will ring out for, hopefully, thousands of years, providing it's looked after and whatnot.
06:48And there we are.
06:49That must make the job extra satisfying, Anthony.
06:51It does, it does. It certainly does.
07:01So in 1618, Hales Owen's great bell rang out, as it still does.
07:07But in March 1625, it tolled for the death of the old King James and rang in the new, Charles
07:14I.
07:16A fateful moment for all British people.
07:21It would make the black country a crucible of war as Britain turned its ploughshares into swords.
07:31King James had been a canny politician, keeping religious and political tensions in balance.
07:39But King Charles was a different kettle of fish.
07:41He had no political sense.
07:43Not least, as we'll see, with his own parliament in London.
07:48But it was Charles' religious policies towards the Celtic world, towards the Scots and the Irish,
07:55which in the end would lead to disaster.
08:00The problem was the idea of Great Britain itself.
08:05The English, Welsh and Scots were now Protestant nations, but in Catholic Ireland the people would have none of it.
08:12So the English government planned to civilise the Irish by colonisation.
08:17Starting in the 1580s, the English government had encouraged settlers to build farms in Ireland, plantations.
08:26They came from Devon and Cornwall, but were mainly Scots Protestants.
08:31We've been here for hundreds of years now.
08:36They came for better land, to escape persecution perhaps back in Scotland,
08:41to improve their lot and make things better for their families.
08:47I see myself as being Ulster Scots, very much as sort of a foot in both camps as it were.
08:55It's part of my being, who I am, where I belong.
09:02And that pride in their Scottish roots is still tenaciously kept by the Ulster Scots.
09:09In Anna Long County Down, it's Burns Night.
09:12The Hannah family came to Ulster in the 17th century, driven by famine and poverty.
09:18Whatever the circumstances were, I'm not too sure, but I'm sure at that time
09:21that was the right thing to do for the family to move here.
09:25Obviously, we've managed okay ever since moving.
09:28So, yeah, I suppose that was a good decision, yeah.
09:30In a sense, the Ulster Scots were returning to their ancient roots,
09:34for in the dark ages, the Scotty had come from Ireland, as Burns himself said.
09:39He opened up with the words,
09:41I cannot forget that the Ulster man is blood of my blood and bone of my bone.
09:47Now, he got it the wrong way round.
09:50The Scotch man is blood of the Ulster man's blood
09:54and bone of the Ulster man's bone, but a share of sentiment.
10:04But in the 17th century, it was not blood, but religion and culture that would divide them.
10:16Ireland's misfortune in this coming age of atrocities
10:19was perhaps not so much the arrival of hard-working colonists
10:22as the tragic divisions born of Reformation politics.
10:35The English government's plan for colonisation involved founding towns,
10:41building churches, suppressing Irish culture,
10:43all driven by their bitter anti-Irish and anti-Catholic agenda.
10:49And in 1641, the Irish rose in revolt.
10:54The rebellion of 1641 is hugely significant for the history of Ireland,
11:00but also for the history of Scotland and England.
11:02So those three Stuart kingdoms, Michael.
11:05More people lost their lives during this particular moment of intense violence
11:11than in any other period in Ireland's history.
11:14It triggers or unleashes a whole series of events
11:17that really plunges these three kingdoms into utter turmoil and crisis.
11:23We have a decade of very, very intense civil war
11:26that resulted in great blood-bletting in all three kingdoms.
11:33Across the Irish countryside, the rebels butchered the settlers.
11:39The story is told in an archive unique in British and European history.
11:44We're coming into the deposition here where Elizabeth Price and the other settlers
11:49are being herded onto the bridge at Port Adown.
11:55The poor widow of a settler, Elizabeth Price's testimony is one of more than 3,000 witness statements
12:02to the atrocities of 1641.
12:05They are driven like sheep or beef to a market.
12:10Those poor prisoners being about 115 to the bridge of Port Adown.
12:18The said captain and rebels then forced all those prisoners
12:26and amongst them the deponent's five children,
12:31by name Adam, John, Anne, Mary and Joan,
12:36off the bridge into the water
12:38and there instantly and most barbarously drowned the most of them.
12:48Those that could swim and came to the shore,
12:52they knocked them in their hedge
12:56and thereafter drowned them,
12:59also shot them to death in the water.
13:04It's really powerful stuff.
13:06And it goes on page after page like this.
13:10Yeah, like modern war atrocities almost, isn't it?
13:13And her five children, are they killed?
13:15They're all drowned and that's what she's describing there
13:18is the loss of her own children.
13:20The depositions get used a lot in later times
13:24to sustain sectarian interpretations of history, don't they?
13:29How important is religion, though?
13:31I think religion's hugely important.
13:33Religion meant a huge amount to people living in the 17th century,
13:37whether they were Catholic or Protestant.
13:39And what comes out here, even in Elizabeth Price's deposition,
13:44is that fundamental hatred that has bubbled to the surface.
13:48The rebels target churches, they piss on Bibles,
13:52they dig up Protestant graves.
13:53Again, it's this struggle and turmoil.
13:56It's an age of religious wars
13:59and this is Ireland actually's own encounter and experience with that.
14:09The rebels were a confederacy of Irish and old English Catholic families
14:14who'd lived in Ireland since the Middle Ages.
14:16For nearly ten years, they'll be effectively an independent Ireland.
14:24Meanwhile, on the mainland, the Presbyterian Scots too had risen against Charles,
14:29in fury at his attempt to impose an Anglican prayer book.
14:35Charles marched north to suppress them,
14:37but they defeated him and forced him to pay huge war reparations.
14:42The edges of Charles's Great Britain were burning.
14:49King Charles had ruled through the 1630s without Parliament, the 11 years tyranny they called it.
14:57But now, bankrupted by his wars with the Scots and with the situation in Ireland worsening,
15:03Charles was forced to recall Parliament to ask for more money.
15:07But the majority in Parliament were bitterly opposed to him and disputed his right to raise any tax without their
15:14consent,
15:15especially to raise armies within Britain.
15:18It had become a fundamental matter of political authority.
15:22Did it reside with the King or did it reside with Parliament?
15:26Both sides now began to raise armies and prepare for war.
15:33The war would split regions, neighbours and even families.
15:38Western Britain was especially for the King, the rich south-east for Parliament.
15:43In the black country, Hales Owens' Lord was a Royalist,
15:47while Puritan radical Birmingham went with Parliament.
15:51Sunderland supported Parliament.
15:54Newcastle was with the King.
15:59In Edinburgh, the Scots made their covenant against Charles, for now.
16:05English armies rampaging in Ireland, the Scots marching through England.
16:10These were British civil wars.
16:12The Welsh were largely Royalist, confirming the view in London that Wales was a dark corner of Britain.
16:34In August 1642, the King raised his standard at Nottingham.
16:39And then, moving his army to Shrewsbury, he sent his recruiting men into the villages.
16:45This morning, we're going to talk about possible careers within the army.
16:48Among them was the little Shropshire farming community of Middle.
16:52I joined the British army a little bit younger than yourselves, I was 16.
16:56And we know what happened here from a unique village history written by a local, Richard Gough.
17:01There's about 140 different jobs in there.
17:04The attraction for the boys then was regular pay.
17:08Four shillings and eightpence a week was over 400 pounds today.
17:13A good wage for a farm labourer.
17:16Right lads, you've heard me grab it on for the last half hour or so.
17:19Is anybody considering making an application if they're not successful with their football career?
17:24You said, uh-uh, why not?
17:26Don't want to die.
17:27Don't want to die? I'm here!
17:31If you're told to do it by the government of the day, irrespective of you agree politically, you should be
17:38professional enough to do the job that you signed on to do.
17:42The village economy had hit hard times and 20 boys from Middle joined up, swearing their oath of allegiance to
17:50defend King Charles with their utmost.
17:55The King commanded all men between the age of 16 and 60 to appear on Middle Hill.
18:02And if any person would serve as a soldier in the wars, he should have 14 groats a week for
18:06his pay.
18:10I was about eight years old and went to see this great show.
18:14In the late summer of 1642, you would have seen scenes like this across Britain.
18:22Musters, trained bands, volunteers, a nation divided.
18:27It was the first war that involved us all.
18:36In Leicestershire, the village of Cibworth was occupied by both sides at different times during the war.
18:42And there were dead bodies here in Main Street after the battle nearby at Naseby.
18:48Charles' army actually camps in the village and the other villages around before Naseby.
18:53And, of course, once the battle's been lost, they're swarming through here.
18:57They go into the posture of order. Most of you are at order.
19:02We know the term, running a man through, comes from the pipe.
19:05Oh, does it? Yeah, it's literally run at them, through, push the body off the end.
19:09Gruesome!
19:12I'm grateful I am to be living in the 21st century, that's all I can say.
19:18At the start of the war, censorship was relaxed and printed news and propaganda
19:23became important for the first time in our history.
19:28There were proportionally more young men with higher education than at any time before the 20th century.
19:34So the rank and file were literate and politically aware.
19:39We hear that the king is on his way to Nottingham to raise an army to put parliament down.
19:47Parliament is an important part of how this country runs.
20:04Fire!
20:05Fire!
20:14After the first indecisive pitched battle at Edge Hill, things settled down to a war of attrition across Britain.
20:29Gradually, the conflict drew in the regions.
20:35And one of the most bitter and prolonged struggles in the British mainland was in Cornwall,
20:41which stuck with the king through thick and thin.
20:53On the eve of the Civil War, the Cornish were still seen as a separate nation within England,
21:01a nation with its own language and customs.
21:03And the Cornish saw King Charles as representing British rather than English interests,
21:10and hence Cornish interests and Cornish religion.
21:15And so they backed the king in the Civil War.
21:18And for Cornish identity and Cornish culture, that turned out to be a disaster.
21:26Here in the hills outside Foy, Parliament had its biggest defeat.
21:30And the battlefield's now being mapped in a project using metal detectors and GPS.
21:37The added gain for Cornish nationalists, it was Cornwall's greatest triumph.
21:43Yep, that's looking good.
21:46That's the only English one we do have working with us.
21:49You tolerate him, do you?
21:51Yeah.
21:54Huge interest, isn't it?
21:55I mean, it's the greatest battle in the Civil War in the South West,
21:58but it's a Cornish victory as well, isn't it, John?
22:01Oh, yes, yes, yes, it's Cornish, yes.
22:03John and Graham are mapping every bullet, every buckle,
22:07and every powder cap left on the battlefield.
22:11Out of this, they're hoping to create the most detailed map ever of a British battle.
22:16That's a good sound.
22:18So what's that responding to then?
22:21It'd be a musket ball, I reckon.
22:23Fair, fair, here, there.
22:25Yes, here.
22:30And we don't want it to damage the musket ball.
22:37Yeah, if you look at the impact on it, this will be done by the rod here, look.
22:42That is the ramming.
22:43Right.
22:44And if you look on the alert, see where the impacts are?
22:48Wow.
22:48So that's an impact one.
22:49It's been fired?
22:50It's been fired, definitely fired.
22:52And how many of these have you discovered then?
22:556,000.
22:566,000?
22:586,000, yeah.
22:59I've never seen a project like this.
23:02I've never seen a battlefield so amazingly observed before.
23:08And as the vast number of finds are mapped, the chaos of battle begins to take on a pattern.
23:15Each and every musket ball is recorded.
23:18As you can see on this map here, how much fire...
23:21The ferocious fighting along the hedgerows, the Civil War killing grounds.
23:25If you look at how much is here, it's colossal.
23:30The terror of a Civil War firestorm as the doomed parliamentarian army under the Earl of Essex was cornered here
23:39above Foy.
23:41The parliamentarians refer to this as the Cornish mousetrap.
23:46They're trapped in this little area of land between Foy and St Blasey.
23:51They're running out of food, they're running out of ammunition.
23:54They're hoping that supplies will come by sea, but the wind is in the wrong direction and nothing's coming.
24:00And also, they're very heavily outnumbered.
24:03I mean, Essex himself claims that the Royalist horse were coming in in a great cloud.
24:17There were rules of war to protect civilians, and in the mainland they were usually observed.
24:25But there were war crimes.
24:28Before the battle, the Cornish town of Lost Withial had been occupied and badly treated by the parliamentarians.
24:35And now the townsfolk vented their fury on the defeated prisoners.
24:43Another bridge, another scene of savagery.
24:49We're told that they tore off their hats, their coats, their clothes, and threw a number of them actually into
24:56this river.
24:57And they didn't just attack the parliamentarian soldiers, they also attacked the women who were coming with them, their camp
25:03followers.
25:04They even threw a pregnant woman into this water, having taken, you know, most of her clothes away.
25:10And, you know, according to a parliamentarian source, at least, she died as a result of the treatment she had
25:15received in.
25:17You get an impression from a lot of the sources of the time that the English viewed the Cornish as
25:23being kind of primitive, barbarian, boorish...
25:26Yeah, absolutely.
25:28...peasants, almost.
25:29There's a racial hierarchy, if you like, through the eyes of Englishmen in London, with the English at the top,
25:35the Irish at the bottom.
25:36And the Welsh and Cornish somewhere sort of rather uncomfortably in between.
25:39And during the Civil War, parliamentary propagandists go out of their way to draw parallels between the Welsh and Cornish,
25:45to almost alienise them still further, if you like.
25:47And at the same time, I think the Royalists did their best to work things the other way, and to
25:51present the King as a particular defender of the Cornish.
25:54Someone who's particularly anxious to preserve their rights and their traditions and customs.
25:58So both sides, if you like, trying to use Cornishness to their own end.
26:10So eating up men, money and resources, the war spread out to touch the farthest corners of Britain.
26:18But so far as we can tell, most ordinary people resisted being brutalised.
26:25Our local records give us vivid glimpses of human kindness.
26:30Seeing three of the prisoners badly bleeding, I dressed their wounds.
26:35Captain Palmer told me not to help the enemies of God.
26:38I replied, I had a duty to treat them as men, not as enemies.
26:44And what the war was like at village level is revealed in our local constables' books,
26:49with their charity to wounded soldiers, paupers and refugees.
26:53The parish constables' accounts, 1640 to 1666.
27:00Lying on the Great North Road, the village of Upton saw the constant movement of armies.
27:06In the 17th century, you had constables in every village.
27:11And they're not like the police constables today, but they were the origin of them.
27:15Upton, like many other places, would have seen soldiers at least every week.
27:21And there'd be one person in that troop who would be a treasurer,
27:23and he would have a book of receipts, handwritten receipts or printed receipts,
27:28and they would collect things from the village constable.
27:30And this account book has all of those collections.
27:34And one of the constables in Upton was a woman, Jane Kitchen.
27:40Given to six Irish people that had great loss both by sea and land, sixpence.
27:51Paid for a pair of boots for a soldier, two shillings.
28:00Given for carrying the clubs and pikes to Newark, the 17th of May, sixpence.
28:11So what do you think it was like to live here at your age at that time?
28:15Do you think it was scary? Would you like to have been alive then?
28:18You might be freaked out because you don't know what's going to happen.
28:21I think it would have been quite horrible,
28:25and so you might have to move to different places.
28:29It would be kind of weird seeing more, like, the dead bodies and stuff.
28:34What are the rules of war, Martin?
28:35I mean, I'm there with my two little daughters like Ella and Emily here,
28:39and the soldiers come into the town.
28:41Would they just go into our barn and steal our corn?
28:44There are very clear rules.
28:47You are not supposed to plunder anybody.
28:49And most soldiers that are based in this area nearby aren't going to cause a mess.
28:55However, if this is an area occupied by royalists, for example,
28:59a parliamentarian regiment might be a bit less polite about giving out quittances.
29:04And if there's been a siege and a town is stormed,
29:07that is, it's attacked and the attackers get into the town,
29:10and then, again, theoretically, you're not supposed to take things from people's houses,
29:17or kill civilians, or injure them in any way, or burn their house down.
29:22But that sort of thing, unfortunately, does happen.
29:24Would, like, the mum and dad care if they went to war?
29:28If the children went to war, yes, they would, if they liked you.
29:33I mean, if they didn't like you, they'd probably be quite happy.
29:35They'd pack you some sandwiches and off you go.
29:38Yes, parents would be very, very worried if their children went to war.
29:44It's not just a danger of being shot or stabbed or mangled by a cannonball,
29:49but you can catch terrible diseases,
29:52because it's frightening and horrible, and you may never see them again.
30:01And, of course, many young men in the Civil Wars were never seen again.
30:06In Middle, 13 of the 20 boys never returned.
30:11Looking back in his old age, Richard Gough recorded their names and their stories.
30:20Thomas Haywood, brother to Joseph Haywood, the innkeeper in Middle.
30:25He was killed in the wars, but no-one knows where.
30:32Rhys Vaughan, a brother of William Vaughan, a weaver in Middle.
30:36He was killed at Hopton Castle and cut into pieces.
30:43Thomas Taylor, son of Henry Taylor of Middle, was killed at Oswell Street.
30:51John Bennion of Newton, a tailor who married Elizabeth, the daughter of John Hall of Middle.
30:58Soon after, he went for a soldier and died in the wars.
31:02Richard Chaloner of Middle, son of Richard Chaloner and brother of Alan Chaloner, the blacksmith.
31:08A big lad who went to Edge Hill to fight and was never heard of afterwards in this country.
31:20If so many died out of this small place, said Gough,
31:25how many thousands died in England in that war?
31:35For the British people, it was the first modern war.
31:38And making the munitions needed to fight it transformed the economy.
31:4517th century Britain didn't have an arms industry.
31:49But now in Hales-Owin and across the black country, their metal working skills were turned to weapons of war.
31:58It looks like the lost city of the Inca is still in there, with the roots coming out of the
32:02stonework.
32:04But this is one of the most important and most interesting and least known sites for industrial archaeology in the
32:12whole of Britain.
32:13This is the site of Hales Furnace.
32:16With this flow of water, there must have been ironmasters working here from the Middle Ages.
32:23But this landscape was transformed soon after 1600 with the creation of a furnace.
32:29They dammed the river, created this weir with all this stonework around it,
32:34a big water wheel and with it huge bellows made out of leather and wood which drove the blast furnace.
32:43And from then on, you became one of the most important iron-producing places in the country.
32:50Agricultural tools, ploughs, spades, mattocks, all that sort of stuff.
32:55But also weapons, pikes and gun barrels for the Civil War.
33:00Now in the forges of the black country, ploughshares literally were turned into swords.
33:06The lockmakers of Wolverhampton making firing mechanisms.
33:11The scythe makers of Sedgley and Clent, sword blades.
33:15From Starbridge came shot.
33:18From Dudley, Kant.
33:20From Hales Owen, blades and pike heads.
33:23The forges of Hales Owen and Cradley worked for the King.
33:27While Puritan, radical Birmingham supplied Parliament.
33:32So the rivalry between the Brummies and the black country goes back a long way.
33:38We certainly don't like to be classed as Brummies.
33:41And Brummies don't like to be classed as black countries, as they call us yam-yams.
33:46But we are definitely black country.
33:49We're forged in the black country.
33:51Yeah.
33:53Definitely.
33:55As always in history, war generates growth and wealth.
33:59The origins of the black country as the workshop of the world lie in the Civil War.
34:09Robert Porter, Cutler of Birmingham, provided the parliamentarians of Staffordshire with the following.
34:15500 swords, 4 shillings and 8 pounds each.
34:20500 belts, 13 pence each.
34:23500 bandoliers, 16 pence each.
34:27So Birmingham became a key target for the Royalists.
34:31In 1643, the King's dashing nephew, Prince Rupert, attacked the town.
34:36Among the dead were civilians.
34:39On Monday, April 3rd, 1643, Prince Rupert marched against Birmingham
34:46with 2,000 horse and foot.
34:50After two hours' fights, he entered, put diverse people to the sword and burnt about 80 ounces to ashes.
35:02His forces kindled fire in the town with gunpowder and burning coals.
35:07Shooting at anyone who appeared to quench the flames.
35:12Making no difference between friend or foe.
35:20So as the war swept across Britain, more and more civilians were dragged into the conflict.
35:26A thousand dragoons came into Hereford this week.
35:30I fear they will burn my barns and place soldiers so near me that there will be no going out.
35:37And as in all wars, the soldiers left their girls behind.
35:43William, son of a stranger.
35:46Elizabeth, daughter of a soldier, his name unknown but courted in the courthouse.
35:51Even close neighbours were on opposite sides.
35:56Sunderland challenged Royalist Newcastle's coal monopoly.
36:00It's a local pride, it's just a historical battle against each other.
36:05So the Geordies and the Mackhams felt the adrenaline rush of war.
36:11I've been thinking about it all week, sort of like a nervous feeling in my stomach, you know, until it's
36:15over.
36:19As a rhyme of the day said, the Newcastle gallants fighting for the crown
36:24against the cuckolds of Sunderland town.
36:29Everyone paid a price, from Land's End to North Scotland.
36:35In February 1645, a Royalist army, whose corps was Irish, marched all the way through the Highlands
36:43and arrived here in the central square of the little town of Elgin in Mooryshire in North East Scotland.
36:50An amazing document has survived here in Elgin, which gives you a grassroots picture.
36:57of what it was like to live in a small town during the British civil wars.
37:03In the huge Elgin deposition role, today's townsfolk discovered for themselves what it felt like to put up a Royalist
37:11army.
37:12Plundered by the common enemy.
37:15Terrific.
37:15There's a real resonance to it, doesn't it?
37:18From the said Wilwyn Robertson in the month of December 1645.
37:26Alexander Russell, Merchant of Elgin, who was pitifully murdered in May 1645.
37:35Following the losses of Isabel Geddes in Elgin, that there was taken and pundit from her clothes,
37:44aboulement, money, victual, puzzle provision and others of that kind about written.
37:58Vittal, armour, gold, silver, coined and uncoined, household provisions and others of that kind.
38:07Losses to the sum of £144, money.
38:13Did they get the compensation?
38:15The ordinary people, as far as we can tell, never got a penny piece.
38:20However, the provost of the town, a chap called John Hay,
38:24he was given by Parliament an interim payment of £1,000.
38:30Oh, that's a lot of money!
38:32That was to tide him over until he got his full payment of a further £3,600.
38:38Gosh, that's an enormous sum of money.
38:40An enormous sum of money.
38:42But, of course, John Hay was a Member of Parliament.
38:48We all know about them.
38:51The ordinary people had the satisfaction of knowing that they were in the depositions document.
38:57They want to show how grievously they've suffered.
39:02But they do know, I think, deep down, they're not going to get any money back.
39:12In June 1645, King Charles was decisively defeated at Naseby,
39:18by Parliament's new model army under Generals Cromwell and Fairfax.
39:24Charles attempted to claw things back in a second Civil War,
39:28but all the money and material support by now was with Parliament.
39:32And by 1648, it was all over.
39:41In the aftermath, Parliament moved its forces down into Cornwall
39:45to mop up the last stubborn resistance.
40:04For the Cornish people, the bitter circumstances of their final defeat by Parliament
40:10have never been forgotten.
40:13The price of loyally supporting the King would be the eventual loss of their independence,
40:20their language and their culture.
40:25And for the die-hard leadership, there was no escape but the sea.
40:33For the Cornish, 1648 would take its place in their mythology of the tragic defeats,
40:41going back to the 1497 Rising, 1549 Prayer Book Rebellion.
40:46The core of the resistance was here in the tip of the peninsula,
40:50on the Lizard, across there, the Land's End.
40:53The last refuge of the old families, the old culture, the old language.
40:57And after the defeat, the rebels fled to take shelter in these wild coasts and cliff caves,
41:04and even, it was said, down the tin pits.
41:07But the principal firebrands, so a local historian reported, once they were trapped, were so desperate,
41:16that scorning mercy, they joined hands together and ran themselves violently into the ocean,
41:25and perished in the waters.
41:36With the King now in prison and facing trial, a new path in British history opened up.
41:42Political leadership at the beginning of the Civil War period
41:45wanted a readjustment in the balance of power between King and democracy,
41:49between Parliament and the monarchy.
41:52Out of that, they radicalised the ordinary people.
41:57The soldiers were given a catechism based on quotations from the Bible
42:03that supported taking up arms against the King.
42:07So when the war ended and they were told to go home,
42:10the Parliamentarian soldiers said, just a minute, no.
42:13We've got this text that says it's ours, it's our victory.
42:17We want to save.
42:19All the debates we're having now about the nature of Parliament, the nature of the monarchy,
42:23all of these questions were opened up, debated and, interestingly,
42:28solutions found in the 17th century.
42:32It radicalises ordinary people in a way that they've not been involved in central government politics ever before.
42:39Alarmed now by the flood of radical ideas coming from the rank and file,
42:43the army leadership, who were property-owning gentry,
42:46held a public debate about the future of British politics.
42:52St. Mary's Church here in Putney was the place where the victorious members of the Parliamentarian army met to debate
42:59fundamental issues of political liberty.
43:03Fairfax, Ayrton, Cromwell, the generals at a table at that end, the rank and file in the church, radicals like
43:10Rainsborough and Sexby.
43:12Thank you very much.
43:13The place is packed, electric, not quite like tonight perhaps, but then democracy itself was at stake.
43:22Everything in British politics was up for grabs.
43:25We are talking about creating a community of goods and abolishing the wages system and having common and democratic ownership
43:34and control of the means of producing and distributing wealth.
43:37It was the first time that ordinary people were able to take part.
43:41And so you can imagine a whole social gathering of the army people and their families waiting for the results
43:48of these debates.
43:49And that's where you get buff coat and all these lovely ordinary soldiers who are mentioned.
43:54The electoral reform and religious tolerance, all these things were debated.
43:59But the whole crux of it was very much centred on the scriptures, the idea of equality, which they'd got
44:06from the Bible.
44:09Women radicals led by Catherine Chidley petitioned for women's rights in a ferment of democratic ideas.
44:17By natural birth, all men are equal and alike, born to like propriety, liberty and freedom to enjoy their birthrights.
44:24Stand up now.
44:27We judge that all inhabitants should have an equal voice in elections.
44:32I think the poorest man in England has a life to live, as does the greatest man.
44:37Stand up now.
44:39That in all laws made, every person should be bound alike and that no estate, degree, birth or place should
44:45allow any exemption.
44:46Stand up now.
44:47These things we declare to be our native rights, which we have dearly earned.
44:53Yet our peace and freedom depends upon those who intended our bondage and brought a cruel war upon us.
45:01Stand up now.
45:03King Charles was now tried and convicted for crimes against the people.
45:08He was executed here in Whitehall.
45:11As a radical at the time put it, the common people, by their common consent and purse, have overthrown their
45:19oppressor King Charles.
45:21They found justification for it in the law, in history and in the Bible, of course.
45:28Where in the Bible was there justification for one part of mankind ruling another?
45:33Only in selfish imaginations, they said, was one human being set up to rule over others.
45:42The question now was how far would the revolution go?
45:58There were those who wished to push the revolution much further.
46:04Radical groups, levellers and diggers, wanted to do away with class, wealth, privilege, property, the banks.
46:12Declaring the earth a common treasury, they formed a commune on St George's Hill in Surrey.
46:19This is where Winstanley felt called by God to come.
46:25They just took a small area of the land where they planted crops.
46:29They built makeshift houses and they just got on peaceably together.
46:33Putting his spade in the ground, he said about breaking the soil on St George Hill and declaring freedom to
46:39the creation.
46:40Declaring freedom to the creation.
46:47Their chief inspiration was a draper, Gerard Winstanley, who became one of our greatest writers and greatest radicals.
46:57We have no intent of tumult, he said, but to work together in righteousness and to eat the blessings of
47:06the earth in peace.
47:10Posterity, said his friend John Lilburn, we doubt not shall reap the benefit of our endeavours.
47:21It's one of the great stories in British history.
47:24These were ordinary people, inspired, inflamed by the astonishing events of the 1640s, by the teaching of the scriptures and
47:34by basic ideas about social justice.
47:36They decided to take action, to make history for themselves.
47:42Just a bunch of people planting parsnips and carrots, it was said by a sneering contemporary.
47:50But their ideas, what they said, what they did, were in the very fibre of British history.
47:56From the Peasants' Revolt and the Lollards in the 14th century, down through William Blake, to the modern British radical
48:03tradition.
48:05As when Stanley himself had hoped, their ideas became part of our birthright.
48:16But not yet. Inevitably, the levellers were crushed by Parliament.
48:22Cut them to pieces, said Cromwell, or they'll cut you to pieces.
48:29Parliament was now supreme, and with the situation stabilised at home, there was unfinished business over the sea, in Ireland.
48:40In August 1649, a fleet of over 100 ships, loaded with men, weapons and supplies, landed at Ring's End on
48:49the outskirts of Dublin.
48:50For almost ten years, the Irish Confederacy had ruled much of Ireland independent from England.
48:58Cromwell's invasion put an end to that.
49:01Within four years, as many as 500,000 people, or 25% of the population of Ireland, would be dead.
49:15Drogeda, on the River Boyne, County Meath.
49:20The terrible events that took place here, retain an almost mythic force in Irish history.
49:29Cromwell, in fact, was not especially anti-Irish or anti-Catholic.
49:33But he decided to demoralise the Irish with a deliberate act of terror.
49:44When the Royalist garrison refused to surrender, Cromwell ordered them all to be put to the sword.
49:50But with them died seven or eight hundred civilians, men, women and children.
49:57And here they remember it still in exact detail.
50:01He did break in the walls in that little graveyard over there on the 11th of September 1649, with 10
50:09,000 men.
50:12I can't go up and draw it out without knowing who Oliver Cromwell is.
50:17A man who came to our town and massacred the townspeople.
50:23They brought him in the church and the blood run down Scala Street.
50:28That's what they call it Scala Street.
50:30He killed the nuns there, did he?
50:32He killed everybody there, didn't he?
50:36He's a bit of a bollocks.
50:39Atrocities that him and his army committed around the town here.
50:42There's no question that a genocide took place in this area all around us here.
50:48But Cromwell was a vicious kind of guy.
50:52On the streets of Dublin, Cromwell is still a swear word.
50:56Not nice. Not a nice guy. No, no, no. We don't like him.
51:02Cruel man who came and did all sorts of awful things.
51:06It's pure hatred. Simple as hell.
51:19Cromwell's conquest of Ireland was the culmination of a century of English colonisation.
51:24At least 400,000 people are thought to have died from slaughter, starvation and disease.
51:30A fifth of the population.
51:34The British civil wars were almost over.
51:39Parliament's last enemy was their old ally, the Scots.
51:45The Scots had sided with King Charles in the Second Civil War and were now allied to his son, Charles
51:52II.
51:55In 1651, Cromwell mounted his attack on Scotland.
52:00He forced their last line of defence on the Firth of Fourth, defeated the Scots and brought the civil wars
52:08to a close.
52:11One of the great, almost mysteries of the traumatic period in British history is the way in which the conflict
52:18is described as the English Civil War.
52:20As if Scotland or perhaps Ireland had no part in this.
52:22But unfortunately an awful lot of Scottish people were involved and sadly an awful lot of Scottish people died as
52:27well on both sides.
52:30Scotland put up stiff resistance and it was only really when the Battle of Inverkeething in July 1651 was lost
52:37that Scotland fell.
52:40So the conflict fundamentally affected every aspect of Scottish life.
52:45Indeed, after Scotland fell to Cromwell's soldiers and army in 1652, for the next almost ten years until the restoration
52:55in 1660, every aspect of Scottish life changed.
52:58The human cost of the civil wars was huge.
53:02In Britain, maybe 80,000 had died in the battles and more still of disease and famine, a higher proportion
53:08of the population than in the First World War.
53:16Cromwell died in 1658 and in 1660 the monarchy returned.
53:22They were the first of the first, in the first, in the first, in the first, in the first, by
53:27the last, by the last, by the last bell rang in the new King Charles II.
53:34So the monarchy was restored, but with a king whose powers were now limited.
53:41Britain was not yet a democracy but it was a parliamentary state.
53:47in Cornwall in 1660 the restoration was greeted with special feelings of pride in their sufferings
53:54through the war and their loyalty to the crown that's magnificent isn't it it's a fine church
54:00yeah just here above the door is the King's letter original copies of these which were
54:06printed in Oxford as broadsides were stuck up in the churches during the Civil War itself
54:11you see it's royalist propaganda as well as a praise for the Cornish he's pushing his own
54:16cause here and I can imagine the parliamentarian's troops then tore them down in 1646 but after the
54:22restoration they put them up again in these more solid lasting forms in the most public and lasting
54:29manner we can devise commanding copies to be printed and published and one of them to be read in every
54:37church and chapel therein yeah and to be kept forever it's absolutely great isn't it to the
54:45inhabitants of the county of Cornwall we are so highly sensible of their great and eminent courage
54:52against their potent an enemy that we cannot but desire to publish it all to the world and we do
55:02here render our royal thanks to be kept forever as a record as long as the history of these times
55:10and this nation shall continue you will never effectively get away from the radicalism of the
55:2417th century it will reoccur it reoccurs in English politics in the 18th century the French not only use
55:32the radicalism of the English Revolution they take away the terminology the American Revolution
55:38steals wholesale from the English Revolution it's still here now in the English Occupy Movement you
55:46can see them using leveler and digger philosophy straight from the 17th century democracy was a
55:53dangerous word in the 17th century even most parliamentarians thought it could only lead to
56:00anarchy and yet from the Putney debates we can trace that great idea down to our own time to the
56:07universal declaration of human rights and to the political systems under which the majority of the
56:13world now lives and the core idea behind it is the freely elected representatives of the people
56:24irrespective of class gender creed wealth or status and that idea doesn't come from ancient Greece it comes
56:33from 17th century England it comes from buff coat and his fellow soldiers at Putney and from the ordinary
56:40people from tradesmen and tradeswomen like Gerard Wynne Stanley and Catherine Chidley in the English Revolution
56:55so in the 17th century the British and Irish peoples went through their civil wars ordeal a generation of struggle
57:05and violence
57:06the divine right challenged the king executed the monarchy abolished but life went on
57:17the king was restored with an Anglican rather than a Protestant church a typically English compromise
57:30even here in middle the cost had been heavy but as Richard Goff saw it like communities up and down
57:39the land the people of middle had come through rubbing along even when they were on opposite sides and their
57:47descendants still rub along together in the village today you remember their fathers and then their
57:52grandfathers and my age I'm now looking at the the grandsons and I think honey I know four or five
57:59generations of these people they carry the stain of generation just as in golf you know but in 1700 as
58:09golf looked back over his tumultuous century a new age was being born an age of industry and Empire and
58:18with the union of England and Scotland a new identity for us all as Britain's and that's the next part
58:28of
58:28our story it's happening thank you very much I probably don't need a can you hear me at the back
58:33without a microphone it's probably better isn't it thank you very much it's lovely to be here
58:38you don't know how someday in the future you're writing down these things that may seem useless
58:44well not many of them you know