May 30, 2025 • 61 mins
This week, we start a series on the English Civil War and focus on the fighting between King Charles I and the Parliamentarians.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to an hour of our time, the podcast where
we pick a topic, research it and come back to
tell you what we've learned. This week, we're starting our
three part series on the English Civil Wars, beginning with
the first of the civil wars that started in sixteen
forty two between Charles I and the Parliamentarians.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
I'm Dave, I'm Joe, I said, Dave, how are you
doing this? Fine evening?
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Okay, we're in the process of finishing our basement and
it's taken a little while. It's been it's been like
three weeks, but we're getting there. I can finally hopefully
start doing some painting over the weekend and really get
things moving nice.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
You know.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
The thing about the basement though, is that, you know,
because of its large size and the different reasons we
want to use it, we had to sort of divide
it in half, okay, much like a much like a
country split amongst itself.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
I was like, what we we'll go for here?
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Yeah, Like, the the north and west of the basement
is all about the King, south in the east all
about the Parliament, and there's a little space in the
middle that doesn't know what to do.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Make more sense if you were like the I don't
know what. Yeah, like the rural areas of your basement
are on one side, and the the the four urban
areas are on the other side. Amazing except for Oxford.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Well, and you look at you look at what they
were fighting over. And I'm being very very general here,
but it seems like no matter what century we're talking about,
what people were talking about, it all comes down to
religion and.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Taxes, religion, taxes. And then I also think like the
rural urban split seems to be seems to rhyme throughout
at least like quote unquote Western history. I mean, the
Romans were dealing with that shit like we were. You know,
I think you and I were talking about the other day. Yeah, well,
(02:22):
so I do want to say, uh, in honor of
so we are talking about the English Civil Wars period,
and in honor of this, you know, I'm gonna talk
a little bit about food and drink, give like people
a little bit of like a little slice of life
kind of of this time period.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Just yeah, what what bland thing were they eating?
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Then? Oh man, I'm gonna read some stuff. I'm gonna
read some stuff to you, Dave, please, some like from
some cookbooks that I was able to find, but I
never having a conversation. But you know, like sometimes like
because it's the evening, you know, my kids are in bed,
like we're relaxed. I was hanging out. Usually you have
(03:07):
like a a drink to kind of sometimes go with
the podcast, and I was like, what should I have?
And we talked about like maybe I would have I
was like, do I want to be like the parliamentarians,
and like maybe I would have some some beer, you know,
like if I was going for like the royalists, and
I'll probably drink some wine. And Dave suggested, maybe I
can have some meat. I actually have some might do
(03:29):
that next time, but I don't know. I had it
in there. I happened to have it in the fridge,
So I guess I'm outing my my loyalties here, but
I do. I am drinking and English ale mm hm,
which is actually one of my favorite styles of beer.
So I figured I probably am not going to have
(03:49):
the when we film or when we recorded the next episode.
And that is a great time for us to say
that everyone you should strap the fuck because we are
doing a three part episode and this is Dave and
I finally getting wise. There have been many times where
(04:10):
we have decided we were going to cover a war
like the Revolutionary War or something like that, and realized, like, crap,
there's just too much here, too many different people, just
too much stuff to try to like shove into a
(04:31):
one hour right, and since this one, in particular it
is the Civil Wars, I bet we could summarize this
in one episode, but we just thought like, why, why
wouldn't why kill ourselves doing that? It cuts up neatly
into three parts because there are actually three wars within this. Yep,
(04:52):
that's why you will hear us call it the English
Civil Wars. And so yeah, we're gonna do We're gonna
do three parts, and.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Yeah, yeah, Joe, can we can we sort of start
as we have tried to do regularly and talk about
what we knew going in because I can say that
this is a topic that I felt like I knew
surprisingly little about, and I remember talking to my dad
we were on vacation in April, about you know, aspects
(05:21):
of history where we feel like just skipped it over
in our in our studying in the English Civil Wars
was one that came up, and as I was learning
about it. I was like, man, I really like I
knew who Oliver Cromwell was very broadly. Uh that's really it.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Uh. This is one where so I've mentioned a few
times I think on the show that I took European
Advanced Placement European history in high school, and I am
the kind of person that's sort of like retain it,
like I remember it if I learned it at some point.
(06:03):
That being said, obviously that was a long time ago.
They do remember the broad contours of the Civil wars
and and some of the details, but yeah, other than
Oliver Cromwell, don't really remember. I didn't really remember like
any of thela like the people involved. I listened to
(06:26):
some other things and read some other things, and apparently
like this is actually like kind of a thing that
even in even in the UK, people don't learn about
as much as even things like like American children learn
about the Civil War, the American Civil War, for instance,
(06:49):
or the French Revolution. And let's listen to some historians
just sort of speculating about why that is the case.
And they posited that for one thing, like contrasting with
like the American Civil War, one is about two hundred
years earlier in time. Well, yeah, like longer amount of
(07:12):
time has passed. But also like the American Civil War
is just so tightly like ingrained into our body politic
and was also based on, like frankly, the much more
existential like question of like like the basic humanity of
part of the population of this country.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Oh you mean states states rights.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Uh, not exactly, states rights to do what today? What?
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Yeah, that's the yeah, classic thing.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
The cluess most states rights, states rights to do what? Motherfucker?
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Yeah, you know, I think also like the English Civil
Wars kind of you know, you think of things like
the Thirty Years War. This is a pretty short amount
of time and this history relatively speaking, and and we'll
get into this, but the outcome, you know, with the
(08:10):
with the American Civil War, the outcome by a large
sort of stuck but changed, it sort of reverted back eventually.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to say. Was
and even the French Revolution there was a restoration of
well not not even the monarchy, but you know, the emperor.
Uh yeah, but eventually they did, uh you know, have
a parliamentary system.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
So there the result was reversed. I think you're exactly right,
but it was hugely influential. There's a lot of things
that we're going to talk about, so we're going to
focus So and there was three three wars, so I
wanted to give like a real quick, like high level
overview and then Dave and I are going to do
the first, second, and third wars for each episode, or
(09:03):
well each will get its own episode with kind of
the issues that sort of relate to that particular conflict
or are was most important for that particular conflict as
we go along. So for instance, next time, like probably
gonna that's what I'll probably talk about like some of
the military history kind of stuff. So we may like
(09:24):
sort of backtrack a little bit, but broadly we'll do
you know, civil Wars one, two, and three. Okay, so
these were civil wars, or these were wars roughly fought
between Charles the first it was the King of England
and his actually he was the king of England, Scotland
and Ireland.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
We'll get we'll get into that father, but yeah, right.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Fought between him and his people loyal to him, uh
and Parliament and the people loyal to them. Their power
base was mainly London and some of the other cities
and Charles's first power base where mainly sort of Oxford
(10:08):
and the countryside. There's a little more regionality to it,
as they've sort of alluded to. So this happens between
sixteen forty two and sixteen fifty one. This is also part,
as we mentioned, of a bigger set of conflicts, which
are sometimes known as the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.
So the Wars of the Three Kingdoms were going on before, during,
(10:32):
and after the English Civil Wars. So we will discuss
them because they're very important, but probably going to talk
about that stuff mostly in the last episode.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Yeah, yeah, a.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Ton of people died, two hundred thousand people I know,
like I don't know, maybe like if you know anything
about like World War one or World War two, Like
that doesn't sound like I don't want to be blase,
but like that doesn't sound like that too many people
quote unquote you might be thinking to yourself, you have
to remember one, this is just England. It's a much
smaller population. Also, that was four point the population worldwide
(11:12):
was less. That was four point five percent of the
total population. That is, that was the greatest loss of
life in any English conflict until World War One. That's
about proportion of the population as many people as died
in World War One, which was the you know, greatest
(11:33):
loss of life in history caused by war un till
that point. Yeah, maybe, yeah, sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Well I was gonna say also, and this is common
of civil wars, and I believe the the the greatest
loss of life in a battle on American soil was Gettysburg, Right.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
It was a Gettysburger Antietam.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Oh, gotta look that up. Wow, But the same thing
happened in this war. The is it? Sorry, It's to
be fine. In the battle it's not the Battle of
Edge Hill, It's the Battle of Marston Moore, happens in
the first of these wars. Is the deadliest battle on
(12:22):
English soil.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
It was Gettysburg.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
You're right, that's it. I should know. I've been there
five times.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
That's why I thought that.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Well when you said it, I had to think about it.
I mean, they're both very heavy. But like obviously this
is very common in a civil war when you when
you talk about like number of lives of the countrymen lost.
But I believe that the statistic about Battle of Marston
Moore is just like the deadliest battle on English soil.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Yeah, yeah, and like you said, it's it's obviously like
the reason why the Civil War was, you know, the
bloodiest conflict in American history is because it was Americans
versus Americans. Right, well it's Americans versus the Confederates, depending
on your perspective. But but this was yeah, obviously a
(13:12):
huge loss of life.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Yeah, there might be some reasons for that that involved
just like the ability of the people fighting because England
did not have a standing army until this point in history.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Yeah, that's one of the things that will be really
important to talk about. And you know, civil wars obviously
are all wars tragic, but civil wars are like just
they always like seem more sort of poignant because it's
you know, often like literally brother versus brother, or like
people versus their neighbors, or people who were once friends
(13:48):
and find themselves on opposite sides. Right, People thought on
the different sides of this conflict for various of reasons.
Some people were fighting because of religion. Some more people
were fighting, you know, they felt they were fighting for
reaedom over the the the relative role of you know,
how much the real role of parliament, how much power
the king should have. Things like that. Other people were
(14:11):
just fighting because they just happened to be like sworn
to a given nobleman. Other times people were just they
were hired and they were they were fighting for a
particular army just because it was you know, food and
clothing and money. Right, skip into the punchline here a
(14:32):
little bit. In sixteen forty nine, the parliamentary parliamentarians sentenced
Charles the First to death, that executed him, which was
obviously sent chocolaves all throughout Europe, not just England, and
then that set off a period of time where there
was technically the only period of republican rule in British history,
(14:59):
because of course there is actually like the England is
notably not our republic. They still have a king, although
obviously he's a figurehead.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
That led to the basically the rule by like a
military junta. I'd say I didn't call it that at
a time, but that's what we would call it now
under Oliver Cromwell, who was called the Lord Protector of
the Commonwealth. That lasted for eleven years until sixteen sixty
(15:30):
when Charles the Second, Charles's son was restored to the throne.
Among the other things that this results of this were
the first standing army called the New Model Army, which
I will talk about more next time, and also like
what kinds of tactics they used. But this is the
(15:50):
first case in British history we have trained professional soldiers.
And then lastly, this doesn't seem like, you know, like
maybe it's it's not as big of a deal as
like the loss of life or things like that. But
if you go to England today and you go to
see like some of the castles and things like that,
there a lot of them are really fucking beat up.
(16:13):
And it's mostly a lot of them. It's because not
mostly a lot of them though, it's because of this conflict. Sure, yeah,
because they were you know, destroyed in the fighting. Sometimes
they were destroyed deliberately, just as fuck you to the royalists,
and that's why. Yeah, a lot of the castles are
(16:34):
kind of so when you go when you see like
a fairytale castle, most of those are not in England,
and most of them are actually built a lot more
recently than we think they are. Sure, But if you
want to see like in the UK, like really big
nice castles, all of those are actually in Scotland, MT,
(16:56):
partly because of us. Like Stirling Castle it is pretty
beat up, but it's like pretty far to the north,
Emburg Castle, these kinds of things.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Yeah, so.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Why are these people? Why are these people so mad
at each other? What's going on? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (17:13):
You know, And and it's one of the things we've
talked about before, but like, where do you start with
with something like this? Uh? And and I think maybe
one thing to remind people of is kind of the
religious history of Ayat, mainly when it became no longer Catholic.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
So sorry, Dave, if you wanted to learn. Uh, we
didn't talk about this extensively, but we just recently did
an episode excuse me, about the the War of the Roses.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Yes, well.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
It was and then that was an episode where I
got to read a little bit of Shakespeare. The episode
is about Richard the Third, but we ended up talking
quite a lot about the War of the Roses. Four
of the Roses ends with, or sort of begins, the
Tudor dynasty, which is relevant than what you're about to
talk about. So if you want to know more about this,
(18:22):
go ahead and listen to our episode about Richard the third.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, But the what I was going to
get to is that, you know, maybe a good place
to start is, you know, almost one hundred years prior
to this, when Henry the eighth separates the England from
(18:45):
the Catholic Church informs the Anglican Church of what becomes
called the Church of England. And so you had mentioned
Joe that you sort of have this. You have this
kingdom where you have England in Wales sort of together
of Ireland, and you have Scotland, England, Wales. By the
time we get to Queen Elizabeth, so Henry's daughter, you
(19:11):
have England and Wales that is Anglican, of Ireland that
is Catholic, and you have Scotland that is largely Presbyterian.
After Elizabeth dies without an heir, her cousin James the
(19:32):
sixth of Scotland becomes James the First of the Kingdom.
So he becomes the king of England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
The Kingdom.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Yes, he's the first unified king of the of the Kingdom,
coming from Scotland. He is a Presbyterian, but he is
also a major proponent of the divine right of kings.
(20:03):
The kings are divinely appointed by God, I guess as
a way of putting it and kind of do what
they want. However, I also heard that he was a
pretty chill guy and so his bullshit didn't rub people
the wrong way. So immediately he's just a chill guy.
He's just a good chill guy. You know.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Initially, when when King James the First was crowned, the
Catholic minority actually was like pretty stoked because they thought that,
uh yeah, they thought that he might you know, be
good for them. But later on they felt different.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Why did they think that? Initially was he Catholic?
Speaker 2 (20:49):
He wasn't Catholic?
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Okay, okay, but he was.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
It seemed like he had Catholic you know inklings, or
maybe they thought that he might convert. He ended up
marrying the Catholic Princess Henry Marietta Henry Anda Maria of France.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Yes, yes, and disciplined.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
I'm sorry that was Charles today.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Yes, sorry, I was gonna say yes so so to
kind of keep this together.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Sorry. What I wanted to say real quick though, was
that if you want to know more about that and
why the Catholics thought that James the First might be
good for them, and then how they sort of turned
against him as you listen to our episode about Guy
Fox and the Gunpowder Plot.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Yes, and I was gonna say, you know, I don't
know how much you know, Catholic animosity, anti Catholic sentiment
there was in England prior to that, but there was
certainly a lot more after the Gunpowder plot, because if
you don't remember, a band of Catholics tried to blow
up parliam Yeah and the king. Yeah, so.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
You know there was tensions were high amongst the various
religious sects at this point.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Yeah, and remind me this was sixteen five, is the
Gunpowder plot? Yeah, sixteen oh five. So Elizabeth I First
dies in sixteen oh three. King James becomes the king
two years later Gunpowder plot. But James is king for
a couple of decades after that. He dies in sixteen
twenty five, and his son, Charles the First succeeds him
(22:35):
on the throne.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
He Charles the First will be like the you know,
major figure for the Royalists obviously for our story.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
And Charles Mary's a Catholic princess, Henrietta Maria from France,
and this makes people very suspicious of him. His leanings
towards the Catholic Church, whether he's going to try to
turn England back toward the Catholic Church. You know, in
this country, we were very aware of the Puritans. Those
are very radical Protestants. These are the people that are
(23:09):
most suspicious of all of this.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Yeah, and something interesting about just about Henrietta Maria. She
was daughter of King Henrie the fourth of France and
Marie de Mendici Ah Also, their marriage required a special
dispensation from the pope because Charles was a Protestant and
(23:33):
Henriette's Catholic, and so getting the pope involved again really
really pissed off like people like the Puritans.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Yeah, you know, I know, now this doesn't seem like
such like you know, these religions are right up against
each other, but at the time this was a big deal.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Yeah, we think of these I mean honestly, well, I'm
I know that these all just sound like Christianity, but
to Catholics it's different.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
To Protestants is different. But at the time it was
like a line in the sand.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Yeah, these these folks were they felt like there was
very very big differences between him.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
All of these people think when they are on the
side of righteousness for themselves or on the side of
righteousness for God. Right, I guess that's what being on
side of righteous there was on God's in God's favor. So,
like I am Protestant, that is what God wants. Anything
opposed to that is anti God.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
And there were many instances during this conflict where there
would be a major battle where they would be a
major battle where they would be like a siege where
you know, they would think the the side who was
laying siege would think, like, we are ordained by God
to do this, but then like the siege is not
going well, and they would wonder, like he is God
(24:54):
telling us that we should not be taking you know,
this this castle or this estate, or or is it
actually the devil is preventing us from doing this. So
there's a lot of like appeals to God on both sides.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Yeah, yeah, well that's every war anyways. So the other
thing about Charles is, like his father, he is very
in favor of the idea of divine right of the king,
and a few years into his time as king he
dismisses parliament altogether. Now, I say altogether, we think about
(25:30):
parliament now as being like a standing body like our congresses.
But at this point in history, Parliament really serves at
the whim of the king, and the King calls parliament
usually because he needs money and needs to charge some
new taxes, and the parliament is made up of wealthy
landowners who are really the only people in the kingdom
(25:52):
that are able to enforce such things. So when I
say he dissolves it, basically I'm saying is that for
the next eleven years. He does this in sixteen twenty
nine and for eleven years never calls parliament. So that's
you know, that also rubs people the wrong way because
that takes all of the power out of the hands
(26:12):
of the people.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Well people, we mean like, yeah, they're rich aristocrats.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
But yeah, why just mean anybody other than the king, anybody,
right exactly.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Yeah, we talked about religion being important here. In sixteen
thirty three, William Lude was appointed the Archbishop of Canterbury. Yeah,
And why this is important is that Archbishop of Canterbury
is pretty much the most important religious figure in England.
(26:44):
He he was supported by King James, but he brought
in some of the ceremonies that looked awfully Catholic. To
a lot of the Protestants, especially the Puritans. So and
(27:06):
people gunt really, I know, I know it seems like
deeply silly now, but these things are very important to
people at the time. Even things like stained the glass
windows and things like that were like deeply offensive to
some of the parliamentary who would become the parliamentary in faction. Again,
especially the Puritans. It can't stress enough that the Puritans
(27:32):
were like not fun at all. That's why they are
asked to leave. And yeah, the story that we get
told in elementary school is like, well, the Puritans escaped
religious persecution in England and they came to the New World.
It's like, no, they were asked to leave, and then
they came and they persecuted the indigenous population. That's obviously
(27:56):
a oversilification, but only just a little.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Bit, only only a little bit. Well, these, you know,
these new founded religious practices in England, Charles makes some
efforts to kind of push them into the generally Presbyterian Scotland. Yes,
and people get fucking pissed.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
They don't like it.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
They get pissed. They form a group to basically say
that they're not going to stand for this, and ultimately,
a Scottish army defeats the King's forces and takes part
of northern England.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Yeah. So, uh, to back up a step, they there
was something called the Scottish National Covenant.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
That's what I meant by group.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Yeah yeah, when sorry, so when Charles the First was
I think I said James Roer that was his dad.
I'm sorry. Charles the First and Archbishop Loud they were
trying to make these changes to the Scottish Church one
of them. So like you know, uh, there was there
were riots at Edinburgh and the Scots rallied together. They
(29:05):
created something called the National Covenant, which was basically like
a commitment to defend Presbyterianism. And then he Charles saw
this as a rebellion and that led to something called
the Bishop Wars.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
So that's like, so that's when we say that like
this was part of a larger conflict, the War of
the Three Kingdoms. We're not in civil war yet, but
we are in like this War of the Three Kingdoms. Sorry,
so now he's fighting the Scots. Ye, and so now
he's in a pickle. Oh yeah, because that's time if
(29:50):
I'm like stealing your your notes here Dave. He's in
a bit of a pickle because he's got he disbanded parliament,
but he he's run out of money to fight the Scots,
so he summons parliament and this is what they call
the Short Parliament April thirteenth, sixteen forty And at first
(30:18):
I guess it seemed like maybe they actually would give
him the money, because you know, they could put aside
their differences to fuck over the Scots, right.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
Right, But he, yeah, he needs money. This needs money
for he needs money to pay his troops. Right, that's
a big part here. Sorry, yeah, I no, I'm just clarifying.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
I needed to be clear on that. But of course
what actually ends up happening is parliament. They're obviously still
man at the king for various different reasons including dissolu
dissolving parliament, and they refuse to grant him the money,
and then Charles dissolves the parliament again within a month,
(31:01):
which is why it's called the short Parliament. M M.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
You have to remember people are pissed at him for
a number of a number of reasons, but a big
one is that he is these new taxes. For example,
one is there's like a maritime tax. Uh huh where
all the coastal towns pay a tax to upkeep of
the navy, but now he's charging that tax to towns inland.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
I love what that's It's called ship money. Ship money, Yeah,
ship money. Yeah, I just like, I don't know why.
I just think that's funny.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
It's very on the nose.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Yeah, boy, Nick King will go us paid ship money.
It's our long running gag that we're gonna lose our
three UK listeners.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
No, because we're teaching them about their own history that
they may or may not know.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Uh yeah exactly.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Or that statement's gonna make it so much.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Worse, right, it might actually make it worse. But UK listeners,
we love you. And also I don't care if anyone
says your food is good except for beans on toasts.
I can't follow you there, I'm sorry. I always saw
a video on Instagram that was like Britain versus America,
(32:23):
that it was like beans on toast versus shit on
a shingle, which I would eat shit on a shingle.
It has obviously by far the more disgusting name, but
shoot on shingle slaps.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Now, Joe, At what point is Parliament called again where
John Pim is in charge.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
Uh so that'll be the next thing. But before that,
in August sixteen forty, you have the Battle of newbern
So led by Alexander Leslie, the Scots actually invade England yep,
and King Charles army gets their ass beat, including some
(33:11):
of their garrison desserts. So this is obviously a crushing
defeat by the Scotts. So the war against the Scotts
is looking real bad.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Oh yes.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
So then in a few months later, in November sixteen forty,
the Scottish Army is camped out in northern England and
they're refusing to leave unless they get paid.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Yeah, that's what I mean by they took part of
northern England, I mean they basically occupied it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
So again Charles, first he's got to go hat in
hand to Parliament, and Parliament refused. So this is the
next the Long Parliament that you were talking about, Dave,
And I'm sorry, what did you want to say about this?
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Well, so the Long Parliament I was put in charge
of the names that come up later as John Pim
and instead of like immediately you know, reaching out to
help solve this problem for Charles, they decide to use
this opportunity to roll back a lot of the things
he's been doing, get rid of these taxes. They require
(34:19):
that he call Parliament into session at least once every
three years, and they start investigating one of his chief ministers,
Lord Strafford, and ultimately execute him.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
Yes, they execute of his minister. Which is that's how
it say a huge deal. Yeah, so instead of like
giving them money, they used this opportunity to bitch.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Not just bitch, they used the opportunity to bitch, but
also like they they put some restrictions on him, and
they they backed him into a corner. Well, he backed
himself into a corner and they capitalized on it.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
Oh I'm obviously just trying to lighten it up a
little bit.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
His bitch, bitch, bitch.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
Yeah. So I mean this is like again like this
is where like some of the the major like conflicts
come in. So as we kind of talked about, I
think it's it's want of like get back to here.
So like you know, Charles believed in like the divine
right of kings that that he could govern, like he
didn't need parliament to govern. He had something called the
(35:28):
Privy Council that he appointed, and then he sort of expected, uh,
Parliament to just do whatever he wanted. But by this point,
like we kind of didn't mention this like explicitly, but
Parliament already had like gotten a lot, quite a bit
of power in British politics. So they were the ones
(35:52):
that they could raise taxes, they made laws, and they
sort of like allocated money. They i have had a
role sort of like Congress, although obviously like a lot
less less power and there's not really checks and balances.
Well no, and then we also mentioned that like religion
(36:15):
is at play here with especially I like if some
of the more radical quote unquote sects, like the Presbyterians
and especially the Puritans. So yeah, so getting back to
long Parliament. So then the next thing you mentioned the
(36:39):
execution of Earl of Stratford. Then it turns are bad
to worse. So now we've got rebellion in Scotland. Now
there's a rebellion in Ireland in October sixteen forty one.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Oh, I mean this is like serious rebellion.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
Yeah, they start, there's an uprising, so mainly Catholic Ireland,
and there are a lot of Protestant settlers that are murdered.
So anti Catholic sentiment in England now is on the rise.
They use this to sort of stoke fear that the
(37:21):
Irish Army were going to invade and join with Charles
to restore Catholicism. All these people just thought that Charles
was just like itching to restore Catholicism.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Well, there's a reason for this. So after this, you know,
this massacring of Protestants in Ireland and October sixteen forty one,
Charles in Parliament can't agree on what to do. But
Parliament starts to investigate some things about Charles, and they
(37:56):
discover some paperwork that shows that Charles asked the Irish
Parliament to raise an army, and although his intention was
to use his army against Scotland, Parliament becomes suspicious that
he's raising this Catholic leaning king is raising an Irish
army to use against England. At the same time, Charles
(38:21):
becomes paranoid and starts stoking the fire of the idea
that the Scottish rebellion was caused by Parliament itself against him.
Neither of these things are true, but this is the
suspicion that is causing a further rift here as this
is all happening. And this leads us to January of
(38:43):
sixteen forty two. Do you want to get into that, Joe,
you let me take it.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
Yeah, So what happens is no, I'm sorry, sorry, go ahead,
d you got this well.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
In January of sixteen forty two, Charles does something that
no king has ever done. He steps into the House
of Parliament, No king has ever set foot within that group,
and he comes with I want to say, like forty
armed guards. He's trying to arrest five members of Parliament
(39:19):
who opposed him. John pim Is the Leader of Parliament
and four others. Unfortunately for Charles, though, they were tipped
off the day before and I have already left and
after it flew the coop, they flew the coup. In fact,
that's what Charles was quoted as saying, Oh, birds have
flown the coup.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
I believe is that one of that phrase ridge sets well.
I don't know, so I know of I know of
at least two idioms Dave that originate during this conflict.
I was like giddy when I when I learned about this,
and I think I'll probably talk about the next time,
(40:01):
but maybe we need like an addendum like a fourth
episode that's just idioms from this time.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
But anyways, you know, after Charles does this, he knows
that he's really crossed the line, and he flees London,
heads into northern England and calls upon his supporters, many
of which are in Nottingham, to prepare for war. So
Lione has been drawn in the sand. England is now
at war, although, like I said, I read something that
(40:31):
said it's at war, but you wouldn't have known it
from the outside looking in because England does not have
a standing army.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
Right they Yeah, so what happens that they had sort
of like I'll talk about this for next time, but
they basically had temporary armies that would be like you'd
be called by your county to serve in various conflicts.
They're like militias, yes, yes, very much like militias. They're
not really well trained. They were sort of led by
trained officers, but the the the soldiers themselves were often
(41:01):
very poorly trained.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
Yeah, and you know the reason for this. You know,
England even today has a Royal Navy and a Royal
Air Force, but not a Royal army. Yes, there is
an army, but the reason that that England traditionally did
not have a standing army is for fear that it
would give the king too much power.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Yeah, and also standing armies were not we're not common
in Europe at this time. We have talked about this
a little bit before this, but we we actually uh
it sounds strange if you didn't listened episode, but he
designed a lot of like military equipment. But Leonardo da
(41:42):
Vinci episode, we talked a little bit about uh, standing
armies and how there were a lot of mercenaries used
during this time period. So on the continent, Uh, there were,
they made heavy use of merce and the best mercenaries
(42:02):
were actually from Italy or what would become Italy. But
I digress.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
Yeah, I think I think the idea of standing armies
kind of sort of fell by the wayside after the
fall of the Roman Empire. Yeah, I'd have to really
look into that, but it seems like it didn't really
pick back up, you know, the time between the end
of the Roman Empire and like, well, I don't know,
(42:28):
I guess the period after the English Civil War. It's yes,
sort of wasn't common.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
Yeah, So so now what happens is uh, and so
now around this time you kind of get the names
of the different the different factions. So and each of
these were basically like a derisive name by the other side.
So the Royalists are often known as cavaliers, which comes
(42:57):
from the French word chevalier, which is a chivalric figure.
And that's like that's like a good thing, but that
that becomes a pejorative uh term for the Royalists. And
then the uh the term for the parliamentarians was the roundheads.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
Because of their haircuts.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
Because their haircuts, so they so this is also again
economic as well as religious. So a lot of the
parliamentarians were a lot of like new money as we
might call it today. They were business people. They had
like they weren't often not born into some of the
high families or aristract families, and so they they wore
(43:48):
short haircuts, roundheads. The cavaliers, the Royalists, they often had
long flowing hair, and uh, if you look at pictures
of them, they like look like they're having a great time.
They look at pictures of the roundheads and they look
like like really stern because they get they have shit
(44:10):
to do.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
So yeah, anyway, I mean, and we're talking about illustrations,
so it also comes down to like who did the illustrations.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
And w Well, another thing that comes out of this
is basically like journalism, Like it's it's really interesting. This
is one of the first time periods where people were
trying to capture events as they were. So it was
just before this Civil War that you have the first
drawing of a banana in England. And I know that
(44:42):
sounds weird, but like this is a around the Renaissance
and like realism and art was important. Yeah, but you
also find like the idea of journalism starting to appear,
like recording of events and spreading information about current events
to the populace. Now what that also very quickly becomes though,
(45:03):
is you have some of the broadsheets, which would be
newspapers on either side, drawing political cartoons of the other
side and making them look bad and things like that,
and printing stories that were you know, not kind to
the other side of that sort of thing. Sure, but okay,
getting back to the story here. March sixteen forty two,
(45:25):
the Militia Ordinances passed, So this is the Parliament gives
it self to power to raise an army that's separate
from the king.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
Right, but doesn't the king use an old ordinance to
do the same thing. I can raise an army without
the approval of parliament. Yeah, so they both do.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
Each side is raising an army exactly, and initially like
it kinda is like hard for them to do because
they have to Yeah, like there is no like standing army.
(46:05):
So you've got like the county militias, like I said.
But by the time they start raising armies, and by
the time of like the first battle in sixteen forty two,
so this is about the summer, each side had about
twenty thousand soldiers and almost none of them had any
(46:26):
fighting experience, like I mentioned. So the first big battle
happens on October twenty third, which is it's called the
Battle of Edge Hill. Edge Hill. As you may say,
look at some of these like just these great like
(46:47):
political cartoons from the time. Got this cartoon with this
lady who is like sending her husband off to war
and she's saying, go to the wars. Just I don't know,
you should look u stuff from the time period. It's
like it's the first one of the first areas where
you have like political cartoons and things like that. Okay,
(47:08):
so the parliamentary parliamentary parliamentarians, oh my god, the Roundheads.
This is why they got a nickname. They were at
this point commanded by the Earl of Essex. They met
the King's forces at Edgehill, which is near Warwickshire, so
there's about thirteen fourteen thousand one each side. The result
(47:30):
was inconclusive, so the King's army marched towards London, which
was the strong the stronghold for the parliamentarians, but they
were stopped at Turnham Green by Essex force, which had
been growing. So over this period of time both forces
start to like they're getting more and more people. Now
(47:52):
the parliamentarians had about twenty four thousand people and so
they're fighting like small skirmishes throughout the winter. And at
this point the king established his headquarters at Oxford. So
you have the two power centers here now London for
the roundhead slash parliamentarians parliamentarians and Oxford for the Royalists
(48:15):
slash cavaliers. Sixteen forty three there were some peace talks.
Parliament presented the King with what are called the Oxford propositions,
which he was like, no thanks. So now they start
(48:40):
like both sides are still digging in. They're establishing garrisons, ports,
things like that, They're like fortifying some of the various
castles or some of the like houses from some of
the aristocrats and things like that. Right, so roughly, and
(49:04):
people were trying to figure out like whose side they're on.
So by the summer of sixteen forty three, it's basically
like kind of settled into like which regions roughly supported
which side. The land area was about equal, but the
(49:29):
parliamentarians had better resources because they had the major ports
like London, right, and then also places like I'm not
sure if people would know, like but like Portsmouth, Plymouth,
places like that, And they also had the largest arsenals,
(49:50):
and most importantly they controlled the navy, and the king
had almost all of northern England, including their main port
and Newcastle. They also had most of like the middle
(50:10):
part of the country that all of almost all of Wales. Yeah,
so now we have like much bigger armies at this point.
So fighting was like all over the country, mainly like
smaller battles of like regional areas, but there were about
one hundred and fifty thousand soldiers overall. So the Royalists
(50:36):
were gaining ground and consolidating their power in the north,
the middle and the south, and then the Parliamentarians sort
of pushed into the south and east. The Royalists won
several important battles like Braddock Down, Sorting Down, Stratton and
(51:02):
Roundway Down, and they took some important ports, including Bristol.
So it sort of looks like, you know, things are
going well for the Royalists, right.
Speaker 1 (51:17):
It does, it does. And what else makes it seem
like they're doing well is that the King makes a
deal in Ireland where hey, if you'll let a bunch
of our troops leave Ireland to fight for the King,
I'll tell the remaining troops that there's a ceasefire. And
(51:38):
the Parliamentarians get word of this and are kind of
freaking out. But then they strike a deal with Scotland exactly,
which gets them a bit of an upper hand. They
going to get even more troops.
Speaker 2 (51:51):
Yeah, that looks like that. The tide sort of looked
like maybe it had been turning, because once they no
longer have to be fighting in Ireland, then you know,
that absolutely freeze them up. But with the Scottish joining
then yeah, that's obviously bad. So sixteen forty four that's
when the tide sort of turns.
Speaker 1 (52:13):
M hm.
Speaker 2 (52:14):
So. But the problem is the King using Catholic troops
then gave rise to the idea that there was going
to be a Catholic invasion. And there's actually this h
I'm looking at this picture of the Scottish armies and
(52:39):
the parliamentarians uniting because obviously all the Scots also hated
Charles because he had tried to take over Scotland and
that's as beat hell.
Speaker 1 (52:51):
Yeah, So.
Speaker 2 (52:59):
The Scottish army in January sixteen forty four, twenty two
thousand Scots crossed the border to help Parliament and then
encounter this force, a Royalist army. They met at the
Battle of Marston Moor, which is near it is York
(53:20):
on July second. So this is the largest battle the
First Civil War.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
Yeah, I read that it was double chet. This largest
battle in terms of troops overall in the First Civil War,
but I believe again the deadliest battle on English soil.
Speaker 2 (53:35):
Yeah, it was extremely deadly. So there are about twenty
eight thousand soldiers on Parliament side and about eighteen thousand
on the Royalist side, so it was a obviously that's
a lopsided amount of troops because of the addition of
the Scots, but the Royalists were defeated and that caused
(54:00):
their base of power in the North to collapse. They
did win a battle against the Parliamentarians of the Second
Battle of Newbery, but by the end of sixteen forty four,
the North belonged to parliament apart from like a few
(54:24):
holdouts right, and then the king was also losing ground
in the midlands, like the middle part of the country.
Speaker 1 (54:33):
The way that the Parliamentarians took part of the North,
they sort of cut off the King's reinforcements, so it
wasn't like like they kind of like took the north
like but in the middle of it, so that the
troops north of them still couldn't get down to reinforce
the king.
Speaker 2 (54:49):
Yeah, they they typically had even though they were well
we're going to talk a little bit next time about
they did have some fairly good commander and used some
good tactics, including Oliver Cromwell. So he was among the
(55:11):
senior commanders, and he had quite an aptitude for military maneuvers,
and that was one of the reasons that led him
to become the most prominent figure of the Parliamentarian cause,
but we will talk about him a lot at the
(55:32):
next episode. Oh yeah, but I want to finish up
this first Civil War with sort of the last few
sort of battles here. So now it's early in sixteen
forty five, Parliament again goes to the King with something
called the Uxbridge Propositions, which is another list of propositions
(55:54):
to like get him to you know, sign a peace treaty.
But this was even like more stringent than the other ones.
So these would have ended the king's command of the
armed forces, given Parliament responsibility for the education of the
King's children, which is like a weird like but that
(56:21):
was that was one of the things that was basically
like do made this like doomed to failure? The King
was not going to accept that. But also crucially in
introduced Presbyterian religion to England and then also obliged the
king to sign that covenant that we talked about, right,
So of course I feel like there was no chance
that he was going to sign this. Oh no, probably not,
(56:45):
and so he rejected it. But so the parliamentarians around
this time are through this time, like I said, they
were actually removing some of the They are like commanders
who were like part of the aristocracy and replacing them
with trained soldiers. And it was also during this time
(57:09):
where about like sixteen forty five to sixteen forty six,
where they were creating a permanent professional army under someone
called Thomas Fairfax.
Speaker 1 (57:21):
And Oliver Cromwell.
Speaker 2 (57:24):
Oliver Cromwell, right, So the last decisive battle was on
June fourteenth, when about fifteen thousand under Fairfax for the
parliamentarians and about ten thousand under the king. So you
noticed that some of these big battles, the Royalist always
have fewer.
Speaker 1 (57:42):
People, Yeah, they do.
Speaker 2 (57:45):
They fought, they lost, yeah, well, yeah, they fought at
the end. They also didn't have as good of a tactics.
They fought at the Battle of Naseby in Northamptonshire, which
was a decisive victory for Parliament. So for the rest
of nineteen forty five and it in nineteen forty six,
(58:09):
the parliamentary and sort of moved around the areas that
were loyal to the king and like kind of defeating
their remaining forces. So the king's forces are like in
just in disarray. In March sixteen forty six, the Royalist army,
(58:30):
one of the remainders of the army in the west
under Sir Ralph Hopton, they surrendered at Cornwall and then
most of Wales sort of surrendered at this point. A
little bit later in March, and there was one more
battle with just like the last little bits of the
(58:52):
Royalist army was defeated at Stowe on the Wold, which
is near Gloucestershire or Gloucester as you pronounce it, right, Yeah,
that's no, I know it is, but.
Speaker 1 (59:09):
I know it's just funny how you said that.
Speaker 2 (59:11):
That's like I don't know. Yes, well, it's kind of like,
you know, it's the Sciotoe river here as it's like,
that's how it is spelled. But if you ask anyone
who lives here, it's the Sciota is it is what
it is? Right?
Speaker 1 (59:25):
Yeah, no, no, you're not wrong.
Speaker 2 (59:28):
So the king left Oxford and he surrendered to the
Scottish Army on May fifth, and then the there were
like a few holdouts, like people were still fighting for
the Royalist cause, but most of them surrendered by that summer.
So thus ends the First Civil War. And you might
(59:51):
think that that's basically the end of it, but you'd
be wrong, because we got wrong. We've got two more,
two more civil wars.
Speaker 1 (01:00:00):
Thanks.
Speaker 2 (01:00:01):
Look don't look great for old Charles first at this point.
Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
Damn, I gotta tell you, Joe, we did that well,
I mean almost exactly an hour, just just over an hour.
Speaker 2 (01:00:12):
Well, I think, I hope, folks, I hope you can
see why we decided to split this up because there
was really a lot of things we had to do
to talk about, like why this war started before we
could really even get into like and I would love
to talk more about like military tactics and things like that,
(01:00:32):
but that's just like you have to do it in
a whole episode about each battle, all right, see you
later everyone.
Speaker 1 (01:00:39):
So on, thank you for listening to An Hour of
Our Time.
Speaker 2 (01:00:45):
If you like what you heard, explore our catalog of
over two hundred episodes and rate and review us on
your platform of choice.
Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
And if you'd like to support what we do, visit
patreon dot com Slash An Hour of Our Time Podcast
Welcome to an hour of our time, the podcast where
we pick a topic, research it and come back to
tell you what we've learned. This week, we're starting our
three part series on the English Civil Wars, beginning with
the first of the civil wars that started in sixteen
forty two between Charles I and the Parliamentarians.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
I'm Dave, I'm Joe, I said, Dave, how are you
doing this? Fine evening?
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Okay, we're in the process of finishing our basement and
it's taken a little while. It's been it's been like
three weeks, but we're getting there. I can finally hopefully
start doing some painting over the weekend and really get
things moving nice.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
You know.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
The thing about the basement though, is that, you know,
because of its large size and the different reasons we
want to use it, we had to sort of divide
it in half, okay, much like a much like a
country split amongst itself.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
I was like, what we we'll go for here?
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Yeah, Like, the the north and west of the basement
is all about the King, south in the east all
about the Parliament, and there's a little space in the
middle that doesn't know what to do.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Make more sense if you were like the I don't
know what. Yeah, like the rural areas of your basement
are on one side, and the the the four urban
areas are on the other side. Amazing except for Oxford.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Well, and you look at you look at what they
were fighting over. And I'm being very very general here,
but it seems like no matter what century we're talking about,
what people were talking about, it all comes down to
religion and.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Taxes, religion, taxes. And then I also think like the
rural urban split seems to be seems to rhyme throughout
at least like quote unquote Western history. I mean, the
Romans were dealing with that shit like we were. You know,
I think you and I were talking about the other day. Yeah, well,
(02:22):
so I do want to say, uh, in honor of
so we are talking about the English Civil Wars period,
and in honor of this, you know, I'm gonna talk
a little bit about food and drink, give like people
a little bit of like a little slice of life
kind of of this time period.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Just yeah, what what bland thing were they eating?
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Then? Oh man, I'm gonna read some stuff. I'm gonna
read some stuff to you, Dave, please, some like from
some cookbooks that I was able to find, but I
never having a conversation. But you know, like sometimes like
because it's the evening, you know, my kids are in bed,
like we're relaxed. I was hanging out. Usually you have
(03:07):
like a a drink to kind of sometimes go with
the podcast, and I was like, what should I have?
And we talked about like maybe I would have I
was like, do I want to be like the parliamentarians,
and like maybe I would have some some beer, you know,
like if I was going for like the royalists, and
I'll probably drink some wine. And Dave suggested, maybe I
can have some meat. I actually have some might do
(03:29):
that next time, but I don't know. I had it
in there. I happened to have it in the fridge,
So I guess I'm outing my my loyalties here, but
I do. I am drinking and English ale mm hm,
which is actually one of my favorite styles of beer.
So I figured I probably am not going to have
(03:49):
the when we film or when we recorded the next episode.
And that is a great time for us to say
that everyone you should strap the fuck because we are
doing a three part episode and this is Dave and
I finally getting wise. There have been many times where
(04:10):
we have decided we were going to cover a war
like the Revolutionary War or something like that, and realized, like, crap,
there's just too much here, too many different people, just
too much stuff to try to like shove into a
(04:31):
one hour right, and since this one, in particular it
is the Civil Wars, I bet we could summarize this
in one episode, but we just thought like, why, why
wouldn't why kill ourselves doing that? It cuts up neatly
into three parts because there are actually three wars within this. Yep,
(04:52):
that's why you will hear us call it the English
Civil Wars. And so yeah, we're gonna do We're gonna
do three parts, and.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Yeah, yeah, Joe, can we can we sort of start
as we have tried to do regularly and talk about
what we knew going in because I can say that
this is a topic that I felt like I knew
surprisingly little about, and I remember talking to my dad
we were on vacation in April, about you know, aspects
(05:21):
of history where we feel like just skipped it over
in our in our studying in the English Civil Wars
was one that came up, and as I was learning
about it. I was like, man, I really like I
knew who Oliver Cromwell was very broadly. Uh that's really it.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Uh. This is one where so I've mentioned a few
times I think on the show that I took European
Advanced Placement European history in high school, and I am
the kind of person that's sort of like retain it,
like I remember it if I learned it at some point.
(06:03):
That being said, obviously that was a long time ago.
They do remember the broad contours of the Civil wars
and and some of the details, but yeah, other than
Oliver Cromwell, don't really remember. I didn't really remember like
any of thela like the people involved. I listened to
(06:26):
some other things and read some other things, and apparently
like this is actually like kind of a thing that
even in even in the UK, people don't learn about
as much as even things like like American children learn
about the Civil War, the American Civil War, for instance,
(06:49):
or the French Revolution. And let's listen to some historians
just sort of speculating about why that is the case.
And they posited that for one thing, like contrasting with
like the American Civil War, one is about two hundred
years earlier in time. Well, yeah, like longer amount of
(07:12):
time has passed. But also like the American Civil War
is just so tightly like ingrained into our body politic
and was also based on, like frankly, the much more
existential like question of like like the basic humanity of
part of the population of this country.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Oh you mean states states rights.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Uh, not exactly, states rights to do what today? What?
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Yeah, that's the yeah, classic thing.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
The cluess most states rights, states rights to do what? Motherfucker?
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Yeah, you know, I think also like the English Civil
Wars kind of you know, you think of things like
the Thirty Years War. This is a pretty short amount
of time and this history relatively speaking, and and we'll
get into this, but the outcome, you know, with the
(08:10):
with the American Civil War, the outcome by a large
sort of stuck but changed, it sort of reverted back eventually.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to say. Was
and even the French Revolution there was a restoration of
well not not even the monarchy, but you know, the emperor.
Uh yeah, but eventually they did, uh you know, have
a parliamentary system.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
So there the result was reversed. I think you're exactly right,
but it was hugely influential. There's a lot of things
that we're going to talk about, so we're going to
focus So and there was three three wars, so I
wanted to give like a real quick, like high level
overview and then Dave and I are going to do
the first, second, and third wars for each episode, or
(09:03):
well each will get its own episode with kind of
the issues that sort of relate to that particular conflict
or are was most important for that particular conflict as
we go along. So for instance, next time, like probably
gonna that's what I'll probably talk about like some of
the military history kind of stuff. So we may like
(09:24):
sort of backtrack a little bit, but broadly we'll do
you know, civil Wars one, two, and three. Okay, so
these were civil wars, or these were wars roughly fought
between Charles the first it was the King of England
and his actually he was the king of England, Scotland
and Ireland.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
We'll get we'll get into that father, but yeah, right.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Fought between him and his people loyal to him, uh
and Parliament and the people loyal to them. Their power
base was mainly London and some of the other cities
and Charles's first power base where mainly sort of Oxford
(10:08):
and the countryside. There's a little more regionality to it,
as they've sort of alluded to. So this happens between
sixteen forty two and sixteen fifty one. This is also part,
as we mentioned, of a bigger set of conflicts, which
are sometimes known as the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.
So the Wars of the Three Kingdoms were going on before, during,
(10:32):
and after the English Civil Wars. So we will discuss
them because they're very important, but probably going to talk
about that stuff mostly in the last episode.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Yeah, yeah, a.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Ton of people died, two hundred thousand people I know,
like I don't know, maybe like if you know anything
about like World War one or World War two, Like
that doesn't sound like I don't want to be blase,
but like that doesn't sound like that too many people
quote unquote you might be thinking to yourself, you have
to remember one, this is just England. It's a much
smaller population. Also, that was four point the population worldwide
(11:12):
was less. That was four point five percent of the
total population. That is, that was the greatest loss of
life in any English conflict until World War One. That's
about proportion of the population as many people as died
in World War One, which was the you know, greatest
(11:33):
loss of life in history caused by war un till
that point. Yeah, maybe, yeah, sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Well I was gonna say also, and this is common
of civil wars, and I believe the the the greatest
loss of life in a battle on American soil was Gettysburg, Right.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
It was a Gettysburger Antietam.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Oh, gotta look that up. Wow, But the same thing
happened in this war. The is it? Sorry, It's to
be fine. In the battle it's not the Battle of
Edge Hill, It's the Battle of Marston Moore, happens in
the first of these wars. Is the deadliest battle on
(12:22):
English soil.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
It was Gettysburg.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
You're right, that's it. I should know. I've been there
five times.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
That's why I thought that.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Well when you said it, I had to think about it.
I mean, they're both very heavy. But like obviously this
is very common in a civil war when you when
you talk about like number of lives of the countrymen lost.
But I believe that the statistic about Battle of Marston
Moore is just like the deadliest battle on English soil.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Yeah, yeah, and like you said, it's it's obviously like
the reason why the Civil War was, you know, the
bloodiest conflict in American history is because it was Americans
versus Americans. Right, well it's Americans versus the Confederates, depending
on your perspective. But but this was yeah, obviously a
(13:12):
huge loss of life.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Yeah, there might be some reasons for that that involved
just like the ability of the people fighting because England
did not have a standing army until this point in history.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Yeah, that's one of the things that will be really
important to talk about. And you know, civil wars obviously
are all wars tragic, but civil wars are like just
they always like seem more sort of poignant because it's
you know, often like literally brother versus brother, or like
people versus their neighbors, or people who were once friends
(13:48):
and find themselves on opposite sides. Right, People thought on
the different sides of this conflict for various of reasons.
Some people were fighting because of religion. Some more people
were fighting, you know, they felt they were fighting for
reaedom over the the the relative role of you know,
how much the real role of parliament, how much power
the king should have. Things like that. Other people were
(14:11):
just fighting because they just happened to be like sworn
to a given nobleman. Other times people were just they
were hired and they were they were fighting for a
particular army just because it was you know, food and
clothing and money. Right, skip into the punchline here a
(14:32):
little bit. In sixteen forty nine, the parliamentary parliamentarians sentenced
Charles the First to death, that executed him, which was
obviously sent chocolaves all throughout Europe, not just England, and
then that set off a period of time where there
was technically the only period of republican rule in British history,
(14:59):
because of course there is actually like the England is
notably not our republic. They still have a king, although
obviously he's a figurehead.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
That led to the basically the rule by like a
military junta. I'd say I didn't call it that at
a time, but that's what we would call it now
under Oliver Cromwell, who was called the Lord Protector of
the Commonwealth. That lasted for eleven years until sixteen sixty
(15:30):
when Charles the Second, Charles's son was restored to the throne.
Among the other things that this results of this were
the first standing army called the New Model Army, which
I will talk about more next time, and also like
what kinds of tactics they used. But this is the
(15:50):
first case in British history we have trained professional soldiers.
And then lastly, this doesn't seem like, you know, like
maybe it's it's not as big of a deal as
like the loss of life or things like that. But
if you go to England today and you go to
see like some of the castles and things like that,
there a lot of them are really fucking beat up.
(16:13):
And it's mostly a lot of them. It's because not
mostly a lot of them though, it's because of this conflict. Sure, yeah,
because they were you know, destroyed in the fighting. Sometimes
they were destroyed deliberately, just as fuck you to the royalists,
and that's why. Yeah, a lot of the castles are
(16:34):
kind of so when you go when you see like
a fairytale castle, most of those are not in England,
and most of them are actually built a lot more
recently than we think they are. Sure, But if you
want to see like in the UK, like really big
nice castles, all of those are actually in Scotland, MT,
(16:56):
partly because of us. Like Stirling Castle it is pretty
beat up, but it's like pretty far to the north,
Emburg Castle, these kinds of things.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Yeah, so.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Why are these people? Why are these people so mad
at each other? What's going on? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (17:13):
You know, And and it's one of the things we've
talked about before, but like, where do you start with
with something like this? Uh? And and I think maybe
one thing to remind people of is kind of the
religious history of Ayat, mainly when it became no longer Catholic.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
So sorry, Dave, if you wanted to learn. Uh, we
didn't talk about this extensively, but we just recently did
an episode excuse me, about the the War of the Roses.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Yes, well.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
It was and then that was an episode where I
got to read a little bit of Shakespeare. The episode
is about Richard the Third, but we ended up talking
quite a lot about the War of the Roses. Four
of the Roses ends with, or sort of begins, the
Tudor dynasty, which is relevant than what you're about to
talk about. So if you want to know more about this,
(18:22):
go ahead and listen to our episode about Richard the third.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, But the what I was going to
get to is that, you know, maybe a good place
to start is, you know, almost one hundred years prior
to this, when Henry the eighth separates the England from
(18:45):
the Catholic Church informs the Anglican Church of what becomes
called the Church of England. And so you had mentioned
Joe that you sort of have this. You have this
kingdom where you have England in Wales sort of together
of Ireland, and you have Scotland, England, Wales. By the
time we get to Queen Elizabeth, so Henry's daughter, you
(19:11):
have England and Wales that is Anglican, of Ireland that
is Catholic, and you have Scotland that is largely Presbyterian.
After Elizabeth dies without an heir, her cousin James the
(19:32):
sixth of Scotland becomes James the First of the Kingdom.
So he becomes the king of England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
The Kingdom.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Yes, he's the first unified king of the of the Kingdom,
coming from Scotland. He is a Presbyterian, but he is
also a major proponent of the divine right of kings.
(20:03):
The kings are divinely appointed by God, I guess as
a way of putting it and kind of do what
they want. However, I also heard that he was a
pretty chill guy and so his bullshit didn't rub people
the wrong way. So immediately he's just a chill guy.
He's just a good chill guy. You know.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Initially, when when King James the First was crowned, the
Catholic minority actually was like pretty stoked because they thought that,
uh yeah, they thought that he might you know, be
good for them. But later on they felt different.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Why did they think that? Initially was he Catholic?
Speaker 2 (20:49):
He wasn't Catholic?
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Okay, okay, but he was.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
It seemed like he had Catholic you know inklings, or
maybe they thought that he might convert. He ended up
marrying the Catholic Princess Henry Marietta Henry Anda Maria of France.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Yes, yes, and disciplined.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
I'm sorry that was Charles today.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Yes, sorry, I was gonna say yes so so to
kind of keep this together.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Sorry. What I wanted to say real quick though, was
that if you want to know more about that and
why the Catholics thought that James the First might be
good for them, and then how they sort of turned
against him as you listen to our episode about Guy
Fox and the Gunpowder Plot.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Yes, and I was gonna say, you know, I don't
know how much you know, Catholic animosity, anti Catholic sentiment
there was in England prior to that, but there was
certainly a lot more after the Gunpowder plot, because if
you don't remember, a band of Catholics tried to blow
up parliam Yeah and the king. Yeah, so.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
You know there was tensions were high amongst the various
religious sects at this point.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Yeah, and remind me this was sixteen five, is the
Gunpowder plot? Yeah, sixteen oh five. So Elizabeth I First
dies in sixteen oh three. King James becomes the king
two years later Gunpowder plot. But James is king for
a couple of decades after that. He dies in sixteen
twenty five, and his son, Charles the First succeeds him
(22:35):
on the throne.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
He Charles the First will be like the you know,
major figure for the Royalists obviously for our story.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
And Charles Mary's a Catholic princess, Henrietta Maria from France,
and this makes people very suspicious of him. His leanings
towards the Catholic Church, whether he's going to try to
turn England back toward the Catholic Church. You know, in
this country, we were very aware of the Puritans. Those
are very radical Protestants. These are the people that are
(23:09):
most suspicious of all of this.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Yeah, and something interesting about just about Henrietta Maria. She
was daughter of King Henrie the fourth of France and
Marie de Mendici Ah Also, their marriage required a special
dispensation from the pope because Charles was a Protestant and
(23:33):
Henriette's Catholic, and so getting the pope involved again really
really pissed off like people like the Puritans.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Yeah, you know, I know, now this doesn't seem like
such like you know, these religions are right up against
each other, but at the time this was a big deal.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Yeah, we think of these I mean honestly, well, I'm
I know that these all just sound like Christianity, but
to Catholics it's different.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
To Protestants is different. But at the time it was
like a line in the sand.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Yeah, these these folks were they felt like there was
very very big differences between him.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
All of these people think when they are on the
side of righteousness for themselves or on the side of
righteousness for God. Right, I guess that's what being on
side of righteous there was on God's in God's favor. So,
like I am Protestant, that is what God wants. Anything
opposed to that is anti God.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
And there were many instances during this conflict where there
would be a major battle where they would be a
major battle where they would be like a siege where
you know, they would think the the side who was
laying siege would think, like, we are ordained by God
to do this, but then like the siege is not
going well, and they would wonder, like he is God
(24:54):
telling us that we should not be taking you know,
this this castle or this estate, or or is it
actually the devil is preventing us from doing this. So
there's a lot of like appeals to God on both sides.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Yeah, yeah, well that's every war anyways. So the other
thing about Charles is, like his father, he is very
in favor of the idea of divine right of the king,
and a few years into his time as king he
dismisses parliament altogether. Now, I say altogether, we think about
(25:30):
parliament now as being like a standing body like our congresses.
But at this point in history, Parliament really serves at
the whim of the king, and the King calls parliament
usually because he needs money and needs to charge some
new taxes, and the parliament is made up of wealthy
landowners who are really the only people in the kingdom
(25:52):
that are able to enforce such things. So when I
say he dissolves it, basically I'm saying is that for
the next eleven years. He does this in sixteen twenty
nine and for eleven years never calls parliament. So that's
you know, that also rubs people the wrong way because
that takes all of the power out of the hands
(26:12):
of the people.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Well people, we mean like, yeah, they're rich aristocrats.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
But yeah, why just mean anybody other than the king, anybody,
right exactly.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Yeah, we talked about religion being important here. In sixteen
thirty three, William Lude was appointed the Archbishop of Canterbury. Yeah,
And why this is important is that Archbishop of Canterbury
is pretty much the most important religious figure in England.
(26:44):
He he was supported by King James, but he brought
in some of the ceremonies that looked awfully Catholic. To
a lot of the Protestants, especially the Puritans. So and
(27:06):
people gunt really, I know, I know it seems like
deeply silly now, but these things are very important to
people at the time. Even things like stained the glass
windows and things like that were like deeply offensive to
some of the parliamentary who would become the parliamentary in faction. Again,
especially the Puritans. It can't stress enough that the Puritans
(27:32):
were like not fun at all. That's why they are
asked to leave. And yeah, the story that we get
told in elementary school is like, well, the Puritans escaped
religious persecution in England and they came to the New World.
It's like, no, they were asked to leave, and then
they came and they persecuted the indigenous population. That's obviously
(27:56):
a oversilification, but only just a little.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Bit, only only a little bit. Well, these, you know,
these new founded religious practices in England, Charles makes some
efforts to kind of push them into the generally Presbyterian Scotland. Yes,
and people get fucking pissed.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
They don't like it.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
They get pissed. They form a group to basically say
that they're not going to stand for this, and ultimately,
a Scottish army defeats the King's forces and takes part
of northern England.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Yeah. So, uh, to back up a step, they there
was something called the Scottish National Covenant.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
That's what I meant by group.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Yeah yeah, when sorry, so when Charles the First was
I think I said James Roer that was his dad.
I'm sorry. Charles the First and Archbishop Loud they were
trying to make these changes to the Scottish Church one
of them. So like you know, uh, there was there
were riots at Edinburgh and the Scots rallied together. They
(29:05):
created something called the National Covenant, which was basically like
a commitment to defend Presbyterianism. And then he Charles saw
this as a rebellion and that led to something called
the Bishop Wars.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
So that's like, so that's when we say that like
this was part of a larger conflict, the War of
the Three Kingdoms. We're not in civil war yet, but
we are in like this War of the Three Kingdoms. Sorry,
so now he's fighting the Scots. Ye, and so now
he's in a pickle. Oh yeah, because that's time if
(29:50):
I'm like stealing your your notes here Dave. He's in
a bit of a pickle because he's got he disbanded parliament,
but he he's run out of money to fight the Scots,
so he summons parliament and this is what they call
the Short Parliament April thirteenth, sixteen forty And at first
(30:18):
I guess it seemed like maybe they actually would give
him the money, because you know, they could put aside
their differences to fuck over the Scots, right.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
Right, But he, yeah, he needs money. This needs money
for he needs money to pay his troops. Right, that's
a big part here. Sorry, yeah, I no, I'm just clarifying.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
I needed to be clear on that. But of course
what actually ends up happening is parliament. They're obviously still
man at the king for various different reasons including dissolu
dissolving parliament, and they refuse to grant him the money,
and then Charles dissolves the parliament again within a month,
(31:01):
which is why it's called the short Parliament. M M.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
You have to remember people are pissed at him for
a number of a number of reasons, but a big
one is that he is these new taxes. For example,
one is there's like a maritime tax. Uh huh where
all the coastal towns pay a tax to upkeep of
the navy, but now he's charging that tax to towns inland.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
I love what that's It's called ship money. Ship money, Yeah,
ship money. Yeah, I just like, I don't know why.
I just think that's funny.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
It's very on the nose.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Yeah, boy, Nick King will go us paid ship money.
It's our long running gag that we're gonna lose our
three UK listeners.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
No, because we're teaching them about their own history that
they may or may not know.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Uh yeah exactly.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Or that statement's gonna make it so much.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Worse, right, it might actually make it worse. But UK listeners,
we love you. And also I don't care if anyone
says your food is good except for beans on toasts.
I can't follow you there, I'm sorry. I always saw
a video on Instagram that was like Britain versus America,
(32:23):
that it was like beans on toast versus shit on
a shingle, which I would eat shit on a shingle.
It has obviously by far the more disgusting name, but
shoot on shingle slaps.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Now, Joe, At what point is Parliament called again where
John Pim is in charge.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
Uh so that'll be the next thing. But before that,
in August sixteen forty, you have the Battle of newbern
So led by Alexander Leslie, the Scots actually invade England yep,
and King Charles army gets their ass beat, including some
(33:11):
of their garrison desserts. So this is obviously a crushing
defeat by the Scotts. So the war against the Scotts
is looking real bad.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Oh yes.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
So then in a few months later, in November sixteen forty,
the Scottish Army is camped out in northern England and
they're refusing to leave unless they get paid.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Yeah, that's what I mean by they took part of
northern England, I mean they basically occupied it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
So again Charles, first he's got to go hat in
hand to Parliament, and Parliament refused. So this is the
next the Long Parliament that you were talking about, Dave,
And I'm sorry, what did you want to say about this?
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Well, so the Long Parliament I was put in charge
of the names that come up later as John Pim
and instead of like immediately you know, reaching out to
help solve this problem for Charles, they decide to use
this opportunity to roll back a lot of the things
he's been doing, get rid of these taxes. They require
(34:19):
that he call Parliament into session at least once every
three years, and they start investigating one of his chief ministers,
Lord Strafford, and ultimately execute him.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
Yes, they execute of his minister. Which is that's how
it say a huge deal. Yeah, so instead of like
giving them money, they used this opportunity to bitch.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Not just bitch, they used the opportunity to bitch, but
also like they they put some restrictions on him, and
they they backed him into a corner. Well, he backed
himself into a corner and they capitalized on it.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
Oh I'm obviously just trying to lighten it up a
little bit.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
His bitch, bitch, bitch.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
Yeah. So I mean this is like again like this
is where like some of the the major like conflicts
come in. So as we kind of talked about, I
think it's it's want of like get back to here.
So like you know, Charles believed in like the divine
right of kings that that he could govern, like he
didn't need parliament to govern. He had something called the
(35:28):
Privy Council that he appointed, and then he sort of expected, uh,
Parliament to just do whatever he wanted. But by this point,
like we kind of didn't mention this like explicitly, but
Parliament already had like gotten a lot, quite a bit
of power in British politics. So they were the ones
(35:52):
that they could raise taxes, they made laws, and they
sort of like allocated money. They i have had a
role sort of like Congress, although obviously like a lot
less less power and there's not really checks and balances.
Well no, and then we also mentioned that like religion
(36:15):
is at play here with especially I like if some
of the more radical quote unquote sects, like the Presbyterians
and especially the Puritans. So yeah, so getting back to
long Parliament. So then the next thing you mentioned the
(36:39):
execution of Earl of Stratford. Then it turns are bad
to worse. So now we've got rebellion in Scotland. Now
there's a rebellion in Ireland in October sixteen forty one.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Oh, I mean this is like serious rebellion.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
Yeah, they start, there's an uprising, so mainly Catholic Ireland,
and there are a lot of Protestant settlers that are murdered.
So anti Catholic sentiment in England now is on the rise.
They use this to sort of stoke fear that the
(37:21):
Irish Army were going to invade and join with Charles
to restore Catholicism. All these people just thought that Charles
was just like itching to restore Catholicism.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Well, there's a reason for this. So after this, you know,
this massacring of Protestants in Ireland and October sixteen forty one,
Charles in Parliament can't agree on what to do. But
Parliament starts to investigate some things about Charles, and they
(37:56):
discover some paperwork that shows that Charles asked the Irish
Parliament to raise an army, and although his intention was
to use his army against Scotland, Parliament becomes suspicious that
he's raising this Catholic leaning king is raising an Irish
army to use against England. At the same time, Charles
(38:21):
becomes paranoid and starts stoking the fire of the idea
that the Scottish rebellion was caused by Parliament itself against him.
Neither of these things are true, but this is the
suspicion that is causing a further rift here as this
is all happening. And this leads us to January of
(38:43):
sixteen forty two. Do you want to get into that, Joe,
you let me take it.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
Yeah, So what happens is no, I'm sorry, sorry, go ahead,
d you got this well.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
In January of sixteen forty two, Charles does something that
no king has ever done. He steps into the House
of Parliament, No king has ever set foot within that group,
and he comes with I want to say, like forty
armed guards. He's trying to arrest five members of Parliament
(39:19):
who opposed him. John pim Is the Leader of Parliament
and four others. Unfortunately for Charles, though, they were tipped
off the day before and I have already left and
after it flew the coop, they flew the coup. In fact,
that's what Charles was quoted as saying, Oh, birds have
flown the coup.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
I believe is that one of that phrase ridge sets well.
I don't know, so I know of I know of
at least two idioms Dave that originate during this conflict.
I was like giddy when I when I learned about this,
and I think I'll probably talk about the next time,
(40:01):
but maybe we need like an addendum like a fourth
episode that's just idioms from this time.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
But anyways, you know, after Charles does this, he knows
that he's really crossed the line, and he flees London,
heads into northern England and calls upon his supporters, many
of which are in Nottingham, to prepare for war. So
Lione has been drawn in the sand. England is now
at war, although, like I said, I read something that
(40:31):
said it's at war, but you wouldn't have known it
from the outside looking in because England does not have
a standing army.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
Right they Yeah, so what happens that they had sort
of like I'll talk about this for next time, but
they basically had temporary armies that would be like you'd
be called by your county to serve in various conflicts.
They're like militias, yes, yes, very much like militias. They're
not really well trained. They were sort of led by
trained officers, but the the the soldiers themselves were often
(41:01):
very poorly trained.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
Yeah, and you know the reason for this. You know,
England even today has a Royal Navy and a Royal
Air Force, but not a Royal army. Yes, there is
an army, but the reason that that England traditionally did
not have a standing army is for fear that it
would give the king too much power.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Yeah, and also standing armies were not we're not common
in Europe at this time. We have talked about this
a little bit before this, but we we actually uh
it sounds strange if you didn't listened episode, but he
designed a lot of like military equipment. But Leonardo da
(41:42):
Vinci episode, we talked a little bit about uh, standing
armies and how there were a lot of mercenaries used
during this time period. So on the continent, Uh, there were,
they made heavy use of merce and the best mercenaries
(42:02):
were actually from Italy or what would become Italy. But
I digress.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
Yeah, I think I think the idea of standing armies
kind of sort of fell by the wayside after the
fall of the Roman Empire. Yeah, I'd have to really
look into that, but it seems like it didn't really
pick back up, you know, the time between the end
of the Roman Empire and like, well, I don't know,
(42:28):
I guess the period after the English Civil War. It's yes,
sort of wasn't common.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
Yeah, So so now what happens is uh, and so
now around this time you kind of get the names
of the different the different factions. So and each of
these were basically like a derisive name by the other side.
So the Royalists are often known as cavaliers, which comes
(42:57):
from the French word chevalier, which is a chivalric figure.
And that's like that's like a good thing, but that
that becomes a pejorative uh term for the Royalists. And
then the uh the term for the parliamentarians was the roundheads.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
Because of their haircuts.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
Because their haircuts, so they so this is also again
economic as well as religious. So a lot of the
parliamentarians were a lot of like new money as we
might call it today. They were business people. They had
like they weren't often not born into some of the
high families or aristract families, and so they they wore
(43:48):
short haircuts, roundheads. The cavaliers, the Royalists, they often had
long flowing hair, and uh, if you look at pictures
of them, they like look like they're having a great time.
They look at pictures of the roundheads and they look
like like really stern because they get they have shit
(44:10):
to do.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
So yeah, anyway, I mean, and we're talking about illustrations,
so it also comes down to like who did the illustrations.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
And w Well, another thing that comes out of this
is basically like journalism, Like it's it's really interesting. This
is one of the first time periods where people were
trying to capture events as they were. So it was
just before this Civil War that you have the first
drawing of a banana in England. And I know that
(44:42):
sounds weird, but like this is a around the Renaissance
and like realism and art was important. Yeah, but you
also find like the idea of journalism starting to appear,
like recording of events and spreading information about current events
to the populace. Now what that also very quickly becomes though,
(45:03):
is you have some of the broadsheets, which would be
newspapers on either side, drawing political cartoons of the other
side and making them look bad and things like that,
and printing stories that were you know, not kind to
the other side of that sort of thing. Sure, but okay,
getting back to the story here. March sixteen forty two,
(45:25):
the Militia Ordinances passed, So this is the Parliament gives
it self to power to raise an army that's separate
from the king.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
Right, but doesn't the king use an old ordinance to
do the same thing. I can raise an army without
the approval of parliament. Yeah, so they both do.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
Each side is raising an army exactly, and initially like
it kinda is like hard for them to do because
they have to Yeah, like there is no like standing army.
(46:05):
So you've got like the county militias, like I said.
But by the time they start raising armies, and by
the time of like the first battle in sixteen forty two,
so this is about the summer, each side had about
twenty thousand soldiers and almost none of them had any
(46:26):
fighting experience, like I mentioned. So the first big battle
happens on October twenty third, which is it's called the
Battle of Edge Hill. Edge Hill. As you may say,
look at some of these like just these great like
(46:47):
political cartoons from the time. Got this cartoon with this
lady who is like sending her husband off to war
and she's saying, go to the wars. Just I don't know,
you should look u stuff from the time period. It's
like it's the first one of the first areas where
you have like political cartoons and things like that. Okay,
(47:08):
so the parliamentary parliamentary parliamentarians, oh my god, the Roundheads.
This is why they got a nickname. They were at
this point commanded by the Earl of Essex. They met
the King's forces at Edgehill, which is near Warwickshire, so
there's about thirteen fourteen thousand one each side. The result
(47:30):
was inconclusive, so the King's army marched towards London, which
was the strong the stronghold for the parliamentarians, but they
were stopped at Turnham Green by Essex force, which had
been growing. So over this period of time both forces
start to like they're getting more and more people. Now
(47:52):
the parliamentarians had about twenty four thousand people and so
they're fighting like small skirmishes throughout the winter. And at
this point the king established his headquarters at Oxford. So
you have the two power centers here now London for
the roundhead slash parliamentarians parliamentarians and Oxford for the Royalists
(48:15):
slash cavaliers. Sixteen forty three there were some peace talks.
Parliament presented the King with what are called the Oxford propositions,
which he was like, no thanks. So now they start
(48:40):
like both sides are still digging in. They're establishing garrisons, ports,
things like that, They're like fortifying some of the various
castles or some of the like houses from some of
the aristocrats and things like that. Right, so roughly, and
(49:04):
people were trying to figure out like whose side they're on.
So by the summer of sixteen forty three, it's basically
like kind of settled into like which regions roughly supported
which side. The land area was about equal, but the
(49:29):
parliamentarians had better resources because they had the major ports
like London, right, and then also places like I'm not
sure if people would know, like but like Portsmouth, Plymouth,
places like that, And they also had the largest arsenals,
(49:50):
and most importantly they controlled the navy, and the king
had almost all of northern England, including their main port
and Newcastle. They also had most of like the middle
(50:10):
part of the country that all of almost all of Wales. Yeah,
so now we have like much bigger armies at this point.
So fighting was like all over the country, mainly like
smaller battles of like regional areas, but there were about
one hundred and fifty thousand soldiers overall. So the Royalists
(50:36):
were gaining ground and consolidating their power in the north,
the middle and the south, and then the Parliamentarians sort
of pushed into the south and east. The Royalists won
several important battles like Braddock Down, Sorting Down, Stratton and
(51:02):
Roundway Down, and they took some important ports, including Bristol.
So it sort of looks like, you know, things are
going well for the Royalists, right.
Speaker 1 (51:17):
It does, it does. And what else makes it seem
like they're doing well is that the King makes a
deal in Ireland where hey, if you'll let a bunch
of our troops leave Ireland to fight for the King,
I'll tell the remaining troops that there's a ceasefire. And
(51:38):
the Parliamentarians get word of this and are kind of
freaking out. But then they strike a deal with Scotland exactly,
which gets them a bit of an upper hand. They
going to get even more troops.
Speaker 2 (51:51):
Yeah, that looks like that. The tide sort of looked
like maybe it had been turning, because once they no
longer have to be fighting in Ireland, then you know,
that absolutely freeze them up. But with the Scottish joining
then yeah, that's obviously bad. So sixteen forty four that's
when the tide sort of turns.
Speaker 1 (52:13):
M hm.
Speaker 2 (52:14):
So. But the problem is the King using Catholic troops
then gave rise to the idea that there was going
to be a Catholic invasion. And there's actually this h
I'm looking at this picture of the Scottish armies and
(52:39):
the parliamentarians uniting because obviously all the Scots also hated
Charles because he had tried to take over Scotland and
that's as beat hell.
Speaker 1 (52:51):
Yeah, So.
Speaker 2 (52:59):
The Scottish army in January sixteen forty four, twenty two
thousand Scots crossed the border to help Parliament and then
encounter this force, a Royalist army. They met at the
Battle of Marston Moor, which is near it is York
(53:20):
on July second. So this is the largest battle the
First Civil War.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
Yeah, I read that it was double chet. This largest
battle in terms of troops overall in the First Civil War,
but I believe again the deadliest battle on English soil.
Speaker 2 (53:35):
Yeah, it was extremely deadly. So there are about twenty
eight thousand soldiers on Parliament side and about eighteen thousand
on the Royalist side, so it was a obviously that's
a lopsided amount of troops because of the addition of
the Scots, but the Royalists were defeated and that caused
(54:00):
their base of power in the North to collapse. They
did win a battle against the Parliamentarians of the Second
Battle of Newbery, but by the end of sixteen forty four,
the North belonged to parliament apart from like a few
(54:24):
holdouts right, and then the king was also losing ground
in the midlands, like the middle part of the country.
Speaker 1 (54:33):
The way that the Parliamentarians took part of the North,
they sort of cut off the King's reinforcements, so it
wasn't like like they kind of like took the north
like but in the middle of it, so that the
troops north of them still couldn't get down to reinforce
the king.
Speaker 2 (54:49):
Yeah, they they typically had even though they were well
we're going to talk a little bit next time about
they did have some fairly good commander and used some
good tactics, including Oliver Cromwell. So he was among the
(55:11):
senior commanders, and he had quite an aptitude for military maneuvers,
and that was one of the reasons that led him
to become the most prominent figure of the Parliamentarian cause,
but we will talk about him a lot at the
(55:32):
next episode. Oh yeah, but I want to finish up
this first Civil War with sort of the last few
sort of battles here. So now it's early in sixteen
forty five, Parliament again goes to the King with something
called the Uxbridge Propositions, which is another list of propositions
(55:54):
to like get him to you know, sign a peace treaty.
But this was even like more stringent than the other ones.
So these would have ended the king's command of the
armed forces, given Parliament responsibility for the education of the
King's children, which is like a weird like but that
(56:21):
was that was one of the things that was basically
like do made this like doomed to failure? The King
was not going to accept that. But also crucially in
introduced Presbyterian religion to England and then also obliged the
king to sign that covenant that we talked about, right,
So of course I feel like there was no chance
that he was going to sign this. Oh no, probably not,
(56:45):
and so he rejected it. But so the parliamentarians around
this time are through this time, like I said, they
were actually removing some of the They are like commanders
who were like part of the aristocracy and replacing them
with trained soldiers. And it was also during this time
(57:09):
where about like sixteen forty five to sixteen forty six,
where they were creating a permanent professional army under someone
called Thomas Fairfax.
Speaker 1 (57:21):
And Oliver Cromwell.
Speaker 2 (57:24):
Oliver Cromwell, right, So the last decisive battle was on
June fourteenth, when about fifteen thousand under Fairfax for the
parliamentarians and about ten thousand under the king. So you
noticed that some of these big battles, the Royalist always
have fewer.
Speaker 1 (57:42):
People, Yeah, they do.
Speaker 2 (57:45):
They fought, they lost, yeah, well, yeah, they fought at
the end. They also didn't have as good of a tactics.
They fought at the Battle of Naseby in Northamptonshire, which
was a decisive victory for Parliament. So for the rest
of nineteen forty five and it in nineteen forty six,
(58:09):
the parliamentary and sort of moved around the areas that
were loyal to the king and like kind of defeating
their remaining forces. So the king's forces are like in
just in disarray. In March sixteen forty six, the Royalist army,
(58:30):
one of the remainders of the army in the west
under Sir Ralph Hopton, they surrendered at Cornwall and then
most of Wales sort of surrendered at this point. A
little bit later in March, and there was one more
battle with just like the last little bits of the
(58:52):
Royalist army was defeated at Stowe on the Wold, which
is near Gloucestershire or Gloucester as you pronounce it, right, Yeah,
that's no, I know it is, but.
Speaker 1 (59:09):
I know it's just funny how you said that.
Speaker 2 (59:11):
That's like I don't know. Yes, well, it's kind of like,
you know, it's the Sciotoe river here as it's like,
that's how it is spelled. But if you ask anyone
who lives here, it's the Sciota is it is what
it is? Right?
Speaker 1 (59:25):
Yeah, no, no, you're not wrong.
Speaker 2 (59:28):
So the king left Oxford and he surrendered to the
Scottish Army on May fifth, and then the there were
like a few holdouts, like people were still fighting for
the Royalist cause, but most of them surrendered by that summer.
So thus ends the First Civil War. And you might
(59:51):
think that that's basically the end of it, but you'd
be wrong, because we got wrong. We've got two more,
two more civil wars.
Speaker 1 (01:00:00):
Thanks.
Speaker 2 (01:00:01):
Look don't look great for old Charles first at this point.
Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
Damn, I gotta tell you, Joe, we did that well,
I mean almost exactly an hour, just just over an hour.
Speaker 2 (01:00:12):
Well, I think, I hope, folks, I hope you can
see why we decided to split this up because there
was really a lot of things we had to do
to talk about, like why this war started before we
could really even get into like and I would love
to talk more about like military tactics and things like that,
(01:00:32):
but that's just like you have to do it in
a whole episode about each battle, all right, see you
later everyone.
Speaker 1 (01:00:39):
So on, thank you for listening to An Hour of
Our Time.
Speaker 2 (01:00:45):
If you like what you heard, explore our catalog of
over two hundred episodes and rate and review us on
your platform of choice.
Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
And if you'd like to support what we do, visit
patreon dot com Slash An Hour of Our Time Podcast
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist
It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.