The Year One by M.I. Finley (1968)

History tends to be the history of the winners, with the losers assigned the passive, largely unvoiced, faceless role of the people on whom the winners operated.
(‘Aspects of Antiquity’, page 189)

Notes on ‘The Year One’, a short essay included in Finley’s 1968 collection, ‘Aspects of Antiquity’.

Ancient calendars

People living through a momentous year (1066, 1789, 1939, 2000) usually know about it. The most obvious thing to say about the year 1 is nobody living through it knew about it at the time. The entire chronological framework of Western civilisation, whereby we divide years into before Christ (BC) or after Christ (in the year of the Lord, anno Domini, AD) hadn’t been invented.

Instead, all the different cultures of the ancient world kept their own calendars relating to their own cultural landmarks. The Greeks thought in terms of four year blocks or ‘Olympiads’ which began with the first Olympic Games in 776 BC, so year one was the first year of the 195th Olympiad.

The Romans had, for centuries, dated events by referring to the two consuls who were in office for that year, thus ‘in the consulship of Caius Caesar, son of Augustus, and Lucius Aemilius Paullus, son of Paullus.’

Only the learned wanted to look back deeper than a few decades and, for those purposes, Roman historians had worked out the year of the legendary foundation of Rome, and dated everything AUC standing for ‘ab urbe condita’ or ‘since the founding of the city (Rome)’. Many centuries later Christian historians aligned this legendary date to 753 years before the birth of Christ. So the year one was 754 AUC. This system was devised by the Christian historian Dionysius Exiguus, a Greek-speaking monk.

The evidence of the gospels

Of the four gospels only two give details of the birth of Jesus, Matthew and Luke

Matthew’s Gospel

Matthew’s gospel includes the story of ‘the massacre of the innocents’ (chapter 2, verses 16 to 18). Herod the Great, king of Judea, is said to have heard a prophecy that his kingdom will be overthrown by a child about to be born in Bethlehem, so he ordered the execution of all male children aged two and under in the vicinity of Bethlehem. The Catholic Church regards them as the first Christian martyrs, and their feast – Holy Innocents’ Day (or the Feast of the Holy Innocents) – is celebrated on 28 December. In this story, Joseph and Mary were warned by angels about the impending massacre and so made their way secretly to Egypt, ‘The Flight to Egypt’, a journey depicted in countless paintings.

Unfortunately for the veracity of this version, Herod the Great died in 4 BC. If Matthew is literally correct, Jesus must have been born in 4 BC at the latest.

Luke’s Gospel

Luke’s story is different. He says the Romans sent out a decree that everyone had to return to their home town in order to take part in a national census of the population of Judea so they could be taxed more efficiently.

Unfortunately, the only census decreed by the Romans that we know of occurred in either 6 or 7 AD.

In 6 AD the Romans deposed Herod’s son, Archelaus, themselves took over Judea, and installed a Roman governor with instructions to conduct a census. (The northern province of Galilee remained under the rule of the Herod family; Finley says this slight inconsistency between direct and indirect rule was common in provinces on the edge of the empire.)

The Roman Empire

Was an empire in the full sense. The ‘Roman people’ i.e. citizens of Rome and central and northern Italy, ruled all the other inhabitants of the empire as subjects. The empire outside Italy was divided into provinciae. In 1 AD the Roman empire covered about 1,250,000 square miles with a population of about 60 million (population figures are deeply contested). Censuses were taken in the provinces to maximise tax revenue, but at different times in different provinces, using different methods and definitions, so…

The tax collector, along with the soldier, was the most obvious and ubiquitous link between the provinces and Rome. (p.187)

The limits of Empire

In 9 AD a Romanised German warrior chief named Arminius lured three legions into an ambush in the Teutoburg Forest and annihilated them, seizing the precious standards. Traumatised by this terrible news, the emperor Augustus ordered the remaining two legions and all Roman citizens to withdraw back across the Rhine, a decision reinforced by his successor Tiberius, which crystallised into a fiat. The Romans never attempted to conquer and colonise Germany and the north European border settled for the next four centuries along the Rhine-Danube line.

The borders finalised as England in the north-west, the Atlantic in the west, the Atlas mountains, the Sahara and the cataracts of the Nile in Africa, Judea in what is now the Middle East, and Asia i.e. half of Anatolia up to the border with Armenia.

Imperial exploitation

The Romans had no shortage of writers and propagandists (Horace, Virgil and so on) praising Augustus’ rule and, by extension, Rome’s right to rule the entire world (Virgil). The Christian European empires 1700 years later (Spain, France, Britain, Holland) made lengthy attempts to justify their imperial conquests in terms of bringing civilisation etc to barbarian lands. The Romans used the same rhetoric but were much more honest about the sheer greed and looting involved in conquest. As Finley says in his essay about slavery, Julius Caesar set out for Gaul a penniless aristocrat from a down-at-heel family and he returned 8 years later a multi-millionaire and the most powerful man in Rome. That’s what 8 years of burning and looting did for him.

Once a province had been conquered and pacified there an infrastructure was imposed designed to extract wealth, consisting of extensive taxes(in goods and services and money) for the state, but great personal income skimmed off by high officials and members of the tax farming corporations.

Rome had no mission to civilise comparable to France’s great pretension to a mission civilisatrice. Some of her propagandists later developed this idea but the reality was that, so long as they paid their taxes, Rome left her subject peoples largely to themselves, only interfering if there was disorder, rebellion etc. Over a century of conquering and administering other peoples had shown that minimal interference paid off and…was cheap to run.

This was particularly true in the East, which had well-established cultures/civilisations long before the Romans arrived. Latin was the language of the new rulers but Greek remained the language of intellectuals and the ruling classes which sat directly below the Roman governor. Educated Romans learned Greeks but Greeks rarely bothered to learn Latin, a far simpler, cruder language.

Josephus

Finley makes a pit stop to spend a page profiling Joseph ben Matthias, member of a Jewish priestly family known to history as Josephus and for the epic history of the Jewish War, an account of the 4-year rebellion of Jews against Roman rule 66 to 70 AD which led up to the Romans storming Jerusalem and destroying the Great Temple built by Herod.

Josephus was a Pharisee, a member of the elite priestly caste who identified with law and order and the Romans, so the enemies in his book are the Zealots, who he calls rebels and bandits, religious visionaries who stirred up the people to revolt by playing on their grievances, their extreme poverty and promises of a new world.

Augustus

The essay then turns to consider Augustus’s achievement, namely bringing to an end 60 odd years of chaos as the Roman Republic proved incapable of managing its empire, or, more precisely, the scale of the wealth and power pouring into Rome exacerbate the toxic rivalries among great men which had previously been contained by its republican institutions, but now boiled over into repeated civil wars by over-mighty rulers. Until Octavian put a stop to it (helped by the fact that all the eminent men of his generation had been killed in the civil wars, committed suicide or been murdered in his ‘proscriptions’, leaving him the last significant military-political figure standing).

Augustus’s titles

In 27 BC Octavian was awarded the title ‘Augustus’ by the senate. But his other titles are significant. He wanted to be known as ‘princeps’ i.e. principle figure, partly because it avoided the dreaded term rex or king. And also kept the title Imperator, originally given to victorious generals, but now awarded him a) as recognition of victorious campaigns but b) as continual reminder of where his power lay – the complete loyalty of the army.

Around the time of Christ’s birth, in 2 AD Augustus was awarded a further title, ‘Father of the Nation’, which is not as cuddly as it sounds, given the draconian authority the father of a family had over all its other members, male or female.

Augustus tries to ensure heirs

In his magisterial biography of Augustus Adrian Goldsworthy goes out of his way to emphasise that through most of his rule Augustus appears to have not wanted to create a dynasty and been succeeded by one heir. On the contrary he tried to create a cohort of experienced young men who, Goldsworthy thinks, were meant to form a small cabinet, to rule collegiately.

The two problems with this was that they all tended to come from within his own close family, so royal, monarchical, imperial logic was hard to deny – but worse, that almost all his proteges died, leaving, the grumpy, surly, graceless Tiberius as the last most obvious figure standing.

But before all this had become clear Augustus spent time and energy grooming a succession of young male relatives for rule and in doing so rode roughshod over many of the conventions of the Republic he claimed to be defending. Thus in 4 BC the Senate was prevailed upon to decree that Augustus’s two grandsons (who he had adopted to make legally his sons) Gaius and Lucius, should be designated consuls at the tender age of 15 and then awarded the actual posts, for a year, when they turned 20. Each was titled ‘Princeps of the Youth’. In the Year One Gaius was indeed ‘elected’ consul (as everyone the Princeps recommended to the voters tended to be). But then the curse struck…Lucius died in 2 AD, Gaius in 4 AD.

Augustus’s propaganda machine

Augustus had statues of himself carved and erected in cities all over the empire. Instead of realistic depictions they show an idealised, tall virile commander of men. He ensured his face was on all coinage, so even the illiterate knew who he was. He encouraged his inclusion in the ceremonies of all the religions and cults practiced across the empire. Via his unofficial minister of the arts, Maecenas, he ‘encouraged’ praise by the leading poets of the day, poets like Virgil, Horace and Ovid whose words of sycophantic praise have survived down to our time, 2,000 years later.

Augustus’s campaign for moral regeneration

Alongside a major programme of rebuilding and renovating not only Rome but all the major cities in the Empire, Augustus tried to bring about a moral revival as well. He had roughly two concerns: one was that the ancient noble families of Rome had been severely depleted by the civil wars and so he passed successive legislation promoting marriage and punishing adult men who failed to marry or have children. He gave legal and financial incentives to families with three or more children – legislation collectively known as the Leges Iuliae.

Augustus wasn’t concerned about sexual morality as such but was concerned about its impact on the stability and fecundity of the ruling class which he wanted to grow and stabilise in order to secure Rome’s future. It’s in this context that he passed legislation severely punishing adultery. He wanted more sons of the aristocracy, and that they should marry and do their military and civic duty, instead of not marrying and frittering away their family fortunes on increasing displays of opulence.

Exiling the Julias

It was in this context that in 2 BC he exiled his only biological child, his daughter Julia the Elder (39 BC to 14 AD), who he married to an unwilling Tiberius, allegedly for flagrant adultery and sexual depravity. Several men who had allegedly been her partners were also exiled. In 8 AD he similarly exiled Julia the Elder’s daughter and so Augustus’s grand-daughter, Julia the Younger, again for adultery.

On each of these occasions the ostensible reason was breaching the emperor’s own code of morality, but he also spoke about Julia the Elder being involved in some kind of plot against his life. The details remain obscure but most modern historians think there was more to both affairs than meets the eye, and that in both cases the exiled women were in some way figureheads of attempts to overthrow Augustus’s rule. Hence historians speak of a ‘Julian’ party at his court.

Although the details continue to elude us, Finley draws the central point which is that as soon as you have courts you have courtly intrigue, you have palace plotting – in the later empire this kind of conspiracy became endemic but it is instructive to note that it appears to have arisen as soon as there was a court, in the close family of the very first emperor.

Ovid is exiled

This is the view of Peter Green who devotes most of the long 80-page introduction to his translation of Ovid’s Art of Love to a forensic analysis of events and accusations surrounding the 8 AD exiling of Julia the Younger, because the poet was caught up in the same event and, with little or no warning, exiled by Augustus to the furthest border of the Roman empire, to the miserable provincial town of Tomis on the Black Sea. Ovid wrote a large number of letters to former friends and officials begging to be allowed to return, and a series of poems elaborating on the wretchedness of his fate – but to no avail. Even when Augustus died, his successor, Tiberius, renewed his exile and Ovid died miserably, far from his beloved Rome.

Frustratingly, despite writing a huge amount about his exile, Ovid never anywhere specifies the nature of his error. He insists it was minor, that he never plotted against the emperor, or planned to use poison or a knife or anything like that. Green weighs all the evidence and thinks Ovid must have seen something or been present at meetings where such plots were discussed and failed to report them to the authorities. Because he wasn’t an active plotter, Ovid’s life was spared; but because he didn’t report whatever he saw, his lack of loyalty to the emperor – and to the entire peaceful regime which Augustus had spent a lifetime creating – was called into doubt. Hence exile.

The Augustan peace

It’s easy to criticise Augustus’s early career, his cut-throat manoeuvres, his participation in the proscriptions i.e. mass murder of anyone who stood in the way of the Second Triumvirate, his hugely unpopular land redistribution away from traditional farmer and to veterans of the military campaigns leading up to the decisive Battle of Philippi. But by these expedients he secured the end of the civil wars which had lasted as long as anyone could remember, brought military, civil and social peace, order and stability. He secured the longest period of continuous peace the Mediterranean world had ever known. In this atmosphere of peace and stability business flourished and people got rich.

If the theatre was the characteristic secular building of the ancient Greeks, the amphitheatre was its Roman counterpart, and the long peace saw them built in cities all around the Central Sea.

Augustus worship

The result, especially in the East, was that people began to worship Augustus:

as Saviour, Benefactor and God Manifest (Epiphanes) just as they had deified a succession of Ptolemies, Seleucids and other rulers of the preceding centuries. (p.194)

In Rome he couldn’t be worshipped as a god while alive, only his spirit was said to be holy. But the east had no such hesitations and built temples to Augustus the god. This had nothing to do with love or respect but simple pragmatism. Most people were utterly powerless to influence events, least of all the slaves. It made simple sense to venerate and appease the mighty; that was the way of the world. Finley draws the major conclusion with huge implications for the growth of Christianity, that:

Religion became increasingly centred on salvation in the next world, whereas it had once been chiefly concerned with life in this one. (p.194)

Client kings and dependent rulers had a vested interest in encouraging the cult of Augustus as it underpinned their own authority, for most of the East was a patchwork of cults and religions which, for the most part, co-existed peacefully enough.

The Jewish Revolt

The Jews stood apart in their fierce insistence on monotheism. Jews had migrated and had communities all around the Mediterranean and in Rome (where Ovid recommends the synagogue as a good place to pick up women in The Art of Love). The Old Testament writings had been translated into Greek as far back as the third century BC as Jews in the diaspora lost touch with Hebrew.

Herod the Great, King of Judaea, had more in common with his Roman rulers than his Jewish subjects. When he introduced an amphitheatre and gladiator fights in the Roman style there were mutterings of discontent, but when he tried to impose official worship of Augustus the god there was an outcry and an assassination attempt.

The Jews’ dogged insistence on the uniqueness of their god puzzled the Romans (and their neighbours). Neither Augustus nor Tiberius took any steps against the Jews, but Roman officials in the provinces were less tolerant and insistence on conformity to Augustus worship or other religious practices led to repeated clashes. Many Jews were nervous of their masters’ lack of understanding and religious extremists – the Zealots so criticised by Josephus – played on these fears and encouraged proactive rebellion.

All these forces led to the outbreak of the First Jewish–Roman War (66 to 73 AD), sometimes called the Great Jewish Revolt or The Jewish War. It began in the twelfth year of the reign of Nero, with anti-taxation protests leading to attacks on Roman citizens by the Jews. The Roman governor, Gessius Florus, responded by plundering the Second Temple, claiming the money was for the Emperor, and the next day launching a raid on the city, arresting numerous senior Jewish figures. This prompted a wider, large-scale rebellion and the Roman military garrison of Judaea was quickly overrun by the rebels.

It took the Romans with all their might four full years to quell the rebellion, marked by the sack of Jerusalem, the destruction of Herod’s Temple and the displacement of its people around the Mediterranean, followed by three years of further mopping-up operations. Most other Roman provinces suffered from extortionate taxation, harsh military rule, severe punishment for anyone who breached the peace. What made the Jews different was the involvement of fierce religious belief which shaded into millenarian visions of a Final Battle and Second Coming of the Promised One. Egypt, Greece, Britain, Spain and other equally exploited provinces had nothing like this.

The rise of Christianity

Obviously nobody alive in the Year One had a clue that it would one day, centuries later, be singled out as the start of a new dispensation on human history. If you’re not a Christian, chances are you still use the Christian system of numbering years, if only for business purposes. If you are a Christian this year marked the start of a completely new epoch of world and human history, one in which Divine Grace entered the human realm and all people were offered the chance of salvation through faith in the risen Christ.

Finley dwells on the fairly well-known textual records of early Christianity, within his realm of Roman studies, for example the famous letters of Pliny the Elder to the emperor Trajan asking for advice on how to deal with the men and women being denounced to him as ‘Christians’.

Returning to borders, Finley points out that this same emperor Trajan conquered ‘Dacia’, roughly modern Transylvania, and embarked on a foolhardy campaign against the Parthians (graveyard of the ambitions of Crassus and Anthony to name but two) but Hadrian, who succeeded him, gave up the Parthian gains and settled the borders of the empire for good. Thus, give or take a few small provinces and the elimination of a few client-kingdoms, such as Judaea, the frontiers established by Augustus in the Year One were not far from being the final, definitive borders of the Empire.

Trade

One of the consistent surprises when reading about pre-modern history is the extent and complexity of pre-modern trade routes. It was one of the big messages of the British Museum’s great Vikings exhibition, showing just how far-flung Viking exploration and trade was. Whether considering the trading networks of ancient China or the early explorations of the Portuguese or the vast extent of the Mongol conquests, the message is always the same: pre-modern trading networks were always more wide-reaching than you would have thought.

Same here: Finley points out that the Romans bought silk from as far afield as China (via middlemen in Chinese Turkestan), and more directly with China and Ceylon. Indo-Roman trading stations existed as far away as Pondicherry. ‘There was a drain of Roman coins to India and further East’. Yet references to India were thin and misleading. In the works of the elegiac poets India is usually just linked as a name alongside Parthia to represent the furtherst ends of the earth.

Similarly, there was trans-Sahara trade, especially for ivory, but almost total ignorance of the African continent below the desert. (p.198)

In a way the northern border was more intriguing. After the catastrophe of the Teutoburg Forest (described in vivid detail by Goldsworthy in his biography of Augustus) Augustus withdrew all legions, merchants and settlers in Germany back south of the Rhine and the Rhine-Danube became de facto the northern border of the empire for the next four centuries.

Despite interacting with them extensively, despite making treaties with chieftains, trading with them, understanding something about their societies, in a sense the Romans never got to grips with the Germans. Finley explains part of this was because the Germans were illiterate so had no texts for the Romans to study; no history, art, no architecture.

Also, the Germans were made up of loose and constantly changing tribal confederations. The Parthians had an emperor, the Armenians a great king and so on: you knew who you were dealing with and what they had to offer and how to bargain. None of this worked with the Germans.

(He makes the interesting point that, in their relative ignorance, the Germans relied on ‘primitive agricultural techniques’ which rapidly exhausted what agricultural land they created by forest clearance, and this was a factor in their constant migrations. That and the periodic arrival of entire peoples from further east, which pushed the nearby Germans over the Rhine, often for safety.)

Lastly, he makes a quick point that despite trade with far-flung places outside the empire, most of the cultural and especially religious innovation came from within the empire.

The great matrix of religion innovation was within the empire, in its eastern regions: Egypt, Syria and Palestine, Asia Minor. And, of course, in the end the triumphant contribution from that area in this period was Christianity. (p.198)

East and West

He concludes with the Big Idea that the whole notion of Western Europe in a sense owes its existence to the Augustan settlement which secured Italy, Spain, France and Britain for Roman rule for centuries to come, bequeathing them a common culture, no matter how far it decayed during the Dark Ages.

The East, with far deeper cultural roots of its own, was not ‘Romanised’ to anything like the same extent, retaining a cultural independence which was expressed, first through the survival of the Byzantine Empire for another 1,000 years, and then through its conquest by another Eastern religion, Islam, tearing the Middle East and North Africa out of the Roman Christian family of nations, setting up a profound geographical and cultural divide which lasts to this day.


Credit

‘The Year One’ was included in a collection of essays by M.I. Finley titled Aspects of Antiquity, published by Penguin books in 1968. References are to the 1977 Penguin paperback edition.

Roman reviews

The odes of Horace

The gods watch over me; a heart
That’s reverent and the poets art
Please them.
(Horace Book 1, ode 17, in James Michie’s translation)

Come, learn this air
And sing it to delight me.
A good song can repair
The ravages inflicted by black care.
(Book 4, ode 11)

Horace’s works

Scholars broadly agree the following dates for Horace’s body of poetry:

Horace’s odes

Horace published 104 odes. They are divided into 4 books. He published the first 3 books of odes in 23 BC, containing 88 carmina or songs. He prided himself on the skill with which he adapted a wide variety of Greek metres to suit Latin, which is a more concise, pithy and sententious language than Greek.

I shall be renowned
As one who, poor-born, rose and pioneered
A way to fit Greek rhythms to our tongue… (3.30)

Horace aimed to create interest by varying the metre as much as possible, using over a dozen different verse formats. He was particularly indebted to metres associated with two Greek poets, Alcaeus and Sappho. Of the 104 odes, 37 are in Alcaics and 26 in Sapphics i.e. over half.

The precise definition of these forms is highly technical, so I refer you to the Wikipedia articles for Alcaics and Sapphics.

Despite all this skillful adaptation, the odes were not greeted with the acclaim Horace hoped for, which may explain why he seems to have abandoned ode writing and returned to the hexameters in which he had written the satires. Using this he now proceeded to write two books of epistles, ‘elegant and witty reflections on literature and morality,’ according to James Michie, which scholars think were published in 20 and 12 BC, respectively.

In 17 BC Augustus commissioned Horace to write an ode to be sung at the start of the Secular Games which he had reinstated as part of his policy of reviving traditional Roman festivals, customs and religious ceremonies. Soon afterwards, Augustus asked Horace to write odes on the military victories of his grandsons Drusus and Tiberius. Whether these commissions renewed an interest in the form or spurred him to assemble works he’d been writing in the interim we don’t know but in about 11 BC Horace published his fourth, final and shortest book of odes, containing just 15 poems.

What is an ode?

The following is adapted from the Wikipedia definition:

An ode (from Ancient Greek: ᾠδή, romanized: ōdḗ) is a sub-type of lyrical poem. An ode generally praises or glorifies an event or individual. Whereas a pure lyric uses impassioned and emotional language, and a satire uses harsh and demotic language, an ode – insofar as it is an address to a named individual, whether friend, emperor or god – generally has a dignified and sincere tone (although part of Horace’s practice was experimenting with and varying that tone).

Greek odes were originally poetic pieces performed with musical accompaniment. As time passed they gradually became known as personal lyrical compositions whether sung (with or without musical instruments) or merely recited (always with accompaniment). The primary instruments used were the aulos and the lyre. There are three typical forms of odes: the Pindaric, Horatian, and irregular.

  • The typical Pindaric ode was structured into three major parts: the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode. However, Horace’s odes do not follow this pattern.
  • Horatian odes do not have the three-part structure of Pindaric odes. They tend to be written as continuous blocks of verse, or, more often, are divided into four-line stanzas. It’s in this division into neat 4-line stanzas that they most imitate Greek lyricists such as Alcaeus and Anacreon.
  • Irregular odes use rhyme but not the three-part form of the Pindaric ode, nor the two- or four-line stanza of the Horatian ode.

An ode is short. I’ve recently read the Eclogues of Virgil which are fairly long and the Georgics which felt very long: Horace’s odes are the opposite. Some are as short as 8 lines, for example book 1 ode 30 and 4.10.

Subject matter

Horace was praised by critics for not just adapting the Greek forms of Alcaeus and Sappho to Latin, but filling them with details of the social life of Rome in the age of Augustus. He broadened the subject matter to cover a much wider range of subjects including love and jealousy, friendship and mourning, hymns to various gods, addresses to the all-powerful emperor Augustus, reflections on mortality, promotion of the golden mean and patriotic criticism of excess luxury and calls for society to return to the sterner, abstemious values of their Roman ancestors. There are several poems consisting entirely of eulogy to Augustus, describing him as a blessing to the nation, the only man who could bring peace and wishing him success in his military campaigns in the East. I enjoy John Dryden’s description of Horace as “a well-mannered court slave”. It doesn’t feel that when you read all his other poems, but when you read the Augustus ones, you immediately get what Dryden was saying. The word ‘poet’ is only one letter away from ‘pet’.

Underlying all the poems, and appearing them as either passing references or the central subject, are two ‘philosophical’ themes: the uncertainty and transience of life, and the need to observe moderation in all things, what Aristotle had defined as ‘the golden mean’ between extremes:

All who love safety make their prize
The golden mean and hate extremes… (2.10)

James Michie

Greek and Latin poets did not use rhyme to structure their poetry, they used the counting of syllables in each line according to a variety of patterns established by various ancient Greek poets and copied and adapted by the Romans.

English poets by contrast, since the Middle Ages, use beats or emphasis instead of counting syllables, and have used rhyme. Not exclusively, witness the reams of blank verse used in the dramas of Shakespeare and his contemporaries or in Milton’s Paradise Lost, but certainly in short lyrics and Horace’s odes are short lyrics. All 104 of Horace’s odes fit onto just 114 pages of English verse.

This explains the decision of James Michie, translator of the 1964 Penguin paperback edition of the complete odes of Horace, to cast them into predominantly rhymed verse.

The Penguin edition is interesting and/or useful because it features the Latin on one page, with Michie’s English translation on the page opposite. I did Latin GCSE and so, with a bit of effort, can correlate the English words to the original Latin phrases, though I don’t have anything like enough Latin to appreciate Horace’s style.

Book 1 is the longest, containing 38 odes. Book 2 has 20. Book 3 has 30, and the final, short one, book 4, has 15.

Themes

Direct address to gods

Any summary of Horace as the poet of friendship and conviviality has to take account that about one in six of the poems are straight religious hymns to named deities. Michie’s (admirably brief) introduction explains that the poems give no evidence about how sincerely Horace felt these religious sentiments. Probably he was religious in the same way most educated Romans of his time were, as Cicero was: viewing religion and the old festivals and ceremonies as important for the social cohesion of Rome.

In this view the correct ceremonies had to be carried out on the correct occasions to the correct deities in order to ensure the state’s security and future. Whether an individual ‘believed’ in the gods or not was irrelevant: correct action was all. The importance of internal, psychological ‘belief’ only became an issue with the slow arrival of Christianity well over a hundred years later. In the meantime, correct invocations of the gods could be seen as part of civic and patriotic duty, especially for Augustus, who in so many ways tried to restore the old ceremonies, rites and festivals of Republican Rome.

1.10 To Mercury

You are the one my poem sings –
The lyre’s inventor; he who brings
Heaven’s messages; the witty
Adventurer who takes delight
In slyly stowing out of sight
Anything he finds pretty.

1.21 To Diana

Virgin maidens, praise Diana.
Young men, sing a like hosanna

1.30 Prayer to Venus

O Queen of Cnidos, Paphos,
Come, leave, though dearly thine,
Cyprus; for here’s thick incense,
And Glycera calls divine
Venus to her new shrine.

1.31 Prayer to Apollo

What boon, Apollo, what does the poet as
He pours the new wine out of the bowl at your
New shrine request?

Incidentally, note the slight complexity of this long sentence. It took me a few readings to realise it is:

What boon, Apollo, what does the poet (as
He pours the new wine out of the bowl at your
New shrine) request?

We’ll come back to this issue, the sometimes grammatically challenging nature of Michie’s translation.

1.35 Hymn to Fortuna

O goddess ruling over favoured Antium,
With power to raise our perishable bodies
From low degree or turn
The pomp of triumph into funeral,

Thee the poor farmer with his worried prayer
Propitiates…

To women

The poems of heterosexual men are often about difficulties with relationships. Horace has poems directly addressing women, lovers, more often ex-lovers; or addressing women who are messing with his friends’ emotions; or poems to male friends offering advice about their relationships with women. I can see how a feminist critic might object to Horace’s basic stance and to much of the detail of what he says. For me the main effect is to create a sense of the extended social circle the poet inhabits.

Come, let’s
Go to the cave of love
And look for music in a jollier key. (2.1)

Horace plays at being jealous, while never achieving the emotional intensity of Catullus. And this is because his ‘love’ poems, such as 1.13, often turn out to be really promoting his philosophy of life, namely moderation in all things, wine, women, politics and poetry.

1.13 To Lydia

Happy are they alone whom affections hold
Inseparable united; those who stay
Friends without quarrels, and who cannot be torn away
From each other’s arms until their dying day.

1.16 is addressed to an unnamed women who he has, apparently, infuriated by writing a witty lampoon about her. Horace apologises unreservedly for upsetting her. But the poem is really about the emotion of anger, how ruinous it is for individuals and nations, how it must be avoided at all costs. Moments like this accumulate to make you suspect that even Horace’s most ‘passionate’ poems are clever artifice. It is hard to imagine the poet who promoted moderation and sensible restraint at every opportunity ever losing his head over anyone, no matter how he poses.

1.19 The Poet’s Love for Glycera

The Mother of the Loves, unkindly
Goddess, and Semele’s son combine
With wild abandon to remind me
That though I had thought desire
Dead, it still burns. The fire

Is Glycera.

1.23 To Chloe

This is such fun I’ll quote it in its entirety. Whether it reflects any real situation, I doubt. It feels more like a witty exercise, in the manner of Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress. To understand it you need to realise the first line means ‘Chloe, why won’t you venture near ME’, but Michie cannot quite say that in order to preserve his tight rhyme scheme. And to know that ‘dam’ is an archaic poetic word for ‘mother’. So that the majority of the poem is treating this young woman, Chloe, as if she is as timorous and scared as Bambi.

Chloe, you will not venture near,
Just like a lost young mountain deer
Seeking her frantic dam; for her each
Gust in the trees is a needless fear.

Whether the spring-announcing breeze
Shudders the light leaves or she sees
The brambles twitched by a green lizard,
Panic sets racing her heart and knees.

Am I a fierce Gaetulian
Lion or some tiger with a plan
To seize and maul you? Come, now, leave your
Mother: you’re ready to know a man.

So, in fact, this middle-aged man is preparing ‘to seize and maul’ this timorous young woman. If we attribute the speaking voice to 40-something Horace, it is inappropriate. But if it is a song to be sung by any young man, less so.

Here he is gently mocking a friend (in fact a fellow poet, Tibullus) because his girlfriend’s dumped him:

Tibullus, give up this extravagant grieving
For a sweetheart turned sour. ‘Why was she deceiving?’
You ask, and then whimper long elegies on
The theme of the older man being outshone… (1.33)

In praise of booze

Horace is surprisingly insistent on the blessings of wine and the vine, with a number of poems recommending it as the appropriate accompaniment to all sorts of situations, from cheering up a doleful lover to consoling a parent for the loss of a child, celebrating an old friend having his citizenship restored or safely returned from a long journey (1.36), or just a way to forget sorrows and anxieties and be sociable (2.11). In ancient Rome wine was never drunk neat, but always diluted with water:

Come, boy, look sharp. Let the healths rip!
To midnight! The new moon! The augurship
Of our Murena! Mix the bowls – diluted
With three or nine parts wine: tastes must be suited.
The poet, who loves the Muses’ number, nine,
Inspired, demands that measure of pure wine. (3.19)

Above all wine was shared. In ancient Rome wine was drunk in social situations, among friends and with slaves to open the bottles and mix them correctly. In Horace’s day, men who got together to hold a convivial evening elected one of their number ‘president’ by rolling dice to see who got the highest score, and the president then selected which wines were to be drunk, in which order, to command the slaves, and institute topics of conversation or games.

Who’ll win the right to be
Lord of the revelry
By dicing highest? (2.7)

In other words, ‘wine’ symbolises not just a drink but a much deeper concept of sociability and conviviality. And importantly, this sociability was the cure for anxiety, depression and grief. So ‘wine’ isn’t at all about seeking intoxication or oblivion; quite the opposite: ‘wine’ symbolises the moderation and sociable common sense which Horace is always promoting. Even when he appears to be promoting booze, it’s really this idea he’s promoting.

Let Damalis, the girl we crown
Champion drinker, be put down
By Bassus at the game of sinking
A whole cup without breath or blinking. (1.36)

And, as with almost all aspects of Roman life, there was a ‘religious’ aspect in the sense that the Romans thanked the gods for all their blessings (just as they attributed all disasters to the malign influence of Fortune). It was ‘fitting’ to thank the gods, and often this was done with ‘libations’ i.e. pouring part of each bottle of wine onto the ground as an offering to the gods, as thanks for blessings received, as hope for blessings continued.

Pay Jove his feast, then. In my laurel’s shade
Stretch out the bones that long campaigns have made
Weary. Your wine’s been waiting
For years: no hesitating! (2.7)

In the following extract the ‘fast-greying tops’ means the greying heads of hair of Horace and his friend, Quinctilius, who he’s trying to persuade to stop being so anxious about life.

Futurity is infinite:
Why tax the brain with plans for it?
Better by this tall plane or pine
To sprawl and while we may, drink wine
And grace with Syrian balsam drops
And roses these fast-greying tops.
Bacchus shoos off the wolves of worry. (2.11)

1.11 carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero

Horace’s attitude overlaps with the modern notion of mindfulness. According to this website, ‘Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us. As he tells Maecenas:

Be a plain citizen for once – you fret
Too much about the people’s sufferings.
Relax. Take what the hour gives, gladly. Let
Others attend the graver side of things. (3.8)

The shame of recent Roman history i.e. the civil wars

This attitude is not bourgeois complacency (‘Hey slave, bring us more booze!’). Well, OK, it is – but it is given more bite by the historical background. Rome had just emerged from about 13 years of civil war (Antony and Octavian against Caesar’s assassins) or a very uneasy peace leading to another civil war (Octavian against Antony). Unlike most bourgeois Horace had led a legion in a major battle (Philippi), seen men hacked to pieces around him, and seen his cause completely crushed. What good had the assassination of Julius Caesar and then Brutus and Cassius’s war against Octavian and Antony achieved? Nothing. Absolutely nothing except tens of thousands of Roman dead and devastation of entire provinces.

And he refers to it repeatedly, the utter pointlessness and futility of war.

Alas, the shameful past – our scars, our crimes, our
Fratricides! This hardened generation
Has winced at nothing, left
No horror unexplored… (1.35)

Our fields are rich with Roman
Dead and not one lacks graves to speak against our
Impious battles. Even
Parthia can hear the ruin of the West. (2.1)

So Horace’s is not the complacent attitude of a pampered aristocrat who has never known trouble, but of a self-made man who has seen a whole lot of trouble and therefore knows the true value of peace. Although he wears it lightly, it is a hard-won philosophy. And he refers to it, repeatedly.

Greek mythology

Horace is so identified in my mind with Rome, with Augustus, with the golden age of Roman literature, that it comes as a shock to see just how much of the subject matter is Greek. Take 1.15 which is a dramatic address to Paris as he abducts Helen by the sea goddess Nereus, foreseeing the long siege and destruction of Troy. 2.4 is about inappropriate love but stuffed with examples from Troy. But all of the poems contain references to Greek mythology and require a good working knowledge of its complex family trees: just who is son of Latona, who is Semele’s son? Who are:

Yet how could mighty Mimas or Typhoeus
Or Rhoetus or Porphyrion for all hid
Colossal rage or fierce
Enceladus who tore up trees for darts

Succeed? (3.4)

Or take the long poem 3.27 which contains a rather moving soliloquy by the maid Europa who, in a fit of madness, let herself be raped by a bull, a sophisticated poem full of unexpected compassion for the miserable young woman who is, of course, Jupiter in disguise. The poem contains a twist in the tail, for Venus has been standing by all through the girl’s frantic speech, enjoying the scene with that detached cruelty typical of the gods and only at the end reveals the bull in question was none other than Jupiter in disguise, hence explaining the girl’s powerlessness to resist.

False modesty

That said, there is another repeated trope which, as it were, modifies the Hellenic influence and this is Horace’s stock protestations that his muse and lyre and skill aren’t up to epic or serious verse, are instead designed for more homely, lowly subject matter. He turns this into a joke on a couple of occasions when he’s getting carried away invoking the Mighty Warriors of the Trojan War and suddenly realises what he’s doing, back pedals and dials it down.

Where are you rambling, Muse? This theme’s beyond your
Light-hearted lyre. End now. Absurd presumption
To tell tales of the gods
And mar high matters with your reedy voice! (3.3)

Maybe 1.6 is the best expression of this repeated trope of inadequacy. To understand it you need to know that Varius is a rival Roman poet, famous for his high-flown tragedies, and that the poem is directly addressed to Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, the Roman general who Augustus relied on to win his battles.

That eagle of Homeric wing,
Varius, will in due course sing
Your courage and your conquests, every deed
Of daring that our forces,
Riding on ships or horses
Accomplish with Agrippa in the lead.

But I’m not strong enough to try
Such epic flights. For themes as high
As iron Achilles in his savage pique,
Crafty Ulysses homing
After long ocean-roaming,
Or Pelops’ house of blood, my wings feel weak.

And both my modesty and my Muse,
Who tunes her lyre to peace, refuse
To let her tarnish in the laureate’s part
Our glorious Augustus’
Or your own battle-lustres
With my imperfect and unpolished art…

Feasts, and the war where girls’ trimmed nails
Scratch fiercely at besieging males –
These are the subjects that appeal to me,
Flippant, as is my fashion,
Whether the flame of passion
Has scorched me or has left me fancy-free.

As usual, the translation is fluent and clever, but I stumbled over the grammar of ‘Augustus” and it took me a few goes to realise he’s saying ‘my muse refuses to tarnish either Augustus’s, or your, battle-lustres’. Maybe you got it first time, but at quite a few places, Michie’s ingenuity in rhyming results in phrases which made me stumble. Anyway, here is Horace again, protesting the modesty of his poetic aims and means:

The history of the long Numantian war;
Iron Hannibal; the sea incarnadined
Off Sicily with Carthaginian gore;
Wild Lapiths fighting blind-

Drunk Centaurs; or the Giants who made the bright
Halls of old Saturn reel till Hercules
Tame them – you’d find my gentle lyre too slight
An instrument for these

Magnificent themes, Maecenas… (2.12)

Friends

The majority of the poems address a named individual, buttonholing and badgering them, and the number of these addressed poems, added to the variety of subject matter, creates a sense of great sociability, of a buzzing circle of friends. Horace comes over as a very sociable man with a word of advice for all his many friends, something which really struck me in the run of poems at the start of book 2:

Sallustius Crispus, you’re no friend of metal
Unless it’s made to gleam with healthy motion… (2.2)

Maintain and unmoved poise in adversity;
Likewise in luck, one free of extravagant
Joy. Bear in mind my admonition,
Dellius… (2.3)

Dear Phocian Xanthias, don’t feel ashamed
Of loving a servant… (2.4)

Septimius, my beloved friend,
Who’d go with me to the world’s end… (2.6)

Pompeius, chief of all my friends, with whom
I often ventured to the edge of doom
When Brutus led our line… (2.7)

Barine, if for perjured truth
Some punishment had ever hurt you –
One blemished nail or blackened tooth –
I might believe this show of virtue… (2.7)

The clouds disgorge a flood
Of rain; fields are churned mud;
The Caspian seas
Are persecuted by the pouncing blasts;
But, Valgius, my friend, no weather lasts
For ever… (2.9)

Licinius, to live wisely shun
The deep sea; on the other hand,
Straining to dodge the storm don’t run
Too close in to the jagged land… (2.10)

‘Is warlike Spain hatching a plot?’
You ask me anxiously. ‘And what
Of Scythia?’ My dear Quinctius
There’s a whole ocean guarding us.
Stop fretting… (2.11)

Male friends he addresses poems to include: Maecenas his patron and ‘inseperable friend’ (2.17), Virgil, Sestius, Plancus, Thaliarchus, Leuconoe, Tyndaris, Aristius Fuscus, Megilla of Opus, Iccius, Tibullus, Plotius Numida, Asinius Pollio, Sallustius Crispus, Quintus Dellius, Xanthias Phoceus, Septimius, Pompeius Varus, C. Valgius Rufus, Lucius Licinius Murena, Quinctius Hirpinus, Postumus, Aelius Lama, Telephus, Phidyle, Ligurinus, Julus, Torquatus, Caius Marcius Censorinus and Lollius.

The women he addresses include: Pyrrha, Lydia (who appears in 4 poems 1.8, 1.13, 1.25, 3.9), the unnamed lady of 1.16, Glycera (twice 1.19, 1.30, 1.33), Chloe, Barine, Asterie, Lyce, Chloris, Galatea and Phyllis.

All go to create the sense of a thriving active social life, an extended circle of friends and acquaintances which is very…urbane. Civilised, indulgent, luxurious:

Boy, fetch me wreaths, bring perfume, pour
Wine from a jar that can recall
Memories of the Marsian war… (3.14)

The predominant tone is of friendship and fondness and frank advice:

Then go, my Galatea, and, wherever
You choose, live happily… (3.27)

But the reader is left to wonder whether any of these people (apart from Maecenas and Virgil, and maybe one or two others) ever actually existed, or whether they are characters in the play of his imaginarium.

The simple life

Again and again Horace contrasts the anxious life of high officials in Rome with the simplicity of life on his farm out in the country, and the even simpler pleasures of life the peasants who live on it. The theme is elaborated at greatest length in one of the longest poems, 3.29, where Horace invites careworn Maecenas to come and stay on his farm, yet another excuse to repeat his injunction to Live in the Present, for nobody knows what the future holds.

Call him happy
And master of his own soul who every evening
Can say, ‘Today I have lived…’

Homosexuality

As long as a Roman citizen of the upper class married, sired male children and performed his religious and family duties, the details of his sexuality weren’t important, or might have prompted waspish gossip, but weren’t illegal. Homosexuality isn’t as prominent in Horace’s poetry as it is in Virgil’s, but it’s here as part of his urbane mockery of his own love life and one poem in particular, 4.1, is a passionate and surprisingly moving poem of unrequited love for a youth named Ligurinus.

Why then,
My Ligurinus, why
Should the reluctant-flowing tears surprise these dry
Cheeks, and my fluent tongue
Stumble in unbecoming silences among
Syllable? In dreams at night
I hold you in my arms, or toil behind your flight
Across the Martian Field,
Or chase through yielding waves the boy who will not yield.

This Ligurinus is (apparently) a pre-pubescent boy because another entire poem, 4.10, is devoted to him, pointing out that one day soon he’ll sprout a beard, his peaches and cream complexion will roughen, and he’ll no longer be the hairless beauty he is now.

It is very striking indeed that earlier in book 4 Horace writes a series of poems lamenting the decline and fall in Roman social standards, singling out greed and luxury, and also adultery which, of course, makes it difficult to determine the real father of a child – and yet this flagrantly homosexual and, possibly, if the boy is under 16 which seems pretty certain, pederastic poem, passes without comment and presents no obstacle to the poet’s earlier harsh moralising.

Sucking up to Augustus

As is fitting, the first poem in book 1 addresses his patron (and friend) Augustus’s minister for the arts, Maecenas. And the second poem addresses the boss man himself, Augustus, unquestioned supreme ruler of Rome and its empire, who is subsequently addressed at regular intervals throughout the series of poems. Here is Horace, addressing Jupiter king of the gods but describing Augustus (referred to here by the name of his adoptive great-uncle, Caesar, by which he was widely known, before the title ‘Augustus’ was bestowed in 27 BC):

Thou son of Saturn, father and protector
Of humankind, to thee Fate has entrusted
Care of great Caesar; govern, then, while Caesar
Holds the lieutenancy.

He, whether leading in entitled triumph
The Parthians now darkening Rome’s horizon,
The Indian or the Chinese peoples huddled
Close to the rising sun,

Shall, as thy right hand, deal the broad earth justice. (1.12)

Here Horace is asking the fickle goddess Fortune to protect Augustus and the Roman armies engaged in battle:

Guard Caesar bound for Britain at the world’s end,
Guard our young swarm of warriors on the wing now
To spread the fear of Rome
Into Arabia and the Red Sea coasts. (1.35)

1.37 includes a brief description of Octavian’s historic victory over the fleets of Antony and Cleopatra at the naval Battle of Actium in 31 BC.

Thunder in heaven confirms our faith – Jove rules there;
But here on earth Augustus shall be hailed as
God also, when he makes
New subjects of the Briton and the dour

Parthian. (3.5)

Incidentally, I don’t know why there are so many references to conquering Britain. In his long reign Augustus never sent armies to invade Britain, that was left to his great-nephew, the emperor Claudius, in 43 AD.

Book 4 contains noticeably more praise of Augustus (‘O shield of Italy and her imperial metropolis’) than the previous books: was it clearer than ever that the new regime was here to stay? Had Horace got closer to Augustus? Was it a shrewd political move to butter up the big man?

We know that Horace had been personally commissioned to write the two odes in praise of Drusus (4.4) and Tiberius (4.14) which overflow with slavish praise of their stepfather, Augustus, and the book includes a poem calling on Apollo to help him write the Centennial Hymn which Augustus commissioned (4.6). So this book contains more lickspittle emperor-worship than the previous 3 books combined.

How shall a zealous parliament or people
With due emolument and ample honours
Immortalise thy name
By inscription and commemorative page,

Augustus, O pre-eminent of princes
Wherever sunlight makes inhabitable
The earth? (4.14)

And the final ode in the entire series, 4.15, is another extended hymn of praise to Augustus’s peerless achievements.

Book 4

In his edition of Horace’s satires, Professor Nial Rudd points out that book 4, published about 12 years after books 1 to 3, has a definite autumnal feeling. Virgil is dead (19 BC) and Horace’s patron, Maecenas, no longer plays the central role he had done a decade earlier. The odes to Tiberius and Drusus highlight that a new young generation is coming up, and Horace refers to his own grey hair and age. Had Maecenas previously formed a buffer between him and the emperor, and, with his declining influence, has the emperor become more demanding of direct praise?

Famous phrases

It’s difficult for a non-Latinist to really be sure of but all the scholars and translators assure us that Horace had a way with a phrase and that this meant he coined numerous quotations used by later generations.

Probably the three most famous are ‘carpe diem’ and ‘nunc est bibendum’ and ‘dulce et decorum est’, from 1.11, 1.37 and 3.2, respectively. Here’s the source Latin and Michie’s translations of each instance:

Carmen 1.11 (complete)

Tu ne quaesieris (scire nefas) quem mihi, quem tibi
finem di dederint, Leuconoe, nec Babylonios
temptaris numeros. Ut melius quicquid erit pati!
Seu pluris hiemes seu tribuit Iuppiter ultimam,
quae nunc oppositis debilitat pumicibus mare 5
Tyrrhenum, sapias, vina liques et spatio brevi
spem longam reseces. Dum loquimur, fugerit invida
aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.

Don’t ask (we may not know), Leuconie,
What the gods plan for you and me.
Leave the Chaldees to parse
The sentence of the stars.

Better to bear the outcome, good or bad,
Whether Jove purposes to add
Fresh winters to the past
Or to make this the last

Which now tires out the Tuscan sea and mocks
Its strength with barricades of rocks.
Be wise, strain clear the wine
And prune the rambling vine

Of expectation. Life’s short. Even while
We talk, Time, hateful, runs a mile.
Don’t trust tomorrow’s bough
For fruit. Pluck this, here, now.

Carmen 1.37 (opening stanza)

Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero
pulsanda tellus, nunc Saliaribus
ornare pulvinar deorum
tempus erat dapibus, sodales…

Today is the day to drink and dance on. Dance, then,
Merrily, friends, till the earth shakes. Now let us
Rival the priests of Mars
With feasts to deck the couches of the gods…

3.2 comes from the series of 6 poems which open book 3, which are longer than usual and adopt quite a strict scolding tone, instructing Romans of his day to abandon luxury and return to the noble warrior values of their ancestors. It needs to be read in that context:

Carmen 3.2 (Opening only)

Angustam amice pauperiem pati
robustus acri militia puer
condiscat et Parthos ferocis
vexet eques metuendus hasta

vitamque sub divo et trepidis agat
in rebus. Illum ex moenibus hosticis
matrona bellantis tyranni
prospiciens et adulta virgo

suspiret, eheu, ne rudis agminum
sponsus lacessat regius asperum
tactu leonem, quem cruenta
per medias rapit ira caedes.

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori:
mors et fugacem persequitur virum
nec parcit inbellis iuventae
poplitibus timidove tergo…

Disciplined in the school of hard campaigning,
Let the young Roman study how to bear
Rigorous difficulties without complaining,
And camp with danger in the open air,

And with his horse and lance become the scourge of
Wild Parthians. From the ramparts of the town
Of the warring king, the princess on the verge of
Womanhood with her mother shall look down

And sigh, ‘Ah, royal lover, still a stranger
To battle, do not recklessly excite
That lion, savage to touch, whom murderous anger
Drives headlong through the thickest of the fight.’

The glorious and the decent way of dying
Is for one’s country. Run, and death will seize
You no less surely. The young coward, flying,
Gets his quietus in his back and knees…

Two points. One, quite obviously ancient Rome was an extremely militarised society with all its politicians expected to have served in the army or, as consuls, be sent off in command of armies in umpteen foreign campaigns. Two, with this in mind it’s worth pointing out that the poem goes on to contrast the glory won by death in battle with the vulgar world of democratic politics and elections.

Unconscious of mere loss of votes and shining
With honours that the mob’s breath cannot dim,
True worth is not found raising or resigning
The fasces at the wind of popular whim…

The fasces being the bundle of wooden rods, sometimes bound around an axe with its blade emerging, which was carried by the lictors who accompanied a consul everywhere during his term of office and which symbolised a magistrate’s power and jurisdiction.

Summary

Michie is very proficient indeed at rhyming. More than that, he enjoys showing off his skill:

Boys, give Tempe praise meanwhile and
Delos, the god’s birthday island. (1.21)

A cheap hag haunting alley places
On moonless nights when the wind from Thrace is
Rising and raging… (1.25)

When the brigade of Giants
In impious defiance… (2.19)

But I think the cumulative effect of so much dazzling ingenuity is that sometimes  the poems reek more of cleverness for its own sake than the kind of dignified tone which the Latinists describe as having. At times the cleverness of his rhyming overshadows the sense.

Boy, I detest the Persian style
Of elaboration. Garlands bore me
Laced up with lime-bark. Don’t run a mile
To find the last rose of summer for me. (1.38)

Throughout the book, in pretty much every poem, although I could read the words, I struggled to understand what the poem was about. I had to read most of them 2 or 3 times to understand what was going on. Half way through, I stumbled upon the one-sentence summaries of each ode given on the Wikipedia page about the Odes. This was a lifesaver, a game changer. From that point on, I read the one-sentence summary of each poem to find out who it was addressed to and what it was about – and so was freed to enjoy how it was constructed, and the slickness of Michie’s translations.

Bless this life

Above all, be happy. Life is short. Count each day as a blessing.

Try not to guess what lies in the future, but,
As Fortune deals days, enter them into your
Life’s book as windfalls, credit items,
Gratefully… (1.9)

You can see why all the translators, scholars and commentators on Horace describe him as a friendly, reassuring presence. A poet to take down off your shelves and read whenever you need to feel sensible and grounded.


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Roman reviews

SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard (2015) – 3 Historical overview

SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard is divided into roughly three parts – the early legendary period (1200 to 500 BC), the republic (509 to 30 BC) and the empire (30 BC to where Beard chooses to end her account, in the year 212 AD).

It’s sort of predictable that most of the earliest history of ancient Rome, its foundation and early years, would be shrouded in legend and probably mostly fictional. It’s a more interesting point, and one Beard repeats a number of times, that a good deal of what you could call the early historical period, the 600s, 500s, 400s and even 300s BC, were still heavily distorted and fictionalised and glamorised by the authors of the first centuries BC and AD.

They projected the administrative ranks and classes and issues, the epic battles and even the grand architecture of the Rome of their own time, back onto earlier periods which probably consisted of little more than chieftains living in basic huts and leading cattle raids against nearby communities.

It was a world of chieftains and warrior bands, not of organised armies and foreign policy. (p.117)

For a fundamental learning to emerge from the first 200 pages of this book is that the first century BC and the first century AD were the classic period for great Roman writing, including the first extensive historical writing (Livy), detailed discussions of the Roman constitution and politics (Cicero),  Catullus’s love poetry, Caesar’s accounts of his war in Gaul, plays, poetry and so on (p.214).

The point being that modern historians think that many aspects of the accounts written during these centuries about the founding and early history of Rome hundreds of years earlier are very misleading. The rulers, warriors, wars and battles of the early centuries were exaggerated to heroic proportions, mixed with legend, and highly moralised to provide improving, educational stories to a 1st century audience.

It is clear that much of the tradition that has come down to us, far from reality, is a fascinating mythical projection of later Roman priorities and anxieties into the distant past. (p.100)

(This core idea, and the word ‘projected’, recur on pages 97, 100, 108, 141, 205).

The traditional, grand and impressive history of the founding and early years of ancient Rome, as it was written up by Rome’s first century propagandists, was repeated for centuries afterwards, inspiring all subsequent histories, countless poems and paintings and plays throughout the Western tradition. It was only in the twentieth century, with the advent of modern archaeological techniques, that virtually all these stories came, not so much to be questioned (historians had been sceptical about some of the taller tales even at the time) but to be definitively disproved by the evidence in the ground.

This process goes on to the present day, with ever-more advanced technology and computer analysis (and DNA analysis of bones and remains) contributing to a comprehensive overhaul of our image of ancient Rome. If you Google books about ancient Rome you’ll quickly discover that ones published even as recently as 2000 are now considered out of date because the archaeology is moving at such a pace and shedding ever-newer light on Rome’s origins and early development.

Now, Beard does take a lot of this on board. Her narrative frequently grinds to a halt while she tells us about important, recent archaeological discoveries, complete with photos and descriptions. The problem for the reader is that Beard doesn’t give a good clear detailed account of what the traditional story actually was before setting out to question and undermine it. She’ll write that the famous story about x has been thrown into doubt by recent finds under the Forum and you, as the reader, go: ‘Hang on, hang on, what famous story about x?’

In fact she uses the word ‘famous’ very liberally and often to describe things I’ve never heard of. I appreciate that this is because they are ‘famous’ in the world of Classics and ancient history, but surely the whole point of the book is to try and bring this world to outsiders, to people who know very little about it apart from the handful of clichés and stereotypes we call ‘general knowledge’.

What follows is my notes for myself on the key events from the traditional version.

1. Aeneas 1200 BC

Ancient legends associate Rome with the arrival of Aeneas, exile from Troy, around 1200 BC (ancient Greeks and Romans dated the Trojan War to what we now call the 12th or 11th centuries BC). Aeneas settled in central Italy and founded the line which led, centuries later, to King Numitor the maternal grandfather of the twins, Romulus and Remus.

Numerous variations on the Aeneas legend exist and were extensively reworked in the historical period i.e. from the 2nd century BC onwards. The version best known to the post-Roman world derives from the Aeneid, the great epic poem by Publius Vergilius Maro (70 BC to 19 AD). The Aeneid is maybe the most influential poem in Western literature (p.76).

The first six of the poem’s twelve books describe Aeneas’s journey from Troy to Rome, the second six describe Aeneas’s settlement in Italy in the region of what would (a lot later) come to be Rome. This process of settlement involved Aeneas in fierce fighting against local tribes (the Rutulians led by their king, Turnus) until he finally won the war, gained the territory and the hand of the beautiful Lavinia, daughter of another powerful local king, Latinus.

But Aeneas was not the actual founder of Rome. He founded a town he named Lavinium after his wife. It was his son, Ascanius, who was said to have founded another town in the area, Alba Longa, whose king, Numitor, some 400 years later, was to the maternal grandfather of the twins Romulus and Remus (p.77).

2. Romulus 750s BC

Beard speculates freely about the origins and meaning of the Romulus and Remus legend about the founding of Rome. Characteristically, she doesn’t explain it very well so I had to look it up on Wikipedia to get a clear understanding. Various versions are found in ancient texts, many of which contradict each other, but the consensus story is that:

Numitor was king of Alba Longa, a town a little south of what was to become Rome. He was overthrown by his brother Amulius. Numitor had a daughter, Rhea Silvia, who was a vestal virgin. She was made pregnant by the war god Mars and gave birth to twins. Seeing as they were descendants of the rightful (overthrown) king, Numitor, Amulius ordered the twins to be abandoned on the banks of the river Tiber (as Moses, Oedipus, Paris and so many other figures of legend are abandoned as children). Here they were discovered by a she-wolf who suckled them and kept them alive in a cave (later known as the Lupercal) until they were discovered and adopted by Faustulus, a shepherd and raised (like Paris) as simple shepherds. In time the twins grew into natural leaders of men and found themselves caught up in a conflict between Numitor and Amulius. They joined the forces of Numitor and helped restore him to his rightful throne of Alba Longa, during which process they were recognised as Numitor’s grandsons. Then they set off to found a city of their own, deciding to build it on the defensible hills by the Tiber where they founded Rome. They each set about building a citadel of their own, Romulus preferring the Palatine Hill (above the Lupercal cave), Remus preferring the Aventine Hill. When Remus mockingly jumped over the early foundations of Romulus’s wall, Romulus killed him (various versions supply other reasons why the pair fell out so badly). Romulus then went on to found the city of Rome, its institutions, government, military and religious traditions and reigned for many years as its first king.

Interpret this legend how you will. The story of founding brothers who fall out, with one murdering the other, is as old as Cain and Abel (p.64). And on this telling, Romulus and Remus are repeating the fraternal falling out of their grandfather and his brother, Numitor and Amulius. In my opinion these myths may be attempts by ancient peoples to structure and rationalise the kind of civil strife early societies were prone to.

Did any of this actually happen? Almost certainly not. The earliest written record of the legend dates from the late third century BC i.e. some 500 years after the events it purports to describe. Far from being a real person who founded Rome, Romulus is almost certainly a legendary invention and his name the result of what historians and linguists call ‘back formation’ i.e. starting with an established place and inventing a legendary figure who you claim it’s named after. Almost certainly ‘Roma’ came first and Romulus afterwards (p.71).

The suckling by the she-wolf is precisely the kind of odd, distinctive and uncanny detail of ancient myth which defies rationalisation. A quick amateur interpretation for a self-consciously warrior race like the Romans would be that the twins imbibed wolfish aggression and ferocity from their animal wetnurse. Same with their parentage, a vestal virgin (holiness and piety) impregnated by the God of War (speaks for itself).

Incidentally, what Beard refers to as the ‘famous’ statue of Romulus and Remus suckling from the she-wolf is a fake, in the sense that the figures of the suckling boys were made in the fifteenth century, a thousand years after the sculpture of the wolf.

Statue of the she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus, currently in the Capitoline Museum. The statue is thought to be Etruscan, maybe from the fifth century BC while the twins are from the 15th century AD.

By the 1st century Roman historians had calculated a year for the founding of their city (in the third year of the sixth cycle of Olympic Games, p.71) and dated events ab urbe condita (AUC) or ‘since the city was founded’. Six hundred years later, in 525 AD when the monk Dionysius Exiguus first devised the system of dating events around the birth of Christ, into either ‘before Christ’ (BC) or ‘in the year of our Lord’ (anno domini or AD), he calculated the AUC date to be 753 BC, a Christian-era date which became enshrined in later tradition.

By contrast, during the republican period itself, historic events were dated by referring to the name of the consuls in power during a particular year. In the imperial period, government officials date events as in year 1, 2, 3 etc of each individual emperor. You can see why both these methods would eventually become very cumbersome, complicated and confusing. It’s surprising it took so long for the Christian authorities, in the shape of Dionysus, to come up with what, to us, appears the obvious, improved system.

3. The monarchy 750s to 509 BC

Seven improbably long-lived kings are said to have filled the period from 753 (the traditional date for the founding of the city) to 509 (the traditional date for the overthrow of the monarchy) (p.93, 96). Maybe seven kings to match the seven hills the city is supposedly founded on (?). Archaeologists and historians think the last 3 in the list were real people, but there’s debate over whether the first 4 were real or figures of legend:

  1. Romulus
  2. Numa Pompilius
  3. Tullus Hostilius
  4. Ancus Marcius
  5. Tarquinius Priscus
  6. Servius Tullius
  7. Tarquinius Superbus

4. End of the monarchy / founding of the republic 509 BC

The outrageous behaviour of the last king, Tarquin the Arrogant, prompted the population of Rome to rise up, overthrow him, and establish a republic. The spark for the revolution was, from an early point, associated with the legend of the rape of Lucretia.

Lucretia was a noblewoman in ancient Rome. She was raped by the son of the last king, Sextus Tarquinius and, out of shame, committed suicide by stabbing herself (p.122-3). Lucretia’s noble family and their allies rose up against Tarquinius and drove him and his family out of Rome although he didn’t give up without a fight, sparking a war against him and his followers which lasted up to a decade (p.125). As with other early legends there are no contemporary accounts, in fact the first written accounts of the story are only given by the Roman historian Livy (born 60 BC) and Greco-Roman historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus (born 59 BC) 450 years later.

There followed a period of transition during which it was agreed that the new republic would be ruled by an elected leader called a ‘consul’, himself advised by a ‘senate’ of elders and aristocrats. This quickly evolved into the notion of two consuls, each elected to serve for one year, a system Rome was to keep for the next 1,000 years. Collatinus, the husband of the raped suicide Lucretia was one of the first consuls (p.127).

Quite soon the Senate invented another innovation, the ability to elect a single leader, a ‘dictator’, to manage the republic during time of war. This was necessary because the early accounts describe how Rome was plunged almost immediately into a long series of wars with neighbouring tribes and people in Italy, for example the Etruscans, the Samnites, the Aquians, the Veii, the Senones, Umbri, Picentes and the Marsi.

5. The Conflict of the Orders 400s to 200s BC

In its earliest days political power was held by the wealthiest families, described as ‘patricians’ (Latin patricii) and sharply distinguished from the majority of the population who were described as ‘plebeians’ or ‘plebs’. Membership of the patrician class was hereditary and could only be achieved by birth.

The fifth century i.e. the 400s BC, were marked by a series of administrative reforms which slowly and arduously gave the plebeians equal power and say with the patricians (although it wasn’t until 366 that the first plebeian consul was elected).

The conflict between the patricians and plebeians in Rome is referred to as the Conflict of the Orders although, as Beard points out, the Latin ordines translates better as ‘social ranks’ (p.146). In our post-Marxist times it’s tempting to call it the Class War but that would also be wrong because a key point that emerges from Beard’s account is that the plebs in question weren’t necessarily poor: in fact many of them were richer than the patricians, it was more a question of nouveaux riches ‘new men’, who’d acquired military glory and/or wealth but were excluded from running the city by virtue of not being born into the right families.

The conflict took place over a very long period, from soon after the foundation of the republic, around 500 BC, down to 287 BC when patrician senators finally lost their last check over the Plebeian Council.

Really major moments were marked by a secessio when the entire population of plebeians left the city causing what was, in effect, a general strike. The first of these took place in 494, prompted by the plebeians’ widespread indebtedness to rich patrician lenders, and it successfully led to the establishment of a new body, the Concilium Plebis, and a new office of state, the tribunes of the people (tribuni plebis). There were at least five secessios.

Some of the main constitutional reforms from the period include:

450 BC drafting of the Twelve Tables, an early code of law (pages 139 to 145).

445 Lex Canuleia removing the ban on marriage between patricians and plebeians (lex is Latin for law, hence English words like ‘legal’)

443 BC The offices of the Tribuni militum consulari potestate were established. A collegium of three patrician or plebeian tribunes, one each from specific Roman tribes (the Titienses, the Ramnenses, and the Luceres) would hold the power of the consuls from year to year, subject to the Senate.

367 BC one of the consulships was opened to plebeians (p.148).

342 BC law passed making it mandatory for one of the two consuls to be a plebeian.

339 BC law passed making it mandatory for one of the two censors to be a plebeian

326 BC the system of enslavement for debt was abolished, establishing the principle that the liberty of the Roman citizen was an inalienable right (p.148).

300 BC half of the priesthoods (which were also state offices) must be plebeian.

287 BC Third Secession led to the Hortensian Law stating, among other things, that all plebiscites (measures passed in the Concilium Plebis) had the force of laws for the whole Roman state, removing from the Patrician senators their final check over the Plebeian Council. By depriving the Patricians of their final weapon over the Plebeians, it ensured that the Roman state didn’t become a democracy but rested firmly under the control of the new Patricio-Plebeian aristocracy.

The conflict marked the breakdown of the old aristocracy of birth and its replacement by an aristocracy based on i) the holding of political offices and ii) wealth, particularly land-based wealth. In Beard’s words, the Conflict of the Orders:

replaced a governing class defined by birth with one defined by wealth and achievement. (p.167)

The upshot of the Conflict of the Orders was not popular revolution but the creation of a new governing class, comprising rich plebeians and patricians. (p.189)

So it didn’t remove the hierarchical, class-based nature of Roman society, nor did it significantly improve the lives or prospects of the poorer members of society.

6. Consolidating power in Italy – Rome’s wars

This was a world where violence was endemic, skirmishes with neighbours were annual events, plunder was a significant revenue stream for everyone and disputes were resolved by force. (p.162)

Military campaigning was a defining feature of Roman life…the Roman tradition [viewed] war as the structuring principle of history…The Romans directed enormous resources to warfare and, even as victors, paid a huge price in human life…somewhere between 10 and 25 per cent of the Roman adult male population would have served in the legions each year…(pages 176 to 177)

It was a world of political conflict, shifting alliances and continuous, brutal interstate violence…(p.194)

The ancient world consisted of tribes, kingdoms and empires almost continually at war with each other. Rome was to eventually emerge as the most effective fighting state in the Mediterranean region. But first it took a century of fighting their neighbours to emerge as the strongest power in central, and then all of, Italy. And then the series of Punic Wars (264 to 146) to wear down and eliminate their main rival in the central Mediterranean. Carthage. Here are some of the key moments:

Conquest of Veii 396

396 BC Roman forces led by the dictator Marcus Furius Camillus conquered the nearby town of Veii. This probably involved relatively small numbers on both sides but was mythologised by later writers as a heroic conflict up there with the Trojan wars. For Beard its significance is that Rome didn’t just beat another city, it annexed it along with all its land. Soon afterwards, the Veii and three local tribes were included in the list of tribes who were allowed to become Roman citizens. Conquest and assimilation were to be the basis for Rome’s winning formula. It is no coincidence that around the same time as this Roman soldiers first earned a salary (from the Latin for ‘salt’) i.e. they stopped being glorified private militias and became something much more organised, centrally funded and administered (p.155).

Gauls take Rome 390 BC

Brennus was a chieftain of the Senones tribe of Cisalpine Gauls (where Cisalpine means this side of the Alps i.e. in Italy, as opposed to transalpine meaning the other side of the Alps i.e. in modern France) (incidentally that explains the newish word cisgender, meaning someone whose sense of personal identity aligns with their birth gender, as opposed to transgender meaning someone whose sense of personal identity is different from their birth sex: you can see how cis and trans retain the sense they had in ancient times of this side and that side of a border, in this case a psychological one to do with gender identity.)

Back to Brennus: in about 390 BC he defeated the Romans at the Battle of the Allia and went on to take Rome, holding it for several months (pages 138 and 155).

Brennus’s sack of Rome was the only time in 800 years the city was occupied by a non-Roman army before the fall of the city to the Visigoths in 410 AD and beard spends some time describing the how the memory grew in shame and trauma over the years, was exaggerated and lamented by 1st century writers, and routinely used as a benchmark of scandal and humiliation with which to attack contemporary politicians.

Latin War 341 to 338 (p.158)

The Samnite wars (p.158)

Fought against communities in the mountainous parts of central-south Italy (p.158).

  • First Samnite War 343 to 341
  • Second Samnite War 326 to 304
  • Third Samnite War 298 to 290

By the end of the Samnite wars over half the Italian peninsula was under Roman control, either directly or through alliances (p.159).

(334 to 323 Alexander the Great conquers from Greece to India, p.158)

Pyrrhic war 280 to 275

From the incursion of Pyrrhus in 280 BC to the final crushing of Carthage in 146 Rome was continuously at war with enemies in the Italian peninsula or overseas (p.175).

The Greek king Pyrrhus invades southern Italy but, despite a series of victories, his forces become so depleted that he moved on to Sicily (278 to 275) before returning to the mainland and being conclusively defeated by the Romans. He survived the final battle and withdrew the remnant of  his forces back to Greece (p.174).

The Pyrrhic War was the first time that Rome confronted the professional mercenary armies of the Hellenistic states of the eastern Mediterranean. Their victory sent waves around the eastern Mediterranean. As a result of the war, Rome confirmed its hegemony over southern Italy.

First Punic War 264 to 241

Rome against Carthage, fought almost entirely in the contested island of Sicily (p.175).

Second Punic war 219 to 202

When Hannibal Barca marched a Carthaginian army from Spain around the south of France and then over the Alps. This is covered in detail in Richard Miles’s book, Carthage Must Be Destroyed, from which I was surprised to learn that this wasn’t a one-year campaign, but that Hannibal and his army criss-crossed Italy for fifteen years (p.175). The campaign was most famous for the epic Battle of Cannae in 216 where Hannibal destroyed a Roman army, inflicting a reputed 70,000 casualties (p.180-2).

First Macedonian war 215 to 205

The Macedon wars were triggered by fears that their king would cross the short stretch of sea to Italy to come to Hannibal’s aid. So a Roman army was sent to fight him (p.176).

Second Macedonian war 200 to 197

Syrian war 192 to 188

Under Scipio Asiaticus the Romans defeated Antiochus ‘the Great’ of Syria (who had, as it happens, given a refuge to Hannibal in exile from Carthage) (p.176).

Third Macedonian war 172 to 168

Final Roman victory in this war effectively gave Rome control over all mainland Greece (p.176 and 196). The Greek historian Polybius commented that, in the 50 years up to 168 Rome had conquered the entire known world (p.199). When Aemilius Paulinus returned from defeating king Perseus of Macedon, was given a ‘triumph’ in 167, it took three days for the procession of loot to pass through Rome, including so much silver coin that 3,000 men were needed to carry it in 750 huge vessels (p.201).

War in Iberia 155 to 133

Carthage occupied southern Spain, not least to exploit the vast silver mines there which were worked by up to 40,000 slaves (p.196). Hannibal was the son of the Carthaginian general who first conquered it, which explains why he set out from Spain, not Africa, to attack Rome. During these years Rome sent legions to finally defeat and expel the Carthaginians from southern Spain.

Third Punic war 149 to 146

Short struggle which ended with the Romans under Publius Cornelius Scipio breaking into Carthage, burning and razing it to the ground, carrying off the population that survived into slavery. For which Scipio acquired the name ‘Africanus’ i.e. African (Carthage being in north Africa, under what is the modern city of Tunis) (p.209).

War with Jugurtha 118 to 106

Described on pages 264 to 268 as an example of the way Rome’s old constitution struggled to cope with managing a Mediterranean-wide empire. The mismanagement of the war led Sallust to compose The War Against Jugurtha a devastating indictment of Rome’s failure to quell this north African ruler.

The Social War 91 to 87

From the Latin bellum sociale meaning ‘war of the allies’, when Rome went to war with its several of its autonomous allies or socii (pages 234 to 239). The allies had for some time wanted full Roman citizenship, an issue which became more and more bitterly divisive. Things came to a head when the consul Marcus Livius Drusus suggested reforms grant the Italian allies Roman citizenship, giving them a greater say in the external policy of the Roman Republic. The Roman senatorial elite rejected his ideas and he was assassinated. At which point the allies realised there was no hope of reform and communities across Italy declared independence from Rome. When the rebels took Asculum, the first city to fall to them, they slaughtered every Roman they could find. The wives of the men who refused to join them were tortured and scalped. To which Rome replied with equal brutality. And so four long years of what, in many places, was in effect a civil war. According to Beard, the Social War was:

one of the deadliest and most puzzling conflicts in Roman history (p.234)

After defeating the various allies, Rome did indeed grant citizenship to all of peninsular Italy, at a stroke trebling the number of Roman citizens to about a million. The Social War led to a complete Romanisation of Italy (p.217) and the nearest thing to a nation state that ever existed in the ancient world (p.239).

Civil wars

Which brings us to the era of Lucius Cornelius Sulla (138 to 78 BC), Roman general and statesman who won the first large-scale civil war in Roman history and became the first man of the Republic to seize power through force. He was the first Roman general to march on Rome and take it by force, in 88, doing so to outlaw his enemy Gaius Marius. He did it again on his return from campaigning in the East, installing himself as dictator in Rome and embarking on a reign of terror which involved issuing proscriptions, or prices on the heads of thousands of men including a third of the Senate (pages 217 and 243). The point is that a general occupying Rome by force and bloodily wiping out his political opponents set a terrible precedent for the decades to come.

First Mithradatic war 89 to 85

The Greek king Mithradates VI of Pontus was to prove a comically irrepressible and obstinate foe (p.242).

Second Mithradatic war 83 to 81

It was during this war that General Sulla was appointed dictator by the Senate.

Third Mithradatic war 73 to 63

Revolt of Spartacus 73 to 71

Beard refers to Spartacus’s slave revolt three or four times (pages 217, 248, 249) but is not interested in the details of battles or outcomes. She uses it mainly to demonstrate modern ideas about the social make-up of the Italian countryside, in the sense that the rebellion can’t have lasted as long as it did if it was just slaves. Quite a lot of the rural poor and maybe lower middle classes must have joined it (page 217 and again on page 249).

Pompey the Great

During the 70s Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus was manoeuvring to become the most powerful Roman general. In the scope of his ambition based on his enormous achievement in remodelling Rome’s entire possessions in the East, Beard thinks ‘Pompey has a good claim to be called the first Roman emperor’ (p.274). Complex politicking led in 60 BC to Pompey joining Marcus Licinius Crassus (the man who led the army which finally defeated Spartacus) and Julius Caesar in a military-political alliance known as the First Triumvirate (p.218 and 279). The point about it was the way it aimed to circumvent all the careful checks and balances of the old republican constitution in order to vest absolute and permanent power in the hands of just three men.

The 50s were a decade of complex jockeying for power as the two main players fought for Rome in their respective arenas, Caesar conquering Gaul, Pompey in the East. Crassus died at the disastrous Battle of Carrhae in 53 against Rome’s long-time eastern enemy, the Parthian Empire. His death began the unravelling of the uneasy partnership between Pompey and Caesar.

Julius Caesar

In 49 Caesar marched his army back into Italy and crossed the river Rubicon, committing to war with Pompey, a civil war which led to Pompey’s death in 48 but which dragged on until the last of his supporters were vanquished in 45.

At which point Caesar had emerged as by the far the most powerful politician and military figure in Rome and was looking forward to consolidating his power and implementing a widespread programme of reforms, when he was assassinated in March 44, plunging Rome into another 15 years of civil war.

P.S.

It’s worth reiterating and emphasising that Beard’s book is not a military history. She doesn’t give detailed descriptions of any battles, doesn’t detail the progress of any specific campaign or war. She only mentions wars as ammunition for discussions about the historical and social questions and issues which is what she’s far more interested in. So to repeat an example given above, she refers to the Spartacus rebellion 3 or 4 times but gives hardly any detail about the man himself, about the life or conditions of gladiators, doesn’t give any sense of the campaigns or battles involved in the three-year-long conflict. Instead it’s only briefly mentioned in the context of broader discussions of poverty, social ranks, relationships with Rome’s Italian allies and so on. If you’re looking for good accounts of ancient Roman wars, battles, generals and so on, this is emphatically not the book for you.


Credit

SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard was published in 2015 by Profile Books. All references are to the 2016 paperback edition.

Roman reviews

Charles II: His Life and Times by Antonia Fraser (revised 1993 edition)

Lady Antonia Fraser published her life of Charles II in 1979. 14 years later she published this big hardback version, which is basically a large-format coffee-table book, with the text drastically cut back in order to make room for hundreds of beautiful and fascinating full-colour illustrations.

As I have detailed the political events leading up to the civil wars in other blog posts, this review will focus on snippets and insights into Charles’s private life, seeing the events of this turbulent time from his personal perspective.

Birth Charles was born on 29 May 1630, one year into his father’s Personal Rule i.e. Charles I’s determination to rule without troublesome parliaments.

Heredity Charles had a swarthy complexion. He was nicknamed the Black Boy and this is the origin of hundreds of pubs of the same name across England. Through his father, Charles I, Charles was one quarter Scots, one quarter Danish (his grandfather James I was married to Anne of Denmark); through his mother, Henrietta Maria, he was one quarter French, one quarter Italian. Hence the ‘foreign’ look which many commentators pointed out.

Charles I’s wife, Queen Henrietta Maria, bore nine children, six of whom survived infancy. It was in the marriage contract between Henrietta Maria and Charles I that all their children should be suckled only by Protestant wet-nurses.

Trial of Strafford Charles’s idyllic early childhood was overshadowed by clouds of approaching war. As Prince of Wales, aged just ten, he sat through the entire seven-week trial of Charles I’s adviser, Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, who’d acquired the nickname of ‘Black Tom Tyrant’. When Parliament passed an Act of Attainder declaring Strafford a traitor sentenced to death, 10-year-old Charles was sent to Parliament with a petition for mercy, which was rejected.

Orange In 1642 Charles’s sister, Mary, aged just nine, was married off to Prince William of Orange, aged 12. Their marriage produced a son who was to become William III of Britain 46 years later.

Wedding portrait of William II, Prince of Orange, and Mary Stuart, daughter of Charles I, future parents of King William III, by Anthony van Dyck

Nottingham As the political crisis deepened Charles I kept his sons, Charles and James, by his side, leaving his other children in London when he fled the capital in 1642. They were with him when Charles raised his standard of war at Nottingham Castle on 22 August 1642.

Edgehill Charles was nearly captured by a troop of Roundheads at the Battle of Edgehill, 23 October 1642. In a much-repeated anecdote, the 12-year-old drew his sword and prepared to fight, before Royalist soldiers came to the rescue. Charles accompanied his father to Oxford where a Royalist Parliament was set up. His youngest siblings, Elizabeth and Henry, had remained in royal nurseries in London, where they were seized by Parliamentarians and given Roundhead governesses.

Hyde Aged 14, early in 1645, Charles was given nominal leadership of the Royalist Western Association and departed Oxford. He was never to see his father again. He was to be supervised by Sir Edward Hyde, a lawyer who had initially attacked Charles’s policies in Parliament, but came round to being an advocate for a new type of constitutional Royalism, became firm friends with Charles I, and then the trusted guardian and mentor of his son for the next 20 years.

Flight The battle of Naseby, 14 June 1645, was the decisive military engagement of the first civil war in which the Royalist army was soundly beaten, followed by further Royalist defeats in the West. Young Charles had moved between Bristol and Bridgewater. Now he clearly needed to flee. His party were pushed by advancing Roundheads down into Cornwall and then took ship to the Scilly Isles. Charles was thrilled by the sea journey and at one point took the tiller himself, whetting an appetite for sea sports which was to resurface after the Restoration.

In Bristol, in Bridgewater, in Cornwall and in the Scillies, argument had raged about where Charles should ultimately flee. Hyde was insistent he remain on British soil, for its symbolic importance. But eventually Charles gave in to the wishes of his mother, Henrietta Maria, who had fled back to her native France in July 1645.

Puritan iconoclasm To give a sense of Roundhead iconoclastic zeal, when Henrietta had fled London, Parliament voted to destroy her private chapel at Somerset House and to arrest the Capuchin friars who maintained it. In March, Henry Marten and John Clotworthy forced their way into the chapel with troops and destroyed the altarpiece by Rubens, smashed many of the statues and made a bonfire of the Queen’s religious canvases, books and vestments.

Charles in Paris King Louis XIV of France was Charles’s cousin (the son of his mother, Henrietta Maria’s, brother) and eight years younger i.e. 8 when the 16-year-old Charles arrived in Paris. Henrietta Maria received a small pension from the French court, but Charles received nothing at all – for political reasons on both sides – and had to ask his mother for maintenance, a situation which led to increasing discord. He was reunited with his boyhood friend, the Duke of Buckingham and they both acquired reputations for laziness and ‘gallantry’.

Holland The next two years were spent among the bickering little court of Royalist exiles around Henrietta Maria. In 1648 a Scottish army invaded England. Charles was invited to put himself at the head of it but was fatally deterred by his advisers and instead sent to Holland where part of the British fleet had mutinied. Here he was reunited with his younger brother James. They sailed in the fleet to Yarmouth, optimistic that the Royalist uprising would soon result in the liberation of Charles I who was in prison on the Isle of Wight.

Preston But young Charles and the invading Scots engaged in the same old argument about whether Presbyterianism would be imposed on England, and during these squabbles Cromwell led an army north and destroyed the Scots forces at the Battle of Preston, 17 August 1648.

Birth of Monmouth So Charles’s little fleet sailed sadly back to Holland where he became dependent on the personal charity of the Prince of Orange, living in the Hague. He took a mistress, Lucy Walter, who on 9 April 1649 bore him a son, James, the future Duke of Monmouth, who was to lead a rebellion against Charles’s brother, his uncle James, in 1685.

Execution of Charles I While the Royalists squabbled amongst themselves, the pace of events in England speeded up. It took a while for news to come through that King Charles was to be put on trial, and even then it took some days for young Charles to realise his father might actually be killed. Henrietta Maria sent a letter to Parliament begging to be with her husband but this was ignored, and lay unsealed and unread for decades. Charles sent an envoy to plead with the Dutch Estates General to send official envoys to intercede, but by the time they arrived in London it was too late.

Legend has it that Charles signed a blank piece of paper to be given to the Roundhead court, indicating that he would agree to any terms at all, so long as his father was spared.

Tearful farewells This is a very personal history and so Fraser dwells on the last meeting between the doomed Charles I and his two youngest children who had been kept in Parliamentarian care since the outbreak of war, 13-year-old Princess Elizabeth and 8-year-old Henry Duke of Gloucester, who both broke down in tears. Accounts of this meeting, plus Charles’s last loving letters to his wife, helped to shape the image of Charles the gentle, saintly martyr, which became so powerful in subsequent royalist propaganda.

The Covenanters In September Charles and advisers sailed back to Jersey, with a view to preparing to raise a Royalist rebellion in Ireland. But while they waited, fretted and argued, Cromwell crushed Irish resistance. The royalist party sailed back to the Netherlands. Scotland remained the only hope. An embassy of Covenanters visited Charles in April 1650, insisting that he agree to impose Presbyterianism on all three kingdoms. Charles set off for Scotland and very reluctantly signed the Covenant, the grand document of the Scottish rebels. However, the army of Scots Covenanters which invaded England was crushed by Cromwell at the Battle of Dunbar on 3 September 1650. In any case, Charles had grown to hate the Covenanters and their narrow, bickering worldview.

King of Scotland Defeated in battle, the Scots Covenanters now realised they had to ally with the Royalist Scots if they were to mount a successful invasion of England. To this end, it was arranged for Charles to be crowned King of Scotland on 1 January 1651. He went on a tour of north and east Scotland to raise support. He turned 21 on 29 May 1651. Divisions continued among the Scots, some of whom refused to join the army being raised to invade England. Again.

Worcester The Scots were defeated at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1653. Charles fought bravely, escaped and went on the run. His experience of being hidden in the homes and priest holes of recusant Catholic families was to influence his thinking about this loyal but persecuted minority when he was restored. Maybe as a result of being locked up in various tiny hidey-holes, Charles in later life developed claustrophobia.

At one point Charles was disguised as a servant to Jane Lane, accompanying her on a visit to Bristol. He cut south to Lyme, expecting to rendezvous with a ship but when this didn’t appear, was forced back inland. Fraser tells the story with breathless excitement but then, it was a genuinely exciting adventure.

European travels Eventually Charles took ship from Brighton back to the Continent. His sojourn in Paris is brought to an end when the  French decide they want to ally with Cromwell’s England and Charles was given ten days to pack his bags. He went to Spa in Belgium, then Cologne, then Dusseldorf. He conceived the plan of an alliance with Spain so went to the Spanish Netherlands, settling in Bruges.

The Restoration I have given a detailed account of the negotiations leading up to the Restoration in another blog post. The procession from Dover, wine flowing in the streets, garlands of flowers. The actual coronation the next year, on 23 April 1661. In the same month, the first awards of the Order of the Garter for a generation.

Catherine of Braganza His people and traditionalists expected magnificence but this came at a cost and Charles was soon spending more than the million or so pounds he was awarded by Parliament. Hence betrothal to Catherine of Braganza. The poor woman was 23, had been raised in a convent, and was sold to Charles along with a dowry of two million crowns or £360,000. But almost all this money was mortgaged before she even arrived in the country. She brought Dunkirk as part of her dowry but in 1662 Charles was forced to sell it to the French (at the admittedly impressive price of £400,000).

Infertility When she was introduced to Charles’s mistress, Barbara Villiers, Catherine had a fit, burst out crying and collapsed on the floor. Over time she learned to manage herself and her feelings in the alien court with its alien religion, surrounded by scheming courtiers, and her husband’s open dalliances with various mistresses. And then it turned out she was ‘barren’ (as we used to say), infertile, incapable of having children. She couldn’t get pregnant. She visited Bath and other spas to take the healing waters. No effect. It must have been incredibly hard.

Frances Stuart The traditional image of Britannia is based on the beautiful but maddeningly virtuous Frances Stuart, who Charles became infatuated with.

The cabal I found it interesting that Fraser thinks, or thought, that every schoolchild ought to know that the word cabal is an acronym for the five statesman who administered Charles’s affairs after he had dismissed the unpopular Earl of Clarendon, who was made to take the blame for the unpopular and humiliating Dutch war – namely Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley and Lauderdale (p.156). Does every schoolchild know that? Ought they to?

Painting of Charles II in his coronation robes

King Charles II in his coronation robes by John Michael Wright

Sporty Charles was physically restless and interested in all forms of activity. He was notorious for his fast walking pace which wore out younger companions. He played ‘real’ tennis almost every day. He liked swimming in the Thames. He liked fishing. All of these activities might see him rising at 5am to indulge. He was definitely not a lazy slugabed.

Horse racing Charles loved hunting game in the royal forests e.g. the New Forest and Sherwood Forest, which he had restocked. Charles was an excellent horseman, he loved horse-racing, instituted the Epsom Derby, was no mean jockey himself, and regularly visited the racing at Newmarket. A famous stallion of the day which was used to breed a vast progeny was named Old Rowley and some people nicknamed the king Old Rowley for Charles’s similar tendencies.

St James Park Charles threw open St James’s Park to the public and had the lake built, which he liked to swim in. When it froze over Pepys wrote about the new Dutch fashion for skating or ‘sliding’ as it was called. Birdcage Walk is named after Charles’s interest in rare birds and the aviary he had constructed.

Science Charles loved clocks. He had at least seven in his personal rooms, which all kept different time and struck the hour at random, driving his servants crazy. It was part of his general love of gadgets which fed into serious interests in mathematics and the new sciences – the so-called Scientific Revolution which had seen him found the Royal Society in 1662.

Final illness Fraser’s description of Charles’s death is harrowing. He woke in the night, was feverish, struggled through to morning, let out a great shriek while being shaved, and was thereafter subjected to the monstrous interventions of half a dozen doctors, which included letting a staggering amount of blood, administering cantharides, red hot pokers to his shaved skull (!), cups, blistering and so on. The historian Macauley commented 150 years ago, that Charles was killed by his doctors.

Deathbed conversion to Catholicism Even more dramatic is the story of his deathbed conversion to Catholicism, laden with pathos since the priest who received him into the Catholic church was none other than the Father Huddleston who had helped hide Charles in the homes of local Catholics after the crushing defeat at Worcester all those years ago. He was procured and brought in secret to Charles’s bed-chamber by his brother, James. Fraser’s description of the catechism Huddleston administered and Charles’s conversion are very moving. After 45 minutes Huddleston left. Only his brother James and two other hand-picked gentlemen witnessed it. The great throng of nobles and all the Anglican bishops who had assembled, had been pushed out into ante-chambers and had no inkling of what was taking place.

An exemplary death But Charles didn’t die at once, he lingered. In fact, with characteristic politeness, he apologised to the gentlemen surrounding his bed for being so long a-dying. He called his wife and his two final mistresses in to see him. His many children were brought in and he blessed them one by one. It was an exemplary death from a man who had, throughout his life, striven to be noble and decent. A final example of his loyalty to those who helped him, and his confident way with the people who he so easily mixed with, in St James’s Park or Newmarket, sailing or racing, which endeared him to ‘the people’.

Parliaments Fraser’s account leaves you feeling that Charles wanted to be, and had the abilities to be, genuinely the father of his people. It was his Parliaments, the early ones determined on vicious revenge against Puritans and dissenters, the later ones obsessed by the Catholic threat, which poisoned the politics of his reign, especially the last seven or eight years.

If only Henry Duke of Gloucester, Charles I’s youngest son and widely admired as a young man, had not died in 1660, aged just 20, maybe Charles would have accepted the Whig attempts to exclude James II from the succession in favour of Protestant Henry, and all the disruption which followed would have been avoided.

If only Catherine of Braganza had borne him at least one child who would have been raised a Protestant and ensured the Stuart succession.

But Henry died and Catherine could not get pregnant, and so James Duke of York was left as the most legitimate successor to Charles, and so on 6 February 1685 his doomed reign began.


Related links

Restoration art

Restoration comedies

The restoration of Charles II

Introduction to the restoration of Charles II

When Oliver Cromwell died on 3 September 1658 there was no immediate sense that the Commonwealth would collapse and the king be restored. Rule passed smoothly to Oliver’s son, Richard – but things quickly started to unravel.

Cromwell’s rule had never reconciled the ever-increasing number of conflicting constituencies or parties or groups within not only England, but the other kingdoms of Scotland and Ireland. His rule rested ultimately on his control of the army, and the loyalty to him of (most) of the army generals. From this secure base he made attempts throughout the Protectorate, 1653-58, to reach out to:

  • in religion, episcopalians, moderate Anglicans, Presbyterians and independents
  • in politics, to moderate Royalists, to republicans and to the revolutionaries who had denounced his regime after the regicide
  • in Scotland and Ireland to moderate leaders prepared to accept his authority and work with him

These two central elements a) military authority and b) the intricate skein of negotiated settlements with all these constituencies, often based on personal acquaintance – vanished with his death.

The actual sequence of constitutional, parliamentary and political events following Cromwell’s death are extremely complex, but a high-level summary is that the general in Cromwell’s army tasked with running Scotland, General Monck, got in touch with representatives of the king and offered his services to broker a restoration.

Monck’s main concern was the material demands of the army:

  • there was to be a general pardon for actions carried out under orders
  • arrears of pay were to be fully met
  • titles to former Crown and Church lands bought during the Interregnum were to be confirmed
  • religious toleration for moderate sectarians was to be guaranteed

Charles and his advisers prepared a conciliatory declaration that offered a free pardon and amnesty to everyone who would swear loyalty to the Crown within forty day of the King’s return. However, Charles was canny enough to avoid the main points of contention, saying he’d put them off to be agreed by the first Parliament elected.

The result of these negotiations was the Declaration of Breda, signed by Charles on 4 April 1660, Breda being a town in the southern part of the Netherlands, where Charles had relocated for the negotiations.

Copies of the Declaration were sent to the House of Lords, the House of Commons, the army, the fleet and the City of London. A new Parliament had been elected in April 1660, and when Sir John Grenville delivered the Declaration to it on 1 May, both Houses unanimously voted for the Restoration.

Timeline of the Restoration

The timeline below gives some sense of the confusion and potential anarchy which spread after Richard Cromwell was forced to abdicate and then nobody knew what was happening or what to expect.

1659

May 7 – Richard Cromwell forced by the Council of Officers to reinstate the Rump Parliament.
May 24 – Resignation of Richard Cromwell after Parliament refuses to recognise the Protectorate.
June 7 – Parliament commissions Charles Fleetwood commander-in-chief of the armies in England and Scotland but retains the power to appoint or promote officers.
July 3 – Viscount Mordaunt arrives in England to co-ordinate a general Royalist insurrection.
August 5-19 – Booth’s Uprising: Royalist revolt in Cheshire, suppressed by Colonel John Lambert.
September – Officers of Lambert’s army meet at Derby and draw up a petition setting out their demands for the government of the nation.
September 22-3 – Parliament forbids any further petitioning by soldiers. Sir Arthur Hesilrige calls for Lambert’s arrest.
October 12 – Parliament revokes the commissions of Lambert and eight other senior officers.
October 13 – Lambert’s troops occupy Westminster and prevent Parliament from sitting.
October 15 – The Council of Officers appoints a ten-member Committee of Safety to consider how to carry on the government.
October 20 – General Monck sends a declaration from Scotland demanding the return of Parliament.
October 25 – The Council of State dissolved; the Committee of Safety re-appointed by Army leaders.
November 3 – Lambert marches north from London with 12,000 troops to block Monck’s route into England.
November 12 – Monck’s representatives arrive in London for talks with the Council of Officers.
November 24 – Former members of the Council of State appoint Monck commander of all military units in England and Scotland and empower him to take military action against the enemies of Parliament if necessary.
December 3 – Sir Arthur Hesilrige secures Portsmouth for Parliament.
December 5 – Riots in London for the return of Parliament.
December 8 – Monck crosses the border and establishes his headquarters at Coldstream.
December 14 – Vice-Admiral John Lawson sails for the Thames, threatening to blockade London in support of Parliament.
December 26 – Fleetwood forced to recall the Rump Parliament.

1660

January 1 – General Monck marches from Coldstream for London.
January 9 – Sir Henry Vane expelled from Parliament for having sided with the military junta.
January 11 – Lord Fairfax meets Monck at York and urges him to restore the Monarchy.
February 3 – Monck’s army arrives in London.
February 9 – Parliament orders Monck to remove the City gates and portcullises after citizens of London demand the reinstatement of Presbyterian MPs purged in 1648.
February 11 – Monck demands the re-admission of the purged MPs and apologises for his actions in removing the City gates.
February 21 – The Long Parliament restored: surviving MPs purged in 1648 re-admitted to Parliament under Monck’s protection.
March 5 – John Lambert imprisoned in the Tower of London.
March 16 – The Long Parliament calls free elections and votes for its own dissolution.
April 10 – Lambert escapes from the Tower and tries to rally resistance to the Restoration.
April 22 – Lambert and his followers defeated at Daventry; Lambert returned to London as a prisoner.
April 25 – The Convention Parliament assembles.
May 1 – Charles II’s manifesto the Declaration of Breda read in Parliament.
May 8 – The Convention Parliament declares Charles II to have been King since 30th January 1649.
May 14 – Parliament orders the arrest of all surviving regicides.
May 25 – Charles II lands at Dover.
May 29 – Charles II makes a triumphal entry into London.

The reign of Charles II, the 1660s

Charles’s reign breaks up into a number of periods and is dominated by a few key themes.

First, was how to deal with the legacy of the Civil War. Charles was in favour of forgiveness and tried to steer the first Parliament of his reign, the Convention Parliament, in that direction. However, the second Parliament, which came to be known as the Cavalier Parliament, not to mention the newly restored House of Lords, contained many who had suffered severely, lost land and family to the Roundheads. They were determined to push the clock back, to recover their lost land and money, to savagely punish all those responsible for the wars and the regicide, and to re-establish a rigid conformity in religion.

Convention Parliament

The Convention Parliament sat until the end of 1660. It was responsible for implementing the terms for the initial Restoration settlement under which Charles II established his administration.

The Convention passed the Bill of Indemnity and Oblivion, which was intended to reunite the nation under the restored monarchy by pardoning the majority of those who had opposed the Crown during the civil wars and Interregnum. It also undertook the task of disbanding the army which had underpinned the Commonwealth and Protectorate régimes. First steps were taken towards settling disputes over lands which had been sold off during the Interregnum, and initial legislation to provide revenue for the restored monarchy was set out. Charles dissolved the Convention Parliament on 29 December 1660.

The Clarendon Code

The Restoration religious settlement comprised four acts of Parliament known collectively as the Clarendon Code. The name derived from Sir Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, who served as Charles II’s lord chancellor – though Clarendon was not the chief instigator of the acts and even argued against some of the more severe aspects.

The Corporation Act (1661)

This required all office holders in towns and cities to take oaths of allegiance to the Crown, to renounce the Solemn League and Covenant and to take the sacrament in accordance with the doctrines of the Church of England.

The Act of Uniformity (1662)

This brought all ordained clergymen under the doctrines and liturgy of the established Church. Candidates for the ministry had to be ordained by a bishop according to the rites of the Church of England. They were required to renounce the Solemn League and Covenant and to declare their acceptance of the revised Book of Common Prayer and all doctrinal articles sanctioned by the Church. Hundreds of Presbyterian and non-conformist clergymen were expelled from their livings on St Bartholomew’s Day (24 August) 1662 for refusing to comply with the Act of Uniformity.

The Conventicle Act (1664)

This was intended to prevent clergymen ejected by the Act of Uniformity from forming their own congregations. Fines or imprisonment were imposed on anyone attending an independent prayer meeting or act of worship (a so-called ‘conventicle) that was not in accordance with the Anglican liturgy.

The Five-Mile Act (1665)

This was intended to curb the influence of dissenting clergymen by prohibiting them from residing within five miles of any living they had held before the Act was passed. Furthermore, they were required to take an oath of non-resistance to royal authority before accepting any appointment as tutor or schoolmaster.

Money

Once again a Stuart king let himself become poor, spending a fortune on the two stupid Dutch wars and frittering it away on mistresses and favourites at home.

A timeline of the 1660s

1661 Corporation Act – aimed at Presbyterians, the Act provided that no person could be legally elected to any office relating to the government of a city or corporation, unless he had within the previous twelve months received the sacrament of ‘the Lord’s Supper’ according to the rites of the Church of England. He was also commanded to take the Oaths of Allegiance and the Oath of Supremacy, to swear belief in the Doctrine of Passive Obedience, and to renounce the Covenant.
1662 Act of Uniformity compels Puritans to accept the doctrines of the Church of England or leave the church.
1662 Royal Society for the improvement of science founded

Catherine of Braganza

Charles married Catherine of the Portuguese royal house of Braganza. He married her for money but her dowry was quickly spent and then Britain found itself drawn into Portugal’s war against Spain. And, crucially, Catherine turned out to be ‘barren’ or incapable of conceiving children. Charles wasn’t. He was to acknowledge fatherhood of eighteen bastards (the most famous being the Duke of Monmouth, born as early as 1649, when Charles himself was only 19).

The lack of a male heir from the Braganza marriage meant the throne would pass to his brother James who was an overt Catholic i.e. more or less condemned the Stuart line to come to an end. As with Henry VIII, the infertility of a royal marriage was to have seismic consequences for the British.

1664 England seizes the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam, changing its name to New York.
1665 Outbreak of the Second Anglo-Dutch War
1665 The Great Plague strikes London and over 60,000 die.
1666 The Great Fire of London rages for four days and three nights. Two thirds of central London is destroyed and 65,000 are left homeless

1667 As part of The Second Dutch War A Dutch fleet sails up the River Medway captures the English flagship The Royal Charles and sinks three other great ships. This humiliation provided Charles with a pretext to blame and thus get rid of the Earl of Clarendon, the statesman who had guided and mentored him in exile and dominated the first seven years of his rule.

Fall of Clarendon

Clarendon was replaced by a set of five statesmen or advisers who come to be known as The Cabal and held power from 1668 to 1674.

The Cabal

The linchpin of the Cabal was probably George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. Although he only held the household office of Master of the Horse, with responsibility for overseeing the King’s travel arrangements, Buckingham was a long and close associate of King Charles II. They had practically been raised together since they were children, during the close association of their fathers, Charles I and the first Duke of Buckingham, a relationship they consciously compared themselves to in adulthood, and might have replicated, had the younger Buckingham possessed the skills of his father. Nonetheless, Buckingham was in constant contact and a clear favourite of the king, and the centre of the Cabal’s grip on power. Gilbert Burnet, who knew some of its members personally, said that Buckingham stood apart from the rest of the Cabal, hating them and being hated in return.

The Lord High Treasurer Wriothesley having died just before Clarendon’s departure, the Treasury came under the nominal chairmanship of George Monck (Duke of Albermarle). But as Monck was practically retired from public life, control of the Treasury commission was taken up by Sir Thomas Clifford (Comptroller and soon Treasurer of the Household) and Anthony Ashley Cooper (Chancellor of the Exchequer). With the assistance of their close associates John Duncombe (Ashley’s deputy at the Exchequer), Stephen Fox (the Paymaster of the Forces) and Sir George Downing, the secretary to the Treasury commission, Clifford and Ashley overhauled the monarchical finances, placing them in a much more solvent state than before.

Foreign affairs was directed by Henry Bennet, Earl of Arlington (Secretary of the South), with occasional assistance from George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. (Although foreign affairs were notionally in the purview of the Secretary of the North, the Cabal bullied Sir William Morice into selling the seat to Sir John Trevor, and then sidelined the latter.)

John Maitland, Earl of Lauderdale (Secretary of State for Scotland) had already consolidated his position in 1663 by securing the dismissal of his principal rival, John Middleton (Lord High Commissioner to the Parliament of Scotland) and his replacement by the more pliable John Leslie, Earl of Rothes. In 1669, Lauderdale went one step further, and got Leslie dismissed and the Lord High Commissioner position for himself, consolidating his hold and ruling Scotland as a virtual autocrat for the remainder of his career.

Sir Orlando Bridgeman, the Royalist lawyer who had prosecuted the Regicides, and who took over Clarendon’s duties as Lord Keeper of the Great Seal in 1667, was outside of this inner circle, although cooperated with their goals.

Despite their comparative energy and efficiency, the Cabal was a fractious and unpopular group. Although perceived as a secretive and unsavoury junta, they rarely formed a united front, and their internal quarrels often spilled over into the public arena.

J. P. Kenyon suggests that the King actually encouraged the Cabal members to quarrel, in the belief that this made them easier to control. They in turn, never trusted him not to bring them down as he had brought down Clarendon, and as Kenyon remarks, they hardly dared turn their backs on him for fear of sudden dismissal.

It was said that the King treated his ministers very much as he did his mistresses: ‘He used them, but he was not in love with them, and was tied to them no more than they to him, which implies sufficient liberty on either side’.

Sir William Coventry, the Secretary to the Admiralty, resigned from office following a duel challenge from the Duke of Buckingham, and re-emerged in the House of Commons at the head of a group of MPs known as the ‘Country Party’, which loudly opposed the Cabal and its policies.

Charles II acceded to the Cabal’s recommendation to prorogue parliament repeatedly, keeping it out of session for as long as he could, and leaving the Cabal to run the country on their own. When he found himself in financial difficulties following the Great Stop of the Exchequer in 1672 and the outbreak of the Third Anglo-Dutch War, Charles was obliged to re-convene parliament in 1673 and the parliamentarians were bent on revenge.

Fall of the Cabal

The Cabal began to split in 1672, particularly over the autocratic nature of the King’s Royal Declaration of Indulgence, the financing of the Third Anglo-Dutch War, and Britain’s relationship with France.

Personal rivalries and a conflict over foreign policy between Buckingham and Arlington escalated. The Ministry became very unpopular. The public saw them as ‘untrustworthy, venal and self-seeking, their eyes always on the main chance”.

Towards the end of the year, Ashley, now the Earl of Shaftesbury, became Lord Chancellor, leaving Treasury matters to Clifford and the Exchequer to Duncombe. He pressed publicly for greater reform of government, taking the side of the Opposition against his colleagues and the King.

Clifford resigned over the in-fighting and retired from public life: as an open Roman Catholic he would in any case have been debarred by the Test Act of 1673 from holding office in the future. Shaftesbury was replaced by Viscount Osborne, soon to become Earl of Danby, in the summer of 1673, on the recommendation of Buckingham and Clifford.

Danby immediately established his authority over the remaining members of the Cabal. Buckingham’s feud with Arlington saw him leak the details of the Treaty of Dover and fall from favour in 1674. Arlington survived as Southern Secretary until September of that year. Lauderdale retained his position and his relatively autonomous power in Scotland, becoming an enemy of Shaftesbury.

Shaftesbury began to agitate against Charles and his brother, the Duke of York, later James II. He briefly returned to government in the Privy Council Ministry and took a lead in forming the partisan group that would eventually become known as the Whigs.

Reign of Charles II, the 1670s

1670 – Charles signs the secret Treaty of Dover, by which Charles agrees to declare himself a Catholic, suspend penal laws against Catholics in England in return for secret subsidies from Louis XIV of France.
1670 – Second Conventicle Act
1670 – Hudson Bay Company founded in North America

1672 – Charles issues the Declaration of Indulgence, allowing dissenters and Catholics to practice their religion in private
1672 – Outbreak of the Third Dutch War as part of the secret treaty with France, the French invading the Spanish Netherlands while the British fleet engaged the Dutch fleet. The Dutch defeated the British fleet at Sole Bay and repelled a land invasion by France by flooding their dykes.
1672 James Duke of York’s wife, Anne Hyde (daughter of the disgraced Earl of Clarendon) died in childbirth, having delivered him two daughters, Mary (b.1662) and Anne, both of whom were brought up as Protestants. Who suspected, then, that they would both reign as queens of England?

1673 – James, Duke of York remarried, taking as his second wife Mary of Modena, a Catholic who was only four years older than his daughter, Mary. James came out publicly as a Catholic which caused a scandal.

1673 – When Charles allowed the Cavalier Parliament to sit again in 1673, it was inflamed by rumours of Charles’s deals with the King of France and Catholic influence in British statecraft, and so the vengeful Anglicans passed a Test Act which required everybody holding public office to take Anglican communion and swear an oath against a belief in transubstantiation – that the wafer of bread and the wine administered during communion actually and literally become the blood of Christ, a central premise of Roman Catholicism. In other words, the Act was expressly designed to keep Roman Catholics out of political office. The Catholic Treasurer Lord Clifford resigned his office then took his life. Charles’s brother, James Duke of York, resigned as High Admiral of the Navy.

In 1677 the Earl of Danby, who had emerged as Charles’s most capable minister, persuaded both Charles and James to let him make a strategic alliance by marrying James’s daughter Mary to her cousin, the Protestant Stadtholder of Holland, William III of Orange. William was the son of the King’s late sister, Mary, Princess Royal, and thus fourth in the line of succession after James, Mary, and Ann. When James told Mary that she was to marry her cousin, ‘she wept all that afternoon and all the following day’. She was 15.

Reign of Charles II, the Popish Plot and after

1678 – The fantasist Titus Oates concocted the Popish Plot, the notion of a complex, far-reaching plot to murder Charles and convert Britain to a Catholic dictatorship. His initial claims were passed up the chain of command to Charles himself who handed them to Danby to investigate, and with each telling they became more fantastic and baroque. They played into the sense that Britain was being sold into Catholic influence which had haunted the 1670s, what with James’s overt Catholicism, his marriage to a Catholic princess, with Charles repeatedly allying with Catholic France against the Protestant Dutch. Oates’s fabrications helped create a McCarthy witch-hunt atmosphere. Even when he accused the Queen of being a member of the plot to assassinate her own husband, he was widely believed.

A second Test Act (1678) was passed which excluded all known Catholics from both Houses of Parliament. Known Catholics were ordered to leave London and many Protestants in the city openly carried weapons to defend themselves against the impending Catholic ‘onslaught’. Shops in London were boarded up, chains were stretched across major roadways, ferry passengers were detained for questioning, a fleet of lesser crooks and narks emerged to inform on their neighbours and rivals. Some twenty-four utterly innocent people were tried and executed, while Oates was awarded rooms in Whitehall and a pension.

The hysteria lasted from 1678 to 1681. A new Parliament was elected in March 1679 which presented a bill seeking to prevent the succession of the Catholic James. Charles worked on numerous fronts to address concerns, taking opponents into his Privy Council, sending James out of the kingdom, being prepared to sign a bill limiting the power of a Catholic monarch. But he would not concede the right to determine the royal succession to Parliament and so he dissolved this Parliament and called a second one. The second Parliament of 1679 was called amid mounting hysteria and opposition was orchestrated by the Earl of Shaftesbury amid press campaigns and petitions.

The coalition of allies which Shaftesbury put together around this central anti-Catholic approach was arguably the first political party in Britain and became known as the Whigs. The king’s supporters quickly copied the new organisational tactics of the Whigs and began to be known as the Tories. Charles refused to let the second Parliament sit, proroguing it seven times over the course of a year. Whig propagandists played on fears of Catholic tyranny; Tories revived memories of 1641 and the way a Parliament trying to seize the king’s prerogatives had led to 20 years of chaos.

Whigs and Tories

The term Whig was originally short for whiggamor, a term meaning ‘cattle driver’ used to describe western Scots who came to Leith for corn. In the reign of Charles I the term was used during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms to refer derisively to a radical faction of the Scottish Covenanters who called themselves the Kirk Party (see the Whiggamore Raid). It was then applied to Scottish Presbyterian rebels who were against the King’s Episcopalian order in Scotland.

The term Whig entered English political discourse during the Exclusion Bill crisis of 1678–1681 when there was controversy about whether or not King Charles II’s brother, James, should be allowed to succeed to the throne on Charles’s death. Whig was a term of abuse applied to those who wanted to exclude James on the grounds that he was a Roman Catholic. The fervent Tory Samuel Johnson often joked that ‘the first Whig was the Devil’.

In his six-volume history of England, David Hume wrote:

The court party reproached their antagonists with their affinity to the fanatical conventiclers in Scotland, who were known by the name of Whigs: The country party found a resemblance between the courtiers and the popish banditti in Ireland, to whom the appellation of Tory was affixed. And after this manner, these foolish terms of reproach came into public and general use; and even at present seem not nearer their end than when they were first invented

In response, King Charles prorogued Parliament and then dissolved it, but the subsequent elections in August and September saw the Whigs’ strength increase. This new parliament did not meet for thirteen months but when it did in October 1680, an Exclusion Bill was introduced and passed in the Commons without major resistance, but Charles was in attendance when it was rejected in the Lords and Charles dissolved Parliament in January 1681.

As Mark Kishlansky summarises, ‘the governing class was now irredeemably divided.’

The next attempt at a Parliament met in March at Oxford, but when it also determined on the Exclusion Bill, Charles dissolved it after only a few days. He then he made an appeal to the country against the Whigs and ruled for the rest of his reign without Parliament.

In February, Charles had made a deal with the French King Louis XIV, who promised to support him against the Whigs. Without Parliament, the Whigs gradually crumbled, mainly due to government repression following the discovery of the Rye House Plot, which directly implicated many of them.

1683 The Rye House Plot a conspiracy to kill Charles and his brother James and return to parliamentary rule is uncovered. The Rye House Plot of 1683 was a plan to assassinate King Charles II of England and his brother (and heir to the throne) James, Duke of York. The royal party went from Westminster to Newmarket to see horse races and were expected to make the return journey on 1 April 1683, but because there was a major fire in Newmarket on 22 March (which destroyed half the town), the races were cancelled, and the King and the Duke returned to London early. As a result, the planned attack never took place.

There seems to have been disagreement among the plotters on almost every aspect, including whether there even would be an assassination or whether it should be a kidnapping, and exactly how the subsequent uprising would be started and managed.

Once information about it was leaked, the plotters incriminated each other and letters and diaries were discovered which spread the net wider and wider.

Unlike the Popish Plot, Rye House was a genuine conspiracy involving an extended network of Whigs, politicians and non-conformists. Twelve were executed including William Lord Russell and Algernon Sidney, two condemned to death but pardoned, 10 imprisoned including the ageing Leveller John Wildman, 10 fled into exile including the noted philosopher John Locke and, most importantly, the Earl of Shaftesbury, who had been the effective leader of the Whig party. These formed a core of Whig opposition in exile, in the Netherlands.

As Anglican pledges of support flooded in from round the country, the authorities took the opportunity to crack down in dissenters and over 1,300 Quakers were imprisoned over the next 12 months.

Charles undertook a policy of reincorporation, systematically placing loyalist country officers around the country.

Death of Charles II

Charles died on 5 February 1685, aged just 54, only barely outmatching his father, who died aged 48. On his deathbed he was received into the Roman Catholic Church. In the absence of any legitimate male heirs, the crown passed to his younger brother, who became King James II.


Related links

Restoration art

Restoration comedies

Political documents of the British civil wars

Political documents of the civil wars

What follows are summaries of some of the key political documents produced between the start of Charles I’s conflict with Scotland  in 1637 and the Restoration of Charles II in 1660. Instead of a chronological or thematic approach to the period, this is a different angle from which to consider events, a record of the proliferation of plans and constitutions cooked up by all sides in their attempts to find a solution to the nation’s deep divisions.

Lining them up like this brings out one of the central ideas of Mark Kishlansky’s history of the 17th century, namely the collapse of consensus, the collapse of belief in a central set of political and religious values which characterised the era, and the countless attempts made by different political players to rebuild it.

In the last few documents of the series you can see the realisation emerging that the late-medieval idea of a hierarchical and completely homogeneous society was permanently broken and that only a system which allowed for some measure of tolerance and pluralism could replace it.

The question of just how much pluralism and tolerance could be permitted and society remain, in some sense, united or coherent, remained an open question – in fact, arguably, it’s one of the main threads of British social and political history right up to the present day.

To me what this proliferation of documents indicates is how very difficult it is, once you abandon tradition and precedent, to draw up a new political constitution in a period of crisis. It’s one of the reasons revolutions are so tumultuous. Getting rid of the ancien regime, especially if it’s embodied in one hated ruler (Charles I, Louis XVIII, Czar Nicholas II, the Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi) is relatively easy. Finding a successor system which all the competing factions can unite behind… almost impossible.

Which is why revolutions often become uncontrollable by all except the most ideological, ruthless and uncompromising: Cromwell, Napoleon, Lenin, Ayatollah Khomeini. Or collapse into civil war: Iraq, Libya.

I’m aware that the documents are in a broad range of genres – from constitutions enacted by central government to the manifestos of fringe groups (the Levellers and even more so, the Diggers), from religious oaths to political treaties. A proper study would take this more into account. I am concerned simply to give an indication of a) the sheer number of them b) their range and variety, and – as said above – the way they show how, once a shared consensus has collapsed, it is so very difficult to create a new one.

  • 1638 The Scottish National Covenant
  • 1641 The Grand Remonstrance
  • 1643 The Solemn League & Covenant
  • 1647 The Heads of the Proposals
  • 1647-9 An Agreement of the People
  • 1648 The Army Remonstrance
  • 1649 England’s New Chains Discovered
  • 1649 The True Levellers Standard Advanced (the Diggers)
  • 1650 The Treaty of Breda
  • 1653 The Instrument of Government
  • 1657 Humble Petition and Advice
  • 1660 The Declaration of Breda

1638 The Scottish National Covenant

In 1637 King Charles I and Archbishop Laud tried to bring the separate churches of England and Scotland closer together, firstly by the introduction of a new Book of Canons to replace John Knox’s Book of Discipline as the authority for the organisation of the Kirk, and secondly by the introduction of a modified form of the Book of Common Prayer into Scotland. Charles and Laud consulted neither the Scottish Parliament or the Assembly of the Kirk with the inevitable result that the proposals met with outrage from Scots determined to preserve their national and religious identity.

At the first service where they were introduced, on 23 July 1637 in St Giles’s cathedral in Edinburgh, Jenny Geddes flung her prayer stool at the dean as he read from the book, and started a riot. Similar demonstrations took place in churches all across Scotland where the new liturgy was introduced.

This spontaneous protest was soon organised by Presbyterian elders and aristocrats into a campaign of petitions denouncing the Laudian prayer book and the power of the bishops. These coalesced into a committee which drew up a National Covenant to unite the protesters. The Covenant called for adherence to doctrines already enshrined by Acts of Parliament and for a rejection of untried ‘innovations’ in religion.

In February 1638, at a ceremony in Greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh, large numbers of Scottish noblemen, gentry, clergy and burgesses signed the Covenant, committing themselves under God to preserving the purity of the Kirk. Copies were distributed throughout Scotland for signing on a wave of popular support. Those who hesitated were often intimidated into signing and clergymen who opposed it were deposed. By the end of May 1638, the only areas of Scotland where the Covenant had not been widely accepted were the remote western highlands and the counties of Aberdeen and Banff, where resistance to it was led by the Royalist George Gordon, Marquis of Huntly.

An Assembly was held at Glasgow in 1638 where the Covenanter movement became the dominant political and religious force in Scotland.

In 1643 the objectives of the Covenant were incorporated into the Solemn League and Covenant which formed the basis of the military alliance between the English Parliament and the Scottish Covenanters against the Royalists.

1641 The Grand Remonstrance

A Remonstrance against King Charles I was first proposed by George Digby, MP for Dorset, soon after the Long Parliament assembled in November 1640. The idea was taken up by John Pym in 1641. Pym planned to use it as part of his campaign to transfer control of the armed forces to Parliament by undermining confidence in the King and his ministers and by demonstrating the integrity of Parliament.

The Remonstrance was drafted between August and November 1641 by Pym and his supporters. These included John Hampden, John Glynn, Sir John Clotworthy, Arthur Goodwyn and others who later formed the ‘Middle Group’ that was associated with Pym’s efforts to bridge the parliamentarian ‘War’ and ‘Peace’ parties during the early years of the English Civil War.

The Grand Remonstrance was a long, wide-ranging document that listed all the grievances perpetrated by the King’s government in Church and State since the beginning of his reign. Rather than blaming the King himself, the Remonstrance emphasised the role of bishops, papists and ‘malignant’ ministers and advisers who were alleged to have deliberately provoked discord and division between King and Parliament.

In contrast, the Remonstrance described the measures taken by the Long Parliament towards rectifying these grievances during its first year in office, including the abolition of prerogative courts and illegal taxes, legislation for the regular summoning of Parliament, and a partial reform of the Church. Thus the House of Commons was presented as the true defender of the King’s rightful prerogative, of the Protestant faith, of the privileges of Parliament and the liberties of the people.

In order to continue its work, the Remonstrance called for the setting up of an Assembly of Divines, nominated by Parliament, to supervise ongoing reform of the Church; furthermore, it demanded that the King’s ministers should be approved by Parliament, with the right of veto over those it considered unsuitable.

On 22 November 1641, after a stormy debate that lasted long into the night, the House of Commons passed the Remonstrance by a narrow margin of 159 votes to 148. The King’s supporters who tried to enter a protest were shouted down in a bad-tempered confrontation that almost ended in a riot. Oliver Cromwell is said to have remarked that if the Remonstrance had not been passed he would have sold all he had and gone overseas to America.

Opponents of the Remonstrance, who included Viscount Falkland and Edward Hyde, formed what was, for the first time, a recognisable Royalist party in Parliament. The Remonstrance was presented to the King on 1 December 1641. He ignored it for as long as possible, so Parliament took the unprecedented step of having it printed and circulated in order to rally outside support. On 23 December, the King finally presented his reply. Drafted by Edward Hyde, it rejected the Remonstrance but in reasoned and conciliatory tones calculated to appeal to moderate opinion.

1643 The Solemn League & Covenant

The alliance between the English Parliament and the Scottish Covenanters was sealed with the signing of the Solemn League and Covenant by both Houses of Parliament and the Scottish commissioners on 25 September 1643. It was a military league and a religious covenant. Its immediate purpose was to overwhelm the Royalists, who in 1643 seemed in a strong position to win the English Civil War.

An alliance between Parliament and the Scots was first proposed by John Pym early in 1643. Parliament was anxious to secure military help from Scotland in order to counter Royalist victories in England. The Convention of Estates in Edinburgh favoured the alliance after the discovery of the Earl of Antrim’s conspiracy to bring over an Irish Catholic army to support a projected uprising of Scottish Royalists. However, the Covenanters regarded the alliance principally as a religious union of the two nations. They hoped to unite the churches of Scotland and England under a Presbyterian system of church government.

In August 1643, the four commissioners appointed by the House of Commons arrived in Edinburgh. They were Sir Henry Vane, Sir William Armyne, Thomas Hatcher and Henry Darley. They were accompanied by two clergymen, the Presbyterian Stephen Marshall and the Independent Philip Nye. Although the House of Lords had voted in favour of the alliance, no peers were prepared to go to Scotland to take part in the negotiations. Sir Henry Vane emerged as the leading spokesman of the English delegation.

Both sides were eager to defeat the Royalists so the negotiations proceeded quickly. The Westminster Parliament ratified the new covenant within two weeks of receiving it at the end of August 1643. Certain alterations were made to avoid an immediate commitment to strict Presbyterianism and these were accepted by the Convention of Estates.

The Scots agreed to send an army into England on condition that Parliament would co-operate with the Kirk in upholding the Protestant religion and uprooting all remaining traces of popery. Although it was implied that Presbyterian forms of worship and church government would be enforced in England, Wales and Ireland, the clause was qualified to read that church reform would be carried out ‘according to the Word of God’ – which was open to different interpretations.

Reform of the Anglican church was debated at the Westminster Assembly, but a Presbyterian religious settlement for England was strongly opposed by Independents and others. The settlement that was eventually imposed was regarded as a compromise by the Covenanters.

In January 1644, the Army of the Covenant marched into England to take the field against the Royalists. Parliament decreed that the Covenant was to be taken by every Englishman over the age of eighteen. Although no penalty was specified, the names of those who refused to sign were to be certified to Parliament. Signing the Covenant became a prerequisite for holding any command or office under Parliament until King Charles I made his own alliance with the Scots in 1648.

After the execution of Charles I, Kirk leaders pressed the Solemn League and Covenant on his son Charles II at the Treaty of Breda (1650). However, the defeat of the Royalist-Scots alliance at the battle of Worcester in September 1651 ended all attempts to impose Presbyterianism in England.

1646 The Newcastle Propositions

The Newcastle Propositions were drawn up by the Westminster Parliament as a basis for a treaty with King Charles I in July 1646 after the defeat of the Royalists in the First Civil War. The King had surrendered to Parliament’s Scottish allies rather than to Parliament itself and was held in semi-captivity at Newcastle.

There was resentment among English Parliamentarians that the King was in the hands of the Scots, and tension had increased after an intercepted letter revealed that secret negotiations had passed between the King and the Scots earlier in the year. Fearing that the alliance with Parliament was under threat, the Committee of Estates in Edinburgh instructed the Scottish commissioners in London to consent to Parliament’s proposals, even though they fell short of the Covenanters’ ideals in the settlement of religion.

The Propositions put to the King consisted of nineteen clauses. The main points were:

  • The King was to sign the Covenant and an Act was to be passed imposing it on all his subjects
  • Episcopacy was to be abolished as it had been in Scotland; the church in England and Ireland was to be reformed along Presbyterian lines as directed by Parliament and the Assembly of Divines
  • The armed forces and militia were to be controlled by Parliament for a period of twenty years before reverting to the Crown
  • Leading officials and judges were to be nominated by Parliament
  • The Irish Cessation was to be annulled and the war in Ireland to be directed by Parliament
  • Conservators of the Peace were to be appointed in England and Scotland to maintain peace between the two nations
  • A number of named Royalists were to be exempted from pardon and punished for their actions in the Civil War
  • Strict laws against Catholics were to be enforced

1647 The Heads of the Proposals

These were a set of propositions intended to be a basis for a constitutional settlement after King Charles I was defeated in the First English Civil War. The document was drafted by Commissionary-General Henry Ireton and Major-General John Lambert. during the summer of 1647 when the Army was engaged in a political power struggle with Presbyterian MPs over the settlement of the nation. The proposals were termed the ‘Heads’ to indicate that they were a broad outline, to be negotiated in detail later.

  • Royalists had to wait five years before running for or holding an office.
  • The Book of Common Prayer was allowed to be read but not mandatory, and no penalties should be made for not going to church, or attending other acts of worship.
  • The sitting Parliament was to set a date for its own termination. Thereafter, biennial Parliaments were to be called (i.e. every two years), which would sit for a minimum of 120 days and maximum of 240 days. Constituencies were to be reorganized.
  • Episcopacy would be retained in church government, but the power of the bishops would be substantially reduced.
  • Parliament was to control the appointment of state officials and officers in the army and navy for 10 years.

Although the Army proposals were more lenient than the terms offered in Parliament’s Newcastle Propositions, the King regarded them as too restrictive and rejected them outright. During the negotiations, Ireton and Cromwell lost the support of the Army radicals, who were disappointed that the proposals made no concessions to Leveller demands for a wider franchise, and who criticised the Grandees’ ‘servility’ in their dealings with the King.

Meanwhile, Charles continued his attempts to play off the Army and Parliament against one another. He also began secretly negotiating with a faction among the Scots, which was to lead to the Second Civil War in 1648.

At the Putney Debates (October-November 1647), where the Army Council discussed a new constitution for England, Ireton promoted the Heads of the Proposals as a moderate alternative to the Leveller-inspired Agreement of the People.

Six years later, elements of Ireton’s proposals were incorporated into the Instrument of Government – the written constitution that defined Cromwell’s powers as Lord Protector. The religious settlement proposed by Ireton in 1647 was virtually identical to that finally adopted in the Toleration Act of 1689.

1647-49 An Agreement of the People

The Agreement of the People was the principal constitutional manifesto associated with the Levellers. It was intended to be a written constitution that would define the form and powers of government and would also set limits on those powers by reserving a set of inalienable rights to the people. It would take the form of a contract between the electorate and the representative, to be renewed at each election. The Agreement developed over several versions between October 1647 and May 1649.

Original Draft, 1647 An Agreement of the People for a firm and present peace upon grounds of common right was first drafted in October 1647 when Agitators of the New Model Army and civilian Levellers collaborated to propose an outline for a new constitution in the aftermath of the First Civil War. It was probably drafted by John Wildman though its authorship is not known for certain. Stating that sovereign power should reside in the people of England rather than with the discredited King or Parliament, the original Agreement consisted of four clauses:

  1. The peoples’ representatives (i.e. Members of Parliament) should be elected in proportion to the population of their constituencies
  2. The existing Parliament should be dissolved on 30 September 1648
  3. Future Parliaments should be elected biennially and sit every other year from April to September
  4. The biennial Parliament (consisting of a single elected House) should be the supreme authority in the land, with powers to make or repeal laws, appoint officials and conduct domestic and foreign policy

Certain constraints were placed on Parliament: it was not to interfere with freedom of religion; it was not to press men to serve in the armed forces; it could not prosecute anyone for their part in the recent war; it was not to exempt anyone from the ordinary course of the law; all laws passed by Parliament should be for the common good.

The proposals were debated at the Putney Debates of October and November 1647 where the Grandees Cromwell and Ireton tried to curb Leveller extremism, particularly over a proposal to extend the franchise to all adult males. Parliament denounced the Agreement as destructive to the government of the nation and ordered Fairfax to investigate its authorship. Attempts to gain wider Army support for the Agreement at the Corkbush Field rendezvous were forcibly suppressed by the Grandees.

The Whitehall Debates, 1648-9 During 1648, civilian and military supporters of the Agreement continued to debate and refine its proposals. The Armies Petition or a new Engagement was drafted by a group of Agitators at St Albans in April 1648 and was published in tandem with a related civilian broadside, A New Engagement, or Manifesto. These documents expanded upon the original Agreement to include more specific proposals for legal and economic reform.

After the King’s defeat in the Second Civil War, John Lilburne promoted an extended version of the Agreement which was discussed by a committee of Levellers, London Independents, MPs and army Grandees at Whitehall in December 1648. These discussions took place in the aftermath of Pride’s Purge when the King’s trial was imminent.

Lilburne wanted to secure Parliament’s acceptance of the Agreement before the King was brought to trial so that the trial would have a basis in a legitimate and legal constitution. However, Lilburne and his colleague Richard Overton walked out of the discussions when Army officers led by Henry Ireton insisted upon making further modifications to the Agreement before it was presented to Parliament.

The discussions continued in Lilburne’s absence. While Ireton appeared to make concessions to the Levellers over the franchise, it is probable that he was playing for time to distract the Army Levellers while preparations for the King’s trial went ahead. The revised Agreement was finally presented to the House of Commons as a proposal for a new constitution on 20 January 1649, the very day that the public sessions of the High Court of Justice began. As Ireton had calculated, MPs postponed discussion of the Agreement until after the trial, and it was never taken up again by Parliament.

Final version, May 1649 The Grandees’ modification of the Agreement of January 1649 was the Army’s last official involvement in its evolution. However, Lilburne and the civilian Levellers regarded Ireton’s intervention as a betrayal and continued to refine their proposals. A fully developed version of the Agreement – An Agreement of the Free People of England, tendered as a Peace-Offering to this distressed Nation – was published in May 1649, signed jointly by John Lilburne, Richard Overton, William Walwyn and Thomas Prince. Its proposals included:

  • The right to vote for all men over the age of 21 (excepting servants, beggars and Royalists)
  • Annual elections to Parliament with MPs serving one term only
  • No army officer, treasurer or lawyer could be an MP (to prevent conflict of interest)
  • Equality of all persons before the law
  • Trials should be heard before 12 jurymen, freely chosen by their community
  • The law should proceed in English and cases should not extend longer than six months
  • No-one could be punished for refusing to testify against themselves in criminal cases
  • The death penalty to be applied only in cases of murder
  • Abolition of imprisonment for debt
  • Tithes should be abolished and parishioners have the right to choose their ministers
  • Taxation in proportion to real or personal property
  • Abolition of military conscription, monopolies and excise taxes

The final version was published after the Leveller leaders had been imprisoned by order of the Council of State and a few weeks before the suppression of the Army Levellers at Burford on 17 May 1649, after which the Leveller movement was effectively finished.

1648 The Army Remonstrance

The Remonstrance of General Fairfax and the Council of Officers was a manifesto adopted by the New Model Army in November 1648 to justify its intention to abandon treaty negotiations with King Charles and to bring him to trial as an enemy of the people. Although it was issued under the authority of Fairfax and the Council of Officers, the Remonstrance was primarily the work of Henry Ireton.

In September 1648, Parliament opened negotiations for a settlement with King Charles at the Treaty of Newport. However, Army radicals demanded that the negotiations should be abandoned and the King brought to justice for inflicting the Second Civil War upon the nation.

Ireton wrote to General Fairfax proposing that the Army should purge Parliament of MPs who supported the Treaty. After Fairfax rejected the proposal, Ireton began drafting the Remonstrance. Several petitions from radical regiments demanding justice against the King were presented to Fairfax during the following weeks, possibly under Ireton’s direction. Under pressure from the radicals, Fairfax agreed to call a meeting of the General Council of the Army at St Albans to discuss the situation. In contrast to the Putney Debates of the previous year, representatives of the common soldiers were excluded from the discussions.

The General Council convened in St Albans Abbey on 7 November 1648. After discussion of the petitions and general grievances of the soldiers, Ireton presented the draft of the Army Remonstrance on 10 November. It was initially rejected by Fairfax and the moderate officers but their opposition evaporated after 15 November when the House of Commons voted to allow the King to return to London on completion of the Newport Treaty and to restore his lands and revenues.

Fearing that Parliament intended to grant an unconditional restoration, the Army united behind Ireton’s Remonstrance. After some last-minute amendments to ensure the support of the Levellers, the Remonstrance was adopted by the General Council on 18 November 1648.

Under the maxim salus populi suprema lex (‘the safety of the people is the supreme law’), the Remonstrance proclaimed the sovereignty of the people under a representative government. Divine providence would prove the righteousness or otherwise of the government’s actions, and would also thwart unjustified rebellion against authority. Thus, the defeat of King Charles in the Second Civil War vindicated the actions of the Army as the defenders of the people. It was argued that the King should be brought to account because he had broken the sacred covenant with his people and attempted to place himself above the law.

The Remonstrance also proposed a set of Leveller-inspired constitutional reforms, including the possibility of an elective monarchy. Parliament was to set a date for its own dissolution, to be followed by annual or bi-annual Parliaments elected on a reformed franchise. There was to be a written constitution with a declaration of parliamentary authority over the King and Lords. All office-holders, including the monarch, were to subscribe to the Levellers’ Agreement of the People.

A delegation of officers headed by Colonel Ewer presented the Remonstrance to Parliament on 20 November. After an initial flurry of opposition led by William Prynne, Parliament postponed further discussion until treaty negotiations with the King at Newport were completed. Meanwhile, the Army moved its headquarters from St Albans to Windsor. On 28 November, the General Council of the Army resolved to march into London. With Parliament still refusing to discuss the Remonstrance and apparently intent on implementing the Treaty of Newport, Ireton initiated the train of events that led to Pride’s Purge in December 1648.

1649 England’s New Chains Discovered

On 26 February one of the leading radicals in the army, John Lilburne, published this attack on the new Commonwealth, in which he asserted the illegality of the High Court of Justice, the Council of State (which, he pointed out ,rested solely on the diminished or Rump Parliament) and the Council of the Army, which he accused of having become an instrument for the rich officers against the rank and file.

His agitation did not go unnoticed. In March 1649, Lilburne and other Leveller leaders were arrested. In October, Lilburne was brought to trial at the Guildhall, charged with high treason and with inciting the Leveller mutinies. He conducted his own defence, during which he raised strong objections to all aspects of the prosecution and quoted directly from Sir Edward Coke’s Institutes, or commentaries on the laws of England. The jury found Lilburne Not Guilty, to enthusiastic cheers from crowds of his supporters and well-wishers.

April 1649 The True Levellers Standard Advanced

This was the manifesto of the splinter group of Levellers who decided to put theory into practice and claimed a patch of common land near Weybridge in Surrey and began digging it. It was written by their leader Gerard Winstanley who has gone down as a hero to Marxists and left-leaning liberals. They thought all hierarchy should be abolished, wealth should be redistributed to abolish poverty, that the land was a common treasury and all the land parcelled out to households who would have equal rights to cultivate them and share the proceeds. As a result they were nicknamed the Diggers. Within months they’d been driven from the original site by the local landowners, and attempted their communal experiment in various other locations until fading away.

1650 The Treaty of Breda

After the execution of Charles I in January 1649, the Scottish Parliament proclaimed his son the new king, Charles II. However, the government of Scotland was dominated by the covenanting Kirk Party, which was determined that Charles should take the Covenant and agree to impose Presbyterianism throughout the Three Kingdoms before he could be crowned King of Scots or receive Scottish help to regain the throne of England.

Initial negotiations between Charles and representatives of the Scottish government were held at The Hague in March 1649 but broke down because Charles did not accept the legitimacy of the Kirk Party régime. However, his hopes of using Ireland as a rallying ground for the Royalist cause were thwarted by Cromwell’s invasion in August 1649. Various European heads of state offered sympathy but no practical help for regaining the throne, so Charles and his council were obliged to call for another round of negotiations with the Scots.

Negotiations between Charles II and a delegation of Scottish commissioners opened at Breda in the Netherlands on 25 March 1650. Aware of Charles’ desperate situation, the demands made by the Scottish Parliament were harsh:

  • Charles was required to sign the Covenant and to promise to impose it upon everyone in the Three Kingdoms.
  • All members of the King’s household were to adopt the Presbyterian religion.
  • Catholicism was never to be tolerated in the Three Kingdoms.
  • The King was to recognise the Scottish Parliament and to confirm all Acts passed since 1641
  • The King was to annul all recent commissions and treaties – this was intended to force Charles to disown Montrose’s expedition to Scotland and Ormond’s treaty with the Irish Confederates

Bad-tempered wrangling continued through March and April. Charles tried to gain concessions that would allow a reconciliation with the Engagers, who were excluded from office in Scotland by the Act of Classes. He would not impose Presbyterianism in England nor would he annul the Irish treaty. But to the dismay of English Royalists, Charles finally agreed to take the Oath of the Covenant. Other contentious issues were to be discussed upon his arrival in Scotland. He signed the Treaty of Breda on 1 May 1650 and took the Covenant immediately before landing in Scotland on 23 June 1650.

Charles then led a Scottish army into England which was comprehensively crushed at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651, the final engagement of the war in England which had started in 1642. Charles escaped the battlefield and was on the run for 45 days till he managed to take ship to France and nine years of exile.

1653 The Instrument of Government

England’s first written constitution, the Instrument of Government was a constitutional settlement drafted by Major-General John Lambert during the autumn of 1653 and adopted by the Council of Officers when the Nominated Assembly surrendered its powers to Oliver Cromwell in December.

Lambert’s original intention had been that the old constitution of King, Lords and Commons should be replaced by one of King, Council and Parliament. In discussion with a few trusted advisers after the abdication of the Nominated Assembly, Cromwell amended the Instrument to avoid reference to the royal title, which was likely to be unacceptable to the Army.

Under the terms of the Instrument of Government, executive power passed to an elected Lord Protector, in consultation with a Council of State numbering between thirteen and twenty-one members. Cromwell was declared Lord Protector for life, though it was stressed that the office was not hereditary. He was required to call triennial Parliaments consisting of a single House of 400 members from England and 30 each from Scotland and Ireland, to remain in session for at least five months.

Parliamentary constituencies were re-arranged in an attempt to lessen the influence of the gentry in favour of the emerging middle class who, it was hoped, would be more inclined to support the Protectorate government. The number of MPs from towns and boroughs (where voting was traditionally influenced by the local gentry) was significantly reduced and representation of the universities was limited. To balance the representative, the number of MPs from the counties was correspondingly increased.

In a direct repudiation of Leveller ideas, the county franchise was restricted to persons with land or personal property valued at £200 or more. The borough franchise remained with aldermen, councillors and burgesses. Furthermore, Roman Catholics and known Royalists were declared ineligible to vote or seek election.

Under the Instrument, Parliament was charged with raising revenue for establishing and maintaining a standing army of 10,000 horse and dragoons and 20,000 foot for the defence of England, Scotland and Ireland.

Liberty of worship was granted to all except Roman Catholics and those guilty of ‘licentiousness’ (i.e. the extreme sectarians).

The Instrument of Government was England’s first written constitution. It was adopted by the Council of Officers on 15 December 1653 and Cromwell was installed as Lord Protector the next day. The First Protectorate Parliament duly assembled on 3 September 1654. However, the abrupt termination of Parliament in January 1655 meant that MPs never finished revising the Instrument of Government and so it was never legally endorsed. Doubts regarding its legal authority led to the resignation of the Lord Chief Justice Henry Rolle in June 1655.

The Instrument was superseded in 1657 by the Humble Petition and Advice.

1657 Humble Petition and Advice

The Humble Petition and Advice was a constitutional document drawn up by a group of MPs in 1657 under which Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell was offered the Crown. It represented an attempt by civilian Parliamentarians to move back towards traditional forms of government after the imposition of various army-led constitutional experiments, in particular the unpopular Rule of the Major-Generals.

The offer of the Crown was intended to limit Cromwell’s power rather than extend it, because as King his power would be defined by precedent. The Humble Petition aimed to legitimise the constitution since it came from an elected Parliament, unlike its predecessor the Instrument of Government.

The first version of the Humble Petition was known as the Humble Address and Remonstrance. It was drafted by a small group which included Lord Broghill, Edward Montagu and Oliver St John. The Remonstrance was brought before the Second Protectorate Parliament on 23 February 1657 by Sir Christopher Packe, a former lord mayor of London. It included proposals for the re-introduction of a second House of Parliament and for the establishment of a national church regulated by a Confession of Faith, but its most controversial proposal was that the Protector should be invited to assume the office and title of King.

This proposal was supported by most lawyers and civilian MPs but was fiercely opposed by Major-General Lambert and other army officers as well as by republicans and religious radicals.

Cromwell agonised over the decision for several months and finally declined the offer of the Crown on 8 May. A revised version of the proposal, which avoided reference to the royal title, was adopted on 25 May. Cromwell was re-installed as Lord Protector in a ceremony still reminiscent of a royal coronation on 26 June 1657.

Under the new constitution, Cromwell was to remain Lord Protector for life and could now choose his own successor. He was required to call triennial Parliaments which were to consist of two chambers: the elected House of Commons and a second chamber, or Upper House (referred to only as the ‘other house’), of between forty and seventy persons nominated by the Protector but approved by Parliament. The Upper House was intended to mediate between the Lower House and the Protector. It had the right to veto any legislation passed in the Lower House and was roundly condemned by republicans as too reminiscent of the old House of Lords. The Council of State was to become the Protector’s privy council, consisting of 21 members chosen by the Protector and approved by Parliament.

After the Instrument of Government, the Humble Petition and Advice was England’s second – and last – written constitution. It differed significantly from the Instrument in that it was drawn up by civilian parliamentarians rather than by army officers and also in that it was legally endorsed by Parliament. It remained in force throughout the remainder of the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell and during the brief jurisdiction of his successor Richard Cromwell.

1660 The Declaration of Breda

This was a manifesto issued in April 1660 by the exiled Charles II in which he outlined his initial terms for the Restoration of the monarchy. The Declaration was drawn up by Charles himself and his three principal advisers, Sir Edward Hyde, the Marquis of Ormond and Sir Edward Nicholas.

In March 1660, shortly after the final dissolution of the Long Parliament, General George Monck entered into secret negotiations with Charles’ representative Sir John Grenville regarding the possibility of the King’s return to power. Grenville was authorised to offer Monck high office in return for his help, while Monck himself claimed to have always been secretly working towards the Restoration – a view that came to be widely accepted later.

Monck’s terms were geared primarily towards satisfying the material concerns of the army:

  • there was to be a general pardon for actions carried out under orders
  • arrears of pay were to be fully met
  • titles to former Crown and Church lands bought during the Interregnum were to be confirmed
  • religious toleration for moderate sectarians was to be guaranteed

Following Monck’s advice to move from Spanish territory to Breda in the Protestant Netherlands, Charles and his principal advisers prepared a conciliatory declaration that touched upon the major issues of indemnity, confirmation of land sales and the religious settlement. A free pardon and amnesty was offered to all who would swear loyalty to the Crown within forty day of the King’s return.

However, Charles skirted around all points of contention by referring the final details of the Restoration settlement to a future Parliament. Charles was aware that any legislation passed by the forthcoming Convention Parliament would have to be confirmed or refuted by a later Parliament summoned under the King’s authority, and that the blame for inevitable disappointments in the Restoration settlement would then be borne by Parliament rather than by the Crown.

Smart thinking.

The Declaration was signed by Charles on 4 April 1660. Copies were prepared with separate letters to the House of Lords, the House of Commons, the army, the fleet and the City of London. Monck was offered a commission as commander-in-chief of the army. When Sir John Grenville delivered the Declaration to the newly-elected Convention Parliament on 1 May, both Houses unanimously voted for the Restoration.

Sources

The period 1649 to 1658 is covered by pages 189 to 212 of A Monarchy Transformed: Britain 1603 – 1714 by Mark Kishlansky. I’ve also sourced information from Wikipedia. But the main source for a lot of this information was the excellent British Civil Wars, Commonwealth & Protectorate website, which covers all aspects of the subject and includes really excellent maps.


Related links

A Monarchy Transformed: Britain 1603-1714 by Mark Kishlansky (1996)

Mark Kishlansky (1948 – 2015) was an American historian of seventeenth-century British politics. He was the Frank Baird, Jr. Professor of History at Harvard University, editor of the Journal of British Studies from 1984 to 1991, and editor-in-chief of History Compass from 2003 to 2009.

Kishlansky wrote half a dozen or so books and lots of articles about Stuart Britain and so was invited to write Volume Six of the Penguin History of England covering that period, under the general editorship of historian David Cannadine.

I think of the history of Britain in the 17th century as consisting of four parts:

  1. The first two Stuarts (Kings James I & Charles I) 1603 – 1642
  2. The Civil Wars and Protectorate (Oliver Cromwell) 1642 – 1660
  3. The Restoration (Kings Charles II & James II) 1660 – 1688
  4. The Glorious Revolution and Whig monarchs (William & Mary, then Queen Anne) 1688 – 1714

Although obviously you can go by monarch:

  1. James I (1603-25)
  2. Charles I (1625-42)
  3. Wars of the three kingdoms (1637-53)
  4. Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell (1653-1660)
  5. Charles II (1660-1685)
  6. James II and the Glorious Revolution (1685-88)
  7. William & Mary (1688-1702)

I appreciate that this is an English perspective, and Kishlansky is the first to acknowledge his history tends to focus on England, by far the largest and most powerful of the three kingdoms of Britain. The histories of Scotland and Ireland over the same period shadowed the English timeline but – obviously – had significant events, personnel and continuities of their own. From the start Kishlansky acknowledges he doesn’t have space to give these separate histories the space they deserve.

Why is the history of seventeenth century Britain so attractive and exciting?

The seventeenth century has a good claim to being the most important, the most interesting and maybe the most exciting century in English history because of the sweeping changes that affected every level of society. In 1600 England was still a late-medieval society; in 1700 it was an early modern society and in many ways the most advanced country on earth.

Social changes

  • business the modern business world was created, with the founding of the Bank of England and Lloyds insurance, cheques, banknotes and milled coins were invented; the Stock Exchange was founded and the National Debt, a financial device which allowed the British government to raise large sums for wars and colonial settlement; excise and land taxes provided reliable sources of revenue for the government
  • empire the British Empire was defined with the growth of colonies in North America and India
  • feudal forms of government withered and medieval practices such as torture and the demonisation of witchcraft and heresy died out
  • media newspapers were invented and went from weekly to daily editions
  • new consumer products domestic consumption was transformed by the arrival of new products including tobacco, sugar, rum, gin, port, champagne, tea, coffee and Cheddar cheese
  • the scientific revolution biology, chemistry and physics trace their origins to discoveries made in the 1600s – Francis Bacon laid the intellectual foundations for the scientific method; William Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood; Robert Boyle posited the existence of chemical elements, invented perfected the air pump and created the first vacuum; Isaac Newton discovered his laws of thermodynamics, the composition of light, the laws of gravity; William Napier invented logarithms; William Oughtred invented the multiplication sign in maths; Edmund Halley identified the comet which bears his name, Robert Hooke invented the microscope, the quadrant, and the marine barometer; the Royal College of Physicians published the first pharmacopeia listing the properties of drugs; Peter Chamberlen invented the forceps; the Royal Society (for the sciences) was founded in 1660
  • sport the first cricket and gold clubs were founded; Izaak Walton codified knowledge about fishing in The Compleat Angler; Charles II inaugurated yacht racing at Cowes and Queen Anne founded Royal Ascot
  • architecture Inigo Jones, Sir Christopher Wren, Nicholas Hawksmoor and John Vanbrugh created wonderful stately homes and public buildings e.g. Jones laid out the Covent Garden piazza which remains an attraction in London to this day and Wren designed the new St Paul’s cathedral which became a symbol of London
  • philosophy the political upheavals produced two masterworks of political philosophy, the Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, which are still studied and applied in a way most previous philosophy isn’t
  • non conformists despite repeated attempts to ban them, Puritan sects who refused to ‘conform’ to the Restoration settlement of the Church of England were grudgingly accepted and went on to become a permanent and fertile element of British society – the Quakers, Baptists and Presbyterians

Political upheaval

At the centre of the century sits the great 20-year upheaval, the civil wars or British wars or Great Rebellion or the Wars of Three Kingdoms, fought between the armies of parliament and the armies of King Charles I, with significant interventions by armies of Scotland and Ireland, which eventually led to the execution of the king, the abolition of the House of Lords and the disestablishment of the Church of England – achievements which still form a core of the radical agenda to this day. These revolutionary changes were- followed by a series of constitutional experiments under the aegis of the military dictator Oliver Cromwell, which radicalised and politicised an entire generation.

Soon after Cromwell’s death in 1658, his regime began to collapse and elements of it arranged for the Restoration of King Charles II, who returned but under a new, more constitutional monarchy, restrained by laws and conventions guaranteeing the liberties of British subjects and well aware of the mistakes which led to the overthrow of his father.

But none of this stopped his overtly Roman Catholic brother, who succeeded him as James II in 1685, making a string of mistakes which collectively alienated the Protestant grandees of the land who conspired to overthrow him and replace him with the reliably Protestant Prince William of Orange. James was forced to flee, William was invited to become King of England and to rule according to a new, clearly defined constitution or Bill of Rights, which guaranteed all kinds of liberties including of speech and assembly.

All of these upheavals meant that by 1700 England had the most advanced, liberal and open society in Europe, maybe in the world, had experimented with a wide variety of political reforms and constitutions, and developed one which seemed most practical and workable – which was to become the envy of liberals in neighbouring France, and the basis of the more thoroughly worked-out Constitution devised by the founders of the American republic in the 1780s.

Studying the 17th century combines the intellectual excitement of watching these constitutional and political developments unfold, alongside the more visceral excitement of following the dramatic twists and turns in the long civil wars – and then following the slow-burning problems which led to the second great upheaval, the overthrow of James II. There is tremendous pleasure to be had from getting to know the lead characters in both stories and understanding their motives and psychologies.

Key features of 17th century England

The first two chapters of Mark Kishlansky’s book set out the social and political situation in Britain in 1600. These include:

Britain was a comprehensively patriarchal society. The king ruled the country and his word meant life or death. Le Roy le veult – the King wishes it – was the medieval French phrase still used to ratify statutes into law. The monarch made all political, legal, administrative and religious appointments – lords, ministers, bishops, judges and magistrates owed their position to him. In every locality, knights of the shires, justices of the peace administered the king’s laws. The peerage was very finely gradated and jealously policed. Status was everything.

And this hierarchy was echoed in families which were run by the male head of the household who had complete power over his wife and children, a patriarchal household structure endorsed by the examples in the Bible. Women might have as many as 9 pregnancies, of which 6 went to term and three died in infancy, with a further three children dying in infancy.

The family was primarily a unit of production, with all family members down to small children having specified tasks in the often backbreaking toil involved in agricultural work, caring for livestock, foraging for edibles in woods and fields, producing clothes and shoes. Hard physical labour was the unavoidable lot of almost the entire population.

Marriages were a vital way of passing on land and thus wealth, as well as family names and lineages. Most marriages were arranged to achieve these ends. The top responsibility of both spouses were the rights and responsibilities of marriage i.e. a wife obeyed her husband and a husband cherished and supported his wife. It was thought that ‘love’ would grow as a result of carrying out these duties, but wasn’t a necessary component.

Geography 80% of the population in 1600 worked on the land. Britain can be divided into two geographical zones:

1. The North and West The uplands of the north-west, including Scotland and Wales, whose thin soils encouraged livestock supplemented by a thin diet of oats and barley. Settlements here were scattered and people arranged themselves by kin, in Scotland by clans. Lords owned vast estates and preserved an old-fashioned medieval idea of hospitality and patronage.

Poor harvests had a catastrophic impact. A run of bad harvests in the 1690s led to mass emigration from Scotland to America, and also to the closer ‘plantations’ in Ulster.

It was at this point that Scottish Presbyterians became the majority community in the province. Whereas in the 1660s, they made up some 20% of Ulster’s population… by 1720 they were an absolute majority in Ulster, with up to 50,000 having arrived during the period 1690-1710. (Wikipedia)

2. The south and east of Britain was more densely populated, with villages and towns instead of scattered homesteads. Agriculture was more diverse and productive. Where you have more people – in towns and cities – ties of kinship become weaker and people assess each other less by ‘family’ than by achievements, social standing and wealth.

The North prided itself on its older, more traditional values. The South prided itself on being more productive and competitive.

Population The population of England rose from 4 million in 1600 to 5 million in 1700. There were maybe 600 ‘towns’ with populations of around 1,000. Big provincial capitals like Norwich, Exeter or Bristol (with pops from 10,000 to 30,000) were exceptions.

London was unlike anywhere else in Britain, with a population of 200,000 in 1600 growing to around 600,000 by 1700. It was home to the Court, government with its Houses of Lords and Commons, all the main law courts, and the financial and mercantile hub of the nation (Royal Exchange, Royal Mint, later the Bank of England and Stock Exchange). The centre of publishing and the new science, literature, the arts and theatre. By 1700 London was the largest city in the Western world. Edinburgh, the second largest city in Britain, had a paltry 40,000 population.

Inflation Rising population led to a squeeze on food since agricultural production couldn’t keep pace. This resulted in continuous inflation with foodstuffs becoming more expensive throughout the century, which reduced living standards in the countryside and contributed to periods of near famine. On the other hand, the gentry who managed to hang onto or increase their landholdings saw an unprecedented rise in their income. The rise of this class led to the development of local and regional markets and to the marketisation of agriculture. Those who did well spent lavishly, building manors and grand houses, cutting a fine figure in their coaches, sending the sons to university or the army, educating their daughters in order to attract wealthy husbands.

Vagrancy The change in working patterns on the land, plus the rising population, led to a big increase in vagrancy, which the authorities tackled with varying degrees of savagery, including branding on the face with a V for Vagrant. Contemporary theorists blamed overpopulation for poverty, vagrancy and rising crime. One solution was to encourage the excess population to settle plantations in sparsely populated Ireland or emigrate to New England. There were moral panics about rising alcoholism, and sex outside marriage.

Puritans Leading the charge to control immoral behaviour were the Puritans, a negative word applied to a range of people who believed that the Church of England needed to be further reformed in order to reach the state of purity achieved by Calvinists on the continent. Their aims included:

  • abolition of the 26 bishops (who were appointed by the king) and their replacement by Elders elected by congregations
  • reforms of theology and practice – getting rid of images, candles, carvings etc inside churches, getting rid of elaborate ceremonies, bells and incense and other ‘Roman’ superstitions
  • reducing the number of sacraments to the only two practiced by Jesus in the New Testament
  • adult baptism replacing infant baptism

Banning Closely connected was the impulse to crack down on all ungodly behaviour e.g. alcohol (close pubs), immorality (close theatres), licentiousness (ban most books except the Bible), lewd behaviour (force women to wear modest outfits, keep their eyes on the ground), ban festivals, ban Christmas, and so on.

Trans-shipping The key driver of Britain’s economic wealth was shipping and more precisely trans-shipping – where goods were brought in from one source before being transhipped on elsewhere. The size of Britain’s merchant fleet more than tripled and the sized of the cargo ships increased tenfold. London’s wealth was based on the trans-shipping trade.

The end of consensus politics

The second of Kishlansky’s introductory chapters describes in detail the political and administrative system in early 17th century Britain. It is fascinating about a) the complexity of the system b) its highly personal orientation about the person the monarch. It’s far too complicated to summarise here but a few key themes emerge:

Consensus Decisions at every level were reached by consensus. To give an example, when a new Parliament was called by the king, the justices of the peace in a county met at a session where, usually, two candidates put themselves forward and the assembled JPs discussed and chose one. Only very rarely were they forced back on the expedient of consulting local householders i.e. actually having a vote on the matter.

Kishlansky explains how this principle of consensus applied in lots of other areas of administration and politics, for example in discussions in Parliament about acts proposed by the king and which needed to be agreed by both Commons and Lords.

He then goes on to launch what is – for me at any rate – a new and massive idea: that the entire 17th century can be seen as the slow and very painful progression from a political model of consensus to an adversarial model.

The entire sequence of civil war, dictatorship, restoration and overthrow can be interpreted as a series of attempts to reach a consensus by excluding your opponents. King Charles prorogued Parliament to get his way, then tried to arrest its leading members. Cromwell, notoriously, was forced to continually remodel and eventually handpick a Parliament which would agree to do his bidding. After the Restoration Charles II tried to exclude both Catholics and non-conforming Protestants from the body politic, imposing an oath of allegiance in order to preserve the model of consensus sought by his grandfather and father.

the point is that all these attempts to purify the body politic in order to achieve consensus failed.

The advent of William of Orange and the Bill of Rights in 1689 can be seen as not so much defining liberties and freedoms but as finally accepting the new reality, that political consensus was no longer possible and only a well-managed adversarial system could work in a modern mixed society.

Religion What made consensus increasingly impossible? Religion. The reformation of Roman Catholicism which began in 1517, and continued throughout the 16th century meant that, by the 1620s, British society was no longer one culturally and religiously unified community, but included irreducible minorities of Catholics and new-style Calvinist Puritans. Both sides in what became the civil wars tried to preserve the old-fashioned consensus by excluding what they saw as disruptive elements who prevented consensus agreements being reached i.e. the Royalists tried to exclude the Parliamentarians, the Parliamentarians tried to exclude the Royalists, both of them tried to exclude Catholics, the Puritans once in power tried to exclude the Anglicans and so on.

But the consensus model was based on the notion that, deep down, all participants shared the same religious, cultural and social values. Once they had ceased to do that the model was doomed.

Seen from this point of view the entire history of the 17th century was the slow, bloody, and very reluctant acceptance that the old model was dead and that an entirely new model was required in which political elites simply had to accept the long-term existence of sincere and loyal but completely different opinions from their own.

Political parties It is no accident that it was after the Glorious Revolution that the seeds of what became political parties first began to emerge. Under the consensus model they weren’t needed; grandees and royal ministers and so on managed affairs so that most of them agreed or acquiesced on the big decisions. Political parties only become necessary or possible once it had become widely accepted that consensus was no longer possible and that one side or another in a debate over policy would simply lose and would have to put up with losing.

So Kishlansky’s long and fascinating introduction leads up to this insight – that the succession of rebellions and civil wars across the three kingdoms, the instability of the Restoration and then the overthrow of James II were all necessary to utterly and finally discredit the old late-medieval notion of political decision-making by consensus, and to usher in the new world of political decision-making by votes, by parties, by lobbying, by organising, by arguing and taking your arguments to a broader political nation i.e. the electorate.

In large part the English Revolution resulted from the inability of the consensual political system to accommodate principled dissension. (p.63)

At a deep level, the adoption of democracy means the abandonment of attempts to repress a society into agreement. On this view, the core meaning of democracy isn’t the paraphernalia about voting, that’s secondary. In its essence democracy means accepting other people’s right to disagree, sincerely and deeply, with what you hold to be profoundly true. Crafting a system which allows people to think differently and speak differently and live differently, without fear or intimidation.


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Charles I: King and Collector @ the Royal Academy

King Charles I is most famous for getting his head chopped off in 1649, at the climax of the civil war he had triggered against his Puritan, ’roundhead’ opponents in Parliament.

(I am aware that there’s controversy about all aspects of the wars, from their very name [should it be called the Great Rebellion, the British Civil Wars, the Wars of Three Kingdoms, etc] through to the dates, because the civil wars across all four of his realms actually started with the rebellion of the Scots at having an English prayer book imposed on them in 1637 – which triggered Charles’s hapless manoeuvrings with his Parliament to get them to fund an army to repel the Scots invasion of 1638 – although it wasn’t until rebellion broke out in Ireland in 1641 that the final breach between Charles and his Puritan opponents in Parliament became irreconcilable. It’s a much more complicated story than usually depicted.)

Anyway, before he mismanaged his kingdoms so badly that he triggered war in all three of them (Wales was not a kingdom but a principality) Charles had been one of the most sophisticated royal patrons and collectors of art anywhere in Europe. This big exhibition at the Royal Academy brings together an impressive number of the sculptures, paintings, tapestries and so on that Charles either directly commissioned or purchased through his roving agents from the leading artists of the day. it is a magnificent display of some 150 works of art, ranging from classical sculptures to Baroque paintings, and from exquisite miniatures to monumental tapestries.

Equestrian painting of Charles I with M. de St Antoine by Anthony van Dyck (1633)

Scattered and reunited

A simple but important point about the exhibition – and a demonstration of the vanity of human wishes – is that, having spent a lifetime collecting all these riches, soon after Charles’s execution the new Puritan regime sold them off to pay their soldiers and all these masterpieces were scattered across Europe.

Some were tracked down and rebought by his son, Charles II after his restoration to the throne in 1660, especially the ones which had gone to British purchasers who were no keen to ingratiate themselves with the new king. Most remained abroad and, indeed, made very nice additions to the royal collections of the Louvre and the Prado. But what was returned, along with the works which Charles’s queen, Henrietta Maria, had taken to France and brought back in 1660, went on to form the core of the future Royal Collection.

Charles the collector

In 1623, two years before he became king, Prince Charles visited Madrid. The purpose of the visit was to sound out the possibility of marriage to Maria Anna of Spain, daughter of King Philip III of Spain. Negotiations broke down when the new king, Philip IV, demanded that Charles convert to the Catholic Church and live in Spain for a year as pre-conditions.

But although the diplomatic aim of the visit failed, one thing made a deep impact on the future king of England, namely the huge and dazzling art collection of the Philip IV. This, thought Charles, was the magnificence and grandeur befitting a divinely appointed monarch! Charles went shopping and returned to England with a number of works, including paintings by Titian and Veronese, while agents were sent to France and Italy to snap up anything which came on the market. Thus Charles was able to snap up the famous Gonzaga collection which had been accumulated by successive dukes of Mantua, through the work of Nicolas Lanier, his Master of Music and agent.

It was this collection which included Andrea Mantegna’s monumental series, The Triumph of Caesar, (1484 to 1492) which is given a whole room to itself in the exhibition.

Triumph of Caesar: The Vase Bearers by Andrea Mantegna (1484 to 1492)

But it wasn’t just a matter of liking fine art. A king’s collection bespoke his power, both to the few subjects who saw it, but, more importantly, to visiting ambassadors and princes. According to historian Jenny Uglow, ‘ceremonies were delayed and dinners cooled as he showed visiting dignitaries proudly round’ his collection, including the so-called Bear Gallery containing works like Titian’s portrait of Charles V with a Dog (1533) and Rubens’s Daniel in the Lions’ Den (1616), to the Privy Lodging Rooms which housed works by Titian, Correggio, Giorgione and others; and then, the core of the collection, the Cabinet Room, which held 80 paintings, 36 statues and statuettes, as well as bas-reliefs, miniatures, books, engravings, drawings, medals and precious objects.

Charles V with a Dog by Titian (1533) Museo Nacional del Prado

Moreover portraits, such as those by van Dyck, then had multiple copies made of them which could be sent to foreign monarchs as testaments to Charles’s majesty and glory.

By 1649, Charles’s collection comprised around 1,500 paintings and 500 sculptures. An inventory compiled by Abraham van der Doort (c.1580 to 1640), first Surveyor of The King’s Pictures, recorded the contents of the collection, providing a detailed account of the artistic tastes and high level of connoisseurship within the king’s circle.

Changing British taste

One of the aims of the exhibition is to demonstrate how Charles was the first British monarch to really grasp the artistic culture of the Continent. The Protestant Tudor monarchs (Henry VIII, Edward VI, Elizabeth I), with the brief exception of the Catholic Queen Mary (1553 to 1558), had been wary of Catholic Europe and its culture.

But Charles’s father, James I, changed this policy. During the long reign of Queen Elizabeth Catholic Spain had been the enemy, justifiably so since its king, Philip II, had launched an armed invasion of England, which, if it had succeeded, would have resulted in the forced conversion of the church and people back to strict Roman Catholicism, with untold numbers of arrests, tortures and public burners of recusants.

James came from a different family and tradition and so was able to break with Elizabeth’s policy and seek a rapprochement with Catholic Spain. During his reign the treaties with Spain were moderate but still sparked murmurs of dissent from the Protestant aristocracy. (Anti-Spanish murmurings became louder when the Protestant hero, Sir Walter Raleigh, was beheaded in 1618, largely at the behest of the Spanish ambassador, and as a result of a last, ill-fated expedition to South America in 1617.)

The apotheosis of James I, commissioned by Charles I from Peter Paul Rubens to form the centrepiece of the newly refurbished Banqueting House, completed in 1636

James’s eldest son, Henry, surrounded himself with scholars, artists and musicians and acquired ‘Catholic’ paintings from Holland and from Florence. On Henry’s death in 1612 his collection passed to his mother, Anne of Denmark, who herself became a keen patron of painters, dramatists and architects as well as court masques, and filled her rooms at Somerset House and Oatlands Palace with religious pictures, still-lifes, landscapes and allegorical scenes.

So this was the family atmosphere Charles grew up in, far more relaxed about Catholic culture than his Protestant forebears of the previous century. The Puritans in Parliament disliked this cultural shift, as they had disliked Charles’s trip to Spain (still Europe’s most Catholic power) and then really disliked Charles’s marriage to the Catholic Henrietta Maria, youngest daughter of Henry IV of France, who – to the Puritans’ outrage – was allowed to attend Catholic masses in the Royal Palaces.

But Charles wasn’t alone in his taste for Continental art. Other super-rich aristocrats vied with him to create superb collections, including Thomas Howard (1586 to 1646), Earl of Arundel, and George Villiers (1592 to 1628), Duke of Buckingham. At the height of his success, Buckingham’s palace in the Strand contained over 300 paintings by artists including Rubens, Titian, Tintoretto and Bassano. It became a fashion and a competition.

Titian was the main man. Titian (1490 to 1576) had loyally served Habsburg monarchs, sending them paintings on a wide range of subject from his base in Venice. Titian’s portraits, especially those of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, proved him the supreme painter of kingly, military and diplomatic power, and Charles wanted some.

The Allocution of Alfonso d’Avalos to His Troops by Titian (1540 to 1541) Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid

Charles and Van Dyck

The artist most associated with Charles is Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599 to 1641). Charles persuaded the great Flemish painter to come to London in 1632, where he was appointed ‘principalle Paynter in Ordenarie to their Majesties’.

Triple Portrait of Charles I by Sir Anthony van Dyck (1636)

Van Dyck’s achievement was immense. His fluency and sense of composition, his extraordinary ability to capture not just the likeness but the mood and character of his sitters, was unparalleled. The exhibition includes some of his most spectacular works, including:

  • Charles I and Henrietta Maria with Prince Charles and Princess Mary (1632)
  • his two magnificent equestrian portraits, Charles I on Horseback with M. de St. Antoine (1633) and Charles I on Horseback (1638)
  • ‘Le Roi à la chasse’ (1635)

Many portraits were done in several versions, to be sent as diplomatic gifts or given to supporters of the increasingly embattled king. Altogether van Dyck has been estimated to have painted forty portraits of Charles himself, as well as about thirty of the Queen.

Such was the impact and range of his works that van Dyck became the dominant influence on English portrait-painting for the next 150 years. Charles awarded him a knighthood and a £200 annual pension. When van Dyck died young, in 1641, he was buried in (the old) St Paul’s Cathedral.

The Mortlake tapestries

But it wasn’t just van Dyck. Charles I commissioned some of the most important artists of his day. Beside the ceiling of the Banqueting House (above) Charles commissioned from Peter Paul Rubens paintings such as ‘Minerva Protects Pax from Mars’ (1630) and his ‘Landscape with Saint George and the Dragon’ (1630 to 1635).

Another major highlight of the exhibition is the Mortlake tapestries of Raphael’s Acts of the Apostles. These have a complicated history. In 1513 Pope Leo X commissioned Raphael to design a set of tapestries of the Acts of the Apostles to be hung in the Sistine Chapel. Detailed versions of the works were painted in gouache on sheets of paper which were glued together to achieve the scale required, and these preparatory studies are referred to as ‘cartoons’. These cartoons were the send to Brussels, at that time the premiere centre of tapestry making in Europe. The final tapestries took some time to create but were complete and delivered to Rome by the time of the Pope Leo’s death in 1521.

The cartoons were kept on at the workshops in Brussels for some years, and more versions of the tapestries created from them. But a hundred years later many had found their way back to Italy, to the city of Genoa to be precise. And it was here that one of Charles’s agents ascertained that they were available for sale and so young Prince Charles hurriedly bought them.

His aim was to bring the cartoons to England, where they could be used as models for the tapestry factory established in 1619 by his father, James I, at Mortlake in south-west London, and several partial sets of the Acts of the Apostles were indeed woven here over the next two decades. After passing through the hands of various monarchs, the reassembled cartoons were eventually gifted to the Victoria and Albert Museum. And it’s these huge and awesome works that the visitor can see in a room devoted to them.

The Miraculous Draft of Fishes by Raphael (1515 to 1516)

Summary

To visit the exhibition is to bask, for a while, in the reflected glory and magnificence of royalty, strolling past the masterpieces mentioned above as well as stunning works by other Renaissance artists such as Correggio, Agnolo Bronzino, Jacopo Bassano, Tintoretto and Paolo Veronese as well as Albrecht Dürer, Jan Gossaert, Hans Holbein the Younger and Pieter Bruegel the Elder. What a banquet of Baroque art, a visual feast fit for a king.

The promotional video


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The Trial of Charles I by Dame Veronica Wedgwood (1964)

I own about 50 books on the Civil Wars and am a member of the Cromwell Association, have attended lectures and visited battlefields and key Civil War sites. But if you asked me what to read on the subject I would unhesitatingly recommend the ageing but brilliant trilogy of books by Dame Veronica Wedgwood (1910 to 1997): The King’s Peace (1955), The King’s War (1958), and The Trial of Charles I (1964).

The reason is simple. All the other books I’m aware of are either high-level overviews of the entire period (from the 1630s or earlier, to the Restoration in 1660) or specialist books by professional historians arguing a particular thesis or interpretation. Wedgwood’s books are the only ones I know of which give a straightforward, chronological account of what happened on an almost daily basis. This level of detail about the helter-skelter of day-to-day events, the rush and pressure of unpredictable crises and alarm, is crucial to understanding the decisions the key players made as they struggled to understand and control events.

Ten fateful weeks Wedgwood concentrates on the 10 weeks between Cromwell’s Army, on 20th November 1648, laying before a reluctant Parliament their demands that the king be brought to trial – and the execution of the king January 30 1649.  First she sketches in the background and the key political groups which had emerged during the Civil War:

The Royalists Mostly in exile or hiding after the failed rising or ‘second civil war’ in the Spring and Summer of 1648 which had been convincingly crushed by the New Model Army. Royalists throughout the land were being repressed and, if they’d helped in the uprising, often had their land and money confiscated.

The Army Under its brilliant commander Sir Thomas Fairfax the army had emerged victorious in the second civil war, defeating all Royalist forces. This battle-hardened army was to go on to occupy Scotland and then storm through Ireland. But the Army was divided into two parts:

  • The Levellers During the war there emerged from the common troops, formerly uneducated men who had found a voice and confidence through their success and solidarity, a group nicknamed the Levellers, who demanded a comprehensive overhaul of the English State, starting with free elections on the basis of universal male suffrage to form a new House of Commons with a mandate to review Common Law, abolish the Church of England, abolish tithes and so on.  Their most effective leader was the young, impassioned John Lilburne, once whipped through the streets of London at Charles’s order for slandering the Court.
  • ‘The Grandees’ the Levellers’ nickname for the landed gentry and aristocrats who led the Army, who opposed the king on legal or religious principle, but had not the slightest interest in reordering Society, who were convinced that would lead to anarchy. They formed a small Council of the Army, dominated by the ruthless workaholic Henry Ireton, who happened to be son-in-law to Cromwell.

Parliament

  • The House of Lords Heavily biased towards the king, most of the Royalists were abroad in exile, in hiding or dead. In the leadup to the trial sometimes as few as six Lords attended some sessions.
  • The House of Commons Claiming to represent the people of England, the Commons was already diminished by up to 200 of the original members of the 1642 House. Even so it was still dominated by the Presbyterians, so-called moderate Puritans who desperately wanted to reach agreement with the king. It was these moderates that Charles had been stringing along since 1647 while he hoped against hope for further uprisings or help from a foreign government to free him.
  • The Army MPs Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton and some 20 others combined leadership positions in the Army with membership of the House of Commons and used their position repeatedly to get the Army’s way.

Pride’s Purge When the Presbyterian majority in the Commons delayed debating the Army’s demand for a trial, events took a dramatic turn. On December 5th Colonel Pride stood outside Westminster Hall and as each MP arrived, he let through the ones favourable to the Army, took into custody all those opposed. Only 45 MPs were let in. It became known as ‘Pride’s Purge’. It was in effect a military coup, ensuring that the Parliament Cromwell and the others took up arms to defend in 1642, now consisted of few if any Lords, and only a hard core of MPs favourable to the Army’s wishes.

The Commission This reduced ‘Rump’ was persuaded to set up a Commission with 135 members to administer the trial and decide the king’s guilt. Of this hand-picked group rarely more than 60 attended any of the sessions. Wedgwood gives a brilliant, day by day of the trial and the central clash – between the obscure lawyer John Bradshaw chosen to run the court, who repeatedly tried to get Charles to enter a plea – and the dignified king who knew the law inside out and refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the court.

The conflict Charles I was convinced he had a God-given duty to preserve not only the laws and traditions of England, but the rights and prerogatives of the Crown, as handed to him by his father, in order to hand them on to his son. The religious zealots in the Army were convinced that Charles’s defeat in the first and second civil wars showed beyond doubt that God had decided against him, that he was guilty of starting the war in the first place, and therefore was the ‘Man of Blood’ as they called him, and deserved to die. More practical roundheads like Henry Ireton probably Cromwell just simply realised there was no dealing with this king. One way or another they had been trying to negotiate with him since 1640 and it had led to nothing but bloodshed, political collapse, economic depression, while the king endlessly prevaricated and endlessly schemed, trying to get the Scots to invade, to raise an Irish army, to persuade the French king to aid him.

Wedgwood’s account brilliantly conveys why both sides were convinced God was on their side, and how the different interpretations of what that meant led to complete stalemate. The only way to break the stalemate was to remove one of the players.

Reactions to the execution The execution of the king was very unpopular. Even within the Army there were protests. The Presbyterian interest in London and beyond opposed it. It prompted the Presbyterian Scots to declare war on England. Royalists sincerely considered it the most heinous act since the Crucifixion of Christ, to which it was immediately compared.

Cromwell War in Scotland and Ireland took up Cromwell’s time over the next few years while the Rump Parliament gained a damning reputation for corruption until, in April 1653, Cromwell ejected it by force. Leaders of the Army offered Cromwell the crown. He refused but accepted the title Lord Protector in December 1653 and set about instituting the godly, fair and just government he had hoped for. But the various experiments in democracy, nominated Parliaments, and rule by military Governor-General all failed. Cromwell died in September 1658, almost ten years after he’d led the men who executed Charles I.

The Restoration Within a year his regime had unravelled, the Protectorate collapsed, and the strongest surviving military figure, General Monk, bowing to popular demand and political realism, invited Charles II to return to Britain and take the throne.

The disappearance of Christian belief As Wedgwood concludes, the strongest element in these events, the devout and sometimes fanatical Christian belief of all the players involved, is the one that has most faded from contemporary view, becoming almost inaccessible from our modern perspective. We fill the gap with Marxist or mercantilist or psychoanalytical, with political or biographical interpretations. But it was upon the rock of a shared Christian faith, reflected through vastly different interpretations, that all four nations in the British Isles came to bloody grief for 20 long years.

‘Cromwell before the Coffin of Charles I’ (1849) by Hippolyte Delaroche

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