The English Civil Wars, Part 1 of 2

25:27Ireland is a bitterly divided place, bitterly divided along ethnic lines. It's essentially ruled by an English and Scottish Protestant settler class, but the majority of the population are Catholic, very much hostile to what's been done in Ireland over the last few hundred years. So these terrible massacres and atrocities, rumours and stories about these soon arrive back in England, and soon all sorts of Protestants are fleeing from Ireland and bringing these terrible trails of what's going on there into England itself. Reports spread of Protestant settlers being attacked and killed by Irish Catholics.

26:04And although many of the earliest accounts are exaggerated, they unleash a wave of panic that is impossible to contain.

26:13For English Protestants, the rebellion confirms their worst suspicions about Catholic violence and conspiracy. The King's Puritan enemies are quick to seize on that fear and weaponize it against him. They suggest that the King and his Catholic wife are actually behind the Catholic rebellion in Ireland, that Charles and Henrietta are in secret alliance with the Catholic Irish. That terrifies many English people. and it also heightens the stakes in another way that obviously with Ireland going up in flames, everyone in England is united in sort of feeling something must be done and what everyone wants to see done is essentially a large English army being sent to Ireland to reconquer it.

26:54But once you start to talk about raising a large army in England, who's going to command it? Parliament doesn't want the king in charge of an army in case he uses it against his opponents at home. Charles, meanwhile, rejects their attempts to strip him of his military authority. But then, at the end of 1641, a new threat comes to light, which proves the final straw for the king. I think the tipping point is that around Christmas 1641-2, rumours begin to circulate that John Pym, who's the leader of Charles' opponents in the House of Commons, and a group of his closest allies that they are planning to pass an act of attainder against Charles's wife, Henrietta Maria, essentially blaming her for having started the Irish rebellion in the first place.

27:45And an act of attainder can be passed and means that someone can be executed with no trial. So at this point, there is actually a threat to the life of Charles's wife.

27:58Charles and Henrietta Maria are unusually close for a royal couple, and the idea that Parliament's leaders might move against her so treacherously terrifies him. For years he has believed that his enemies are growing bolder and more dangerous, now he has proof. So, in January 1642, Charles makes the most dramatic and disastrous gamble of his reign. He enters the House of Commons in person, accompanied by armed men, intending to arrest Pym and four other leading MPs on charges of treason. Though he is unsuccessful, it is nonetheless an extraordinary breach of parliamentary protocol, and it backfires immediately.

28:42It's one of the worst miscalculations of his whole reign. If he had managed to arrest them and had executed them, who knows what might have happened. But as it is, he gets the worst of all worlds. He moves against them. He is shown to sort of intervene in Parliament in a threatening way. But he doesn't manage to get the parliamentary leaders. They slip away. They make their way into London. And the King is left baffled and confounded, failing to have taken out his chief opponents, but at the same time to have raised a storm of opposition to what he's done. The scene is humiliating for the King, but its importance goes far beyond personal embarrassment.

29:22Charles has just shown that he is willing to use force against his political opponents and violate the protections on which English government depends. Parliament, as you'd imagine, takes full advantage of this. The King eventually flees from London at this point because he's raised such a sort of outrage in the capital and in no time at all, Pym and his allies are back in Parliament and announcing that the King's attempt to arrest them with his troops at his back was proof that what they'd been saying all along was true, that there is a Catholic plot against Parliament and that the king is determined to take power by force.

29:55And they claim that the whole of Parliament was on the point of being massacred when Charles arrived. And had it not been for divine aid, you know, he would have killed all of the MPs there and then. I mean, there's no evidence at all that that was the case. But it is gold dust from their point of view. It's like a massive propaganda victory.

30:15By the summer of 1642, the breach between King and Parliament is too wide to mend, and all of England stands divided. From Westminster, it is easy to assume that Charles has overplayed his hand so badly that he must now either submit or flee. But in much of the country beyond the capital, it's a different story. And in fact, in large districts of sort of provincial England, the King and the more conservative English church is very popular. And as a result, it gradually becomes clear that the king is actually able to raise much more support in the provinces than people had originally imagined. Yet the nation is not neatly split in two along purely religious lines.

30:58Allegiances are also shaped by region, local loyalties, or personal interest. There wasn't a single community in the country that was holy on one side or the other. There are always exceptions, and families are absolutely divided. We know of husbands and wives actually supporting different sides, But there are also quite clear general patterns as well. Broadly speaking, Parliament's support is strongest in London, the South and the East, where wealth, trade and stronger networks of godly Protestantism help sustain its cause. Backing for the royalist cause is greater across much of the North and the West.

31:39In Wales and Cornwall especially, endorsement of the King is connected to strong local identities and a mistrust of a Puritan movement that seems culturally alien and politically dominated by London. Those who rally to the Parliament are, above all, the Puritans, the most ardent Protestants, and those who rally to the King are essentially those who are in favour of the old, more traditional form of Church of England. And this is tied up with culture as well. The Puritans are seen by their enemies as killjoys who want to sort of destroy the old festive culture. who want to sort of force everyone into this very, very pious form of religion.

32:19And the Puritans, for their part, say, well, they describe the king's allies not so much as conservative Protestants, but rather as semi-Catholics, as quasi-Papists. These are only rough patterns, not hard borders. But when Charles raises his royal standard at Nottingham in August 1642, formally signaling that the kingdom is now at war, those patterns harden into military and political allegiance. Across England and Wales, people are forced to make a choice based on their religion, loyalty and kinship, as well as a decision about the kind of country they want to live in. What emerges are two rival armies with two competing visions of authority, each claiming to defend the true constitution of the kingdom.

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35:05and venturing into a missile silo in the dead of night as the US is threatened with nuclear disaster. And in Sherlock Holmes' short stories, get two episodes each week as Hugh Bonneville explores Conan Doyle's great novel, A Study in Scarlet. Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus.

35:32It is the morning of Sunday, the 23rd of October, 1642, near Edge Hill in Warwickshire. Across the fields, below the ridge, the day begins in a strange, suspended quiet. In the parliamentarian line stands a young soldier. Except until a few days ago, he was a baker's apprentice, and the hands with which he clutches his pike are more used to flour and dough than wood and iron. He has marched out, believing that one hard battle might beat the king's men back and return England to order. The air is cold and damp, the ground heavy underfoot, and a thin autumn haze lies across the field. Distant drums roll through the gloom As officers call for order above the murmur of thousands of men Trying to master their fear Out beyond the haze, the king's army is forming too It's vast, far bigger than the young baker expected Though these royalist cavaliers, as they are known Are derided for their fancy ways The only difference he can see between them and his own fellows is their use of red sashes to distinguish them from the parliamentarian's orange.

36:53He knows the royalists mock their enemy in turn as roundheads, in reference to their short, cropped hair, and the plain godliness of their Puritan zeal. But in truth, as he looks around, they look less like a religious cause than a crowd of frightened Englishmen waiting for the guns to begin.

37:15When the first shots fire, the sound seems to tear the day apart. The young man feels it in his chest, and his hands instinctively tighten around his pike, a horse to his left rears, whinnying. But the men know better than to show their terror. As smoke drags across the field, The cry goes up to charge. Whatever organization existed in the parliamentarian line immediately dissolves into noise and confusion. Orders are shouted and lost as cavalry surges forward in a thunder of hooves, vanishing into the chaos. Muskets crack and cannon answer. The apprentice is pushed forward with the line, His pike clutched tight in sweating hands, boots slipping in the mud.

38:07He halts, braces, lurches on again. Men who had stood steady beside him moments before suddenly drop, convulsing to the ground. Others stumble forward as if unable to understand what has struck them. He hears someone crying out for God. Another for his captain. Another still for his mother.

38:32The field becomes a kaleidoscope of horror, with flashes of steel, gun smoke, torn standards, men shouting to lost friends, blood and gore at every turn. By afternoon, the battle is a series of violent collisions spread across the land. And when darkness begins to fall, there is no great triumph to mark the end of it, and no clear victor emerging from the smoke. Only exhaustion, wreckage, and death. For this soldier, standing amid the churned earth and the cries of wounded men, the truth settles heavily. This will not be the one sharp encounter followed by a return to order that they had been expecting.

39:17England is at war with itself now. Whether it will be able to find a way back to peace is anyone's guess.

39:31The bloodshed at Edge Hill is not the first of the civil war, but it is the first major battle. It brings a sudden, brutal end to any lingering illusion that this conflict might be settled quickly. Edge Hill is a really interesting encounter because Parliament had not expected that the King would be able to raise an army at all. I think the plan was that they would simply be able to scoop him up with their own troops. So they're surprised and obviously very worried and alarmed that he's been able to raise large numbers of troops in the north, in Wales and the Midlands. But I think from the point of view of people watching, of course, most people didn't know at this time, well, nobody knew that they were on the brink of a prolonged civil war.

40:12As a battle, Edge Hill demonstrates the uncertainty and improvisation of the early stages of the war, with poorly coordinated attacks and uneven discipline from both sides. Above all, it shows that neither is strong enough to crush the other quickly. As the war goes on, Parliament starts turning its early advantages into more concrete gains. It holds London, the political and financial heart of the Kingdom, giving it access to greater wealth and the machinery needed to sustain a long conflict. London has always been the centre of English administration or British administration since Roman times.

40:52All the main roads converge on it. It's by far the biggest city. It's by far the wealthiest city. It's the centre of trade and governance. As soon as Charles loses London, he's given a huge advantage to his opponents. In addition, in 1642, most of the navy sides with Parliament and accepts the Earl of Warwick as its commander, denying Charles one of the strongest weapons of the state. Ironically, this is the same navy strengthened by all that contentious ship money. Now it helps hamper the king's war effort, as well as securing his enemy's supply lines. So having lost control of the navy, which has always been perhaps the most powerful sort of military force for the English, there is no way of blockading London or starving it out.

41:40With London in its hands, Parliament can build a war machine using the country's richest region, its main administrative centre, and its most powerful presses. The King, by contrast, has to improvise. Setting up a rival court at Oxford, he tries to create new systems of government and struggles to coordinate supporters spread across the North, Wales, the West Country, and the Midlands. Parliament's strength is concentrated and well supplied, while the royalists are scattered and harder to unify. And yet Charles is still far from beaten. Nobody would describe Charles as a coward. He's a courageous man, he's a brave man, you could argue he's a foolish man, but you know, he doesn't lack the stomach for a fight.

42:25And also, we shouldn't underestimate the power of the name of a king. In fact, as 1643 wears on, Charles begins to recover. At this point, the royalists control more territory than their enemies, and there is a real possibility that the king and his cavaliers might yet turn the war decisively in his favour. From his position in Oxford, and with royalist strength in Wales, the West Country and the North, there is potential for a pinsome movement towards London. For a time, Parliament's position looks far less secure than it had hoped. But those in the capital prove better at building vital alliances.

43:08John Pym's greatest triumph, the sort of de facto leader of the Parliamentarians, is that towards the end of his life in 1643, he makes this alliance, a solemn league and covenant with the Scots. And as a result, they agreed to send in a large and powerful army into England to help Parliament. Now, that's something like 20 ,000 men that advance over the English-Scottish border in late 1643, early 1644. And that's a disaster for the King. You know, the northern royalists, they're some of his most important supporters. They're now caught in a vice between the Scots advancing south and parliamentarian troops pushing northwards.

43:46Thus, reinforced, Parliament now learns how to fight more effectively.

43:55Commanders like Sir Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell can see that local, poorly coordinated armies are not enough to win a national war. Even identifying who is fighting whom is chaotic at this time, with armies wearing whatever uniforms their colonels give them, often leaving them unable to tell friend from foe. Indeed, in one battle, both sides disastrously choose the addition of something white to their headgear to help them distinguish one side from another, and even the same code word of God with us. But it's not just about uniforms. What is needed is a more disciplined, unified force. Out of this understanding, in 1645, the new model army is born.

44:39Under Fairfax and with Cromwell as one of its most formidable leaders, this new force is organised, better trained and shaped by sense of common purpose. It gives Parliament the military edge it has previously lacked. And it's not just that Parliament has more money or more men, it's that it is getting better at turning those advantages into victories. By this time, Parliament is increasingly promoting men on merit, if you like, rather than social status. So a lot of the soldiers and the officers in the Parliamentary Army, they're kind of hardened by war. And the officers in particular are now rising up through the ranks not so much because they're gentlemen, but rather because they've shown that they're good soldiers.

45:23As the balance of the war shifts, its effects are felt far and wide.

45:36It is late October 1644 in Chester near the English border with Wales. In the public house in the heart of the city, the landlord stands behind the worn timber of the taproom. He listens as another dull boom sounds beyond the walls, followed by the rattle of a building fallen in the street. The inn is full, but not with travelers. Royalist garrison soldiers crowd the benches where merchants once sat over ale and mutton, their boots muddy, their tempers short. A local woman in the corner tries to hush a child. A man near the hearth asks, not quite quietly enough, whether the parliamentarians will overrun the city before help comes.

46:22No one answers.

46:27Since the round-haired forces began closing around Chester, the city has felt less like a safe royalist stronghold and more like a shutting trap. Roads that once carried merchants and travelers have been blocked and carts seized as enemy troops tighten their stranglehold. The siege is still new, but already the pinch is beginning to show, with soldiers and civilians locked in together as fear and shortage settle over the city. Every day the publican draws ale thinner than the day before, and counts every loaf before it is cut. Upstairs, rooms meant for paying guests are crammed with the displaced and the waiting.

47:10Below, in the cellar, the barrels stand fewer than they should, and each time he lifts the hatch, he wonders not just how long the beer will last, but how long any of them will. When a pounding comes at the door, the whole room stills. For a second, all that can be heard is the hiss of the fire, the wind in the chimney, and the far-off thud of guns. The hammering comes again, harder this time. The publican slides the bar free. and opens to a messenger, rushing in wild-eyed, carrying news of another breach of the city's defenses and another street now too dangerous to cross. Under siege, Chester is turning in on itself.

47:53Food is short, rumors are everywhere, and every setback brings fresh blame. People whisper about hoarding, defeatism, and who can still be trusted. Neighbor watches neighbor almost as closely as the enemy beyond the walls. This is what the war has become, and the publican is no longer sure whether to fear the army outside more, or the desperation growing within.

48:28This September, on the Noiser Podcast Network. On Jane Austen Stories, Dame Julie Andrews continues to bring Austen's beloved classic Emma to life. On Short History of, we're in medieval England for the fascinating story of the Peasants' Revolt. And 25 years on from 9-11, we're on the ground in New York City. On Real Survival Stories, we're on a luscious winery in Northwest America, and venturing into a missile silo in the dead of night as the US is threatened with nuclear disaster. And in Sherlock Holmes' short stories, get two episodes each week as Hugh Bonneville explores Conan Doyle's great novel, A Study in Scarlet.

49:07Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus.

49:16I'm Julie Andrews, and it is my great pleasure to return to Jane Austen Stories. This time, I'll be reading another beloved classic, Emma. Join me as we step into the village of Highbury, home to the handsome and clever Emma Woodhouse. But as new visitors arrive and quiet mysteries unfold, what will our strong-willed heroine learn, both of the secrets of others and of her own heart's desires? Listen to Jane Austen's stories now, wherever you get your podcasts. By now, the balance of the war has decisively shifted in favor of the parliamentarians. At Marston Moor back in the summer, their forces shattered royalist strength in the north, weakening the king's hold on that part of the kingdom.

50:12But interestingly, although the northern royalists are defeated at Marston Moor in 1644, the king himself wins a superb victory in Cornwall during that same summer and manages to recapture much of the south of England for his cause. So at the beginning of 1645, he's still surprisingly confident. And he too has built up a very strong and powerful army, very experienced, with hundreds of very, very experienced officers and thousands of very, very committed and experienced troops as well. Then the conflict comes to Naseby, a small town at the center of England. Fought in June 1645, it is the battle that effectively destroys Charles's main field army and lays bare the weakness of his cause.

51:00The new model army proves its worth in devastating fashion. Not only is he defeated by the parliamentarians, but his entire veteran infantry force is surrounded and captured, and the parliamentarians ship most of those captives off abroad after they've got them so that they can never rally to the king again. From this point on, royalist resistance crumbles. One stronghold after another falls. And in May 1646, with defeat closing in, Charles gives himself up to the Scots, hoping he can still bargain his way back into power. This is not a completely foolish idea, because although the Scots come in to help the parliamentarians in 1644, by 1646, when the king decides to throw himself on the Scots' mercy, if you like, the relationship between the two is soured.

51:51There's a lot of English people, Oliver Cromwell included, who are very hostile to the Scots. They don't like the fact there is now a Scottish army in England. It is a sign of how fractured the victors already are. Parliament has won the war, but it is far from united about reaching a peace. The Scots want a settlement that protects their interests. Many in Westminster want to reach terms with the King, and rising figures in the army, among them Oliver Cromwell, are increasingly distrustful both of Charles and of the Scots. But though he is now effectively a captive king, no one can agree what should be done with Charles.

52:34In the end, unfortunately for him, the Scots are tired, they're weary of war, they certainly don't want to fight the parliamentarians, they just simply want everything to be settled on terms that they can agree on. So they eventually sell the king to parliament in return for quite a large sum of cash, and then they disappear back into Scotland again, and so then the king is left in the hands of Parliament. And still, the deeper question that has haunted the kingdom from the beginning remains unanswered. What kind of peace is now possible, and on whose terms? Even though Charles has been beaten, he has not been silenced.

53:13For now, as the fighting gives way to negotiation, division and mistrust remain, and England edges into an even more dangerous chapter. I think first of all, we should remember the terrible impact it has on everyone living here in England and Wales and Cornwall. For everyone who lived through the Civil War, it was the biggest event of their lives. And for the rest of their lives, they would refer to it as the war or the wars, just as our grandparents referred to the Second World War as the war. You know, this was the big event. Nobody ever forgot it. So its impact on its own time is enormous. To me, it's probably the single most important conflict we've ever been involved in, for all sorts of reasons, apart from possibly the Second World War and the defeat of Hitler.

54:01That's next time in Part 2.

54:08You can listen to the next two episodes of Short History of Right Now without waiting and without adverts by subscribing to Noiser Plus. Just hit the link in the episode description or head to www.noiser.com forward slash subscriptions to unlock more episodes today. This September on the Noiser podcast network. On Jane Austen stories, Dame Julie Andrews continues to bring Austen's beloved classic Emma to life. On Short History of, we're in medieval England for the fascinating story of the Peasants' Revolt. And 25 years on from 9-11, we're on the ground in New York City. On Real Survival Stories, we're on a luscious winery in Northwest America.

54:48and venturing into a missile silo in the dead of night as the US is threatened with nuclear disaster. And in Sherlock Holmes' short stories, get two episodes each week as Hugh Bonneville explores Conan Doyle's great novel, A Study in Scarlet. Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus.