Part two, about 30 questions I think; Religion, the public Sphere, culture – and a couple of ‘What Ifs’ which were really good fun
Download Podcast - Part II Sam and David’s English Revolution Q&A (Right Click and select Save Link As)
Part two, about 30 questions I think; Religion, the public Sphere, culture – and a couple of ‘What Ifs’ which were really good fun
Download Podcast - Part II Sam and David’s English Revolution Q&A (Right Click and select Save Link As)
Delightful episode, loved to hear the back and forth. Very interesting to hear about East Anglia and how it stood out as a center for the hotter sort of Protestantism and continental refugees.
Thanks Conor
Very good episode. Loved getting more context on the story so far told.
Interesting sound editing, as a curious bean I have to ask. Did Sam use an AI audio assistant to clean up David’s audio? Because there are sections that sound like David’s voice was being warped to sound like Sam and it was extra weird. Not just your regular noisy audio situation.
Thanks Martin. Sam was kind enough to do ALL the editing, which was a gift and no mistake! He did use AI; Adobe I think. We did have a problem with my audio dropping in a few places…
One thing I wish I’d asked about in the Q&A are the political underpinnings of the royalist cause, and specifically the absolutist angle. You’ve often dismissed them as self-interested toffs, which some of them were, but absolutism stuck around for centuries and had very eminent supporters such as Voltaire and Hobbes who certainly weren’t toffs. Charles I wasn’t an abherration in his views, especially when viewed from the continent. Why did Europeans view absolutism as a desired system? Why were the English so sceptical of it, including many in the royalist camp (such as my favourite royalist Clarendon)? Would it be possible to explore those ideas when we come to the Restoration?
Hi Sam, and you are quite right, absolutism was not an aberration. I thought I had tried to cover rtghat at the start of the personal rule, buit could be wroing – that many people absolutely believed the king was without restraints; maybe in my Lawyers Vs Clerics episode? The reasons were hoistoeric – belief oin roiyal divine right; but also, as Hobbes would articulate, pratical. The power of rulers was the best bulwark against anarchy. I mean to say a bit about Leviathan so maybe I’ll come back to it then.
Ah sorry I’ll need to go back and check that episode! It feels rather long ago now! I suppose one could view absolutism as the logical conclusion of the centralisation of power within nation states. The French and Spanish could have pointed to the English bloodletting as precisely the reason to have an absolute monarch!
Well yes, but I think it’s a bit more direct than that. There was the bloodletting of the Fronde 1648-1653, and the memory of the religious wars in France. Spain has it’s own rebellions -the reapers war and the Barretinas and memory of the Aragonese rebellions. Which makes the European view of England as Deviland most amusing!
David and Sam,
Perhaps a bit late to ask this, but during his “trial” (quotation marks intended), why was there not more if an outcry about the outrageous way that the cards were stacked against Charles? I understand that he was deeply unpopular with many, but the very fact that the entire proceedings were conducted by a hand-picked council ensuring his conviction would seen ti undermine any sense of legitimacy. And also understanding that Charles would not accept the right of any court to try him in the first place, why did he not appeal to his many supporters to at least have a fair hearing before the full Parliament, where the outcome might have been very different? I am no Royalist, but the trial of Charles seems much more an act of assassination than of justice.
One bit of context might be to point out that countless people ‘tried’ and executed by kings through the ages had a good deal less consideration than Charles was given. Secondly, the context of Charles’ serial untrustworthiness – why yet another chance when he’d had so many? And finally parliament was not a court of law; any presentation to it would be just another round of politics,ofwhich therehad, at some point, to be an end. And after the second cicil war, this was the point
More practically of course, the King’s supporters were thoroughly exhausted by all these years of war; royalist MPs were no longer in parliament so they had no platform; and they faced a massive army, almost universally determined to hold the King to account for the blood he had needlessly spilled.
I am much, much more sympathetic to the trial as you might have guess. No one had tried a king before. They did their best to accord to protocols. Whether it was a fair trial or not is hardly the point because there was no legal way to try a king – and it was surely justice
Thanks David for your detailed and clear reply. As an American I am completely fascinated by the political philosophies that emerged during this period, especially among those referred to as a group as “Levellers”, and others arguing for religious tolerance, expanded suffrage (if not so much for women at this point), and natural rights, all of which are immediately recognizable in the politics and beleifs in the American colonies 120 years later. I dare say that few Americans today know anything about the origins of these ideas in 17th century Britain.
Don Falk (of New Mexico, but currently in Dorset resting up after walking Oxford to Bath)
Thank you Don; and that sounds like a brilliant walk. I am most envious. Hope you are enjoying Dorset!