0:00:09 > 0:00:15England and Scotland. Two realms divided, until now.
0:00:15 > 0:00:19In 1603, they had come together in one person -
0:00:19 > 0:00:23James VI of Scotland and I of England.
0:00:23 > 0:00:27He wanted to be known as the king of Great Britain.
0:00:27 > 0:00:31But what was this new thing in the world, this Great Britain?
0:00:31 > 0:00:37In the first years of the 17th century, only the map makers could tell you.
0:00:37 > 0:00:43One of them, an ex-tailor called John Speed, published his atlas of 67 maps
0:00:43 > 0:00:47called The Theatre Of The Empire of Great Britaine,
0:00:47 > 0:00:53covering every inch of Scotland, Wales, Ireland and England.
0:00:53 > 0:00:58What lay behind Speed's atlas was an optimistic vision
0:00:58 > 0:01:05of happy, harmonious Britannia coming together under a king who was determined to bring unity
0:01:05 > 0:01:10after centuries of war and hatred. In the Vale of the Red Horse in Warwickshire,
0:01:10 > 0:01:17John Speed had a glimpse of what this British heaven on Earth might look like.
0:01:19 > 0:01:24The meadowing pastures with the green mantles so embroidered with flowers
0:01:24 > 0:01:28that, from Edgehill, we might behold another Eden.
0:01:30 > 0:01:35On October the 23rd 1642, another man, King Charles I,
0:01:35 > 0:01:39surveyed the same landscape from the same ridge.
0:01:39 > 0:01:47The meadows were now full, not with cows and harebells, but cannon, pikes and musketeers.
0:01:47 > 0:01:53By nightfall, there would be 3,000 British corpses lying in the freezing mud.
0:01:53 > 0:01:56Here at Edgehill, Eden had become Golgotha.
0:02:04 > 0:02:11Over the next long years, the nations that both James and Charles yearned to bring together
0:02:11 > 0:02:15would tear each other apart in murderous civil wars.
0:02:15 > 0:02:22Hundreds of thousands of lives would be lost in battles, sieges, epidemics and famine.
0:02:24 > 0:02:28A raw body count fails to measure the full enormity of a disaster
0:02:28 > 0:02:36which reached into every part of Britain, from Cornwall to County Connaught, from York to the Hebrides.
0:02:36 > 0:02:40It tore apart communities of the parish and the county
0:02:40 > 0:02:45which, all through the turmoil of the Reformation, had managed to agree
0:02:45 > 0:02:49on how the country should be governed and who should do the governing.
0:02:49 > 0:02:54Men who had broken bread together now tried to break each other's heads.
0:02:54 > 0:02:58Men who had judged together now judged each other.
0:02:58 > 0:03:04At the end of it all, there would be a united Britain, as the Stuarts had hoped,
0:03:04 > 0:03:09but it would not be a united kingdom. It would be a united republic.
0:03:48 > 0:03:55The civil wars were not just an accident, or an occasion to dress up as Cavaliers and Roundheads.
0:03:55 > 0:04:02They were that most un-British event - a war of ideas, ideas that mattered deeply to contemporaries
0:04:02 > 0:04:07because at the heart of them was an argument about liberty and obedience.
0:04:07 > 0:04:14That argument became lethal here at Edgehill and it would echo for generations through British history.
0:04:14 > 0:04:19As a matter of fact, that argument has never really gone away.
0:04:20 > 0:04:24To the survivors, looking back, the issue was simple.
0:04:24 > 0:04:31Whether the King should govern as a god by his will and the people governed by force as beasts,
0:04:31 > 0:04:36or whether the people should be governed by their own consent.
0:04:38 > 0:04:44Yes, that's the voice of a republican in exile - Edmund Ludlow.
0:04:44 > 0:04:46That same voice, that same memory,
0:04:46 > 0:04:53would be heard through the centuries and in revolutions far beyond our shores -
0:04:53 > 0:04:56in America in 1776, in France in 1789.
0:04:56 > 0:05:02It goes against the grain. A bit embarrassing - not to say painful -
0:05:02 > 0:05:07to be thought of as the fountainhead of revolutions. Not very British.
0:05:07 > 0:05:14All that shouting, all that Bible waving, all that killing. So was it all an aberration, then?
0:05:14 > 0:05:16Well, no, actually.
0:05:19 > 0:05:24These wars were the crucible of our modern history.
0:05:24 > 0:05:30Out of the fires of these wars came, eventually, a genuinely parliamentary monarchy.
0:05:30 > 0:05:38But no-one understood it at the time. There was no script which commanded, "Go forth and be democratic."
0:05:41 > 0:05:45When the 24-year-old Charles became King,
0:05:45 > 0:05:51no-one in their right mind could possibly have imagined a war between Parliament and the Crown.
0:05:51 > 0:05:57No succession in over two centuries had been as settled or as unthreatened.
0:06:02 > 0:06:07Charles may have been smaller than life, long-faced, painfully formal,
0:06:07 > 0:06:14private to the point of being secretive, a stickler for decorum, as cool, as still, as pallid as marble,
0:06:14 > 0:06:19but, to many, this was a welcome contrast with his father James
0:06:19 > 0:06:23who'd been loud-mouthed, pedantic and uncouth.
0:06:26 > 0:06:30But, from the beginning, for those who were paying attention,
0:06:30 > 0:06:35there was something ominously distant about this small man on a big horse -
0:06:35 > 0:06:42too lofty to bother with a coronation procession, a man who believed that kings were little gods on Earth.
0:06:42 > 0:06:48Charles saw himself as the father of the nation and, like any 17th-century father,
0:06:48 > 0:06:52he thought he was responsible for the wellbeing of his family.
0:06:52 > 0:06:56In return, he expected to be strictly obeyed.
0:06:56 > 0:07:03Of course, like James before him, he would listen to the people through their representatives in Parliament,
0:07:03 > 0:07:08but only when HE chose and only on matters HE saw fit to be discussed.
0:07:11 > 0:07:17But the House of Commons was filled with historians and lawyers
0:07:17 > 0:07:22and, for them, Parliament was not simply a matter of royal convenience.
0:07:22 > 0:07:24Ever heard of Magna Carta?
0:07:26 > 0:07:32For these men, parliamentary history, the history they were reading and writing,
0:07:32 > 0:07:37was an ongoing epic of liberty and THEY were the keepers of the flame.
0:07:37 > 0:07:42The countdown to the civil wars started now, though nobody heard it.
0:07:42 > 0:07:47It was a countdown that could have been stopped time and time again.
0:07:47 > 0:07:53But the ticking grew louder and louder until, by 1642, it would be deafening.
0:07:53 > 0:07:57And what triggered that countdown? Money.
0:07:59 > 0:08:04One of the first things this young King did was declare war on Spain.
0:08:04 > 0:08:11Nothing was more ruinously expensive than foreign war. There was the added complication that, in England,
0:08:11 > 0:08:17even little gods on Earth had to go cap in hand to Parliament for the money to fight.
0:08:17 > 0:08:20For Charles, the issue was personal.
0:08:20 > 0:08:24Wars of religion were tearing Europe apart.
0:08:24 > 0:08:30Protestants and Catholics were killing each other from Sweden to Hungary with unspeakable cruelty.
0:08:30 > 0:08:36They'd forced his own sister, the queen of Bohemia, into exile.
0:08:36 > 0:08:41In his quiet way, Charles burned to be a Christian warrior.
0:08:43 > 0:08:47There was also the matter of his older brother Henry.
0:08:47 > 0:08:54A champion of the joust, celebrated by the poets as a Protestant hero, Henry was supposed to have been King,
0:08:54 > 0:09:00but he had died when Charles was a boy and his armour had passed on to him.
0:09:03 > 0:09:06It was too big.
0:09:07 > 0:09:11All his life, Charles would try and fit the steel,
0:09:11 > 0:09:16try to become the gartered Charlemagne beneath the British oak.
0:09:16 > 0:09:20This war against Spain would be his big chance.
0:09:20 > 0:09:26Surely Parliament would cough up the money for the great Protestant crusade?
0:09:26 > 0:09:31"Oh, yes," was the answer, "but..." And it was a big but.
0:09:31 > 0:09:37"..with all due respect, we don't much care for your choice of commander, the Duke of Buckingham.
0:09:37 > 0:09:41"So, while we are happy to fork over subsidies,
0:09:41 > 0:09:48"we rather think we'll make it a short-term contract, renewable IF he turns out all right."
0:09:48 > 0:09:55But Parliament knew perfectly well it wouldn't. From the start, Parliament had Buckingham's number.
0:09:55 > 0:09:59To them, he was an upstart nobody, a peacock with a pretty face
0:09:59 > 0:10:05who'd been promoted, outrageously, above the great earls of the land.
0:10:05 > 0:10:12He'd been James' favourite - well, actually, more than a favourite if court scandal was to be believed -
0:10:12 > 0:10:17and now he'd wormed his way into Charles's favour, too.
0:10:17 > 0:10:24The pair of them had travelled incognito to Spain in a bid to woo the Spanish infanta for Charles.
0:10:24 > 0:10:28They returned from their escapade empty-handed.
0:10:28 > 0:10:31But, to the young, insecure Charles,
0:10:31 > 0:10:35glamorous, worldly Buckingham had become his idol.
0:10:35 > 0:10:40To the rest of the court, however, Buckingham was a parasite, a viper.
0:10:40 > 0:10:44Why would one give HIM a blank cheque?
0:10:48 > 0:10:53It was obvious what would happen to the money, and it did.
0:10:53 > 0:10:57Buckingham blew a cool £240,000 in a raid on France so botched,
0:10:57 > 0:11:02it seemed the act of a saboteur, not a supremo.
0:11:03 > 0:11:08So, if Charles wanted a penny more, then his darling had to go.
0:11:09 > 0:11:16Presume to talk to the King about HIS choice of trusted generals and ministers?
0:11:16 > 0:11:22Presume to tell the King? Presume to lay down the law? That was an end of kingship itself.
0:11:25 > 0:11:32So, in 1626, Charles did what he assumed kings worth the name were perfectly entitled to do.
0:11:32 > 0:11:38He would dismiss Parliament and collect the money himself through a forced loan.
0:11:38 > 0:11:42It was the politest bullying. Charles was always polite.
0:11:51 > 0:11:56The gloves were off. Loan refusers were threatened, prosecuted.
0:11:56 > 0:12:03Two of them - Sir Francis Barrington and Sir Edmund Hampden - died, either in prison or shortly afterwards.
0:12:03 > 0:12:09Many did pay up, but their compliance spoke of fear as much as loyalty.
0:12:11 > 0:12:17They'd always been professional grumblers when it had come to tax,
0:12:17 > 0:12:22but these country gentlemen were now speaking a new and dangerous language.
0:12:22 > 0:12:28No tax could be lawful without the consent of Parliament, they said.
0:12:28 > 0:12:31The money ran out again in 1628
0:12:31 > 0:12:35and Charles was forced to call another Parliament.
0:12:37 > 0:12:43Speaker after speaker rose to the rostrum in defence of the liberties of England.
0:12:43 > 0:12:49They drafted a formal list of their grievances in a petition of rights
0:12:49 > 0:12:55which Charles graciously conceded as the price for saving his beloved Buckingham.
0:12:55 > 0:13:02Any slight chance of Charles honouring it, and it was slight enough to begin with, disappeared
0:13:02 > 0:13:08when, later in 1628, Buckingham was assassinated, to national cheering.
0:13:16 > 0:13:22Convulsed with grief and hardened by rage, Charles shut Parliament down.
0:13:28 > 0:13:33As the doors were being closed, one MP, Sir John Eliot, stood up
0:13:33 > 0:13:38and roared that anyone imposing a tax without Parliament's consent
0:13:38 > 0:13:43would be a capital enemy to this kingdom and commonwealth.
0:13:43 > 0:13:47Charles disagreed - Eliot was the traitor.
0:13:47 > 0:13:51So off to the Tower of London he went where he died in 1632.
0:13:54 > 0:13:59But, for Charles, the rainstorm of words had now mercifully stopped.
0:13:59 > 0:14:03In their place beamed sunlight from the heavens.
0:14:03 > 0:14:07Triumphantly, too, the war with Spain was now over,
0:14:07 > 0:14:11so no more begging for money. No more of THAT aggravation.
0:14:11 > 0:14:18So in 1630, as far as Charles was concerned, peace had broken out in Britannia.
0:14:20 > 0:14:26His father James had always preached peace, and James was now much on Charles's mind.
0:14:30 > 0:14:34Charles decided his father's memory deserved something special
0:14:34 > 0:14:40and, courtesy of the Flemish Catholic painter Peter Paul Rubens, he would get it.
0:14:40 > 0:14:47Not one but three huge painted tributes. A go-for-broke manifesto for the Stuart dynasty.
0:14:56 > 0:15:02They would be placed way up high on the ceiling of the building he had inherited from James -
0:15:02 > 0:15:07Inigo Jones's masterpiece, the Banqueting House in Whitehall.
0:15:12 > 0:15:18In 1636, they were triumphantly hoist aloft for all the world to see.
0:15:18 > 0:15:22There are three visions here of James' benevolent rule.
0:15:22 > 0:15:28In one panel, James is depicted as the bringer of peace and prosperity.
0:15:28 > 0:15:34In the central panel, Rubens gives us James being carried to heaven as a god.
0:15:38 > 0:15:41In the third,
0:15:41 > 0:15:45he is Solomon being offered the two crowns of England and Scotland.
0:15:45 > 0:15:50The banqueting house in Whitehall simply takes your breath away
0:15:50 > 0:15:54by the sheer cheek with which it ignores the English Channel.
0:15:54 > 0:15:59It's a piece of Italy in Britain - classical columns, tall windows,
0:15:59 > 0:16:06the ultimate architectural light box designed to flood the Stuart monarchy with brilliance.
0:16:06 > 0:16:10It was also meant to pin any unbelievers to the floor
0:16:10 > 0:16:16through the power of its allegories, singing the virtues of the godlike king.
0:16:16 > 0:16:23When you walked in and remembered that the Stuarts had described kings as little gods on Earth,
0:16:23 > 0:16:26you realised they were not kidding.
0:16:30 > 0:16:35The Banqueting House was Charles's absolutist dream land.
0:16:35 > 0:16:40It was here that Charles could act out the grandest of his fantasies,
0:16:40 > 0:16:44that his three kingdoms - England, Scotland and Ireland -
0:16:44 > 0:16:49were yoked together in harmony under the ruler who was firm, but just.
0:16:51 > 0:16:56What better way to give this new British court a European make-over
0:16:56 > 0:17:00than to turn it into a byword for Baroque gorgeousness?
0:17:00 > 0:17:06There would be a stunning, new, royal art collection gathered from Europe
0:17:06 > 0:17:13of the quality to make popes and emperors moan with envy - Mantegnas, Titians, Rembrandts.
0:17:13 > 0:17:19Charles's unprepossessing French queen, Henrietta Maria, with her sallow skin and discoloured teeth,
0:17:19 > 0:17:26was airbrushed into stardom by the glossiest glamorist of them all - Anthony Van Dyck.
0:17:31 > 0:17:36And, beyond the palace, the King was satisfied to see his will being done.
0:17:36 > 0:17:40People he disapproved of being made to desist.
0:17:41 > 0:17:44I like not this.
0:17:47 > 0:17:52Out in the Shires, his taxes were being collected,
0:17:52 > 0:17:56his justice was being carried out and the skies had not fallen in.
0:17:56 > 0:18:01Who missed the talkers, the Parliament, now? Surely, nobody.
0:18:01 > 0:18:05Sooner or later, Charles was going to have to come down to earth.
0:18:05 > 0:18:12When he did, he'd be bound to notice that his earthly kingdom was ruled, not by images, but by words.
0:18:12 > 0:18:17Now, unlike the invitingly soft scenery of Rubens's fantasy kingdom,
0:18:17 > 0:18:21words were hard things, black and white things.
0:18:21 > 0:18:27In the hands of wordsmiths - lawyers, preachers, printers - they were razor sharp
0:18:27 > 0:18:31and would cut through the Stuart mush about British union
0:18:31 > 0:18:36and bring the playground of the gods crashing to the ground.
0:18:38 > 0:18:43The nay-sayers had not gone away and they had not shut up.
0:18:43 > 0:18:50The men who, in 1625, declared taxes without Parliamentary consent to be illegal still thought this in 1635.
0:18:50 > 0:18:57Yes, they reluctantly forked up, but it didn't stop them smouldering with rage.
0:18:57 > 0:19:02Typical was a Buckinghamshire landowner called John Hampden.
0:19:02 > 0:19:06John Hampden was not some abrasive, unworldly hothead.
0:19:06 > 0:19:11He was a well-respected and important member of the county community.
0:19:14 > 0:19:20Hampden had been deeply moved by the plight of Sir John Eliot in prison.
0:19:20 > 0:19:24He'd visited him and looked after his teenage boys.
0:19:24 > 0:19:29Now he would inherit the mantle of tax resistor - against ship money,
0:19:29 > 0:19:33the tax that paid for the upkeep of the navy.
0:19:33 > 0:19:37Why should counties with no coastlines pay this?
0:19:37 > 0:19:42It may only have been a few shillings and Hampden lost his case,
0:19:42 > 0:19:46but he won the argument. The embers were hot again.
0:19:47 > 0:19:54Alongside the lawyers in Parliament, Charles now faced another group of intransigent critics
0:19:54 > 0:20:02who had something even more unanswerable than Magna Carta - holy scripture. They were the Puritans.
0:20:02 > 0:20:06For the hotter kind of Protestants, the Puritans,
0:20:06 > 0:20:12the Stuart obsession with harmony and unity was, at best, meaningless claptrap
0:20:12 > 0:20:18and, at worst, it was a plot to delude the gullible into bending the knee to Rome again.
0:20:18 > 0:20:25For them, the reality was conflict, the unbridgeable division between the saved and the damned.
0:20:25 > 0:20:32There was an endless battle going on between the saints and the legions of the devil.
0:20:32 > 0:20:35The fires had already been lit in Europe.
0:20:35 > 0:20:41The Reformation was a war, and that war had not yet been won.
0:20:43 > 0:20:50The Puritans looked around them. But all they could see from this King was a betrayal of the godly Reformation.
0:20:50 > 0:20:53Peace with Catholic Spain abroad
0:20:53 > 0:20:59and, at home, even worse - a church ruled by bishops who were little better than Papists,
0:20:59 > 0:21:04bishops who berated the Puritans for having taken the Reformation too far.
0:21:06 > 0:21:13In the face of this cosmic battle, to stay still, to keep silent was a sin and a crime.
0:21:16 > 0:21:23For the Puritans, Charles I ought to have been a custom-built king - austere, decorous and chaste.
0:21:23 > 0:21:30But the fact was, his religion still seemed to need Protestant mumbo jumbo, all those signs and mysteries.
0:21:30 > 0:21:37Even this would have been palatable had he not wanted to foist it on everyone else,
0:21:37 > 0:21:40to force everyone to kneel at its shrine.
0:21:41 > 0:21:48The Puritans declared war against any creeping signs of Romanism in the church.
0:21:48 > 0:21:53Paintings and statues, crucifixes and altar rails.
0:21:54 > 0:22:00And it escaped nobody's notice that Charles was married to a Catholic.
0:22:03 > 0:22:07These men were very much in a minority,
0:22:07 > 0:22:13but, of course, being the elect, they expected to be in a minority, the party of redemption.
0:22:13 > 0:22:17In fact, they glorified in the slightness of their numbers,
0:22:17 > 0:22:21the self-purifying troop of Gideon's army.
0:22:23 > 0:22:28Men like the London wood-turner Nehemiah Wallington
0:22:28 > 0:22:35would be in the front line of this battle, a storm-trooper of the Reformation, always ready to fight.
0:22:37 > 0:22:42You may see now how Antichrist doth plot against the poor church of God.
0:22:42 > 0:22:49But so long as we put our trust in the Lord, let us once again take note of his great deliverances
0:22:49 > 0:22:53from those great and devilish, bloodsucking Papists.
0:22:53 > 0:23:00Of course, Charles was not going to lose any sleep over the Nehemiah Wallingtons of this world,
0:23:00 > 0:23:05but Puritanism was not just the faith of merchants and artisans.
0:23:06 > 0:23:13Plenty among the gentry and the nobility believed as passionately in the word of scripture
0:23:13 > 0:23:18and, for all of them, it was an article of faith that nobody -
0:23:18 > 0:23:22neither Pope nor King - would ever be allowed to flout the word of God.
0:23:26 > 0:23:30And Charles would never be allowed to forget it.
0:23:34 > 0:23:38Yes, finally, they were a minority.
0:23:40 > 0:23:47But it was one of Charles's most costly errors to let so many in the Protestant middle of the country
0:23:47 > 0:23:53come to regard HIM as a greater threat to their church than the Puritan militants.
0:23:53 > 0:23:57For this fatal error, Charles had one man to thank -
0:23:57 > 0:24:02William Laud, whom he made Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633.
0:24:02 > 0:24:09Poor old Laud. Is there anything good to be said for Laud and the principles he stood for?
0:24:09 > 0:24:16He's remembered as an arrogant and destructive man. But put yourself in his vestments and it looks different.
0:24:16 > 0:24:22Far from being an elitist, Laud thought it was the Puritans who were the authoritarians.
0:24:22 > 0:24:27Thou shalt smite them and utterly destroy them.
0:24:27 > 0:24:32Thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them.
0:24:32 > 0:24:39The Puritans with their obsession with reading and preaching and their gloomy fatalism
0:24:39 > 0:24:45deprived the ordinary people of what they needed from the church - colour, spectacle,
0:24:45 > 0:24:50a sight of the saviour in the form of his cross upon the altar,
0:24:50 > 0:24:57the comforts of ritual, sacrament and ceremony, a fence to keep dogs off the communion tray
0:24:57 > 0:25:03and, most of all, the consoling possibility that sinful souls might at the end be received into Christ.
0:25:03 > 0:25:06What was so very wrong with that?
0:25:08 > 0:25:15Well, what was wrong was that Laud was not presenting his programme as an option, but as an order.
0:25:15 > 0:25:20Believe this, worship like this, pray like this or take the consequences.
0:25:25 > 0:25:31Anyone who defied him found himself before his special tribunal.
0:25:31 > 0:25:37Dissidents like Prynne, Burton and Bastwick became Laud's highest profile victims.
0:25:39 > 0:25:42They had their ears cut off.
0:25:47 > 0:25:50Laud's iron fist went unopposed,
0:25:50 > 0:25:53for the time being.
0:26:00 > 0:26:02By the mid-1630s,
0:26:02 > 0:26:09Charles could see no obstacle to consummating the great Stuart plan of harmony across the three kingdoms,
0:26:09 > 0:26:12whether they wanted it or not.
0:26:12 > 0:26:15England was under control
0:26:15 > 0:26:20and, thanks to the brutal tactics of his Lord Deputy in Ireland -
0:26:20 > 0:26:24Charles's other right-hand hard man, Thomas Wentworth - so was Ireland.
0:26:30 > 0:26:33That just left Scotland
0:26:33 > 0:26:39and, in particular, its obstinate, cantankerous, Presbyterian kirk.
0:26:40 > 0:26:47It had a galling and, to Charles, completely unacceptable contempt for the authority of bishops.
0:26:47 > 0:26:50Charles was determined to break this.
0:26:50 > 0:26:54Then the whole realm could pray and worship as one.
0:26:54 > 0:27:00But the obsession with union which so consumed both James and Charles
0:27:00 > 0:27:06would, in the end, turn out to guarantee nothing but hatred and division.
0:27:10 > 0:27:17Charles, born in Dunfermline, was himself Scottish, so, surely, there could be no problem with this.
0:27:17 > 0:27:19Well, yes, there could.
0:27:19 > 0:27:27It had taken Charles eight years to bother travelling to Edinburgh for his Scottish coronation.
0:27:27 > 0:27:31He'd become Scotland's very first absentee king,
0:27:31 > 0:27:33and there would be a price to pay.
0:27:47 > 0:27:54Charles was completely incapable of appreciating Calvinism's call for a great moral purification.
0:27:54 > 0:28:00As far as he was concerned, Scotland and England were not all that different.
0:28:00 > 0:28:07If one kingdom had been bent to his royal will by a show of firmness, so would the other one.
0:28:07 > 0:28:11But the Scottish Reformation had been nothing like England's.
0:28:11 > 0:28:17South of the border, changes had happened in the church at a slow and fitful pace.
0:28:17 > 0:28:24In Scotland, Calvinism had struck in great, electrifying bursts of charismatic conversion,
0:28:24 > 0:28:31backed up by teachers and ministers and only forced into a reluctant and periodic retreat by James I
0:28:31 > 0:28:35who, unlike his son, had known when to stop.
0:28:39 > 0:28:45So when Charles announced the introduction into Scotland of the new prayer book,
0:28:45 > 0:28:51he would discover just how little he understood of the kingdom of his birth.
0:28:51 > 0:28:56The royal council had, very obligingly, let it be known
0:28:56 > 0:29:02that the prayer book had to be introduced, at the latest, by Easter 1637.
0:29:02 > 0:29:04Then there was a printing delay.
0:29:04 > 0:29:11This gave ample time for the Calvinist preachers and lords to organise exactly what they'd do.
0:29:11 > 0:29:18Archbishop Laud, the King, the council, the bishops, everyone fell straight into the trap.
0:29:18 > 0:29:24Now, whoever thought a little thing like this would start a revolution?
0:29:24 > 0:29:30The British wars began here in St Giles's Cathedral, Edinburgh,
0:29:30 > 0:29:34on the morning of July the 23rd 1637.
0:29:34 > 0:29:40The first missiles that were launched were not cannonballs. They were footstools.
0:29:42 > 0:29:49They were launched straight down the nave and their targets were the dean and bishop of the cathedral.
0:29:49 > 0:29:54They had just started to read from a royally authorised new prayer book,
0:29:54 > 0:30:01and this attempt to read from the liturgy had triggered a deafening outburst of shouting and wailing,
0:30:01 > 0:30:06especially from the many women gathered in the church.
0:30:07 > 0:30:11The prayer book riots, though, were just the fuse.
0:30:11 > 0:30:18Those who lit it wanted to blow up the bishops and the whole Royal church establishment in Scotland.
0:30:21 > 0:30:28On February the 28th 1638, a national covenant was signed in a four-hour ceremony,
0:30:28 > 0:30:35along with sermons and psalms, exhorting the godly to be the new Israel.
0:30:35 > 0:30:41Next day, the covenant was brought to the open churchyard at Greyfriars,
0:30:41 > 0:30:45where hordes of ordinary Scots added their signature.
0:30:45 > 0:30:50Copies were made and distributed the length and breadth of Scotland.
0:30:50 > 0:30:53For countless thousands of Scots,
0:30:53 > 0:30:59signing the covenant was just an extension of the vows they took in kirk.
0:30:59 > 0:31:04But, rapidly, the document assumed the status of a patriotic scripture,
0:31:04 > 0:31:11determining who and who was not a real Christian, who and who was not truly a Scot.
0:31:13 > 0:31:18For Charles, there was no question of negotiating. They were all rebels.
0:31:18 > 0:31:21They must all be punished.
0:31:21 > 0:31:23There was just one snag.
0:31:23 > 0:31:28It wasn't Charles who had the formidable army, but the Scots,
0:31:28 > 0:31:31veterans of the wars of religion in Europe.
0:31:31 > 0:31:34Facing his first really crucial test,
0:31:34 > 0:31:40Charles, the British Charlemagne, found he couldn't raise money and he couldn't raise men.
0:31:41 > 0:31:49It took one bruising skirmish for Charles to see the folly of further fighting. A truce was hastily signed.
0:31:51 > 0:31:54But he wouldn't back off.
0:31:56 > 0:32:00By now, Charles was desperate enough for men of money
0:32:00 > 0:32:05to do what he'd hoped he'd never have to do again - call a Parliament.
0:32:05 > 0:32:08After 11 years of gathering dust,
0:32:08 > 0:32:14the House of Commons would once again be full of passionate argument and legal fury.
0:32:15 > 0:32:21If Charles thought that 11 years meant the old quarrels had been forgotten,
0:32:21 > 0:32:25he was ignoring a force new to British politics - the news.
0:32:25 > 0:32:32For the great political dramas of the last 20 years had been hotly consumed by a reading public
0:32:32 > 0:32:39addicted to newspapers, pamphlets, woodcuts and the so-called sixpenny separates,
0:32:39 > 0:32:45recording debates and controversies, and dispatched around the Shires.
0:32:47 > 0:32:54The 1640 Parliament took up exactly where it had left off in 1629 when Charles had closed it down.
0:32:56 > 0:33:00It must have come as an unpleasant surprise, then,
0:33:00 > 0:33:07when this new Parliament, instead of laying imagined grievances aside, immediately began to resurrect them.
0:33:07 > 0:33:14This Parliament lasted only three short weeks before, once again, Charles suspended it.
0:33:18 > 0:33:25But his list of options was getting shorter by the day, and they were all bad.
0:33:25 > 0:33:30He wasn't going to cave in to the Scots or reopen Parliament.
0:33:30 > 0:33:37But there was a third way, courtesy of his Lord Deputy in Ireland, Thomas Wentworth.
0:33:37 > 0:33:42Why not use an Irish Catholic army to crush the Presbyterian Scots?
0:33:42 > 0:33:45Grateful for his advice,
0:33:45 > 0:33:49Charles made Wentworth Earl of Strafford, but hesitated.
0:33:49 > 0:33:56Charles knew that Protestant England was unlikely to approve of a Catholic army attacking their brother Scots.
0:33:58 > 0:34:05What followed in 1640 was a breakdown of deference of frightening magnitude.
0:34:05 > 0:34:09Officers were being attacked by their own men.
0:34:09 > 0:34:15The latest round of fighting with the Scots was a disaster.
0:34:15 > 0:34:22Newcastle, with its priceless coal, was captured. To get the Scots out of England, Charles needed cash, fast.
0:34:25 > 0:34:30He had no choice now. He would HAVE to reopen Parliament.
0:34:32 > 0:34:34There'd never be a better opportunity
0:34:34 > 0:34:40for John Pym and his fellow Parliamentary leaders to rein in the King.
0:34:43 > 0:34:49Pym had discovered, whether he understood the word or not, the elixir of revolution.
0:34:49 > 0:34:54Yesterday's truism - obey the King - is tomorrow's bad joke.
0:34:54 > 0:34:57Yesterday's unthinkable - abolish all bishops -
0:34:57 > 0:35:00seems to be tomorrow's necessity.
0:35:02 > 0:35:07All round London were enormous seething crowds,
0:35:07 > 0:35:11practically laying siege to Westminster.
0:35:11 > 0:35:14John Pym's demands were simple and blunt -
0:35:14 > 0:35:18no taxes, ever, without Parliament's say-so,
0:35:18 > 0:35:22Parliaments to be elected every three years
0:35:22 > 0:35:26and most decisively of all, looking right into Charles's eyes,
0:35:26 > 0:35:33no Parliament, especially not this one, could be dissolved without its own consent.
0:35:33 > 0:35:39When Charles, through gritted teeth, conceded, it was the destruction of the absolute monarchy. Or was it?
0:35:39 > 0:35:43The King did still have one card he could play -
0:35:43 > 0:35:49that Catholic army that Wentworth, the Earl of Strafford, had raised in Ireland.
0:35:50 > 0:35:57Pym now knew he would have to annihilate Strafford if he was to defend Parliament from this threat.
0:35:57 > 0:36:02So, in the spring of 1641, Strafford was impeached.
0:36:02 > 0:36:08Sick and grey haired, he proved frustratingly impossible to convict of treason.
0:36:08 > 0:36:12So Pym resorted to an act of attainder instead.
0:36:12 > 0:36:15This merely required a burden of suspicion.
0:36:15 > 0:36:23When Strafford had spoken of an Irish army reducing the kingdom, hadn't he meant England, argued Pym?
0:36:23 > 0:36:29But there was one problem. The act of attainder needed the signature of the King.
0:36:32 > 0:36:38Poor Charles. Memories of Buckingham must have flooded back into his mind.
0:36:38 > 0:36:44For a king obsessed by loyalty, how could he abandon Strafford, his most faithful ally?
0:36:44 > 0:36:49It was Strafford himself who spared Charles the agony of indecision.
0:36:49 > 0:36:55He knew that only his own death could save the King and the country from further upheaval.
0:36:55 > 0:37:02In a final letter written to Charles, Strafford begged the King to do what had to be done.
0:37:02 > 0:37:09May it please Your Sacred Majesty, I understand that the minds of men are more and more incensed against me
0:37:09 > 0:37:15and, to set Your Majesty's conscience at liberty, I do most humbly beseech Your Majesty,
0:37:15 > 0:37:20for preventing evils that may happen by your refusal, to pass the bill.
0:37:20 > 0:37:23Weeping, Charles signed the warrant.
0:37:23 > 0:37:31Strafford was led out onto Tower Green, surrounded by jeering crowds, and beheaded.
0:37:38 > 0:37:42Charles never forgave himself for this act of betrayal.
0:37:42 > 0:37:49It had never occurred to Strafford that his death would actually make things worse for Charles, not better.
0:37:49 > 0:37:53What happened next was the worst that could happen -
0:37:53 > 0:37:56Ireland erupted.
0:37:56 > 0:38:02With Strafford executed, Irish Catholics felt unprotected against Protestant reprisals.
0:38:02 > 0:38:06In a pre-emptive strike, they attacked first.
0:38:15 > 0:38:21Late in 1641, news of Irish killings began filtering through England,
0:38:21 > 0:38:26graphically illustrated by a campaign of atrocity prints.
0:38:26 > 0:38:28Now, bad things did happen,
0:38:28 > 0:38:32but the usual fantasy pictures of impaled babies
0:38:32 > 0:38:37tripped the wire of Anglo-Protestant paranoia.
0:38:38 > 0:38:45Even worse, it was rumoured that the Catholic rebels claimed to be acting on behalf of the King.
0:38:45 > 0:38:49The Puritan press hit the streets screaming, "We're next."
0:38:49 > 0:38:56Charles was painfully aware of how costly his dream of a united Britain had become.
0:38:56 > 0:39:00First, the Presbyterian Scots had brought down his personal rule.
0:39:00 > 0:39:07Now the mass panic triggered by the Catholic Irish threatened to finish off his power altogether.
0:39:07 > 0:39:12With events now spiralling out of control,
0:39:12 > 0:39:19Pym saw this was the moment to try and strip the King of his authority. Charles tried to arrest him.
0:39:19 > 0:39:27But Pym, and four others, had been tipped off that the King was marching on Parliament with an armed guard.
0:39:27 > 0:39:34They waited till the last moment and slipped out at the back. Charles was left empty-handed.
0:39:35 > 0:39:38It was an unmitigated fiasco.
0:39:38 > 0:39:44The gamble had only been worthwhile so long as Charles was sure of absolute success.
0:39:44 > 0:39:49Exposed now, just as Pym had wanted, as a naked, abject failure,
0:39:49 > 0:39:55Charles appeared to be something worse than a despot - a blundering despot.
0:39:57 > 0:40:02Both sides were moving fast beyond any point of reconciliation.
0:40:02 > 0:40:08Pym made it clear that Parliament now needed to protect itself and England from the King.
0:40:08 > 0:40:11It set about raising an army.
0:40:11 > 0:40:18In July 1642, Bulstrode Whitelock thought out loud about the abyss facing the country.
0:40:18 > 0:40:25It is strange to note how insensibly we have slipped into this beginning of a civil war
0:40:25 > 0:40:29by one unexpected accident after another,
0:40:29 > 0:40:35as waves of the sea which have brought us this far and which we scarce know how.
0:40:35 > 0:40:43What the issue shall be, no man alive can tell. Probably few of us here may live to see the end of it.
0:40:45 > 0:40:50What's amazing and very touching about the spring and summer of 1642
0:40:50 > 0:40:54is the abundance of evidence we have about the agonies of allegiance.
0:40:54 > 0:40:59The real soul-searching that people went through when they were pondering
0:40:59 > 0:41:05the most painful decision of their lives - which side to join themselves to -
0:41:05 > 0:41:11and how earnestly and how honestly they tried to justify that decision
0:41:11 > 0:41:15to their families, their friends and themselves.
0:41:15 > 0:41:19Cruellest of all, it tore fathers away from sons.
0:41:19 > 0:41:24The sad history of one Buckinghamshire family says it all.
0:41:24 > 0:41:31The Verneys had been the very model of a loving, companionable, gentry family.
0:41:31 > 0:41:38But they were torn apart in this crisis. Ralph had sat next to his father during the 1640 Parliaments,
0:41:38 > 0:41:42but now he not only expressed support for the Parliamentary cause,
0:41:42 > 0:41:47but swore the oath required of all members after the militia ordinance.
0:41:47 > 0:41:51Now, oaths were very serious things in the 17th century.
0:41:51 > 0:41:59Taking this one split Ralph not only from his father, but from his hothead younger, Royalist brother Edmund
0:41:59 > 0:42:06who absolutely failed to see why Ralph should not be honouring not only his father, but the King.
0:42:06 > 0:42:10And yet, and yet, the Verneys did remain a family.
0:42:11 > 0:42:14Ralph had made his vow to Parliament,
0:42:14 > 0:42:18but his father felt under no less an obligation to Charles.
0:42:18 > 0:42:25This bond of personal loyalty held despite Edmund having little enthusiasm for the King's actions.
0:42:25 > 0:42:32I do not like the quarrel and do heartily wish the King WOULD yield and consent to what they desire
0:42:32 > 0:42:39so that MY conscience is only concerned in honour and gratitude to follow my master.
0:42:39 > 0:42:44I have eaten his bread and served him near 30 years
0:42:44 > 0:42:49and will not do so base a thing as to forsake him.
0:42:52 > 0:42:59In the third week of August 1642, Charles raised his standard. The Rubicon had been crossed.
0:42:59 > 0:43:06The honour of holding Charles's personal flag in the battle fell to Sir Edmund Verney.
0:43:06 > 0:43:10He swore only death would prise it from his hands.
0:43:19 > 0:43:25By the time the Royalist army arrived at Edgehill, its prospects had been transformed.
0:43:25 > 0:43:28It was now about 20,000 strong,
0:43:28 > 0:43:35about 14,000 of whom took up position on the ridge in the early afternoon of October the 22nd.
0:43:35 > 0:43:39At the top of the hill were the King and his two sons -
0:43:39 > 0:43:43Charles, the Prince of Wales, and the nine-year-old James, Duke of York -
0:43:43 > 0:43:47along with Prince Rupert and his toy poodle Boy.
0:43:47 > 0:43:52It was here that Charles I planted his flag.
0:43:57 > 0:44:02In mid-afternoon, the commander of the Parliamentary army,
0:44:02 > 0:44:06the Earl of Essex, began to cannonade the Royalist infantry.
0:44:06 > 0:44:11Balls thudded and hissed, taking a life here, a limb there.
0:44:12 > 0:44:16Then Prince Rupert led his cavalry forward down the hill.
0:44:16 > 0:44:23For the men in the Parliament lines, watching a distant trot turn into a canter and then a charge
0:44:23 > 0:44:29and seeing their own muskets have no effect on the hurtling horsemen,
0:44:29 > 0:44:32the moment of truth had arrived.
0:44:37 > 0:44:40War slammed into them.
0:44:40 > 0:44:45Big, dark horses. Bright, deadly steel. They panicked and broke,
0:44:45 > 0:44:50Rupert's horsemen following fleeing troopers.
0:44:50 > 0:44:55Rupert must have thought this was going to be easy.
0:44:55 > 0:44:59But by now the Parliamentary infantry had crawled forward,
0:44:59 > 0:45:04the two great phalanxes of pikemen heaving and pushing at each other
0:45:04 > 0:45:07until they dropped of exhaustion.
0:45:09 > 0:45:13Somewhere, amidst the smoke, fire and steel was Sir Edmund Verney.
0:45:13 > 0:45:18The Royal standard clenched in his hand made him an obvious target.
0:45:18 > 0:45:21They never even found his corpse.
0:45:21 > 0:45:24# There lies a knight
0:45:24 > 0:45:26# Slain under his shield
0:45:26 > 0:45:30# With a down... #
0:45:35 > 0:45:40In the following months, the war broke down into grim, grinding local conflicts.
0:45:40 > 0:45:48Parliament held onto London. The King tried to nail down bases of strength in the north and south-west.
0:45:48 > 0:45:52The south-western campaign was especially savage.
0:45:52 > 0:45:59Towns like Exeter and Taunton changed hands. Local families were divided between brothers and cousins.
0:45:59 > 0:46:06Old friends became new enemies. Two such opponents, men in every other respect virtually indistinguishable,
0:46:06 > 0:46:11were William Waller, a Parliamentary general, and Ralph Hopton, a Royalist.
0:46:11 > 0:46:16In a lull in the fighting, Hopton wrote to Waller asking for a meeting.
0:46:16 > 0:46:24Waller felt he had to turn him down, but wrote back of the deep sorrow he felt at their broken friendship.
0:46:24 > 0:46:28It's the classic lament of this terrible civil war.
0:46:28 > 0:46:31To my noble friend Sir Ralph.
0:46:31 > 0:46:35Sir, My affections to you are so unchangeable
0:46:35 > 0:46:41that hostility itself cannot violate my friendship to your person.
0:46:41 > 0:46:45But I must be true to the cause wherein I serve.
0:46:45 > 0:46:52That great God which is the searcher of my heart knows with what a sad scene I go upon this service
0:46:52 > 0:46:57and with what a perfect hatred I detest this war without an enemy.
0:46:57 > 0:47:04But I look upon it as an opus domine, which is enough to silence all passion in me.
0:47:04 > 0:47:11We are both upon the stage and must act those parts that are assigned to us in this tragedy.
0:47:11 > 0:47:17Let us do it in a way of honour and without personal animosities, whatsoever the issue be.
0:47:17 > 0:47:25I shall never relinquish the dear title of your most affectionated friend and faithful servant,
0:47:25 > 0:47:27William Waller.
0:47:27 > 0:47:35The scythe of mortality, always busy, never fussy, swept up all kinds and conditions of men.
0:47:35 > 0:47:39Officers and rank and file. Musketeers and troopers.
0:47:39 > 0:47:42Camp whores and sutlers.
0:47:42 > 0:47:48Young apprentices who put on a helmet for the very first time
0:47:48 > 0:47:51and hardened old mercenaries who had grown rusty.
0:47:51 > 0:47:58Soldiers who had no idea where to get a pair of boots or anything to fill their bellies
0:47:58 > 0:48:02and peasants who had absolutely nothing left to give them.
0:48:02 > 0:48:06Drummer boys and buglers. Captains and cooks.
0:48:06 > 0:48:10By the autumn of 1643, Parliament was utterly demoralised.
0:48:10 > 0:48:13Bristol had fallen to the Royalists.
0:48:13 > 0:48:19The King had established a court and a military government in Oxford.
0:48:19 > 0:48:25Many Parliamentarians, weary of the poverty and slaughter, were making noises about peace.
0:48:25 > 0:48:28Bulstrode Whitelock wrote...
0:48:28 > 0:48:35Women are weary of their being robbed of children, of their chastity and their parents.
0:48:35 > 0:48:41Is it not time for us to be weary of these discords and to use our utmost endeavours to put an end to them?
0:48:46 > 0:48:49This was not what John Pym wanted to hear.
0:48:49 > 0:48:54Even as he was dying, tortured by cancer of the bowel,
0:48:54 > 0:49:00to squash a peace movement, he pulled off a last coup which would transform the war.
0:49:05 > 0:49:11On September the 25th 1643, an alliance was struck between Parliament and the Scots -
0:49:11 > 0:49:14the Solemn League And Covenant.
0:49:14 > 0:49:18In 1637, Scotland had begun the resistance against Charles I.
0:49:18 > 0:49:23Seven years later, the Covenant would all but finish him off.
0:49:26 > 0:49:31At Marston Moor outside York on a wet afternoon in July 1644,
0:49:31 > 0:49:37the full force of the Anglo-Scots alliance hammered the Royalist army.
0:49:37 > 0:49:43It was the bloodiest battle of the war. The cream of Charles's army was annihilated.
0:49:43 > 0:49:50Among the victors was the MP for Cambridge, a cavalry officer with iron in his soul.
0:49:54 > 0:49:57His name was Oliver Cromwell
0:49:57 > 0:50:01and he was, he thought, doing the Lord's work.
0:50:01 > 0:50:05Cromwell was himself an East Anglian country gentleman,
0:50:05 > 0:50:11but he knew that gentility was no use in THIS war, only effective fighting men.
0:50:11 > 0:50:15After Edgehill, he had told John Hampden...
0:50:15 > 0:50:21I had rather have a russet-coated captain that knows what he fights for and loves what he knows
0:50:21 > 0:50:26than that which you call a gentleman and is nothing else.
0:50:26 > 0:50:29In the winter of 1644-45,
0:50:29 > 0:50:35Cromwell and a Yorkshire general Sir Thomas Fairfax set about to make a new kind of army,
0:50:35 > 0:50:42prepared to accept discipline in return for decent supplies of food, boots and shelter.
0:50:42 > 0:50:47And it would be an army that knew what it was fighting for.
0:50:47 > 0:50:52I fight for the preservation of our Parliament, in the being whereof,
0:50:52 > 0:50:56under God, consists the glory and welfare of this kingdom.
0:51:03 > 0:51:06At Naseby, in June 1645,
0:51:06 > 0:51:13the two wings of the New Model Army closed in on a Royalist force about half their size.
0:51:13 > 0:51:18At the end of the fighting, nothing was left of the Royal army,
0:51:18 > 0:51:21except the dead left strewn across the fields.
0:51:26 > 0:51:31The last Royalist strongholds were taken one by one. Bristol. Carlisle.
0:51:31 > 0:51:37At Basing in Hampshire, one of the most vicious sieges in a war full of them
0:51:37 > 0:51:41came to a long, drawn-out, bloody conclusion.
0:51:42 > 0:51:46The war was over and Parliament had won.
0:51:46 > 0:51:49So, finally, God HAD spoken.
0:51:53 > 0:51:56Surely, even Charles could see that?
0:51:56 > 0:52:02Surely, that would be an end to the bloodshed and the country could return to reasonableness?
0:52:04 > 0:52:08There were many in Parliament aching for just this,
0:52:08 > 0:52:13a settlement that would allow Charles to keep his throne,
0:52:13 > 0:52:18some kind of return to what had been on the table back in 1642.
0:52:22 > 0:52:29Surely, after all the blunders and bloodshed, the botched coups and the futile slaughters,
0:52:29 > 0:52:33he would do the right thing, he would share power?
0:52:33 > 0:52:40But Charles was constitutionally incapable of being a constitutional king.
0:52:40 > 0:52:46He gagged at the idea of being reduced to a subaltern monarch, taking, not giving, orders.
0:52:46 > 0:52:51The war might be over, for now, but for Charles the plotting was not.
0:52:51 > 0:52:58For the next two years, in a bid to reverse his defeat, Charles tried to play off Parliament against the army,
0:52:58 > 0:53:03the army against Parliament and the Scots against both.
0:53:04 > 0:53:08Oliver Cromwell finally realised that, as long as Charles was around,
0:53:08 > 0:53:15he was always going to be a rallying point for the discontented, and there were bound to be a lot of them.
0:53:15 > 0:53:22But Cromwell was also enraged by Charles's presumption at defying the verdict of God,
0:53:22 > 0:53:26so clearly revealed at Marston Moor and Naseby.
0:53:26 > 0:53:32It was evident then that King Charles had to go. Whether or not he had to die, well, that was another matter.
0:53:35 > 0:53:43A second civil war flared up, once more requiring from Cromwell all his military ruthlessness.
0:53:43 > 0:53:48With his annihilation of the Royalist Scottish army in 1648 at Preston,
0:53:48 > 0:53:51Charles's final hope had gone.
0:53:53 > 0:53:58Any thought of conciliation with the King was now purest folly.
0:53:59 > 0:54:05Those MPs who persisted in the idea that Charles could be reasoned with
0:54:05 > 0:54:10now had a furious and vengeful army to answer to.
0:54:10 > 0:54:16When Colonel Thomas Pride used his troops to weed out any MPs suspected of going soft on Charles,
0:54:16 > 0:54:20the country realised there was a new power in the land.
0:54:23 > 0:54:29This was the soldiers' show now. Britain belonged to them, and they belonged to God.
0:54:29 > 0:54:36They had no desire to go back to a country of princes, lords and gentlemen. They wanted Jerusalem now.
0:54:45 > 0:54:51And they wanted the biggest sinner of them all, the man of blood, Charles Stuart,
0:54:51 > 0:54:54to feel the fire of God's wrath.
0:54:54 > 0:54:58The final question could be addressed.
0:54:58 > 0:55:01What should happen to Charles?
0:55:07 > 0:55:13Cromwell agonised, prayed and wept, beseeched the Lord of Hosts to give him an answer.
0:55:13 > 0:55:21In the end, politics not prayer decided it. The King would have to die if the country was ever to heal.
0:55:21 > 0:55:24But not done away with in some dark corner.
0:55:24 > 0:55:30No, Charles was going to be tried in the open and then beheaded in public.
0:55:30 > 0:55:33Cut his head off with the crown on it.
0:55:33 > 0:55:38This would be THE great turning point in British history.
0:55:38 > 0:55:43The trial would kill one kind of Britain and give birth to another -
0:55:43 > 0:55:46a republic, a kingless state of God.
0:55:46 > 0:55:54For both Charles and Oliver Cromwell, the final act would become a theatre, a classroom, a debating chamber.
0:55:54 > 0:55:59Charles would play the classic Stuart part of holy martyr -
0:55:59 > 0:56:04as his grandmother Mary Queen of Scots had done - imposing, dignified, tragic.
0:56:04 > 0:56:12But he knew as well as Oliver Cromwell did that the outcome was never in doubt. The King would die.
0:56:12 > 0:56:16The only question was as what? Martyr or traitor?
0:56:16 > 0:56:21What had he learned? In the end, the answer was nothing.
0:56:25 > 0:56:30On January the 30th 1649, he was led out through the Banqueting House
0:56:30 > 0:56:35onto the scaffold erected right outside in Whitehall.
0:56:35 > 0:56:37The windows were all boarded up,
0:56:37 > 0:56:44so Rubens's great anthem to the godlike omnipotence of kings was invisible in the gloom,
0:56:44 > 0:56:46the light gone out of it.
0:56:51 > 0:56:56But Charles didn't need the pictures. He had the script off by heart.
0:56:56 > 0:57:02A subject and a sovereign are clean different things.
0:57:18 > 0:57:23So the last words out of Charles I's mouth were...the truth.
0:57:23 > 0:57:28With nothing left to lose for himself and everything to gain for his son,
0:57:28 > 0:57:35he was not about to confuse anyone about the nature of the kingdom that God had ordained.
0:57:35 > 0:57:39It was the same kingdom that Rubens had painted on that ceiling.
0:57:39 > 0:57:44The anointed sovereign, answerable only to the Almighty,
0:57:44 > 0:57:48laying down laws for the benefit of his subjects.
0:57:48 > 0:57:52He offered justice and he expected obedience.
0:57:52 > 0:57:54That was it. Take it or leave it.
0:57:54 > 0:57:58It had always been about that, really.
0:57:58 > 0:58:06All the pious hopes of turning Charles in to a parliamentary monarch were just so many castles in the air.
0:58:07 > 0:58:11# There were three ravens
0:58:11 > 0:58:14# Sat on a tree
0:58:14 > 0:58:20# Down a down, hey down, hey down
0:58:20 > 0:58:27# They were as black as they might be
0:58:27 > 0:58:32# With a do-own... #