Lost Worlds and New Worlds The Great British Story: A People's History


Lost Worlds and New Worlds

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The story of the British is a tale of creativity,

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resilience, and struggle.

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The tale has been told many times, and in different ways,

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but this is about the people's experience.

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Told from all around the British Isles,

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with the help of today's people.

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So far in this series, we've seen how our society's emerged

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through the trials of the Middle Ages.

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How our people set out on their long march

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to make a free and just society,

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a story that still continues today.

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In this second half of the tale, we leave the mediaeval world behind.

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Now we enter the age of the Tudors,

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and the Protestant Reformation.

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It's the next chapter of the Great British Story.

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In the 16th century,

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a Tudor poet described Britain as, "Its own little world.

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"A sceptred isle. A precious stone set in a silver sea.

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"A fortress built by nature against infection,

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"and the hand of war."

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But in the 16th century, Britain would not be immune to war.

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And nor, especially, to the infection of ideas.

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In our story, we've reached the 1500s.

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In the thousand years or more since the fall of Rome,

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through the Middle Ages, the peoples of Britain

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have developed societies and cultures and nations.

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And as things stand at this point in our history,

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in the islands of Britain,

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there are three kingdoms.

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There are four nations - five, if you include the Cornish.

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There are three parliaments, in Edinburgh, Dublin and in London.

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And there are ten languages spoken,

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including Cornish and Scots and Irish Gaelic.

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But in all this great patchwork of cultures and identities,

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here's the key:

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there's only one religion. The Catholic faith.

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But in a few decades in the 1500s, that situation will change

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so dramatically and so contentiously,

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as to reshape our identities as Britons from then until now.

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This is the village of Llancarfan, near Cardiff.

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Here, only recently, the villagers made an extraordinary discovery.

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From underneath layers of whitewash, a lost world has come to light.

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She's drawing a swan with a feather pen to make it show out.

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Like the painting up there.

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Deliberately defaced in the Reformation,

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the still bright images of the old Catholic universe

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to which we all once belonged.

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You can imagine late-mediaeval painters,

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with all their stuff out here in the church, can't you?

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And all the local kids coming in to watch them!

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'And as the paintings emerge, the villagers have been inspired

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'to explore the lost world of their ancestors.'

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So this is called pigment, OK? Pigment.

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See that? You're going to put it on the wall using these.

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And they are called pouncers.

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Up to 1547, like every church in Britain,

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this was a Catholic Church.

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Its walls covered with paintings of the Christian story, the saints,

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the seven deadly sins, purgatory and hellfire.

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The world that we lost in the 16th century.

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If you want to get an idea of what a mediaeval church looked like

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here in Wales before the Reformation,

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an incredible new discovery here in Llancarfan -

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only found a couple of years ago.

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It's being restored at the moment,

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and it's the story of St George and the dragon.

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'I was in The Fox and Hounds, and the conservator came in,'

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and she said, "Sam! You won't believe it!"

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And showed me the photographs

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of the king's head and the top of the princess.

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She said, "If this is what we think it is,

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"it's going to be one of THE most exciting finds ever."

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There's the king and queen in their castle.

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Their daughter, the princess. She's the dragon's dinner.

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She's been left outside the city as a human sacrifice.

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And there to rescue her,

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St George himself.

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With his huge spear coming down into the dragon's mouth.

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They're just fairy tales to us,

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but to our forebears,

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these supernatural stories were real.

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And as further paintings are uncovered,

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the villagers have been driven to find out more about them.

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-And the egg's a binding element in mediaeval paint?

-Absolutely, yeah.

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They've got egg tempera today, that would have been used

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in the more expensive churches and cathedrals.

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And these colours, these mediaeval colours,

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you've actually ground these from the natural elements, have you?

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-Well, I mined the yellow ochre from Clearwell Caves!

-You're joking!

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-You mined them?!

-Yes, I did! With a pickaxe!

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-Do you see her eyes?

-Yeah!

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This was, of course, the centre of the community in its day,

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and it's becoming so again, which is rather splendid.

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And all around, other typical pieces of mediaeval painting.

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The seven deadly sins over there,

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the Virgin Mary you can see.

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And here, the gallant and death.

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"Don't get too tied up with worldly things,"

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the typical warning of mediaeval Christianity.

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These were the beliefs, the feelings

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that once bound us all together.

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But then, in just a few years, the new Protestant rulers in London

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condemned it all as Popeish superstition,

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and it was literally whitewashed away.

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To be rediscovered only in our time.

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The Reformation is an amazing story.

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The greatest destruction of our heritage in British history.

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So how had it happened?

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The story goes that it was started by Henry VIII,

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sparked by his feud with the Pope

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over his right to divorce Catherine of Aragon,

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and marry Anne Boleyn to get a male heir.

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But the beginnings of the attack on the Catholic Church in Britain

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lie much further back in the Middle Ages.

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'Here in Oxford, in the late 14th century,

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'an academic heresy had lit a slow-burning fuse.

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'John Wycliffe and his followers, who became known as Lollards.

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'They were against the power of the Catholic Church,

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'its rituals, its image worship, and its moneymaking.

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'And new discoveries in the documents show they had wide support

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'among ordinary people

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'in cities like Coventry, Norwich, and Leicester.

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'And in villages all over south-eastern England.'

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Wycliffe thought that his new ideas should be spread

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by an army of what he called "poor preachers".

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And that the law of the Gospel

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should be the law that we were living under.

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And what about images?

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They were against images, were they?

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-That's right.

-There were complaints of corruption too, weren't there?

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Were those exaggerated?

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No, I don't think they were exaggerated!

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THEY LAUGH I'm not one of those who thinks that, no!

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No, I think there was quite a lot of corruption.

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And peasants, I think,

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they wanted to know a bit more about what their religion really was.

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To read, in their own language, the Bible,

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which was at the centre of their lives.

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But the English church bishops

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were very against Bible translation.

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Because you couldn't have people,

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just ordinary people, reading the Bible for themselves,

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because there were lots of dangerous ideas in there.

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HE LAUGHS

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For instance, there was a certain wing of the Lollards,

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or the Wycliffites, who believed in community of property.

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Because that's something that was in the Bible.

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I mean, there were some Lollards and Wycliffites

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who believed that women were entitled to go out

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and preach the gospel, even.

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From around 1400, these heretical views

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spread as far as the Welsh borders and up into Scotland.

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"Women have the power and authority to preach

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"and make the body of Christ."

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"That any good man may be a priest."

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"Or any good woman."

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"That every man may lawfully withhold

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"tithes and offerings from priests

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"and give them straight to the poor."

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A Lollard revolt against King Henry V was crushed in 1414.

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But at the grassroots, their ideas survived.

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In the 1530s, when Henry VIII was refused a divorce by the Pope,

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he broke with Rome and made himself head of a Church of England.

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In 1536, at the height of his feud with the Pope,

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and deep in money troubles,

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Henry then ordered the closure, or the dissolution, of the monasteries.

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With wealth built up over 1,000 years,

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the church controlled 40% of the British economy.

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And now the monasteries were to be taken over,

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the monks driven out, and their wealth confiscated.

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One of the abbeys targeted by Henry

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owned the West Midlands market town of Halesowen, near Birmingham.

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The Abbot of Halesowen had been an oppressive landlord,

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and his property was ripe for the picking.

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Henry VIII's agents came here to Halesowen Abbey in 1539.

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The movable wealth was confiscated.

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The treasure, the plates, the timber, the lead, the bells.

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And then the abbey was sold off to a local grandee,

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who leased it to a well-to-do farmer.

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And he demolished the church,

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sold off the building's stone,

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built himself a nice house,

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and turned the rest of the buildings into barns.

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It's Tudor asset-stripping.

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The sharp end of the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

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The monasteries had held a third of all the land in England.

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Much of this now went to Henry's cronies.

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But a great part was sold on

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to a new rising middle-class,

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of merchants and entrepreneurs.

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This huge shift in national wealth

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'gave this new class a stake in the Reformation.'

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And as we see it now,

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it's a key moment in the rise of capitalism in Britain.

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Here in Bristol, then Britain's second city,

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one man who rose on the profits of the Dissolution

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was a merchant called John Smith.

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'His father was a sort of middling Bristol merchant.'

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John Smith became a much wealthier merchant.

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By the end of his career,

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he was the wealthiest merchant in Bristol.

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Served as sheriff, been twice mayor of the city

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and used his great resources

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to buy up lands, largely ex-monastic lands,

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from the Dissolution,

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to establish a foundation for his family,

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which became a gentry family,

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which lasted until the 20th century in Bristol.

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Cor, great story! So he's one of the self-made men

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who do very well out of Henry VIII's Reformation?

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Yes, absolutely.

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He's one of these people who did well in great property bonanza

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which followed the Dissolution.

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His main focuses are the Bordeaux region for wine,

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San Sebastian for iron,

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Lisbon and Lucia for olive oil,

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for dried fruits, raisins, things like this.

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These are the goods he's buying in.

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He'll take those, and then he'll be marketing all those goods.

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Everywhere up as far as places like Manchester, Coventry, Birmingham,

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into Wales and other parts of the West Country.

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So it's the whole west of England.

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And this is his book?

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Yes, this is very typical of a 16th century merchant's ledger.

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This is his handwriting, is it?

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Yes. I mean, to be a merchant in this period,

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you're going to have to be numerate, be literate.

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It's double-entry bookkeeping.

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It's based on the most advanced

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Italian counting techniques of the time.

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So it's a way of tracking your different business ventures,

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establishing how profitable they are,

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so that you can know what's making money,

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what isn't, and therefore what you're going to do next.

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Sounds like the beginning of our world, almost.

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Yes, absolutely.

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It's a world ruled by account books.

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By the mid-16th century, England had only 3 million people.

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By the standards of the time,

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it was an underdeveloped country.

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But with the discovery of the Americas after 1492,

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the centre of gravity of the world's economies

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was beginning to shift to the Atlantic seaboard.

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To small maritime nations,

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individualistic, commercially-minded.

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For the merchants of trading towns like Bristol, their time had come.

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Since the Middle Ages, one of Bristol's staples had been wine.

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And Avery's are one of the city's oldest wine merchants.

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By Tudor times,

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the city imported half a million gallons of wine a year.

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In cash, nearly half of all the city's imports.

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And the younger generation are still involved today.

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So you have various of the finer, sweet wines.

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But beautiful colours.

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My favourite bit of coming in here

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is the colours of the sweet wines.

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The links with France and Spain are eight centuries old.

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We are probably in the oldest trade in the city.

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And the general prosperity of Bristol

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would have been helped considerably

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by the wine and spirit trade, I have to say.

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In fact, it's probably been the most consistent trade

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over the period when Bristol has been

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an important city, or town, in the early days.

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And in the 16th century, all this was part

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of the opening up of the horizons and tastes of the British people.

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Bristol is twinned with Bordeaux.

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And then, of course, both of them, Bordeaux and Bristol,

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became very involved with the trade with the Americas.

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With the New World.

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So hard-headed merchant enterprise

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helped shape 16th-century Britain too.

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And it had many repercussions.

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The first Africans living in Bristol are recorded in the 1560s.

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And in London, too, the world was changing.

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Here in the East End,

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there have been waves of migrants throughout history.

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Flemings, Huguenots, and Jews.

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The Bengalis of Brick Lane.

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But the first Bengalis and the first West Africans

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are all recorded in the mid-16th century.

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This little-known part of Tudor history

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features on Tony Warner's black history tour.

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This was the Jamaica Coffee House,

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where you'd come to do business in Jamaica.

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Only yards from the Bank of England, there are surprises for those

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who thought Britain's black history is a late 20th-century phenomenon.

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This is a really important church in terms of black history,

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because this church has records of the African presence in London

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going back to the 1500s.

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Back at the Marrakesh Cafe, we poured over

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the parish registers of St Botolph's,

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to find the forgotten lives of black Elizabethans.

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This is where we are, in the 1550s. This is Aldgate.

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That's the city, crammed in, and London Wall.

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-There's Botolph's church.

-We went there as well, yeah.

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You know, and Aldgate tube. Then, lined with inns.

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And that's where we get hundreds and hundreds of black people.

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You see this guy here, Robert, a servant...

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"Robert Annega, being servant to William Matthew, a gentleman.

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"He was buried in the outer churchyard.

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"He had the second cloth and four bearers."

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The ceremonial, with fine funeral cloths,

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gives a clue to how their employers and friends felt

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towards these black musicians, workers, and servants.

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It's a very interesting indicator of the status of these people.

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And here you've got Cassanggo, a black servant...

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"Cassanggo, a black and Moor servant

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"to Thomas Barbour, a merchant from his house

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"at the sign of the red cross,

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"was buried on the ninth day of October, 1593."

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More surprising perhaps, is the evidence of Tudor mixed marriages.

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Because there's records of marriage

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between black and white people in these records, isn't there?

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Here you go. "Marriage of James Curres, a Moor..."

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Meaning an African, and Christian.

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"..to Margaret Pearson, a maid."

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Yeah, I'm really shocked, you know, that marriage

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within different races was never illegal.

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But in these registers, there are people

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who are obviously marrying because they love each other.

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Yeah, I'm just really interested in the aspect

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that they just assimilated into the community.

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In school, they don't say there wasn't any,

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but they don't say there was any.

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You know, as a black boy, all you learn about

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is slavery and Martin Luther King, and that is it.

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I got taught in school there was no black people here.

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Because in my primary school,

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the teaching that we got was that we just came here.

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There wasn't ever a presence of us, but we came here.

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Yeah, and that was it.

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It will definitely change a lot of people's perspectives,

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cos when I was younger,

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I was told by the old man down the road, "Go back to your own country!"

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I could say, "Well, this is my own country!

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"I was probably here before your family was!"

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'So it was the Tudor age that saw the beginnings

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'of Britain's black community.'

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So the Dissolution of the Monasteries

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opened new directions in our history.

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At this point, most of the English people were still Catholic,

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using a half-Protestant, half-Catholic prayer book,

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bequeathed them by Henry VIII.

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But after Henry's death,

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the new rulers of England began their devastating attack

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on traditional religion itself.

0:20:430:20:45

Now the Dissolution of the Monasteries,

0:20:450:20:48

the destruction of places like Halesowen Abbey,

0:20:480:20:51

had really come about through chance and circumstance.

0:20:510:20:56

Henry's divorce and his financial problems.

0:20:560:21:00

And there, things might have ended.

0:21:000:21:03

In 1539, nobody could have imagined the huge changes

0:21:030:21:06

that the people of Britain would go through

0:21:060:21:08

in the practice of their religion,

0:21:080:21:11

in their ideas about life and death and the afterlife.

0:21:110:21:15

The great change began a few years later with Henry's death in 1547.

0:21:150:21:22

The new government under Henry's teenage son, Edward VI.

0:21:220:21:27

Edward was a pious, cold-hearted swot,

0:21:280:21:32

surrounded by hardline Protestant ministers

0:21:320:21:35

who wished to put through

0:21:350:21:37

a more root and branch reform of the religion.

0:21:370:21:40

And in 1549, they announced that all churches in the land

0:21:400:21:44

were to destroy their imagery and their statues,

0:21:440:21:48

whitewash their walls,

0:21:480:21:49

dig out their altars,

0:21:490:21:51

and bring in a new, Protestant prayer book.

0:21:510:21:54

The revolution had begun.

0:21:540:21:56

And the revolution would turn out to be an attack

0:21:590:22:02

on the very way of life of the people.

0:22:020:22:05

England then was still a traditional society,

0:22:050:22:08

especially the countryside, where most of the people lived and worked.

0:22:080:22:13

TRADITIONAL MUSIC PLAYS

0:22:130:22:17

Their lives were marked by the cycles of the farming year,

0:22:170:22:21

with fairs like Bampton, here, on the edge of Exmoor.

0:22:210:22:26

'Bampton is a very, very thriving community.'

0:22:260:22:28

We have about 33 different clubs, groups, associations here.

0:22:280:22:33

So we like to keep these old traditions alive

0:22:330:22:35

as much as we possibly can.

0:22:350:22:37

'There's a Devon tradition got to be kept going.'

0:22:410:22:45

We've got several pony fairs around, Chagford Fair, Bampton Fair.

0:22:450:22:48

There's quite a few going. Just keeping the tradition going.

0:22:480:22:52

Hay, straw, bit of farm machinery.

0:22:520:22:55

Poultry, ferrets, ducks,

0:22:550:22:57

guinea pigs. The lot, really.

0:22:570:22:58

AUCTIONEER: At two pound, at two pound...

0:22:580:23:01

In such country communities,

0:23:010:23:03

old-fashioned country religion

0:23:030:23:05

was simply the way things had always been.

0:23:050:23:08

The saints, the feasts, the festivals.

0:23:080:23:10

AUCTIONEER: At five pound...well, where do you want them now?

0:23:100:23:13

Hampshire, 30 guineas!

0:23:130:23:15

And so it was in the little village of Morebath, under Exmoor.

0:23:150:23:19

The vicar here from 1520 to 1574

0:23:220:23:26

was the wonderfully-named Christopher Tricky.

0:23:260:23:29

It would be Tricky's task to steer his village

0:23:310:23:34

through four changes of religion in 20 years.

0:23:340:23:38

And his notes in the church warden's book tell the story,

0:23:380:23:41

starting in the last days of the old faith.

0:23:410:23:45

"William Potter gave his hive of bees to maintain..."

0:23:450:23:50

"..to maintain a lamp,

0:23:500:23:53

"burning before the figure of Jesus and before St Sidwell,

0:23:530:23:57

"every principal feast in the year."

0:23:570:24:00

"And to St Sidwell, a ring of silver,

0:24:020:24:05

"which did help make St Sidwell's shoes."

0:24:050:24:08

I think one of the things that fascinates people

0:24:080:24:12

is the fact that it is just ordinary people.

0:24:120:24:15

You know, just everyday, ordinary people. Nobody special.

0:24:150:24:17

But because they've kept these wonderful records,

0:24:170:24:22

that story, that voice of those ordinary people, can come out.

0:24:220:24:25

It's just... I think that's what attracts people.

0:24:250:24:28

What about Tricky himself?

0:24:280:24:30

Do you get any impression of what he was like as a bloke?

0:24:300:24:32

I think he must have been an incredibly tough, resilient man.

0:24:320:24:36

I mean, there must have been times

0:24:360:24:37

when he really didn't like what was going on.

0:24:370:24:40

THEY LAUGH But he still stuck it out.

0:24:400:24:43

And he didn't leave or do the modern thing.

0:24:430:24:47

He actually just stuck it out

0:24:470:24:49

and took care of the community in the way in which he did.

0:24:490:24:52

"Anno domini, 1548.

0:24:540:24:58

"The warden of the church was Lucy Skelly,

0:24:580:25:02

"and in her time, the church goods were sold away

0:25:020:25:06

"and no gift given to the church.

0:25:060:25:09

"But all taken from the church."

0:25:090:25:13

"1551, paid to John Lowesmore.

0:25:160:25:21

"For taking away the altars and the rood loft.

0:25:210:25:25

"Three shillings."

0:25:250:25:27

These are things that involve

0:25:300:25:32

the very basic human feelings, aren't they?

0:25:320:25:34

About family and the hereafter

0:25:340:25:37

and how you bury your mum and dad, or your child that's died.

0:25:370:25:42

All these things were being in some sense attacked,

0:25:420:25:45

weren't they, by the new rules?

0:25:450:25:47

People don't like change to this day, particularly within the church!

0:25:470:25:52

And how this man ever managed

0:25:520:25:54

the change that they went through is astounding.

0:25:540:25:57

We have a slight change, and it takes counselling!

0:25:570:26:01

THEY LAUGH Yes, yes!

0:26:010:26:04

So, across the country, Edward's government pushed through

0:26:080:26:12

the destruction of the mediaeval Christian heritage.

0:26:120:26:16

From Morebath to Llancarfan,

0:26:160:26:18

and from Long Melford to Halesowen.

0:26:180:26:21

Popular support for Edward's Reformation was strongest

0:26:210:26:24

among the middle classes in London and the South East,

0:26:240:26:27

where Lollard beliefs had been found a century before.

0:26:270:26:31

Loyalty to the old faith was strongest in the North

0:26:310:26:35

and the West, and there, the changes were bitterly resisted.

0:26:350:26:38

Especially down here in Cornwall and Devon,

0:26:410:26:45

where opposition burst out in open warfare.

0:26:450:26:48

As so often in this story, you get a very different perspective

0:26:540:26:58

on the great events of British history

0:26:580:27:00

if you leave London and the South East,

0:27:000:27:03

and you come out to the perimeter Britain.

0:27:030:27:05

Cornwall here in the 1540s,

0:27:050:27:07

was still formally an English county like all the others.

0:27:070:27:12

But actually, everybody saw the Cornish as a different race

0:27:120:27:16

with their own language and their own customs.

0:27:160:27:18

Their own religion in Cornish.

0:27:180:27:21

To the people here, Edward's introduction

0:27:280:27:31

of a Protestant prayer book in English was the last straw.

0:27:310:27:34

Here, the people spoke Cornish and prayed in Latin.

0:27:340:27:38

To them, it was an attack on their Cornish identity,

0:27:380:27:42

and their traditional way of life.

0:27:420:27:45

As they tried to explain to the king himself.

0:27:450:27:49

"It is not the devil's persuasion,

0:27:490:27:51

"nor the temerity of the seditious which caused us to assemble."

0:27:510:27:56

"It is more the responsibility that each of us owes his friend

0:27:560:27:59

"and our common displeasure at seeing the religion of our ancestors

0:27:590:28:03

"now so much changed and reduced by new ways."

0:28:030:28:07

The revolt began down in the Lizard Peninsula,

0:28:120:28:15

and it spread like wildfire

0:28:150:28:17

among the fishermen, farmers, and tin miners.

0:28:170:28:21

They formed a Cornish army,

0:28:210:28:23

in what became known as the Prayer Book Rebellion.

0:28:230:28:26

Here at Sampford Courtenay,

0:28:280:28:31

the Cornish army joined forces

0:28:310:28:33

with the men of Devon.

0:28:330:28:34

Suddenly, a threat to the Tudor state.

0:28:340:28:38

-You've said, a conservative part of the world.

-Yeah.

0:28:400:28:43

Different reactions across Britain.

0:28:430:28:45

Yes, and this seems to be an area that is perhaps in some ways

0:28:450:28:48

particularly remote from the main swim of national life.

0:28:480:28:51

Protestantism was not at all strong in Devon and Cornwall,

0:28:510:28:53

and I think this particular region of Devon was probably even more

0:28:530:28:57

conservative than the other regions of the county.

0:28:570:29:00

The rebel army now marched on Exeter,

0:29:020:29:05

the main centre of Tudor power in the South West.

0:29:050:29:09

News of the rising soon reached little Morebath,

0:29:100:29:14

on the edge of Exmoor.

0:29:140:29:16

Here, vicar Christopher Tricky, true to the old faith,

0:29:200:29:22

was on the side of the rebels.

0:29:220:29:25

Morebath has heard the call, and is preparing to answer.

0:29:250:29:29

And the people of Morebath have decided

0:29:290:29:31

to send their young men to assist the rebels.

0:29:310:29:34

And here we have an actual recording of that fact. "Paid to William...

0:29:340:29:39

"...to William Hurley, the young man,

0:29:390:29:41

"at his going forth to the camp on St David's Down.

0:29:410:29:47

"Six shillings and eight pence."

0:29:470:29:50

And it's interesting, this word, "camp",

0:29:500:29:53

was used a great deal by the rebels at the time.

0:29:530:29:55

Sometimes the rebels themselves were called camp men,

0:29:550:29:58

and just this word

0:29:580:30:00

is actually dangerous for Sir Christopher to have recorded it.

0:30:000:30:03

And he later goes along and scrubs this out.

0:30:030:30:06

-Erased three times.

-Three times, yes.

0:30:060:30:09

Gosh! So, do we get the names of the other boys?

0:30:090:30:12

Yes, we do. We have here Thomas Borridge...

0:30:120:30:14

"Thomas Borridge, the younger,

0:30:140:30:18

"be paid for his going to the camp six shillings and eight pence.

0:30:180:30:22

"To John Taywoll, Christopher Morse,

0:30:220:30:24

"and Robert Sayer, at their going forth

0:30:240:30:28

"to St David's Down camp..."

0:30:280:30:30

Two shillings here, I think. And fourpence.

0:30:300:30:34

They're sending several young men,

0:30:340:30:36

we think a total of five set off from Morebath.

0:30:360:30:38

That's a large number of young men from such a small place

0:30:380:30:41

with a very small population. They were sending probably

0:30:410:30:44

their bravest and best to fight alongside the rebels.

0:30:440:30:48

So Morebath's boys went to Exeter.

0:30:520:30:56

Behind the city's massive walls, the royalist mayor refused to surrender,

0:30:570:31:02

and the siege began.

0:31:020:31:04

Here we are in the castle,

0:31:040:31:06

the strongest point of the city's defences.

0:31:060:31:08

We know it was garrisoned by troops during the siege.

0:31:080:31:10

And looking out beyond them, there would have been rebel positions

0:31:100:31:13

all the way along here, from the big camp at St David's Down,

0:31:130:31:17

stretching along the hillside here and right round to St Sidwell's.

0:31:170:31:20

They'd have been taking pot shots at you,

0:31:200:31:23

there'd have been abuse and catcalls coming up from down below.

0:31:230:31:26

The rebels were very close.

0:31:260:31:27

The siege lasted six weeks.

0:31:290:31:32

Eventually, a government army 8,000 strong,

0:31:320:31:35

stiffened by foreign mercenaries, closed in,

0:31:350:31:38

and the rebels were routed.

0:31:380:31:40

Their last desperate stand took place on a windswept hill,

0:31:440:31:49

outside Sampford Courtenay.

0:31:490:31:51

Over the next weeks, the survivors were hunted down

0:31:520:31:55

in the lanes around Dartmoor.

0:31:550:31:57

The Morebath boys among them.

0:31:570:32:00

Well, I suppose we should reconsider those myths

0:32:000:32:03

which we read about, certainly when I was a kid in my schoolbooks,

0:32:030:32:07

that somehow the Reformation was consensual,

0:32:070:32:09

we got rid of all that superstitious stuff and moved on.

0:32:090:32:12

-It wasn't quite like that, was it?

-Not at all.

0:32:120:32:15

I think it's remarkable that Henry VIII succeeded

0:32:150:32:17

in pushing through the Reformation in the first place

0:32:170:32:19

and then Edward and his government succeeded in going as far as they did

0:32:190:32:23

because there was such resistance to what they were trying to do.

0:32:230:32:26

I think the great surprise of the English Reformation

0:32:260:32:28

is the fact it actually succeeded.

0:32:280:32:30

So the Reformation was forced from above on a divided population.

0:32:350:32:40

In Wales, which had been joined to the English crown

0:32:400:32:43

since Henry VIII, the bards bitterly lamented the end of the old ways.

0:32:430:32:49

THEY SPEAK IN WELSH

0:32:490:32:51

"We have been changed by the faith of the English,

0:33:070:33:10

"our hearts are not inclined towards it."

0:33:100:33:14

SHE SPEAKS IN WELSH

0:33:180:33:20

Up in the north, in the kingdom of Scotland,

0:33:340:33:37

the Protestant Reformation unfolded later than in England and Wales.

0:33:370:33:41

In 1559, the great cathedral at St Andrews

0:33:410:33:44

was stripped of its altars and images and left in ruins.

0:33:440:33:50

The Reformation here was driven by the firebrand preacher,

0:33:500:33:54

John Knox.

0:33:540:33:56

Knox's ideals, shaped in Geneva by John Calvin himself,

0:33:560:34:00

made Scottish Protestantism much stricter than England's,

0:34:000:34:05

and those differences still mark the Scots and the English today.

0:34:050:34:09

In these small islands,

0:34:090:34:11

we all have a lot of stereotypes about each other,

0:34:110:34:13

but these are things...The Kirk and Presbyterianism

0:34:130:34:16

and Calvinism and, you know, even not that long ago

0:34:160:34:19

we had all those stories about places in the Western Isles

0:34:190:34:22

who wouldn't allow the ferries to go on a Sunday.

0:34:220:34:25

Why did Scotland become different?

0:34:250:34:28

I think it - it's partly the form of organisation

0:34:280:34:32

that is put in place.

0:34:320:34:33

They act as a kind of moral police force.

0:34:330:34:36

The Kirk session records are full of examples of people

0:34:360:34:40

being hauled up before the Kirk session

0:34:400:34:44

for transgressing in terms of Sabbatarianism,

0:34:440:34:49

violating the Sabbath, blasphemy is another one.

0:34:490:34:52

And fornication, the number of cases of fornication,

0:34:520:34:55

which is extra-marital-sex, basically, are legion.

0:34:550:34:59

"Margaret Raining, reported to be scandalous

0:34:590:35:03

"in entertaining the dragoons.

0:35:030:35:06

"Also alleged to be guilty of fornication

0:35:060:35:09

"with Patrick Robertson."

0:35:090:35:11

"George Martin, Isabel Hardy and Isabel Dunbar

0:35:110:35:15

"accused of laughing in church."

0:35:150:35:18

"Six young boys were found playing golf in time of preaching

0:35:180:35:22

"and are convicted of profaning the law of Sabbath."

0:35:220:35:26

The effectiveness of these Kirk sessions is really quite remarkable.

0:35:260:35:30

As they spread throughout the kingdom,

0:35:300:35:33

and I think it's that system and the moral discipline

0:35:330:35:36

and Godly discipline, as they liked to call it,

0:35:360:35:39

which they tried to inculcate,

0:35:390:35:40

which in a way differentiates the Scottish situation

0:35:400:35:43

from the English one.

0:35:430:35:45

So how long does it take them

0:35:450:35:47

to achieve that across the whole country?

0:35:470:35:50

It's very difficult to say,

0:35:500:35:52

but we're talking at least one, two, three generations.

0:35:520:35:55

And perhaps because it's gradual, it's able to take root

0:35:550:35:58

in a more radical form that it does in England.

0:35:580:36:02

In both Scotland and England,

0:36:060:36:07

there was a link between Protestantism

0:36:070:36:11

and the rise of capitalism and industry.

0:36:110:36:13

In the Black Country, Tudor iron masters are now working

0:36:140:36:17

the coal seams on the old monastic lands of Halesowen.

0:36:170:36:22

In Cornwall, Tudor entrepreneurs opened tin and copper mines.

0:36:230:36:29

And up here on the Firth of Forth, an amazing discovery has revealed

0:36:330:36:38

the ambitions of Scottish industrialists

0:36:380:36:41

at the former monastic town of Culross in Fife.

0:36:410:36:43

Culross now became a centre for the export of coal and salt

0:36:460:36:51

to the Baltic and Scandinavia.

0:36:510:36:53

It's one of those places in Britain where, with their innovations,

0:36:530:36:58

early capitalists anticipated the Industrial Revolution,

0:36:580:37:01

in this case by a couple of hundred years.

0:37:010:37:04

Here, believe it or not, they dug a coalmine in the sea.

0:37:040:37:09

Coal would be the driving force

0:37:150:37:16

behind the Industrial Revolution across Britain.

0:37:160:37:20

And we now know that it's extraction was underway,

0:37:200:37:23

if only on a small scale, far earlier than has been thought.

0:37:230:37:26

And here, they were pioneers of a new technology.

0:37:280:37:32

So, Douglas, that's where the shaft is, that little island peeping up?

0:37:320:37:37

Very much so, it's just starting to show itself now.

0:37:370:37:39

You imagine we were standing here in, say, 1590,

0:37:390:37:43

shortly after the pit had been constructed.

0:37:430:37:45

What we would see is a tower about perhaps 10 metres,

0:37:450:37:49

sticking out of the ground.

0:37:490:37:51

A round tower some 15 metres in diameter.

0:37:510:37:53

It's like a very, very, heavy, thick chimney,

0:37:530:37:57

with a small four metre wide shaft in the middle,

0:37:570:38:00

which was travelling all the way down, some 40, 50 feet,

0:38:000:38:03

to the galleries of coal that were being mined below it.

0:38:030:38:05

Incredible! Incredible!

0:38:050:38:07

It's absolutely fantastic, cos we have to remember

0:38:070:38:09

this is the 16th century and this is half a kilometre out to sea.

0:38:090:38:13

They're actually mining under the sea bed -

0:38:130:38:15

and not only are they under the sea bed,

0:38:150:38:17

once they're down there, they're going for another half mile or so,

0:38:170:38:20

and what I think we're seeing here is the very origins,

0:38:200:38:23

the earliest glimmerings, of the Industrial Revolution.

0:38:230:38:25

The plan is to go out to the moat pit

0:38:280:38:30

and to try and strip it of seaweed

0:38:300:38:32

so we can get some really clear pictures of the site

0:38:320:38:36

to enable us to survey it.

0:38:360:38:37

On a very low tide, these local volunteers are hoping

0:38:390:38:42

to expose the remains of the top of the shaft.

0:38:420:38:47

In a minute, you will be amazed

0:38:500:38:52

when you see just how lovely this thing is.

0:38:520:38:54

Well, what we're actually seeing here just coming to light,

0:39:040:39:07

just in the last few moments,

0:39:070:39:09

we can actually see this large circular enclosure,

0:39:090:39:11

this is the actual inner shaft, the shaft itself.

0:39:110:39:14

I'm standing on part of the wall of the vertical shaft

0:39:140:39:17

that dropped 40 feet below us.

0:39:170:39:19

So below us now,

0:39:190:39:21

probably 100 metres either side, we have a complex of galleries.

0:39:210:39:24

I just find it a really exciting structure.

0:39:240:39:27

We sort of know the story of the pit but you somehow can't believe it

0:39:270:39:31

until you see the distance it is from the shore.

0:39:310:39:36

Did you realise it's tongue and groove board they put in here?

0:39:360:39:40

It's tongue and groove board. That's incredible.

0:39:400:39:44

Well, that gives you a watertight line into the tower.

0:39:440:39:47

Yeah, yeah.

0:39:470:39:48

Now we can see very, very clearly the moat pit in front of us,

0:39:480:39:52

we can see the outer wall, we can see the inner wall.

0:39:520:39:55

We've exposed some structural details of the timbering,

0:39:550:39:57

which held the clay in place to keep the structure watertight

0:39:570:40:00

and of course we've got this lovely inner shaft,

0:40:000:40:02

and this is the coal mine in front of us. Right here.

0:40:020:40:05

Would the coal have been taken out from here?

0:40:050:40:08

Very much so, absolutely, and ships would have - small ships -

0:40:080:40:12

would have come alongside,

0:40:120:40:13

and the coal would have been loaded directly from the top of the actual

0:40:130:40:16

shaft itself, straight into the ships and off it would have gone.

0:40:160:40:20

By the time the Culross pit was dug,

0:40:280:40:31

down in England, the Reformation had taken further extraordinary twists.

0:40:310:40:36

The Protestant Edward was followed by the Catholic Mary,

0:40:360:40:40

and then in 1558 by Elizabeth I,

0:40:400:40:44

who steered England and Wales back to the Protestant religion.

0:40:440:40:48

Elizabeth was a convinced Protestant but not a zealous one,

0:40:520:40:56

let alone fanatical.

0:40:560:40:58

She had no desire to open windows on men's souls, she said.

0:40:580:41:02

But events in England now were no longer determined

0:41:020:41:06

simply by what happened within the country,

0:41:060:41:08

but by the wider stage, both of Ireland and of Europe.

0:41:080:41:13

And the threat of Spain.

0:41:130:41:16

Across Europe, the Reformation had produced a deep religious divide.

0:41:180:41:22

The looming power of the Spanish Catholic empire,

0:41:240:41:26

which occupied the Netherlands,

0:41:260:41:29

provoked English paranoia about Papist invasions and plots.

0:41:290:41:33

Especially in English-occupied Catholic Ireland.

0:41:330:41:37

Here, the Protestant Reformation had made no headway.

0:41:370:41:41

So, fatefully, the Elizabethans began

0:41:430:41:46

the conquest and colonisation of Ireland,

0:41:460:41:48

an event which has marked our common histories to this day.

0:41:480:41:52

To the English, the Irish were uncivilised barbarians

0:41:540:41:59

and the Irish tried to persuade Elizabeth otherwise.

0:41:590:42:02

Here in Dublin,

0:42:040:42:05

there's an extraordinary survival from that time.

0:42:050:42:08

A presentation booklet asking Elizabeth herself

0:42:080:42:12

to see Ireland as one of Europe's ancient cultures.

0:42:120:42:15

This is it!

0:42:170:42:19

It's a very delicate, almost flimsy document,

0:42:190:42:22

but it's quite beautiful.

0:42:220:42:24

It's talked of being put together around 1563-64,

0:42:240:42:29

in anticipation of Elizabeth's visit to Cambridge.

0:42:290:42:32

The author of it is the Baron Of Delvin, Christopher Nugent.

0:42:320:42:38

And what this is, at the very start is an address to Queen Elizabeth,

0:42:380:42:43

thanking her for according him the honour of inviting him

0:42:430:42:46

to supply her with an account of the Irish language.

0:42:460:42:49

It's gorgeous.

0:42:490:42:50

"Among the many fold actions, most gracious

0:42:500:42:53

"and virtuous Sovereign,

0:42:530:42:55

"that bare testimony to the world of your Majesty's great affection,

0:42:550:43:01

"tending to the Reformation of Ireland."

0:43:010:43:03

-So this is politically loaded, then.

-It is indeed.

0:43:030:43:06

But, of course, she ignored it, I don't know that it ever left

0:43:060:43:09

the area of Cambridge, it was found there in the mid-19th century.

0:43:090:43:12

Don't know if she ever even read it. So it's a poignant document.

0:43:120:43:15

It's very poignant, isn't it?

0:43:150:43:17

Her interest in Irish, as we know now,

0:43:170:43:20

was purely in using the language as a vehicle for the propagation

0:43:200:43:25

of the reformed religion.

0:43:250:43:28

This is where he is laying out the parallels between

0:43:280:43:31

Latin, Greek, Hebrew and the Irish language.

0:43:310:43:36

Not barbarian, it's a classical language!

0:43:360:43:38

Precisely, that is the subtext.

0:43:380:43:41

And then he gets around to giving Elizabeth what she wants,

0:43:410:43:45

which is the... as we said, is the alphabet

0:43:450:43:48

and then he finishes off with some useful phrases, you might...

0:43:480:43:51

Great! Will you read them in Gaelic if I read them in English?

0:43:510:43:54

So, well, it's, "How do you do?" Which is "quomodo habes?"

0:43:540:43:58

"Cones ta tu?"

0:43:580:44:00

"I'm well." "Benesum."

0:44:000:44:01

"Taim to maih."

0:44:010:44:03

And here's one for you. "God save the queen."

0:44:030:44:06

HE LAUGHS

0:44:060:44:07

Never thought I'd find myself saying this.

0:44:070:44:09

"Dia shabhail banrion."

0:44:090:44:11

But Elizabeth couldn't listen with an open mind.

0:44:130:44:17

Tensions were ratcheted up as the English feared the Irish Catholics

0:44:170:44:22

would make common cause with Spain.

0:44:220:44:25

It was the thorn in the side of the Tudor administration.

0:44:250:44:28

And it was the area over which they -

0:44:280:44:30

certainly the Henrytian administration -

0:44:300:44:33

and later the Elizabethan one, had so little influence,

0:44:330:44:37

and in fact it was the frustration, I suppose, that encouraged

0:44:370:44:41

Elizabeth to try to bring it under her control to a greater degree.

0:44:410:44:44

Elizabeth's government committed itself

0:44:480:44:51

to making Ireland British.

0:44:510:44:53

And they met fierce resistance,

0:44:530:44:56

especially from the great Ulster Catholic clans, like the MacDonalds.

0:44:560:45:00

And in the summer of 1575, an Elizabethan army

0:45:000:45:04

besieged the MacDonald stronghold out there on the island of Rathlin,

0:45:040:45:09

where the MacDonald lords had put their families for safety.

0:45:090:45:13

It was a four-day bombardment by the English commanders,

0:45:130:45:17

including Francis Drake.

0:45:170:45:18

And in the end the garrison surrendered,

0:45:180:45:21

believing they had safe conduct.

0:45:210:45:23

200 of them were massacred and so were 300 or 400 women and children,

0:45:230:45:28

hunted down in the caves and sea cliffs,

0:45:280:45:31

in revenge against the rebels.

0:45:310:45:33

And the MacDonald lords themselves,

0:45:340:45:37

believing that their families were safe out there,

0:45:370:45:39

stood here on the coast, powerless to intervene

0:45:390:45:43

as the tragedy unfolded.

0:45:430:45:45

It was a grim foretaste of what was to come in the 17th century.

0:45:450:45:51

In 1588, Spain attempted a full-scale invasion of England,

0:45:510:45:56

the Spanish Armada.

0:45:560:45:58

Defeated in the channel by Drake and his captains, the invasion failed.

0:46:000:46:06

That autumn, the returning Armada was destroyed

0:46:100:46:13

here on the rocky shores of Antrim and Donegal.

0:46:130:46:17

The victory set the seal

0:46:170:46:20

on Elizabeth's fledging English Protestant state.

0:46:200:46:23

On the victory medal, a proud inscription,

0:46:240:46:28

"God blew and they were scattered".

0:46:280:46:31

In Ireland, the English began a policy of plantations,

0:46:380:46:42

shipping over settlers from Devon and Cornwall,

0:46:420:46:44

and especially from Scotland.

0:46:440:46:46

The English regarded colonisation as a kind of civilising mission.

0:46:460:46:52

TRADITIONAL IRISH MUSIC

0:46:540:46:57

The English poet Edmund Spencer said

0:47:000:47:03

the Irish must be made to forget their Irish nation,

0:47:030:47:06

and that meant a war on Irish culture.

0:47:060:47:09

Now, in traditional societies, still strongly oral societies

0:47:110:47:16

like 16th century Ireland, Tudor Wales or Cornwall for that matter,

0:47:160:47:20

the bards, the poets, the harpers were not just entertainers,

0:47:200:47:24

they were the custodians of history and language, of genealogy,

0:47:240:47:28

of the people's claim to the land -

0:47:280:47:31

in other words, of the communal identity and collective memory.

0:47:310:47:36

But in Queen Elizabeth's reign,

0:47:360:47:37

the Irish people were faced with an occupying English state

0:47:370:47:42

that remorselessly pushed nationalistic propaganda,

0:47:420:47:46

English identity,

0:47:460:47:47

the Irish didn't have that.

0:47:470:47:50

In the 1590s, Irish bards and poets

0:47:500:47:54

responded by speaking of the single Irish people.

0:47:540:47:59

Elizabethan government's answer was to declare war on the poets.

0:48:000:48:04

So it was in the face of this cultural oppression

0:48:080:48:12

that the people of Ireland began to form an Irish national identity.

0:48:120:48:17

And by the end of the century, right across the British isles

0:48:190:48:23

these religious and national divisions had hardened.

0:48:230:48:26

And they would shape our modern world.

0:48:270:48:31

In England, too, national identity

0:48:340:48:37

had been moulded by Reformation politics.

0:48:370:48:40

Flushed with patriotic pride after the Armada,

0:48:420:48:45

by the 1590s, England could now call itself a Protestant nation.

0:48:450:48:50

And the English people could begin to look back more calmly

0:48:500:48:55

on the tumultuous events of the century.

0:48:550:48:57

They'd gone through four changes of religion in a single lifetime,

0:48:570:49:01

at times they can't have known

0:49:010:49:03

what the government would tell them to believe next.

0:49:030:49:06

But now the mass of the people had accepted the changes and moved on.

0:49:080:49:14

And here in Long Melford, a remarkable manuscript

0:49:140:49:18

gives us a sense of what that meant.

0:49:180:49:19

Written by the churchwarden Roger Martin,

0:49:190:49:23

it sums up Britain's age of new worlds and lost worlds.

0:49:230:49:28

Yes, this is the so-called black book of Melford.

0:49:280:49:33

This page shows his account of the contents of the book.

0:49:330:49:40

Listed here are the documents that he thought it was important

0:49:400:49:46

to record for all time.

0:49:460:49:48

This is his characteristic hand, with his Rs and Hs

0:49:480:49:52

and the tendency to write uphill.

0:49:520:49:54

And then Martin gets into his stride and he says,

0:49:560:49:59

"Item of the silver plate,

0:49:590:50:03

"that did belong unto Melford Church before the spoil, a remembrance."

0:50:030:50:10

There's a very important dig

0:50:100:50:14

that something pretty dramatic has happened.

0:50:140:50:18

And that this is worth recording for posterity.

0:50:180:50:21

In just a few decades, the British people had been forced

0:50:210:50:25

to leave their old world behind,

0:50:250:50:27

and many of them, like Roger Martin, with profound regret.

0:50:270:50:33

Yes, must have been very confusing times

0:50:340:50:36

for ordinary people in Britain, mustn't they?

0:50:360:50:40

By the end of the 16th century,

0:50:400:50:42

toward the end of Elizabeth's reign,

0:50:420:50:45

you're dealing with a nation which, religiously, was fractured.

0:50:450:50:50

And never the same again.

0:50:500:50:54

With various bodies of opinion, there were those who decided,

0:50:540:50:57

either by conviction or out of caution,

0:50:570:51:01

to conform to the new established Protestant Church Of England,

0:51:010:51:06

but, as we know from the case of Roger Martin and others,

0:51:060:51:10

others remained true to the old faith.

0:51:100:51:13

And Roger Martin was true in that way right up to his death in 1615.

0:51:130:51:20

He survived the whole of the Reformation,

0:51:200:51:24

across five reigns of different monarchs

0:51:240:51:26

but he still remained true to his faith.

0:51:260:51:30

On the other hand, of course, there were plenty of people

0:51:300:51:33

who were far more liberal and unlikely to conform to anything.

0:51:330:51:40

Who were much more convinced about the personal relationship

0:51:400:51:43

between the individual and God, and the importance of the word.

0:51:430:51:49

The word in the scriptures and as expounded from the pulpit,

0:51:490:51:54

far more than, you know, tradition,

0:51:540:51:57

and the theatre and the colour of old worship.

0:51:570:52:02

-I suppose...the dust settled?

-Has the dust settled?

0:52:020:52:05

-Has the dust settled?

-Probably not!

0:52:050:52:07

For after all, even today across the British Isles and Ireland,

0:52:090:52:14

we're still negotiating the fallout of these great events.

0:52:140:52:18

And again, as always in history, there were unforeseen consequences.

0:52:200:52:25

For once Pandora's box had been opened,

0:52:250:52:29

out came Pandora's Protestants.

0:52:290:52:33

# The tax man's taken all my dough... #

0:52:360:52:40

This is Scrooby in Nottinghamshire. Here, late in Elizabeth's reign,

0:52:400:52:44

events began that would lead to the triumph of the Puritans in England,

0:52:440:52:49

the overthrow of the British monarchy,

0:52:490:52:51

and even the founding of America.

0:52:510:52:55

# In the summer time... #

0:52:550:52:56

By now, Elizabeth's government

0:52:560:52:58

thought the Reformation had gone far enough,

0:52:580:53:01

but up here there were many who didn't agree.

0:53:010:53:05

We're very proud of our history, we really are.

0:53:050:53:09

The residents of Scrooby, I think,

0:53:090:53:11

see themselves as part of the British history

0:53:110:53:15

because it was a fundamental change in British religion

0:53:150:53:17

and of course it affected the Americans as well.

0:53:170:53:22

I think we see ourselves as almost a small republic today.

0:53:220:53:26

Fighting against the evils of oppressive government

0:53:260:53:28

and the nanny state!

0:53:280:53:30

But, in a funny way, don't you think that's what

0:53:300:53:32

they were about too?

0:53:320:53:34

They were against being told what to do, in a sense.

0:53:340:53:36

Well, absolutely, and, you know, they suffered for it.

0:53:360:53:40

It was the freedom that they desired that they couldn't get here.

0:53:400:53:43

# Help me, help me, help me sail away... #

0:53:430:53:49

Out of these villages came sturdy Puritan separatists,

0:53:490:53:53

far more radical in their politics than the Tudor government

0:53:530:53:58

could ever have foreseen when they started their Reformation.

0:53:580:54:02

Difficult question, but why did it happen here?

0:54:020:54:06

I mean, this tiny little area, this side of the Trent,

0:54:060:54:10

this cluster of villages.

0:54:100:54:11

The people in this area are certainly very spirited.

0:54:110:54:14

HE LAUGHS

0:54:140:54:15

They are!

0:54:150:54:17

Maybe it's just that by chance that we have this

0:54:170:54:20

clump here of like minded people, able to support each other

0:54:200:54:24

and thank goodness that they did

0:54:240:54:26

because they changed the world, really,

0:54:260:54:28

when you look at what this did.

0:54:280:54:30

Ladies and gentlemen! The raffle will now be drawn in the tent.

0:54:330:54:37

The movement gathered momentum

0:54:400:54:44

and this part of the East Midlands became a hotbed of non-conformity.

0:54:440:54:48

Secret religious services were held in the surrounding villages.

0:54:480:54:51

This is the path that was used by those early separatists

0:54:530:54:57

from Scrooby on their journeys to listen to a charismatic preacher,

0:54:570:55:04

another core member of the group. Richard Clifton

0:55:040:55:08

was vicar in a tiny church in the woods here, of Babworth.

0:55:080:55:12

And here today, you'll still find both memories and physical traces

0:55:170:55:22

of this radical religious past.

0:55:220:55:25

In Babworth, a remarkable discovery was made only recently.

0:55:260:55:30

As the workmen went down,

0:55:300:55:33

they came across this old tin can, as they thought.

0:55:330:55:37

And they realised it was something more important.

0:55:370:55:40

So this would have been used for communion? 1593.

0:55:400:55:45

Yes.

0:55:450:55:46

But 1593, Clifton's here preaching in this church

0:55:460:55:50

and doing the rituals.

0:55:500:55:52

And to realise that Clifton's hands, all those years ago,

0:55:520:55:57

held that, it is quite humbling in a way, I suppose, really.

0:55:570:56:03

He must have been a great preacher

0:56:030:56:05

because he attracted people to come this church from villages

0:56:050:56:10

round about, and farther than villages, and he collected

0:56:100:56:13

this rather dedicated band of people who were willing to follow him.

0:56:130:56:17

When James I heard about it, they were reporting to him

0:56:170:56:22

saying that they thought there should be no bishops in the church.

0:56:220:56:27

He said, "What? No bishop? No king! So get them out."

0:56:270:56:31

And he did.

0:56:310:56:33

The other way of looking at it is that the people of Babworth

0:56:330:56:37

were just bloody minded!

0:56:370:56:39

Yes, they were.

0:56:390:56:41

And to a certain extent we still are, those in the church.

0:56:410:56:44

The last parson said,

0:56:440:56:46

"Separatists, what makes them think they went away?"

0:56:460:56:50

THEY ALL LAUGH

0:56:500:56:51

These ideas now spread out from the villages of the Trent valley

0:56:560:57:00

to towns like Gainsborough, where they were supported

0:57:000:57:04

by wealthy Puritan patrons.

0:57:040:57:06

And from here, they went to Europe and America.

0:57:060:57:10

You have to remember, these ideas have been running

0:57:110:57:15

under the surface of society for a long time.

0:57:150:57:17

Indeed, that idea of intensive private reading

0:57:170:57:23

of the religious text

0:57:230:57:25

would be as important to the religious separatists here

0:57:250:57:29

as it had been to the Lollards.

0:57:290:57:31

Those ideas didn't go away, the Lollards' battle

0:57:310:57:34

had been against the Pope in Rome and the Catholic Church.

0:57:340:57:37

Now, there was an established Protestant Church of England,

0:57:370:57:41

but it was still state religion, tied to the monarchy,

0:57:410:57:45

and backed by force.

0:57:450:57:47

So the issue was still the same.

0:57:470:57:50

By whose authority is my personal path to God to be mediated?

0:57:500:57:55

So, in the 16th century, the British people went through

0:58:000:58:05

a tremendous psychological rupture

0:58:050:58:07

at the hands of their own government.

0:58:070:58:09

MUSIC: "When The Saints Go Marching In"

0:58:100:58:13

But resilient and adaptable, they came out of it with new energies.

0:58:140:58:20

With new ideas about personal freedom,

0:58:200:58:23

ideas which will lead to the age of revolution.

0:58:230:58:29

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0:58:450:58:48

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