The Age of Revolution The Great British Story: A People's History

The story of the British is a tale of invention and creativity,

but also of constant struggle.

The tale has been told many times and in different ways

but this about the people's experience.

Told with the help of communities right across the British isles.

The real makers of our story were the people themselves,

for it was they, often in the face of great adversity,

who created our rights and our freedoms.

And in that story, the next great turning point is the 17th century.

Then the ordinary people fought their rulers for democracy itself.

And for the first time in our story, the tales of all

the peoples of Britain come together in one common narrative.

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

At the start of the 17th century,

the British Isles were poised between the old world and the new.

In 1603, Elizabeth I dies childless,

and the English invite the King of the Scots, James VI,

to come down here to London

and to rule the kingdom of England and Wales and Ireland, too.

And, of course, James's perspective is not an English one. He's a Scot.

He's sees the British world from the North.

In his lifetime,

he'd seen the terrible divisions that had afflicted the island

and in his mind crystallises the idea of Great Britain.

A single kingdom under one monarch

and one law encompassing the whole of the Isles.

They even devise a new flag

to symbolise this union of what James called North and South Britain.

And there were many, of course, north and south of the border

who vehemently disagreed with that vision of the future.

But, at that moment, it's a time of optimism.

A typical English community then was Halesowen in the Black Country.

It was a metalworking place.

There'd been cutlers and blade-makers here since the 1200s.

Back in the reformation,

they'd survived the Tudor religious crises in relative calm.

Like most of the country by now,

the people here had accepted the new Protestant religion,

but, fatefully, it would be their metalworking skills

that would draw them into war.

1618 here in Halesowen must have seemed a year like any other.

The wars and revolutions, the violence which would engulf the

British isles in the 17th century and sweep across the Black Country,

turning neighbour against neighbour, wasn't even a cloud on the horizon.

We know about life here from the churchwarden's books,

which show us the time through the people's eyes.

When you open the churchwarden's accounts for those years,

it's the simple record of an English community

rubbing along together.

Expenses of the wardens, the charitable donations,

church festivals,

King James's holy day at the end of July.

But the great event for the village was the decision

taken by the parish to cast a new great bell.

"Paid for ale at the Black Boy Tavern in Halesowen

"when we agreed for the casting of the great bell."

"Paid in earnest of the bargain."

To cast their great bell,

the villagers dug a casting pit in the church yard.

Here, the bell maker worked with the villagers' help.

Puritans then saw church bells as a superstitious hangover

from the old catholic religion.

But Halesowen wasn't a fanatical place.

They threw themselves into the project with energy and enthusiasm.

In a proud metalworking town, every detail mattered.

"Paid to John Hadley, for fetching the bell metal from Birmingham,

"12 pence."

"Paid for oil to the bells, three pence."

"Paid for leather to make

"the Baldrics, four pence."

"Paid to John Hadley for fetching the clay to make the moulds,

"four shillings."

"Paid for the fetching of horse muck

"to make the moulds, 16 pence."

"Paid for men to help us out of the ground with the bell,

"on the morrow after the casting, four shillings."

This is how it's been done since Taylor's was here, kind of thing.

And if this method works, why change it?

"Paid to the bell caster for casting our great bell,

"four pounds and ten shillings."

There we've got the date it was made,

and then round the other side we have the inscription.

Even in 2011, these things matter to people.

This will ring out for, hopefully, thousands of years,

providing it's looked after and whatnot.

There we are.

That must make the job extra satisfying.

It does, it does. Certainly does.

CHURCH BELLS RING

So, in 1618, Halesowen's great bell rang out as it still does.

But, in March 1625, it tolled for the death of the old King James,

and rang in the new Charles I.

A fateful moment for all British people.

It would make the Black Country a crucible of war,

as Britain turned its plough shears into swords.

King James had been a canny politician,

keeping religious and political tensions in balance.

But King Charles was a different kettle of fish. He had no political sense.

Not least, as we'll see, with his own Parliament in London.

But it was Charles' religious policies towards the Celtic world,

towards the Scots and the Irish,

which, in the end, would lead to disaster.

The problem was the idea of Great Britain itself.

The English, Welsh and Scots were now Protestant nations.

But in Catholic Ireland, the people would have none of it.

So the English government planned to civilise the Irish by colonisation.

Starting in the 1580s, the English government had encouraged

settlers to build farms in Ireland, plantations.

They came from Devon and Cornwall, but were mainly Scots Protestants.

We've been here for hundreds of years now.

They came for better land,

to escape persecution, perhaps, back in Scotland,

to improve their lot and make things better for their families.

I see myself as being Ulster Scots.

Very much a, sort of, fit in both camps, as it were.

It's part my being, who I am, where I belong.

BAGPIPES PLAY

And that pride in their Scottish roots is still tenaciously

kept by the Ulster Scots.

In Annalong, County Down, it's Burns Night.

The Hanna family came to Ulster in the 17th century,

driven by famine and poverty.

I'm not sure what the circumstances were, but I'm sure it was right for the family to move here.

Obviously, we've managed OK ever since moving,

so I suppose that was a good decision.

In a sense, the Ulster Scots were returning to their ancient roots,

for in the Dark Ages,

the Scoti had come from Ireland as Burns himself said.

He opened up with the words, "I cannot forget that the Ulster man,

"has blood of my blood and bone of my bone."

Now, he got it the wrong way round,

The Scots man is blood of the Ulster man's blood,

and bone of the Ulster man's bone. But I share his sentiment.

BAGPIPES PLAY

But in the 17th century, it was not blood

but religion and culture that would divide them.

Ireland's misfortune in this coming age of atrocities

was perhaps not so much the arrival of hard-working colonists

as the tragic divisions born of reformation politics.

The English government's plan for colonisation involved

founding towns, building churches, suppressing Irish culture,

all driven by their bitter anti-Irish and anti-Catholic agenda.

And in 1641, the Irish rose in revolt.

The rebellion of 1641 is hugely significant for the history of Ireland,

but also for the history of Scotland and England,

so those three Stuart kingdoms, Michael.

More people lost their lives during this particular moment

of intense violence than in any other period in Ireland's history.

It triggers or unleashes a whole series of events that really

plunges these three kingdoms into utter turmoil and crisis.

We have a decade of very, very intense civil war

that resulted in great bloodletting in all three kingdoms.

Across the Irish countryside, the rebels butchered the settlers.

The story is told in an archive unique in British and European history.

We're coming into the deposition here, where Elizabeth Price

and the other settlers are being herded onto the bridge at Portadown.

The poor widow of a settler, Elizabeth Price's testimony

is one of more than 3,000 witness statements to the atrocities of 1641.

"They are driven like sheep or beef to a market,

"those poor prisoners, being about 115,

"to the bridge of Portadown.

"The said captain and rebels

"then forced all those prisoners

"nd amongst them the deponents, five children

"By name, Adam, John Ann, Mary and Joan,

"off the bridge, into the water,

"and there, instantly and most barbarously,

"drowned the most of them.'

"Those that could swim and came to the shore,

"they knocked them in their heads

"and thereafter drowned them,

"also shot them to death in the water."

It's really powerful stuff,

and it goes on, page after page, like this.

Like modern war atrocities, almost, isn't it?

And her five children, are they killed?

They're all drowned, and that's what she's describing there,

the loss of her own children.

The depositions get used a lot in later times

to sustain sectarian interpretations of history, don't they?

How important is religion, though?

I think religion is hugely important.

Religion meant a huge amount to people living in the 17th century,

whether they were Catholic or Protestant,

and what comes out here even in Elizabeth Price's deposition,

is that fundamental hatred that has bubbled to the surface.

The rebels target churches, they piss on bibles.

They dig up Protestant graves.

Again, it's this struggle and turmoil,

it's an age of religious wars,

and this is Ireland's own encounter and experience with that.

The rebels were a confederacy of Irish and old English Catholic

families who'd lived in Ireland since the Middle Ages.

For nearly ten years, they'll be, effectively, an independent Ireland.

Meanwhile, on the mainland,

the Presbyterian Scots, too, had risen against Charles,

in fury at his attempt to impose an Anglican prayer book.

Charles marched north to suppress them,

but they defeated him and forced him to pay huge war reparations.

The edges of Charles' Great Britain were burning.

King Charles had ruled through the 1630s without Parliament.

The Eleven Years' Tyranny, they called it.

But now, bankrupted by his wars with the Scots,

and with the situation in Ireland worsening,

Charles was forced to recall Parliament to ask for more money.

But the majority in Parliament were bitterly opposed to him

and disputed his right to raise any tax without their consent,

especially to raise armies within Britain.

It had become a fundamental matter of political authority.

Did it reside with the King or did it reside with Parliament?

Both sides now began to raise armies and prepare for war.

BELL TOLLS

The war would split regions, neighbours and even families.

Western Britain was especially for the King,

the rich Southeast for Parliament.

In the Black Country, Halesowen's Lord was a royalist,

while puritan radical Birmingham went with Parliament.

Sunderland supported Parliament.

Newcastle was with the King.

In Edinburgh, the Scots made their covenant against Charles, for now.

English armies rampaging in Ireland, the Scots marching through England.

These were British civil wars.

The Welsh were largely royalist,

confirming the view in London that

Wales was a dark corner of Britain.

In August 1642, the King raised his standard at Nottingham.

Then, moving his army to Shrewsbury,

he sent his recruiting men into the villages.

This morning, we're going to talk about possible careers within the army.

Among them was the little Shropshire farming community of Myddle.

I joined the British army a little bit younger than yourselves.

I was 16.

And we know what happened here from a unique village history,

written by a local, Richard Gough.

There's about 140 different jobs in there.

The attraction for the boys then was regular pay.

Four shillings and eight pence a week was over £400 today.

A good wage for a farm labourer.

Right, lads, you've heard me rabbit on for the last half hour or so.

Is anybody considering making it a vocation if they're not successful at football?

Why not?

Don't want to die!

Don't want to die? I'm here.

If you're told to do it by the government of the day,

irrespective of whether you agree politically,

you should be professional enough to do the job that you signed on to do.

The village economy had hit hard times,

and twenty boys from Myddle joined up,

swearing their oath of allegiance

to defend King Charles with their utmost.

"The King commanded all men between the age of 16 and 60 to appear on Myddle Hill."

"And if any person would serve as a soldier in the wars,

"he should have 14 groats a week for his pay."

"I was about eight years old. I went to see this great show."

In the late summer of 1642, you would have seen

scenes like this across Britain.

Musters, trained bands, volunteers - a nation divided.

It was the first war that involved us all.

In Leicestershire, the village of Kibworth was occupied by both sides

at different times during the war.

And there were dead bodies here in Mainstreet

after the battle nearby at Naseby.

Charles' army actually camps in the village

and the other villages around before Naseby.

Right.

And, of course, once the battle's been lost,

they're swarming through here.

Go into the posture of order. Most of you are at order.

You know the term "running a man through" comes from the pike?

Oh, does it?

Yeah, run at them, through,

push the body off the end, carry on running.

Gruesome.

Horrible, isn't it?

How grateful I am to be living in the 21st century, is all I can say.

At the start of the war, censorship was relaxed and printed news

and propaganda became important for the first time in our history.

There were proportionally more young men with higher education

than at any time before the 20th century,

so the rank and file were literate and politically aware.

We hear that the King's on his way to Nottingham to raise an army

to put Parliament down.

Parliament is an important part of how this country runs.

Fire!

After the first indecisive pitched battle at Edgehill,

things settled down to a war of attrition across Britain.

Gradually, the conflict drew in the regions.

And one of the most bitter and prolonged struggles

in the British mainland was in Cornwall,

which stuck with the King through thick and thin.

On the eve of the Civil War, the Cornish were still seen

as a separate nation within England -

a nation with its own language and customs -

and the Cornish saw King Charles

as representing British rather than English interests,

and hence Cornish interests and Cornish religion,

and so they backed the King in the Civil War.

And for Cornish identity and Cornish culture,

that turned out to be a disaster.

Here in the hills outside Fowey, Parliament had its biggest defeat

and the battlefield's now being mapped in a project

using metal detectors and GPS.

The added gain for Cornish nationalists.

It was Cornwall's greatest triumph

Yeah, that's looking good.

That's the only English one we do have working with us.

-You tolerate him, do you?

-Yeah.

Huge interest, isn't it?

It's the greatest battle in the Civil War in the Southwest

but it's a Cornish victory, as well, isn't it?

Oh, yes, yes, it's Cornish.

John and Graham are mapping every bullet,

every buckle and every powder cap left on the battlefield.

Out of this, they're hoping to create the most detailed map ever

of a British battle.

METAL DETECTOR BEEPS

-That's a good sound.

-So, what's that responding to?

It'll be a musket ball, I reckon.

There, there.

Can you see her?

Now, we don't want to...

METAL DETECTOR BEEPS

..damage the musket ball.

Yeah, if you look at the impact on it.

This'll be done by the rod, there, look. That is the ramming.

Right.

And if you look on here, look, see where the impacts are.

So that's an impact one.

It's been fired?

It's been fired, definitely fired.

And how many of these have you discovered, then?

6,000.

6,000?!

6,000, yeah.

I've never seen a project like this.

I've never seen a battlefield so amazingly observed before.

And as vast numbers of finds are mapped,

the chaos of battle begins to take on a pattern.

Each and every musket ball is recorded.

As you can see on this map here...

The ferocious fighting along the hedgerows -

the Civil War killing grounds.

Look at how much is here. It's colossal.

The terror of a civil war firestorm, as the doomed parliamentarian army

under the Earl of Essex was cornered, here above Fowey.

The parliamentarians referred to this as the Cornish mousetrap.

They're trapped in this little area of land between Fowey and St Blazey.

They're running out of food, they're running out of ammunition,

they're hoping that supplies will come by sea,

but the wind is in the wrong direction and nothing's coming.

And also, they're very heavily outnumbered.

I mean, Essex himself claims that

the royalist horse were coming in in a great cloud.

There were rules of war to protect civilians,

and in the mainland they were usually observed.

But there were war crimes.

Before the battle, the Cornish town of Lostwithiel had been occupied

and badly treated by the parliamentarians.

And now the townsfolk vented their fury on the defeated prisoners.

Another bridge, another scene of savagery.

We're told that they tore off their hats, their coats,

their clothes and threw a number of them actually into this river.

And they didn't just attack the parliamentarian soldiers.

They also attacked the women coming with them, their camp followers.

They threw a pregnant woman into this, this water,

having taken, you know, most of her clothes away,

and, according to a parliamentarian source, at least, she died

as a result of the treatment she'd received.

You get an impression from a lot of the sources of the time

that the English viewed the Cornish as being,

kind of, primitive, barbarian, boorish.

Yeah, absolutely.

Peasants, almost.

There's a racial hierarchy, if you like,

through the eyes of Englishmen in London,

with the English at the top, Irish at the bottom and Welsh

and Cornish sitting somewhere rather uncomfortably in-between.

And during the Civil War, parliamentary propagandists

go out of their way to draw parallels

between the Welsh and the Cornish, almost to alienise them

still further, if you like.

And I think the royalists did their best

to work things the other way,

and to present the King as a particular defender of the Cornish,

someone who's particularly anxious to preserve their rights

and their traditions and customs.

So both sides if you like trying to use Cornishness to their own end.

So eating up men, money and resources,

the war spread out to touch the farthest corners of Britain.

But so far as we can tell,

most ordinary people resisted being brutalised.

Our local records give us vivid glimpses of human kindness.

"Seeing three of the prisoners badly bleeding, I dressed their wounds."

"Captain Palmer told me not to help the enemies of God."

"I replied I had a duty to treat them as men not as enemies."

'What the war was like at village level

'is revealed in our local constable's books,

'with their charity to wounded soldiers, paupers, and refugees.'

Parish constable's accounts.

1640 to 1666.

'Lying on the Great North Road,

'the village of Upton saw the constant movement of armies.'

In the 17th century, you had constables in every village.

And they're not like the police constables today

but they were the origin of them.

Upton, like many other places, would have seen soldiers

at least every week and there'd be one person in that troop

who'd be a treasurer, and he would have a book of receipts,

handwritten receipts or printed receipts,

and they would collect things from the village constable,

and this account book has all of those collections.

And one of the constables in Upton was a woman, Jane Kitchin.

"Given to six Irish people that had great loss,

"both by sea and land, sixpence."

"Paid for a pair of boots for a soldier, two shillings."

"Given for carrying the clubs and pikes

to Newark the 17th of May, sixpence."

What do you think of what it was like to live here

at your age, at that time?

Do you think it was scary?

Would you have liked to have been alive then?

You might be freaked out because you don't know what's going to happen.

Think it would have been quite horrible

and so you might have to move to different places.

Be kind of weird seeing all the dead bodies and stuff.

Were there rules of war, Martyn?

I mean, I'm there with my two little daughters like Ella and Emily here,

and the soldiers come into the town.

Would they just go into our barn and steal our corn?

There are very clear rules.

You are not supposed to plunder anybody,

and most soldiers that are based in this area, nearby,

aren't going to cause a mess.

However, if this is an area occupied by royalists, for example,

a parliamentarian regiment

might be a bit less polite about giving out quittances,

and if there's been a siege and a town is stormed,

that is it's attacked and the attackers get into the town,

then, again, theoretically,

you're not supposed to take things from people's houses,

or kill civilians or injure them in any way or burn their house down.

But that sort of thing, unfortunately, does happen.

Would the mum and dad care if they went to war?

If the children went to war?

Yes, they would. If they liked you.

I mean, if they didn't like you they might be quite happy,

pack you some sandwiches and off you go.

Yes, parents would be very worried if their children went to war.

It's not just a danger of being shot or stabbed

or mangled by a cannonball.

But you can catch terrible diseases because it's frightening

and horrible, and you may never see them again.

And, of course, many young men in the civil wars

were never seen again.

In Myddle, 13 of the 20 boys never returned.

Looking back in his old age,

Richard Gough recorded their names and their stories.

"Thomas Haywood, brother to Joseph Haywood, the innkeeper in Myddle,

"He was killed in the wars, but no-one knows where."

"Rhys Vaughan, a brother of William Vaughan, a weaver in Myddle,

"He was killed at Hopton Castle and cut into pieces."

"Thomas Taylor, son of Henry Taylor of Myddle

"was killed at Oswell Street."

"John Benion of Newton, a tailor who married Elizabeth,

"the daughter of John Hall of Myddle."

"Soon after, he went for a soldier and died in the wars."

"Richard Chaloner of Myddle, son of Richard Turner

"and brother of Alan Turner, the blacksmith,

"a big lad to who went to Edgehill to fight,

"and was never heard of afterwards in this country."

"If so many died out of this small place," said Gough,

"How many thousands died in England in that war?"

For the British people, it was the first modern war,

and making the munitions needed to fight it transformed the economy.

17th century Britain didn't have an arms industry...

..but now, in Halesowen and across the Black Country,

their metalworking skills were turned to weapons of war.

It looks like the Lost City of the Incas, doesn't it,

with the roots coming out of the stonework.

But this is one of the most important and most interesting

and least known sights of industrial archaeology in the whole of Britain.

This is the sight of Hales Furnace.

With this flow of water,

there must have been iron masters working here from the Middle Ages.

But this landscape was transformed soon after 1600

with the creation of a furnace.

They dammed the river,

created this weir with all this stonework around it.

A big water wheel and with it huge bellows made out of leather and wood,

which drove the blast furnace.

And from then on it became one of the most important

iron producing places in the country.

Agricultural tools, ploughs, spades, mattocks,

all that sort of stuff, but also weapons.

Pikes and gun barrels for the Civil War.

Now in the forges of the Black Country,

plough shears literally were turned into swords.

The lock makers of Wolverhampton, making firing mechanisms.

The scythe makers of Sedgeley and Klent, sword blades.

From Stourbridge came shot. From Dudley, cannons.

From Halesowen, blades and pike heads.

The forges of Halesowen and Cradley worked for the King,

while puritan, radical Birmingham supplied Parliament.

So the rivalry between the brummies and the Black Country

goes back a long way.

We certainly don't like to be classed as brummies,

and brummies don't like to be classed as black countries,

as they call us, Yam Yams.

We are definitely Black Country.

Forged in the Black Country.

Definitely.

As always in history, war generates growth and wealth.

The origins of the Black Country as the workshop of the world

lie in the Civil War.

"Robert Porter, cutler of Birmingham,

"provided the parliamentarians of Staffordshire with the following."

"500 swords, four shillings and eight pence each."

"500 belts, 13 pence each.

"500 Bandoliers, 16 pence each."

So Birmingham became a key target for the royalists.

In 1643, the King's dashing nephew Prince Rupert attacked the town.

Among the dead were civilians.

"On Monday, April 3, 1643,

"Prince Rupert marched against Birmingham

"with 2,000 horse and foot."

"After two hours' fights, he entered,

"put diverse people to the sword and burnt about 80 houses to ashes."

"His forces kindled fire in the town with gunpowder and burning coals."

"Shooting at anyone who appeared to quench the flames."

"Making no differences between friend or foe."

As the war swept across Britain,

more and more civilians were dragged into the conflict.

"A thousand dragoons came into Hereford this week."

"I fear they will burn my barns and place soldiers so near me

"that there will be no going out."

And, as in all wars, the soldiers left their girls behind.

"William, son of a stranger."

"Elizabeth, daughter of a soldier,

"his name unknown, but courted in the courthouse."

Even close neighbours were on opposite sides.

Sunderland challenged royalist Newcastle's coal monopoly.

It's local pride.

It's just that historical battle against each other.

So the Geordies and the Mackems felt the adrenaline rush of war.

I've been thinking about it all week,

like a nervous feeling in my stomach, you know, until it's over.

As a rhyme of the day said,

"The Newcastle gallants fighting for the crown

"against the cuckolds of Sunderland town."

Everyone paid a price, from Land's End to north Scotland.

In February 1645, a royalist army whose core was Irish

marched all the way through the Highlands

and arrived here in the central square of the little town of Elgin

in Morayshire in Northeast Scotland.

An amazing document has survived here in Elgin,

which gives you a grass roots picture of what it was like

to live in a small town during the British civil wars.

In the huge Elgin deposition roll, today's townsfolk

discovered for themselves what it felt like to put up a royalist army.

Plundered by the common enemy, horrific.

Has a real resonance to it, doesn't it?

"From the said William Robertson in the month of December 1645."

"Alexander Russell, merchant of Elgin."

"He was pitifully murdered in May, 1645."

"Following the losses of Isabel Geddis in Elgin."

"But there was taken and plundered from her, clothes, habiliments,

"money, victuals, household provisions

"and others of that kind about written."

"Vittle, armour, gold, silver, coined and uncoined,

"household provisions and others of that kind."

"Losses to the sum of £144 money."

Did they get the compensation?

The ordinary people, as far as we can tell, never got a penny piece.

However, the Provost of the town, a chap called John Hay,

he was given, by Parliament, an interim payment of £1,000.

Phwoar, that's a lot of money!

That was to tide him over

until he got his full payment of a further 3,600.

That's an enormous sum of money.

An enormous sum of money,

but, of course, John Hay was a member of Parliament.

We all know about them!

The ordinary people had the satisfaction

of knowing that they were in the deposition's documents.

They want to show how grievously they've suffered, but they do know,

I think, deep down, they're not going to get any money back.

In June 1645, King Charles was decisively defeated at Naseby,

by Parliament's new model army under Generals Cromwell and Fairfax.

Charles attempted to claw things back in a second civil war,

but all the money and material support by now was with Parliament,

and by 1648, it was all over.

In the aftermath, Parliament moved its forces down into Cornwall

to mop up the last stubborn resistance.

For the Cornish people, the bitter circumstances of their final defeat

by Parliament have never been forgotten.

The price of loyally supporting the King would be the eventual loss

of their independence, their language, and their culture.

And for the diehard leadership, there was no escape but the sea.

For the Cornish, 1648 would take its place in their mythology

of the tragic defeats going back to the 1497 rising,

1549 prayer book rebellion.

The core of the resistance was here in the tip of the peninsula on the lizard,

across there to the land's end,

the last refuge of the old families, the old culture, the old language.

And after the defeat, the rebels fled to take shelter

in these wild coasts in cliff caves,

and even, it was said, down the tin pits.

But the principal firebrands, so a local historian reported,

once they were trapped, were so desperate that, scorning mercy,

they joined hands together and ran themselves violently into the ocean...

perished in the waters.

With the king now in prison and facing trial,

a new path in British history opened up.

Political leadership at the beginning of the Civil War period

wanted a re-adjustment in the balance of power

between King and democracy, between Parliament and the monarchy.

Out of that, they radicalised the ordinary people.

The soldiers were given a catechism, based on quotations from the bible

that supported taking up arms against the King.

So when the war ended and they were told to go home,

the Parliamentarian soldiers said, "Just a minute, no.

"We've got this text that says it's ours. It's our victory.

"We want a say."

All the debates we're having now about the nature of Parliament,

the nature of the monarchy, all of these questions were opened up,

debated and, interestingly, solutions found in the 17th century.

It radicalises ordinary people in a way that they've not been involved

in central government politics ever before.

Alarmed now by the flood of radical ideas coming from the rank and file,

the army leadership, who were property-owning gentry,

held a public debate about the future of British politics.

St Mary's church here in Putney was the place

where the victorious members of the parliamentarian army

met to debate fundamental issues of political liberty.

Fairfax, Ireton, Cromwell, the generals at a table at that end,

the rank and file in the church, radicals like Rainsbrough and Sexby.

The place is packed, electric. Not quite like tonight, perhaps,

but then democracy itself was at stake.

Everything in Britain politics was up for grabs.

We are talking about creating a community of goods and abolishing

the wages system and having common and democratic ownership

and control of the means of producing and distributing wealth.

It was the first time that ordinary people were able to take part,

and so you could imagine a whole social gathering of the army people

and their families waiting for the results of these debates.

And that's where you get Buff Coat

and all these lovely ordinary soldiers who are mentioned.

The electoral reform and religious tolerance,

all these things were debated,

but the whole crux of it was very much centred on the scriptures,

the idea of equality, which they'd got from the bible.

Women radicals, led by Katherine Chidley,

petitioned for women's rights, in a ferment of democratic ideas.

"By natural birth, all men are equal and alike.

"Born to like propriety, liberty and freedom

"to enjoy their birthright."

"We judge that all inhabitants should have an equal voice in elections."

"I think the poorest man in England has a life to live,

"as does the greatest man."

"That in all laws made, every person should be bound alike

"and that no estate, degree birth,

"or place should allow any exemptions."

"These things we declare to be our native rights,

"which we have dearly earned, yet our peace and freedom depends upon

"those who intended are bonded and brought a cruel war upon us."

King Charles was now tried

and convicted for crimes against the people.

He was executed here in Whitehall.

As a radical of the time put it,

"The common people, by their common consent and purse

"have overthrown their oppressor, King Charles."

They found justification for it in the law, in history,

and in the bible, of course.

Where in the bible was there justification

for one part of mankind ruling another?

"Only in selfish imaginations," they said,

"was one human being set up to rule over others."

The question now was how far would the revolution go?

# You noble diggers all

# Stand up now, stand up now

# You noble diggers all

# Stand up now. #

There were those who wished to push the revolution much further.

Radical groups, levellers and diggers wanted to do away

with class, wealth, privilege, property, the banks.

Declaring the earth a common treasury,

they formed a commune on St George's Hill in Surrey.

This is where Winstanley felt called by God to come.

They just took a small area of the land where they planted crops.

They built makeshift houses and they just got on peaceably together.

Putting a spade in the ground -

this is about breaking the soil on St George's Hill

and declaring freedom to the creation.

Declaring freedom to the creation.

Their chief inspiration was a draper, Gerrard Winstanley,

who became one of our greatest writers and greatest radicals.

"We have no intent of tumult," he said,

"But to work together in righteousness

"and to eat the blessings of the earth in peace."

"Posterity," said his friend, John Lilburn,

"We doubt not shall reap the benefit of our endeavours."

It's one of the great stories in British history.

These were ordinary people, inspired, inflamed

by the astonishing events of the 1640s,

by the teaching of the scriptures and by basic ideas

about social justice, they decided to take action

to make history for themselves.

"Just a bunch of people planting parsnips and carrots,"

it was said by a sneering contemporary, but their ideas,

what they said, what they did, are in the very fibre of British history

from the peasants' revolt and the lollards in the 14th century,

down through William Blake to the modern British radical tradition,

as Winstanley himself had hoped,

their ideas became part of OUR birthright.

But not yet.

Inevitably, the levellers were crushed by Parliament.

"Cut them to pieces," said Cromwell, "or they'll cut you to pieces."

Parliament was now supreme, and with the situation stabilised at home,

there was unfinished business over the sea, in Ireland.

"In August 1649, a fleet of over 100 ships loaded with men,

"weapons and supplies,

"landed at Ring's End on the outskirts of Dublin."

For almost ten years, the Irish confederacy

had ruled much of Ireland independent from England.

Cromwell's invasion put an end to that.

"Within four years, as many as 500,000 people

"or 25% of the population of the population of Ireland

"would be dead."

Drogheda, on the river Boyne, County Meath.

The terrible events that took place here

retain an almost mythic force in Irish history.

Cromwell, in fact, was not especially anti-Irish

or anti-Catholic, but he decided to demoralise the Irish

with a deliberate act of terror.

When the royalist garrison refused to surrender,

Cromwell ordered them all to be put to the sword.

But with them died 700 or 800 civilians - men, women and children.

And here they remember it still in exact detail.

They did break in the walls in that little graveyard over there

on the 11th of September 1649 with 10,000 men.

You can't grow up in Drogheda

without knowing who Oliver Cromwell is.

A man who came to our town and massacred the townspeople.

Got them in the church and the blood ran down Scarlet Street.

That's what they called it, Scarlet Street.

He killed the nuns there, did he?

He killed everybody, though.

He's a bit of a bollocks.

The atrocities that him and his army committed around the town here,

there's no question it was genocide

that took place in this area all around us here.

But Cromwell was a vicious kind of guy.

On the streets of Dublin, Cromwell is still a swear word.

Not nice.

Oliver Cromwell? Not a nice guy, no. We don't like him.

Cruel man, who came and did all sorts of awful things.

Pure hatred. Simple as that.

Cromwell's conquest of Ireland was the culmination

of a century of English colonisation.

At least 400,000 people are thought to have died

from slaughters, starvation and disease.

A fifth of the population.

The British civil wars were almost over.

Parliament's last enemy was their old ally, the Scots.

The Scots had sided with King Charles in the second Civil War,

and were now allied to his son, Charles II.

In 1651, Cromwell mounted his attack on Scotland.

He forced their last line of defence on the Firth of Forth,

defeated the Scots and brought the civil wars to a close.

One of the great, almost, mysteries of that traumatic period in British history

is the way in which the conflict is described as the English Civil War,

as if Scotland or perhaps Ireland had no part in it,

but unfortunately, an awful lot of Scottish people were involved

and sadly an awful lot of Scottish people died as well on both sides.

Scotland put up stiff resistance and it was only really

when the battle of Inverkeithing in July 1651 was lost

that Scotland fell.

So the conflict fundamentally affected

every aspect of Scottish life.

Indeed, after Scotland fell to Cromwell's soldiers and army in 1652,

for the next, almost, ten years until the restoration in 1660,

every aspect of Scottish life changed.

The human cost of the civil wars was huge.

In Britain, maybe 80,000 had died in the battles

and more still of disease and famine.

A higher proportion of the population

than in the First World War.

Cromwell died in 1658, and in 1660, the monarchy returned.

In Halesowen, the great bell rang in the new king, Charles II.

So the monarchy was restored,

but with a king whose powers were now limited.

Britain was not yet a democracy, but it was a parliamentary state.

In Cornwall, in 1660, the restoration was greeted

with special feelings of pride in their sufferings through the war

and their loyalty to the crown.

-That's magnificent, isn't it?

-It's a fine church.

Just here, above the door, is the king's letter.

Oh, yeah.

Original copies of these, which were printed in Oxford as broadsides,

were stuck up in the churches during the Civil War itself.

It's royalist propaganda as well as praise to the Cornish history.

He's pushing his own cause here, and I can imagine

the parliamentarians' troops then tore them down in 1646.

But after the restoration, they put them up again

in these more solid lasting forms.

"In the most public and lasting manner we can devise,

"commanding copies to be printed and published and one of them

"to be read in every church and chapel therein."

"And to be kept for ever." It's absolutely great, isn't it?

"To the inhabitants of the county of Cornwall."

"We are so highly sensible of their great and eminent courage

"against so potent an enemy..."

"..that we cannot but desire to publish it all to the world."

"And we do hear render our royal thanks to be kept for ever

"as a record, as long as the history of these times

"and this nation shall continue."

You'll never effectively get away from the radicalism

of the 17th century. It will re-occur.

It re-occurs in English politics in the 18th century,

the French not only use the radicalism of the English revolution,

they take away the terminology.

The American revolution steals wholesale

from the English revolution.

It's still here now.

But in the English occupy movement, you can see them

using leveller and digger philosophy straight from the 17th century.

Democracy was a dangerous word in the 17th century.

Even most parliamentarians thought is could only lead to anarchy,

and yet from the Putney debates

we can trace that great idea down to our own time,

to the universal declaration of human rights,

and to the political systems

under which the majority of the world now lives.

And the core idea behind it

is the freely-elected representatives of the people,

irrespective of class, gender,

creed, wealth or status.

And that idea doesn't come from ancient Greece,

it comes from 17th century England,

it comes from Buff Coat and his fellow soldiers at Putney,

and from the ordinary people.

From tradesmen and tradeswomen like Gerard Winstanley

and Katherine Chidley in the English revolution.

So, in the 17th century,

the British and Irish peoples went through their civil wars ordeal.

A generation of struggle and violence.

Divine right challenged,

the King executed,

the monarchy abolished, but life went on.

The King was restored with an Anglican

rather than a Protestant church.

A typically English compromise.

Even here in Myddle, the cost had been heavy.

But, as Richard Gough saw it, like communities up and down the land,

the people of Myddle had come through,

rubbing along, even when they were on opposite sides,

and their descendants still rub along together in the village today.

You remember their fathers and then their grandfathers,

and at my age I'm now looking at the grandsons

and I think, golly, I know four or five generations of these people.

They carry the stain of generations, just as in Gough, you know.

'But, in 1700, as Gough looked back over his tumultuous century,

'a new age was being born.'

'An age of industry and empire.'

'And with the union of England and Scotland,

'a new identity for us all, as Britons.'

'And that's the next part of our story.'

Thank you very much. Can you hear at the back without a microphone?

It's probably better, isn't it?

Thank you very much. It's lovely to be here.

SONG: "Somewhere Over The Rainbow"

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd