The Rebel Daughter by Miranda Malins

 

This is a prequel/companion novel to The Puritan Princess , told in a first person narrative by Bridget Cromwell, the eldest daughter of Oliver Cromwell and wife of Henry Ireton (and, following Ireton’s death, of Charles Fleetwood).  It’s told in the present tense, which I do find annoying – it makes me feel as if I’m back in the Infants, reading a Peter & Jane or Janet & John book – but it’s a fascinating story of weighty events combined with the domestic lives of the Cromwell women.

Civil War novels are generally about Cavaliers versus Roundheads, but this one focuses on the in-fighting between the Roundheads – Presbyterians versus Independents (which really ceased to be an issue in England, if not in Scotland and Northern Ireland, after the Restoration, but which was crucial in the late 1640s), the Putney Debates, and the role of the Levellers.  However, there’s no mention of the Diggers, which is a shame.  I find it interesting that the leader of the Diggers was from Wigan!  I also find it interesting that here are pop groups named after the Diggers, the Levellers and the New Model Army, but that’s beside the point.

The book finishes, apart from a brief epilogue, in 1652, so we don’t get the famous “In the name of God, go” speech, but there are numerous references to the frustration of the press and the public with politicians on all sides.  Some things don’t change very much over the years.  It’s particularly interesting to see two very controversial subjects, the execution of Charles I and the atrocities committed by Cromwell’s troops in Ireland, led by Henry Ireton, from Bridget’s viewpoint.

Puritans don’t get a very good press in England.  What do we know about Puritans?  They banned Christmas (with specific reference to mince pies) and they stopped people from playing football on Sundays.  Boo, hiss.  They went round people’s houses looking for old men who wouldn’t say their prayers, and taking them by the left leg and throwing them down the stairs.  There’s that brilliant episode of Blackadder in which Lord and Lady Whiteadder come to visit, and criticise absolutely everything that Edmund does.

Puritans who went to America, however, are seen in a rather romantic light.  That’s actually quite odd, given the way they treated Quakers and Baptists, and the Salem Witch Trials; but it’s that idea of wanting to found a New World, a New Jerusalem.  That in itself is problematic, given that Puritanism in in Dutch form was a major contributor towards apartheid, the idea of a chosen people who could help themselves to someone else’s land, but the romantic idea lingers.  And, having just typed “A New Jerusalem”, I’m now going to be earwormed by Carly Simon’s “Let the River Run” all day.   I love the fact that she wrote that song as a hymn to New York.  Much as I love Hubert Parry’s musical setting of “Jerusalem”, I take great exception to William Blake suggesting that a town/city with “dark satanic mills” is the antithesis of a New Jerusalem.  Gah.  Sorry, that’s totally beside the point, LOL.

I very much doubt that the Pilgrim Fathers ever so much as mentioned a New Jerusalem, a City on a Hill and all the rest of it, but we tend to think that they did.  And there does seem to have been some sense amongst Puritans in England in the mid to late 1640s of a chance to build a new world – we had the Levellers and the Diggers, as already mentioned, and the Fifth Monarchists.  The book very much presents Bridget as an idealist, someone who genuinely believed in the idea of a godly Commonwealth, and who was devastated when her father eventually accepted a role not that far removed from that of king.

The character does come across very well, but there are some frustrating anachronisms.  “Liz” and “Olly” would not have been used as nicknames for Elizabeth and Oliver in the 17th century: “Bess” and “Noll” were the usual short forms of the names.  And people would not have been talking about women’s rights.  Even the title of the book’s odd, because Bridget doesn’t rebel.   Her interpretation of events is put across well, though – although people might take exception to it.  We see her justifying the execution of Charles I as supposedly being the only way to bring an end to the conflict (except that it didn’t).  And, whilst being horrified by what happened in Ireland, saying that it was in line with what happened to besieged towns during the Thirty Years’ War – which is true enough, but may not go down very well with Irish readers.

For the Civil War from a female viewpoint, my number one recommendation is Pamela Belle’s Wintercombe, but that’s about a woman living in a country house in Somerset, whereas this one’s about a woman at the centre of the big events at the time, so they’re not really comparable.   This one isn’t the best Civil War book I’ve ever come across, but it’s certainly well worth a read: the history’s accurate, and, in particular, it’s an interesting and unusual take on the period.  I’ll certainly be keeping an eye out for any more books in this series.

Advertisement

The Puritan Princess by Miranda Malins

This was a fascinating idea, to write a book with Frances Cromwell, Oliver Cromwell’s youngest daughter, as the protagonist, and show how she went from being the child of a country gentleman, leading a quiet life and expecting to marry a man of, within reason, her own choice, to living at what was a court in all but name, surrounded by political intrigue and facing a marriage arranged for reasons of state.

The title of “Puritan Princess” was a bit of a misnomer and presumably chosen largely because of the alliteration: Puritanism didn’t really come into it, strangely enough.  And I’m with the Victorians, OK.  I do not like Cromwell.  I see him as the man who killed the king.  And banned mince pies.  However, I do accept that that view may be a teensy bit biased, as the book showed.  And it was a very interesting book.  I initially thought it was going to be a disaster, when Fanny/Frances started going on about “empowering” women and “owning” her own story as someone who wasn’t of aristocratic origins – seriously, “empowering” and “owning”, in the 1650s?! – but it did get better!

It was a fascinating story.  As the book said, these were times when no-one knew what the rules were, because there were no precedents.  Cromwell might easily have become king – as, over a century later, George Washington might easily have become king of the new United States.  Was that the best option?   What exactly had the Roundheads been after?   And had that changed, and when, and how?  How would people react?  What was meant to happen?  The book did go into the debates quite deeply, but it was a lot easier to read them all as discussions in amongst the family life of the Cromwells than to wade through Hobbes or Locke.

I’m not sure that I quite got the idea of everyone addressing the Cromwells as “Your Highness”, but the Cromwells are the author’s specialist subject so I assume she must have got that from somewhere.  But they did become a demi royal family of sorts, and, as the book said, there was even talk of marrying Fanny to the future Charles II.  In the end, Fanny was able to marry Robert Rich, the man of her choice, but, sadly, he died only a few months after the wedding.  So, in amongst all the complex politics of the time, we saw Fanny’s happiness and then her grief, and also the ups and downs of her siblings and their spouses, including her brother Richard who took over as Lord Protector after their father’s death, but was soon deposed.

And, at the end, Miranda Malins included the story that, after the Restoration, Cromwell’s daughters took their father’s body away and substituted it for someone else’s, when they heard of the plans to hang, draw and quarter it.  Was that true?  We still don’t know.

We live now in an era in which the lives and loves of Royals are treated as a soap opera, but people, in the social media age, seem to forget that politicians are actually human, and vilify and dehumanise them.  I suppose history has done that with Cromwell – as much as he’d probably prefer to be seen as a soldier rather than as a politician.  Having said that, he always seems to end up near the top of those “100 Greatest English people”/”100 Greatest Britons” lists we get from time to time, which I don’t get at all … but the point is that we don’t really think about what it must have been like for him, and even more so for his family, to go from being fairly obscure country gentlefolk to being at the centre of power.  And then back again!   This book made me think about that for the first time.  After a disappointing start, it really was a good read.

 

Tidelands by Philippa Gregory

Philippa Gregory usually has me spitting feathers because of her wild flights of fancy distorting the lives and characters of real historical figures. If you want to make things up, write about fictional characters! This time, she has written about fictional characters, and she’s also avoided the bizarre extremes she went to in, for example, The Wise Woman. Hooray! And I really want to be able to say that this book, set in 1648, is brilliant, because it deals with the struggles of a poor woman to survive in a rich man’s world, and the issues faced by ordinary people at a time when political leaders were tearing the nation apart. However, whilst it’s not bad, it’s not that good either. Much of it revolves around a very unconvincing romance between the woman and a Catholic priest. The Thorn Birds is one of the greatest novels of all time. This is not! But I’ve read worse.

Just in case anyone’s actually reading this – I’m never sure if they are or not, especially as my viewing stats are being weirdly distorted by some sort of Spambot Stalker! – I’ll try not to include too many spoilers, because I know that Philippa Gregory’s books are very popular and that a lot of people will be planning to read this one. It’s 1648, so Charles I has been defeated and is imprisoned on the Isle of Wight, Oliver Cromwell is in control, and a Royalist comeback seems unlikely. It’s a fascinating time period to be writing about – all the social, cultural and religious upheaval. The very idea that the monarchy can be overthrown, and what that might mean for the rest of the social structure. The shift towards a more Calvinist form of Protestantism, and changing attitudes towards old ways and old traditions that have existed for centuries. And most people just wanting to get on with their lives in peace. We’re not at Westminster, or in a grand country house – we’re in Selsey, on the Sussex coast. And our heroine is one Alinor Reekie, a midwife-cum-herbalist like her mother and grandmother before her, whose fisherman husband has deserted her and their two children.

Apropos of nothing, I wonder what made Philippa Gregory choose the surname “Reekie”. It’s very unusual. It’s also Scottish, so unlikely to be found on the south coast in the 17th century. What I really want to know is if she got it from the ridiculously-named Rykie Reekie who features in one of Elsie J Oxenham’s Abbey books!

Anyway. Woman living without a man, midwife-cum-herbalist, 17th century – obviously this immediately flags up the likelihood of accusations of witchcraft. That in itself is a fascinating subject, with everything it says about attitudes towards women at this time, and about how quickly panic and persecution can spread. It features in a lot of books, such as The Familiars and The Heretic’s Daughter. Alinor is already regarded with suspicion by some of her neighbours. She then meets a man who’s lost on the shore, and he turns out to be a Catholic priest disguised as a Protestant minister, on his way to meet up with the local squire. She helps him to get where he’s going, and, in return for her help and her silence, she’s given some money, and her son’s given a place at the manor house and the promise of an apprenticeship. Then her daughter catches the eye of an eligible young bachelor. Things are looking up for her … but people become jealous, and suspicion as to how this change in her fortunes has come about means that she’s the subject of more gossip than ever.

It all sounds very promising, and there are also some interesting descriptions of local life, especially about the harvest festivities. But somehow it doesn’t quite work. It never even feels as if we really get to know Alinor that well. And she embarks on a romance with the priest, James, which just doesn’t ring true. It’s full of Mills and Boon language, which doesn’t really fit it into the context of the book. She’s the most beautiful woman ever. He’s the most handsome man ever. They long to see each other’s beautiful hair (they both seem to be weirdly obsessed with hair). It doesn’t matter that he’s a priest and (as we later find out) the son of a baronet, and that she’s from the lowest of the lower classes and may or may not have a husband still living.  Oh please.  And James even seems ready to believe some of the stories about her being a witch, which definitely doesn’t fit with the Mills and Boon stuff.

He’s not just a priest – he’s a Royalist spy, who’s been sent by Henrietta Maria to rescue Charles I. He goes to the Isle of Wight, where he meets Alinor’s husband, who’s not dead at all. But Charles I won’t come with him. So he’s disillusioned about everything, and decides that he just wants to return to his home, in Northallerton, and marry Alinor – once her husband’s been declared dead, which he can be after he’s been gone for 7 years, but, hey, they can live over the brush the while. He seems to have changed his mind about everything in his life remarkably quickly, and I’m not sure that it really works.  The idea that someone might come to feel that everything they’d always believed and had been fighting for is wrong, or even just isn’t worth it, is perfectly valid, especially when writing about wartime, but this was all too quick quick quick.  I never felt that we really got into his head, or into Alinor’s.

We also see both him and Alinor’s Roundhead brother attending the trial of Charles I, but, even though it’s such a momentous occasion, it doesn’t really seem to have that much impact on either of them. The book’s just lacking in spark.

Meanwhile, Alinor has discovered that she’s pregnant. When James returns to Selsey, he’s extremely shocked, and says he’d have assumed that a midwife-cum-herbalist would know how to prevent an unwanted pregnancy. Yep, my thoughts exactly! His reaction is that he wants her to take some herbs to induce a miscarriage. He can’t cope with the dishonour of her coming to his home with an illegitimate child, who’ll have bear her husband’s surname. Er, hang on. If he was worried about the effects of the child on the stain of illegitimacy, fair enough, but he only seems to be worried about himself – which hardly rings true, when he’s fine with the idea of them living together outside marriage for the next six years and assumes that people will be OK about that. Anyway, what’s the problem? No-one in Northallerton is going to know anything about an obscure woman from the other side of the country. Just say that the baby’s the orphaned child of her poor dear sister/brother/cousin/best friend. No-one’s going to know any different. Even if they suspect, what are they going to do about it? Why does something so obvious not occur to either of them?!

Then a neighbour discovers that the money she’s been saving for her daughter’s dowry has been stolen, and replaced by dross. There’s more to it than that, but, as I said, I don’t want to include too many spoilers.  Alinor is accused of the theft of the money, for her own daughter’s dowry, and of witchcraft by dint of turning the money into faerie gold. How is she supposed to have both stolen the money and transformed it?!  Anyway, they seem to be more bothered about the idea that she’s transformed it. This isn’t the best of witch trial stories. People were usually accused of causing someone to fall ill, or a pet to die, or a cow to stop producing milk. Turning money into “faerie gold” is a bit of a daft storyline – although, compared to Philippa Gregory’s attempts at writing about witchcraft in The Wise Woman and her Wars of the Roses novels, I suppose it could have been a lot worse.

They can’t do a “swim/duck the witch” trial because she’s scared of water. Right, because they’d be so concered about that! So they decide to spin her on the miller’s wheel instead. She nearly drowns, but survives. So she’s cleared of witchcraft. Er, hang on. I appreciate that this actually wasn’t a swimming/ducking, but it was the same general idea – they were still shoving her under the water. Even though they couldn’t duck her because she was scared of water (??). The whole idea was that witches would float. So, if the accused didn’t drown, they were a witch. If they weren’t a witch, then they’d have drowned. There was no option of surviving the ordeal and being cleared!  It didn’t work like that.

Alinor and her daughter then both took off to start a new life elsewhere … and this is apparently the start of a new series, possibly intended to be a very long family saga.  It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great either – and that was a shame, because it was a good idea.  But, however much I moan about Philippa Gregory’s books, they are undeniably very popular.  Hey, I keep reading them myself!  So she must be doing something right!

Charles I: Downfall of a King – BBC 4

Apparently, the Civil War was caused by court masques, currants, Henrietta Maria’s make-up, people believing that the Lieutenant of the Tower of London was a cannibal, and the inability of Londoners to hold their drink (especially over the Christmas period). Some interesting theories there. Or else it was all due to a personal feud between Charles I and Pym the Puritan. Honestly, I thought we’d got past all this “revisionist” stuff about it being due to religion and short-term squabbles!  I was impressed that it made it clear that Pym & co were religious extremists, rather than just eulogising them as defenders of rights and liberties, though.  Also, it was history for grown-ups – no dressing up and no racing around – and it improved as it went on.  And Lisa Hilton (who writes “steamy” novels) uses some wonderful flowery language, although I find it rather annoying when Northerners speak in fake posh accents for TV.

However, I wish people wouldn’t keep trying to put a modern spin on historic events, though – talking about “populism”, “radicalisation”, “red lines”, “inclusivity”, “toxic masculinity”, “tabloid stings”, “fake news”, “tabloid sting” and “social media” in relation to the 1640s just sounds silly.   No-one actually used “alt-right” to describe the most extreme Puritans, but they certainly hinted at it … and that was good, because  I can’t stand the way the likes of Pym and Cromwell get idolised.  I also wish someone would write a book discussing how Henrietta Maria, Marie Antoinette and Alexandra Feodorovna all got the blame for their husbands’ stupidity, and was glad to see Henrietta Maria getting some sympathy here.

In summary – and there’s no arguing with this, even if I’d dispute the importance of the masques and the currants – we ended up with a complete mess made by a bunch of idiots and extremists … which is now widely recognised as being a crucial turning point in the spread of democracy across the western world.   History is great.  You couldn’t make it up!

I’m not a great fan of the revisionist theory that the causes of the Civil War were short-term, but, OK, I think we can all agree that it probably wouldn’t have happened if Charles I hadn’t been such an idiot. The focus of this three-part series was all on fifty days in late 1641 and early 1642, though, and there really needed to be more background information. The Personal Rule was barely mentioned, ship money wasn’t mentioned at all, and Scotland wasn’t mentioned until a long way into the first episode. And, without wishing to get too Victorian Whiggish about things, the “seeds of democracy” (Lisa’s expression) were sown well, well before the 1640s, thank you!!

Anyway.  Nice to have a historical docu-drama series with no dressing up or racing about, as I said – although Lisa did quite a bit of posing on staircases and gazing into the camera, not to mention gazing up at nude paintings. Oh, and Earl Spencer needs a haircut. I do wish the BBC would get over this obsession with trying to relate everything historical to the present day, though. But, if you want present day comparisons, then the contents of this programme made a few things very clear. Leaders need to stay in touch with the people and not live in a Westminster bubble. Extremists of any variety are bad news. Religion should be kept out of politics. London is out of step with the rest of the country. And anyone who’s running a country needs to understand that country’s history (let’s not even go there with Donald Trump saying that the Continental Army seized control of the airports).

Whilst I’m really not a fan of the revisionist short term causes theory, this did make everything sound rather dramatic.  You don’t often get such detailed coverage of this period, or indeed any period.  This was three hours of TV covering only fifty days.  And it did quite a convincing job of showing that war wasn’t inevitable – at least at that point. It all came across rather like a five set match at Wimbledon, with the momentum swinging first to one player and then to another! That’s actually quite a good analogy, seeing as they rather bizarrely made it sound as if only two people were involved and all the action took place in London. I don’t do revisionist views of the Civil War. Have I said that enough times now?!

It started off very strangely indeed, making it sound as if the whole country had turned Puritan (er, no) and everyone was narked with Charles I because he put on extravagant masques at court (had they got mixed up with the French Revolution?!). Yes, Charles I was unpopular. Yes, Henrietta Maria was unpopular because she was Catholic. But I think people were rather more concerned about the economic, political and religious issues than about masques at court!

Along came Pym’s Grand Remonstrance … and it was all made to sound like a populist battle, with Charles trying to win hearts and minds by staging grand parades and Pym trying to radicalise disaffected young men. Interesting point about the effect on voting in the Commons of MPs refusing to come to London because of plague. Later on, it was because of bad weather making travel difficult. Maybe that’s the way to deal with the House of Commons – hold votes when MPs can’t or won’t get to London! We didn’t hear that much about everything that was in the Grand Remonstrance, but currants were mentioned. Never mind ship money – apparently the issue with Charles I and his questionable tax-raising was that he was levying taxes on currants.

Then on to the Irish Rebellion – and this was interesting, because, for one reason and another, Cromwell’s massacres of Catholics in Ireland are widely known but the 1641 Portadown Massacre of Protestants in Ireland isn’t known nearly as well. It was horrific. And people were genuinely afraid. Was Pym exploiting people’s fears to his own ends by trying to end the king’s control over the militia? Whatever his reasons, Charles stupidly played right into his hands by turning to the bishops for support.

And, at this point, we got a lot of talk about John Lilburne – which was also interesting, because he’s normally mentioned more in connection with the rise of the Levellers in the mid-1640s, and his role earlier on tends to be overlooked. All so London-centric, though. The programme, I mean, not Lilburne!

Meanwhile, Pym had been banned from publishing the Grand Remonstrance, but he got round this by boring everyone. Seriously. One of his gang made a speech in the Commons that was so long and boring that a load of MPs got fed up and went home … whereupon a vote was held, which, with most of his opponents having left, Pym won. That’s actually a much better way of dealing with things than just keeping MPs away from London.

Henrietta Maria then got blamed for the Portadown Massacre: it was claimed that the rebels had had her authority to stage an uprising. At this point, I’d have really liked some discussion of how often queens get the blame for the stupidity of their husbands. Instead, we were told that her lady-in-waiting had taught her how to apply make-up. What?? Henrietta Maria’s unpopularity was due to the fact that she wore make-up? I don’t think so. Incidentally, who’s the great heroine of English Protestantism. Elizabeth I, who used to keep the Cabinet waiting until she’d got all her make-up on. I think we can discount the argument that the Civil War had anything to do with Henrietta Maria’s make-up.

Charles, getting rather stressed out about all this, decided to replace the incumbent Lieutenant of the Tower of London with an ally of his, one Thomas Lunsford. This was not a great idea, because Lunsford was very unpopular: people thought he was a cannibal. We definitely never heard about currants and cannibals when we “did” the Civil War at school! Then a load of radicalised Londoners had too much to drink over Christmas and started rioting. (Don’t ask me how getting drunk over Christmas was supposed to tie in with the idea that the country had gone really Puritanical.) Charles sacked Lunsford, but the drunken Londoners had got really stuck into the rioting by now. And the bishops were prevented from getting into the House of Lords to vote.

The bishops weren’t very pleased, which wasn’t unreasonable from their point of view, and protested, whereupon Pym’s gang decided that they should be impeached. Several bishops were arrested and locI often find myself wondering just how political leaders can be so bloody stupid. It’s something that doesn’t change from century to century. Lisa Hilton used the word “dim”. Charles had signed a bill which took away his power to dissolve Parliament – although it should be noted that it only applied to that particular Parliament, and that the power to dissolve Parliament in general (before the end of the five year fixed term we’re supposed to have now), or to prorogue Parliament, still lies with the sovereign – and then tried to get Pym on side by offering him the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer. Pym turned him down.

I was really glad, at this point, one of the historians pointed out that Pym was not some great hero.  We joke about Cromwell banning mince pies and all the rest of it, but there really wasn’t anything funny about Puritan extremism.  There still isn’t: it’s played a large part in the development of some very unpleasant attitudes amongst factions in both the United States and South Africa.  Pym even wanted to make Catholics wear distinctive clothing.  He never actually tried that, but he did try ordering the removal of Henrietta Maria’s household Catholic clergymen.  A very interesting point was made, which I must say I’ve never really thought of before, that Henrietta Maria had grown up in a France where Protestants were not persecuted.  I can reel off the dates of the passing and revocation of the Edict of Nantes without even thinking about them, but somehow I’d never really thought much about this being in between the two.

And, as if Henrietta Maria didn’t have enough problems, her friend and lady-in-waiting, Lucy Hay, was spying for Pym.  Was she Pym’s mistress?  The programme didn’t suggest that, but it’s been rumoured.  Nor did it mention that she was the Earl of Essex’s cousin.  Another person Charles and Henrietta Maria mistakenly trusted was George Digby, who at least wasn’t spying but who did make a complete mess of his task of denouncing Pym in the Lords, and just kind of wimped out.

I’m not keen on Henrietta Maria, but I do think she got a raw deal, and I think it’s very typical of how women so often get the blame for their powerful husbands’ stupidity.  And how people will attack a woman by impugning her virtue (very Victorian term there!).  I think she probably got involved with Henry Jermyn later on, when she was a widow, but I certainly don’t think she’d done so at this point –  but Pym was whipping up rumours that she had.  Everyone was turning against her.  She must have been terrified.  Nice to see the historians, especially the female historians, expressing sympathy for her.  And I rather like the tradition that she yelled at Charles and told him to stop being such a bloody wuss and go and do something about it.

We were into the third episode by this point, and this was by far the best of the three. Big drama!  The famous episode in which Charles barged into the House of Commons, only to find that the five MPs he was planning to arrest had done a bunk – tipped off by Lucy Hay, who was shown creeping around in a hooded cloak, looking rather like Madame in the Dogtanian cartoons.  I love the fact that the State Opening of Parliament still includes the door being slammed in Black Rod’s face, al because of this!  And it’s fascinating that Parliament, and also the people at the Guildhall, who refused to hand over Pym & co when Charles went there, had the authority nerve to stand up to him.  As one of the historians said, you can’t imagine that happening in Henry VIII’s time.  Charles believed in the divine right of monarchs … but there he was, calling out names with everyone refusing to tell him where the people he wanted were, like a hapless schoolteacher who couldn’t control the class.

What a prat, and what a mess.  As Earl Spencer said, anyone would have struggled to deal with all the political, social and religious troubles of the day (hooray – someone who wasn’t trying to make out that the causes of the Civil War were all short-term!), but Charles I didn’t have a clue.  Meanwhile, and rather scarily, radicals were joining the militia to get arms and training in how to use them.  And the Royal Family fled to Hampton Court Palace.

This was in early January, though, and the war didn’t actually kick off until August.  I’m not quite getting the idea of making a three-part series about fifty days in late 1641 and early 1642, with so little attention paid to what happened before and none to what happened after.  But it still made for interesting viewing.  Lisa proclaimed that, without the events of 1641/42, there would have been no American Revolution, no French Revolution and no democracy as we know it.  Yes.  I’ll go with that.  No Civil War, no Restoration Settlement, no Glorious Revolution, no Enlightenment  … no American Revolution, no French Revolution and no democracy as we know it.

Lisa finished off by asking the various historians she’d interviewed which side they’d have taken – and this bit was great, because she put it as it must have looked at the time.  We tie ourselves in knots over both the Civil War and the Glorious Revolution.  Social contracts, de facto and de jure, had Charles I betrayed his side of the bargain by refusing to play by the rules, had James II effectively abdicated by running off.  Leviathan was published in 1651 and Two Treatises of Government in 1689: none of this social contract stuff was going in 1642.  We need the Civil War to have happened, and we need Charles to have lost, because there was a danger that, otherwise, we’d have ended up with an absolute monarchy.  But we don’t really do rebellion and revolution.  So we try to justify it by thinking about ancient rights and liberties.  And it works to bad-mouth Henrietta Maria, because she was a foreigner.  But we don’t really do overthrowing the rightful government, any more than we do absolute monarchy.  So we tie ourselves in knots.

But, if you look at things as they’d have looked at the time, no-one could have seen what lay ahead.  There’d been loads of spats between kings and subjects.  Most people must have assumed that there’d be one battle, or maybe even just a confrontation, and it’d all have got sorted.  The rightful king or the defenders of ancient liberties?  Nah.  As Lisa said, it would have been a choice between a useless, unpopular king who wouldn’t play by the rules, or a bunch of radical extremists.  No-one seemed very enthusiastic either way.  And yet it really was one of the great turning points of history.   Sometimes, you just don’t know how things are going to turn out, do you?