tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/charles-i-28874/articlesCharles I – The Conversation2022-09-19T02:01:15Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1908342022-09-19T02:01:15Z2022-09-19T02:01:15ZSilence of the poets – has an ancient tradition of commemorative verse died with the Queen?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485196/original/file-20220919-61758-10pn2a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C0%2C5853%2C3908&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Not so long ago, the death of a monarch would have been a cue for outpourings of elegies and poetic commemorations. One might have thought the end of the second Elizabethan era would prompt something similar – but apparently not.</p>
<p>So far, the death of Queen Elizabeth II has had only a muted response from our poets, both in the United Kingdom and here in Aotearoa New Zealand. Does this reflect shifting priorities in the national imagination? Are we witnessing the demise of poetry on public occasions?</p>
<p>We need only look back at the death in 1936 of the queen’s grandfather, George V, for comparison. <a href="https://backwatersman.wordpress.com/2009/12/27/the-death-of-king-george-v/">John Betjeman</a> and <a href="https://www.poetryexplorer.net/poem.php?id=10105234">John Masefield</a> were among the poets who marked the occasion. Betjeman was England’s poet laureate from 1972 until his death in 1984, and also wrote on the <a href="https://www.poetryexplorer.net/poem.php?id=10038138">birthday of the queen mother</a> and the <a href="https://www.poetryexplorer.net/poem.php?id=10038137">marriage of Charles and Diana</a>.</p>
<p>Betjeman stood in a long line of British poet laureates stretching back unbroken to John Dryden in 1668, and to poets such as Geoffrey Chaucer before that. But the culture of poetry responding to monarchs’ deaths has flourished outside the official post, too.</p>
<p>The unexpected death in 1612 of the 18-year-old Prince Henry, son and heir to James VI and I, prompted an <a href="https://specialcollections-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=3553">outpouring of poetic tears</a>. <a href="https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/elegy-upon-untimely-death-incomparable-prince-henry">John Donne</a> wrote an elegy, as did George Herbert, John Webster and Sir Walter Raleigh.</p>
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<span class="caption">A flood of poetry: the execution of King Charles I, unknown artist, circa 1649.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Portrait Gallery, London</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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<h2>Elegiac energy</h2>
<p>Particularly voluminous was the the flood of poetry that met the execution of King Charles I at the height of the English Civil Wars in 1649. His <a href="https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw35443/The-execution-of-King-Charles-I">dramatic beheading</a> on a scaffold erected outside Whitehall Palace made him a martyr to his loyal followers. </p>
<p>Literary historian Nigel Smith has described the way elegy became a royalist genre, as the death of the king “sucked all elegiac energy into its own subject”.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485192/original/file-20220919-53681-2t01r9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485192/original/file-20220919-53681-2t01r9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485192/original/file-20220919-53681-2t01r9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485192/original/file-20220919-53681-2t01r9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485192/original/file-20220919-53681-2t01r9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485192/original/file-20220919-53681-2t01r9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485192/original/file-20220919-53681-2t01r9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485192/original/file-20220919-53681-2t01r9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Poetic ‘sighs’ and ‘groans’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library Victoria</span></span>
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<p>And there are close connections nearby to these elegies on King Charles I. Melbourne’s State Library Victoria holds the <a href="https://www.slv.vic.gov.au/search-discover/explore-collections-theme/history-book/emmerson-collection">John Emmerson collection</a> of over 5,000 early modern English books, among which poems, pamphlets and other <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-16/king-charles-1-trial-and-executed-news-of-the-time/6391990">publications on the death of Charles I</a> feature prominently.</p>
<p>Poetic treasures in the collection include a copy of Monumentum Regale: Or a Tombe, Erected for that Incomparable and Glorious Monarch, Charles the First, a volume of elegies and poetic “sighs” and “groans” published three months after the king’s execution. Royalist poets grapple with how they can possibly commemorate an “incomparable” king. The Earl of Montrose declares he has written his poem with “blood”, “wounds” and the point of his sword.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-news-of-the-death-of-elizabeth-i-in-the-17th-century-was-communicated-in-ballads-and-proclamations-190625">How news of the death of Elizabeth I in the 17th century was communicated in ballads and proclamations</a>
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<p>In Aotearoa New Zealand, the Alexander Turnbull Library is famous for its collection of works by a poet from the other side of the 17th-century political divide, John Milton. <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/2t53/turnbull-alexander-horsburgh">Turnbull</a> (1868–1918) had a personal interest in Milton, an ardent republican. Even Turnbull’s collection, however, contains a notable number of volumes celebrating Charles I, including multiple editions of Eikon Basilike (The King’s Book), which represented Charles I as a Christ-like martyr.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485195/original/file-20220919-63951-ev5egv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485195/original/file-20220919-63951-ev5egv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485195/original/file-20220919-63951-ev5egv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485195/original/file-20220919-63951-ev5egv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485195/original/file-20220919-63951-ev5egv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485195/original/file-20220919-63951-ev5egv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485195/original/file-20220919-63951-ev5egv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Former NZ poet laureate Selina Tusitala Marsh speaking at a reception at Government House in 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span>
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<h2>Public poetry isn’t dead</h2>
<p>This vast body of public poetry about previous monarchs is in sharp contrast to the response to Queen Elizabeth II’s death. Even in the United Kingdom, the current poet laureate, Simon Armitage, seems to have struggled. The form of his poem “Floral Tribute”, an acrostic on the name “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/sep/13/floral-tribute-poem-queen-elizabeth-simon-armitage-poet-laureate">Elizabeth</a>”, seems archaic at best and banal at worst.</p>
<p>New Zealand’s poet laurate, Chris Tse, inaugurated only a few weeks ago, has been notably silent. When I asked him why, he said writing a poem for the queen “would be a backwards step in terms of where I want the role to go”.</p>
<p>Tse’s reticence perhaps echoes the complicated thoughts of Selina Tusitala Marsh, a recent former laureate, on <a href="https://www.read-nz.org/aotearoa-reads-details/nz-poet-selina-tusitala-marsh-visits-and-sasses-the-queen">performing her poem</a> “Unity” for the queen in 2016. For Marsh, the British Crown’s colonial legacy (as she put it, “Her peeps also colonised my peeps”) made writing and performing the poem a complex commission to accept.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-do-britains-tears-for-queen-elizabeth-mean-190784">What do Britain's tears for Queen Elizabeth mean?</a>
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<p>As laureate, Marsh preferred to write poems on occasions such as <a href="https://thespinoff.co.nz/books/22-06-2018/the-friday-poem-jacinda-and-clarke-and-the-baby-and-us-by-the-nz-poet-laureate">the birth of a prime ministerial baby</a>. But the fact New Zealand even has a <a href="http://www.poetlaureate.org.nz/">poet laureate</a> in 2022 suggests there is still an appetite for public poetry, even if the days of poems on the death of a queen are numbered.</p>
<p>The modern monarchy itself, of course, provides rich material for poetry of a less commemorative kind. Bill Manhire, New Zealand’s inaugural laureate, speculated on Twitter that we are awaiting an acrostic on “Andrew”. And the most remarkable poem of the morning we awoke to news of the queen’s death was essa may ranapiri’s “<a href="https://twitter.com/ired0mi/status/1567977694348058624">The Queen is Dead</a>”.</p>
<p>Immediate and visceral, it’s an unabashed anti-colonialist spit in the face of monarchy. Some will find it shocking, others will gasp with appreciation. But even those taken aback by its frank approach and timing may share the sense of distance it captures, in its formal displacement of the news from afar by scrambled eggs, spring sunlight and the joy of quotidian love as a new day begins.</p>
<p>Public poetry isn’t dead. But our poets’ responses to the death of the queen – the silent, the awkward, the confrontational – tell us much, as ever, about the societies we live in.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190834/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah C. E. Ross receives funding from the Australian Research Council for Transforming the Early Modern Archive: The Emmerson Collection at State Library Victoria. </span></em></p>Poets once wrote their verse in “blood” or “wounds” when a king or queen died. On the eve of Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral, what has happened to the epic art of elegy?Sarah C. E. Ross, Associate Professor in English Literatures and Creative Communication, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of WellingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1442322020-09-21T14:23:47Z2020-09-21T14:23:47ZMayflower 400: how society feared and ridiculed puritans<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/359060/original/file-20200921-18-vd0zjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=125%2C535%2C2112%2C1559&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">John Lacy, a Restoration actor and playwright, satirised puritans, including in his role as Mr Scruple in The Cheats by John Wilson (right).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">John Michael Wright (died 1694/National Portrait Gallery</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>England in the 17th century was what’s known as a “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4050089">confessional state</a>” – everyone was supposed to practice religion in the way the government decided. But puritans didn’t much like the way religion was practised by the Church of England. </p>
<p>Puritans thought there should be more stress on the bible and opposed any religious practice not clearly sanctioned by it. This included everything the Church of England retained from Catholicism: clerical dress, images, the Common Prayer Book and the church festivals associated with it. Non-puritans thought such objections unreasonable and a threat to the authority of both church and state. Thus the government increasingly sought ways to counteract the puritans’ influence.</p>
<p>Many of the things puritans argued about caused social friction. They wanted to outlaw non-religious activities such as drinking and sports on Sundays, putting them at odds with ordinary people who wanted to enjoy their only day off. Another issue was the puritan habit of “sermon gadding” – going elsewhere to listen to popular preachers, instead of their own parish church. The authorities were suspicious of people who travelled about: “vagabonds” were enthusiastically whipped and Quakers later imprisoned for their peripatetic evangelism.</p>
<p>Puritans were a minority, but could not easily be ignored. Their powerful supporters amongst the elite lobbied for religious change and pointedly criticised the Church. The government responded by suspending some puritan clergy, fining and excommunicating sermon-gadders and separatists meeting outside the church. In 1637 three of Charles I’s most prominent puritan critics had their <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Prynne">ears nailed to the pillory and cut off</a>. But state persecution of puritanism was more limited than that imposed on Catholics, who were seen as the greater threat.</p>
<h2>Laughter as a weapon</h2>
<p>Persecution risks creating martyrs: powerful things in England where <a href="https://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item126927.html">Foxe’s Book of Martyrs</a> – an account of the burnings of Protestants under Mary Tudor – was a key religious text. A more sophisticated and politically palatable way of dealing with a threat was to make it socially unacceptable via ridicule. </p>
<p>My <a href="https://boydellandbrewer.com/the-power-of-laughter-and-satire-in-early-modern-britain.html">research shows that</a> anti-puritan satire took many forms: anecdotes, poems, parodies, character-sketches, and particularly – since puritans opposed the theatre – the stage puritan. </p>
<p>First appearing around the 1590s, the stage puritan was stereotypically a tradesman, ill-educated and suspicious of learning. “Zealous Knowlittle, a Boxmaker” in <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A72254.0001.001?view=toc">The Rivall Friends (1632)</a> was a typical example. </p>
<p>Puritans were portrayed as hypocrites, claiming virtue while secretly both sexually voracious and corrupt. “Thus do we blind the world with holiness,” says a character in the comic morality tale <a href="http://hensloweasablog.blogspot.com/2016/06/10-june-1592-knack-to-know-knave.html">A Knack to see a Knave (1592)</a>. </p>
<p>Poems mocked the puritan preaching style: “<a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A33421.0001.001/1:23.80?rgn=div2;view=fulltext">eyes, all white and many a groan</a>, as well as their habit of speaking "through the nose”. Many joked about the ridiculous affectation and noisiness of puritan sermons – and their length, which made congregations fall asleep or desperate for the toilet.</p>
<p>For a century the basic formula hardly changed. But during the English Civil Wars the tone darkened. Earlier anti-puritan satire is playful. “Zeal-of-the-Land Busy” in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bartholomew-Fair">Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair</a> (1614), tears down idolatrous gingerbread stalls, before losing a debate with a puppet. The aim was to belittle puritans, not acknowledge them as a potential threat or understand them.</p>
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<p>Shakespeare was the exception, creating sympathetic, if wrongheaded, puritan characters, such as Malvolio in Twelfth Night, and Angelo in Measure for Measure – a prescient thought-experiment as to what might happen if puritans ran the state that anticipated the English Civil Wars by 40 years.</p>
<h2>Power of the word</h2>
<p>From 1640-1660 puritans dominated Church and state, radically reforming English religion by military force. Nobody now thought them harmless. Pamphlets warned of the strange religious sects now emerging and catalogued the trades of artisans – cobblers, soap boilers and button makers – getting on to tubs to preach. </p>
<p>The mood of defeated royalists was black – their satire became unrestrained invective. One compared sectarianism to the rape of a dismembered woman, another joked about a nonconformist’s lack of testicles. They relished the grotesque murder of an adulterous puritan minister, his brains, struck by an axe, spilling out of bed into “an open Close-stool” (a covered chamber pot).</p>
<p>Misogynistic depictions of sexually rapacious female devotees became a staple feature, part of an atmosphere of abuse that endured for decades after the Restoration. The daughters of a Northamptonshire minister were “infamous whores”, wrote one loyalist in the early 18th century, in a letter held in the <a href="https://archives.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/repositories/2/resources/671">Walker archive</a> at the Bodleian Library, “who have given the Pox to some Gallants, that have adventured on them”.</p>
<p>The restoration of the monarchy and traditionalist Anglican religion in 1660 ushered in a flood of satire targeting the outgoing interregnum puritans. <a href="https://neoclassical-poetry.bloomyebooks.com/2014/11/samuel-butlers-hudibras-analysis.html">Samuel Butler’s Hudibras</a> (1663), a clever parody of epic romance with a puritan anti-hero, was a bestseller. </p>
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<img alt="Two men on horses surprise two other people and overturn table. Dog barking in foreground." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357657/original/file-20200911-24-bnw9lm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357657/original/file-20200911-24-bnw9lm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357657/original/file-20200911-24-bnw9lm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357657/original/file-20200911-24-bnw9lm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357657/original/file-20200911-24-bnw9lm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357657/original/file-20200911-24-bnw9lm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357657/original/file-20200911-24-bnw9lm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Hudibras Sallies Forth: Puritans were a rich source of satirical targets in the 17th and 18th centuries.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudibras#/media/File:HogarthHudibras.jpg">William Hogarth</a></span>
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<p>Even bishops staged mock-Presbyterian sermons. Dramatists, like musicians working variations on a familiar theme, populated their plays with puritans of a rich variety of type and setting. Mr Scruple, in John Wilson’s popular <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/509891">The Cheats (1663)</a>, engages in a verbal duel with an astrologer for obtuseness of doctrine.</p>
<p>An elderly practical joker in <a href="https://theodora.com/encyclopedia/o/thomas_otway.html">Thomas Otway’s The Atheist (1684)</a> disguises himself as a “Phanatique Preacher” to receive a deathbed conversion. In <a href="https://www.questia.com/library/98663595/the-man-of-mode">George Etherege’s Man of Mode (1676)</a>, the puritan chaplain spends the whole play in a cupboard. Strange puritan names like “Praise-God Barebones”, were laughed at and imitated. There was a trend for character names beginning with “s” to suggest the slippery, serpent-like duplicity of the stage puritan: Snarl, Smirk, Scruple. This persisted: Obadiah Slope in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/31/baddies-in-books-obadiah-slope-anthony-trollope">Barchester Towers (1857)</a> and even Severus Snape from Harry Potter reveal how the puritan archetype of the sour-faced, black-clothed kill-joy has persisted.</p>
<p>Puritan values were an important influence on American culture, and can be seen today in their individualistic work ethic, their attitudes to drink and their tendency to divide people into winners and losers, just as the puritans separated the elect and the damned. In England, meanwhile, the reaction against them was more significant. Most English people loved everything the puritans hated: drink, theatre, sports, silly traditions, Christmas. Above all, English humour and irony, the seeds of which were sown during the interregnum, was the only antidote to powerful people who took themselves far too seriously.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/mayflower-400-were-the-pilgrims-asylum-seekers-or-subversives-144163">Mayflower 400: were the Pilgrims asylum seekers or subversives?</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144232/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fiona McCall received funding from the British Academy Small Grants Scheme, 2015-17. I also receive regular research funding from the University of Portsmouth, for whom I work as a lecturer, some of this as part of the Disrupted Authority research project, see <a href="https://www.port.ac.uk/research/research-projects/disrupted-authority">https://www.port.ac.uk/research/research-projects/disrupted-authority</a>. My D Phil thesis (University of Oxford, 2008) via which some of the archival material was obtained, was sponsored by two years' grant from the AHRC. </span></em></p>Puritans were often depicted as fools until they had a shot at government, and then the humour got darker.Fiona McCall, Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1408882020-07-01T11:11:21Z2020-07-01T11:11:21ZHistory tells us that ideological ‘purity spirals’ rarely end well<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344801/original/file-20200630-103668-10703cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C2000%2C1077&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Iconoclasm: the beheading of the English king, Charles I, in January 1649.</span> </figcaption></figure><blockquote>
<p>Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart, for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Author James Baldwin’s words, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Nobody-Knows-My-Name">written in the America of the late 1950s</a>, captures perfectly a feeling in the air that is currently troubling public discourse in many Western countries. Increasingly, questions once treated as complicated inquiries requiring scrutiny and nuance are being reduced to moral absolutes. Just look at Trumpism.</p>
<p>This follows a now dismally familiar pattern: two camps are identified, the acceptable “for” and the demonised “against”. The latter are cast beyond the pale, cancelled and trolled. Identity politics has become a secular religion and, like any strict sect, apostates are severely punished. </p>
<p>This can lead to a “<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000d70h">purity spiral</a>”, with the more extreme opinion the more rewarded in a pattern of increasing escalation. Nuance and debate are the casualties, and a kind of moral feeding frenzy results. </p>
<p>Are <a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Purity%20Spiral">purity spirals</a> inevitable? It is natural for humans to form “in” and “out” groups. Identifying a common enemy is often the key to group solidarity. Nationalist politicians and the marketing teams who serve them know how effective such strategies can be with ill-informed electorates. Equally, if an individual can manifest virtues valued by the group, this fosters a sense of self-worth and belonging.</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, we have been here before. History demonstrates the ease with which ordinary people commit atrocious acts, particularly during crises. When you believe you are morally superior, when you dehumanise those you disagree with, you can justify almost anything. Take the example of one of the most consequential purity spirals, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3161951?seq=1">the Puritan Revolution in 17th-century England</a>.</p>
<h2>Word of God</h2>
<p>The Puritans were certain that the godly majority supported them in toppling the tyranny of King Charles I. In their eyes, the monarch and his bishops were challenging the true word of God. The Puritans established an English Republic and Presbyterianism replaced Episcopalianism. Families were divided and fought during a bloody civil war across England, Scotland and Ireland. </p>
<p>The ultimate act of iconoclasm or cancellation is to kill another human being. The poet John Milton, in his <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Eikonoklastes">Eikonoklastes</a> (Icon Breaker) of October 1649, justified the execution of Charles I by arguing that shattering the sacred icon of monarchy had been essential to prevent the English people from being turned into slaves. </p>
<p>Living within a purity spiral defined Puritan society. Dress <a href="https://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/puritan-dress-code-and-outrage-slashed-sleeves/">became simple</a>. Luxury was forbidden. <a href="https://warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/when_christmas_was/">Christmas was cancelled</a>. And discipline <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3166367?seq=1">became a social watchword</a>.
Marriage and patriarchy within the household <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/206103">were sacred</a>. Children were given first names such as “<a href="https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Nicholas+If-Jesus-Had-Not-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned+Barbon">Unless-Jesus-Christ-Had-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned</a>”. </p>
<p>The “saints” competed to show their godliness. Those who did not accept the new culture were condemned. It was said of beggars, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=pJrQsqhVESYC&pg=PA551&dq=%22the+curse+of+God+pursueth+them%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjnkqrY0qnqAhXRaRUIHbsYAqMQ6AEwAXoECAEQAg#v=onepage&q&f=false">for example</a>, that “the curse of God pursueth them” because they had abandoned family life. A new tyranny replaced the old.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344806/original/file-20200630-103683-114542k.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344806/original/file-20200630-103683-114542k.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344806/original/file-20200630-103683-114542k.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344806/original/file-20200630-103683-114542k.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344806/original/file-20200630-103683-114542k.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344806/original/file-20200630-103683-114542k.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344806/original/file-20200630-103683-114542k.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The mid-17th century was not the most liberal era if you didn’t agree with the majority view.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">British Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Looking back from the 18th-century, many feared new waves of Puritans seeking to enforce their moral codes upon an unwilling society, bringing public violence and political upheaval. It was natural for the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=WbLP6mA_F-gC&pg=PA299&lpg=PA299&dq=forty+thousand+Puritans+such+as+they+might+be+in+the+time+of+Cromwell+have+started+out+of+their+graves&source=bl&ots=qc1rU6fXtC&sig=ACfU3U3X4oMS6sWzBaKR_kjCU2TVI8E41w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjMn-Lyu6nqAhVKfMAKHaBFCF4Q6AEwC3oECDUQAQ#v=onepage&q=forty%20thousand%20Puritans%20such%20as%20they%20might%20be%20in%20the%20time%20of%20Cromwell%20have%20started%20out%20of%20their%20graves&f=false">historian Edward Gibbon to note</a> during the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots of June 1780 that “forty thousand Puritans such as they might be in the time of Cromwell have started out of their graves”.</p>
<p>Some philosophers, such as the <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/">Scot David Hume</a>, argued that the Puritan purity spiral <a href="http://www.english.upenn.edu/%7Emgamer/Etexts/hume.superstition.html">had been worth it</a>. Hume likened the process to a wild storm bringing calm. He called the devout crusaders “fanatics”, and also ridiculous. He also asserted that their passion for liberty had made Britain a free state with limited monarchy and enhanced civil liberties. </p>
<h2>Liberty, Equality, Fraternity</h2>
<p>Should we encourage purity spirals because they are the source of our liberty? No, we should not. Take another purity spiral during the French Revolution – perhaps the greatest in history. Few events have so united a population. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345033/original/file-20200701-159781-1p13t5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345033/original/file-20200701-159781-1p13t5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345033/original/file-20200701-159781-1p13t5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345033/original/file-20200701-159781-1p13t5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345033/original/file-20200701-159781-1p13t5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345033/original/file-20200701-159781-1p13t5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345033/original/file-20200701-159781-1p13t5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345033/original/file-20200701-159781-1p13t5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Zenith of French Glory (1793) by James Gillray.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">British Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Revolution began with the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-Rt7Cq7f-KcC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">iconoclastic storming the Bastille</a>, the prison symbolising absolutism whose walls were reduced to rubble. Within months, a new world was established. Aristocrats gave up their feudal rights. Empire and war were rejected. Liberty and rights were proclaimed. Hairstyles changed (no more wigs). So did fashion (no bling). </p>
<p>By January 1793, after years of controversy over the nature of liberty, the head of state, Louis XVI, was executed for treason. Monuments of monarchy then toppled. Royal tombs were desecrated. Many aristocrats changed their names to signal their dedication to republican revolution. The rich cousin of the king, Louis Philippe, duc d'Orléans, changed his name to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/nov/01/french-revolution-books">Philippe Égalité</a>.</p>
<p>But by the end of the year, the revolutionaries had turned upon themselves. A law passed the governing Convention on April 1, 1793 condemning any person deemed an enemy of liberty. Although Égalité voted for the law, he soon became its victim, guillotined in November by the Revolutionary Tribunal. </p>
<p>The republican church began to break up as <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ukxaAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA32&dq=intitle:robespierre&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiI_LL91anqAhWPa8AKHWkXDWAQ6AEwAHoECAEQAg#v=onepage&q&f=false">virtue-signalling reached new heights</a>. Under “the incorruptible” Robespierre, anyone with an aristocratic demeanour or critical of government was imprisoned. Thousands died. The philosopher Condorcet, a true supporter of equality between the sexes, was arrested for carrying a Latin book by Horace. </p>
<p>Having any connection to the English enemy brought suspicion. <a href="https://reviews.history.ac.uk/review/2316">Thomas Paine</a> remained imprisoned for almost a year because the US ambassador, Gouverneur Morris, who hated Paine, would not vouch that he was no longer English. Critics of Robespierre, such as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jacques-Pierre-Brissot">Jacques-Pierre Brissot</a>, ended up singing republican songs on their way to the guillotine, convinced that <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=TI-1wQEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">mad anarchists had hijacked the Revolution</a> and commenced indiscriminate murder.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344808/original/file-20200630-103653-yreo48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344808/original/file-20200630-103653-yreo48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344808/original/file-20200630-103653-yreo48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344808/original/file-20200630-103653-yreo48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344808/original/file-20200630-103653-yreo48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344808/original/file-20200630-103653-yreo48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344808/original/file-20200630-103653-yreo48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Having consigned many others to death by ‘Madame Guillotine’, Maximilian Robespierre met his end the same way in July 1794. Engraving by Giacomo Aliprandi of a design by Giacomo Beys.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bibliothèque nationale de France</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hume was right that fanaticism and virtue-signalling burn themselves out. Robespierre found himself on the execution block. The price was civil war. The Revolution then went the way of so many democratic revolutions, descending into aristocratic rule (<a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Directory-French-history">The Directory</a>) until a general conducted a coup. Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself emperor, delighting the populace by combining public order and military victory. </p>
<p>In asserting his authority, Bonaparte warned that the alternative to his rule was a descent into Terror. He overran most of Europe, replacing monarchs with members of his family. His new aristocracy was the Légion d'honneur. Savvy followers learned the lesson, including <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3625978/A-role-model-for-all-dictators.html">Stalin and Mao</a> – make the people afraid of so-called fanatics and they will follow you.</p>
<h2>Lessons for today</h2>
<p>The lesson: purity spirals can topple authoritarian regimes, but assist new authoritarians in ruining the lives of innocent people. They turn families and friends against one another.</p>
<p>At the end of his life, Hume worried that a lust for liberty was turning fanatical. Hume’s disciples attacked the French Revolution for reigniting religious warfare. Instead of killing each other to save souls, people now did so in the name of freedom. Civil liberties were forgotten.</p>
<p>As polarisation intensifies, people are increasingly loath to consider opinions that don’t reinforce their own. Quite literally the road to hell can be paved with good intentions.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140888/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The polarisation of today’s political discourse has echoes of the intolerance that characterised the Puritan era and the French Revolution.Katrin Redfern, Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Intellectual History, University of St AndrewsRichard Whatmore, Professor of Modern History, University of St AndrewsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1304002020-01-22T18:19:45Z2020-01-22T18:19:45ZImpeachment: a political weapon that went out of fashion in England just as it was adopted in the US<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311336/original/file-20200122-117954-1vsyyyl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C4%2C940%2C757&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Overweening ambition: George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Peter Paul Rubens</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>See if you can guess who this describes: a politician adored by his supporters but loathed by his enemies. A man accused of corruptly favouring his cronies and his relatives. A vain, preening man said to glory in the ostentation of his wealth and who loved to acquire property. A man who sought to monopolise power, who some think betrayed his country to the national enemy and who wanted to magnify his nation’s standing in the world – but ended up reducing it and damaging trade. A man who was lampooned mercilessly – and who faced impeachment.</p>
<p>I’m not describing Donald Trump – but <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/George-Villiers-1st-duke-of-Buckingham">George Villiers, first duke of Buckingham (1592-1628)</a>. The impeachment of the current US president nevertheless gives us reason to look at the role of impeachment more generally in the British context – which is where they began (at least, in the form with which we are familiar). The central allegation against Trump is abuse of office, which also ran through the charges against Buckingham.</p>
<p>Buckingham was one of the most controversial figures of his day. Rising from relative obscurity, he acquired enormous wealth as a result of his close friendship (<a href="https://thehistoryofparliament.wordpress.com/2019/02/21/james-i-and-the-duke-of-buckingham-love-power-and-betrayal/">some alleged more</a>) with first king James I and then Charles I. At the height of his power in the mid-1620s, he enjoyed an income four times that of the wealthiest landowner, though he spent money so freely that he was always in debt. </p>
<p>Impeachment was a parliamentary trial – a prosecution brought by the House of Commons and judged by the Lords. The process began in the medieval period in order to prosecute corrupt, over-mighty officials for “high crimes and misdemeanours”. This was a term we are hearing a lot of in the US Senate’s impeachment proceedings against Trump. It was a catch-all term, but was intrinsically linked to accusations of corruption and betrayal.</p>
<h2>Medieval misgovernment</h2>
<p>In 1376, the so-called “Good Parliament” was opened by its speaker launching an attack on the royal court’s corruption and calling for close scrutiny of the royal financial accounts. This led to the first impeachment: of Lord Latimer who – along with others – was accused of selling the country to the enemy, taking bribes, pocketing fines that were due to King Edward III and charging the king extortionate interest for loans he made. </p>
<p>But impeachment fell out of use between 1453 when the Wars of the Roses took redress onto the battlefield and thereafter Tudor power dominated. It was revived in 1621 when parliament wanted the scalps of corrupt officials linked to Buckingham. </p>
<p>The first under attack was <a href="http://www.histparl.ac.uk/volume/1604-1629/member/mompesson-giles-1584-1651">Sir Giles Mompesson</a>, who had abused a monopoly on the licensing of inns (and was a relative of Buckingham). The second target was the Lord Chancellor, <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/francis-bacon/">Francis Bacon</a> – the man sometimes credited with popularising the scientific revolution, but who was also a politician with powerful enemies. Bacon was accused of accepting bribes, though his closeness to Buckingham was perhaps the most significant factor in the proceedings. Impeachment was always political.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311423/original/file-20200122-117954-go4uif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311423/original/file-20200122-117954-go4uif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311423/original/file-20200122-117954-go4uif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311423/original/file-20200122-117954-go4uif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311423/original/file-20200122-117954-go4uif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311423/original/file-20200122-117954-go4uif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311423/original/file-20200122-117954-go4uif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Francis Bacon: philosopher and grifter?</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The attempted impeachment of Buckingham himself <a href="https://www.british-history.ac.uk/rushworth-papers/vol1/pp302-358">came in 1626</a>. Charges were drawn up against him alleging that he had monopolised offices, favoured his kin at the expense of the kingdom, bought and sold offices and misspent public money. Further, it was charged that he had damaged British trade and overseas interests, betrayed the nation as commander of the naval forces, taken bribes, perverted the honour of the peerage by selling honours, misspent Crown money and failed to keep proper accounts. </p>
<p>It was even suggested that he may have tried to poison James I. Buckingham’s mind was said to be “full of collusion and deceit”. Buckingham was an over-mighty politician who threatened and corrupted the constitution.</p>
<p>Buckingham was a showman politician who loved displaying power and wealth. As one MP put it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Infinite sums of Money, and Mass of Land … have been heaped upon him, and how have they been employed? Upon costly Furniture, sumptuous Feasting, and magnificent Building.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Buckingham refuted the impeachment charges, alleging that “common fame” was the only proof against him – and that it was fake news. But parliament was not to be deflected by his protestations. MPs drew up a remonstrance and declared the duke to be the single cause of the nation’s ills: “The great enemy of the kingdom”.</p>
<p>The House of Commons resolved that “the excessive power of the Duke of Buckingham, and the abuse of that power, are the chief causes of these evils and dangers to the King and kingdom”. And yet, after all, the impeachment failed. The duke still had the king’s ear and Charles I dissolved parliament.</p>
<h2>Too hard to prove</h2>
<p>Why does this history matter? Impeachment was used in Britain repeatedly after 1626 against holders of office, until 1806 when Lord Melville, who had also been accused of corruption, was <a href="https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1805/jul/08/impeachment-of-lord-melville">found not guilty</a>. It was a difficult process to pull off. The definition of “high crimes and misdemeanours” was not to be found in statute law. As a parliamentary trial, impeachment was intrinsically wrapped in politics and therefore only ever semi-judicial. </p>
<p>The failure to convict in 1806 came a decade after another major impeachment, of <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230306004_2">Warren Hastings</a>, which had also ended in acquittal. So 1806 was the last time the process was attempted in Britain. A <a href="https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/jt201314/jtselect/jtprivi/30/30.pdf">1999 report</a> from the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege states that “the procedure may be considered obsolete”. </p>
<p>But it is a different matter in the US. The practice transferred across the pond when, drawing on British law, impeachment was written into <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/article/article-i">Article 1 of the 1787</a> constitution of the recently liberated United States, 20 years before the British abandoned it.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-to-think-when-youre-thinking-about-impeachment-5-essential-reads-130118">What to think when you're thinking about impeachment: 5 essential reads</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>But the British story has darker lessons too. In 1628, two years after the failed impeachment, <a href="https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/today-in-history/duke-of-buckingham-was-ousted-in-parliamentary-leadership-spill-by-an-assassins-knife/news-story/09241cd09411f6e1bd21e9eedfceff5e">Buckingham was assassinated</a>, his killer inspired in part by the Commons’ remonstrance.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311429/original/file-20200122-117911-f3untv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311429/original/file-20200122-117911-f3untv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311429/original/file-20200122-117911-f3untv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311429/original/file-20200122-117911-f3untv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311429/original/file-20200122-117911-f3untv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=621&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311429/original/file-20200122-117911-f3untv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=621&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311429/original/file-20200122-117911-f3untv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=621&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The assassination of the Duke of Buckingham in 1628.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Richard Sawyer, National Portrait Gallery.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Clearly no one would ever want that history to repeat itself – but it is a warning about the height to which passions could be roused by impeachment and about how the perceived frustration of the legal process could stoke disillusionment, resentment and desperation. </p>
<p>And a bloody end was not just meted out against the duke himself. Two decades after Buckingham’s impeachment, Britain was not just engaged in a war of words or a legal battle but embroiled in civil war, mired in the sense that government as a whole had become corrupted. Impeachment may thus be a moment to step back and reconsider the wider health of political culture and discourse.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130400/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Knights received an HRC Leadership Fellowship for his work on corruption and has received a Leverhulme Fellowship for the same project. His book, provisionally titled The Abuse of Entrusted Power: Corruption and Office in Britain and its Empire 1600-1850.</span></em></p>Impeachment was a common political tool in early modern England, but its use lapsed 20 years after it was adopted in the US constitution.Mark Knights, Professor of HIstory, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1285072019-12-13T16:01:44Z2019-12-13T16:01:44ZImpeachment is better than exile<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306687/original/file-20191212-85404-axjwxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Donald Trump waves as he boards Air Force One, June 6, 2019.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Trump/13982b66f3b44226935a883b354ba573/169/0">AP/Alex Brandon</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When the framers of the Constitution created the process for Congress to impeach “<a href="https://history.house.gov/Institution/Origins-Development/Impeachment/">all civil officers of the United States</a>,” they rejected a much more severe punishment practiced in early America: exile. </p>
<p>That threat was real in the early colonial period. In 17th-century New England, Puritan authorities banished individuals who challenged their rule. Those who challenged orthodox religious teaching or the administration of the colonies found themselves sent to other colonies or, on occasion, to England. </p>
<p>Three cases – the lay minister <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/timeline/html/cw01_11804.html">Anne Hutchinson</a>, Rhode Island founder <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Roger-Williams-American-religious-leader">Roger Williams</a> and the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=ECm7DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA201&lpg=PA201&dq=thrice-exiled+lawyer+Thomas+Morton&source=bl&ots=qED1sfubB3&sig=ACfU3U1F47KvWcvOLMqnjaNbGKDpq5ZQ3w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiLzeHE7bDmAhWaZs0KHR1zCWgQ6AEwAXoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=thrice-exiled%20lawyer%20Thomas%20Morton&f=false">thrice-exiled lawyer Thomas Morton</a> – reveal that the founders understood the difference between actions that posed a threat to the state and those that required less severe punishment, even when the crimes had been committed by those holding high political office.</p>
<p>As the author of a new study of <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300230109/trials-thomas-morton">the formative years of New England</a> and a historian with a longtime interest in the <a href="https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/origins-and-ideologies-of-the-american-revolution.html">ideas that shaped the Revolution</a>, I am keenly aware of the fact that the founders studied history, including their colonial predecessors. Their views of the past shaped the contents of the United States Constitution. </p>
<p>The founders had a particular interest in the history of systems of representative government. They <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/lessons-decline-democracy-from-ruined-roman-republic-180970711/">paid careful attention to ancient Rome</a>, seeing it as the most famous example of the collapse of a republic. They knew that they needed protections from would-be tyrants, who would always be waiting for an opportunity to strike.</p>
<p>One way to reduce that possibility was to build in a way to remove a president who committed what they called <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/interpretation/article-ii/clauses/349">“Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”</a></p>
<p>But what should happen to someone who was impeached? </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306684/original/file-20191212-85386-14nbfb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306684/original/file-20191212-85386-14nbfb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306684/original/file-20191212-85386-14nbfb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=784&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306684/original/file-20191212-85386-14nbfb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=784&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306684/original/file-20191212-85386-14nbfb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=784&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306684/original/file-20191212-85386-14nbfb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=985&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306684/original/file-20191212-85386-14nbfb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=985&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306684/original/file-20191212-85386-14nbfb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=985&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anne Hutchinson on trial; she was exiled for her beliefs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.jssgallery.org/Other_Artists/Edwin_Austin_Abbey/Anne_Hutchinson_on_Trial.htm">Edwin Austin Abbey, artist</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Dissent leads to exile</h2>
<p>The punishments any society creates for those it deems dangerous reflect its core values. </p>
<p>In times of war and revolution, governments might choose to kill domestic enemies, as happened when the English <a href="https://search-proquest-com.libproxy1.usc.edu/docview/1299034047/fulltextPDF/AC2FDCDA28624085PQ/1?accountid=14749">executed King Charles I for high treason in 1649</a> and during the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Reign-of-Terror">Terror in France in the 1790s</a>, when revolutionaries <a href="https://www-jstor-org.libproxy1.usc.edu/stable/pdf/j.ctt2tt8x8.11.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A49b8c08348488a32e443b363d0bab66f">executed King Louis XVI and thousands of others</a> in their efforts to sustain their rebellion.</p>
<p>In colonial New England, where there was no separation of church and state, authorities saw threats from those who departed from acceptable Puritan values. They established rules for who could be a full member of a church and held to strict ideas about how individuals described <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801490415/visible-saints/">experiences of saving grace</a>. They knew that their communities, outnumbered by indigenous neighbors and persecuted for their religious beliefs in England, were precarious. </p>
<p>Soon after the founding of the colonies of Plymouth in 1620 and Massachusetts Bay a decade later, Puritan leaders confronted problems posed by Williams and Hutchinson.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/god-government-and-roger-williams-big-idea-6291280/">Williams held dissenting ideas</a> about how a church should be constituted and criticized the administration of the colony. <a href="https://www.nps.gov/sapa/planyourvisit/anne-hutchinson-in-massachusetts-bay.htm">Hutchinson spoke about her religious convictions</a> in ways that convinced authorities she was an antinomian, someone who believed she received direct revelation from God. That was an idea authorities deemed theologically – and thus politically – dangerous. </p>
<p>The colony’s leaders decided that both posed an existential threat to the proper working of the community and banished them. </p>
<p>Williams went to Narragansett Bay in 1635, where he <a href="https://www.massmoments.org/moment-details/roger-williams-banished.html">founded the colony of Rhode Island</a>, which became famous for its tolerance of religious diversity. He became an <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/god-government-and-roger-williams-big-idea-6291280/">advocate for the separation of church and state</a>. <a href="http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/bdorsey1/41docs/30-hut.html">Hutchinson followed Williams in 1637</a>, but eventually left for New Netherland, where she <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Anne-Hutchinson">died in a conflict known as Keift’s War in 1643</a>.</p>
<h2>Exile fails to deter</h2>
<p>Morton, a would-be fur trader, <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300230109/trials-thomas-morton">danced around a Maypole</a> – an act <a href="https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/intoxication/lord-misrule">the Pilgrim fathers deemed sinful</a>. He also sold guns to his indigenous trade partners.</p>
<p>Plymouth’s leaders arrested him and placed him on a ship bound for England, confident he would be jailed for his actions. But Morton never went to prison. </p>
<p>Instead, the next year, he returned to New England, but went to the just-founded colony of Massachusetts instead of returning to Plymouth. Soon he challenged the legitimacy of the new government’s policies, which he believed did not respect the authority of the English king. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306704/original/file-20191212-85376-ro92vg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306704/original/file-20191212-85376-ro92vg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306704/original/file-20191212-85376-ro92vg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306704/original/file-20191212-85376-ro92vg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306704/original/file-20191212-85376-ro92vg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306704/original/file-20191212-85376-ro92vg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306704/original/file-20191212-85376-ro92vg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306704/original/file-20191212-85376-ro92vg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Morton’s book, ‘New English Canaan,’ lampooned the Puritans and got him exiled a third time.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.christies.com/lotfinder/Lot/americas-first-banned-book-lampooning-the-puritans-6228516-details.aspx">Christie's auction house</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In response, colonial leaders exiled him to England. A decade later he returned yet again, only to be banished a third time when local authorities learned he and others had tried to have the Massachusetts charter revoked.</p>
<p>During his exile, Morton also <a href="https://library.si.edu/digital-library/book/newenglishcanaa00mort">published a book</a> that ridiculed the Puritans and accused them of violating acceptable Anglican religious practices. A copy of the book had crossed the Atlantic before Morton’s final return. </p>
<p>Infuriated by what they read, Massachusetts authorities imprisoned Morton. Morton by then was, as Governor John Winthrop put it, “old and crazy.” They could not fine him because he had no money. They decided to exile him again, this time to modern Maine, territory which was part of Massachusetts where few colonists had gone. </p>
<p>Morton died there, likely in 1646, “poor and despised,” according to Winthrop. </p>
<h2>Different crimes, different threats</h2>
<p>The actions of Williams, Hutchinson and Morton demanded banishment because each, in his or her own way, undermined the continuing existence of their communities. </p>
<p>Federal office holders who break the law, even in ways that undermine the United States Constitution, need a different kind of sentence: losing office and potentially being prevented from holding another. That was, and remains, a serious penalty. </p>
<p>But the founders believed that the country could withstand the continued presence of an impeached office holder. </p>
<p>We may debate the meaning of “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/us/politics/impeachment-hearings.html">high crimes and misdemeanors</a>,” but the founders understood that those found guilty of such crimes did not need to be exiled.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128507/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter C. Mancall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When the founders wrote the Constitution, they had to devise a punishment fitting for a civil servant’s impeachment. One possible punishment: banishment from the community.Peter C. Mancall, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and SciencesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1202932019-07-15T13:11:09Z2019-07-15T13:11:09ZBrexit: Boris Johnson would prorogue parliament at his peril – just ask Charles I<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/283994/original/file-20190714-173325-psqvg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Charles I in Three Positions by Anthonis van Dyck.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Charles_I_in_three_positions.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.royal.uk/charles-i">Charles I</a> is relevant again today – 370 years after his execution. Responding to the suggestion that Tory leadership hopeful Boris Johnson may be willing to <a href="https://www.theweek.co.uk/63099/parliament-prorogued-what-does-it-mean-and-can-it-be-used-to-push-through-brexit">prorogue</a> (suspend) parliament in order to force through a no-deal Brexit, former UK prime minister John Major recently evoked the spectre of the 17th-century monarch, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-boris-johnson-no-deal-parliament-suspend-prorogue-judicial-review-a8998136.html">ominously remarking</a> that such a move “didn’t end well” for Charles I in the 1640s. </p>
<p>And Major isn’t alone. Others have taken to Twitter, <a href="https://twitter.com/AssisiCat/status/1148938406912831488">warning that</a> “Boris should remember what happened to #CharlesI”. Campaigner Gina Miller is also launching <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/gina-miller-boris-johnson-no-deal-brexit-parliament-suspend-prorogue-a9004051.html">a legal campaign</a> to prevent Johnson from proroguing parliament.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1148938406912831488"}"></div></p>
<p>But what exactly is it that Johnson should be remembering? And what should we make of the reappearance of a 17th-century king, who played fast and loose with parliament and lost his head to the executioner’s axe, in 21st-century politics? </p>
<h2>Civil war</h2>
<p>In early modern England, monarchs weren’t obliged to call a parliament, but they did need parliamentary approval to levy new taxes, and this often proved to be a powerful incentive to do so. <a href="https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/research/surveys/surveys-1604-1629">In 1628</a>, following a pretty disastrous series of overseas military campaigns, Charles summoned parliament in the hope of raising money for further military action. Parliament, however, was in no mood to give the king something for nothing.</p>
<p>Two years earlier, Charles had attempted to implement the so-called <a href="https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/research/surveys/surveys-1604-1629">“forced loan”</a> – a tax by another name for which he had not sought parliament’s consent. And so when he wanted more money in 1628, parliament attempted to preserve its authority by pressuring Charles into accepting the <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/parliamentaryauthority/civilwar/overview/petition-of-right/">Petition of Right</a>, a document which laid out certain constraints on the king’s powers, including a ban on levying non-parliamentary taxation. Charles conceded just enough for parliament to grant him the money – and then he prorogued it, suspending its sitting. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-charles-i-lost-his-head-over-his-lust-for-the-worlds-greatest-art-collection-91848">How Charles I lost his head over his lust for the world's greatest art collection</a>
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<p>When parliament met again the <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/parliamentaryauthority/civilwar/overview/petition-of-right/">following year</a>, proceedings were scarcely more amicable. When Charles ordered MPs to take a break for a week, they refused. Two members held the speaker in his chair, another locked the door, and they refused to leave until they had voted on their own adjournment. Exasperated, Charles dissolved parliament altogether.</p>
<p>From the spring of 1629 until the spring of 1640, Charles ruled without a parliament. This was unusual, but it wasn’t illegal. What was more questionable were some of the measures Charles was forced to enact to sustain this state of affairs.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/ship-money">“Ship money”</a>, for example, was one of the few taxes a monarch could legitimately levy without the approval of parliament. It was usually paid by coastal communities to fund naval defences in times of threat.</p>
<p>Charles, however, demanded payment from inland as well as coastal areas every year, even during peacetime. This caused discontent, but it wasn’t as unpopular as some of his religious policies, such as the imposition of a <a href="http://bcw-project.org/church-and-state/crisis-in-scotland/scottish-national-covenant">new prayer book</a>, which eventually provoked <a href="http://bcw-project.org/military/bishops-wars/">a war with his Scottish subjects</a>, who objected to the king’s attempts to impose an unpopular form of worship on them.</p>
<h2>‘Some fewe cunning and ill affected men’</h2>
<p>With Scottish armies at the border, in February 1640 Charles was once again forced to summon a parliament. In the 11 years since its last sitting, grievances had been growing and this time Charles dissolved the body after only three weeks. In his closing speech, Charles blamed the dissolution on <a href="https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-5143">“some fewe cunning and ill affected men”</a> in the Commons who were plotting against him.</p>
<p>When a new parliament was called in the autumn of 1640, one of its chief concerns was how to ensure that it could not be as casually dismissed as its predecessors. One solution was the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Triennial-Act-England-1641">Triennial Act</a>, which required that parliament meet for at least a 50-day session once every three years.</p>
<p>His back against the wall, Charles was forced to accept. He also accepted other concessions, including the outlawing of ship money. Even so, the trust between king and parliament was gone, and in 1642 the ongoing political, religious and constitutional disputes exploded into armed conflict. The civil wars that followed lasted for nearly a decade and culminated in the <a href="https://www.hrp.org.uk/banqueting-house/history-and-stories/the-execution-of-charles-i/#gs.p2hday">king’s execution for treason</a> on January 30, 1649.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/283995/original/file-20190714-173376-x1jmhw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/283995/original/file-20190714-173376-x1jmhw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283995/original/file-20190714-173376-x1jmhw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283995/original/file-20190714-173376-x1jmhw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283995/original/file-20190714-173376-x1jmhw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283995/original/file-20190714-173376-x1jmhw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283995/original/file-20190714-173376-x1jmhw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Boris Johnson: following in the footsteps of Charles I?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/success?u=http%3A%2F%2Fdownload.shutterstock.com%2Fgatekeeper%2FW3siZSI6MTU2MzE1MjQzNywiYyI6Il9waG90b19zZXNzaW9uX2lkIiwiZGMiOiJpZGxfMTAzOTE0NjI0MSIsImsiOiJwaG90by8xMDM5MTQ2MjQxL21lZGl1bS5qcGciLCJtIjoxLCJkIjoic2h1dHRlcnN0b2NrLW1lZGlhIn0sIjA3TWhrOVpDWW5NbGJuSTlxWS8reG5WZzVldyJd%2Fshutterstock_1039146241.jpg&ir=true&pi=33421636&m=1039146241&src=X1Obg5CT_CATaRLQY91QVQ-1-0">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While Charles did prorogue the 1628 parliament, in 1640 he favoured complete dissolution, a move which, in the 21st century, would provoke a general election. Yet the memory of the 1630s and 40s as a time when a tyrannical ruler rode roughshod over parliament, split the country, and triggered civil war clearly lives on. </p>
<p>This, in itself, is nothing new. These events have cast a long shadow over politics down the centuries, and even across continents. From 1681, Charles II – who was restored to the throne after a period when the country was a republic – ruled without a parliament.</p>
<p>For his opponents, this was a state of affairs comparable to the days of Charles I, a parallel that emphasised the dangerous consequences of a king who tried to govern without a legislature. For his defenders, by contrast, one of the main lessons to be learned from this period were the dangers posed by overly zealous politicians, who had forced a rupture between the king and his country, and, ultimately, a civil war. </p>
<p>Nearly a century later, during the American campaign for independence, the imposition of a <a href="https://www.history.org/history/teaching/tchcrsta.cfm">stamp tax</a> on Americans without their consent was likened to Charles I’s ship money, a shorthand for a despotic and illegal imposition of taxation. Meanwhile, in the early 19th century, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampden_Clubs">Hampden Clubs</a>, meetings of radicals who sought political and social reform, took their name from John Hampden, the 17th-century MP famous for his opposition to ship money. </p>
<p>Fast forward to Major’s evocation of the civil war era. It might best be read as a warning about the dangers of political chaos and constitutional crisis. The uncanny timeliness of <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/proginfo/2019/28/charles-downfall-of-a-king-ep1">BBC4’s new mini-series</a> on the fall of Charles I, which aired recently, also reminds us that England’s most remarkable period of political turmoil continues to stalk the popular imagination.</p>
<p>So, Charles I may be back in the headlines – but perhaps the bigger question is whether he ever really went away.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/120293/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Imogen Peck receives funding from Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust</span></em></p>John Major was right – it didn’t end well for the 17th-century king, who ignored parliament and lost his head.Imogen Peck, Teaching Fellow in History, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/918482018-03-07T11:27:27Z2018-03-07T11:27:27ZHow Charles I lost his head over his lust for the world’s greatest art collection<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208229/original/file-20180228-36677-b4jisl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sir Anthony Van Dyck's Charles I. Google Art Project</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Great leaders like to demonstrate their power. These days, it tends to be shows of military might and grand parades of state of the art weaponry. But Renaissance monarchs and nobles amassed huge collections of art – the better to show off their cultural sophistication. Charles I was no exception – and an exhibition at the Royal Academy indicates the extent of his obsession with collecting the finest art and artists: an obsession which was ultimately to cost him his head.</p>
<p>Walk through <a href="https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/charles-i-king-and-collector">Charles I: King and Collector</a> – which represents only a small fraction of the Stuart king’s entire collection – and you can see how art functioned as a political display of power and magnificence. But behind the austere painted faces of the king and court, there is another story to be told. Reuniting works for the first time in 350 years, it captures a singular moment in British history – as an unscrupulous king created arguably the most impressive art collection in the world, while ostracising his parliament and people and catapulting himself on to the scaffold. </p>
<p>When James I succeeded Elizabeth I to the throne in 1603, it quickly became apparent that here was a more “continental” monarch. He was descended from the Bourbons through his mother, his court spoke in French, he was determined to create a unity between his three kingdoms of Scotland, England and Ireland and to marry his children into powerful courts of Europe. </p>
<p>Under his rule, England was “open for business”. England could now reap the rewards of the freedom of movement artists had enjoyed on the continent for generations. Over the next 40 years, the English would greet the likes of Van Dyck, Orazio and Artemesia Gentileschi and Rubens.</p>
<p>Art was more than merely decorative. It functioned as a symbol of power and wealth, displayed at particular diplomatic events to put across messages of majesty and status. Art and diplomacy were completely inseparable at this point and James’s son Prince Charles was determined to present himself at the forefront of European power. He turned to art to project this image of majesty.</p>
<h2>Spanish tour</h2>
<p>The story of Charles as collector starts with an imprudent trip to the rigid court of Spain. To Charles, he and his companion – the king’s favourite, The Duke of Buckingham – were chivalrous knights on a voyage to woo and wed a European princess. To Buckingham, they were art collectors ready to reap the spoils of a court already housing an array of masterpieces. They took with them Buckingham’s art agent and a handful of courtiers well versed in collecting and Spanish etiquette. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/206346/original/file-20180214-174982-9rg2oz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/206346/original/file-20180214-174982-9rg2oz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206346/original/file-20180214-174982-9rg2oz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206346/original/file-20180214-174982-9rg2oz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206346/original/file-20180214-174982-9rg2oz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206346/original/file-20180214-174982-9rg2oz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206346/original/file-20180214-174982-9rg2oz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Samson Slaying a Philistine, about 1562, Giambologna.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Samson_slaying_a_philistine.jpg">V & A Museum via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The trip was costly both diplomatically and financially, but they came back with a great haul of art, gifted, bought – and possibly even stolen, in the case of a sculpture of <a href="http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/s/giambolognas-samson-and-a-philistine/">Samson Slaying a Philistine</a>. Charles had caught the collecting bug with an acute love of Titian.</p>
<p>Negotiations for a marriage alliance between England and the Spanish Hapsburgs had begun in 1614, but had quickly broken down once it became clear that the Spanish conditions for such a match were far too high for James I to abide: mainly freedom of faith for Catholics in England. Negotiations for the match between Charles and the Infanta were opened up once more in 1621 – but progress was slow, and in 1623 Charles and Buckingham announced to James their intentions to travel to Spain in disguise, to woo the Infanta in person and to bring her back as an English princess. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209290/original/file-20180307-146675-o9u82l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209290/original/file-20180307-146675-o9u82l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209290/original/file-20180307-146675-o9u82l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209290/original/file-20180307-146675-o9u82l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209290/original/file-20180307-146675-o9u82l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209290/original/file-20180307-146675-o9u82l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209290/original/file-20180307-146675-o9u82l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Supper at Emmaus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Titian_-_Supper_at_Emmaus_-_WGA22794.jpg">Titian (c1530)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When they arrived at the Spanish court, they witnessed an unimaginable kind of majesty. The Habsburgs owned some of the most splendid art in the world – the walls were covered with works by Titian, Bosch, Correggio, Velasquez – and sumptuous tapestries woven with gold and silver thread. No one in England had ever seen anything like this before and the experience had a profound effect on the group.</p>
<p>To the Spanish, his sudden arrival could only mean one thing – he may be willing to become a Catholic. In an attempt to show Charles all that Catholicism had to offer, he was given pride of place at the great festival of Corpus Christi. It was a feast for the eyes; the streets were lined with great tapestries and he saw how Philip IV was revered by his people, almost as a deity. Though he had no thoughts of conversion, Charles saw the tempting reality of a king treated almost as a god, with an art collection to rival any other in existence. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209287/original/file-20180307-146691-10bpqze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209287/original/file-20180307-146691-10bpqze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209287/original/file-20180307-146691-10bpqze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209287/original/file-20180307-146691-10bpqze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209287/original/file-20180307-146691-10bpqze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1038&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209287/original/file-20180307-146691-10bpqze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1038&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209287/original/file-20180307-146691-10bpqze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1038&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Charles I with M. de St Antoine.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_I_with_M._de_St_Antoine#/media/File:Anthony_van_Dyck_-_Charles_I_(1600-49)_with_M._de_St_Antoine_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg">Antony van Dyck (1633)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We can see from paintings of the prince upon his return that he took on Spanish fashion, and a new kind of majesty was implemented. As well as falling in love with art and ceremony, Charles was immediately besotted with his potential bride, and accounts describe his constant impatience to see her – on one occasion even breaking into her garden only to be met with shrieks of terror from the virtuous princess. This is clearly not the way a prince was expected to behave and, if a union had ever been possible, his ideas of diplomacy drew an end to it.</p>
<h2>Spending spree</h2>
<p>As possibilities for a marriage dwindled into oblivion, the Stuart courtiers scavenged what they could get their hands on, and the trip turned into little more than an art collectors’ holiday. This visit was financially ruinous. James wrote to his son begging him to come home, telling him that the royal purse was empty.</p>
<p>An accounts book from the year 1623 (now at the <a href="https://www.nls.uk/">National Library of Scotland</a>) documents vast sums of money spent on elaborate clothing, jewels and art, as well as an elephant and camels. In their first two months, the group had already spent 261,421 reales, which amounted over £500,000 then, today it would be significantly more (to put this into context, Van Dyck’s annual salary as court painter was £100).</p>
<p>If that wasn’t enough, when they returned home Charles and Buckingham were determined on war with Spain, and in 1625 the latter took an <a href="https://www.warhistoryonline.com/history/cadiz-expedition-1625-m.html">invading fleet to Cadiz</a>. It was another complete fiasco and the cost was immeasurable, both in terms of money and loss of lives, without making a dent in the Spanish army. </p>
<p>Buckingham was already wildly unpopular at court and this was the beginning of the end for the royal favourite. Parliament began proceedings to impeach the Duke, and rather than risk a conviction, Charles – who had succeeded James the same year – dissolved parliament. Buckingham <a href="http://www.earlystuartlibels.net/htdocs/buckingham_assassination_section/P0.html">was assassinated</a> by a soldier from the Cadiz mission in 1628.</p>
<h2>Hubris embodied</h2>
<p>The trip to Spain was a definitive moment for Charles – a diplomatic and financial disaster and the first of many ill-judged moves which would come to characterise his reign. He returned to England determined to be the most prominent king in Europe, a great collector, almost divine, and above all, indisputably powerful. He would continue to spend vast amounts of money on art, clothes and court entertainments. He would ostracise an already distant parliament, and within four years of becoming king engage in an 11 year personal rule under which he would impose unpopular and barely legal taxes on his people. </p>
<p>His immovability on matters of state and religion would embroil his three kingdoms in a civil war that would last a decade, and he would maintain his divine right to rule until parliament had no choice but to condemn him for treason. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/206352/original/file-20180214-174982-1vxtah8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/206352/original/file-20180214-174982-1vxtah8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=328&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206352/original/file-20180214-174982-1vxtah8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=328&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206352/original/file-20180214-174982-1vxtah8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=328&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206352/original/file-20180214-174982-1vxtah8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206352/original/file-20180214-174982-1vxtah8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206352/original/file-20180214-174982-1vxtah8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Execution of Charles I of England (c.1649).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Execution_of_Charles_I_of_England.jpg">Unknown artist/Scottish National Gallery.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On January 30, 1649, Charles was walked from St James Palace to the Banqueting House in Whitehall where, sat under the extraordinary ceiling painting by Rubens depicting his father in divine glory, he would settle his affairs before being lead onto a purpose built scaffold, and beheaded. Even in this, Charles wielded his last moment of power, ordering that the axe would not fall until he gave his command.</p>
<p>Oliver Cromwell became Lord Protector, and under him the crown jewels were melted down and the gems sold, along with the majority of this enormous art collection – a necessary move to recoup some of the money lost under decades of decadent monarchs. What we see in the exhibition is around 7% of the original collection – and walking through it is easy to see how the king lost his head.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91848/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Breeze Barrington does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Charles I’s belief that art was a way of projecting power bankrupted England and alienated his people. The rest is history.Breeze Barrington, PhD Candidate in Early Modern Tapestry, Queen Mary University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/793012017-06-20T08:21:00Z2017-06-20T08:21:00ZWhy Oliver Cromwell may have been Britain’s greatest ever general – new analysis of battle reports<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173349/original/file-20170612-10249-5jbdbm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Statue of Oliver Cromwell outside the Palace of Westminster, London, UK</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/oliver-cromwell-statue-front-palace-westminster-96806341?src=A-jBsXePVku-6sCGm0kkNg-1-2">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="http://www.battlefieldstrust.com/resource-centre/civil-war/battleview.asp?BattleFieldId=49">battle of Worcester</a> was <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/charles_i_king.shtml">Oliver Cromwell’s</a> greatest triumph. It was the culmination of a campaign which ran like clockwork and finally ended the long and bloody English Civil War (1642-1651).</p>
<p>Some even believe that Cromwell engineered the preceding invasion of England by the royalist army of Prince Charles (the son of the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/charles_i_king.shtml">executed King Charles I</a>) by letting him slip behind his own parliamentarian force in the north. Cromwell then allowed the Scottish and English royalists to pass unchallenged down the western side of the Pennine mountains while simultaneously arranging a series of military rendezvous and creating supply dumps down eastern England ahead of his own march southwards. </p>
<p>Cromwell ensured royalist recruitment drives in Charles’s wake were broken up and defeated. And then, isolating Charles and his army in Worcester, Cromwell tightened his cordon. On September 3, 1651, Cromwell’s professional <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/New-Model-Army">New Model Army</a> stormed the royalist positions from the east and south. By the end of the day, Worcester was in Cromwell’s hands and his enemies were scattered. While Prince Charles escaped into exile, the royalist cause was doomed. It was a remarkable battle and campaign. </p>
<h2>A battle to end a war</h2>
<p>The planning which forced Charles into the trap was smooth and successful. And Cromwell also mastered a <a href="http://www.ibtauris.com/en/Books/Humanities/History/Cromwell%20at%20War%20The%20Lord%20General%20and%20His%20Military%20Revolution?menuitem=%7BF27A7174-62F6-40A3-8A37-7C39F7340215%7D">force of 35,000 men</a>, the largest army seen during the war. The sophistication bears comparison with Napoleon Bonaparte’s march into Bavaria in autumn 1805 and his entrapment of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Ulm">General Mack at Ulm</a>, a victory which essentially knocked Austria out of that war. With this extraordinary success, Cromwell also brought an end to years of warfare.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174443/original/file-20170619-12433-j9rox4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174443/original/file-20170619-12433-j9rox4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174443/original/file-20170619-12433-j9rox4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174443/original/file-20170619-12433-j9rox4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174443/original/file-20170619-12433-j9rox4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174443/original/file-20170619-12433-j9rox4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174443/original/file-20170619-12433-j9rox4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Oliver Cromwell.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/oliver-cromwell-15991658-engraved-by-escriven-81841279?src=A-jBsXePVku-6sCGm0kkNg-1-0">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>My new book, <a href="http://www.ibtauris.com/en/Books/Humanities/History/Cromwell%20at%20War%20The%20Lord%20General%20and%20His%20Military%20Revolution?menuitem=%7BF27A7174-62F6-40A3-8A37-7C39F7340215%7D">Cromwell at War: the Lord General and His Military Revolution</a>, explores Cromwell’s battles using contemporary descriptions and battle reports in conjunction with military manuals available to Cromwell to reveal how the “virgin soldier” learned his trade. </p>
<p>Just nine years before Worcester, Cromwell, then aged 43, had strapped on his sword for the first time – as a captain of a troop of horses in parliament’s army at the beginning of the English Civil War. Within months, he was a colonel, and at a skirmish near Grantham in May 1643, Cromwell won his first battle. </p>
<p>Analysis of Cromwell’s <a href="http://www.ibtauris.com/en/Books/Humanities/History/Cromwell%20at%20War%20The%20Lord%20General%20and%20His%20Military%20Revolution?menuitem=%7BF27A7174-62F6-40A3-8A37-7C39F7340215%7D">report</a> of the skirmish reveals that he had been using many of the military manuals that had been written in response to the fast-changing nature of warfare on the continent at the time, particularly during the ongoing <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Thirty-Years-War">Thirty Years War</a> on the continent.</p>
<p>Here, Cromwell used dragoons – fast-moving, mounted infantry armed with muskets – to fire on the royalists before staging his main attack. This tactic caused casualties among the ranks and killed officers, breaking up command and control within the royalist force. </p>
<p>Cromwell was also a consultative leader, who had formed strong relationships with his fellow soldiers, writing that he had consulted with one or more of his “faithfullest and most experienced Captains … we agreed to charge”. </p>
<p>His attack began at a “full trot” which then built up speed until his men were “charging fiercely”. His forces hit the royalists standing and broke the enemy in a manner borrowed from the Swedish king <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gustav-II-Adolf">Gustavus Adolphus</a>, who had made Sweden a potent modern military power a few decades earlier. Cromwell then ensured the royalists remained in a state of confusion by pursuing them for two or three miles. </p>
<h2>A master of strategy</h2>
<p>Cromwell was not just an astute student of tactics, he also showed a remarkable capacity for strategy. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174446/original/file-20170619-27202-1lpx46r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174446/original/file-20170619-27202-1lpx46r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174446/original/file-20170619-27202-1lpx46r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174446/original/file-20170619-27202-1lpx46r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174446/original/file-20170619-27202-1lpx46r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174446/original/file-20170619-27202-1lpx46r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174446/original/file-20170619-27202-1lpx46r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An Antique 17th-century English Civil War lobstertail cavalry helmet and breastplate.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Reexamining Cromwell’s reports from 1643 also reveals how the new soldier quickly and correctly identified the importance of Newark in Nottinghamshire. This royalist stronghold was strategically located on the major thoroughfares of the Great North Road and Fosse Way, and also dominated the River Trent. For several months in the spring and summer of 1643, Cromwell tried to coordinate local forces to capture the town. </p>
<p>Cromwell realised that as well as disrupting communications between parliament in Westminster and the northern parliamentarians, Newark threatened the parliamentarians’ hold on East Anglia, imperilling access to vast resources of food, money and manpower. So convinced was he of his “vision” that he ruthlessly exposed in his reports to, and speeches within parliament the superior officers who failed to appreciate his strategy. Leading parliamentarians Lord Grey of Wark, Lord Grey of Groby, Lord Willoughby of Parham and the Earl of Manchester were all castigated and replaced for their “failure” to see things as Cromwell did. </p>
<p>But Cromwell was also able to read the landscape and its military implications quickly and correctly. </p>
<p>It would be at the Battle of Marston Moor on July 2, 1644 that Cromwell came to the attention of the wider nation. There, his understanding of the terrain gave the parliamentarians a huge advantage and his wing of the army won the battle in a manner reminiscent of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/timelines/zwtf34j">Wellington’s victory over Napoleon at Waterloo</a>, 150 years later. </p>
<p>Seizing a small knoll on the fringe of the ridge where his cavalry was based, Cromwell pushed the royalists into defending disadvantageous ground. Later in the day, on that very spot, he went on to defeat them. </p>
<p>From a standing start, Cromwell developed into a great military leader – and he would later go on to rule Britain and Ireland as Lord Protector. Whether or not the military developments taking place on the continent constituted a revolution, he mastered them and more than any other British commander before or since combined an understanding of modern tactics with a detailed appreciation of terrain and the need for a strategic vision. </p>
<p>These talents he combined with ensuring that he led well-trained men with a high degree of <em>esprit de corps</em>, confident in their abilities and cause, first in his own regiment and later in the parliamentrians’ formidable <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/New-Model-Army">New Model Army</a>. </p>
<p>He was a clever leader with a clear and realistic vision – and he changed the face of Britain.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79301/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martyn Bennett is affiliated with
Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
Member of the Cromwell Association
member of the British Interplanetary society
member of the Thoroton Society of Nottinghamshire</span></em></p>He strapped on a sword aged 43 – and changed British history.Martyn Bennett, Professor of Early Modern History, Nottingham Trent UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/609562016-07-04T10:53:00Z2016-07-04T10:53:00ZThe long history behind the power of Royal Portraits<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128667/original/image-20160629-15248-75xu66.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Generation game.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Royal Mail</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The royal portraits released to mark the <a href="https://www.royal.uk/queens-birthday">90th birthday of Queen Elizabeth II</a> deliberately emphasise her status as the matriarch within a flourishing family. The oldest and newest generations of royals smile together for the camera, projecting the Windsor line as safely secured into the future. </p>
<p>These well choreographed and well publicised pictures blend longevity and authority with an appreciation of renewal and dynastic security. Across British history, however, the idea that the monarch’s nuclear family is necessarily a unit of stable authority has been hard won.</p>
<p>While of course there have been royal families for as long as there have been monarchs, spouses and offspring haven’t always shared the limelight. The pivotal era of change is that of the <a href="http://stuarts-online.com/">Stuarts (1603-1714)</a>, who reigned when print culture exploded and new forms of visual media emerged. </p>
<p>Successive Stuart monarchs quickly grasped the value of royal imagery, keenly sponsoring portraits of themselves or holding lavish events which promoted their reign and policies. In turn, authorised images were disseminated more extensively through cheaply printed pamphlets. </p>
<p>Sharing the royal image with their subjects was a new and powerful tool – but it also carried risks.</p>
<p>Promoting his family held advantages for the first Stuart monarch, James VI of Scotland, who assumed the English throne in 1603, becoming James I. After the turbulent reigns of the early Tudors, and decades of rule by a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/tudors/elizabeth_i_01.shtml">Virgin Queen</a>, James brought his subjects a healthy royal family. While he perhaps had little affection for his wife, Queen Anna of Denmark – and rather more for his succession of male royal favourites – he appreciated the importance of dynastic continuity and placed his three young children clearly in the public eye.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127768/original/image-20160622-7203-na1ico.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127768/original/image-20160622-7203-na1ico.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127768/original/image-20160622-7203-na1ico.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127768/original/image-20160622-7203-na1ico.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127768/original/image-20160622-7203-na1ico.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127768/original/image-20160622-7203-na1ico.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127768/original/image-20160622-7203-na1ico.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">James I and his royal progeny.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikicommons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>London’s printers devoted much attention to the king and his family. Genealogical charts and portraits of the family were disseminated in cheap printed form. James’s great book of political theory, <a href="http://www.stoics.com/basilikon_doron.html">Basilikon Doron</a>, was also rushed into print in London in 1603. This text was an extended essay on dynastic continuity, addressed to his eldest son, Prince Henry. And while James’s family experienced more than its share of upheaval, with Henry dying suddenly in 1612, and his sister Elizabeth being sucked into the morass of the <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/thirty-years-war">Thirty Years’ War</a>, royal imagery stressed the continuity of Stuart rule.</p>
<p>Charles I, James’s second son, went on to exploit even more fully the potential of the royal family image. Charles’s marriage to the French princess Henrietta Maria coincided with his father’s unexpected death in 1625, meaning his reign began at the same time as the start of a stable and happy marriage. His image as a ruler was virtually indistinguishable from his profile as a husband and father. </p>
<p><a href="http://english.rutgers.edu/images/documents/faculty/coiro_ball_of_strife_essay_2009.pdf">Scholars have even argued</a> that Charles only established an identifiable and independent reputation as a ruler from around 1630, when Henrietta Maria gave birth to the first of a succession of seven children.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127526/original/image-20160621-13008-1ht0mav.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127526/original/image-20160621-13008-1ht0mav.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=710&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127526/original/image-20160621-13008-1ht0mav.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=710&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127526/original/image-20160621-13008-1ht0mav.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=710&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127526/original/image-20160621-13008-1ht0mav.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=892&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127526/original/image-20160621-13008-1ht0mav.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=892&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127526/original/image-20160621-13008-1ht0mav.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=892&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Charles I, family guy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Royal Collection</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>All the media of the age were mobilised to celebrate the family. Volumes of poetry were published to mark each royal birth, while the greatest court artists were commissioned to paint portraits. One portrait of Charles, Henrietta Maria and their first two children, by Anthony Van Dyck, hangs to this day in Buckingham Palace. Yet the risks of this approach also became apparent, as the perceived influence of a foreign, Catholic queen <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=oz-BxVxgzhwC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">became a focus of resentment</a> in the 1640s. </p>
<h2>Traditional gender roles</h2>
<p>Set against a more traditional model of masculine authority, Charles was derided by his critics as weak and vulnerable. The publication of secret correspondence between the couple, in <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-kk-AAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&hl=en%20-%20v=onepage&q&f=false#v=onepage&q&f=false">The King’s Cabinet Opened</a> (1645), fuelled the flames of civil war.</p>
<p>The royal family remained a source of tension in the second half of the Stuart era. Charles II’s childless marriage to Katherine of Braganza lacked the intensity of his parents’ union. For his brother and heir, James II, the birth of a Catholic son in 1688 in fact precipitated his downfall. While his subjects were prepared to tolerate James II’s leadership, they were anxious about the prospect of a future line of Catholic Stuarts. </p>
<p>His opponents challenged the maternity of the child, James Francis Edward, alleging that he was an imposter smuggled into the Queen’s rooms in a bedpan. Hundreds of pamphlets, histories and even plays were produced about this “warming pan plot”. </p>
<p>Months later, James’s son-in-law, William of Orange, capitalised on discontent and invaded England to seize the crown. Thereafter, images of the Stuart royal family tended to be divisive, often associated with the “Jacobites” who sought to restore James to the throne.</p>
<p>Today, the Windsors can congratulate themselves on their evident success in creating an image suited to the times. Yet a glance back in history, to the very century when the royal family was invented as a media product, underlines the challenges that they face in promoting – and maintaining – the positive royal image in a digital age.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60956/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew McRae receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anna-Marie Linnell receives funding from the AHRC for her PhD studentship. </span></em></p>Royal PR in pictures started with the Stuarts 400 years ago.Andrew McRae, Head of English, Professor of Renaissance Studies, University of ExeterAnna-Marie Linnell, PhD candidate, University of ExeterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.