In this episode we speak with historian Jonathan Healey about one of the most extraordinary days in parliamentary history when King Charles I entered the Commons Chamber with soldiers aiming to arrest five MPs. This dramatic moment, vividly recounted in Healey’s new book The Blood in Winter, marked a crucial turning point toward civil war. We explore the power struggles, propaganda, and the geography that shaped the fate of a nation and the Westminster Parliament.
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January 4th, 1642: King Charles I enters the House of Commons with armed soldiers to arrest five MPs – Pym, Hampden, Haselrig, Holles, and Strode. It's a scene etched into British constitutional memory, echoed today in the symbolic slamming of the Commons’ door during the State Opening of Parliament. But what led to this unprecedented royal intrusion?
In this special Summer recess episode, we are joined by historian Professor Jonathan Healey, author of The Blood in Winter: A Nation Descends, to unpack the political, legal and emotional drama behind that fateful day.
We explore the rising tensions over Parliament’s role in securing consent for taxation to fund the King’s wars, controversial religious reform, and the escalating political crisis – including the moment when MPs used the parliamentary process to force Charles to agree to the execution of his powerful ally and chief enforcer, the Earl of Strafford. Healey reveals how political passions were stirred by the new technology of pamphlet-printing, city mobs, and the role of the great nobles in backing MPs who resisted the King.
Jonathan also sheds light on the crucial role geography played in 17th century Westminster, with the royal palace of Whitehall just a short walk from Parliament, and both set along a public thoroughfare that left them exposed to rioting crowds from the City of London.
We learn about Speaker William Lenthall’s defiant stand, the fate of the elusive five MPs, and how figures like John Pym and Denzil Holles helped redraw the lines between Crown and Commons. Plus, a look at how near-unknown backbencher Oliver Cromwell was just beginning to appear on the scene.
It’s a gripping account of how political missteps and personal rivalries pushed the nation to civil war and shaped the parliamentary democracy we have today.
Dr Jonathan Healey
A social historian of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Jonathan Healey writes history from the bottom up, focusing on ordinary people – their lives, loves, culture and politics. He is Associate Professor in Social History at the University of Oxford, where his current research is on the court of Star Chamber, social policy, and popular legalism and politics. His latest book, The Blood in Winter: A Nation Descends, 1642, is a political history of the dramatic months leading up to the outbreak of the English civil war. His previous book, The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England, was picked as a Book of the Year by the Telegraph, Economist and New Yorker. He lives in Oxford and tweets as @SocialHistoryOx.
The Blood in Winter: A Nation Descends, 1642 (Bloomsbury)
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Intro: [00:00:00] You are listening to Parliament Matters, a Hansard Society production supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Learn more at hansardsociety.org.uk/pm.
Ruth Fox: Welcome to Parliament Matters, the podcast about the institution at the heart of our democracy, Parliament itself. I'm Ruth Fox.
Mark D'Arcy: And I'm Mark D'Arcy. And in this special episode, we are looking back to the greatest crisis in Parliament's history. It's January 4th, 1642, and King Charles I marches his troops to the door of the Commons chamber to arrest five MPs who've opposed his policies. Pym, Hampden, Holles, Haselrig and Strode. The resulting fiasco, possibly the first act in the English Civil War, is described in a new book by the historian Jonathan Healey. Blood in Winter, a Nation Descends.
Ruth Fox: The [00:01:00] moment is still echoed in Westminster ritual to this day when the doors of the House of Commons are slammed in the face of the King's representative, Black Rod, at the State Opening of Parliament, to assert the independence of the House from the Crown. Can you start Jonathan with that dramatic moment of the crisis, the King is at the door of the House of Commons.
Can you recreate that scene for us?
Jonathan Healey: Yeah, so I mean it starts in Whitehall Palace. So at this point, the sort of landscape of Westminster, it has these kind of two centers really. I mean, you've got Westminster Abbey as well, so three. Palace of Westminster, which is where Parliament was sitting, and you've got Whitehall Palace, which is the Royal Palace.
And so Charles had been sort of milling around all day on the 4th of January, pacing around in the chambers of Whitehall, well, in Westminster, in the Palace of Westminster. Parliament was sitting, the House of Commons was sitting. And they were getting increasingly nervous about reports that there was a gathering of soldiers at the Royal Palace in Whitehall.
They'd had warnings overnight that Charles was going to do something [00:02:00] dramatic and they'd sent observers, and one MP had gone to observe what was going on at Whitehall. And he'd seen that there were these soldiers and they were gathering ready to do something. And then at three o'clock, Charles appeared.
In a courtyard in Whitehall Palace and says, you know, follow me, my lead, kind of thing.
Mark D'Arcy: And for those who don't know the geography of Westminster, this is not very far away at all.
Jonathan Healey: Yeah. It's roughly where the Banqueting House is today. That's the sort of precise location anyway, so he sort of comes out and then he hasn't got a coach.
There's no coach for him to use, so he has to sort of flag one down or grab one, which was hard actually. And then sort of trundles down what's now Whitehall and then King Street with probably about 500 armed soldiers, cavaliers, with him and get to the Palace of Westminster. And in that time someone has run ahead and warned MPs in the House of Commons that this is happening.
So he leaves about 400 of those soldiers outside and then takes about 80 to a hundred of them up into the lobby outside the House of Commons, and then knocks on the door [00:03:00] and the person at the door opens it, sort of sees that the King is there and then the King came into the chamber, everyone stood up because that's what they did instinctively.
And he walked to the Speaker's chair and said to Speaker Lenthall, he said, May I please make bold with your chair? And as he came in, there was this kind of, as I say, instinctive reaction from MPs who knew that something bad is gonna happen or is likely to happen. And they're also looking through this kind of small wooden, I guess, door.
And they can see outside that there are soldiers. With swords and pistols and leaning on the door is this Scottish Lord called the Earl of Roxborough, who's an extremely dubious character. He'd done a murder in the 1590s in Edinburgh, and everyone knows him as this kind of, you know, firebrand of lunatic.
So it's a moment of high drama. And people in the chamber don't really know what's going to happen next, and they realise it could be very violent very, very quickly.
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