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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 realize it could be very violent very, very quickly. But of course, in the meantime, the MPs themselves, the ones that Charles was coming to arrest, [00:04:00] had fled and they were somewhere else in the building at this point. Still on their way out. They were going down to the river to try and escape into the city of London. But at this point, as Charles is coming into the chamber with these soldiers, they're still in the building. They haven't escaped yet.

Mark D'Arcy: So it was essentially a very dramatic moment, which ended with the famous words of the Speaker, Speaker Lenthall, basically he's telling the king he wasn't gonna help him find the MPs.

Jonathan Healey: Yeah, Lenthall's speech, which is, it's not completely clear that he did it, but it's entirely plausible. It seems like he would've said something like this. He basically says, I don't have eyes to see except those that the House give me.

So he's saying basically that he is the representative of the House of Commons. He's not the representative of the King, which is in itself quite a striking thing because the Speaker is appointed by the King, but he's able to kind of say, no, actually I represent these people around me because they represent the people and it's a moment of incredible defiance.

Particularly as Lenthall himself [00:05:00] had just a few weeks earlier, he'd written a letter to the King's Secretary of State begging to be able to resign because he was so tired. He just wanted to go back to Oxfordshire where he could just live his life in peace and it had been ignored. So it is one of those sort of great imponderable moments is what would've happened if the King and and his Secretary of State had allowed Lenthall to resign.

What would've happened there? Would they have had someone who was more compliant? But yeah, I mean it's incredible defiance. It's a real statement of the political independence of Parliament and the House of Commons from the Crown, and it is an important moment. It's one that the 19th Century historians would've seen as being really, really important.

We sort of may have lost a little bit of that understanding of its importance, but it is a really, really electric critical moment, I think.

Mark D'Arcy: And Charles, the first reaction, he didn't know how to cope with it. He is said to have looked around the chamber and said, I see my birds have flown.

Jonathan Healey: Yes. And as he walked out, he's supposed to have looked increasingly angry, as you may expect.

But there's also reports that the soldiers who are outside. [00:06:00] As Charles left the chamber and went, they made a corridor for him to walk past, and they were sort of saying to him, let's go in, let's shoot, let's fire, let's go and attack these guys. And he didn't give the order to shoot. I don't think he ever had any real intention.

I think he was intending to threaten Parliament, not to actually commit a massacre. It wasn't really in his nature, but some of the people who were there with him were definitely there wanting to get some blood because they were very, very angry about the radical implications of what the House of Commons was doing.

Ruth Fox: So this is the iconic moment, Jonathan. This clash between the executive in the form of the King and the legislature, the House of Commons, the MPs. Can backtrack a bit. This is the culmination of a confrontation that's been brewing for years. Charles has been attempting to rule without parliament. He's been trying to raise taxes without parliament. He's been confronted with the rebellion in Scotland. He's been cornered. He can only raise the taxes he needs to put the rebellion down by summoning the Commons and the Lords to give their consent. [00:07:00] But you've got this clash because the MPs and the peers wanted more in return than he was willing to concede.

So what is it that the MPs are wanting and why is he after these particular five MPs?

Jonathan Healey: Well, in the beginning what Parliament wanted was they wanted to basically sort of roll back the expansion of the role of the Crown in the 1630s. And what had happened is, as you say, Charles had tried to tax without parliament and he tried to change the religious landscape of the country to adopt a much more high church model in England, which was very controversial.

It had a lot of support, but it was also had a lot of detractors. The biggest thing really in 1640 was taxation without parliamentary consent, because there's this understanding amongst English common lawyers, basically, that you can't tax the people without their consent. And the way that they give their consent is they are gathered in Parliament and that the Parliament represents the people.

In fact, Parliament, to some is the people, but the people assembled and they give consent. But what Charles had done is he [00:08:00] tried to expand his tax base and then allowed it to be tested in the law court without going to Parliament, and he knew that the judges who all very, very competent men, learned lawyers, but they were people who knew what side their career was on.

Mark D'Arcy: What side their bread was buttered on.

Jonathan Healey: Exactly, exactly.

They knew what the best kind of judgment would be for their later promotion. So Charles was able to kind of get these taxes ratified by the courts. And what that did was it meant that people were more interested in what Parliament could offer because Parliament was less corruptible, I suppose, or it was more independent to be slightly more neutral.

So in 1640 there'd been this kind of big desire to reform the so-called abuses of Charles's personal rule. But as part of that process. Some of the MPs, particularly the more radical ones, and some of the members of the House of Lords had engaged in a correspondence with the Scottish rebels and they had pushed Parliament further than some of their fellow MPs and Lords wanted to go.[00:09:00]

And in the process of doing this, they'd also tried to use the crowd, the London crowd, as a way of putting pressure on the royal family. And what that meant is that there was a sort of small, hardcore of more radical members of both Houses who had really kind of pushed things. And for Charles, they were his enemies.

He wanted revenge on them. And so that kind of threads through the whole story of those kind of early months. That then means that they feel that they need to protect themselves and the way that they want to protect themselves is they want to get control of the executives, get control of the government.

For centuries, everyone had accepted that government ministers, so like Lord Treasurer, Chancellor of the Exchequer, membership of the Privy Council, had been appointed by the Crown that had just had how it had been done. But what you get is you get a group of MPs, more radical MPs and supporters in the Lords who are saying, actually, Parliament should have a say in this, or they should pick them.

And that's a very radical suggestion.

Mark D'Arcy: And one of the things the King wanted revenge for was the fate [00:10:00] of, I suppose, someone you could call his enforcer, Thomas Wentworth, the Earl of Strafford who had been called back from Ireland, where he'd been the King's enforcer, to be the King's enforcer against parliament. Pretty openly. And he was the person who was the strong man who was going to sort out the crisis on behalf of Charles I and Parliament got him first.

Jonathan Healey: Yes. And it's a fascinating case. I mean, there's, there's some really interesting ideology behind Stratford because he's someone who believes that reason of state, as he would put it, can trump the law.

So if something needs to be done, then it needs to be done. It doesn't matter what the law is. And if you can build up an army, this is how he'd ruled Ireland. He built up an army and then did what he needed to do. And that's a very, very dangerous ideology, particularly for a Parliament, which is full of lawyers.

So they are very worried about him. The other really, really dangerous thing about Strafford is that he's also very effective. You know, it's all very well having a tyrant, but having an effective tyrant is even worse. So they are very, very worried about him, and initially they [00:11:00] attempt to impeach him.

Impeachment had been around in the Middle Ages, but it had then kind of lapsed. It hadn't been used for a long time. And then it was rediscovered in the early 17th century as a way that the legislature could have some control over the executive, and if they're not able to appoint government officers, then at least they can have them fired if they are completely corrupt.

And they'd used that process and there was a kind of established procedure, very early days for this, but it was a sort of established procedure, which is that impeachment would be begun in the House of Commons, very similar to the US, begun in the House of Commons and then tried in the House of Lords. But the trouble was with Strafford is that they just couldn't make it stick.

They didn't have a very, very good case. It was all dependent on this idea of cumulative treason, whereby he had been so tyrannical and arbitrary that he had caused the people to fall out of love with the Crown. And that is basically the same as waging war on the Crown. But of course he's got Charles there who's saying, no, no, he's fine, I support him. So how can you be committing treason against someone that. Is supporting you. [00:12:00] So they're in a very, very difficult situation. They can't get this treason charge to stick through the impeachment trial. So instead, they used another medieval instrument, which is an act of attainder, where basically Parliament just declares you guilty of treason. The idea of it was, for times like the wars of the roses where people might have committed treason and then fled the country, and an act of attainder allows you to get their lands. But if the guy's sitting there and he's literally on trial in Westminster Hall at this time, it's a very, very slippery move to just sort of pass this act of attainder. And the logic is brutal. Parliament just declares you guilty of treason, and then that's it.

Mark D'Arcy: And then it's off to the executioner's block. An interesting little sort of parliamentary point here is of course that laws have to receive the royal assent. It doesn't become a law until the sovereign signs it. And this is a pretty brutal constitutional point that Strafford runs afoul of because eventually the King does sign it into law. How did they make him do that?

Jonathan Healey: Well, essentially there were crowds outside [00:13:00] the Palace of Whitehall chanting for justice and execution, and Charles was very, very scared for his own safety and particularly the safety of his family.

And he called upon his bishops and his privy counselors, and quite a lot of them basically sort of encouraged him to do it. Even his nephew, the Prince Elect, Charles Louis of the Palatinate was saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, you've got to do it. You've got to do it. There is a strong case and Charles was probably weeping at the Privy Council table because he knew that he didn't really have a choice and he felt very, very bad about it later. But it's that combination of pressure from some members of his government who could sort of see the arguments and thought Strafford was quite dangerous, even though he was a royalist and they were royalists.

It's shades of royalism at this point, but also pressure from the streets, which made Charles incredibly frightened for his own safety and particularly for the safety of his family. There's many facets to his character, but one of them is that he's very much a family man. He's someone who had a lot of love for his family [00:14:00] and wanted to protect them at all costs.

Mark D'Arcy: And we come back to this point about Westminster geography. I mean the Palace of Whitehall as well as not being all that far, few hundred yards from Parliament is also somewhere there's a public street running right through it so the crowds can build and could quite easily invade and it's probably not that easy to defend against the mob.

Jonathan Healey: Yes, a hundred percent. And one of the things I loved about writing the book was that you really did get a sense of how important that topography is and the fact that Whitehall is near Westminster, but it's also on the way from the city of London. So you get the crowds and even if they're on their way to the Palace of Westminster, they go past the Palace of Whitehall. And you know, later in the story, there's this kind of critical moment where Charles wants to spend Christmas at Hampton Court because why wouldn't you? But the city of London who are worried about trade, want the Royal Court in Whitehall because it will bring business for the city, and they persuade him to stay in Whitehall.

That's where he is when this whole crisis happens, and it's a topographical element is fascinating.

Ruth Fox: I think [00:15:00] one of the interesting things I found about the book, Jonathan, is that for many years the historical account of this period was that it was the landed gentry, the sort of almost the rise of the middle class in the House of Commons that was in opposition to the king, but actually more recent historical research and interpretation, which your book draws out, is that actually it was as much a revolt of the nobility, the nobles across the country were big movers in this as much as the MPs, and we know sort of historically about the big Commons names, the dissidents like John Pym, but actually there's sort of more an impression that they were agents of the nobility as much as the main protagonists.

Jonathan Healey: Yeah, I mean, I think the members of the Commons have a lot of their own agency, if you like. They choose which aristocrats to associate themselves with, but you do have these kind of big dissident aristocrats like Northumberland, like Warwick, like Essex, like Bedford to begin with, although he died in May, 1641.

And of course they're the ones if, you know, if Parliament gets control of [00:16:00] Government offices, it's them who are the ones who will become the big office holders. They'll become Lord Treasurer, they'll become members of the Privy Council. All those kind of things. The sort of lower offices like Chancellor of the Exchequer, which at this point was a reasonably junior office, would go to members of the Commons.

So the big financial one is Lord Treasurer and that would go to a Lord, whereas his deputy would be the Chancellor of the Exchequer and, you know, that would go to quite often a member of the House of Commons. So it's those aristocrats who had most to benefit from that. They've also got this kind of tradition, I think, and the work of John Adamson, for example, really kind of emphasized this brilliantly.

Mark D'Arcy: John Adamson author of a book of called The Noble Revolt, which had a look at the role of the big aristocrats in this process.

Jonathan Healey: Yeah, this tradition amongst the nobility of giving noble counsel to the crown and having a share in power. And that does run through this kind of story.

The other thing that I found really, really fascinating is the way that political organization is happening at this point, because we actually, [00:17:00] really kind of, for the first time, I suppose we get a quite a vivid view of how people are organizing political activity in the Houses of Parliament.

And so, you know, on the one hand we've got letters from the Queen, Henrietta Maria to members of the House of Lords saying there's a big vote coming up. You've got to make sure you're in the House, because we've got to block the junto, the reform. But on the other hand, you've got these meetings which are taking place in the big aristocratic mansions like Warwick House and Bedford House.

Warwick House is on Holborn and Bedford House was sort of near where Covent Garden is now, and Lord Mandeville's house in Chelsea and Holland's house up in Holland Park. And what you can see is that the political tactics in both Houses are being plotted in these aristocratic mansions in London, and that's then kind of spilling out into the Houses.

And it's a coordination between both sides. Generally speaking, the House of Commons is more radical than the House of Lords partly because the House of Lords still has these 26 bishops in there and they're all royal [00:18:00] appointees.

Mark D'Arcy: So, and that was one of the things, of course, that some of the radicals wanted to get rid of is getting rid of the bishops. A pleasingly modern resonance about that.

Jonathan Healey: Yes. Couldn't possibly comment, but yes. In the street protest at the end of 1641, there's this chanting against bishops, and it sounds quite religious, but one of the things that Adamson points out, and I think he's right about this, is that it's also about parliamentary maths. Because if you get rid of the bishops, that gives you a radical majority in both houses.

Mark D'Arcy: And while we're talking about the prime movers, tell us a little bit more about John Pym, because he is, these days, a little known figure I suppose, but he was fantastically significant at the time. People said this was a war between King Charles and King Pym.

Jonathan Healey: Yes, in some ways quite an unattractive character, because he's sort of rather a stern Puritan. He had absolutely pathological hatred of what he would call Papism and thought that there was this kind of grand Catholic plot to overthrow the country. So in many ways, quite an unattractive figure. Said to be notoriously humorous. There was an occasion in the 1620s where [00:19:00] Parliament was discussing a bill against adultery and John Pym moved that we commit it, meaning we commit the bill, but it caused great mirth in the house because it sounded like he was saying, we should all commit adultery. And that's, I think the only time that he's ever raised a laugh in the house. But he's also an incredibly sophisticated political operator.

Very, very devious, very clever in the way that he manipulates the House. A real kind of politician, a proper politician, and a man with some really, really interesting principles. He's sometimes described as a sort of religious fanatic, but actually don't think that's true on one of the big religious issues of the day, which is whether to have bishops. He's actually quite open-minded about that, and his big kind of contribution really is that he's someone who believes that it's Houses of Parliament, but especially the House of Commons, that should have a crucial role in the government of the country. And that's something which came out of, you know, his experience in the 1620s, his experience of defeat in the 1630s.

And presumably also his kind of political skill, his realization that that's where his skill lies. [00:20:00] He's also someone who's quite capable of using the press. I speculate in the book that, so at one point in late 1641, you get the development of the first ever serial newspaper describing English political news. It's called the Heads of Several Proceeds. Not a very snappy title, but it's probably it's been published by someone who's a known associate of John Pym, and it's probably him who's sort of realizing that. He wants to mobilize the people, and one of the ways to do that is to give them regular news, give them newspapers, so there's that as well.

It's a perennially, fascinating character, I think. Not always an attractive one, but really interesting.

Mark D'Arcy: Now, one of the interesting things about this is that we have a lot of eyewitness accounts. There's a character's quoted extensively in your book called Sir Simonds D'Ewes. I hope I'm pronouncing it even vaguely.

He was a relatively minor MP, but fortunately for posterity, kept very, very detailed accounts and had daily diary really of speeches and events in Parliament, including the arrival of the king to try and seize the five members. So tell us a bit [00:21:00] about him and perhaps some of the other sources are available.

Jonathan Healey: Yeah, I mean, so Simonds D'Ewes, you're very close, was a Puritan gentleman. I think one of his grandfathers was a Dutch migrant, so he had a kind of migrant background, but he was born in Dorset and he'd moved to Suffolk as a youngster, and he was a Puritan. He was also someone who had really kind of imbibed the ideology of the English common law, and he believed in no taxation without consent in Parliament and all these kind of things.

Quite a pompous, quite a sort of particular man. He was an antiquarian and quite often if the House was debating something, he would be sent off to his study, which was just around the corner, to kind of collect historical references so that he could bring them into debate. And he loved nothing more than doing that.

Had a fairly difficult relationship with the Speaker as well. But as you say, his real contribution is that he left this incredible parliamentary diary. It's not a perfect source. You know, there are times where he had a cold, so he had to stay away. One of the most frustrating is during the [00:22:00] debate on the Grand Remonstrance, this sort of big parliamentary protest in November where he had this, he had a sniffle, so he had to go back to his and go back to lodgings and just sort of sleep.

But you're right, I mean, he gives this kind of vivid description of the attempted arrest of the five members on the 4th of January. His is the best. We have other parliamentary diaries that you know, I remember using one in the Bodleian Library, which was kind of tiny scribble notes, this very, very thing that I was holding would've been in the long Parliament when it was sitting.

It was incredible to be able to hold that. You've also got a very, very extensive journal of the House of Commons. The House of Lords papers exist and they're quite extensive, and also you've got a lot more reporting by journalists. Essentially, this is a world in which print is exploding. And that means there's a really, really big market for people to find out what's going on in Parliament, print it off pretty quickly, and then retail it in the booksellers of London so that people can read about it.

There are moments where it is a bit obscure what's actually happening [00:23:00] in the House, but in terms of what we know, it is an incredible moment because we can really see where the candles were being used and we can see where people are sitting to some extent. D'Ewes sometimes talks about the gentleman speaking from the gallery. So we, we know that this one speech is coming from the gallery of the House of Commons.

Mark D'Arcy: And you do get the impression that actually the House of Commons is a pretty uncomfortable place when it's very crowded and the candles are burning and you can barely breathe the air.

Jonathan Healey: Yeah. And there's one moment where it's sort of, one of the galleries kind of collapses and everyone thinks that it's a Catholic attack or something, and they'll run out panicking.

And there's this Puritan who clings onto this image of Jesus and he gets mocked for it because he's sort of holding onto a graven image in fear for his life. Um, so yeah, I mean, very uncomfortable, very crowded.

Ruth Fox: Can we talk a little bit Jonathan about the King. This is the man that the House of Commons has confronted. He's inherited a clutch of difficult to govern kingdoms. Each have got its own religious, political, and economic [00:24:00] tensions, but he's not very adept at managing any of it.

Jonathan Healey: No, he's a bit of a fuss pot. And I think that that doesn't help, because as you say, you know, you've got these three very, very different kingdoms and his father had basically got by by essentially leaving them alone as far as possible.

Whereas Charles, actually, he was a centralized, I mean, he genuinely believed that his form of Christianity was superior to the one they had in Scotland and he didn't particularly like the Catholics in Ireland. So yeah, he did try and sort of regularize it and I think that was a real mistake. His ideology is sort of recoverable actually because he talked quite a lot about what he believed.

He had this idea that used maxims to, you know, approach politics and he would say things like it is better for the subject to suffer a little than for everything to lie out of order. He believed in order. He believed in peace. He believed in stability, sort of strong and stable government, if you like. This thing was very, very hard to achieve.

Mark D'Arcy: So the King attempts to seize the five members. It's a fiasco. [00:25:00] And essentially then his authority in London collapses.

Jonathan Healey: Yeah, I mean there's a critical moment which is not widely known about. I mean, it's a very interesting moment. So one of the things I try and do with the book is I try and tell some of the stories of the people, partly people around Charles, and including the lawyers and the Lord Keeper Edward Littleton is asked shortly after the attempted arrest of the five members to put the Great Seal on a proclamation saying that they should be arrested as soon as you see them and he decides that this is unconstitutional, that he refuses to do it. So even the Lord Keeper, you know, the senior lawyer in the country is refusing to follow the King.

Even the Attorney General, a man called Edward Herbert, who'd been the one who brought the charges against the five members in the House of Lords. Even he was putting it out that he thought it was illegal, what the Crown was doing. So there's this kind of critical moment in January where it just even Charles's supporters apart from the real die hards are thinking this is too much. So it does kind of cause his authority to collapse. There's also [00:26:00] this critical moment on the day after. People know about the 4th of January. It's this sort of critical moment where he goes to the House of Commons, but then the next day he went to the city to try and get the city to hand over these MPs and the city refused.

And then having had lunch with one of the sheriffs on his way back, his coach has to sort of push through these crowds of people and a journalist ran up to his coach and threw a pamphlet in, which basically accused Charles of being a tyrant.

Mark D'Arcy: Oh, this is, to thy tents, oh Israel.

Jonathan Healey: Yeah, and it had literally been printed the night before by a man called Thomas Payne.

Of course, of all names, but I don't, I I don't know whether there was any relation. And it had been printed and then scattered around St. Paul's. And Henry Walker Walker, who's the journalist, ran up to the coach and threw it in. And Charles was terrified by this because, you know, suddenly there's no protection for him.

Mark D'Arcy: To explain that to their tents, oh Israel, thing. This was a biblical text against, I think it was the son of King Solomon. [00:27:00] Wasn't it? The one who said my father tormented you with scourges. I will torment you with scorpions. He was a tyrannical ruler, and Israel was allowed to overthrow him, and that presumably sent a few shivers down the royal spine.

Jonathan Healey: Absolutely. I mean, you know, the whole text is about the people withdrawing their support from the house of David, and of course, Charles' father portrayed himself as Solomon. So there was a real kind of family reference there. And so when Charles got back to Whitehall, then he said that he was visibly shaken from this, and within a few days he left London.

And that's how you then get into this situation where it's sort of falling into civil war. So yeah, it's not only what happens on the fourth, it's what happens the day after. And it's that popular protest. You know, we talked about noble involvement, but there's also this kind of popular protest. The streets are very, very important.

The people of London are very, very important here as well. And as I say, Charles, he was supposed to be visibly shaken by this, and within a few days he left the city.

Mark D'Arcy: We know the fate of the main protagonist, the King, because he ends up being beheaded outside his banqueting house in Whitehall. [00:28:00] Oliver Cromwell who became king in all but name is just barely visible at this time.

Jonathan Healey: Yeah, I mean, if you watch the film Cromwell, then he is depicted as one of the five members, which is grossly inaccurate. But he was a fairly minor back bencher at this point. It's quite an interesting character. But, you know, of relatively minor importance. He does sort of grub up occasionally. So John Pym died within a year. So he died late in late 1643. So a year and a half. From natural causes. So he was off the scene. He'd just managed to secure an alliance with the Scots at a moment that the parliamentarian cause was really faltering. And so he may well have saved the day, if you like.

And then you've got William Stroud, who's sort of radical, relatively obscure, he also died of natural causes in 1645. John Hampden, one of the more prominent of the five members, he died on the battlefield in 1643. So within sort of three years, three of the five members are dead. The two who survive are two of the most interesting.

So you've got Sir Arthur Haselrig, who's, you know, relatively obscure in [00:29:00] 1642, but he became a sort of leading republican, a Commonwealth's man. He was a thorn in the side of Oliver Cromwell when Cromwell became more sort of regal. And he was very prominent during the years before the restoration, but Charles II didn't forgive him, even though he wasn't a regicide, he was imprisoned at the restoration and died, I think in the Tower of London. But he did, you know, he lived to sort of 1661 and then, you know, kind of fell. The real success story is Denzil Holles, who had been a sort of real firebrand in 1629, he'd been one of the people who held the Speaker down in his chair when parliament was dissolved in 1629.

And he was quite a radical firebrand in 1642. But then very early on in the war, he was fighting with his regiment of red coats at the Battle of Brentford and his soldiers just got completely wiped out by Prince Rupert. And from then on, really, he became a much more moderate parliamentarian. In 1647, he fell out with Oliver Cromwell.

He was banished, wrote his memoirs as [00:30:00] everyone does when they sort of fall from political grace. Eventually Cromwell let him back, but the restoration, he was one of the architects of the restoration. Survived into the 1670s as a sort of fairly grumpy old man who was just a bit cantankerous, but he survived and I think he was a member of the Royal Society and all those kind of things, so he's the success story.

Ruth Fox: Oh, and what of Speaker Lenthall then, Jonathan?

Jonathan Healey: He had a sort of, kind of complex relationship with Parliament during the republic and Cromwell. But he was fine. He made a reasonable amount of money, but then come the restoration, he was getting quite old and he was not able to find a place in the restoration government.

He retired to Burford in the Cotswolds where he was buried. And on his tomb, he insisted that it had, I forget the Latin, but it said his epitaph was just, I am a worm, which is sort of very Calvinist.

Mark D'Arcy: Vermes sum, I think, wasn't it?

Jonathan Healey: Yeah, that's it. And so he died in not obscurity, but having fallen out of [00:31:00] political favor.

But he survived the republic and died in 1662. I think it was on the 3rd of September actually. The same day as Oliver Cromwell, if I recall correctly.

Mark D'Arcy: Well, Jonathan Healey, your book, the Blood in Winter, A Nation Descends 1642, a fascinating account of the catalog of misjudgments and maneuvers and all round chaos that precipitated the English Civil War.

It really is a very fast moving, almost like a novel at times, account of those tumultuous events that laid the foundations, I suppose, for our parliamentary democracy. Thanks so much for joining Ruth and I on today on Parliament Matters.

Jonathan Healey: Thank you very much. It's been great fun.

Ruth Fox: Well, thanks Jonathan. And listeners, just before we go, a few housekeeping points.

If you haven't already done it, would you mind completing our listener survey? It'll really help us in terms of developing the podcast and ensuring we can get those adverts on the podcast, which help pay for this, frankly. And if you haven't already done it as well, please do [00:32:00] review the podcast on your favorite app. Five stars only please. Mark and I don't really understand the algorithms, but we're told that it really helps to grow the podcast and for other listeners to find us on places like Apple and Spotify. So it's kind of essential and it's one way that you can help us on the podcast. So with that, we'll be back with another summer recess episode in a couple of weeks, and, we will see you then.

Mark D'Arcy: Join us then. Bye-bye.

Ruth Fox: Bye.

Outro: Parliament Matters is produced by the Hansard Society and supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. For more information, visit hansardsociety.org.uk/pm or find us on social media at Hansard Society.

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