## Introduction [00:00] hi everyone welcome back to the history and 20 podcast hope you're all doing well so today we're moving a bit further forward than i usually do and we're going to the 17th century and we're discussing the english civil wars which were from 1642 1642-51 so a quick overview of them for you the dates run from the 22nd of august 1642 to the 3rd of september 1651 all across the locations of england scotland and ireland the belligerents were the royalists and the parliamentarians known as the roundheads and cavaliers so i'll explain that in a little second um casualty-wise there was 127 000 non-combatant deaths including 40 000 civilians 50 700 royalists dead and 83 467 captured 34 130 parliamentarians dead and 32 823 captured out comes a few quick ones uh it was a parliamentarian victory king charles the first was beheaded oliver cromwell became the de facto ruler of england so we'll get into this and how it happened but firstly you might notice noticed i said the english civil wars so why the english civil wars plural and not just the english civil war so has there been more than one before well the answer to that is both yes and no so during the reign of king stephen ## The English Civil Wars [01:25] of england which was from 1135 to 54 almost his entire reign was dominated by a conflict known as the anarchy which lasted from 1138-53 so this was a form of civil war although it was fought between england and normandy and not just two rival english factions and also as well you might think of english civil wars the wars of the roses they were english civil wars as well and they lasted in one form or another from 1455 to 87 and right up until the 16th century um that conflict between the houses of lancaster and york were known as the civil wars not the wars of the roses so when we mention the english civil wars why do you think of the roundheads and the cavaliers and charles and cromwell why don't we think of the anarchy under king stephen in the 12th century are the wars the roses in the 15th so simply put i think it's because this was the most recent civil war in england so if a civil war was too rough today and last for weeks months or years then i think we would refer to the 17th century conflict as the old civil war or the 17th century civil war parliamentarian civil wars or something along those lines and in addition the english civil wars were also a series of wars not just battled battles there were three major civil wars and we'll jump straight into it right now but first we have to go back to the origins of the conflict excuse me so ## James the First [02:50] to really find out why and when the conflict arose when it did we have to go right back to the tudor period and the reign of queen elizabeth the first so due to her having no direct air as she was childless she chose her cousin james vi of scotland to succeed her and in doing so he became james vi of scotland and james the first of england and as a result he united the fir the three kingdoms of england scotland and ireland under one ruler for the first time in their history so he managed to do that because ireland was an english english protectorate at the time so as queen elizabeth had been a protestant naturally she wanted a protestant successor however the catholic minority initially welcomed james the first as a ruler but soon began to turn against him and perhaps the most famous example that is another episode i've covered which will be a card on your screen about now and that's the gunpowder plot on the 5th of november 1605 when a select few catholics attempted to blow up the king in parliament however despite the catholic attempt against his life james remained relatively tolerant of catholics in his kingdom particularly because they were a powerful political force in ireland especially however james also commissioned a translation of the bible into english which went against catholic tenets as they believed the bible and clerical dealings should only be done in latin and this bible is still in print today the eponymous king james bible ## Charles the First [04:14] so fast forward into the end of james the first's reign so we've already seen these tensions are up the gunpowder plot the bible coming in they're already charles isn't inheriting the throne a particularly pleasant era so his son charles the first succeeded him in 1625. now charles was married to a catholic princess called henrietta maria of france so this only further fueled suspicions this time on the protestant side that catholic traditions will be brought back into england so the protestants who were most concerned about this were a radical group known as the puritans who will come back to a little later on this episode however charles didn't help himself much either because he believed in the divine right of kings which meant that he viewed himself as god's representative on earth paralleling the role of the catholic pope and in 1629 he dismissed parliament altogether and he wouldn't call it for another 11 years so the next section i'm kind of delving into his war in europe arriving on the shores of the british isles so it's little surprise that it was charles the first who was on the throne while the 30 years war raged across europe with protestants and catholics slaughtering each other all over the continent i've done an episode on that will be a card on your screen somewhere for that too so the effects were certainly felt in england as well so by the late 1630s charles the first of made efforts to establish a more anglicized form of religious practice in scotland something which went against what the scottish presbyterians believed in so the scottish army defeated charles charles's forces and invaded northern england forcing charles to recall parliament in 1640. so as i mentioned earlier this was the first time in 11 years that parliament had been called and the main reason why he called this parliament is because he needed the funds to pay his own troops and to settle the conflict however the royalist versus parliamentary split had already become evident by now parliament acted quickly in aim to restrict charles's powers even going so far as to organizing the trial and execution of one of his chief ministers a guy called lord stratford ## The First Civil War [06:12] so while there was mass political upheaval in england in ireland the catholic majority also rebelled killing hundreds of protestants in october 1641 so when the news of this massacre reached england tensions rose even further because neither charles nor parliament could agree on how to deal with it in january 1642 charles tried and failed to arrest five members of parliament who opposed him now fearing for his own safety charles fled london for northern england where he called on his supporters to prepare themselves for war and this is where the first english civil war begins and this lasted from 1642 until 1646 so on the 1st of june 1642 parliament sent a list of proposals to charles who was in york at the time known as the 19 propositions and in these demands parliament sought a larger share of power in the governance of the kingdom but naturally charles rejected them so war officially broke out on the 22nd of august 1642 when charles the first raised the royal standard at nottingham the royalist supporters who are those known as cavaliers control much of northern and western england while the parliamentarians or the round heads controlled large parts of the south and east of the country so the first pitched battle of the civil war was edge hill in warwickshire on sunday the 23rd of october 1642 but the result of this battle was actually inconclusive because both royalists and parliamentarians celebrated it as a victory both sides had relatively evenly matched armies and lost very similar numbers of men however by 1643 charles the first forces seemed to begin in the upper hand having won a battle at odd walton moore and yorkshire on the 30th of june 1643 and also that had concluded an alliance with irish catholics to put an end to the irish rebellion unfortunately for the royalists though the parliamentarians had also been busy securing alliances and they had scotland on their side by the turn of 1644 and this alliance was most famous for its part in the battle of marston moore on 2nd of july 1644. so marston moore near harrogate in north yorkshire was one of the key parliamentarian victories of the first civil war the parliamentarian army outnumbered the royalist army by 28 thousand to eighteen thousand and only lost three hundred men compared to the four thousand dead and fifteen hundred captured on the royalist side so due to the location of this battle near york where charles had been residing it effectively ended royalist support in the north as the parliamentarians now controlled almost all of the territory in northern england so seeing the success of the victory at marston the following year parliament created the new model army which was a 22 000 strong force of permanent professionally trained soldiers and this army was trained and commanded by a guy called sir thomas fairfax and another man called oliver cromwell who'll be a part of this story later on so two more key parliamentarian victories followed the battle of nairsby on saturday the 14th to june 1645 in northamptonshire where the main royalist army was destroyed and then the battle of langport on the 10th of july 1645 where the last royalist field army was also destroyed and it was at this time that charles the first was handed over to parliament by the scots and imprisoned in may 1646 after seeking shelter with scottish presbyterians in nottinghamshire who turned him into parliament ## The Second Civil War [09:36] and this marked the end of the first english civil war so the second english civil war which is 1648 to 9. there's a little bit of an interlude here so i'll explain that before we move on to the second english civil war so due to charles's arrest and imprisonment this meant that there was a partial power vacuum in which any of the royalists new model army or presbyterians could potentially take over and as a result charles passed in between these factions while each one attempted to negotiate a better deal than the others however while on the isle of wight in 1647-48 charles negotiated a deal with the scots and this deal was known as the engagement and its objectives were simple uh charles would make church reforms that suited the scots if they would invade england on his behalf and restore him onto the throne so during the spring and summer of 1648 a series of armed uprisings across england erupted and even a scottish invasion took place albeit unsuccessfully but the conclusive battle of the second civil war was the battle of preston fought between the 17th to the 19th of august 1648. this was where a combined uh royalist and scottish force was soundly defeated by cromwell's parliamentarians the royalist force numbered 11 000 while cromwell's troops numbered just under nine thousand but despite this two thousand of the royalist forces were killed and a further nine thousand captured where whereas cromwell's forces lost uh only under a hundred men but still charles undertook secret pacts and encouraged his supporters to break their parole which only caused parliament to debate whether to return child to the throne at all and the new model army who were furious for parliament that they continued to countenance charles as a ruler marched on parliament and conducted what was known as pride's purge named after the leader a guy called thomas pride on the 6th of december 1648 and this is where we lead up to the trial of charles the first so the troops arrested 45 members of parliament and kept 146 more out of the chamber so the rump parliament received orders to set up and organize a trial for the treason of charles the first and even thomas fairfax who's one of the most constitutional monarchists and supporters of charles decided declined to have anything to do with the trial and resigned uh completely as the head of the army thus cleaned the path for oliver cromwell to take power so following the trial of 59 commissioners or judges found charles the first guilty of high treason as a tyrant traitor murderer and public enemy he was beheaded on the 30th of january 1649 on a scaffold erected in front of the banqueting house at the palace of whitehall in london following his beheading on the 30th january his son charles was proclaimed king charles ii in the royal square in saint helio in jersey on the 17th of february that same year ## The Third Civil War [12:30] so the next section is the third english civil war which ran from 1649-51 so although the king was dead the war was not yet over a new republican regime was established in england headed by the guy who mentioned earlier oliver cromwell and he was backed by the support of the huge new model army now one of cromwell's first moves was to see the irish problem and it resulted in one of the worst massacres in irish history so from the 3rd to the 11th september 1649 three and a half thousand irish citizens lost their lives at the siege of dreider also known as the dreider massacre so of these three and a half thousand approximately 2 700 were royalist soldiers while the others were simply catholic civilians although cromwell would later claim that all of them were armed whether they were or not will never be found out but it's highly unlikely that they all were and this massacre is one of the main factors that's caused divisions between anglo-irish relations and protestant catholic relations that are still felt there today the result of the massacre was that cromwell's forces took the town and executed the royalist garrison that was there too so scotland were unfortunately next up on cromwell's bloody list so charles ii had wasted no time in gaining support north of the border before he'd even been crowned and this prompted cromwell to invade scotland in 1650 so charles's forces were defeated at the battle of dunbar on the 3rd of september and he then launched an invasion into england but he again suffered another defeat at the battle of worcester exactly a year later on the 3rd of september 1651. so following the royalist defeat at worcester charles ii narrowly escaped with his life having famously hidden in an oak tree which was then named the royal oak which many british pubs are now named after today it's the oak tree that charles ii hidden to avoid capturing almost certain death so as a result of this parliament was left in de facto control of england and this decisive parliamentarian victory meant that the third and final english civil war came to a close so what impact did the civil wars have ## The Aftermath [14:33] so as i mentioned earlier over the course of the conflict over 200 000 people lost their lives as an estimate so this figure includes both soldiers and civilians and death by numbers killed in battle and those who were killed by the spread of disease from the traveling armies so this loss of life uh is proportionate to population wise anyway that of the first world war so that's the huge impact that would have had on society on the economy on everything in the country a loss of life parallel with that of the first world war given the population of the country at the time so following the conclusion of the english civil wars oliver cromwell was instated as lord protector of the commonwealth of england scotland and ireland and it was during this period that puritism was rife in the kingdom and events such as dancing gambling and even christmas were made illegal and funnily enough this law has never actually been reinstated meaning that technically in england christmas is still illegal today cromwell tried albeit unsuccessfully to gain widespread republican support but this again proved difficult with a large distrust of the new model army and new religious sex divide in the country but in my opinion the english civil war certainly were a religious war of the 17th century on par with that of the 30 years war i think the divisions caused in particular an island with catholicism and protestantism the droid of massacre i think the they are religious civil war religious wars um anyway oliver cromwell died on the third of september 1658 age 59 from malarial fever and this is a belter of a way to go out because he refused the only northern treatment which is canine which is found in tonic water because it had been discovered by catholic jesuit missionaries so he wouldn't take this treatment simply because catholics had discovered it and he ended up dying and he was succeeded by his son richard but richard cromwell abdicated uh just eight months later amid continued support for the monarchy after years of repression of the cromwellian regime so parliament reassembled with the continued disintegration of the republic and negotiations begun to restore charles ii to the throne he arrived in london on the 29th of may 1660 which was his 30th birthday and celebrate his return a public holiday was announced and he was crowned at westminster abbey almost a year later on the 23rd of april 1661 and this ushered in the period known as the restoration or the restoration of the monarchy and there's a great horrible history song on that you can check that out on youtube as well it's well worth it so thanks for listening to this one i hope you enjoyed it if you've got any comments let me know below any suggestions for future podcasts or episodes let me know in the comments below you can send me an email that'll be in the description make sure you check me out on instagram on facebook and on my social media channels and i'll catch you at the next one thanks bye