This is Stuart England The Civil Wars episode two point one hundred and eleven.
Conclusion, Well, it's been a fun four years. I started this project
as a way to continue reading and writing about history after my decision to leave
professional academia. But it's really taken out a life of its own that I
couldn't have imagined. It turns out running a podcast involves all the best aspects
of teaching. You get to read books all day and interact with people who
are just as passionate about history as you, and you get to cut out
all the dreary parts of the job. Very rarely have I been called in
for a podcast or faculty meeting. I suppose there's less money in podcasting,
but since when is money an important part of a job anyway? This is
my roundabout way of thanking you all for introducing me to the wonderful world of
history podcasting. It was a bumpy ride at times, especially at the beginning.
A friend of mine once noted that the show really picked up when it
decided to buy a microphone instead of yelling into a tin can with a string
running out of the bottom. It certainly has been an educational experience in everything
from production to editing to learning how to speak to an empty room without sounding
like a robot. But I'm glad you guys stuck with me. What I'd
like to do in this final episode is lay out a mini epilog to get
a sense of where the characters we've all grown to love or headed from here.
Answer a few viewer questions that have come in, then offer some concluding
thoughts on the whole project. Why was it worth spending more than one hundred
hours contemplating the first half of the seventeenth century in England. Surely there was
a good reason, Otherwise we've all made some poor life decisions. We'll start
by rounding up the story from last time. As I'm sure you remember,
King Charles the Second formally entered London in Triumph on the twenty ninth of May
sixteen sixty, technically the eleventh year of his reign, but for all practical
purposes, the beginning of the Late Stuart era. Earlier that month, Parliament
had decreed that England would be ruled by king, lords and Commons, and
now each of those institutions were present and accounted for, the real work could
begin. Although Charles had made an excellent impression with his magnanimous declaration of Breda.
There were still several contentious issues to resolve, each of them capable of
ruining the joyful atmosphere in London and Westminster. Charles did his best to keep
the good will going by surrounding himself with a collaborative council. His advisers included
those who can loosely be described as Cromwellians, men who had never been full
thrown a supporters of the various regimes that had followed the Protectorate, and who
had, to varying degrees aided the return of the King. Leading the way
here were George Monk and Edward Montagu, both of whom were prominent in the
King's formal escort home. Charles also invited as many as eight Presbyterians into his
council, men who had been purged from Parliament in sixteen forty eight and so
were untainted by any association with the regicidal Republican regime. The important names here
were the Earl of Manchester, denzil Holes and Arthur Annesley, the Anglo Irish
leader who had recently risen to prominence as Monk's close in Parliament. In many
ways. The first month of the Parliament had been a blow to Presbyterian designs.
Their efforts to place conditions on the king's return had been stymied, as
had an attempt to make Manchester the dominant figure in the King's council. Despite
Presbyterian arguments to the contrary. Parliament determined that Charles had the prerogative to choose
his own advisors, but the new king had no desire to alienate the Presbyterians
by including so many of them in his council. Charles encouraged them to believe
that their voices would be heard. The council would be a communal body,
but there was little doubt about who the King's closest advisor would be, Chancellor
Edward Hyde. It was Hyde who had guided Charles through his years and exam,
and the miraculous and largely bloodless restoration was a vindication of Hyde's constitutional vision.
For the next seven years, Hyde would be the de facto chief Minister
of the Royal administration. With a coherent government now in place, the King
could begin working with Parliament to hash out England's new political settlement. In the
immediate term, the Declaration of Breda had identified four major issues that needed to
be addressed, amnesty's religion, determining the ownership of land seized by Parliament,
and paying off the army so it could be safely disbanded. As you recall,
in each case, Charles deferred to Parliament, relieving himself of the burden
of making any controversial decisions. The Parliament passed a fairly lenient Bill of indemnity
and oblivion. In fact, some of the most ardent royalists complained that the
bill delivered indemnities to the King's enemies and oblivion to his friends. In general,
all past rebellions were forgiven so long as men now swore their loyalty to
the king. There were exceptions, however, Those that could be directly tied
to the trial and execution of Charles the first were explicitly named and exempted from
any amnesty. Though inclusion on this unfortunate list wasn't entirely cut and dry.
Personal connections and recent behavior counted two. Those who had friends in the new
regime willing to vouch for them were usually granted clemency. A bribe or two
to the right people helped as well. Both Strode Whitelock, who had provided
the constitutional justification for much of the Commonwealth and Protectorate state apparatus, greased a
few poems and was rewarded with an audience with the King himself. After some
pleasant chit chat, Charles advised Whitelocke to retire from public life and enjoy his
country estate, advice he was grateful to accept. Meanwhile, Henry Cromwell was
allowed to retain the properties he had accumulated in Ireland. This was largely due
to the lobbying of George Monk and Roger Boyle, who convinced the royal administration
that this Cromwell had, like them, done much to oppose the radical regimes
that followed the collapse of the Protectorate. Arthur Hasselrigg for so long the face
of English Republicanism was also offered a degree of leniency. Once it was obvious
that the rump was doomed. Monk had secured from Hasselerigg a pledge to quietly
retire from politics. Hasserigg kept up his end of the bargain by denouncing John
Lambert's insurrection in April and not standing for election for the new Parliament. Monk
reciprocated by convincing Charles to commute Hasselerigg's death sentence, though it was little consolation
for Hasseregg, who died in the Tower of London a few months later in
January sixteen sixty one. Religion, as you can imagine, was a far
thornier problem. The Presbyterians still hoped for a Calvinist national church. The return
of bishop seemed inevitable, but at the very least they argued for a more
decentralized model that would curtail their powers. That would be a bitter pill for
the bishops who had joined the king in exile and expected that they would be
restored along with their patron Meanwhile, those who worshiped outside the established church pointed
to Charles's promise of liberty to tender consciences in the Declaration of Bredon. Radical
groups like the Quakers enjoyed little sympathy in Parliament, but by sixteen sixty more
mainstream independent churches had taken root in English society. Their adherents were not cats.
They would be willingly stuffed back in the bag of an established church,
if that metaphor makes any sense. Unsurprisingly, religion sparked the most contentious debates
of the whole Parliament. In the end, Westminster took a page under the
King's book and deferred a final decision. Everyone agreed to hold a in it
later in the year, where learned scholars would debate the issue and Charles would
act as arbiter. But seeing as any decision would have to be ratified by
Parliament, this was in effect a delaying tactic to skip ahead of it.
This is, after all, an epilog. The delay worked to the advantage
of the bishops and the traditional established church. The religious question would be determined
by the next Parliament, opened in the spring of sixteen sixty one. For
reasons we'll touch on in a moment. The Presbyterians and independence wielded much less
influence in that subsequent session, allowing for the return of a much more traditional
established church. This was an early indication of the long term strategy behind the
declaration of Bredam. For Hyde, the conciliatory tone of the King's initial position
was tactical, a way to buy time in order to ensure the success of
the restoration. Charles had to make as many friends as possible, but once
ensconced in power, time was on the side of the royalists. Over time,
allies of convenience could be abandoned, and peace by peace the old constitution.
Restored land posed an entirely different problem for the king. Delay wasn't really
a viable option. The King's friends, who had suffered the loss of their
properties while in exile, expected the immediate restoration of their estates, a just
reward for their loyalty. But neither Charles nor Hyde saw any political upside in
the forcible redistribution of property. This was the source of the earlier complaint I
mentioned that the king's enemies enjoyed indemnity while his friends faced oblivion. What kind
of sense did it make for Oliver Cromwell's son in Ireland to retain his lands
while men who had stood by the king for years got nothing. Monks suggested
a compromise. Confiscated lands would be restored, but the men who had purchased
them from Parliament would stay on as tenants under generous leases. Like all good
compromises, However, no one liked Monk's idea, and it was roundly defeated
in Parliament. Instead, a different compromise was reached. Crown and church lands
would be restored to their original owners, but before we taking possession, they
would pay for any improvements that had been made to the land. The process
of surveying lands to determine the value of any improvements was complicated and easily manipulated
by the well connected men who surrounded the king. Landowners who had made peace
with the royal administration enjoyed quick surveys and generous payouts. Meanwhile, the program
was limited to former Church and Crown lands, leaving many Royalist lords and gentlemen
out in the cold. They couldsole themselves with the option of taking their disputes
to the civil courts through lawsuits, but that could be a lengthy, expensive
process, and some lands were deemed irretrievable. The Earl of Darby, the
King's most loyal subject in the northwest of England, found that much of his
family's land was gone forever. Some of it he had willingly sold in order
to raise money to pay fines and taxes to Parliament. Others he had given
away in trusts to protect against seizure. Darby argued that justice demanded the return
of those properties. He was informed by the courts, however, that property
law trump's justice. The land issue was perhaps the least successful of the King's
gambles. Royalists, who were u satisfied with the land compromises, directed most
of their are at the rebels who had illegally confiscated their lands, but they
saved some of their resentment for the king, who failed to appreciate their loyalty
and stand up for their rights. Charles could not take the support of ultra
royalists for granted, a lesson that would influence his decisions in the early years
of his reign. Finally was the problem of the army, which in reality
was the familiar problem of money. Most everyone agreed that the army had played
a destructive role in politics over the past few years, an assessment George Monk
had made explicit shortly before the King was invited back to England. The only
issue to be resolved was how to raise the money necessary to pay off the
soldiers and have them disband peacefully. Parliament approved a poll tax on every subject,
their contributions determined by social rank, and when that proved insufficient, army
pay was supplemented by additional taxes on property holders. By the end of sixteen
sixty, the men of the Army had received all the pay they were owed
for fifteen years. One of the most powerful institutions in England, the New
Model Army dissolved peaceful at the beginning of sixteen sixty one. The King retained
a small personal guard of less than four thousand men. Its size and political
influence would be restricted by limited Crown finances. In a general antipathy within England
for standing armies paying out the New Model Army led into a more general settlement
on public finances. In effect, Westminster revisited the idea of the Great Contract
proposed by Robert Cecil in sixteen ten. After closely reviewing the costs of maintaining
a government, Westminster agreed to an annual budget for the Crown of just under
a million pounds. The need for the Crown to raise money irregularly through prerogative
perks was therefore removed, and with it many of the abuses that had bred
resentment towards the administrations of James the First and Charles the First, having completed
its work on the twenty ninth of December, Parliament was dissolved by King Charles
the Second, Though completed, is a bit misleading. There were many details
yet to be worked out, especially in the always contentious realm of religion.
In reality, the Restoration Settlement would be a prolonged process which times even reverse
some of the decisions made at Westminster in sixteen sixty. It would take a
whole other podcast series maybe someday to untangle that whole mess. But I thought
i'd end with some of the early harbingers of what the Restoration era would happen
In store, Charles's reign would be defined by two tensions, the line of
succession and the balance between the warring factions that had been reconciled in sixteen sixty.
So far, Charles had proven himself to be a skilled politician, but
navigating those dual challenges would not be easy. To take the king's family first.
When Charles returned to England in sixteen sixty, there was every reason to
believe the Stewart line was well supplied with airs. Charles was unmarried, but
he was just thirty years old, and now the undisputed King of England,
he would surely be a great prize on the European marriage market. Meanwhile,
he had four surviving siblings, including two younger brothers, James, Duke of
York and Henry, Duke of Gloucester. But soon after Charles's return to England,
the Stewart family suffered a series of blows. In September sixteen sixty,
Henry died, either from smallpox or from the actions of doctors who were trying
to save him from smallpox. Shortly thereafter, Charles's sister Mary, who had
married William of Orange back in sixteen forty one, also died. Though setting
aside the personal tragedy, this was not necessarily a problem from a dynastic perspective.
Charles could fully expect to produce his own heirs, and he still had
his remaining brother, James. But another development that fall muddied the family waters
still further. In a scandalous revelation, Edward Hyde's daughter Anne revealed that she
was pregnant thanks to James, Duke of York, who she had secretly married
earlier that year. James initially denied the allegation, but when witnesses to the
private marriage ceremony came forward, he was forced to admit the truth of it.
The scandal was doubly problematic for Charles, first, his brother and current
heir to the throne had demonstrated a shocking lack of judgment, both in terms
of marrying Anne Hyde and attempting to cover it up. James could very well
be the King of England some day, and so his choice of wife ought
to have been a matter of politics, diplomacy, and strategy, not a
secret ceremony to legitimize a tryst. James's ham handed approach to the resulting scandal
also demonstrated a troubling incompetence in a potential king. He could perhaps be excused
on account of his youth, but James was now twenty five years old,
hardly a child. If he was going to turn into a respectable royal,
time was running out. The second headache James had given his brother had to
do with who he had married. Anne's father was Charles's closest adviser, which
was a real problem among some royalists. Hide was already resented for his influence
over the king. Some had always disagreed with his constitutional approach to royalism,
and others were aristocrats who hated playing second fiddle to a commoner like Hyde.
The news that Hyde's family was now joined to that of the royal line,
who was greeted with outrage. It was all too easy to believe that this
had not been some unplanned indiscretion. It would make perfect sense for a schemer
like Hyde to manipulate his way into the Stewart dynasty. Charles tried to put
the face on the situation and elevated Hide to the peerage, naming him the
Earl of Clarendon. But to his critics this merely reinforced their suspicions that he
was the puppetmaster behind the restored monarchy. Resentment towards Hyde made it much more
difficult for Charles to manage the factions within his government. Not only did he
have to balance the interests of men like Monk and Montagu against their bitter enemies
among his most loyal entourage, but now he had to contend with a chief
minister who seemed to be resented by everyone. Charles would spend the next twenty
five years trying to balance the royaling factions within English political life. Many of
the decisions he made in that time can be traced back to the instability within
his own family in the opening weeks of his reign. Of course, Charles
wasn't the only one whose life was reshaped by the events of sixteen sixty.
Some used the uncertainty and turmoil of the transition to their advantage. Topping the
list has to be George Monk, who had done more than anyone else to
engineer the restoration. He was rewarded with an elevation to the nobility estates in
Ireland and England and high political office, both a seat on the Privy Council
and the office of Lord Deputy of Ireland. Monk, however, soon stepped
back from public life, partially due to ill health. He resigned from his
position in Ireland and was replaced by the Marquess of Ormond, for twenty years
the face of royalism in Ireland. Monk enjoyed the benefits of his private largesse,
returning to military service in the Second Anglo Dutch War of sixteen sixty five
to sixteen sixty seven. He died in sixteen seventy at the age of sixty
one. Edward Montague also reaped the rewards of his role in the restoration.
Like Monk, Montague was granted a noble title, the Earl of Sandwich.
Charles also named him the Admiral of the Narrow Seas and made him a key
figure in the naval and diplomatic arms of the new administration. Montague was therefore
front and center in these second and third Anglo Dutch Wars that Charles fought against
his one time hosts in the Netherlands. In fact, he died in battle
against the Dutch in sixteen seventy two when the royal flagship he was commanding was
sunk in the Battle of Sole Bay. Rudge Or Boyle prospered out of the
restoration as well. The King rewarded him with lands in Ireland and promotion to
an earldom. More importantly, Boyle secured the office of Lord President of Munster,
making him the most powerful man in the South of Ireland. From there,
Boyle waged a kind of political war with the Marquis of Ormond, who
ruled from Dublin. In a sense, it was Irish politics as usual.
The new English Boyle persistently nipped at the heels of the old English Ormond.
But not everyone who had fought against the king was forgiven. Unrepentant regicigns like
the Fifth monarchist Thomas Harrison, the rump spymaster Thomas Scott, and the preacher
Hugh Peter were apprehended and executed. Henry Vane was targeted too, although he
hadn't participated in the trial and execution of the old King. Charles found it
impossible to forgive Vane's repeated denunciations of the institution of monarchy, and after a
lengthy debate in Parliament, he was sentenced to death. The Marquis of Argyle,
so long the most powerful man in Scotland, suffered a similar fate.
After the restoration, Argyle traveled to London in hopes of reconciling with the newly
returned King, but Charles had not forgotten the indignities he had undergone in order
to win argyll support. Back in sixteen fifty, the Scottish lord was cleared
of any involvement in the execution of Charles the First, but his subsequent cooperation
with the Commonwealth was deemed treasonable. It's a testament how arbitrary the line was
between reconciliation and retribution that much of the evidence against Argyll came from his correspondence
with fellow Commonwealth and protectorate collaborator George Monk. Monk enjoyed wealth and influence after
the restoration Argyle had his head chopped off. Other commonwealth or protectorate figures found
the King open to appeals for mercy. Charles Fleetwood, Bostrode Whitelocke, and
Oliver Sinjohn escaped without any criminal punishment, though they were barred from holding public
office for the rest of their lives. Richard and Henry Cromwell weren't punished at
all. They were allowed to live out the rest of their lives in obscurity.
More stalwart enemies of the monarchy like Arthur Hesselreag and John Lambert were imprisoned
and sentenced to death, but Charles graciously commuted their sentences, largely on the
advice of George Monk and others. In the end, defiance evaporated, and
the King saw the advantage of a benevolent response to their pleas for mercy.
Though neither Hassereg nor Lambert had pleasant lives after the restoration. As we've seen,
Hasselig died after less than a year in the tower, and while Lambert
survived for another twenty four years, he spent all that time in confinement.
Forty years old at the time of his arrest, Lambert spent the last third
of his life in a declining mental state that eventually ended in insanity. Charles
saved his greatest animosity for those regicides who were already dead. After the Restoration,
the bodies of Alver Cromwell and John Bradshaw were exhumed and ceremonially hanged in
their shrouds. Afterwards, their skulls were displayed in Westminster Hall for Charles is
a pale facsimile of the justice that had been stolen by Cromwell's fatal illness.
It also acted as a symbolic representation of the reconciliation England was undergoing. Cromwell
was a convenient villain. He was safely beyond the grave, and so all
the evils of the past twenty years could be heaped on to him at little
political cost. Any animosity the King's Royalist entourage might harbor towards parliamentary leaders like
Monk Montagu or Boyle could be safely redirected towards Cromwell's corpse. That didn't erase
the tensions within Restoration England. These scars of the Civil War couldn't be healed
so easily, but it was a useful fiction that allowed politics to function in
that way, the restoration was a return to pre war norms, Just as
in James's day, It didn't benefit anyone to examine too closely the fundamental assumptions
of the political world, So what had changed with the restoration? The return
of the king didn't really settle the constitutional questions that had plagued England since James
came down from Scotland. The warm reception Charles received on the streets of London
was not an expression of popular support for an ultra royalist interpretation of the monarchy.
The mood would be more accurately described as a rejection of republicanism and the
rule of the army. For many, especially of the younger generation, the
Commonwealth or protectorate were far more familiar than the rule of kings, which had
taken on a kind of mythic quality. Edward Hyde and other royalists hope to
gradually direct England back towards an idealized version of the old monarchy, but the
sixteen forties and sixteen fifties couldn't be erased from English history. The memory of
that turbulent period would continue to shape English political culture for decades and centuries to
come. If anything, the legacy of the Civil Wars wasn't so much the
restoration of the monarchy, but a rejection of radical republicanism and army politics.
After the failure of the instrument of government and the humble petition and advice,
generations of English political thinkers developed an aversion to written constitutions. Rules and systems
that sprang from the mind of one man or even a group of men would
always be flawed and easily exploited. The only way to ensure lasting stability was
to follow the lead of Edward Cook and look to the past. History was
a laboratory, the only true test that could determine the value and staying power
of constitutional ideals and institutions. Secondly, these sixteen fifties exploded any faith in
divine providence as a reliable guide for constitutional politics. Radical religion and political power
had proved to be a dangerous, combustible mix. The toleration of dissenting churches
remained a hotly contested issue in English politics for centuries to come, but radical
religion would never again be a justification for constitutional change. Finally, the Civil
War period confirmed English distrust of standing armies. In James's day, parliaments had
balked at the cost of even modest temporary armies in the lead up to the
Civil War. Those concerns of economy turned to outright suspicion when Charles in Parliament
battled over control of the militias. But the determining factor was the outsized role
the army played in the politics of the post war period. To many in
England, the new model Army had fought for laudable principles, and perhaps their
interventions at Westminster prevented disasters of royalists or radical takeovers. But by sixteen sixty
the argument that the army could deliver political stability had been thoroughly debunked. As
a political institution, the army couldn't justify itself on representative grounds nor an appeal
to tradition. Neither did it appear capable of delivering results in the form of
political stability. Army politics had failed, and generations of english men and women
came to believe that it would always be destined to fail. Almost by default,
monarchy was the only alternative, which is the tragedy of the mid seventeenth
century. After two decades of warfare and civil strife, England was back where
it had started. Like his grandfather and father before him, Charles the Second
would spend his reign trying to figure out how a political system designed to rule
over a medieval society could be adapted to an early modern world. This Charles
had the benefit of hindsight and had already shown an ability to avoid the mistakes
his father had made. He also had new tools to work with, the
Commonwealth and protectorate regimes had created new administrative instruments and a far more centralized bureaucracy
than anything the early Stewarts had enjoyed, and the new king was canny enough
to realize that restoring the monarchy didn't necessarily mean throwing out the baby with bathwater.
Of course, he also inherited a far more divided England. King James
had been forced to deal with factional in fighting, but he had never been
asked to together enemies who had literally squared off in battle. The other side
of the coin was that England now knew the stakes at play. Failure meant
a return to civil war, the costs of which no one underestimated. But
I'll stop my rambling before I end up convincing myself to do a podcast series
on the restoration. Perhaps someday I wanted to end this long journey with a
few thought provoking questions listeners have graciously sent my way. Joseph pointed out the
legacy of the Civil War period on the founding of the United States, a
connection I know little about but has always fascinated me. Thomas Jefferson and James
Madison, and I'm sure most of the founding fathers were students of history and
surely would have seen the relevance of the rebellions and revolutions of the mid seventeenth
century to their eighteenth century predicament. More indirectly, throughout the podcast, we've
seen heated debate an ideas such as popular sovereignty, religious liberty, determining when
armed revolt is justified, the balance of powers, and the nature of written
constitutions, whether explicitly referenced or not. The patriots of the seventeen seventies were
reaching a hu twenty years into the past to make their arguments. I suppose
the obvious place to start with the connection between the English Civil War and the
American Revolution is Kevin Phillips's The Cousins Wars, which ties together the English Civil
War the American Revolution and the American Civil War, a span of more than
two hundred years. I'm usually not a fan of history with that kind of
epic scope, but Phillips throws up some interesting parallels. In the eighteenth century,
the large British military presence in the colonies, especially after these seven years
War with France, spurred comparisons to the use of armed muscle by the Stuart
Kings, though interestingly, the army politics of the sixteen forties and sixteen fifties
seems to have held a more ambivalent meeting for the colonists. An even more
direct parallel might be drawn between these seventeenth century fears of Irish Catholic armies and
later colonial fears of French Catholic Canadians being used as an instrument of royal tyranny.
In both cases, government accommodations with foreign Catholic subjects spread terror and paranoia
among Englishmen and contributed to the outbreak of hostilities. I've always been a bit
more interested in how the American colonists remembered the Civil War. Thomas Jefferson admitted
to cribbing material from the pamphlets of the sixteen forties and John Adams, when
he was the American envoy to Britain, toured the Civil War battle sites of
Edge Hill and Worcester, which he referred to as Holy Ground. More broadly,
the tensions of the seventeen sixties and seventeen seventies seemed to have sparked a
revival of Oliver Cromwell as a folk hero in New England, perhaps unsurprising considering
the Puritan origins of the northern colonies. Oliver became a much more popular baby
name in the seventeen seventies, and Connecticut in particular seems to have embraced the
old Lord Protector. Some colonists boasted at Cromwell, along with John Pym and
John Handen, had considered migrating to Connecticut before the Civil War, and two
vessels in the state's Revolutionary Navy were named after Oliver Cromwell. More broadly,
I think many of the ideas that fuel the American Revolution were born, or
at least refined, during the turbulent middle decades of the seventeenth century. I
get the sense that the Glorious Revolution of sixteen eighty eight eighty nine produced a
more coherent book fabulary for the revolutionaries, but many of the arguments and debates
in Philadelphia or Boston would have been comprehensible to Bolstrode Whitelock, John Lambert or
Edward Hyde. Another listener, Finnbar was also interested in the long term legacy
of the Commonwealth and Protectorate period, though within Great Britain itself. Finnbar asks
if we're not a bit mistaken in thinking about the Commonwealth and Protectorate period as
the republican road not taken by English history. Instead, Cromwell and his friends
did as much as anyone else to set England on the path that ended up
taking through the constitutional reforms of the following generations and even into these scientific and
industrial revolutions. I'd be inclined to agree. At first glance, the Commonwealth
and Protectorate era can seem like a blip on the otherwise unbroken historical evolution of
the monarchy. But on closer inspection, the legacy of the sixteen forties and
sixteen fifties can be found throughout these subsequent centuries. The Restoration was not a
comprehensive repudiation of what had come before, Despite the efforts of some royalists,
the constitutional and religious ideology of the period was not snuffed out. The same
goes for practical affairs, like government bureaucracy in the economy. Charles the second
was candy enough to see the value of the administrative apparatus he inherited. Although
he populated his council with friends and allies as his father and grandfather had,
day to day affairs were run by the kinds of civil servants the Republican regime
had employed. The king's brother, James, Duke of York, was the
Lord Admiral, but his administration was nothing like the personal fiefdom the Duke of
Buckingham had run in the sixteen twenties. Management of the navy fell to a
commission of dedicated bureaucrats, just as it had under the Rump or Cromwell.
You could also make the case that the foundations of the modern English economy were
set during the sixteen fifties, whether a product of war, Republican governance,
or general turmoil. The England that emerged in sixteen sixty was quite different from
the one that witnessed the outbreak of the Civil War in sixteen forty two.
In a twenty year span, England saw remarkable experimentation in taxation, public finance,
and international trade policy. These in turn spurt developments outside of government,
for instance, the emergence of a mature and innovative financial sector. Many of
the defining features of Restoration England and even later errors have their roots in the
Civil War and its aftermath. Finally, Danny Buck, Norfolk's most celebrated witchfinder,
asks what aspect of the Stewart era surprised me the most. I've given
this a lot of thought, and I'd have to say that it might be
the continuities of the era. The England's of sixteen ten, sixteen forty two
and sixteen fifty nine can seem like entirely different worlds, and yet some people
somehow lived in all three of them. If Lord Protector Cromwell met the thirty
year old version of himself struggling to keep his head afloat in Huntingdon, would
they even recognize one another? Or were they roughly the same person? England
was the one that had changed. I guess surprise might not be the best
word, but that's certainly what I find so fascinating about the seventeenth century politics,
economics, and society in general were changing. So rapidly, and yet
people had to find a way to adapt. I suppose it's not that remarkable
to us. We expect to see rapid changes virtually on a yearly basis,
But in a world where continuity and the durability of tradition were taken for granted,
the ever changing environment must have been incomprehensible. So I suppose, in
a roundabout way, that's my answer. The surprising thing to me is how
someone like Ebet Hyde was able to make sense of the world he found himself
in despite it being unexpectedly and quite suddenly alien, which I suppose is a
good segue into my own naval gazing thoughts on the podcast. I feel like
I've learned a lot over the past four years, from how radical constitutional change
can be effected, to the relationship between narrative and history, to just how
much sound waves can bounce off the walls of a bedroom. Probably the most
lasting and often repeated lesson has been about context. The early Stuart period,
like any other period, I suppose, lends itself too pithy, easy to
remember assessments. James the First was an irresponsible spendthrift. William Laude led an
Inquisition in the Church of England. The Fifth Monarchists were a bunch of religious
whackadoodles. Oliver Cromwell was a bloodthirsty tyrant. Each of them have an element
of truth about them, but when taken in isolation, they can give him
misleading impression of the early seventeenth century world. The closer you look at any
historical moment or figure, the more those helpful shorthands break down, to the
point that it can be difficult to have any faith in any kind of narrative
structure altogether. More than once over the course of this project, I stopped
and thought about what I was leaving out, or what avenues I chose not
to pursue, and how those choices shaped the narrative as much as what was
included. But maybe that's getting a bit too meta. Perhaps a more constructive
way to talk about context is to keep it tangible. In the seventeenth century,
England's story wasn't just England's. It was also the story of Wales,
Scotland and Ireland, not to mention Europe, America, India, Africa,
and even littler corners of the globe like Newovendland closely linked to the West Country
fishing industry. Neither is the story of England's constitutional revolutions. The exclusive property
of Westminster and Whitehall. London, as an entirely separate political institution, played
a prominent role, and so too did events and people in Yorkshire, Cornwall,
East Anglia, Cheshire, the Midlands and all places in between. It's
perhaps impossible to squeeze all that into a coherent explanation of six decades of history,
but it was fun to try. I suppose that's what fascinates me the
most about history. I'm always drawn by the promise of solving the puzzle,
unlocking the secret explanations for why things happen the way they did, why people
made the decisions they did. But a perfect understanding always remains elusive. Was
the Civil War the inevitable outcome of a flawed and ambiguous political system? Was
it the product of incompetence on the part of Charles the First Was England's experiment
with republicanism a dead end on the march to constitutional monarchy? Or did it
lay the groundwork for the liberties that underpinned the British Constitution today. I'm not
sure I'm in any better position to answer questions like that than I was four
years ago. At least, I don't feel like I'm able to give any
kind of conclusive answer, but conclusions are overrated anyway. And on that note,
let me once again thank all of you for making this grand experiment possible.
It's been more fun than it could have imagined, and hopefully I'll see
you all again out there.