BRAVE NEW WORLD

A review of Winston Churchill’s The New World (1956)

Part of the A History of the English-Speaking Peoples series

(Rating 4 of 5)

                Churchill’s first volume, The Birth of Britain, covers thousands of years.  This second volume covers only a little over two centuries.  What a few centuries it was!  The book begins with the rise of Henry VII and the Tudor dynasty and ends with the fall of James II in the Glorious Revolution.  In this volume the English monarchy rises to its highest of heights achieving near absolute power.  The three great Tudors Henry VII, Henry VIII, and Elizabeth I were magnificent monarchs whose power went unquestioned.  Their feeble replacements, the Stuarts, would struggle to hold onto what they had inherited and the monarchy would fall to its lowest states with one king being executed and another dismissed.   Churchill captures all with magnificent style.  As I noted earlier the best part about reading Churchill’s work is you get to see how a famous historical figure views other historical events. 

               

Henry VII

The book begins with the aftermath of the War the Roses.  With his new crown, King Henry VII, picks up the pieces of the short-lived York dynasty and sets the foundations of a powerful monarchy.  During his reign Henry gave the reputation of being a something of a miser, but doing this help stabilize his regime.  Churchill notes that although he was nice famous as some of his European cousins his achievements were no less impressive.

“His achievement was massive and durable.  He built his power amid the ruins and ashes of his predecessors.  He fiercely and carefully gathered what seemed in those days a vast reserve of liquid wealth.  He trained a body of efficient servants.  He magnified the Crown without losing the cooperation of the Commons.  He identified prosperity with monarchy.  Among the princes of Renaissance Europe he is not surpassing achievement in fame by Louis XI of France or Ferdinand of Spain.” (pg.20)

                

                   When any historian writes about King Henry VIII they all follow the same trap.  What you talk about?  Henry VIII had a lot of legitimate achievements during his reign.  He set the foundation that would lead England on the road to become a modern state.  Yet, we think of Henry is hard not to go over the six wives.  Only the first three are important those marriages and how they ended change the road England would be on forever.  Churchill does a good job covering the reign despite his limited space. (After all he still has over two centuries to cover with only a couple hundred pages to do it.)

“Henry’s rule saw many advances in the growth and character of the English state, but it is a hideous blot upon his record that the rain should be widely remembered for its executions.  Two Queens, two of the King’s chief Ministers, a saintly Bishop, numerous abbots, monks and many ordinary folk who dared to resist the Royal will were put to death.  Almost every member of the nobility in royal blood ran perished on the scaffold at Henry’s command.  Roman Catholic and Calvinist alike were burned for heresy and religious treason.  These persecutions, inflicted in solemn manner by officers of the law, perhaps in the presence of the Counsel or even the King himself, form a brutal sequel to the bright promise of the Renaissance.  The sufferings of devout men and women upon the faggots, the use of torture, and the savage penalties imposed for even paltry crimes, stand in repellent contrasts the enlightened principles of humanism.  Get his subjects to not turn from Henry in loathing.  He succeeded in maintaining order amid the turmoil in Europe without Army or police, and he imposed on England a discipline which was not attained elsewhere.  A century of religious wars went by without Englishmen taking up arms to fight their fellow-countrymen for their faith.  We must credit Henry’s reign with weighing the basis of sea-power, with a revival of Parliamentary institutions, with the giving of the English Bible to the people, and above all with strengthening a popular monarchy under which the seating generations worked together for the greatness of England while France and Germany were wracked with internal strife.” (pg. 66)

               

Queen Elizabeth I

                     Like any good English patriot Churchill has a warm spot for the year 1588 the defeat of Spanish Armada.  It was an important victory from England, they were only all half an island against the great imperial power.  Arguably, the threat the Spanish represented was a greater threat to England as a threat Churchill himself faced in his own time.  Despite his feelings he doesn’t go overboard with the legend, as fun as it would be to tell the story of the smashing of the great Spanish fleet he realizes history does not always work like that.  Nevertheless, it was crowning achievement for Queen Elizabeth I.

“The English had not lost a single ship, and scarcely 100 men.  But their captains were disappointed.  For the last thirty years they believe themselves superior to their opponents.  They had now found themselves fighting a much bigger fleet than they had imagined the Spaniards could put the sea.  Their own ships have been sparingly equipped.  Their ammunition had run short at a critical moment.  The gunnery of the merchant vessels had proved poor and half the enemy’s fleet had got away.  There were no postings; they record their dissatisfactions.
“But to the English people as a whole the defeat of the Armada came as a miracle.  For 30 years the shadow of Spanish power had darkened the political scene.  A wave of religious emotion filled men’s minds.  One of the metals strike to commemorate the victory bears the inscription ‘Afflavit Deus et dissipantur’—‘ God blue and they were scattered.’” (pg. 102)

               

Spanish Armada 

As England was getting to its feet the world the Europeans knew was expanding.  The voyages of Columbus opened up to new continents that the people did not know existed.  This created opportunity for the Europeans to create colonies. For certain English subjects it represented the opportunity to begin the world anew.  For those who are proud of their Englishness but found England unbearable due to whatever corruption they viewed as inexcusable, such as the Puritans they no longer had to hang out in Holland.  They now had the opportunity to build their own version of England in the form of a colony.  In his previous work the English-speaking peoples they were just one people confined to one island, now they were many expanding across the globe.  It was this phenomenon that Churchill gives the books title.

                The first half of the book covers the English monarchy at its highest; in the second half we could see it at its lowest.  Queen Elizabeth I died without heir.  The crown of England passes to the King of Scotland.  King James VI becomes King James I and moved from Edinburgh to London.  Churchill had some fun poking fun at this joke of a dynasty in his last volume.  As the Stuarts come to England they do not get any smarter.  Churchill portrays these sovereigns as being out of touch with reality and not up to the task of governing England.

King James I

“James and his Parliaments grew more and more out of sympathy as the years went by.  The Tudors have been discrete in their use of the Royal Prerogative and had never put forward any general theory of government, but James saw himself as a schoolmaster of the whole island.” (pg. 120)

                Despite his flaws, I personally have some sympathy for King Charles I and it appears in the book that Churchill does as well.  I have always found Cromwell to be an utter hypocrite and his regime to be more tyrannical than any king ever dreamed of being.  While reading this book it seems Winston Churchill was of the same opinion.

King Charles I

Oliver Cromwell

“We must not be led by Victorian writers into regarding this triumph of the Ironsides end of Cromwell as a kind of victory for democracy and the Parliamentary system over Divine Right and Old World dreams.  It was the triumph of some twenty thousand resolute, ruthless, disciplined, military fanatics over all that England has ever willed or ever wished.  Long years in unceasing irritations were required to reverse it.  Thus the struggle, in which we have in these days so much sympathy in part, begun to bring about a constitutional and limited monarchy, had led only to autocracy of the sword.  The harsh, terrific, lightning – charged being, whose erratic, opportunist, self- centered course is laid bare upon the annals, was now master, in the next 12 years of the record of well – meant, puzzled plungings and surgings.” (pg. 212)

                Earlier in this book we see King Henry VIII sending everyone and anyone including his own ministers and two of his queens to the scaffold to have their heads cut off.  In a completely different turn of events a King of England is sent to his death in the very manner that his predecessor had imposed onto others.  Yet this King, who many fought against him under the banner of fighting against tyranny, would be viewed as a martyr for liberty.

“A strange destiny had engulfed this King of England.  None had resisted with more untimely stubbornness the movement of his age.  He had been in his heyday the convinced opponent of all we now call our Parliamentary liberties.  Yet as misfortunes crowd upon him he increasingly became the physical embodiment of the liberties and traditions of England.  His mistakes and wrong deeds had arisen not so much for personal cravings for arbitrary power as from the conception of kingship to which she was born it was along with the settled custom of the land.  In the end he stood against the Army which had destroyed all Parliamentary government, it was about to plunge England into a tyranny at once more irresistible and more petty than any seen before or since.” (pg. 216)

After the fall of the protectorate, Churchill tells the story of how the monarchy was restored.  The king in exile, Charles II, was simply invited back by his people and not retuning at the head of conquering army.  For a Stuart, King Charles II was not that bad of a ruler.  He was fairly competent, unlike his younger brother, the Duke of York, who would succeed him as king, ruling as James II.  Despite his historical importance Churchill tells the story of the Glorious Revolution very quickly.  I expected it would be more detailed considering the involvement of his famous ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough.

I found this book to be a great summary of two chaotic and messy centuries in the history of Great Britain.  It tells a story of a powerful dynasty that rises and dies off, a Scottish dynasty which unifies the kingdoms, and a civil war that tore the nations apart.  It is a brief and great read.

THE MERRY MONARCH

A review of Stephen Coote’s Royal Survivor: The Life of Charles II (1999)

(Rating 5 of 5)

Royal Survivor is great book written about an interesting person with a fascinating life. Born to the ultimate form of privilege Charles was the eldest son of the King. As and heir to the throne of the King of England, Charles spent his boyhood as the Prince of Wales leading a life a wealth and luxury. However as he grew to greater awareness, he observed the country go through the greatest upheaval in its history. The English Civil War was turning the world on its head. His father, King Charles I would be dethroned, tried, and executed. He would spend his young adulthood wandering around Europe, homeless, hoping other charitable monarchs to take him in and feed him. Then he is suddenly restored to his rightful place to begin a very memorable reign.


(Charles II as the Prince of Wales)

Charles II is most famous for being ‘the Merry Monarch’ I however found the most interesting parts of the book to be his time in exile. It was not easy for a prince born the heir to the throne believing he was rightful king in a monarchy that had now been abolished, having to now live in state of poverty. For Charles it must have been as if the whole world had turned upside down. Poor, homeless, and impoverished the man who considered himself to be a king was hardly living the life, being tossed back and forth between France, Holland, and Spain. His previous attempts to win back his crown had ended in disaster. However with the self-destruction of the Protectorate government of England a few years following the death of Oliver Cromwell, he was then presented with the opportunity of a lifetime. Parliament invited him back to rule, and Charles was restored in a change of government that almost bloodless! Only the regicides perished when King Charles II was actually able to rule his kingdom. It was an amazing feat that he played well, but it was a victory that he did not earn.

“There was also a more subtle reasons for irony. It was surely evident to Charles how small a part he had played in his own restoration. On the occasions when he had exerted himself and tried to regain his crown, the result had always been bloodshed, defeat and death. Now he had been bloodlessly willed into power by his own people, his single contribution having been the adroitness with which he had been able to present himself as the only credible alternative to the repeated failures of the Interregnum regimes. Charles had been restored not because of who he was but of what he was: his country’s legitimate monarch.”p.180

The reign of King Charles II was what the previous puritan regime was not: scandalous. The people, who lived under the tyranny of Oliver Cromwell’s major generals, were most likely grateful to live under a monarch who paraded his mistresses around with pride. However his reign was more than just about sex, during his kingship England saw great progress in the areas of science. And unlike his personnel restoration, which he played no great role in, he directly contributed to the scientific progress that defined his era. Charles’ grandfather, King James I, ruled a nation that took the idea of witches seriously. King James wrote a book about witches complete with flying broomsticks, and he seriously believed that it was a witch’s curse that gave him an overly large tongue. The England of King Charles II brought to the Western World Newtonian physics.

“The Royal Society was incorporated under a charter granted by Charles on 15 July 1662, and his genuine interest in scientific matters led to research and debate becoming fashionable among the nobility and gentry. Charles employed one of his gentlemen ushers to convey his enquiries to the Society and probed the members as to why sensitive plants flinched and contracted when touched, and why ants’ eggs were sometimes bigger than the ants themselves. He arranged for a laboratory to be built in his palace at Whitehall where experiments could be conducted before him or he could investigate problems for himself. He took a keen interest in inventions that the society patented, presented it with curiosities, and throughout his life provided members with the venison traditionally eaten at the anniversary dinner. What Charles was encouraging in such ways was a profound change in the manner in which the elite looked at the world.

The regular publication of research was a crucial part of the Society’s early achievement and, if the initial hopes of its founders were nor immediately realized, the record of its success is remarkable indeed. The group of scholars and gentlemen amateurs incorporated by Charles included Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle and above all Sir Isaac Newton. Though the discoveries of these men especially, it became possible to view the universe as acting in all places and at all times according to consistent and verifiable rules or natural laws.” p.258-9

(Charles II as King)

Throughout his life and reign King Charles II was a brilliant politician in ways his father could have only dreamed of being. Despite his humble method in restoration he would emerge as a very powerful king. He has a troubling legacy in terms of succession. It is still unclear to me why he did not try to legitimize the Duke of Monmouth. King Henry VIII was desperate for an heir and often considered making his illegitimate son that person. Had Henry Fitzroy, the Duke of Richmond lived as long as his father he mostly likely would have been king. Even if Henry VIII held off to the birth of his legitimate son, Edward VI, Richmond still would have been in line in the same manner that his sisters, Mary I and Elizabeth I, were. Yet, Charles, even though Coote writes that the he considered his lawful heir, the Duke of York, to be a moron, he did not chose to support his son. Ultimately, he Duke of Monmouth suffered the same fate as his royal grandfather only it was more gruesome. Nevertheless the Exclusion crisis, which tried to prevent his brother from coming to the throne, allowed Charles to triumph over his political adversaries and emerge supreme.


(James II, Duke of York in his brother's and father's reigns. James II was a foolish king who was the last British monarch to be dethroned)


(The Duke of Monmouth, the eldest of the king's bastards and the first to try to dethrone his uncle. He failed and was beheaded.)

“He had emerged from the Exclusion Crisis as an unfettered sovereign, and as such he would remain. He distanced himself from his Tory supporters, refusing them the privileges they might legitimately have expected. Indeed, Charles was determined to lower the levels of political consciousness and excitement in the country as a whole, and to reduce the influence of party activity especially.” P.344

Royal Survivor is great book. The life of King Charles II is one incredible adventure and Coote creates a great narrative to explain it. I would recommend this book to the historian and non-historian alike.

{Video is from the BBC series The Last King- The Power and Passion of Charles II}

COMPLICATED MAN

A review of Antonia Fraser’s Cromwell (1973)

(Rating 5 of 5)

Oliver Cromwell is a historical figure that I often find myself confused on how I feel about him. His story is very exciting, for the first forty years of his life he is mostly irrelevant until the circumstances of the English Civil War would send him at the forefront. A commoner who overthrew a king and took his life as well as his kingdom. On the other hand it is hard to see him as anything other than a hypocrite. How can one be a champion of liberty when that individual crushes the fledgling English Republic in its infancy and becomes a dictator? Cromwell is very complicated man and Fraser does a good job in presenting his many sides.


(Oliver Cromwell Warts and All)

In many ways Cromwell reminds me of King Henry IV. Like Henry, Cromwell had no right by blood to rule the kingdom that he would eventually take command. It is true that Henry was prince by birth as a grandson to King Edward III while Cromwell was just a well off commoner, but there were still a handful of royals in Henry’s time that had a far better claim than he. Both Henry and Cromwell would depose unpopular kings and end up ruling in their place.

That analogy carries us only so far. While Richard II was an outright tyrant, King Charles I was just bad at his job. Henry was smart enough to have Richard killed in secret while Charles was publicly tried, executed, and martyred. Henry also took the throne as King while Cromwell simply called himself the Lord Protector.


(King Charles I, many kings sent their subjects to the ax, he got sent there by his subjects)

Fraser discusses how often Cromwell was tempted to take the title of King and the many reasons he kept deciding against it. Interestingly it is never discussed if Cromwell would of found the title limiting. There were many advantages and disadvantages to being the King, but never is it pointed out that Cromwell had sent Charles to his death for seeking unlawful powers and tyranny. By wearing a crown he could open himself to be judged by the same standard. A problem that Henry IV learned after the overthrow of his tyrannical cousin.

“For whatsoever could be said of the execution of King Charles I, that it was inevitable, even that it was necessary, it could never be said that it was right.” (p.291)

Cromwell as a military leader is easy to admire for he always won. I think Cromwell represents what Napoleon might have been if Napoleon had been confined to an island kingdom as opposed to a great nation-state*. The fact that he had no military experience prior to the English Civil War is a testimony to his natural talent.

“The distinction is surely an unfair one, for Generals are not gods, and their role is not to create situations, but to provide solutions. Just as the function of the solider is to fight battles, the function of a commander is to win battles, and win them in such a way that the last victory also will go to his own side. In this function Cromwell was supremely successful. He never failed, whether in the crucible of Dunbar or with the pincer trap of Worcester, to find either by God’s providence or some special sort of military grace, exactly the type of victory that was required. To achieve what it was necessary to do, and achieve it perfectly is a rare distinction, whatever the scale: it is that which gives to Cromwell, him too, the right to be placed in the hall of fame.” (p.390)

However as a political leader if one wishes to view him as a champion of liberty they are going to be very disappointed. If Charles I committed an act of tyranny by trying to arrest members of the House of Commons on the House’s floor, then what does one call Pride’s Purge or Cromwell dismissal of the Rump? In many ways Cromwell is like a modern day petty dictator who comes to power after a revolution and makes the revolutionaries wonder if they have made a terrible mistake.

“So that into the basic dichotomy of his nature was introduced another discordant element of having to cope with those very problems which he himself had originally raised. More and more, as the shadows of the Protectorate lengthened, he found himself using those very expedients, financial or political, against which he had originally protested. Cromwell maintained his power by means that Charles I would have been delighted to use, if he had had them at his disposal, in the cause of what Cromwell had then termed arbitrary tyranny.” (p.704)

(Cromwell as tyrant)

Often when one reads about the English Civil War, it is said that the final result of the conflict was that Parliament is established as the supreme authority greater than even the monarch. However, in reality, all it did was prove the group with the most effective army was supreme above all law. Parliament created the New Model Army and the Army purged and emasculated the Parliament.

*Yes, I know Napoleon was born on and died confined to an island. My point is if Napoleon had been an Englishman then he would have to concentrate on creating a strong island and not a continental empire.

{Music from Monty Python}

TRAGIC LIFE AND REIGN

A review of Christopher Hibbert’s Charles I: A Life of Religion War and Treason (1968 original) (2009, my copy)

(Rating 5 of 5)

His life could have been much better had his older brother Henry lived. That way England could have had its King Henry IX and Charles, the Duke of York, could have been a great art director. Instead death took his brother’s life and sent Charles to a position in which he was so over his head that he lost it.

During the course of this book I wondered how a monarchy so powerful in the days of the Tudors could become so weak and feeble. Part of King Charles’ problem was he was the son of King James. King James I had often boasted of his absolute power and wondered why his ancestors allowed an institution such as Parliament to come into existence. If King James had only done a tad bit of research he may have discovered that Edward Longshanks stole the idea from Simon De Montfort. King Edward I thought it would be best to have a meeting where the various interests of the kingdom could discuss any problems the kingdom was facing, raise money, and if anyone had any grievances to be able to air them. This allowed the King to govern more effectively and for most of its history Parliament was just a state of being as opposed to an institution with its own interests. For many effective monarchs, Parliament was just a method used by the King to strengthen his own power. One could imagine that Edward I, Edward III, Edward IV, Henry VII, Henry VIII, or Elizabeth I could have handled the problems the King Charles had to deal with far more effectively than he did. For King Charles I was brought up listening to his father’s theories and believed every one of them.


(Charles I was a great patron of the arts, his personal painter Sir Anthony van Dyck made many masterpieces for him, including this Charles in three positions)

Charles was clearly the wrong man for the job. He was so stubborn in his position that he would never negotiate until it was too late, and then, when willing, he wanted the previous terms offered to him. He had almost no sense of his situation. Despite being absolutely sure in his position he was slow to action. Everything he tried from his attempts to arrest Pym and other members of the Commons to his battle strategies he was too slow and unimaginative.

“Underlying melancholy there was a certain lack of sympathy in the King’s responses, a defensive rejection of an intimacy that might reveal him as a less assured man than he tried to be. Few men ever felt that Charles really liked them. Few servants ever felt that their services were truly appreciated: if they did not do their duty they were politely dismissed, if they did do their duty they were doing what was expected of them, they were treated well but rarely with a hint of warmth or affection.” (p.136)

After his defeat and imprisonment he remained as stubborn as ever, he made several attempts to escape and he tried to hold out hoping things might turn his way again. His moment of glory and greatness came, ironically, at his lowest moments. An American statesman, Senator Al Gore Sr., once observed that in defeat one could often let their glory out. Charles could and did at his trial and execution. He directly challenged the court questioning its legitimacy. His bravery and dignity at his own execution turned him into a martyr.




The one drawback of this book is there is no real discussion on the legitimacy of King Charles’ trial. When Louis XVI is tried by his people it is done with the monarchy abolished and the former King reduced to just plain citizen Louis Capet. When King Charles is tired he is tired as the King of England. That the King could be tried under existing laws is something absurd when one thinks of it. Yet this is never brought up, the only thing about the legal irregularities brought about was the mention that most of the nation’s top attorneys refused to participate.




In the end I found this to be a great an informative book. King Charles I was probably the second worst King of England, with only King Edward II being worse. Was Charles a tyrant like Richard II? I do not think so. Yes, he could be brutal, but no more than the Tudors or many other great kings and monarchs of this time period. I do feel what replaced him was, in the end, far worse.

{Video is from the movies Cromwell and To Kill a King}