Hello, you're listening to Better Known, where each episode a guest makes a series of recommendations of things which they think should be better known.
Our recommendations include interesting people, places, objects, stories, experiences and ideas which our guest feels haven't had the exposure that they deserve.
The only conditions for discussion are that our guest loves it and thinks it merits your attention as well.My name is Ivan Wise and this week's guest on Better Known is Professor Alice Hunt.
So you're a professor of early modern literature and history at the University of Southampton, and your new book is Republic, England's Revolutionary Decade, 1649 to 1660.
Now, there's lots of popular depiction of history on revolutions generally, but it's normally the French or American or Russian Revolution.So why are we often less interested in our own revolution, do you think?
Because it didn't work.For a long time it's been called the interregnum, so it was never really meant to happen.And because the king was restored in 1660, the story is that there wasn't really a revolution.It didn't achieve anything.
You've chosen six things to discuss around this topic.The first one is the Republic itself.We hear all the time about our long history of our royal family.
I suspect there are lots of people out there who just have no idea that there's this period of history where we got rid of them.Charles I was executed in 1649 and we actually abolished our monarchy.
At that point, what sort of plan did Oliver Cromwell actually have for what a Republic might look like?
wasn't Oliver Cromwell's plan.He was really important.He was second in command of the new model army, and he was involved with the trial and the execution of Charles I, but he wasn't acting alone.
There was a council of state that came into being after the king was executed, and it was this council of about 40 men who had to decide what the Republic should look like.There was no ready-made plan.
That's not what the wars had been about, and it was not really why Charles I was executed.But they did abolish monarchy quite quickly, and they dismissed the House of Lords, and then they turned themselves into a Commonwealth.
But this didn't happen until a few months after the execution, because before then, and indeed during the whole of this period, Parliament, as you can imagine, are arguing about what kind of republic the country should be.
There were lots of different ideas, some of them looking a little bit monarchical, perhaps with a single person at the head. other ideas, more obviously Republican in the way that we would imagine it with no single person.
But the story of the Republic in this country is the story of them trying to decide what kind of Republic Britain should be.
And I suppose that's a surprising thing, isn't it?Because we've had this long civil war, you kind of would have hoped they'd have worked this out beforehand. but they haven't.
They go into a rump parliament, which is obviously a parliament that is only to a certain extent in agreement with itself or with Cromwell about what they want to do.So over that period, what was Cromwell actually able to achieve in terms of reform?
for the very beginning of the period, Cromwell is actually not in Westminster, he's not at Whitehall, he is on campaign, and the country is still at war.
I mean, you said just then they've had years to work it out, but they were really hoping during this war that they would come to an agreement with Charles I. And right up until the Parliament becomes the Rump Parliament, which means a purged Parliament, right up until that moment, they'd been hoping to come to an agreement with Charles I that he would
kind of agreed to become a little bit more limited and listen to Parliament, but he doesn't.So the rump Parliament then is managing the country while Cromwell is subduing, suppressing rebellions in Ireland and then in Scotland.
In terms of what are they able to do, some kind of groups, factions, like the levellers or the diggers, are really hoping that the king has been executed and now there's a real chance for the country to reform itself politically, socially,
religiously, perhaps they could expand the franchise, more people would be able to vote.But the Rump Parliament is again kind of divided about how far they want to go with certain reforms.The level of John Lilburn
thinks the councillors, the council of state, that includes Cromwell, are looking a little bit comfortable in their seats of power.The big thing that does change, of course, in the first few years is the relationship with Ireland and Scotland.
Ireland is conquered, tamed, is the terrible word that the poet Andrew Marvell uses, and brought into the Republic by force, as is Scotland.The thing that Parliament really needs to do is make itself look a little bit more legitimate.
It doesn't have representatives, MPs from all over the country, because the ones who were not keen on Charles I being put on trial were sent out, purged.And what this Parliament really has to do is put itself up for election.
And it's this that really frustrates Cromwell when he sees that they're refusing to do this.
And then he becomes Lord Protector.So to what extent was this just the monarchy back in a different name?
He's made Lord Protector at the end of 1653, after a failed nominated assembly, which is sort of caretaker parliament called Bare Bones Assembly.
So he's booted out the MPs in 1653, got so cross with them, they were refusing to put themselves up for election. a different kind of assembly comes into being, which is quite radicalized, and that's not that popular.
On the back of this, this idea is created that perhaps we could become a protectorate.And it's John Lambert is the brilliant soldier and constitutionally minded man who comes up with a written constitution.
This is the first ever written constitution that the country has. And this brings in Cromwell as Lord Protector.It does look quite king-like, and foreign observers say, oh, well, he's just basically a king.
And he was nearly named king, actually, but he refused that.He chose to be Lord Protector.But it's also not like a king.There is a written constitution for the first time, which limits and defines his power. It's not hereditary.
The Protector would be elected.There is no House of Lords, so as a single person at the head, he's running the country with the Council and with Parliament.So it's similar, but the differences, I think, are really important too.
So the Republic should be better known. Your second choice is Richard Cromwell, the son of Oliver Cromwell.
So five years after he becomes law protector, a little bit like Lenin actually in the Russian Revolution, the leader of the revolution then dies.
And one of the complaints about the monarchy obviously is it's hereditary and the republic was set up so it wouldn't be hereditary.So did Oliver Cromwell want his son to take over from him?
Ornwell loathed what he called that hereditary way.He said very sensibly that, how would you know whether you're going to get a fool or a wise man imposed with that hereditary way?
So he was very vocal about not wanting the protector to be hereditary.The year before he dies in 1657, The Constitution has been changed again.
They can't agree on how it should be, and they become very worried about what would happen when Cromwell dies.There had been assassination attempts, and he was frequently unwell.
So they start to think, oh, should we persuade him to think it could be hereditary?And Cromwell pushes back.Instead, they come up with the idea that he actually now should be crowned king.
thinking to smuggle in hereditary succession by the back door, that if he becomes king, then it would just sort of by default, it will fall to his eldest son, because that's what kingship is.But that's not what happens.
They offer him the title of king, but they say, you can nominate your heir.Cromwell says, no, I don't want to be king, but I will nominate my heir.But he never does.He's either terrified probably about what would happen if he did nominate Richard.
Perhaps also he's not quite facing his own mortality. that Cromwell, Oliver Cromwell, never wanted to commit to his eldest son being his successor.
But he does get the job, and presumably he wasn't totally qualified to do it.He only last nine months.So what was he up against?
Poor Richard.Yeah, 30 years old and nine months in the top job.And I think many people would never know that he even really had that job.He was better qualified than history has wanted him to be. He was a Justice of the Peace.He was an MP.
He was Warden of the New Forest.He was involved with some of the big schemes of the Republic, the draining of the fens in East Anglia.But he didn't have the experience with the army.And that's really what brought down Richard.
And he's had some unflattering nicknames, like Tumble Down Dick.It sounds like you do feel a certain sympathy for him.Could he ever have been successful in that role, do you think?Or were the circumstances going to make it difficult for him?
I think there's a combination of a particular personality.He was described by contemporaries as perhaps a little more gentle than his father Cromwell, less ruthless.
He perhaps could have done what his father did frequently, which was dissolve parliament when they started to pick at his powers.The other thing he could have done was handle the army better.Senior army officers were his family.
Charles Fleetwood, his brother-in-law, became commander-in-chief of the forces.John Despera, his uncle by marriage, another senior army officer.But the army was becoming also increasingly unhappy with a protectorate.
There's some really radical forces and it proved too much for Richard.
All right, so Richard Cromwell should be better known.
Your third choice is Samuel Hartlib, a 17th century Polish entrepreneur who moved to England and promoted a range of very forward thinking ideas like raising crop yields, a national bank and a health service.
So how did he come to England in the first place?
Samuel Hartlob is one of my favourite, favourite characters that I came across from the period, and he really kind of epitomises the kind of spirit of the Republic that I was trying to get across in my book.
He comes over as a refugee from the Thirty Years' War, the religious wars in Europe.He has an English mother. he comes over to England in the 1620s, and he'd lived in England since 1628.
But he just seems to know absolutely everyone, and across the political divides.
And that's also what I think is interesting, that we, I think we often want to think about this period as, you know, the Roundheads and the Cavaliers, and the Parliamentarians and the Royalists and the Puritans and the non-Puritans.
But it was so much more muddy than that.And Hartley was very Puritan and pious, and he really believed in an idealized version of England, a kind of utopian vision he had.
He knew the Cromwells, he knew John Milton, he knew Robert Boyle, the scientist, but he also knew royalists like John Evelyn, And together they just shared ideas about what they could do to reform, rebuild, regenerate England.
England in the 1650s was bankrupt, war-torn, divided, but people like Hartleff saw that there was an opportunity here to rebuild the country and they petitioned the government with just some really brilliant ideas.
Some were mad, some were crazy ideas, you know, a kind of single language or something, but others were really plausible.You know, a national bank, look at Holland, why don't we do something like that?Or paper money, the idea of credit.
So you see, he's got this great network, including also Samuel Pepys, I think he knew as well.And it was known, I think, as the Hartlep Circle.So was he kind of seen as the leader of this group of people?
It was very much seen as kind of a circle book, and he saw himself, he used the word as a conduit pipe.So it was kind of through him that ideas would be kind of passed.He sort of sets up this kind of intelligence hub, really.
and a communications hub in which ideas would be circulated and he would write to people and exchange ideas and receive their letters.And he would promote ideas through the publication of tracts.
So a lot of the ideas of books and pamphlets which sort of explain all these exciting ideas, he doesn't write himself, but he promotes them and enables them to get published and enables them to be circulated and disseminated.
So he is the conduit pipe through which all these ideas are moving.
And I read that one of his aims was to recall all human knowledge and to make it universally available for the education of all mankind.I mean, it makes him sound like a 17th century Google entrepreneur.Very forward thinking.
Yeah, like a kind of a way in which you might, you could access everything.He's a really unusual person and there's no one kind of really been like him since in a way that he just sort of galvanized the creative reforming energy that many shared.
These times of upheaval and revolution are also for many times of opportunity and chance.And he was wildly ambitious.
All right, so Samuel Hartland, should we better know? You're listening to Better Know with my guest today, Alice Hunt, who's been choosing a series of things which she thinks should be better known.
So far, we've had the Republic, Richard Cromwell and Samuel Hartleb.And we've talked very positively so far, but as well as things which should be better known, is there anything really famous that you wish was much less well known?
I think one of the things that always comes up in a pub quiz, doesn't it, about the Republic or Cromwell or the Interregnum or any time is, oh yeah, they cancelled Christmas.It's always Cromwell who's blamed for that.Who cancelled Christmas?
In fact, I got this wrong in a pub quiz recently because I said it wasn't Cromwell, it was Parliament.But the answer for the pub quiz was Cromwell.He did not cancel Christmas. Christmas was cancelled in 1647 by Parliament.
It was an Act of Parliament that abolished feasts like Christmas and Easter and Whitsuntide because they were not mentioned in the Bible.
But also for Puritans, Christmas was a time of excess and indulgence and drinking and feasting, which for some sort of more strict Puritans, they did not like.
Cromwell himself, as part of the regime, they continued to ban Christmas during the 1650s, but they could not enforce it.So again, the big great myth is Christmas was cancelled, but actually it wasn't for many people.
They either observed it quietly in their homes.So even though the government would meet on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, others were having fun in their own homes.
Have you sent the pub a copy of your book to put them right?
Okay, well we'll hear a little bit less about The Cancellation of Christmas then.
Your book choice is a book by Isaac Walton, a writer we have remarkably previously featured on this podcast, and you want to talk specifically about his book The Complete Angler, a best-selling book from 1653 about the potentially unpromising topic of fishing.
So how did a book about fishing become so successful?
How does this small, quiet, sweet book about fishing by the six-year-old Isaac Walton become a bestseller.It's extraordinary.It did.
And it became a bestseller in 1653, one of the most tumultuous years of the decade when Cromwell storms in, dissolves parliament, and then turns it into a protectorate.It's a book about fishing, yes.
And there are lots of useful details about flies and bait.
and fish and how to cook it as well as catch it, but it is really also a book about friendship, about two men, and it's a book about a love of a country and the countryside, and a book that delights in the past.
And I think for people who found the time a bit heated, they found this book kind of set in the cool, rainy countryside, rather a tonic.It remembered past writers, talks about sort of Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe.
It has that kind of nostalgia, which I think many felt was threatened by the novelty of the time.So on the one hand, we have a character like Hartlib and those around him who are kind of feverishly promoting new and exciting ideas.
And on the other hand, we have people who are feeling tossed about by the amount of change.And I think that's what this book represented, was just a sort of a breather from that.
It's beautifully written, it's really sweet, it's full of lovely details, the inns that they stay in, friendship, conviviality, past.
And I guess it's playing a nostalgic role as, for example, in World War One, poetry Rupert Brooke was summoning up an idea of the past or recent past that was giving people hope for the future.
So was it trying to comment on current events or was it simply looking back and saying this is what we're all about?
doesn't explicitly comment on it, but it is written as part of a recognized code, I suppose, by royalists, that the values of friendship and cheer and eating and feasting and drinking and toasting was something that was shared by those loyal to the monarchy.
There is a kind of code in Angla as a nod to Anglicanism, So it's sort of anti-Puritan and it is signalling that through its title and through its values.He was a Royalist, Walton, a linen draper from Stafford, but who lived in London.
And he had played a part in rescuing Charles II's medal, George Medal, which had to be sort of saved after the big battle of Worcester in 1651, when Charles II is trying to win back his throne.
And Walton plays a part in rescuing this medal and making sure it gets back to its rightful owner. But its success transcends that because it's never been out of print since The Complete Angular.
So his book found a readership that kind of went beyond perhaps its intended readers.
And in the hundreds of years since it was written, has it come back into fashion more in times of chaos and tumult since then?It is, I think, yes, one of those books that
has a kind of particular way of galvanizing a kind of, perhaps a kind of nationalism at times of crisis because of its idealized version. of England and the countryside, and it's quite English.It is a particular kind of vision of the past.
And I think that's been a kind of story, hasn't it, that this country's always wanted to tell about itself, a sort of continuity with the past, stability, looking back to kind of golden periods in times of crisis.
Has it ever inspired you to take up fishing?
No, but I did give a copy to my dad who is a keen fisher and he absolutely loves it.
Okay, so the complete angler should be better known.
Your next choice is a Cistercian monastery in Dorset called Ford Abbey.So how did you first come across it?
I visited lots of places while I was writing this book.I really enjoyed visiting the houses that were important to certain people at this time, and including houses that were built during this time.
Again, busting the myth that the Puritan elite who were running the country weren't interested in nice things. Ford Abbey was just the most favourite place I visited.I just loved it in Dorset.
And I went there because I was researching Oliver Cromwell's attorney general, who was called Edmund Credo.He was a top lawyer.He'd made a lot of money as master of the post, sort of running the postal service.
And he was also an MP in Dorset for Lyme Regis.And he plays a very big part in a big trial in 1655 where a royalist uprising is suppressed and the ringleaders are rounded up and put on trial and then executed.
And Predo is there presiding over the trial and he's got scarlet robes.But he had bought Ford Abbey in 1649 and had done it up.And it's an example of how complicated and mixed
certain Puritans could be at this time, that he had made money, bought a house, and stocked it with beautiful tapestries, built an Italian beautiful staircase, copying kind of architecture from the continent.
And I just think it's really important to kind of really flesh out the characters from this time, particularly the people who were making the decisions, who were the lawyers, the judges, the politicians, the MPs, as well as those who were the household around Cromwell.
Ford Abbey just enabled me to think about that.It's also just the most beautiful place.
So Edmund Prideaux plays obviously a key role in developing the house and in the political life of the time.Then after he dies, his son inherits the house and then he invites the Duke of Monmouth to the Abbey.
So also some significant political consequences for his son.
So this is the story that the Duke of Monmouth stayed there before the failed rebellion of 1685.So the Duke of Monmouth was Charles II's illegitimate son with his mistress, Lucy Walter.He was born in the Netherlands in 1649.
And the coup, which they tried to stage is to depose the Duke of Monmouth's brother, James II, who has inherited the throne from Charles II.James II is Catholic.
this is a Protestant rebellion staged between supporters of James, Duke of Monmouth, and it doesn't work.The James II's army manages to crush Duke of Monmouth and the Monmouth Rebellion, and he's executed for treason.
But yes, these connections, the connections that carry on with particular houses at particular moments, and the family's loyalties is interesting to trace.
And Ford Abbey is open to the public to go and visit today?
Yes, it's now owned by another family.It's privately owned, but it is open to the public.It's got beautiful gardens.It's really worth going to.And the tapestries, of course, are amazing.
Okay, so Ford Abbey should be a better name. Your final choice is the Experimental Philosophy Club, a group of scientists who met in Oxford during the 1650s.So Oxford had supported the King during the Civil War.
What was the atmosphere like there during the Republic?
Yes, the King, you're absolutely right, Charles I had fled to Oxford during the 1640s and had set up a mini court there.It continued to be quite royalist, but Cromwell became Chancellor of Oxford and as such, in the 1650s, he had
the term used, intruded.It means he just gave a job to someone called John Wilkins, Dr. John Wilkins, who was his brother-in-law married to his sister.And John Wilkins became warden of Wadham College.
And Wilkins was really interested in science and loved finding out about new things and inventing things.And he himself had speculated that there might well be life on the moon.And he gathered around him
a group of like-minded scientists, sort of curious scientists who were particularly interested in experiment, you know, really testing things.
And these men were either attached to the university or living in Oxford, but they met in his rooms in Modern College and they exchanged ideas about about the new science and decided on what kind of experiments they should do.
And they would make sure they could get money in order to put on these experiments, get the right equipment.This group of scientists, again, it cuts across political divides.Some of them came from royalist families, Christopher Wren, for example, but
some not.It wasn't kind of politically motivated.Some of them believed that a republic actually was better for science.
It was better to value and promote that kind of merit in a republic, they thought, but it was devoted to science and to experimentation. they were doing what Francis Bacon had advocated during the century, which is the empirical method.
You've got to test the knowledge.
And to some extent, the fact that all this activity was going on, maybe punctures some of the stereotypes people have of this period of a time of just political divide and maybe a lack of actual real experimentation and so forth.
So this goes against the grain, I think, of what people might think was happening at that time.
Yeah, absolutely.It's another moment, again, when you feel the Republic needs fleshing out.Other stuff was happening.People were reading little books about fishing.
They were also watching opera that was going on in the back room of William Davenant's home in London.And these scientists were busy working. devising telescopes, the microscope.
We've got Robert Hooke and his brilliant drawings done through the microscope, working with Robert Boyle.Together they create the air pump
which enables Robert Boyle to discover that you can create a vacuum that hadn't been believed in before, that it wasn't possible, you could not have a vacuum.
And they build together, hook and boil this amazing air pump in Oxford during the end of the 1650s.And they prove it.Christopher Wren is there.I mean, these are names that are going to go on to become incredibly well known.
But their careers began in the late 1650s.It's so important, I think, to look at the other stuff that's happening.
And this group actually becomes the Royal Society, a major scientific institution that still exists today.And it sounds like their ethos was all about trying to develop the scientific method and experiment and innovate.
Yeah, the commitment to experiment and a real belief that that was good for society.So it's connected to Samuel Hartlib.He knew them and the wanting to improve society.
And it's John Wilkins when the Republic has ended and the King Charles II is back on the throne.Their meetings have moved from Oxford to London.Wilkins has since left. Oxford, so that they've dispersed a bit.
They're meeting now in London, and he says, what we should do is that we should seek patronage for what we're doing, and we should seek royal patronage.And that's when they become the Royal Society.
And so for you, it sounds like this book has been a real chance to show people that it wasn't simply about cancelling Christmas and banning plays.There was quite a lot else going on at that time.
what I really wanted to do.Those were the aspects that I became really excited about.I wanted to, firstly, really understand what the Republic was like.How did we get from the execution of the king to the restoration of the king?
What were its different constitutional forms?Because I find that interesting, trying to how do you become not a monarchy?
But I also found all the other windows that were opened just so interesting, the literature that was being written, the way the writers, artists responded to the moment, the science that was being done, the music that was being written.
This all has a really big part to play at the time, but also in the country that we were to become.
Okay, so that's the final item on the list.So today we've had The Republic, Richard Cromwell, Samuel Hartlib, The Complete Angler, Ford Abbey and The Experimental Philosophy Club.
So out of these six choices, Alice, which one do you feel most strongly should be better known?
I'm gonna go for the fact that I just think the Republic should be better known, that it was a Republic, that it was called a Republic, that we should name it as a Republic and that we should understand what it was like and its legacy for us, for the rest of the 17th century and its modern legacy, what has lasted, I think should be better known.
I think the fact that we are a monarchy now is much to the Republic.
Thank you very much to Alice Hunt for her choices.We'll post links to all the topics discussed so you can decide for yourself whether they should indeed be Better Known.You can subscribe and listen to all our previous episodes at betterknown.co.uk.
My name's Ivan Wise and we look forward to talking to you again for the next episode of Better Known.
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