The Stuarts in 100 Facts

by Andrea Zuvich

  Not everyone was pleased with the decidedly royal direction Cromwell began to take. Cromwell had his personal security boosted by hiring highly paid bodyguards. This was because Cromwell realistically could have been assassinated. Several assassination attempts were made, including by former Leveller Colonel Sexby.

  Cromwell died of natural causes in Whitehall Palace in 1658 and his body was embalmed – the way a king’s body would have been prepared. After lying in state at Somerset House, he was given a state funeral and interred at Westminster Abbey – again, like a king. His son, Richard Cromwell, succeeded him in the same hereditary manner. But with Cromwell’s death, so died the Republic. Richard – rather cruelly nicknamed ‘Tumbledown Dick’ – was nothing like his father and his position of power soon came to an end. Eventually, General Monk marched the army into London and in this coup, the Republic was firmly shut down and the return of the king was called for.

  At the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, King Charles II ordered Cromwell’s body to be disinterred from its resting place in Westminster Abbey and posthumously hanged and beheaded. His embalmed head was mounted on a spike and appears to have still been up there until the time of the Rye House Plot in 1683. An embalmed head purported to be Cromwell’s was a source of controversy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and was eventually buried in Cromwell’s alma mater, Cambridge University, in 1960. And what of Cromwell’s legacy? For centuries people either loved him or hated him, but like any human being, he was complex. What is amazing about Cromwell is that he rose up from the gentry, became Lieutenant-General of Horse in the New Model Army, laid siege to several towns, expelled the Rump Parliament, and finally became the Lord Protector.

  46. IRELAND OFTEN GOT A RAW DEAL

  Since Tudor times, English Protestants had settled Ireland in what were called plantations. In the early 1600s, there was the Flight of the Earls and their lands were then taken and more colonists moved in. In 1641, Irish men and women rose up against their English colonisers in what’s known as the Ulster Uprising of 1641, which only added to King Charles I’s many problems. Irish Catholics massacred Protestants and vice versa, and the situation was pretty bad for about a decade.

  Lord Protector Cromwell was particularly vicious in his treatment of the Irish and still has a very poor reputation throughout the Emerald Isle. Cromwell’s reputation remains decidedly unpopular, for during the Third English Civil War and then the subsequent Cromwellian regime, Ireland suffered greatly. In early Autumn 1649, Cromwell invaded Ireland, and in September launched an attack on Drogheda, which had been taken before by the Royalist-Confederate Catholics. What ensued there came to be known as the Massacre of Drogheda. He also had people butchered in Wexford. Over 2,000 people were killed.

  When Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660, the lands that were taken away under Cromwell weren’t returned. The Irish were let down once again. By the late 1680s, Ireland still had a majority Catholic population and so many supported James II. Loyalty to James meant that Ireland was eventually on the losing side during the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Following Williamite and Jacobite skirmishes around the country, and then solid defeats at the Battles of the Boyne and Aughrim, some Irish ended up calling James II Séamus an Chaca, or ‘James the Shit’. The Irish Jacobites were not without heroes. Patrick Sarsfield, Earl of Lucan, was a brave leader who was eventually fatally shot at the Battle of Neerwinden (Landen) in 1693.

  If economic and political turmoil weren’t bad enough, Ireland also got its share of pestilence. Plague was a problem throughout Europe, but it swept through the Emerald Isle in 1604–5 and again in 1650–1. As a consequence of the Glorious Revolution, Londonderry and Dundalk had major outbreaks of Typhus and Dysentery. Thousands of people died. The controversial Orange order and Orangemen Parades in present-day Northern Ireland have their roots in the late Stuart age, for they are named after King William III. William was also the Prince of Orange (hence the ‘orange’) and is credited with liberating Irish protestants from Papish tyranny and giving them religious freedom. The annual parades commemorate Wiliam’s decisive victory over James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. So from disease to colonisation, warfare, and unfortunate political situations, Ireland often got a raw deal.

  47. THE ENGLISH CIVIL WARS CHANGED EVERYTHING

  The Wars of the Three Kingdoms have been given so many names – the English Civil Wars, The Great Rebellion, the British Civil Wars – but no matter what you choose to call this tumultuous series of wars, one thing is certain: they changed everything. Either directly or indirectly, the wars affected all aspects of society and people all across the kingdoms. The English Civil Wars were three different wars over the years 1642 to 1651. This was by no means the first civil war in England. There were several, the most important of these being The Anarchy in the twelfth century and the Wars of the Roses in the fifteenth century.

  Popular culture and even some textbooks have perpetuated many myths about the civil war of the seventeenth century. A case in point is this belief that Royalists (Cavaliers) were made up of only the well-dressed rich snobs and the Parliamentarians (Roundheads) were the hard-working people. The reality was much more complex. Seven years of conflict ensued, in which whole families were torn apart, first perhaps by differing views, and then by the violence of war. Wales usually goes unmentioned because it is so closely associated with England, but Wales played an important role because it was largely in support of Charles I.

  The First English Civil War period contained several important battles. The Battle of Edgehill is notable because it was the first major battle of the civil wars. The Battle of Marston Moor in July 1644 was a decisive win for the Parliamentarians, who had few casualties compared with the Royalists. The Battle of Naseby in Northamptonshire is unquestionably one of the most important and decisive battles in British history. In mid-June 1645, the three-hour battle between the Royalists led by Prince Rupert and the New Model Army led by Sir Fairfax ended again in the slaughter of the Royalist army. The victorious Parliamentarians then turned their attentions to the over 100 women in the Royalist camp – thinking these were Irish (they were probably Welsh) they were killed, raped, or disfigured.

  The Second English Civil War was the shortest of the three wars. While the fighting took place in 1648 there were important events that took place from 1647 to 1649. In 1648, General Fairfax led the Parliamentarians to besiege and defeat the Royalists at Colchester. In December of the same year, Colonel Thomas Pride forcibly removed all MPs who were against trying the king (among other things). This was known as ‘Pride’s Purge’ and it culminated in the establishment of the Rump Parliament and the trial and execution of Charles I in 1649.

  In the Third English Civil War, Royalist forces attempted to invade England from Scotland with Charles II, who was made King of Scotland in 1651. The Battle of Worcester was the last battle of the civil wars and brought all Royalist hopes to a crashing end. Charles was only just whisked away from the battlefield in time and he hid in a hollow of an oak tree near Boscobel House. Scars from the English Civil Wars can still be seen throughout the country. Birmingham’s Aston Hall, for example, has a wooden main staircase that still bears the damage it sustained from a cannonball.

  Once the fighting was over, everything had changed – even the monarchy was impacted and would never again be as it was before the civil wars.

  48. MASQUES WERE A FORMAL ENTERTAINMENT, BUT SOME THOUGHT THEM IMMORAL

  Masques were a formal entertainment, and they were rather like a play with music. They were extravagant, costly productions that required elaborate costumes and spectacular sets, and were performed at night lit by torchlight. They were truly magical events, and to be able to witness them was pretty special. Masques were very popular during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but really came into their own during the early Stuart age, in which they were not only entertainment but also propaganda pieces. Ben Jonson, one of the most popular playwrights of his ti
me and a contemporary of Shakespeare’s, often collaborated with Inigo Jones to create these masques (Jonson and Jones squabbled frequently!). If the costume designs from Ben Jonson’s The Masque of Queens are anything to go by, this meant that some of the women performed bare-breasted.

  Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, that paragon of princely virtues, enjoyed masques as well, so they couldn’t have been very explicit. In 1610, Henry commissioned Jonson to write a masque, which was performed the following year and entitled Oberon the Fairy Prince, with the prince himself in the title role. Inigo Jones’s costume designs for this masque are sumptuous combinations of ancient Roman and Renaissance styles. Henry’s mother, Anne of Denmark, was an enthusiastic commissioner and performer in masques as well.

  Queen Henrietta Maria was particularly fond of performing in masques – and this was met with disapproval by those, particularly certain clergymen, who thought women performing in such spectacles were immoral. To the most radical puritans, masques were in their very nature evil. Militant Puritan pamphleteer William Prynne wrote the scathingly critical and controversial Histriomastix: The Player’s Scourge, or Actor’s Tragedy in 1632, and this was seen by some as a direct attack on the queen. Indeed, Prynne’s writings in this come across as no more than the angry and vicious ranting of a religious zealot. ‘These so vain, so pernicious, so sacrilegious plays and spectacles are to be avoided of all Christians.’ Throughout the work, he continues his attack, stating, ‘The subject matter of stage plays is oftentimes impious, sacrilegious, blasphemous,’ and that plays directly contribute to ‘the fomentation of diverse lusts’.

  As late as 1675, John Crowne’s masque Calisto was performed at Whitehall Palace before Charles II and Catherine of Braganza. The players in this production included the future queens Mary II, as the titular heroine Calisto, and Anne. Other performers included the Duke of Monmouth and Nell Gwynn. This last person was a popular actress. We tend to take actresses for granted now, but there was a time when it was illegal for a woman to perform on a public stage. It was Gwynn’s royal lover, King Charles II, who allowed women to act in public. As his own mother had acted in masques earlier in the century, it is not very surprising that the monarch allowed this. However, there remains debate as to who was the first actress to appear on stage – it seems likely that Margaret ‘Peg’ Hughes was the first, following her performance as Desdemona in Shakespeare’s Othello in 1661.

  49. STUART PHILOSOPHERS USHERED IN AN AGE OF REASON

  The philosophy of the seventeenth century is unquestionably important, especially when one considers that the philosophical works from this era paved the way for the Enlightenment thinking of the eighteenth century. Ideas spread, and so we have to look at the whole of Europe in this fact. In France, philosophy began to take interesting directions under great thinkers such as Rene Descartes (of ‘I think, therefore I am’ fame) and Blaise Pascal (notable for Pascal’s Wager). In England, Francis Bacon (1561–1626) and Thomas Hobbes were some of the most influential thinkers of the early Stuart era.

  Francis Bacon, from whom we get the term ‘Baconian’, died when he developed pneumonia after conducting an experiment in the snow. Thomas Hobbes made a significant impact on modern philosophy as well. The term ‘Hobbesian’ refers to men’s lives, without laws or a power to keep them in line, as ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’. In other words, we need to be ruled because that is in our best interest. Hobbes was thoroughly admired during the Stuart period, and biographer John Aubrey wrote one of his longest and most detailed biographical entries for him.

  The impact of Locke’s philosophy is readily apparent to those who have read both his writings and the Constitution of the Unites States of America. Locke voyaged across from the Dutch Republic to England when William and Mary took the throne in 1689, and he was a staunch supporter of their reign. His works, including An Essay Concerning Human Understanding as well as his Two Treatises of Government, were two of the most influential on the Founding Fathers.

  The Stuart era as a whole was a period in history in which people seemed to have been frightened and confused. I say this because, on the one hand, they were thoroughly entrenched in superstition and deeply religious, but on the other hand, scientific endeavour was beginning to take off. In that century, we had the likes of Galileo, Newton, Leibniz, Cassini, Descartes and many others seeking answers to some of mankind’s greatest questions. To have such great leaps in science and industry while simultaneously maintaining religious and superstitious beliefs must have been difficult for some people.

  50. WILLIAM AND MARY DIDN’T MANAGE TO MODERNISE ALL OF HAMPTON COURT PALACE

  Lying by the River Thames approximately 12 miles south of London, Hampton Court Palace remains a breath-taking sight. The building that greets visitors is largely a palace of two halves – the newer Baroque version, built by William and Mary in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and the older Tudor building, in which Cardinal Wolsey, Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and later Elizabeth I lived.

  When they came to the throne officially in 1689, William and Mary went house hunting because the foul conditions at Whitehall Palace severely aggravated William’s asthma. More verdant climes were sought, and they purchased what came to be known as Kensington Palace. Hampton Court Palace, Windsor Castle and St. James’s Palace were already theirs by right of being the sovereigns. Hampton Court, by that time, was a sprawling Tudor building ; it was well over a hundred years old and considered very old-fashioned. The rooms were damp and so in order to make it habitable, some modernisation was needed. William and Mary’s uncle, King Charles II, had added a few improvements, including the Long Water.

  William and Mary decided that they would have most of the antiquated Tudor palace knocked down to make way for a modern, Baroque palace – a palace, William hoped, to rival Louis XIV’s extravagant Versailles in France. The only thing that was to be kept from the Tudor building was the Great Hall. A good deal of the palace was demolished and a new design created by master architect Sir Christopher Wren. Demolition of the old Tudor building and work on the new began in 1689, and in the interim, Mary set up temporary apartments in the old Water Gallery. This she had filled with her favourite blue-and-white china and the newly made series of portraits of the Hampton Court Beauties.

  William and Mary hired Jean Tijou and Daniel Marot, two French Huguenots, to decorate the new part of the palace. Tijou’s exceptionally beautiful Baroque wrought-iron screens are still located at the far end of the Privy Garden. Marot was an architect and furniture designer specialising in the ultra-modern Baroque style. Master Baroque woodcarver Grinling Gibbons was also employed to carve wooden decorations throughout the King’s and Queen’s Apartments.

  In December of 1694, Mary II died suddenly from smallpox. A grief-stricken King William III had construction stopped for around three years; after all, the money had started to run out. Unlike his French rival across the sea, William’s purse was held by Parliament and his costly wars against the French meant that the full-scale plan of modernisation had to be stopped. In 1697, the widower was doing better politically (the Peace of Rijswijk had just been signed) and financially, and had construction work continue on Hampton Court Palace. During this time, he had the Little Banqueting House built and commissioned Antonio Verrio to decorate the interior of this and the main apartments, most notably the King’s Staircase and the King’s Little Bedchamber.

  51. PIRATES, ESPECIALLY THE BARBARY PIRATES, WERE A CONSTANT TERROR

  Forget jolly pirates with a penchant for imbibing rum. Real pirates were no joke; they were brutal. Piracy has been a problem for centuries (even Julius Caesar was captured by pirates!), and is a problem seafaring vessels face even now in the twenty-first century. During the Stuart era, pirates were a cause for great concern – especially those known as the Barbary Pirates. The Barbary States referred to the coastal areas of North Africa, comprised of the modern-day countries of Morocco, Libya, Tunisia, and Algeria. When King Charles
II married the Portuguese Princess Catherine of Braganza, part of her dowry included the port towns of Bombay (modern-day Mumbai, India) and Tangiers. The latter, however, proved to be a hub of piratical trouble. Surviving political documents from the time suggests that successive reigns had a pirate problem.

  In 1631, Barbary pirates attacked the village of Baltimore in Ireland. Barbary pirates were known for landing the coasts of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, where they would capture European men and women and take them to Algiers to be sold. The former were either killed or forced to work the galleys on ships; the latter were usually sold off as sex slaves in harems. The National Archives in Kew contain reports that state how some English officials were taken prisoner and held for ransom.

  By the time of the Restoration in 1660, it was Charles II’s turn to deal with pirates; he and the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire endeavoured to tackle the problem. In article XIX, page 7, of The Capitulations and Articles of peace between the Majestie of the King of England and the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1663, it says, ‘If the pyrates or Levents who infest the seas with their frigates, shall be found to have taken any English vessel, or to have robbed or spoiled their goods, & faculties … our ministers shall seek out such offenders & severely punish them, and cause that all such goods, ships, monies, and whatsoever … be presently, swiftly, and absolutely restored to them.’ Whether or not that worked is impossible to tell. Page 2 of Issue 14 of the London Gazette for 16 May 1670 states that ‘the pyrates of Algier have taken three Portugal ships bound for Brasile’.