The settlements following the Restoration didn’t turn out exactly as the Three Kingdoms or indeed Charles imagined, but nonetheless for the moment king and his parliaments were in a honeymoon period. Soon to be challenged by Plague, Fire and War.
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Transcript
Hello everyone and welcome back to the History of England at a Gallop, ****. Just a reminder you do not need to listen to this episode, you can keep straight on with the numbered, detailed episodes. But if you prefer history at a faster pace, or indeed want a refresher for the period you’ve just heard about, then this is for you.
Last time on AAG we went from the establishment of the Protectorate in 1653, to the death of Cromwell, and the failure of the Commonwealth to reconcile the different factions, until the only solution was to bring back the monarchy, with the terms set by George Monk which were announced in Charles’ Declaration of Breda. We saw the Convention parliament invite the king to return, and Charles step ashore in May 1660.
This episode covers the events we talked about in episodes 432, to 440. It covers the Restoration, sees King Charles and the Stuart dynasty re-assume the thrones of the Three Kingdoms on a wave of enthusiasm – not to say relief. The 1660s had their difficulties – catastrophic ones for some, such as the plague and the Great fire of London. But they are a honeymoon period politically, a search for reconciliation and forgetting, to put the upheaval and violence of Revolutionary period aside, and move on. The three parliaments seem pleased with their restored king. But the suspicion begins to grow that the revolutions can’t be forgiven and forgotten, and that their divinely appointed came with his own baggage, and the façade of unity begins to crack and a vocal opposition to re-assert itself.
If you will permit me, it might be good to leave the cut and thrust of war, politics and events to one side, and do a bit of a scene setter, and look forward a bit, because we are about to gallop over a very changing scene, Europe and the world will change an awful lot. So maybe it would help if I just outline a few of those big trends and events? It means you could keep me honest, and send me a note to say ‘Hey, what about… (insert subject as applicable)?’
Also, to be fully frank with you, I do have a bit of an ulterior motive, a bit of a rant I’d like to get off my chest. A friend of mine once re-assured me by saying ‘better an empty house than an unhappy tenant’, which is a good phrase, and although he was referring to expelling something other than thoughts at the time, but it works here too.
I am referring to the Enlightenment, and England’s role in it. As a concept the Enlightenment is much knocked about now, angry and critical bullets have been fired at its fabric, so that it looks distinctly tatty and bashed about. And yet there the tapestry still stands, and over the next hundred years or so a whole load of things go on all over the British Isles, Ireland and Europe which will change the world. And yet as far the enlightenment is concerned, it’s been something spoken of in the context mainly of French philosophers, glittering continental thinkers, American giants and indeed the Scottish Enlightenment is a term that has been in full, and totally justified use, for well over a hundred years. But English Enlightenment? Pah, pshaw, and possibly worse. In fact to sum it up, I can quote the historian who once wrote that the term
‘English Enlightenment would be jarring and incongruous’.
So I am here to reclaim the phrase the English Enlightenment, and yah boo sucks to the nay sayers. From the period 1650 onwards, England plays a full and at times leading role in the cultural, scientific and economic transformation of Europe, and this will be a major theme of our story. Roy Porter had a different way of putting it – England as the crucible of modernity.
Now, the eagle eared of you will have noticed I said from the 1650s, not 1660, and this is the last defiant, dying note of my rant. If you are still listening to the main podcasts you will know that the genesis of the Royal society came from the radical winds of the Commonwealth and the Oxford Experimental society, that the passion and search for improvement was typified by Samuel Hartlib and his Europe-wide network – which would be taken over by Henry Oldenburg when the Royal Society was set up.
So there will be a lot about the advance of the Age of Reason. Part of that will be political thinking, because the effort to erase the memory of the Revolution will not fully succeed. It will not be long before we are talking of a new, different kind of revolution and constitutional settlement, and under the last of the Stuarts the establishment of Britain. One of the people who will carry on the traditional of radicalism, even wearing the Green colours of the Levellers, will be the patron of John Locke, the Earl of Shaftesbury who wrote
There is a mighty light which spreads itself over the world especially in these two nations of England and Holland…it is impossible but that letters and knowledge must advance in greater proportion than ever
The Netherlands is a good place to start in talking about the themes of economic change. We will have the fun of talking about the early shoots of a revolution in agriculture, of capitalism and commercialism, and agricultural improvement was a field The Netherlands led if you will forgive the cheesy pun. And they led too in the economic strength of their colonial empire – this is the Dutch Golden age of prosperity, in which England will soon follow. There are many aspects of that global story. One is wealth. In terms of total wealth the world behemoths are of course China, India, and in Europe, France – and don’t you worry we will talk about the glittering story of Louis XIV, who will set the political agenda for the next 50 years and beyond. But absolute size is deceptive; in terms of wealth per person, the picture is very different. China and India were vast, their elites the richest and most culturally sophisticated in the world. But they were highly unequal societies; in terms of individual wealth, GDP per capita, most European counties ranked significantly higher even in 1500, and by 1700 that gap had widened enormously.
In Europe, people in the Netherlands are so much richer than everyone else it is extraordinary; there is a peleton just behind with Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Britain – not the French they are a little way behind that. One of the stories of the century will be increasingly rapid economic growth, but at a lower rate for France when measured on a per head basis. So although we’ll talk a lot – and I mean a lot – about the massive budget Louis has to throw around, but economically one historian has described the century leading up to the French revolution as ‘a long wasting disease’.
Extraordinary innovation is integral to the story; we’ll hear about the transformation of our understand of the world through Scientific and Engineering revolutions in which England is at the head, we will hear about the growth of cottage industry and mechanisation. But there are much less comfortable aspects of Economic change, which often comes at a big social cost. Full scale industrialisation is still more than a century away, but enclosure is not, nor the increasing divisions in society. In England that means the Bloody code around laws of property; in Eastern Europe, it means growing and increasingly repressive serfdom.
And of course global trade and growth comes hand in hand with the often tragic story of colonial empires and slavery in which England also plays a leading part. The Dutch VOC will dominate the spice trade in Asia; and there colonial trade will also be based on slavery, with up to 2/3rds of their colonies in the East Indies being enslaved.
Their dominance of the Spice trade forced England’s East India Company to focus on the subcontinent, and trade in textiles, tea and bullion. Trade will at last begin to flourish for the EIC before we arrive at the age of Clive and active imperial involvement. In England global trade grows, and one important component is the infamous Atlantic trade linking enslaved Africans, the Caribbean island colonies, grain from North America, and the sale of tobacco, coffee and sugar to Europe.
Although much of the earlier population of the English Caribbean was indentured labour – Redlegs as they are now known – in 1660 Charles II established the Royal African Company and England will start its path towards becoming Europe’s largest trader in enslaved people. Across all European slaver trading nations, across the whole 18th century, between 1½ and 2m enslaved people will be purchased from African kingdoms, with around 40 percent being taken to Brazil, another 40 percent to the Caribbean, and the remaining 20 percent to the rest of the Americas, of which about 4 percent went to North America. England developed its own slave societies in the Caribbean, which in 1661 were governed by the brutal Barbados slave code, which would be made even harsher in 1688 and 1691 as enslaved people tried to free themselves.
And one more theme will remain religion. We think of the 18th century as one of growing toleration, although at different speeds. John Locke even before 1660 was blown away by Brandenburg Prussia, which he reported allowed people to just get on with their own religion. The Netherlands although Calvinist was notably open, and the Enlightenment laid the groundwork for fuller toleration. But there is still widespread and active persecution against Jews, this will be the period of the persecution of Old Believers in Peter the Great’s Russia, and if course the stand out single event is the persecution, murder and expulsion of French Huguenots. Confessional boundaries will run deep, and this paradox of the enlightened growth of toleration and continuing religious prejudice, is no more marked than in England and the Three Kingdoms, where it plays a massive though varied part of politics in each kingdom.
Politically and diplomatically, Western Europe will begin to change away from the struggle between Valois/Bourbon and Hapsburg towards the rise of a multiplicity of nation states. It’s thought Spain’s economic decline has been over emphasised in past histories, but none the less it’s pretty clear Louis XIV’s France is now financially supreme. Germany and the Empire are still trying to emerge from the hideous devastation of the 30 YW. All will have to face Louis XIV’s naked ambition to expand France towards what later historians have articulated as France’s ‘natural borders’, which for Louis was a matter of partly security – but mainly La Gloire.
This will be main obsession for the rulers of Western Europe because it affected them all. Fron the North – it affected the States General and the House of Orange in the Dutch Republic. It affected the Empire and Germany along the Rhine, it affected the Spanish Hapsburgs, in defending its vulnerable possessions of the Spanish Netherlands, and the Franche Comte, along the Rhine in North Eastern France.
What worried all these nations, and Britain as well, was not just the ambition – after all France and the Habsburgs have been scrapping for centuries; there is also Absolutism, and the extraordinary ability of the French Monarchy to extract wealth from and control its people. The French church was in thrall to the Crown, not the pope, the crown extracted direct taxation and bypassed traditional local institutions, and the state directed mercantilist, trading and colonial advances. And it is also the mesmerising cultural primacy of France, once again the cultural capital of Christendom. Their gilded nobility squabbled and fought for scraps from the royal table in the golden cage of Versailles, the Academie Francaise produced their great Dictionary in 1694, the academie des Sciences was established in 1666, the Academie de Musique in 1669; the Comedie Francaise in 1680. Royal patronage dominated the French cultural scene, such as the so called ‘king’s Four Friends’ of French literature – Boileau, Moliere, Racine and La Fontaine.
The new kid on the block is increasingly England, and although it’s early days yet, it will soon no longer be able to hide behind the small damp island motif, because of its powerfully expanding economy, navy and empire. And the English, Welsh and Scottish people will be obsessed and terrified by Louis XIV’s France, not just because of Louis’ enormous budget, ambitions and military power, but as a bogeyman, a monster, an exaggerated threat of a supposed partnership of Catholicism and absolutist tyranny.
Funnily enough, one person who remained resolutely out of step with this terror and in step with the royal and cultural glories of France was the Three Kingdoms’ new ruler, Charles II. Charles loved everything about France and its court, and the absolutism of its king, and this will be a problem. Emotionally, the protestant English, Welsh and Scots looked to their long standing military, religious and cultural links with the Dutch, despite their rising naval and trading rivalry, and the first Anglo Dutch War in the 1650s. This tension, Dutch Protestant vs French Catholic will be a major bone of political and public contention.
Charles is a particularly fascinating figure for me – the anti-thesis to his predecessor Cromwell in terms of his reputation. Cromwell is deeply unpopular in the public mind, while Charles, well, Waaay Hey, whoof, what a lad, the merrie Monarch, the suddenly everyone is happy. Whereas Academics generally write positively of Cromwell, and most of them wouldn’t give Charles the rough end of a pineapple. Though there are exceptions such as Ian Mortimer who gets a little tearful with his admiration.
I suspect that part of the issue is that if I met him, I’d have a great time with Charles. He was completely unlike his father, because he was very informal and friendly – he’d go for a couple of walks a day, and a bit like Cromwell was very approachable and available to the Gen Pub; on a couple of occasions a major political event will start from such a meeting – the Popish Plot in particular, which we’ll come across in 1679. He was witty and a great raconteur, famously liked a party of course; he was physically brave and very energetic – he loved the races and was constantly off to Newmarket, and amongst other things loved sailing and introduced the passion for the Dutch yacht to England.
Then it gets a bit trickier. It’s true to say that he had none of the rigidity about religion or demand for conformity with had caused so many problems in Christianity since, ooh, 30 AD, and more recently since 1517. He was at most conventionally pious, and all things being equal I suspect would have had no problem with a world including Catholics, Anglicans and all manner of protestant sects. But – nor did he have any objection to persecuting them if it made life easier for him, or bolstered royal authority. He frequently, very frequently, offers up and approves bouts of persecution for some deal in parliament.
He is also attributed with the kind of political nous his Dad lacked. Certainly he is more flexible, and in the 1680s will make an extremely effective series of political decisions, But he is cautious, short term, tactical, and reactive, driven by events not usually driving them – he has no great vision other than his own cause. He is a very poor manager of people, constantly telling ministers one thing in private and doing another in public, telling some privy councillors one thing and giving a different story to others. He is duplicitous and frequently tells porkies; he is only loyal to himself and to family. Ministers are casually thrown to the wolves. Of all our monarchs, he is most obviously corrupt, taking bribes from a foreign monarch. Hutton sees a man utterly selfish and self centred, and a moral vacuum.
But, of course – he is most famous for his mistresses. Old Rowley the was called, after a famous stallion, and we almost universally think it’s a bit of fun; and fair do’s, he obviously adores them all – for a while at least – and when he doesn’t any more, he looks after the posh ones after discarding them. He has 14 illegitimate children we know about – only one English monarch has more – answers on a postcard to the shed about who that might be. But it is less fun than you might think. Not only does it have a human cost on the humiliation heaped on his Queen, Catherine but it does not escape notice to the nation that there is one rule for them, and another for Charles and all the posh cavaliers who come back with him. The cost of his mistresses and courtiers, and the moral laxity of his court will do his reputation serious, serious damage. There will be a poem. Prepare yourselves for that.
Which leads me on to the themes of Charles’ reign, and what’s on his mind as he trundles north from Dover to London in May 1660.
Firstly, he must restore the damaged prestige, mystique and reputation of the British monarchy because it is in tatters after the Revolution. Charles is a big believer in absolutism. Unlike his Dad, he’s prepared to go slow on that, but he knows it’s impossible to get where Louis is without the Majesty of Majesty, the mystique of the divinely anointed monarch.
He makes an early start on this, and Kings have natural advantages. He starts touching for the King’s Evil – that’s actually divine magic then. He touches over 100,000 people at vast ceremonies. The grand coronation is back – there is a massive stream of foreign ambassadors lining up through London in their grand carriages to present themselves; the Frech and Spanish even have a street battle in an argument over precedence. That looks good if you want to make Majesty Majestic again. Then there will be a grand marriage to the Portuguese royal Princess, Catherine of Braganza – that also helps look the King good, and she brings the town of Tangiers as a dowry. On the mistress thing, the new bride arrives, all unsure and out of her place, to find that her new hubby has a mistress – the brilliant, ambitious, ruthless and beautiful Barbara Castlemaine. That must be a bit of a kick in the teeth for a new bride even back then. There’s worse though. Charles tells his new Queen that Castlemaine will be in her household. Catherine rages, begs pleads, weeps to Charles not to visit this public humiliation on her. He not only insists, but threatens to send all her Portuguese ladies home if she doesn’t sush. Welcome to your new life, Cathy.
Secondly, on his big asks from his new life, Charles wants his freedom, to do what he wants, and to do that, he needs money. And after the revolution that means parliament, which is now the source of 90% of royal income. His priorities are having fun, going to the races, messing about at Court, although don’t get me wrong, Charles is reasonably conscientious, he knows he has a job to do and gets involved in all matters of state. But the purpose of politics is money, personal freedom and dynastic success and reputation.
Then despite his willingness to use religion as a political tool, Charles is looking for consensus for the majority of his reign. He will compromise and consult to try and achieve that. Until he stops.
And finally – there’s that French thing I mentioned. Charles loves France, it’s culture, sees Louis XIV as a model for kingship, and adores his court. While he is not at all convinced about the Dutch. He does not like the fact that they seem to do perfectly well without a king, and even without the House of Orange, and that’s an outrage, and secondly they are commercial rivals.
Anyway, enough! We need to move on to events, dear everyone, events. At the end of the last episode, we heard about the Declaration of Breda in April 1660 which promised a free pardon to everyone except the regicides, and there would be toleration for all protestants. On that basis the Convention Parliament invited Charles to return, and everyone basically welcomed him and an end to the chaos with open arms across all three kingdoms. The Convention parliament implemented a few key decisions – the act of Indemnity and Oblivion, and that the statute book would be returned to 1642 and all other statutes since banished. Then after they had welcomed Charles back, they dissolved themselves and new elections were called – and the resulting settlement would be forged in parliaments in Dublin, Edinburgh and London which we will hear about soon.
Charles’ put together a Privy Council that was pretty broad based with most factions represented, and installed the trusty Clarendon as, effectively, his chief Minister; Clarendon’s daughter Anne was married to the king’s younger brother and heir, James, Duke of York. The parliament that resulted from the elections however was not broad based. The Cavalier parliament it will be called and it will continue to sit, over many prorogations, until 1679 – so, almost as long as the Long Parliament.. Most of the MPs who were religious dissenters from the Church of England had been removed, voted out in reaction to the chaos of the last 2 years.
The result was the imposition of an Anglican Tyranny. Bishops of course were back; and let me remind you that bishops are not just significant in terms of church governance. They are the king’s most ardent supporters, in the name of divinely endorsed hierarchy, and the controllers of the most effective propaganda machine in the early modern world – the Pulpit.
It also results in the most unfairly named Clarendon Code; unfairly because it’s pretty clear Clarendon deeply disapproved. This was a series of repressive acts designed to enforce conformity to a narrowly based and defined Church of England, which for ease we can call the Anglican church. It not only continued Catholic repression and exclusion, but now did the same to those nasty Dissenters, Baptists, Quakers, Presbyterians, refusing the efforts of those who wanted a broad based Elizabethan church which could comprehend dissenters. So Test and Corporation acts, Oaths of Supremacy, Conventicle acts and more; all of which led to 20% of ministers leaving the church, kept Dissenters out of any public office – in theory anyway. The spirit of the Declaration of Breda was trampled and mushed. It was not of Charles’ making; but he waved it through anyway.
Actually this was a nice opportunity for him and he was quick to see it. On a couple of occasions, he would grant relief or even full indulgence for Dissenters by using the royal Prerogative. This had a dual benefit; it claimed that royal rights included all matters of religion, and were above and beyond mere statute law just like a proper monarch – i.e. an Absolute monarch. Generally, Parliament won’t let him get away with it as we will see. Also he hoped it would buy him allies of the Dissenters – that their saviour and hope was the King alone – not parliament. In fact as it turns out – they weren’t fooled.
One of the popular myths about Charles is that after the horrid repressive old puritans, suddenly freedom of speech flourished and coffeeshops appeared full of chatter and life was easy and breezy. Which is just flat wrong.
First of all, Restoration England was terrified of another revolution, and saw reds under their beds at every turn – starting in a damp squib of a rebellion by the Fifth Monarchists in 1660. Those fears were stoked, by the loud and vociferous rhetoric, publications and protests of Dissenters against their repression; Which many equated as a sign not just as a demand for freedom of worship, but sedition against the state. Religious dissenters increasingly come to be associated with political sedition, and eventually a direct link will be drawn to the roundheads and civil war.
So Charles and his government therefore heartily disapproved of all the jabber of ideas whether political or religious, do not encourage it, and try to repress it. A Licensing act was passed in 1663. A censor was appointed, the talented, courteous, wildly libidinous Roger L’estrange who was also not a fan of free expression, had all the characteristics of a rottweiler, and closed down and pursued printer after printer and the number of publications plummeted. As you know from this very podcast, Coffeehouses took off under the Commonwealth well before the Restoration; they annoyed Charles so much that in 1675 he tried to ban them. Didn’t work, but look, the Merrie Monarch did indeed have enormous fun – that didn’t mean he thought that appropriate for Hoi Polloi.
While I am on that topic one of the most depressing things about the return of the king was the return with him of all that wildly over rich and over privileged nobility whose language and behaviour is serious vile. Ian Mortimer seems to find something almost noble in it
‘their profanity is more than just profane: it is revolutionary, deliberately offensive, public and proud’
There must be a puritan in me. I find the excess of many of them slightly repulsive, and the way they many treat their wives a bit gross. The aristocracy had been humiliated by the Revolution, beaten and pushed into second place. They were back, untouchable once more, could get away with excesses no normal citizen could, and would make the world watch them wallow in it.
The land settlement however was a disappointment for them. The declaration had left it to parliament to decide, and so expectant Royalists did not find their land simply restored to them; they would have to go through the courts. But their disappointment was nothing in comparison to the Irish. The parliament there had been the first to declare for Charles, and the ever loyal Duke of Ormonde returned to the Lord Lieutenancy. He would remain in power to 1669, and then resume in 1677 until the end of Charles reign.
He was forced to preside over a land settlement that did not live up to the hopes and expectations of Old English and Gaelic Catholic landowners. Through the acts of 1642 and 1652, the English Parliament had reduced Royalist Catholic landowning from 61% to less than 10% of land. And of course, they expected it back. And did not get it. At the most, Catholic Landowning recovered to about 20%.
The religious settlement brought back the church of Ireland, with its episcopal structure, leaving both Catholics and Scots Presbyterians out in the cold; as a result something like 10% of the population controlled political power, the New Protestant English who had settled in waves since the Reformation. However; most of the disadvantaged made the best of a bad job for the moment and hoped for better days. Vigorous Catholic persecution was hardly possible given they constituted about 75-80% of the population; and the Presbyterians in the north were largely left to get on with it. Despite the Cattle acts in the 1666 banning exports of this major Irish trade to England, the Irish economy did grow, and tax from the Irish parliament would be a welcome source of income. So an sort of equilibrium was established – though the inherent instability of Irish society remained.
Scotland’s Restoration shares many aspects with that of England and Wales. Scotland again had its own parliament and government. Bishops and the aristocracy are also back and are determined their interrupted dominance of society will be fully restored, the Covenanters will be crushed beyond return, and made to suffer for the shame of defeat at the hands of the Commonwealth. For the next 25 years, Scotland will see the most extended period of religious persecution in its history, which Presbyterian historians will term The Killing Time.
The Restoration in Scotland will be highly significant for England and Wales too. Red John, the Duke of Lauderdale will dominate Scottish government for close to 20 years, and under his leadership, Scotland will become as close to an absolutist state as will ever exist in Britain. The Act of Supremacy establishes royal governance over Church and state, money is provided which funded a standing army which could be used anywhere in Britain. Lauderdale would proudly boast to his king that
Never was a king so absolute as you are in poor old Scotland
The Scottish parliament consciously, proudly and publicly proclaims that it is teaching its southern neighbour how to properly behave. English opposition politicians would see this example of royal policy and see in it Charles’ plans for England and Wales; what they saw as the imposition of tyrannical royal rule on a continental, Catholic model
Popery and slavery, like two little sisters, go hand in hand…In England popery was to have brought in slavery. Whereas in Scotland slavery went before and popery was to follow
There’ll be much more of that sort of rhetoric to come.
Right, for the rest of this episode I think I am going to move away from politics, and talk about two cataclysmic events that every school child in England knows all about. You can probably guess what they are, but I’m not going to make it easy for you. Instead, I am going to take you to a prosperous little village of about 500 people in Derbyshire, Eyam by name, in 1665. Where a Tailor’s assistant had recently received a package of damp cloth from London; and had spread it before the fire to dry. And before you could say ‘are you sure you really want to do that’, he was feeling feverish, big black buboes were swelling under his arms. You all know the signs don’t you? That’s right – bubonic plague had arrived.
Well the Vicar had strong views, and he told his parishioners so; just outside there are places like Sheffield – just imagine if we pass it to them? We would be responsible for all their deaths. No! It shall not pass, we must cut ourselves off! Quarantine ourselves!
Sadly, most of the parishioners though didn’t like Mompesson the Vicar, imposed on them by new Anglican bishop, but when they asked their trusted old puritan vicar Stanley, he agreed. And so that was what the villagers of Eyam did. They cut themselves off. Food was left for them outside the village, and in return they left coins in vinegar. They paid a high price for their sacrifice; 260 of them died.
They might have known plague was coming; it had hit Hamburg in 1663; in Amsterdam 15% of the population had died, quarantines were set in place but disease no borders. Also – there’d been comet in the sky. And if there was one thing everyone knew – Comets meant something big was about to happen. Plague, Fire, famine and new episode from the History of England – something, basically, to write home about.
n April 1665, there were a couple of cases in St Giles Cripplegate in London. Now, a big factor for both the disasters we are going to talk about are made infinitely worse by the basic London layout in the words of John Evelyn
A congestion of Houses; some of the principal streets are so narrow, as there is nothing so deformed’
So there will be plagues elsewhere in England – Colchester and Norwich for example, though thankfully Loughborough was spared this time, though it had suffered a massive one in 1631; there was but nothing like what hit London. Because if its size, it’s dirt, it’s congestion. And for the second disaster, of course, the fact that it was made of wood. Loughborough, by the way would not escape fire in 1666. Just so you know.
Now we see a lot through the super famous eyes of Samuel Pepys. It was thought smell was a thing that spread plague, and the smell in London must have been indescribable in a superhot June 1665, when the Plague decided to make itself Great again. Pepys walked by a quarantined house with the Red Cross on Drury lane and knew what to do:
It put me into an ill conception of myself and my smell, so that I was forced to buy some roll-tobacco to smell and chew, which took away the apprehension
Smart. Charles, Brother James and the Court upped sticks and left for Oxford, where Anthony Wood complained furiously about their behaviour and the amount of public poo they generated. Back in London, the plague raged until 1666, and recorded 68,000 plague deaths; probably it was much more than that, because recording a plague meant you’d be forcibly barricaded into your house, so they bribed the old ladies who came round to record the death. Maybe 20% of Londoners died.
All through this, by the way, England was at war with the Dutch, and the Dutch were loving this sign of God’s fury at their enemies
The English nation is now brought down so low with plague that a man may run them down with his finger
They would equally be able to celebrate when the plague finally died down in September, but the moving finger having writ decided to move on and write another line. Because
In 1666, London burned to sticks’.
As aforementioned schoolchildren sing.
Pudding lane didn’t mean lovely things like steamed treacle pud or jam roly poly with lashings of lumpy custard. Back then it meant where Butchers put all their offal and entrails and little squashy bits you didn’t want. But there was a bakery there which is nice, except, they left the lights on, and they did, in fact, start the fire.
Thomas Bludworth was the mayor, and responsible for dealing with this sort of thing when it got big. London was well used to fire of course, and had a system of underground wooden channels you were supposed to be able to get water from – although London had grown like topsy so they weren’t everywhere. Best was to pull houses down around to create a fire break. But our Thomas confirmed Pepys’ low opinion of him; because he didn’t want to upset the landowners, so declined to do the pulling down, and would go down in history as the man who looked at what would become the greatest fire in London’s history said
A woman could piss it out
Revealing a tinge of misogyny as well as stupidity, which he compounded by going back to bed. London will not let him forget – so much so that the vicar at his funeral will feel the need to excuse him.
Well the fire got going, everything as a dry as a bone – or indeed a rotten stick. Charles and James Duke of York play a blinder as it happens; it’s the perfect situation for their talents, both of them are physically brave, they are at their most decisive in a crisis, providing extra men, giving Bludworth all the authority he needs to pull houses down. Doesn’t do much good – it’s all too late now.
Rattle, rattle, rattle was the noise which the fire struck upon the ear round about, as if there had been a thousand iron chariots beating upon the stones
Wrote one observer, as the fire raged for 4 days, 2nd to 6th September 1666, and destroyed 4/5 of London. It is a great story, and we have Pepys’ diary and his burying of his cheese incident, and Evelyn’s diary to help paint the picture too – and I go into it in lots of fun detail in episode 438. But space is limited here because we are galloping, and for me the most exciting bit comes next – in the rebuilding.
London was a smoking ruin – 13,000 houses destroyed, supposedly only 6 people killed though that HAS to be rubbish. It’s also the destruction of all the warehouses, with all the goods in them – £40,000 worth of grain burned at Bridewell alone, many merchants and business were ruined trade destroyed. The Second Anglo Dutch war is still going on, so they were feeling smug – ‘purification of the city’ they called it, the meanies. There were homeless people everywhere, camping rough along the roads and in Moorfields, and the relief effort and collections started, with canvas and tents being provided by the navy at the king’s command. Before long, families took their tents back to where they thought their plot had been – possession is 9/10ths of the law after all.
The immediate reaction was – let’s use this as an opportunity to create the model city which would stand as an example to the whole world. And before Charles could pass Barbara Castlemaine the breakfast Goose pie, there were 6 lovely schemas on the king’s desk, including from Christopher Wren. Charles will make good and bad decisions as king, but surely one of the best was when he realised the critical thing here was speed. London needed to get back to trading, people needed homes. So English pragmatism prevailed instead, and London will be rebuilt on its existing plan – there were just two new thoroughfares, Kings Street and Queen’s Street. But there was a commission of 6 established to make the rebuilding happen – a collab between King and City Corporation, and on it were two geniuses of the Royal Society – Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke.
We haven’t spoken about the Royal Society. I will make the point one more time – the people who will form the world’s oldest scientific community found their inspiration and did a lot of their best work in the Commonwealth – Hooke, Boyle, Petty, and Samuel Hartlib’s Europe wide network of investigation and improvement. So it was those folks who set up the Society in 1660, and who in 1662 petitioned the king and were granted the royal charter. Though fair dos – Charles was a real enthusiast for natural philosophy, he had his own laboratory and was noted for his mechanical skills. Christopher Wren came to prominence when Oliver Cromwell cleared the way for him to become Professor of Astronomy at Gresham College, and it was after his lecture that the society was first formed.
The Royal Society of course consciously based its philosophy on Francis Bacon’s principle of observation and experimentation. In a way, Christopher Wren wasn’t typical of the movement; although a polymath, with mathematical skills that earned the admiration of Blaise Pascal, the accumulation of data really didn’t float his boat – he was a practical man. But by 1665 everyone recognised that he was something special. Robert Hooke himself had already earned astonishment with his incredible Micrographica showing tiny beasts in incredible detail through the use of microscope, when he said of Wren
‘Since the time of Archimedes, there scarce ever met in one man, in so great a perfection, such a Mechanical Hand, and so Philosophical a Mind.’
Basically, Wren and his commission come up with a scheme of 4 standard types of buildings, on 2, 3 or 4 floors, to which templates everyone must build. The streets would be wider, overhangs abolished. All roofs must be made of slate and, critically, every building made of brick. It is a genius solution; the threat of fire is radically reduced, the massive crowding of the old tenements banished, at least for a while. There is a price to pay – where once there was 13,000 buildings there would now be only 8,000. But the free market was released to get on with the job, no overblown unwieldy public project that would take an age to get anywhere.
The decision to build in brick was critical, and not just because of the lower fire risk. We come here to the photosynthetic exchange, the importance of coal, and the real fundamental underlying cause of why England will industrialise first and be at the forefront of modernity – coal. I realise that’s quite a statement, but there are many other factors in induistrialisation, but here is why coal is so important to modernity, and why 1666 was the proving of it.
First of all think of the amount of wood that would be needed to rebuild London – it’s been estimated it would have demanded an extra 5,000 acres of wood to be cut and laboriously dragged to London. As it was, brick works sprung up all over London, small works supplying groups of developments.
Creating that brick would have demanded 300,000 tonnes of firewood to heat the furnaces, in addition to that 5,000 acres. Who knows how long and at what cost that would have taken to assemble. Even if and when this had been achieved, London would have been back in an energy trap. It’s been estimated that a medieval city of 10,000 souls needed 25,000 acres of woodland to support it; a monster like medieval London with 100,000 people needed something like 20 square miles of woodland every year, and by the time the city grew to 400,000 by 1650, its gates would have been clogged with carts hauling wood into the city every day, and the land around a tree desert.
The answer to all of these conundrums was coal. Rather than 300,000 tonnes of firewood, it would take just 14,000 tonnes of coal. Not only that, the amount of land required to produce the energy was a fraction of woodland – and all of those square miles of land which would remain available for food production. This has the posh name of the Photosynthetic exchange, energy no longer dependent on photosynthesis, and it will fire the industrial revolution. The great rebuilding of London plays its part in the great lift off for coal use, which will course be dwarfed by the later 18th century but is still significant; from maybe ¼m tonnes consumed in 1560, to 1 1/2 million tonnes in 1700. The rebuilding banished the open hearth for ever, and coal was everywhere the domestic fuel of choice, so much so that houses usually had a metal plate in the pavement outside, through which coal was poured directly into a house’ cellar. By the 1680s and 90s, London imported over 400,000 tonnes of coal each year – with next to no land taken out of agricultural production.
And the economics of the demand for coal was the reverse of demand for wood; the more wood needed, the less was left agricultural land to grow food; so there was for ever a constraint – let alone the time lag in bringing on new supplies. But as the demand for coal grew, more was invested in the coal industry, in improving the technology of mining, the depth and efficiency of mines; and price of coal began to fall, and its use grow…and so lead to more investment in technology and so on. Coal became the standard for domestic and industrial fuel, replacing wood.
There are another couple of great stories from the rebuilding of London. One of them is Nicholas Barbon, the history of property development and of fire and house insurance – again refer to the detailed episodes. But the last one I’d like to pick is of Robert Hooke; not only the scientist who created Micrographica, but also a practical man who created a sash window which worked, which fit more tightly, and was controlled by weights and pulleys. As a result, windows both retained heat better than the old casement windows and allowed a circulated of the ever present smoke and gases – particularly crucial with coal as the main domestic fuel now. It’s a trick of opening the bottom and top of the windows slightly, drawing air in, and send it out of the other. At the same time, English glass manufacturing absolutely takes off with the benefits of coal, with innovation that allows large sheets of glass, much bigger windows and more light; Hooke designed the HQ for the Royal College of Physicians using this new technology. By 1706 English glass manufacturing led the world and was exporting glass to the master it supplanted – Venice.
Well that’s quite enough excitement about industry and technology and so on – expect much more over the next few years. For now though we need to return to politics and bloodshed, death and destruction. Because there’s a war going on as mentioned, against the Dutch.
Now, Charles was a Francophile, but he was not a thenetherlandsophile. In that, he was at odds with his people, who generally felt an affinity with their Protestant friends across the water. After all they’d fought with them against Spanish Catholic tyranny under Good Queen Bess, and now should stand against the Catholic tide shoulder to shoulder.
More than that, it turns out Charles was actually a thenetherlandsophobe. The Dutch had dealt with and supported the Commonwealth. They were republican – and what son of a murdered father could like that? At this moment in time, the States General were supreme, representatives of the people under the Stadholder General Johan de Witt; and the aristocratic noble, God always intended me to rule not you oiks, William of Orange – was nowhere. That was an offense against the Great Chain of Being. Plus – more practically – the Dutch were the greatest trading nation in the world, unbelievably rich by any measure be you French, Chinese, Indian or wherevers-ville, and their success was built on a navy even better that the English.
In 1664, Charles and his Privy Council were looking to undermine Dutch commercial dominance, undermine De Witt’s republican government; but also to continue the Majesty of Majesty project. Cromwell had famous won renown for military success whereas Charles’ only notable action had been to sell Dunkirk to Louis for £290,000. Very sensible given its vulnerability and cost; but not popular at home, and hardly a route to majestic glory. It is probable in what followed that the Government thought the Dutch were vulnerable, and expected some sabre rattling would produce concessions, and acknowledgement of English sovereignty of the narrow seas. Easy M<majesty points.
What followed was little short of piracy. In 1664, Captain Holmes was sent to disrupt Dutch slave trading on the West African coast and promote the cause of the new Royal African company which he did for 8 months, and returned home expecting a hero’s welcome. He got nothing of the kind; the Dutch admiral De Ruyter had retaliated by raiding the English Caribbean islands and the Newfoundland fisheries. Though in August 1664, Captain Richard Nicholls seized New Amsterdam – and renamed it, of course, New York.
Still, the required concessions and abasement from the Dutch was not forthcoming. To escalate the pressure, Charles arranged for negotiation with the Dutch and called a parliament; he asked for a substantial grants to enhance the navy – calculating that this would strengthen the English hand in negotiation. Now we are still firmly in a honeymoon period between king and parliament. So despite disquiet about war with the Protestant Dutch, Charles obtained the largest grant until 18th century – £2 1/2m. It got them nowhere; de Witt held his ground. The Dutch had even money to spend on their navy, and he had an alliance with Louis XIV of France. The result therefore in January 1665, was a declaration of war, and the Second Anglo Dutch war was on.
We’ll hear in a minute how that goes, but, avoiding plot spoilers for the moment, one thing is reasonably clear about Charles and his brother James – they absolutely understood the sea, the strategic importance of the Navy, and would prioritise its support and investment as far as they could; their enthusiasm would make it a suitable occupation for all classes, including aristocracy. Naval administration would become highly effective, under the guiding hand of Samuel Pepys himself among others – and now in the fact of war, it would expand from its peacetime strength of 4,000 men to 50,000, with 130 ships including 4 First Rates. The growth and importance of the navy reflected that England was becoming a major trading and military nation; the merchant navy will grow from a total tonnage of 162,000 to 340,000 by 1686.
Of course they faced a formidable opponent; the Dutch fleet generally had smaller ships, but brilliant admirals especially De Ruyter, and the budget to adapt and invest. And in June 1665 both sides met in the seas off Lowestoft, with fleets evenly matched at close to 100 each.
The Lord Admiral – James, Duke of York was in the thick of the action, and proved himself a brave and resolute commander. At one stage in the battle a courtier standing right next to him welcomed a cannon ball to the head, and splattered brains all over James and others. The courtier concerned had always been thought of as a bit an a Mr Thicky No Brains, and Andrew Marvell rather unkindly recorded his death
“His shattered head the fearless Duke disdains, and gave the last first proof that he had Brains.
At Lowestoft the English reaped the harvest of their heavier weight of broadsides, and Cromwell’s Admiral Blake who had drilled collective action and discipline into the Navy; the Dutch fleet was split into disconnected squadrons, and by the end the Royal Navy had lost one ship, the Dutch had lost 17, with 9 captured, 5,000 Dutch sailors had died and 2,000 taken captive. It was a massive victory. Conversations about a peace deal started, but the English were over confident now of their demands.
And meanwhile the Dutch recovered, and quickly, and a feature of this war is the depth of their pockets, and their focus – De Witt was determined to spend whatever it took. The Dutch West Indies fleet returned safely avoiding the English ships, and a massive rebuilding programme, and new, bigger ships with a firepower close to the English first rates. So the 1665 campaigning closed with a Dutch blockade of the Thames. And while the Dutch had money the English were struggling. The plague had not only massacred it’s citizens, but trade also, it was proving very hard to collect the massive grant of 1664.
But Parliament met again, and despite having failed to collect the last one, voted a new grant – another £1 ¼m. But there was a cloud no bigger than a man’s elbow, questions were being asked where all that money from 1664 had gone, and rumours circulated about the expensive excesses of the Court, including the mistresses, and the massive gambling debts of Castlemaine. It was noted that while everyone struggled, Charles discovered a new passion for horseracing at Newmarket, and funded an expensive new prize. It struck a sour note.
But of course, if the English won a glorious victory over the Dutch, then the Stuarts would be able to say whatever the Commonwealth could do, they could do better, and everyone would feel all that money had been well spent. The English navy had shown they could match the great Dutch in battle at Lowestoft; maybe 1666 would see a victory in battle crowned by a victory in war.
We will see how that goes in the next At A Gallop episode, which will take us from 1666 to the end of Charles reign in 1685. Until then, everyone, thank you very much for listening, and I always love to get comments and question so let it roll, and remember to send me a note through Despatches on the website. And meanwhile, have a wonderful life, good luck, and have a great week.
