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Next week marks the 400th anniversary of the accession to the throne of Charles I. This moment began what was described in England’s greatest work of history, 1066 and All That, as the ‘Central Period of English History… consisting in the utterly memorable Struggle between the Cavaliers (Wrong but Wromantic) and the Roundheads (Right and Repulsive)’.
It is worth marking this accession because the constitutional and religious drama of the Civil War still plays itself out in our political and public imagination. ‘I judge a man by one thing,’ said Isaac Foot, the father of Michael. ‘Which side would he have liked his ancestors to fight on at Marston Moor?’
As the English-speaking world goes through a crisis of legitimacy and stability, the questions of the English Civil War find themselves of particular importance once again. Although the fault line has always been there, especially during any period of political drama. I remember John Bercow being compared with both Speaker Lenthall and Charles I on the same day, and in neither case favourably.
I must declare an interest: as chaplain to the Royal Martyr Church Union, I know exactly which side I would have wanted my ancestors to have fought on. The 400th anniversary of Charles’s accession on 27 March is a good opportunity to rehabilitate the old King from his ahistorical ‘Wrong but Wromantic’ place in the popular imagination. Scholars of the period are well aware that Charles was not stretching constitutional norms by summoning parliaments only rarely – parliament was, as historians put it, ‘an event, not an institution’.
We know, too, that Oliver Cromwell was no democrat, being content to whittle down parliament until by the time his kangaroo court tried the King, there were only 80 MPs allowed to sit in the Commons, and he had completely abolished the House of Lords. The King’s question to the junta was one they could not answer except by silencing him: ‘Now, I would know by what authority – I mean lawful – I am brought hither; there are many unlawful authorities in the world – thieves and robbers by the highways – but I would know by what authority I was brought from thence.’ They could point to no authority but that of raw power. Cromwell went on to use that power forcibly to exclude the remaining MPs from parliament, and to rule alone. He is no hero of parliament or democracy. He crushed the Prayer Book and persecuted those who celebrated Christmas, so he is no hero of religious liberty either.
And yet, to a certain extent, this doesn’t matter. The Civil War stands as the father of all of our political disputes because its resolution, over the remaining decades of the 17th century, framed the whole way in which we do politics. Robert Tombs puts this well in his magisterial The English and their History: ‘Only when the country rejected fighting, and zealots had to abandon their visions of a compulsory New Jerusalem, was liberty possible. To the Whigs we owe the principle – Magna Carta restated in modern form – that rulers must obey the law and that legitimate consent requires the consent of the people. From the Tories came the principle – fundamental to any political order – that people have no right to rebel against a government because they disagree with it.’
2025 is a good year to look again at this foundational story of the English-speaking world. The consensus born of that era has propelled the English concept of liberty across the world, and it is breaking down.
Inevitably this is most obvious in America: ‘If the United States sneezes, the world catches a cold.’ The hard psychological wall forbidding the use of violence for political ends is crumbling – and on both sides. The willingness to forgive those who stormed Congress to try to overturn an election is one example, but so is the cheering of the 7 October massacres and the idolisation of Luigi Mangione, charged with murdering the UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
The constitutional and religious drama of the Civil War still plays itself out in the public imagination
Political violence is downstream of the words that we use of each other, most especially our political opponents. Traitor, fascist, white supremacist: these leave us with the uncomfortable reflection that our forebears have fought and killed people who bore these names. The increasing desire to imprison our political foes takes us a little bit closer to conflict each time too. If people think their life or liberty is seriously at stake from losing an election, they are far more willing to use violence to protect their interests.
And before we get too smug in Britain, we should note that the past decade has seen two MPs killed in the course of their duties and a Jewish MP needing protection at her own party conference. As the debate over leaving the European Union heated up, some MPs threatened to convene a para-parliament meeting in Church House without any legitimate summons.
For all that it is interesting to relitigate the events of the 17th century, the anniversaries that are coming up should serve a much more important purpose: a warning of what can happen if we allow our political norms to decay. Political stability is the exception not the norm in history, as a quick survey of our European neighbours amply demonstrates.
Charles I and the Roundheads might have been any combination of wrong, romantic, right or repulsive, but their fight inoculated Britain against extremes for centuries. Professor Tombs sums up this inoculation as ‘a suspicion of Utopias and zealots; trust in common sense and experience; respect for tradition; preference for gradual change; and the view that “compromise” is victory, not betrayal’.
Charles I was overthrown by zealots convinced that the righteousness of their cause justified stripping away all constitutional norms and plunging the country into civil war. There is much zealotry about these days, and much certainty of our own side’s righteousness. 2025 gives us an opportunity to stop and, to borrow from the Martyr King’s last word on the scaffold, ‘Remember’.
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