Great Tales from English History, Book 2 (28 page)

Bradford, William ( ed- S. E. Morison),
Of Plymouth Plantation 1620-47
(New York, Alfred A. Knopf), 1954.

1622: The Ark of the John Tradescants

The Tradescants, father and son, are buried in the beautiful St Mary-at-Lambeth, just across the Thames from the House of
Commons. The church was saved from destruction in 1977 by the Tradescant Trust, who turned it into the world’s first Museum
of Garden History, complete with its own replica seventeenth-century knot garden of miniature box trees.
www. museumgardenhistory. org.

Leith-Ross, Prudence,
The John Tradescants
(London, Peter Owen), 1984.

1629: God’s Lieutenant in Earth

Charles Is cradle can be seen at Hatfield House in Hertfordshire where Elizabeth I, a virtual prisoner, was brought the news
that
her sister Mary had died and she had become Queen. The Tudor building was largely torn down and we see Hatfield today as it
was rebuilt in the reign of James I by Robert Cecil. Tel: 01707 287010.

1642: All My Birds Have Flown

It is difficult to better C. V Wedgwood’s classic account of this episode. Tristram Hunt movingly brings together the voices
of the time.

Hunt, Tristram,
The English Civil War at First Hand
(London, Phoenix), 2003.

Wedgwood, C.V.,
The King’s War
(London, HarperCollins), 1955.

1642-8: Roundheads
v.
Cavaliers

No study of the Civil War can omit the inspired and seminal work of Christopher Hill. Royle shows the impact of the wars on
Scotland and Ireland. Blair Worden brilliantly shows how the Civil Wars have been fought through the subsequent centuries.

Hill, Christopher,
Puritanism and Revolution: Studies in Interpretation of the English Revolution of the Seventeenth Century
(London, Secker & Warburg), 1958.

Royle, Trevor,
The Wars of the Three Kingdoms 1638-1660
(London, Little, Brown), 2004.

Worden, Blair,
Roundhead Reputations Ltd: The English Civil Wars and the Passions of Posterity
(London, Penguin Books), 2001.

1649: Behold the Head of a Traitor!

The magnificent Banqueting House from which Charles I walked to his execution still stands opposite Horse Guards Parade in
Whitehall. Designed by Inigo Jones as a setting for the plays and pageants of Ben Jonson, it is decorated with ceiling panels
that illustrate Charles’s disastrous theories on the nature of kingship: one tableau shows James I rising to heaven after
his death like a latter-day Christ, to take his place among the immortals.
www.hrp.org.

1653;
’Take Away This Bauble!’

The remains of Oliver Cromwell, like those of the other regicides, were dug up and dismembered after the Restoration. His
rotting head was set on a pole outside Westminster Hall for a quarter of a century. But you can see his death mask, warts
and all, in the Museum of London,
www.museumoflondon.org.uk
, and you can visit the house where he lived from 1636 to 1647 in St Mary’s Street, Ely. Tel.: 01353 662062.

Hill, Christopher,
God’s Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution
(London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson), 1970.

Morrill, John (ed.),
Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution
(London, Longman), 1990.

1655:
Rabbi Manasseh and the Return of the Jews

The dark oak benches from the Creechurch Lane synagogue, which opened in 1656, were moved in 1701 to the Spanish and Portuguese
Synagogue in Bevis Marks Street, now Britain’s oldest synagogue. Built by a Quaker, the exterior resembles a nonconformist
chapel, while the interior reflects the influence of Sir Christopher Wren. Tel.: 020 7626 1274.

1660: Charles II and the Royal Oak

Richard Ollard colourfully recreates Charles II’s adventures after the Battle of Worcester — and we are now entering the age
of the great diarists, whom Liza Picard quotes along with a host of other contemporary sources in her charming and intimate-feeling
social history.

Bowle, John (ed.),
The Diary of John Evelyn
(Oxford, Oxford University Press), 1983.

Latham, R. (ed.),
The Shorter Pepys
(London, Bell & Hyman), 1985.

Ollard, Richard,
The Escape of Charles II
(London, Constable), 1986.

Picard, Liza,
Restoration London
(London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson), 2001.

1665;
The Village That Chose to Die

Every year on Plague Sunday (the last Sunday in August) the modern inhabitants of Eyam hold an outdoor service to commemorate
the heroic sacrifice of their predecessors. In 2000, Eyam’s enterprising little museum was awarded the Museum of the Year
Shoestring Award.
www.eyammuseum.demon.co.uk.
The Folio Society has recently republished Walter George Bell’s classic account of the plague year.

Bell, Walter George,
The Great Plague in London
(London, Folio Society),2001.

1666: London Burning

The tragedy of the Great Fire produced the finest building of the seventeenth century, and arguably England’s finest building
ever.
’Lector, Si Monumentum Requeris, Circumspice
(’Reader, if you seek a monument, then look around you’) runs Sir Christopher Wren’s inscription beneath the dome of St Paul’s.
Since Saxon times all five churches on this spot had been destroyed by fire. Wren designed the sixth as a sparkling symbol
of London’s rebirth, and he was there to witness its completion thirty-five years later. In the cathedral library you can
see the huge and fabulously expensive oak model that the architect constructed to persuade Charles II to back his revolutionary
concept.
www.stpauls.co.uk.

Bell, George Walter,
The Great Fire of London in 1666
(London, Folio Society), 2003.

1678/9: Titus Oates and the Popish Plot

John Dryden’s poem
Absalom and Achitophel
feverishly evokes the hysteria of the Popish Plot and the exclusion crisis. J. P. Kenyon recounts the story masterfully.

Kenyon, J. P.,
The Popish Plot
(New York, Sterling), 2001.

1685: Monmouth’s Rebellion and the Bloody Assizes

Christopher Lee starred as Judge Jeffreys in
The Bloody Judge
(1970), a film that has now acquired cult status. It is available on the DVD
The Christopher Lee Collection
by Blue Underground.

1688-9: The Glorious Invasion

Lord Macaulay virtually invented modern history, and his great five-volume work remains the classic study of the 1688/9 turning-point.
Eveline Cruickshanks coldly dissects his Whig interpretation, but without destroying it.

Cruickshanks, Eveline,
The Glorious Revolution
(London, Macmillan), 2000.

Macaulay, T. B.,
The History of England from the Accession of James II 1849-61.
The five volumes of Macaulay’s classic are currently in print at three publishers (R.A. Kessinger Publishing, the University
Press of the Pacific, and
Indypublish.com
) and also accessible online at various locations, including
www.strecorsoc.org
/ macaulay/title.html#contents and
www.gutenburg.
net/etext/ 1468.

1687: Isaac Newton and the Principles of the Universe

There are modern apple trees in the orchard of Woolsthorpe Manor near Grantham in Lincolnshire, Isaac Newton’s birthplace.
Tel.: 01476 860338. The best account of the ferment of science and superstition surrounding the birth of the Royal Society
is
Lisa Jardine’s sparkling study of Newton’s great rival. The project to put all Newton’s words on the web can be accessed on
www.newtonproject.ic.ac.uk.

Jardine, Lisa,
The Curious Life of Robert Hooke
(London, Harper-Collins), 2004.

The preceding source notes set out the books, articles and historical research on which I have relied in writing this book,
but I owe a special debt to the historians who have given me personal help and advice — Dr Jacqueline Eales, Richard Eales,
Dr Christopher Haigh, J. Patrick Hornbeck II, John McSween, Christopher Skidmore, Yvonne Ward and Patrick Wormald. I have
also derived particular stimulation from my fellow committee members of the Society of Court Studies — Dr Andrew Barclay,
Dr Anna Keay, our esteemed president Dr David Starkey, Dr Simon Thurley and Dr Mary Hollingsworth, who organises our seminars
and the convivial evenings that follow. Thanks to Nabil AlKhowaiter for his data on the Newton Project.

Nigel Rees once again helped me track down several fugitive quotations, and the National Archives joined the quest — but we
are still looking for the first reliably recorded utterance of the words‘Glorious Revolution’. Nautical gratitude is due to
the crew of
The Matthew
for their guidance in Bristol harbour, and to my mother for her hospitality while I was in Bristol and for her support at
all times. Thanks, when it came to reference resources, to the librarians of the
British Library, the London Library, and the Westminster public library, as well as to the partners of the John Sandoe bookshop.

As with several previous projects, writing this book with the assistance of Moyra Ashford has made the process a pleasure.
My wife Sandi — ever my best friend and critic — has been a particular support in helping to devise the illustrations so beautifully
drawn by Fred van Deelen. In recent months I have been especially strengthened by the clarity offered by Prentis Hancock,
Gregorio Kohon and Belinda Shand.

My thanks at Time Warner to Peter Cotton, David Young, Ursula Mackenzie, Sue Phillpott, David Atkinson, Jane Birkett and,
in particular, to Roger Cazalet and the endlessly patient Viv Redman. Jonathan Pegg, my new agent at Curtis Brown, has worked
hard on my behalf with Camilla Goslett and, more recently, with Shaheeda Sabir.

This volume, the second of three, is dedicated to my second child and only daughter Scarlett. She adds wonderful freshness
to the ideas that I bounce off her in our transatlantic telephone calls, and I am deeply grateful for her unfailing emotional
wisdom and support. She helped me think through the imagery of history as a kaleidoscope, and it is also thanks to her that
I find myself revising the manuscript and writing these final words in the serene and stimulating atmosphere of the Esalen
Institute at Big Sur, California.

Robert Lacey, August 2004

T
he greatest historians are vivid storytellers, Robert Lacey reminds us, and in
Great Tales from English History,
he proves his place among them, illuminating in unforgettable detail the characters and events that shaped a nation. In this
volume, Lacey limns the most important period in England’s past, highlighting the spread of the English language, the rejection
of both a religion and a traditional view of kingly authority, and an unstoppable movement toward intellectual and political
freedom from 1387 to 1689.

Opening with Chaucer’s
Canterbury Tales
and culminating in William and Mary’s “Glorious Revolution,” Lacey revisits some of the truly classic stories of English history:
the Battle of Agin court, where Henry V’s skilled archers defeated a French army three times as large; the tragic tale of
the two young princes locked in the Tower of London (and almost certainly murdered) by their usurping uncle, Richard III;
Henry VIII’s schismatic divorce, not just from his wife but from the authority of the Catholic Church; “Bloody Mary” and the
burning of religious dissidents; Sir Francis Drake’s dramatic, if questionable, part in the defeat of the Spanish Armada;
and the terrible and transformative Great Fire of London, to name but a few. Here Anglophiles will find their favorite English
kings and queens, villains and victims, authors and architects — from Richard II to Anne Boleyn, the Virgin Queen to Oliver
Cromwell, Samuel Pepys to Christopher Wren, and many more.

Continuing the “eminently readable, highly enjoyable”
(St. Touis Post-Dispatch)
history he began in volume I of
Great Tales from English History,
Robert Lacey has drawn on the most up-to-date research to present a taut and riveting narrative, breathing life into the most
pivotal characters and exciting landmarks in England’s history.

Robert Lacey
is the coauthor of the history classic
The Year 1000
and the author of such acclaimed and bestselling books as
Majesty, The
Kingdom, Ford: The Men and the Machine, Sotheby’s: Bidding for Class, The Queen Mother’s Century,
and
Great Tales from English History: The Truth About King Arthur,Lady Godiva, Richard the Lionheart, and More.
The father of three, he lives with his wife in London.

“An informative, trustworthy distillation, less a debunking than an entertaining, wryly lucid reconstruction of the facts.…
The tales weave a narrative as finely thatched as an English cottage.”