An English National Church - David Starkey

foreign [Music] thank you I haven't decided so we come to our third and final lecture address talk on the future of the National Church question mark and I think the aim is for David to talk to us for about 40-45 minutes and then really floating up a plenary in which she's very willing to take questions on anything relating to any of the free talks and we've got even in prayer at half past six and we will need um a little bit of a break for that so we might aim to bring the whole thing to an hour and a half would give us o'clock so let's let's have six o'clock as a sort of endpoint if we haven't run out of the theme before then so um as usual with great joy um pin back here to pay attention pencils down to listen to David again [Applause] um gentlemen what I wanted to begin by doing is again establishing principles rather than talking in detail in other words what you need to have the concept of a National Church and why it is in some ways a peculiarly not entirely but a very strongly English development and it seems to me the reasons for this are once again and I apologize my henrician obsession they are rooted very firmly in the first half of the 16th century and they also address our present concerns in a very remarkable way or so much I think of the discussion that we're doing because the opposite of an idea of a National Church depends on a notion of internationalism or anti-national listen in other words very much in the current week of the current world of international liberalism and woke seems to me there's an extraordinary Echo across time as we've seen so often in these debates so let's ask them the question why was it and this is also another way of addressing the issue why was Henry able to get away with it I was offering you this morning and yesterday a rather a kind of weasily way in which he got away with it you know the gently gently kiddie baby nothing to nothing nothing too dramatic happens at once um you never tread on everybody's toes simultaneously but there is another way in which you can approach this that England I think sees remarkably in debate about the whether the state has moral Authority in the 16th century because it seems to me if you are to have the idea of a National Church the nation and the state in which that church is rooted must be seen to have moral value now this Cuts immediately to the heart of both a contemporary debate the debate on whether nationalism a good or a bad thing the whole intensely internationalist notion of intellectual development from 1945 onwards um in the idea of we have an ambassador here the whole the whole the whole ethos of the Diplomatic service and of Western diplomacy has become essentially one rooted in rubis the notion of a world order with World values of course is a parallel when you come to think of it of a notion of a universal church what is it in England that differs because I think something does differ and that our relationship with rubis is an awkward one in historical context let's then go back and let's begin I was teased I hope this morning on the subject of Erasmus and the the Erasmus seen generally is this wonderful figure of Reason intelligence rationality all sorts of things I have rather mocked uh derided him as a Too Close example of us gone out of time I want to look at that other Sanctified figure of the period Thomas Moore and I want to look now not at the late Thomas More not Thomas More Than Mata though he will come into it I want to look at Thomas More of utopia and I want to look at the extraordinary clutch of works that Moore writes in the period of his closest relationship with Erasmus Erasmus as I said is this is the period of the first French War um from about 1512 through to 1516 much of the time Erasmus is here and more and Erasmus are operating the closest friendship the exchange of of really the exchange of ideas and whatever when um Erasmus is summoned to England after the accession of Henry VII it's by the man that I was talking about Lord mountjoy Henry's socio studiorum he's summoned to England in the famous letter in which it's explained that Henry VII is not like his money-grubbing father he believes in what is it what is it virtue immortality greatness virtue and immortality right so he's summoned into this this this world but the way it's imagined large amounts of money will flow they don't actually but that's another that's another matter and and he on his way back from Rome um where he's been in Rome and Erasmus writes the praise of folly this extraordinary work dedicated to more which is the thing that takes you into the heart of Erasmus because what it is it is an exercise of sublime contempt for the whole of late medieval culture which is seen as corrupt superficial diverting the worship of gold the worship of our fine clothes the worship of fashion the reverence for people simply because they have got blood and so on this the whole of con War the whole of contemporary custom is fully as opposed to what should be the pursuit of Truth Christ and all the rest of it now another thing immediately establishes the world of Erasmus and more at this point Moore's response to that is to write two works we think of them as being very different they're actually very closely related to each other that is the history of Richard III on the one hand and the other is Utopia the two works I think one of them we think of as a history the source of Shakespeare's history play and indeed it is rather good history more because of his the fact that he's brought up by John Morton by Cardinal Morton and I think has very powerful Yorkies background and collect connections he writes an elegy for the death of Elizabeth of York and so on which is clearly written out of personal feeling we don't know why but he acts as a die in other words he is a direct conduit to a historical tradition so he's writing in the Next Generation but one to the actual events of 1483 1485 which is why it's so valuable but actually that's not how he conceives it that's how it comes down to us particularly in its English translation remember more at this stage does not usually write in English the first draft as we now know of the history of Richard III it's an elegant Latin essay which when he tries to translate it into English turns into a sprawling English Chronicle and he gives up what is the Latin essay about the latiness is essentially I think saying that the history of England a little this is a bit like Voltaire you know history is a catalog of the sins follows and whatever of mankind it's essentially saying that English History cannot be a source of moral value he takes this Reign and he looks at the spectacular level of immorality of corruption violence and whatever and it serves as a kind of illustrative text of this idea so that's one half of the diptych what is the other half of the diptych the other half of the diptych is Utopia which is established which is in is utopi as you all know means nowhere what he is saying is and he presents in Utopia a state which he thinks exemplifies Christian values but of course is a unchristian and b does not exist so the real world is an antichristian world that worships money go violence the unreal world is a world again I don't know how many of you are familiar with the detail of Utopia Utopia is fundamentally a satire on England really important one understands this and you you get those long sections in Utopia on the subject of the absurdity of gold chains and that in Utopia they bind criminals with Fetters made of gold to express their contempt everybody including Henry himself is loaded down with gold chains the standard way in which you signify your significance look at Thomas Moore that enormous thing around his neck the SS collar which is the the Livery chain of the House of Lancaster with the great Badge of the two two Port calluses for Beaufort and the great Cuda Rose and everybody was loaded in these things so and again there's that marvelous section in which they discuss hanging and the English are inordinately fond of hanging virtually every crime is punished by hanging and it's regards as being a very good thing good for the moral fiber you know and and whatever so you get then this separation between a real world of folly and false values and an unreal unchristian in the sense of not worshiping Christ nevertheless exemplifying what should be Christian values what's in the background what text of all time is in the background city of God we know more lectures on this and the some Augustine city of God is the key text in this regard because what Augustine is doing in that is taking the Roman inheritance remember Rome worshiped itself you worship Capital line Jupiter Jupiter of the capital line in Athens you worship Palace athene the goddess of the city which is why of course Christianity is such a standing offense it's not simply the worship of the emperor the emperor is is one of the incarnations of the place if you want to use nation state whatever and to refuse worship of that is to put yourself outside the community and what Augustine does remember Augustine writes in the wake of 4 10. he writes in the immediate wake of the first fall of Rome to The Barbarians and he is saying this is not a tragedy again he's saying this is not the fault of Christians and even if it were remember one very good explanation I'm afraid um is that of given that the Roman values of courage force and determined sees you of anybody's property in the name of the Roman state in other words behaving exactly as Britain did in the 17th 18th and 19th centuries is then undercut by this strange religion known as Christianity AK woke and which disapproves of all of those things that you have a kind of internal moral Revolution and what the specific Target of Augustine is one of the greatest works of Cicero which is unfortunately only half surviving and was only fully rediscovered at the beginning of the 19th century the dialogue de Republica which was known only in fragments in the Middle Ages the famous dream of Scipio which is one of the first things that Chaucer writes about at the very beginning of the process of the Renaissance and all the rest of it and the date what the day Republica is is the justification of the Roman State as a just state state which embodies human Justice and commands moral Authority and that he is worthy of the educated man trained in rhetoric trained well of course remember he understands rhetoric in the good sense of the term not pulling wool over people's eyes but the pursuit of truth and the pursuit of politics through your two-sided debate that that is and do we all we do all understand this don't we that the figure behind everybody I've been talking about is Cicero the the cisramonian Latin and the notion of a debate of a cut of an entire culture whose fundamental and again we need to get this right is and the entire culture of Rome is a political culture it is directed to the state and the service of the state in which all forms of knowledge philosophy art architecture everything else is there to glorify to serve to develop to make proper more profound the relationship between the citizen and the Republic the citizen is the Republic the Republic is the citizen the two are in this dialogue with each other this idea this idea of remember this is an idea of State service that is very different from that of fealty in a monarchy it's very different from that idea of of simple simple personal Allegiance it requires a notion of the existence of the state as separate from that of the monarch in France these ideas find it very difficult to take root because you have by this point and quite some time a notion of an absolute monarchy in which Louis XIV can say without irony as we all know and what's very striking for example in France if you find it very difficult to develop the concept of the hero talking about the notion of nation National Church in other words in France you do not have before Napoleon a Westminster Abbey or you do not have a Saint Paul's Cathedral the idea of the or the citizen usually an army or navy officer but but clearly sometimes as instant as in as in Westminster Abbey distinguished in the Arts distinguished in mathematics there was a part you we all know this do we there's a huge Monument to Newton in Westminster Abbey one half of the screen which is by hawksmore was also responsible for finishing the West Front is is is a vast Monument to Newton the other one is is is to start up and the the great rival of of of of Robert Walpole uh and and you already mind this one creating a deliberate National Valhalla within a Christian church with the notion of course that there is a broader sense of service than merely serving the king they are serving the kingdom they're serving what is the word we use in English Commonwealth you are serving the Commonwealth or the common wheel what you can see very strongly beginning very hesitantly with Chaucer remember Chaucer has the EXP all of this is pioneered in Europe in the Italian city-states which are themselves republics so this idea is naturally picked up by them but of course those republics all die remember apart from Venice uh Owen and and Remini Preposterous little Preposterous little place and remember when the Americans come to try to invent their Commonwealth Commonwealth of Virginia their Republic they are profoundly aware of the failure of these Italian states and so much of the American Constitution is deliberately designed to avoid their errors right why is it easier for this to come into England why does the I why does Chaucer respond to it well it's also trust responsible in a very funny way I've said he reads the dream of Scipio he really does he goes to sleep as I notice many of you are doing you know he's he's he's he's he's tired and he nods off and he writes and the the dream of Scipio is all about the service of the state and and you know uh Scipio is a great General I think aren't we supposed here to be by his tomb isn't this one of the isn't the the alleged Consular Monument here one of the guesses is it's Scipio Africanus you know the the man who finally sorts out Hannibal and all the rest of it um uh so once again once again this extraordinary echo of space anyway which also doses off but he recognizes immediately what he's reading he realizes that there's something in England that corresponds to what um the dream of Scipio about it's a thing called Parliament but in his dream he transmutes it from a dream about the House of Commons and laws which he clearly thinks is as boring as we do and indeed as boring as King Charles does which is why he's dropping them from his coronation um he dreams instead of a parliament inhabited by birds who were debating love and so it's called the parliament of fowls but it's this extraordinary first encounter with the world of the Renaissance the world of this idea of Commonwealth and whatever and then in the course of the 15th and remember it's very important we understand this English is a new language English does not in our sense go back Beyond trosa one of the great debates which we have in the in the reign of Henry VIII and particularly Gardner um a man of the utmost Brilliance I think but regularly regularly dismissed and forgotten Gardner one of the fundamental reasons that Gardner objects to the use of English rather than Latin is that it's not a fixed language English is undergoing this gigantic change mostly important importantly in the course of the 16th century the importation of a vast accumulated vocabulary of Latin and Greek English vocabulary nearly doubles in the 16th century it's quite extraordinary the reason again Thomas Moore can't finish his translation of Richard III is that there were no very few abstract nouns in early 16th century English so he wants to do the classic thing that you're good right we do and you you begin with a general statement and then you want particular but you need an abstract noun so one of the things that he wants to say about Richard which is picked up so magnificently by Shakespeare is the idea of rich as an actor he says in the Latin Richard was a Richard III was a man who could play any role he could laugh with laugh with the merry week with with whatever the problem is English doesn't yet have the word rule so that he can't translate it other people do the translation more does not translate Utopia um and you can see from his own English writing how clumsy it still is the English but what we now know of course is that English is going to undergo Tyndale it's going to on the most wonderful prose that muscular prose of the New Testament it's going to undergo cranma the Magnificent prayers the prayer book but you can easily see how rapidly they are changing and The Marvelous revelation of Shakespeare so English then is this new language but now a vehicle for new ideas and you can see the word Commonwealth creep in to English in the in particularly in the course of the struggles of the 15th century now why is why is this word able to domesticate itself well I've given you I think the answer it's called Parliament because when we come to celebrate the coronation the coronation you lot are all interested in the business of consecration there are two aspects to it however the first is contract before the king gets anywhere near you lot pouring oils on him he's got to swear Oaths and those Earls are sworn not to the church but to the people they may be administered by the Archbishop but they are O's which again they have been diluted in the 20th century but the first oath that he swears and I think it would be a very good thing if he actually went back to the original text we can discuss why it's changed in the course of questions the first oath from 1689 onwards is to rule by the laws established by Parliament that's the commitment in other words an authority which includes the king but is above the king and this is explicitly stated and even more interestingly The Germ of that idea is there from 1308 from the beginning of the reign of Edward II and the development of parliament is unique in European history again we need to get this straight very many European states have Estates and representative assemblers of one form or another they're nearly all die out the English Parliament is not new it's oath it's not an innovation it is an it does not surprise anybody an anachronistic survival you've got to ask why England didn't modernize like France and Germany and Italy and become an inefficient absolute estate Z or whatever he's called is trying to do in China as you know ergodan is doing in Turkey it's all sense possibly even Biden trying to do a little bit of America all sensible governments as we now know do it's so much more efficient none of this pouncing around with consent and struggling to get two inches of Railway built when China has covered the place you know in High-Speed Rail in 10 minutes we have this quaint notion there's a thing called the consent of the community and this is absolutely deep rooted the oath that Edward had to swear in 1308 is that he will rule according to the laws which a future perfect shall have been chosen by your people it's a commitment to Futurity to a King that is not just swearing to a vague inherited body of law but to a living institution a living law-giving institution why does it bind it binds as the judges are already telling people when they complain they don't want to pay their tax because they haven't voted for it in Parliament the judges sort of pull the equivalent of their medieval spectacles down and say oh yes you were in Parliament because it is legal doctrine that everybody in England is represented in Parliament either in person in the Lords the Bishops the abbots the peers or by his representative of course I'm afraid it is his the non-inclusive is the the the the in the House of Commons where every community in England in one for over another is represented so what England develops partly I think centrally through Parliament is this notion that the the king is the head of the Commonwealth but he is not the Commonwealth that it exists alongside and with an increasing sense above this seems to me to be an absolute fundamental another reason for that development is the extraordinary nature of English common law English common law which establishes right back going to the 12th century notion them clearly associated with Magna Carta but also legal theorists like bractan Notions that law that light light the fact that there is a rule of law and I was pointing out Henry VIII cannot just execute people and doesn't you have to go through the form of trial that may be rigged you've seen plenty of rig trials um in in various directions it's very expensive to do it can be awfully inconvenient if it goes wrong but you've got to go through the process and the process is one that respects rules similarly I pointed out Henry VII respects everybody's property but that of the monasteries I mean to the last penny of debt that the monasteries and incurred the last contract the last detail of every sheep that their degreed you know to to hire out buy-in or whatever that is honored and it's honored to the absence in other words these Notions which everybody which all economists talk about now that the essential foundations of prosperity and economic growth are a legal system a rule of law and then and confidence about property the whole Hong Kong debate and whatever is already established and rooted in late medieval England and the English knew it and they know that's what distinguishes them from Continental government and you already get it in in fortescues and the governance of England in which he makes a distinction between two different kinds of monarchy he makes a distinction between the absolute monarchy of France on the one hand and what he calls the he calls it a Dominion Francis a Dominion Regale a merely Royal monarchy and though there are institutions of cons of consent in France but they're all local and the King can just play them off against each other and they're socially based and he can just play them off against each other and they do whereas um in England there is this single General institution and the single body of law which again I referred to the institutional peculiarity of Parliament that it meets in a fixed place it has continuous records continuous procedure and so on English common law is even more remarkable because it has its own educational system the ends of Court which stand in parallel to the two universities of Oxford and Cambridge which means again that much of the Reformation that we talk about under the reign of Henry VIII is a war of two literate Elites it's a war of two sets of lawyers Canon lawyers whose Ultimo Authority is Rome and is universal The Universal Church and English common lawyers whose authority is rooted in the state and the King and his local and specific and rises from the soil and we know who wins so it seems to me then that what the English spot very very quickly is that you can do a direct parallel between Roman Republic and ideology and that of England and another reason why I've been talking so much about the popularity of North Italy is a place to study and particularly emphasizing bologna and Padua you will all know how close these are to Venice the Venetian Republic again acts as a model of this and it it it it it is written about by its own citizens and more particularly by the great by the great Cardinal kantalini contolini actually writes um a praise of Venice which is directly modeled on what they all think and they guess very very shrewdly Because by the way one of the reasons that you actually know a lot about the day Republica even though the text didn't well it's only partially found as a palimps set in the um in the early 19th century one of the reasons you know so much about it and so tantalizingly is that Cicero discusses it extensively in the letter to Atticus so you have it's astonishing you have this count of the actual writing of this book this chapter went really well I had absolute fun doing this one this one was a little bit difficult so they know about it and what kontolini does he writes a new version of the day Republica the day Republica venetorum of the the Republic of the venetians not of not of the Romans right how does that work out in England Thomas More then publishes Utopia this vision of an other world that is that is a kind of anti-world that's what Utopia is an anti-world which is a standing indictment of England in particular because Moore's argument again it's taken directly from some to Dustin is that what does the word commonwealth mean the word Commonwealth means doesn't it that things are in common it cannot be a hierarchical society like England with are you see my the reason for my sense of modern parallels you can't have vast vast disparities of wealth can we we need we need equality or we need Equity or we need leveling or we should be profoundly shocked at the existence of the poor all of that is built in the more attack How does it go at 1516 How does it go in terms of response one of the most Utopia is a fascinating book because clearly everybody it's it's one of the world's great books right how many people give the world an idea out of Utopia what we've got to remember gentlemen is every idea has got to be invented they just don't exist in the Imperium somebody comes up with these great ideas and they're attached to specific moments and they arise because of specific moments clearly with Utopia the alternative societies of the new world as well as the engagement uh with with with with the city of God and so on but what we have with with Utopia you can see it's a text that everybody reads God that's important but I don't agree with it I'm going to argue against it it's one of those texts which triggers the most extraordinary debate and the debate begins fascinatingly within what is 1516 it's within where are we 10 within 16 years in 1532 I mentioned this morning the whole business of indeed yesterday as well castillione the idea the much more important educational idea than than Erasmus the idea of the scholar and gentleman the uh the one again the Roman idea if I use the word armata and togata does anybody have a sense Romans are represented in one of two ways you're either draped into toga which is how you are as a civil as a city a citizen in Civil Life or you're wearing armor as the citizen of War so it's the two faces War and Peace each being regarded as the duty of the citizen in a republic right then again why you have the claws about the bearing of weapons in the American Constitution these are this is the tradition they are this is the tradition that they are writing in anyway um what you what you get after uh and again it's also rooted in rhetoric and persuasion and Castillo and his idea is that you need to train a gentleman exactly as the public schools came to do on the one hand in the classics and then on the other hand in all the gentlemen the Arts of course including music including including sport um including writing a verse whatever and the primary purpose being to train you to give Good Counsel to the prince to be able to get his confidence so that you could tell him the truth about all he needs to know without fear of offending him and whatever I mean that's the that's the theory in fact you read you you read the book of the courtier in exactly the same way for exactly the same reasons that you read PPE when you go to Oxford because you're a little and you aspire to power you know and that's why you do isn't it that's why you'd of course look at its look at math Hancock you know if if you want if you if you want to see the truth of this horrible degree and indeed David Cameron uh I mean there's a kind of early oleogenous quality a kind of fake sense of stickiness that go that that that of course mandelson as well um and the the the argue the archetypical sort of slug um the the um so that there is then be the idea of of of the rhetoric rhetoric applied to all of this um and and a vast educational program it is picked up 1528 it goes into print it is picked up within four years but by the way it's cromwell's favorite book it's the book that Cromwell recommends this is not Machiavelli it's a book this is complete misunderstanding Machiavelli does not go into print for another decade Cromwell cannot have read Machiavelli at this stage we know in fact that he sent a copy of Machiavelli after he's been extremely Machiavellian for nearly 10 years um because Lord Morley sends him a copy and the book that he's discussing with Cardinal poll is the book of the courtyard there's absolutely no doubt about this at all and we know that he's got friends like Bishop Bonner the future bloody Bonner who are very keen to they call himself making themselves good Italians and this is the secular version of that immersion of that emotion in Italian culture that I was talking about from the point of view of the church before so what you get is then an astonishing response to both the book of the courtier and to Utopia it's written by a man called Sir Thomas Elliott who is a profile any of you are familiar with T.S Eliot Ellie the poet uses the book of the courtier in particularly little getting um as as the I mean he used it in a very odd way it's in fact a highly sophisticated book he uses it to represent the plodding of peasants and all the rest but he's interested in in the language but what in fact the book of the courtyard is it's an adaptation into the English context of the educational program of castillione so it's about how you train a gentleman the governor a gentleman somebody will bear rule within the English Commonwealth and and it's it's and effectively it becomes the brief earlier this morning I talked about the fact that with the Reformation the university is like everything else a layer sized and you get the movement of the gentrate of the universities and the Book of the courtyard sorry the the book of the governor becomes the key to the informal educational program that the Gentry undergo that right so extraordinary importance in that sense but it's a greater importance in another sense because what you get at the beginning although he does not mention Thomas More by name by the way Eliot and Moore are the closest to friends which becomes profoundly embarrassing to Elliot at certain stages of the 1530s and he has to write the kind of letters and again let's face the horror of Henry's Reign which you have to do under any particularly nasty dictatorship a letter in which you dissociate yourself from a friend to save your own life you know we can we can we can smile and whatever but there are terrible things um but what Elliot also does he debates with more his denial of a true Commonwealth in England and he does it in a way which is fascinating he says he doesn't mention more by name but it's obvious what he's talking about he says you know some people say that um you can't have that the English England is not is not a true Commonwealth it's not a proper raised publica because of this uh the fact that Commonwealth means everything has got to be held in common and here you get the real voice of the good side of Erasmus the real voice of proper linguistic analysis you get Elliot saying Commonwealth is a really bad translation of race publica um he I mean he says if it were to be Commonwealth it would have to be and it would have to be the popular thing or the people's thing that would be the Latin version of it that instead this is the public thing and then he points out that he therefore wants not to translate it as common wheel but public wheel and then he goes on to say well actually if you look at ancient Rome ancient Rome was just like us it had a fixed legal system it had representative assemblies it had tightly structured orders of class once it's grown up and got rid of these tiresomethings called consoles it gets a proper Monarch so you know it's nice and nicely monarchical and pop and he said we are in other words the new Rome and therefore our state like their state commands moral value and what you get from that point onwards is an increasing swelling of this idea in 16th century England and it culminates in the book which directly Echoes both in its title directly Echoes both Cicero and directly echoes the Republic of the English which is written by Sir Thomas Smith um in 1569 I think it is Elizabeth secretary of state would also been uh secretary also being Regis professor of Greek God those were the days where they also also Regis professor of Greek at Cambridge and one of the great influences on the education of sicil and all sorts of people anyway what Thomas Smith does is in that is to say he directly counters more he uses the arguments of Elliot and he says we I do not wish concludes the thing I do not wish to write about imaginary commonwealths like something Augustine like Plato like Sir Thomas More I want to write about the state of England as it is now he gives the date under the whatever year it is of Queen Elizabeth the First and I want to argue that we are as good as just and as well ordered a commonwealth as any that has ever existed and I think it's this sense of the independent moral value state which then able enables Powers the development of the idea of a national church because of course that extraordinary that extraordinary irrationality of the henrician settlement that I talked about with the with the immensely activist role of the Supreme Governor uh in in the sorry of the Supreme head in the form of Henry the Henry VIII himself is increasingly taken over by the Machinery of Parliament however much Elizabeth fights against it however much the steward kicks against the Pricks of it until finally in 1689 religion like everything else is determined by this body of the realm and what I think is very then very striking is to look at what emerges uh from from 1689 and from the extraordinary coronation of William and Mary which which follows the Glorious Revolution how many of you are familiar with the I mean one of the things I've been trying to get home is place and the importance of historical Place how many of you are familiar with the painted Hall Greenwich right what does it represent it's called it's very often called the English Sistine Chapel what does it represent Pub yes it represents the it what it really is it's the reenactment in this extraordinary Baroque paintwork of English History from 1689 to 1740 1713 and 14 and the Hanoverian accession at each stage what does it represent well let me give you the picture because it will help us a lot in what we're talking about what happens with that coronation of 1689 um two things strike well there are the three things about it there is an Act passed for the oath the coronation oath is completely Rewritten so it's totally clear statement you will rule by the laws made in Parliament you will indeed do justice in Mercy and in truth and your version of Christianity when you're keeping peace between church and people will be the reformed religions by Parliament established in England right those that becomes the triple oath what happens in with that coronation it's represented that oath is the complete as we were underpinning they all know what's happened Westminster but there's been all this fuss about who should be in Westminster Abbey how many seats will be available the entire let me get my geography right the entire north side of the choir is taken over with a huge Gallery in which the entire House of Commons has the very best dressed seats at the coronation the dress Circle as it were with their speaker sitting and himself enthroned in the middle overlooking a king that will swear to obey the laws made in Parliament and you get a sermon preached by Gilbert Burnett are we all familiar with Burnett as the greater the great apologist for the Church of England at the great early apologist and very scholarly one um there's part of the Great 19th century debates there are re-editions of Burnett Burnett because he cites so many documents many of which were later damaged in the cottonian fire and that sort of thing but Burnett preaches the sermon and it's a very remarkable so women in that it's a holy political sermon what it actually says we are uniquely blessed in England because we do not suffer on the one hand from tyrannical or despotic power gesture to Louis XIV and on the other hand we do not suffer from the arbitrary rule of tumultuous multitudes Oliver Cromwell and instead we're here in this perfect Middle Ground which is then illustrated by The Painted Hall which shows the fruits of conquest of Commerce of learning of Science of Technology of art every every one of the Arts and whatever is represented there as flourishing in this new regime of law a deed but law that is English that is specifically rooted here in England and that can only be translated I would argue into other similar communities which is why there are the five eyes all of which of course are derivats from this England that I've been talking about now this seems to me it is impossible to have a vision of a National Church unless you actually believe not that it's perfect nobody they didn't think if england was a perfect Society what they thought was it was a just Society in other words it's one that can be administered by due process and in which the idea of improvement is possible you have to have that as a basic idea otherwise it's impossible you will all have different Notions about the need for it to be a Christian Community and so on but that's a different matter I think the reason why this idea anchors itself in England such extraordinary effect and last so long and assume so many different forms which is now a perfect moment for us to talk about is this that I've described you have to have the sense of the moral value of the state and it is precisely what woke is trying to do at the moment which is to destroy that value of the state which is also by the way fundamentally historically rooted which is also what Elliot is on about Elliot Elliott has two views of transcendence which come out very very clearly and he of course gives the order of the Divine Transcendence but little getting is also about historical Transcendence and I because I'm a non-believer I attach myself to the notion of historical Transcendence which is why I've been talking to you about place in the way that I do for me I feel and I hope if you didn't already that you will begin to get that sense there is something utterly extraordinary in standing in the pantheon or in Westminster Abbey or instant pause or in little getting as as as Elliot says in little getting history is now in England you feel that disappearance of time or rather that you are a part of that again it's book The Marriage of past present and future that intergenerational Bond which is I think proper basis for National Church which is why even though I am not a Christian I believe in a national church thank you [Applause] this is not a question that's any question response but I think I think the next sentence I want to add is a national church but what kind that perhaps perhaps others have been thinking that way but but thank you for taking us and and history is now in England those words are on my lips as you started and uh going uh going deeper into little giving but thank that uh wonderful journey to through uh from from the Tudor and Elizabeth here and through onto into into the threshold of where we are now um so um this really is now about um opening up a conversation and um we've got we've got plenty of time so um and can you all speak up I'm sorry my hearing is not brilliant with this kind of echoey space um do you mind I'm sorry it's I apologize it seems very rude do you think those works both Cicero and um Thomas Law had to be killed for a century the same reason no I don't well they had to be killed for opposite reasons um that is to say um Cicero believes in a proper form of an Earthly Commonwealth to which Caesar and Caesar Augustus are opposed and are determined to destroy but of course destroy remember Augustus does it very much like Henry VIII you don't call yourself Emperor you call yourself print caps you first family where have we heard that term before you know and you insinuate a monarchy into the foals of Republic just as Badger says in the 19th century though he's very late that a monarchy the Republic inserts itself into uh the foes of of a monarchy in England by the way the big point that I am making is England is a royal Republic and has been a royal Republic I would argue since the plantagenets and it's only comprehensible as such now the killing of Thomas More you are right Thomas More disagrees radically with what I've said if we accept the account uh of uh which again is it's it's we do not have we do not have direct evidence we've only got Ropers evidence of his trial right what he Roper says in his trial is the deliberate repudiation of exactly the point that I've been making what what he says is you all know more is is is is trapped by Richard Rich into an apparent rejection of the supremacy and all the rest of it um and uh more because it more does not believe that he is of a caliber to assume martyrdom he does everything he can to avoid it but when finally push comes to shove he accepts it and uh the 16th century legal procedure enables you to do this so more is condemned the jury because he's a because he's not a he's not uh he's he's he's tried by commissioner why and tell me he's not actually tried by the court of of the high Steward he's not a nobleman so there's a fairly standard procedure uh he's condemned uh and the the the the the the the the president of the commission of Hawaii and tell me near the chairman of the commission orderly moves immediately to sentence Moore of course is one of the greatest law English lawyers as well as this extraordinary polymath and Moses my Lord uh in my day it was customary that the prisoner was allowed to Traverse the verdict that is to say you're at that stage allowed to present an argument and what Moore does is quite it's it is total it's wonderful piece of rhetoric if he really did it he says my Lord the act of parliament under which I was condemned was illegal why is it illegal because the English Parliament is only a provincial assembly the English Parliament is merely the equivalent of the city of London against the parliament of England because the determination that the pope is head of the church is a resolution of the entire Commonwealth of Christ the the whole body of Christendom whose assembly is not the English Parliament but the general counsel of the church which is only summable and he's reflecting now the Council of constance by the pope therefore the the statute under which I have been condemned is illegal in other words he is arguing for the for the unimportance of the nation and the importance of you in other words exactly what he's saying in Utopia the importance of universal values orderly is clearly completely can you imagine you're a judge and the greatest lawyer in England that you amount to you know tell you know the horrors of the sentence of of hanging drawing on quartering suddenly comes up with this oddly does you can see why he gets on so well immediately passes the buck to it so he turns to the law chief justice who is also on the panel of Hawaii and tell me could you deal with this one and the man does not miss a Beat he simply says if it's an act of Act of parliament it's good enough pleat English positivism and you know what when I was present at the debate recently which is a wonderful book which you all ought to read by Patrick Nash on what's Happening to England because of uh Islamic immigration but the fact that the the very large part of the Pakistani Community has got a clan structure which is established by first cousin marriage it's an astonishing book and one that you know is really of of immense importance and I was expecting that Jonathan would go into a really interesting debate on this he said you know what I think the arguments have absolutely no interest whatever because we judges can do whatever we want that's a verdict if you're the dominant member of the Supreme Court in English law if judges think decide it's law it's law which is exactly it's your name is exactly the voice of that law Chief Justice at the trial of more but I mean you are right more represents which is why I began with YouTube really began with Utopia more represents the opposite set of values as of course do the universalists as does regnan's index Chelsea's as do the Universalist claims of the papacy which is why user represent the the healing process of some of these extraordinary divisions but but why why Catholicism was excluded from the throne because Catholicism was seen as representing the totally antithetical sense of value and the other thing that's very important again and I've only become aware of this we've all been having this tremendous debate about England and slavery why is it that the anti-slavery movement is so completely English I think I've now got the answer the fashionable view is Tom Holland work dominion and whatever but Christianity is fundamentally the basis of liberal values what absolute nonsense for most of its history Christianity has been totally happy with absolutism and has survived in it you know has an absolute monarchy in the papacy what is it why does this happen I think it's because the English as the increasingly consciously differentiate themselves now at a very popular level from Louis XIV with you the second hundred years wars Churchill talks about it against the French you start using the term slave to refer to the subjects of an absolute monarchy which is why you have batons never never shall be slaves you're not thinking Britain suddenly becoming blacks working in the plantations you're thinking of them becoming French with too terrible thought to contemplate and and so you see what I mean the word slave really comes in the language in a way which it why should it have done there's no condemnation of slavery in the Bible Saint Paul you know merely offers good advice to slaves and slave masters it disappears in the sight of God as do all other human distinctions but but there's no condom why should there be and of course Roman culture is entirely based on slavery so again once you get this sense of specificity all sorts of historical puzzles start to solve themselves sorry that was such an interesting question I went on far too long I apologize update I'd like to think about your final comments about you believe in a national church is it there in time to eradicate the church and the church giving birth a church in England Church the issue would be the issue would be wouldn't it that what of our great problems at the moment and ain't why many of these things are in debate is that not simply have we lost a sense of a National Church of a church or the specificity of Christianity or whatever we've lost a sense of nationhood although the the notion of nationhood itself of cultural identity of our history all in in matters of profound contention so um you I mean you can argue I mean again talking of Alternative forms of a National Church it seems to me to be pretty clear if you look at what happens to the Church of England after 1689 and that extraordinary moment which is represented by the painted Hall in Greenwich is that the Church of England becomes essentially English Shinto it's the English worshiping themselves which in the person of the Monarch I mean you you look at the the that Royal element in the prayer book I mean just the dominance of the idea of King and kingship and whatever you never know really that we had much of a parliament if you just look at the prayer book you can still hear the voice of Henry VII and his sense you know his his sense of government uh uh there but I think it does become English Shinto um that it's not and it is more than just the Tory party at prayer and you can also see you you can see I think very clearly uh that in the 18th century this is where you come in what happens in the 18th century you abandon the old notion of the royal year the old year that still despite protestantism rooted in the Christian calendar and whatever and Handel gives you a totally different musical text for Empire and Triumph See the Conquering Hero Comes becomes the kind of mission statement of of this this this this this conquering church again you look at some Paul's sir Paul's is consciously reinvented as a Valhalla of Naval and Military heroism which is why there is a profound uncomfortableness about it now the the you you have you all looked at those monuments these extraordinary sculpted gigantic musculars and you look at them they've all they're aged about two and a half they're aged about 18 or 9 18 or 19. and they've done unbelievably heroic things you know one young midshipman with a rowboat will have will have taken a French frigate dice there is one of them he dies in the process this is real heroism which which is consciously sponsored and is consciously modeled on the Roman experience this is exactly what it is um and but done bizarrely to us within the context of Christianity but a Christianity of course that attaches itself to the Old Testament and to the military Triumph of the Jews Hail the Conquering Hero Comes it's Judas maccabeus is particularly the handle oratorios um uh again I was awakened to so many of these thoughts when I was a newly graduated at Cambridge and I was sitting in King's College listening to Performance of the Messiah after the fellows of Kings in their wisdom decided that the a cross obscured the view of the Reuben's Altarpiece so you care you remove the soul visible Christian symbol uh there so you have the Rubens Altarpiece and then you were surrounded I will do you remember the interior of Kings where you have these vast Tudor Imperial crowns which John sulkeld had the vulgarity to put light bulbs inside so you had all of these throbbing symbols of Tudor monarchy and you know um the the the the the the Hallelujah Chorus king of Kingdom Lord of lords and Israel monarchy monarchy monarchy monarchy God simply is a grown-up version of the king of England and um but seriously this this do we all realize this language is invent handle invents this language for the coronation of of of George II it's it's if the in other words this use as we were saying of what really our outdoor instruments inside the wind instruments and the timpani this is invented really for zedop the priest and it then he then picks it up right he then goes back to writing Italian opera and all the rest of it completely different musical language and then he comes back and one of the things striking about handles musical language is how well you can hear the words I mean this astonishing setting of English um and the way he reduced reduces and the way he reduces the text here again it's astonishing George II says to him um you can edit the Psalms the Archbishop of Canterbury is outraged handle takes accept Okay the original coronation service the complete texts of all of these songs were recited if you look at the equivalent Purcell setting the entire text is there it goes on for about 45 minutes Handel cuts it down to three lines I mean you can just see his pen going through it and there it is sort of zero of the priest and that wonderful Rhythm taken up from the words um it's it's a story you're so easy again to take it for granted but it's it's an it's a Sublime Act of Creation of a particular moment and a particular culture [Music] um [Music] coronation with the supremacy of Parliament how does the how does the good of the National Church um what Bull Work is there left and and we might think about something um such as um the state considering mandatory reporting for all um you know disclosures of um child sexual abuse or whatever it may be and issue of um say a little confession How can there be any remaining full Works between the states simply dictating to the church but remember the concealer of confessional has never had any existence in common law I'm sorry similarly there is no notion um and it was one of the things that was most deliberately reacted against there is no notion of sanctuary uh the the obviously they were in the Middle Ages there were there were the Great sanctuaries surrounding Westminster Abbey but there is the profound hostility of common law um and I think it's it's the the the again it's that extraordinary majoritarian Instinct of common law it is a very it's very uneasy with any rival and canon law was seen specifically as a rival and of course with the Reformation the teaching of canon law in the University of voxel and Cambridge is banned and the only way that you can get a sort of smell of it if you're educated in England is by reading civil law Roman law which of course is the root of canon law but but without the Christian content um it's it common common law is jealous it's a jealous law in other words the behavior of America that extraordinary aggression of the American legal process derives directly from its roots in England isn't it the reason that the American Revolution works is that it isn't that's to say it tries to do none of the radical things that the French Revolution does you get no dis redistribution of property save people who'd Exile themselves as stories you get no no attempt at legal reform you you keep English common law and you continue to keep it because you don't have Victorian legal reform the um similarly you keep the existing structures of state government States already had representative assemblies and remember the American Constitution as Tom Payne points out with bitter indignation to George Washington is simply the king with a wig rather than a crown that's what the president is his powers are directly modeled on that of the late 18th century English monarch um and and you can see this very clearly if you if you go to uh you you look at you look at Congress okay you've got the language of the the neo-roman language of Senate and all the rest of it but the lower house has got a speaker who as was been one of the lines of development of the English Parliament actually manages the house as John burko tried to do and as Speaker lentil did at the beginning of the Revolution and the the the the the the the the person who is the administrative officer of the House of Representatives well the Americans haven't the faintest idea who he is and he's this strange creature called a Sergeant at Arms and no American has got any idea what a surgeon a sergeant to dance is or why is there he's just there because the Sergeant at Arms was the administrative officer of the House of Commons I mean there was little there's a little real revolutionary change as that you um you just cut off the Imperial ties and then immediately resumed them more aggressively economically a brief question about um history as a series of accidents sometimes and the notion of how quickly and how pragmatically certain personalities deal with Henry's Legacy so I think you're somebody who's done a lot of work on when Elizabeth's court has to examine his will and how they get away with the fact well you talk about it remember the Stewart's succession is illegal uh there's a there's a really it's the stewards section is a direct Defiance of Act of parliament Henry VII's will which is ratified by Act of parliament Outlaws the succession by the descendants of Henry's eldest sister Queen Margaret as he becomes Margaret Queen of Scots because she because those descendants are foreign born and instead Henry's will back by Statute gives a succession to the children and descendants of Henry's younger sister Mary who become successively queen of France and then Duchess of Suffolk being being married to Charles Brandon um Elizabeth lose this idea and of course the gray family has terribly blotted its copy book in the person of Jane gray and all the rest of it so she's absolutely determined that won't happen but equally she can't trust Parliament to resolve the succession in a way that they want so how do they deal with it there's a very solemn meeting of the privy Council and I think it's 1566 they read Henry's will a large chest is commissioned with two locks the will is placed and a very remote corner of the exchequer treasury of documents is discovered that somewhat prone to damp and you put it there not opened again for hundreds of years and absolutely and James knows this James knows that he succeeded illegally to the English Throne which is why he's able to invoke a wise able to claim that he succeeds by indefeasible hereditary right that's is Maitland and Frederick Maitland the great great Cambridge constitutionalist constitutional medieval historian who first suggests this idea I haven't thought of it but he's obviously right obviously right sorry somebody else was another hand was raised moment being asked to to uphold that don't but he's right really isn't he I mean all that one can say is he's right um and that but the trouble is it's not clear the the I mean remember the notion of the Protestant reformed religion as embodied in the Church of England was not never the simple majority of Faith the situation in England very very quickly with with the tolerance of dissent on the one hand the increasingly practic increasingly practical tolerance of Catholicism and Judaism their actual admission to Civic status to being restored to the full rights of citizenship in the late 1820s 1830s and so on and that you already have a highly disparate and um and and mosaic-like community in the same way there is no nation of Britain remember we are a most peculiar Society um Britain from the very beginning was multinational that's what it is it's a fusion of two separate historic kingdoms one of which incorporates two other quasi-states Ireland and Wales um and right from the beginning this extraordinarily polymorphous nature of the British state is understood whereas in France of course in the 18th century was very much more disparate and there were much more extremes of dialect and all the rest of it but in France as in America you are indeed in Germany with the culture Camp you ha you use the new devices of State education to reimpose Unity this is why remember the whole notion of La isite that you have in France only really comes in not directly from not directly from the First Republic It's a product of the third Republic It's a product really of the of the of the 18 of the 1880s and particularly the 1890s and Jean Georges and all the rest of it but you impose uniformity through education there was never uniform educational system in England there were Church schools and there were then there were dissenter schools and there were Quaker schools and there were catholic schools and it was a totally separate educational system in Scotland and even with Union in 17 years even even with the act of Union in 1707 being British is for export you're a Britain abroad and the Scots only agreed to Union because they cannot have access to the English Empire having failed to establish one of their own in the Darion scheme and then they become of course the as one really must keep on reminding what's left of the Scotland that they become outstanding and brutal colonialists the the the entire weight of Canadian Hong Kong banking uh The Honkers and Shanks have run by Scots the whole Canadian banking system brutal treatment of the native population entirely Scottish they need reminding of this loudly loudly uh the Ambassador stop his ears uh at this point but there is no attempt at the real imposition of an internal National Unity remember the extraordinary fact that the first football internationalist is played between England and Scotland um uh so so we are very very picky this is what I mean we've we've been intensely disparate I mean what I think happens is you can see if we if we if we we if we jump forward through the Victorian period you can see a very different way in which church and monarchy relate to each other remember the great cha if you look at from the early 18th century right through to essentially to Victoria and to the Decades of Reform of the 1830s you're dealing with a semi-aristocratic state essentially in which you manage remember the great I mentioned this this point before the great art of the survival of the English Parliament is that it's managed the problem in 1689 was you created effectively to equipollant equal Powers Monarch and Parliament how on Earth do you handle relations between them without there being Deadlock the answer is the creation of the Office of Prime Minister because we've got two monarchs there's a there's the nominal Mark just like the Japanese with the emperor you you you have the Mikado and who is his is our Sovereign not for nothing again English Shinto you have the Mikado and then you have the equivalent of the Shogun who is the real exerciser of power who is the prime minister and we are still ruled by the Royal prerogative but it's just exercised by the Prime Minister but the prime minister's got two jobs he manages the Monarch on behalf of Parliament and he manages Parliament on behalf of the Monarch using all the devices of Royal patronage which unfortunately have become increasingly to the surface hence the sewer-like smell that no longer comes from the Thames but actually comes from at the time of Basil jet but but actually comes from inside the house um but but the the the so this aristocratic constitution of course again shows unique flexibility this is another reason for taking very seriously those claims about the moral value of the English State the English state is the only great state of the 19th century that does not collapse with Revolution but is capable of absorbing democracy when you get people marching in the streets in England with the charters and whatever they're not saying tear down Parliament they're saying we want to vote we want a seat so that legitimacy continues but of course once you've actually started to concede the vote to the unwashed the nature with with 1867 with by of course it's really once you've conceded the vote to the unwashed you then have the problem of how you manage the electorate and this is the moment at which there's a transformation in the role of monarchy very much in harnessed with the church I mean if you look at the the early 20th century coronations which provided the blueprint which really culminates in 1953 they're a product of two thoughts they're a product of the one hand of the need to represent government through an individual or through a person to this new popular electorate and you do it very much just as you've done in the Middle Ages by Royal ceremony you reinvent Royal ceremony in the first Decades of the 20th century and it's principally the work of a man called a Reginald Brett ficount Isha um who is the uh the the the chairman of the committee on Imperial defense and the the Constable of Windsor Castle and the great Court favorite of Edward VII and it's done in two ways you re-ceremonialize the coronations which would become absolutely shambolic with Victoria and it's a result of astonishing scholarship the the current the research into medieval history that's done in that first decade of the 20th century is of spectacular quality and it's this is the moment at which you for the first time since handle you've great coronation music Revenue you've got Parry you've you've you've you you you you you've got Elgar and or or all the rest and you know write up to Crown Imperial and all the rest of it for the coronation of the queen um it don't get sadly in the same corresponding excellence in the research on the um Church's rooms do you they get a little bit of they're told isn't it one of them that's told um go and find your best clue oh well that's it because Edward the seven is pig ignorant but but this is the the very striking thing is this is the moment at which high church becomes acceptable not not because the monarchy believes in it but because I've been very usefully reminded by Daniel and Edward VII wants a good show so remember do we all understand this what you were wearing would have led to your being burned I think and earlier in the 20th century um the the the use of even the cope was regarded as exotic and dangerous the first time that a miter is warm is that the enthronement of Cosmo Gordon langa's Archbishop you're in the middle of the first world war and that that but why it becomes acceptable is because they wanted magnificence they want Thea again going back to that word they want theatrical splendor and the great works of the medieval coronation service provide wonderful theatrical splendor but what you also do is you reconstruct the center of London as a theater of monarchy the the uh the monument to Victoria which had been conceived of as a simple Monument to Victoria is taken over by the genius of Isha and he redesigns them all the entire mall is conceived as a royal theater from the from the admiralty Arch right down the length of the mall to that extraordinary roundabout with all the gates named after the the the the great dominions of Empire Australia Canada uh South Africa and whatever the great Gates there and when it was explained to the Royal princesses this thing was going to be going to be constructed they say aren't the people getting a little close to which Isha responds that's the idea and then because of the bit of money left left over you you put it you glue a new front on Buckingham Palace in the course of the summer months of 1913 you don't even take the window panes out it's this it's one stone thick glued on and you create this huge balcony in the center floor the Triumph and so you're creating you're creating a theater of spectacle to among to to a a very critical audience remember London is the site of the great variety of theaters things like the Coliseum and whatever they used spectacular theatrical performance and the monarchy with the church clothing it becomes part of this and then again it's taken over uh and it's really very important to acknowledge this it's taken over by Cosmo Gordon Lang as a central part of the struggle against divorce law reform the church and the Monarch this is how you invent the idea of the family monarchy and the notion that the idea of divorce and being King of England is absolutely impossible there's of course nothing whatever in law that says this at all otherwise we all know Henry they would have had the odd problem um but but it's used to get rid of the seventh I mean it's everybody thought I mean even the Prime Minister thought at the time of the abdication crisis that there was a rule which said the Monarch could not you know marry a divorced person or be divorced or whatever and there's this appalling that this appalled letter from the Lord chances like unfortunately this isn't true so we've got to come up with some other means of getting rid of it and but the monarchy is deployed and I think it the family monarchy that elevation of George V and Queen Mary and George VI and Queen Elizabeth and the earlier part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth herself as a kind of the British family with a kind of notion well he's sort of Christian but there's not much emphasis on that is the thing that makes us what we are the thing that makes us Great British and it's embodied represented in the royal family um and again this very different view of ceremony in which ceremony becomes not an expression of royal power but an expression of the royal burden this again is this notion of of service being an endless routine of empty ceremony the the uh the business of the way the business of the wearing of the crown of the state opening of parliament it's never been done is completely invented by George V who hates it and it gives him a migraine every time he puts it up and yet he he insists he goes ahead with it he consults ask Chris cabinet says and we don't care he does and so you get this notion of ceremony as a kind of hair shirt so somebody like the late Queen you know it was profoundly awkward mainly in company she really did not like it and yet she puts herself through this and the boy again her father George VI for whom he was a torment and yet they feel obliged to do it and now of course we're in the world in which it's very difficult to see any meaning and nobody's tried to explain what the coronation might mean I mean this is this is the appalling thing you've instead had a stream of Royal trivia are we going to have the coolinoa is there a problem with the fact that the Queen's Queen's sector is made of ivory I mean absolute mere trivia rather than any attempt to take remember the coronation is probably in one sense is problematic William IV thought there was no need for him to be crowned yeah absolutely outraged I think I seem to remember I I may I know he intended to open Parliament just putting the crown on himself I mean he explained he was perfectly capable of putting a crown on his own head he didn't need an Archbishop to do it for him as early as 1830. I would suggestions that we are the best country in the world and that we make the best decisions [Music] that are not quite sure whether what you were saying being about the funding of the Church of England is because saying we are the better Church better than the rest of the world that certainly that is certainly what Burnett is saying that's certainly what Burnett is saying that's certainly what the painted Hall at Greenwich is saying and it's saying that this form of right what he's saying is we have a form of rational Christianity we have a form of Christianity which accommodates reason which accommodates progress not no PO no no cursing progress absolutely the opposite a church which is fairly and squarely on the side of it um and again you see aspects of that and in the great Victorian debates over Evolution and all the rest of it which in some ways the church does align itself but very quickly adjusts English conservatism is Progressive Paradox and there is by the way a very good reason that England thought it was best because it won and and the the end remember this is why are we all familiar with the wonderful 1066 and all that when does history stop the end of the first world war when we ceased to be top notion and it's taken over by America and the whole American psyche and you know America great well of course it's now it's now beginning to undergo some of our own self-doubts and whatever but and the other the the very great shift from the late 19th century of the the Oscar Wilde of the uh of the the thing that satirized um in uh in uh in the Mikado and where where um amongst amongst people that Coco is going to execute are those who sing the Praises of every age but this and every country but their own and the hostility of the English intellectual to England um which is a which becomes a peculiar disease which has now taken over America as well where it did not used to be the case at all that self-destruct um um but but up to the 19th century I mean there's a very good reason for that confidence um uh but I think it is also um and I really I do want what I hope you see I mean okay I've been making several jokes because I think jokes are very important as means of understanding things but what I would like you to take away is that notion that the the what Henry VIII did despite all the horrible means by which he did it would not have been possible without that fundamental confidence in the moral value of the English state um and that seems to me to be it's an unbelievably powerful idea and the loss of that idea is a terrible one um one of the reasons for the for the for the loss of that sense of social responsibility which my generation was still brought up in and we are largely responsible for destroying um was was was that sense of a profound obligation to this thing which is good until your duty to be part of it and citizenship is impossible without that notion you cannot be a citizen and not you know you cannot be a responsible citizen without believing in the value of your country you may think there are many things that need improving about it but you've got to think that it's existing Constitution offers means of improvement and that that is what is remarkable about the English tradition that the cons the conservative tradition incorporates the idea of change this really is wonderful on this subject and his his great Crystal Palace speech um uh is is which allegedly he delivers with two bottles of Brandy and going over three hours they they were made of sturdist stuff where they us wimps and there's a couple of glasses of Prosecco and feel tired [Laughter] um but there'll be a chance um later on this evening it's dinner to say to say a little more so I'll just simply say now that um you know thank you so much that David principally and supported by Daniel um rooting us here to begin with in in Rome in in Tudor English Roman relations but now in this final session taking us right up to the present and just I mean I think leading us with more questions than we started with which is actually absolutely was a good a good lecture I should do so we're absolutely uh in your debt and um just for now we'd like to thank you foreign gentlemen can I say you've already repaid it whatever debt there might be I've enjoyed myself and that is the most important thing thank you [Music]

Channel: David Starkey Talks

Views: 16,969

Keywords: David Starkey, History

Id: MdYnl_4DoHU

Length: 90min 32sec (5432 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 07 2023