Henry VIII's Legacy: David Starkey Lectures

foreign it's a very great pleasure to be here and in a sense to have an introduction which takes us into the heart of what I want to talk about which is what a funny country we are um I know whether you all realize the kind of event that we are having now is utterly unknown in most of Europe the notion of voluntary activity the notion that significant parts of health care of Education of Civic life are essentially the result of voluntary not state-funded activity is peculiar to the Anglo-Saxon world if you look in Continental Europe there is scarcely a trace of what we call charitable endeavor so we are what but it is really true and we need to understand this we are a very peculiar country and I am going to be in the in the good and the bad senses of the word funny peculiar and funny haha um we're both um and what I want to do this evening amongst friends and amongst people who are reasonably sophisticated and won't have a fit if I say that I'm not entirely appalled at the notion there may be a little bit of corruption in government this is nothing terribly surprising or unusual or even particularly shocking and by the way we owe a great deal to Robert Walpole who pioneered it all uh that we can we can begin to talk as adults about what we are and why we are be the idea on which I've hung it um is the notion of how England is governed beginning with Henry VII and finishing with King Boris because you do need to understand we do have a monarch and it's not the queen or rather we have two a symbolic one which is the queen and the real rather fallible one but then most most monarchs were called Boris and that Downing Street is a court and the Carrie is an over ambitious Queen I call her cannibalin much better than Carrie Antoinette but the the point is the same so what I want to do is to take that trajectory of ideas and to explain them to mock but also to appreciate because absurd and Preposterous though they are they work and they have delivered a little bit like the notion that things as vital as in John's ambulance and whatever does remain voluntary and depend on people paying too much for rather good champagne and producing sorry but you think of it it's very odd it's unusual to us right let's begin all of you here will be familiar with the fact that we have a capital you think it's called London it's not it's called Westminster there are these Twin Cities in London the Twin Cities of London and Westminster which function more or less as though Washington and New York were separated by a mile rather than what they are separated by in other words you have London the city of London as a commercial Capital the equivalent much more than the equivalent of New York and you have the same time Westminster as the political and administrative Capital like DC but Westminster itself is also a place of profound history what I want to try to do with you is to explore how our government develops and shapes itself using the buildings of Westminster as a model to take us through so to go through from the original Palace of Westminster the origin of what we call rather badly the houses of Parliament through the Palace of Whitehall through to the new key Royal Palace which is not that rather badly refurbished dump called Buckingham Palace it is Downing Street as you probably know many of you will have been in it that little Frontage onto Downing Street is deeply deceptive because behind it opens out into a 60-room mansion overlooking horse guards we're Splendid and Noble rooms and it's a palace it's a town Palace right so let's begin then with the origins of Westminster itself Westminster is created by the founder myth of English History who is Ed with the Confessor it is Edward the Confessor the last Anglo-Saxon well the last reigning Anglo-Saxon King apart from the brief episode of Harold he is the one who creates the Westminster the West Church he builds it as a noble Benedictine Monastery which from the beginning seems to have been intended as a coronation church and every monarch of England from that point onwards has been crowned in Westminster Abbey The Abbey was also designed as a burial place so it's both as it were it's the life cycle this fight becomes clear when the Abbey is rebuilt in the uh in in in in the 13th century by Henry III um in the Magnificent form that we have now the extraordinary soaring Gothic with things that we we simply don't normally think about if you've ever wondered about the strange structure of the Abbey the enormously extended point in the middle of the Abbey which is called The Crossing you have the transps on either side you've got the the high altar at the screen and then the Nave that Extended space there is technically called a theater it's actually built for the coronation it's designed specifically for the coronation and then behind behind the great screen I mean which incidentally all the music for the coronations of the 20th centuries were specifically designed for the movement from the West doors through that screen and and into the coronation theater and that extraordinary at extraordinary uh building at that space is designed for the coronation again what we think of as the Great West entrance is only put on uh in the the beginning the the beginning of the 18th century and the monarchs always used to enter the Abbey through the porter regia which is actually in in the transect the uh in in the in the north transcept which is was directly adjacent to the old Palace of Westminster but the center of the church was from uh the work of Henry III was the enormous Shrine the tomb of Edward the Confessor who is seen as the the the the the Norman kings are very keen to adopt him as a kind of benediction on the brutality of their use of patiently the way in which the Norman Conquest is normally talked about in textbooks it comes across rather as a slightly rough version of a year in Provence it's not it is one of the most brutal acts of occupation in human history the problems of the north stem directly from what William the Conqueror did the North the retardation of the north is the direct result of the harrying of the north it is the economy has never fully recovered from what William did but anyway to as it were heal over these these terrible wounds you adopt the last Anglo-Saxon King you adopt uh you adopt Edward Edward the Confessor as the founder Saint you construct this vast Shrine and you originally have vast tomb chests covered with any of you been to Ravenna or any of you been to montreale they were covered in that extraordinary gold Mosaic that you see there The Abbey must before the Reformation had been extraordinary you have this great Arc of gold of the Tomb chests of the medieval kings so it's a coronation church it's a burial church and it is right next to the great palace there was only one place that was actually called The Palace in the Middle Ages and that's the Palace of Westminster and of course that bit hardly survives at all safe for the men because of the fire of 1834 and we pass the Reform Act In 1832 and the thing burns down two years later it's rather like the fate of the Blair government you know you you do all of those things and then there's a bonfire of the vanities um but the but the the bit that survives is a noblest bit which is the Great Hall um which again do you all remember it it's on the same scale as a Victorian railway station it is the largest medieval building north of the Alps it is unbelievable um to begin with it's not quite so impressive as it is now because it was isled they had no means of roofing over that vast space But at the end of The 14th Century in the reign of Richard II you get this wonderful Carpenter Master Carpenter Henry evilly who devises the uh the the hammer beam which enables you to carry with an extraordinary and remember the Gothic architecture of the Middle Ages Knox classical architecture into cocked hat in terms of engineering is staggering engineering skills so this vast space what is it for well it is for two things it is the King's Hall and behind it is the King's Palace and it's where the kings are because remember government then like government now is an occasion it happens from the autumn to the early summer and then everybody goes away it's just like that um and uh and in that period of the of of the usually beginning on the uh usually beginning immediately after the feasts of All Saints and in other words you know uh Halloween and whatever um at the beginning of November is normally when at the full court the Parliament and whatever meet and so the king is resident there uh on and off for the winter months but what else goes on there particularly in the Great Hall and the rooms around it is what again distinguishes England from virtually every other European country it's there or in its vicinities that regularly meets the parliament it's there that there is the exchequer it's there that there are the Law Courts the great common law course Still Still King's bench Queen's bench though Common Pleas has disappeared we still have the extractor whatever this extraordinary continuity of our administrative history so they're all there immediately dependent upon the king drawing their power from the King uh their symbol being the king the Royal Arms and everything else and that's roughly the state of England in terms of its formal government everything within the precinct of Westminster next to the great Abbey where the sanctification of the Monarch takes place all is there all is concentrated in that space it's completely different from what it appears now everything has got high walls around it the Abbey's got high walls the Palaces got high walls all that comes down in the 18th and 19th century and you lay it out in the Fashions of Victorian and Edwardian town planning with your hip Parliament square and open spaces and all the rest so our government and this again is one of the remarkable things about England we have had a Unified Government for a thousand years this distinguishes completely from effectively any substantial European State whatever so we've been centering with all the complaints about centralizing well so tough we've been governed from Westminster since about 1100. um that's what it is right it then changes as virtually everything else in English History changes with the reign of the king that I have spent most of my life studying that is to say with Henry VII the reign of Henry VII is the axial point it's the turning point of English History now Henry VII is a very good King for an axis that sense of girth and grease about him Charles Dickens memorably calls Henry VII a spot of blood and grease upon the history of England so if you think of him as a well-greased axis around which everything turns everything changes with the reign of Henry VII and it changes in a fashion we all have vaguely in our heads the break with Rome the Reformation which is of course brexit being very serious it is the first brexit the issues are identical you're rebelling against Rome Reformation regarding rebelling against the Treaty of Rome brexit Rome the Roman Church was a separate system of law language and office holding exactly like the EU and there were also special taxes so it's you know the the the the the the the the the the the pattern is astonishingly similar and Henry again on the back of the again on the back of the Reformation Henry creates passionate English nationalism Henry is the first king to see England as a single strategic issue and remember we always go on about being an island being an island is no use unless you have a Navy being an island with lots and lots of excellent natural Harbors actually leaves you open to Invasion if you look in the Middle Ages England has invaded every five minutes every change of Dynasty which there are many in the Middle Ages is a product of a European invasion I mean the tutors the dynasty that we think of bizarrely though they're and they're they're Frank they're Franco Welsh they're they're French and Welsh did we we sort of imagined that their English the tutors themselves are there as direct literal results of the French invasion Henry's troops at Bosworth are French the only person who gets a peerage out of Bosworth is a Frenchman the money that fights at Bosworth is French that's what it is um so you've got that's before Henry with Henry with Henry declaring himself the head of the English church with England becoming what is different from what is different from brexit with England becoming the Pariah of Europe having to deal with the passionate resentment of the French and the Spanish and everybody else you see England as potentially invadable and unlike now we were able to protect our Frontier it's quite astonishing with none of the resources of the internet the tutors are actually able to protect the English Frontier you do it in two ways you construct an astonishing talk about buildings a lot you construct an astonishing string of fortifications the whole of the way around England starting in Newcastle this is the Newcastle is Henry's New Castle that that's what it is and the thoughts go the whole of the way down they cluster particularly around where I live now run Dover folkestone and whatever because that's where as we now know you were most prone to be invaded and then they go all the way along the southern coast they go along North Cornwall those lovely castles there where now everybody surfs and they curve round round past Bristol again heavily fortified and finish up at Milford Haven it's one of the most extraordinary schemes of fortification in the world it's done to Henry's personal Direction with people who go and Survey the entire Coastline and we've got Henry's Maps Henry is a great cartographer we have the actual Maps we can see him altering them you can see putting the details on there so you conceive of England as a single strategic problem you again you create along with the along with the stone walls that surround England you create a wooden wall the first serious Navy is Henry the core of Naval organization is Henry the origins of the naval board is Henry but you also create a religious rhetoric and it's on religious come nationalistic rhetoric of England again so modern England alone against the filthy Europeans I remember vividly when I first went abroad I was age 13 my mother was a northern working-class Puritan I had to explain to her that one of the places we're going to go to was Rome the look of absolute Horror in her face and she couldn't quite convey what she really felt to me after all 13 year old boy I still remember the injunction wash your hands they have very funny toilet habits and the the whole of that anti-romanism the the whole of that sense of distance because remember in the Middle Ages we are all always part of a cross-channel Empire this is the moment at which it breaks but Henry breaks in another way he doesn't simply break from Continental Europe really the first time you can think of England as separate from Continental Europe is the early 16th century I mean if you think of medieval England up to that point we're always part of an androvin Empire Henry the fifths would be Empire the great object of English policy is to conquer France right so the channel is not a the Channel's not a barrier it's a means of communication it's with Henry that becomes a barrier but the other enormous change and the change so that's a change in our foreign policy the change which comes about in our domestic policy is within Westminster and within Westminster the first great change is there's a huge fire we know surprisingly little about it but it burns down the whole of the Palace of Westminster apart from the Great Hall and the complex of rooms around it and from that point onwards no King ever lives in the Royal Palace of Westminster instead the Palace of Westminster although it's still called The Palace is still Royal is still vested in the Chamberlain of the great Chamberlain exactly as it is now is occupied by what it's occupied by Parliament the Law Courts and the exchequer right the king is never there except for the state opening of parliament that's the only time he's there so where does the King live where does Henry live for the first nearly 20 years of the Reign the answer is that he commutes from Greenwich and like many of us you know you can't be bothered with Central London so he goes off into a salubrious suburb which is called Greenwich he has a lovely New Palace built by his father and his mother which is not the modern Greenwich the modern Greenwich is a creation of the 17th and the 18th century as the Royal naval hospital but it's exactly the same site and he can get central London as fast as you can now if you wait for the Turning of the tide you can be Road up the river by your super strong rowers who can actually strong enough actually to drop to the only Bridge there's there's there's London Bridge and you've got to be very strong to get through there but the river to you what you do is there's no point in Remember the Time the tent is completely tidal there's no at this point there's no point in trying to row against the tide you wait for the tide to turn and then it sweeps you up and you can be in Whitehall in less than half an hour you try getting from Greenwich to to Westminster by any means of Transport apart from a helicopter now and you can't do it it's only by the river so the king uses that and instead his great Minister Cardinal Woolsey takes the relatively modest Town Palace of the archbishops of York and transfer transforms it into this huge Palace which becomes colloquially known as the Palace of Whitehall and when Woolsey Falls all his treasures are confiscated by the king and by of course his point um I was going to say I'm going to say caribou and I meant Anne Berlin um is very much on the scene and she goes with Henry to inspect the loot of the Fallen Minister which is displayed you know like trophies of room all his vast Treasures of tapestry gold silver plate whatever are arrayed within the Palace of Whitehall for Henry to inspect and confiscate and seize because do we all remember why we are why are we so well governed in the 16th century as opposed to the 21st because being in power had penalties Now it only has rewards in the 16th century if you got it wrong you were not made a European commissioner as you used to be or you were not promoted to the house of laws you were if you were lucky you had your only your head cut off if you were unlucky I will not describe the process publicly it's it's beyond decent as this is it's not what you can do in in family viewing time though I once organized a very good reproduction of it for Channel 4 but there's an entirely different matter the makeup girl had unfortunately a well-equipped boyfriend who's then we could use cast cut to take take Jerry castings of the relevant bits but anyway um the we really really didn't want to go there and but all your possessions were confiscated as well that's why we were well governed there were penalties for failure as well as rewards for success and until we have those we won't be but that's another matter um so Woolsey Falls and what Henry does then is construct this new vast Palace it stretches from the ministry of Defense right across our modern White Hall which is then called King Street with what was then the longest rum in Europe it was the hundred and odd yard long privy Gallery which stretched from the saint James's park side of the palace which I call the Royal playpen that was where all the sports were it's where there was the jousting it's where there was the tennis play it was where there was The Bear Pit and the cockpit and the cockpit becomes the basis of the treasury this seems to be very appropriate but anyway the whole Palace have this narrow because not even Henry VIII could get rid of a right-of-way there's a right of way that lies through the palace and we've got these two complexes remember the river runs north south at this point so the residential section is on the river side of the palace the playpen side um the the playpen aspect of the Palaces on the St James's side and there are bridges just like Venice just like just like um uh Florence if you think in Florence again there are the corridorio that there are the elevated corridors that link the various buildings again there's an enormous one that runs from the Vatican to the Castello santangelo says that popes can run away when things get rough and they can hide in the security right there Castel santangelo is is a Hadrian's tomb you can actually hide behind those vast Roman walls and Henry has again uh gateways that either end uh with with corridors going over them and the the privy Gallery this the key room of the palace is carried over um in in the uh in the Holbein gate at fame the famous gate with the busts of the tuna monarchs on it and it actually runs from the park side right over to the Riverside with at the end of the gallery all these policies the access is from water it's from the Thames so you've got this Landing stage that takes you to the Thames and the Thames remember being completely different from what it is now why does the Thames freeze so much it is not global warming ladies and gentlemen it is because it's shallow it's because it's not embanked it's twice the width that it is now it's a sprawling flowing stream with most of the time when the river is not at high tide you've got swampy Banks of dozens of yards on either side an essential stream in the middle you get you you get the idea so every town Palace has got a land it's very London is very very difficult to believe it's very like Venice the principal mean of Transport is water and you you have exactly as in Venice you've got um you've got organized Guilds of watermen that that charge fixed prices you've got where is and you've got heavier boats and all the rest of it so there we are what does Henry do with this Palace some of you may have studied history uh you may even have done Tudor history you may even be familiar and let's just do a quick test does the name Jeffrey Elton mean anything to anybody ah you see does the word Tudor revolution mean anything to you Paul Jeffrey my teacher was under this bizarre notion that when Henry VII ruled there was a bureaucratic Revolution which decided that monarchy was redundant and instead we were ruled by committee I always asked Jeffrey when was this fact explained to Henry VII and I think it's about three minutes before um Thomas Cromwell is executed by a deliberately inexperienced executioner with a very Rusty ax it does take quite some time um Jeffrey's theory of a revolution in government the idea of excluding the most powerful King Henry VIII is the English of the 14th the most powerful King in English History the most obviously monarchical the idea you excluded him from power is preposterous but Elton was right about one thing what happens under Henry VII in this new Palace of Whitehall you develop new instruments of government you develop first of all the office of Secretary of State the one that Cromwell Hells except then it's just called royal secretary and you develop the power of the council the privy Council which becomes a formalized body neither the secretary ship nor the or the privy Council are organized under Jeffrey and Hillary mantel's favorite by the way Hillary mantel is just Jeffrey Hilton with adjectives the the entire account of Cromwell and Thomas Moore is derived directly from Jeffrey Elton the fact that Cromwell is this forming modernizing basically quite liberal here and Thomas Moyes is nasty you know medieval Catholic this is entirely the parody of the two of them that is produced by Jeffrey Elton it's unfair to both of them but anyway that aside um the so what what what what what you get then is the creation by Henry in the last seven years of his reign of a conscious new Royal Center of government in the Palace of Whitehall the seat of the pivot council is directly next to the king's bed chamber the king's secretaries and Secretary of State isn't the Secretary of State he is the King's secretary and his rooms are in the arch by which the gallery goes over King Street so all of these people cluster directly around the king the privy Council cannot meet when the king is not in the same building the king is never there but it derives its powers directly from him what does this mean it means you've got two palaces with two different views of monarchy in the White Hall you have the king the actual living fleshly Monarch with these new instruments the secretary ship and the council which are designed to give direct immediate executive power to the king himself to respond immediately to the Royal will in the old Palace of Westminster you will these are also Royal I mean still today in the House of Commons even though the Monarch cannot enter it what appears over the Throne of the speaker the Royal Arms what appears over every judge's seat on which the Monarch cannot sit even though it's called Queen's bench the Royal Arms but this is a different view of monarchy in the Palace of Westminster the Monarch is not an individual he or she because it becomes she quite soon is a representative of the normal way of doing business it's a symbol of the community whatever that means governing itself so do you see what I mean you've now got two very different views of monarchy you've got one which is collective which is to do with English History and all the rest of it you've got another which is immediate Lively personal obviously the two are quite likely to conflict and Henry again produces the grounds why they conflict what I've talked about religion clearly when Henry makes himself Supreme head of the church it is the can we all just get this right we are familiar with the notion on some of most of us are that the queen is supreme governor of the church and in the days when she's still toppled around you saw her with a handbag walking a pace in front of the Archbishop of Canterbury it all looks very gentle gentle womanly and genteel do you know what Henry VIII called himself Supreme head on Earth only under Christ right that's what it meant it was in fact a Royal theocracy it was a royal pain he he takes full papal Powers but of course that enormously expands royal power from this point onwards the king claims to rule over people's Souls as well as their bodies but at that point they were very odd people there our ancestors weren't they they cared more about their souls and their bodies so this becomes a matter of supreme conflict as Catholic fights Protestant and as Protestants above all fight each other and the Monarch particularly from Henry's daughter uh Elizabeth who is indeed Protestant of course um is necessarily so in reaction to her sister Mary um Elizabeth is a deeply conservative and old-fashioned Protestant I mean Elizabeth above all is intelligent enough to know you couldn't have a genuinely Protestant monarchy because there's no ceremony Protestants are really bad at ceremony hopeless ceremony the Catholics are jolly good at it and Elizabeth keeps virtually the whole Repertory well again this was something ioma discovered well into my career all Royal ceremony of the Middle Ages is religious there is hardly any secular ceremony at all the ceremonial year follows the church his year the greatest moment of Royal ceremony isn't a royal birthday or anything like that it's a feast of epiphany when the Monarch plays the role of three wise men and you've still got a Vestige of it in the chapel Royal at St James's when a gentleman Usher on The Feast of the Epiphany of the 6th of January still offers up gold frankincense and myrrh on the chapel of of on the altar of the of of James's the tiny well quite small Chapel that you have there so the Monarch then assumes in the one hand enormous power but on the other hand it is profoundly divisive and Elizabeth in taking over this highly ceremonialized Religion she loves music she has a magnificent Choir in her Chapel world the problem is all of the composers are Catholic and England is rabid against Rome you know like my mother so you have this and it becomes the only monocle actually knows how to deal with it here's James the first James the first is the only monarch between Elizabeth and William William the William III who doesn't actually change religion otherwise every Monarch comes along and uses the Royal Supremacy to switch the style of religion James's good sense to keep it as it was under Elizabeth but then of course Charles comes along is catastrophic son with the appalling record of the House of Stuart and in many ways I'd be quite pleased if the Scots went independent I mean we've got rid of that catastrophic episode and I'm being very serious I'm very serious the the the most disastrous period of relations in in the bad relations between England and Scotland is when we share a common Monarch but have separate parliaments in the 17th century there's a period of absolutely repeated War of the most Savage thought in which I'm fortunate the Scots win and that is a genuine design you know the the Hideous Puritan revolution in 17th century England is a result of a Scottish Conquest the conquest of Newcastle and whatever again it's not normally presented like that but that that is actually what happens so it becomes profoundly divisive Charles the first goes to an even more ceremonialized form of religion under the guidance of Archbishop Lord and so on and that that leads to I think it's this division of religion which brings the Parliamentary structures of Westminster into the dramatic clash with the royal power of Whitehall that is backing that sort of new style religion and that's what the Civil War is about I mean the the notion that the Civil War is a class conflict that it's driven by Marxism is like everything else in Marxism it's for the birds it is simply not true the people who fight on either side of the Civil War are of exactly the same social class Origins and the great leaders of the Civil War to begin with our you know the ones opposing the king are high Nobles including the ones that have been created by the by by the tutors so you get then this clash in the 17th century between the two palaces the two different views of kingship now this is really important again we know most of us know that briefly England does become a republic we you know the French are always so late at these things we execute a king in 1649. they have to wait until this is a very slow notion and they have to wait till the 1790s we put a king on trial but there's astonishing public ice we'd also done it before we do it with Mary Queen of Scots it is you know it's completely revolutionary concept not that you bump a king off everybody does that but you actually subject them to a formal process of trial in the name of that other view of monarchy that Westminster view of monarchy that the king is about proper procedure and what you say is the real King Charles II has betrayed the task of the ideal King the crown so Charles has betrayed the crown Whitehall has betrayed Westminster which is of course why Charles is executed in front of the Palace of Whitehall it's why he's led to his execution through the throne room of the palace which we call the banqueting house absolutely deliberately to humiliate him and to repudiate that vision of monarchy okay we won't go into the into the detail it's too complicated but as you know in the later 17th century uh wisely unlike the French we decisively repudiate Revolution uh though what we did was more Savage than the French significant parts of the French crown jewels the the Manda gustis of Charlemagne the crown and whatever survived the revolution because there was a sense of historicity of History the entire medieval English regalia is destroyed there is not a single fragment that survives the myth of the prince really the myth of the black princes Ruby and the Stuart emerald and what have a total myths everything every coronation regalia is a late 17th century invention it's a post 1660 invention everything everything completely anyway so we have a restoration but there is this profoundly profoundly conflicted reign of Charles II there is then the even more conflicted reign of James II when he tries to reimburse Catholicism on the country and what happens well there is another Revolution the revolution that really sticks the Glorious Revolution which establishes what we've all been taught to believe is this wonderful thing called the supremacy of parliament now there's a real problem with that Parliament ain't supreme but we'll investigate that in a moment so you establish this thing called the supremacy of parliament now again let's just be amongst friends and honest parliaments cannot the notion that Parliament is sovereign the notion that Parliament is able to rule was exposed magnificently when burco tried to make himself Oliver Cromwell the notion that a representative assembly can rule is a total of absurdity you can't what you've got to remember is that every European there's nothing peculiar about the Antiquity of the English Parliament every major European state has forms of Representative Estates right the peculiarity about England is that it survives and the reason Parliament survives in England is exactly the opposite reason for example that was induced by the Supreme Court and its Preposterous ruling on the Royal Pro on boris's prorogation um that the parliament is there to hold the government to account in other words to make a nuisance of itself to do a burqo no it's not Parliament is created not by weak not by the reaction against wheat monarchs it's created by strong monarchs it's created by Edward the first and Edward III why because it's a convenient the English discovered this extra you know we're quite a polite people so in the same way in England you sort of say sorry and please and the French just say no um that that in this exact it was exactly the same way in which things were done with tax in France you were taxed at the point of a sword right in England you ask people you get Parliament to agree and you know what actually people pay much more and there was also the astonishing business which was virtually unique to England that our nobility and gentry actually paid tax in France paying tax was Bad Manners it was only the lower classes I mean being deadly serious it's only the lower classes that pay tax the entire aristocracy inability and remember the French aristocracy is gigantic the English is 250. the French IS 250 000. all the richest people in the country are exempt from tax didn't he Wonder France constantly goes bankrupt it's why the English have got an Empire and the French don't um this despite the fight no seriously despite this is why England remember England is 8 million France is 28. how does the state of 8 million defeat a state of 28. it is because you've got a completely different system of public Finance right okay so but the French had had a parliament too but it just gets in the way so it's abolished this is true of the representative assemblies all over Europe uniquely in England Parliament makes itself useful and therefore indispensable but there is a problem as we saw with the parliament of burco and I hope he's not a friend of anybody the Dreadful Dominic grieving or the rest of it um Parliament needs managing and the person who works out how to manage it who is the key figure in our story is the hero villain of the 18th century so what you've got in the with the Glorious Revolution of 1688 you were subordinated the monarchy you have deprived the Monarch above all of the capacity to change religion up to this point England had followed the European Monarch model that the religion of the people is the religion of the king the English are unique in suddenly discovering wouldn't it be much easier if the religion of the king is a religion of the people that's what 1688-89 is all about so you do that but there is still the problem of how do you manage this newly empowered Parliament the answer ladies and gentlemen is corruption Robert Walpole does this as he Robert Walpole invents the Office of Prime Minister and what is the Office of Prime Minister the Office of Prime Minister exists to do two things it exists to control the Monarch on behalf of parliament so the office effectively assume the Office of Prime Minister has vested in it all the actual Royal prerogatives remember we are not ruled by legislation we are ruled by executive Fiat we are ruled in the name of the royal prerogative but the whole of that prerogative is vested in the prime minister with his absolute power and discretion so what what was happened is the Royal prerogative is transferred to the prime minister so is that there is never any clash between what Parliament wants in other words what the majority in the Commons wants and what the Monarch wants because find a lip the Monarch has got to do what Parliament wants right so that's one half of the job of the Prime Minister that's controlling the monarchy on behalf of parliament but the other job of the Prime Minister is to control Parliament on behalf of the monarch and the way you do that is by using the huge resources of Royal patronage to bribe persuade employ divert send off to Empire the members of the ruling class who sit in the house of laws and the House of Commons so you can manage Parliament and that ladies and gentlemen is broadly how we are still governed and the whole fuss that we've been seeing in recent weeks about doing the role of corruption second jobs you know Jeff and Jeffrey Cox and all the rest of it is a direct replication of Robert Walpole and that regime but it reminds us of several other things and it means we've got to understand the Office of Prime Minister not as it's presented in this childish account uh the unit of constitutional textbook a count of British Politics the Office of Prime Minister isn't the executive it is the real monarchy we've also got to remind ourselves that many countries have two monarchs have had two monarchs we have two monarchs we have a symbolic I mean haven't we all noticed that who the prime minister is the most important factor in how we're governed right much more important than which political party it is it is the personality and the Ambitions and drive and whatever of the person or not in the case of Theresa May if you have a vacuum you know I mean you will you will all remember I'm sure uh the wicked Churchill on the subject of Clement athlete that an empty taxi pulled up in Downing Street and the Prime Minister got out well that applies much more forcibly to raise a May doesn't it really um except I think it'd be a very small car it wouldn't even be a taxi and would probably break down um but the but but but but you would say it's a personality of the prime minister so we've got to understand then we've got two monarchs exactly as Japan did Japan until the Meiji restoration of the 1860s you two monarchs you had somebody was very similar to the queen that is the Mikado in a separate Capital Kyoto and you then had the Shogun who was the actual equivalent of prime minister except that was hereditary in Tokyo which is why you have the two railway lines connecting Kyoto and Tokyo again you see geography is so useful for understanding power once you actually begin to think of these things seriously or similarly in Merovingian France you have the long-haired Kings wonderful name isn't it but like Boris really yes but there you have the long-haired Kings who are carted around they're sacred there dragged around in carts and they appear to be drunk and drugged most of the time and I'm not referring to bars and you've and you've then got the the mayors of the palace who are the future Carol engines people people like Pepin and Pepin later on Charlemagne who actually wield real power and they eventually get rid of the meta Vengeance we've done something different we've done just exactly what the Japanese did we've which is again one of the extraordinary similarities between British and Japanese history we've kept these two things going we've kept a monarchy that represents historical continuity in the formal way of doing things but we also have this and we have a genuine Monarch with the powers of a monarch and of course this means surrounded by a court Downing Street is a court it's a palace there is a a queen there's a queen consort the the way again the people who Governors and not members of the cabinet the cabinet deciphers it hardly meets do we all realize this it barely meets none of the decisions about kobit were taken in the cabinet there are a handful of special advisors there are people we can talk about them more easily and the Blair people like Peter mandelson Peter mandelson is an absolute courtship figure a sort of trail of gilded slime behind him you know um the the the the the the the key the key figure in the court of Henry VII this inner Court of Henry VII the equivalent again it's the Downing Street staff the equivalent figure in the court of Henry VIII was called the groom of the stool and he wiped the Royal bottom which seems to me to be in a very precise analogy he also handled the slush fund he handled the Mistresses and he handled the secret stamp of the king's signature it just sounds exactly combination of the roles of mandelson and Campbell um uh on on on the Blair um and again it accounts for the extraordinary role of somebody like Carrie Simmons you know she manifestly is more important than any Prime than any cabinet minister why are we having the extraordinary who are in Glasgow I mean read anything Boris wrote before two years ago and you will find he's a complete climate skeptic though we need to understand this and finally I'm afraid ladies and gentlemen we need to realize that the notion that Parliament is Sovereign is for the birds it is merely a legal fiction what Parliament is essentially what House of Commons is essentially is an electoral college for the position of prime minister that's what it is but it acts as an emergency long stop whereas in America the Electoral College which is the thing that formally chooses the president and you know as you all realize this don't you the president is not chosen by the popular ballot it's chosen by a weighted electoral college that is weighted towards the smaller States against the bigger States that's what you have to do with the proper Federal Constitution it's why we cannot have a Federated British Isles because here we've got this overwhelming size of England as against everybody else it just just just does not work but in in in England but the moment at the moment the electoral college has elected the president it is never met since the revolution it it has no real existence our Parliament is different it is an electoral college but if things go badly wrong as with Theresa May it can as it were reconvene and removed and again the whole notion that we have this thing called the separation of powers is for the birds where is our government it sits in The Ledger Etc the executive controls the legislature that's how Parliament works and finally democracy oh dear but you see democracy is a deeply problematic form of government the history of democracy and republics is a catastrophe Only One Republic has lasted longer than five minutes and that's America and they drove they strove with every possible effort despite all those Declarations of uni Universal freedom of all the rest of it to make sure that the people enjoyed as little direct power as possible and that's more or less the situation we have but there's enough you know we sort of feel we sort of have a role and in arguably we have more row than we should because far too many modern governments simply exist as permanent election campaigns you can only really understand the government particularly as Tony Blair as a permanent election campaign um so that I'm afraid maybe a little too serious with occasion if which case I apologize but I think we do need to start having I'm a campaign on a campaign at the moment that we need hard facts and reality and we've existed in comfortable Haze and blur and telling nice little stories to ourselves I don't like nice little stories I think we're adults and I think we should contemplate it and I'm delighted to be challenged and take questions that can be as abusive as you like thank you very much foreign now this is very is President XI now is that how it's pronounced I'm delighted to learn I am delighted to learn how do you pronounce x i yes right especially the way forward it could be this is a terrible thought what I said at the beginning of the covet Affair was get a Chinese virus and finish with the Chinese Society and we've seen serious moves in that direction as my friend Jonathan sumption has said repeatedly lockdown is wholly illegal antithetical to the traditions of common law and has been passed with scant regard even to parliamentary procedure um despite as well as it's catastrophic we now have a government debt this is on the same scale as the Second World War it is deranged because it was a very minor virus I mean frankly I mean you compare with the black death you'll know death saw 25 in the first wave eliminating half the population by the time it's finished this is the blip the damage of covid was a self-inflicted damage but that's a different matter but it does raise these questions and we have got as always I am a historian I'm not a prophet the great test with China is very simple what China has taught us what China since Deng has taught us is that the whole notion that we had that lies at the basis of Western policy is anybody familiar with the work of Francis fukuyama nobody's ever been more appropriately named um the the the the the essay on the end of History arguing that the init there wasn't after the fall of the Berlin wall and Russia the Communist Russia there was an inevitable Triumph of liberal democracy and liberal capitalism what we have discovered with deng's China is you you can have an unbelievably productive economy without any political freedom that is a terrifying thought because the only thing we have is freedom the reason that we created remember modernity is invented in England quite simple England from from Newton onwards modernity is invented here in the same way the British Empire is the beginnings of globalization these things are just these things are just facts this is not empty boasting or whatever it is a simple fact Voltaire who is one of the very few Frenchmen who have lived in England and actually understood England acknowledges the fact straight off um so there is that but but but it was based on an idea of freedom that there is a relationship between a free society and a functioning market economy China showed that's not true the enormous question and the terrifying question is can China innovate without freedom if you actually look at the history of China did anybody see the first emperor exhibition the British museum for me it was one of the great experiences I went around with the Jeremy Paxman do you mean that was extraordinary the language I cannot repeat but never mind um but what was striking about the first emperor exhibition was it was this wonderful the first Emperor's Chariot you know about 800. um the first Emperor's Chariot is more sophisticated in its springing than anything that Western Europe can produce before the faten of the Regency period of the early 19th century but China just keeps on making that until 1940. in the same way that that ancient Egypt with this astonishing level of technological sophistication just keeps on with it we are the first civilization to have incrementally changed to have constantly innovated right the question is going to be can China innovate without freedom if China can innovate without Freedom we're finished simple as that next question what yeah oh we've got a microphone yes that would be great would somebody pass it on yeah yeah that's true thank you very much Josh that's very kind how do you see the end for Queen Carrie Berlin how do I see the end for Queen Carrie how do I say the end of Queen Carrie how would I like to see the end of Queen Carrie um I think I think the president of Anne Boleyn should be followed absolutely but um and bearing in mind how Boris was treated previous wives and Mistresses it would not surprise me um she's doing something profoundly dangerous which is visibly to interfere in politics and as a totally non-elected figure and even even people like Sherry Blair Sherry Booth were not as blatant as she is and the English do not like it annberlin was hated Margaret de bonjour was hated some of the queens of the student Henrietta Mariah was hated because they did that and it's a profoundly dangerous thing but you see it is because Downing Street is a court sorry that's what it is and in a court inevitably the woman especially when it's the younger attractive highly fertile carefully producing lots of no no no the power of a woman to produce children and to trap a man has been deployed with immense kind of logical skills come on every man here knows what's going on it is it is it is it is it is the forceps on the track you know uh isn't it I mean that's what it is and then please tell me if I'm wrong but I mean it does seem to me to be visibly the case but it's because it's a court I mean if it were if it were a properly run government like Thatcher look at the invisibility of Dennis he may have the parody of him is just sort of quaffing um uh you know very strong genes well there was a measure of Truth Gins were very strong indeed not quite as strong as her whiskers but equally he was you know he deliberately does not play any public role um she does and there will be a price and either he will pay it or she will pay it or more likely they both will next question yeah if Henry and Boris took us out of Europe who's going to take us back in can you just repeat that a little more clearly embarrassed if Henry and Boris took us out of Europe who takes us back in to continue the trend of somebody else oh if if Henry and Boris take us out of Europe who will take us back in um again I'm not a prophet and I do think that the and I find myself observing what happened in the referendum with enormous interest I'll again be quite honest I voted out I think that the structures of the EU are French Napoleonic they're hostile to English common law uh they also privileged a franco-german hegemony which profoundly injurious to British interests that's that's another matter but the um the uh the the where where I was surprised was I thought that the habits of the EU I thought the fact that the whole of if you like the professional class the whole expert class came down in favor of remaining within the EU would carry the day but then of course I Was a Fool wasn't I because I know as a historian that the English unlike the Scots the Scots put up with a presbyterian Presbytery which is why they put up with the dreadful woman who was running the place now can you imagine can you very much you can you imagine England having a politician like her he would not be tolerated for one second that awful whining hectoring but if you had Presbyterian ministers remember Scotland I mean Scotland as late as 1690 a boy is hanged for denying the existence of the devil it's a priest-ridden society which is why they pay so much attention to the professions the professions of the direct inheritors of the power of priests when the Scots having conquered England at Newcastle in the first Civil War try to force the English Parliament to impose a presbyterian system on England the English Parliament does it nominally but the Scottish representative Leslie in London comes up this wonderful phrase the English have only got a lame erastian Presbytery that means the state still controls the church the English Gentry we're going to be told what to do by some scrofulus jumped up Little Priest who'd been to Oxbridge you know they were gentlemen they were going to be dictated to by some some spectacle-wearing Little Nerd um the proper behavior of the public school sorted this kind of thing out in seconds um and it's a very very different set of attitudes so very very different set I'm being I'm you know I'm expressing it humorously but I'm trying to get a real fundamental points and an enormous part of the reaction against of uh the the reason for the out vote was first the rootedness of our history the sense from Henry VII onwards that were different from Europe but the channel I would argue is the widest strip of water in the world what is meant by the public interest changes on either side of the channel the the French notion of the public why can the French build a railway in five seconds because the French notion of the public interest is something that's discerned by Monsieur Minister it's a top down France is an entirely deductive culture we are an inductive culture the public interest how do you establish the public interest in England many of you will know you have a public inquiry and everybody argues with each other and then you don't take a decision and if you do as with hs2 everybody whinges in wails for the next 20 years which is why we're a free country but we're very bad at building Railways but but there are these there are these kind of profound differences which are at work there's also of course that the the voting so it was a vote for Henry VII's I expected to waken up at the night of the referendum the referendum result recognizing that the king that I don't idolize Henry's a monster but the king who in whose Reign I'd fundamentally still lived that the rain was finally over I wakened up that morning to realize Henry VII was still on the throne and and the the fundamental changes that he brought about were still there but it's again it's something else it's the rebellion of the Tradesman against the professional it's the rebellion of the chaps who do things mainly men against the women who tell them what to do it's a sex this is what so much of sorry but again we must call Things by their proper names and the what has happened is this is this is what the whole business of leveling up it's what the shift in the vote of the north is about it is the reaction against the bossiness of the professional classes because remember you have teachers now who think they know what should be taught not the teachers you have policemen who decide what is an offense and not the law you have midwives who are so Keen to impose natural childbirth that they kill babies and so there is this Rebellion against a professional dictatorial Elite and these are all bound up in that process so I think the person who took us back into the common market or the EU would be very foolish and would not last very long and I can see no circumstances I can see very few certain unless there is actual economic collapse which I don't believe and the only reason it would be that would be climate scare anymore uh yes I think we've got to have a lady after the rude things that I've said so here is your opportunity for Revenge going back to the Middle Ages were you speak into the microphone going back to the Middle Ages yeah um my understanding is that um medieval monarchs could only impose a new tax with the permission of parliament yes that's right is that right so how did that come about and is that different to the situation in Europe yeah completely um taxing this is why the French are completely happened to get rid of the Estates General and continue imposing tax because the politically Elite don't pay taxes in France the absolute rule until the revolution is only those who can't pay pay tax and there's something there's so there's something again we've got to understand this there is something deeply peculiar about the English governing class that they are willing to pay tax and it's one of the reasons why they think they've got the right to control government because they pay for it um but it re I mean sorry it really is important we understand this the power to raise tax by the power of parliament to agree to taxation is specifically given to it partly by Edward the first but especially by Edward III to fight his great Wars against France what we have to understand is but again we teach history so badly England is a violent expansionist hugely successful military power and as with Rome there is a direct relationship between freedom at home and aggressive conquering expansion abroad this is as true in the Middle Ages you know how how do the English again manage to fight as this tiny country how do you largely conquer France well there are two reasons you've got a much more effective system at state finance a much more effective taxation but the bulk of the taxation that pays for the Hundred Years War is exactly the same as the Arab countries of the 1970s you basically impose a hugely High export Duty on wool which is effectively a monopoly product so the people who pay for the war are the poor buggers in Continental Europe are being duffed up by the English they they remember the figures are astonishing that customs duty on wall is one-third advaloren now there's a level of modern Taxation and they're able to get away with it but it's it is the the reason Kings do it is because it enables them to do what they want in the same way Henry VII gives Parliament or uses Parliament to break with Rome so he effectively gives in that sense gives Parliament not only to control over taxation but control over religion but he's leading it he's shaping it are you following me in this exactly the same in exactly the same way that Edward III was leading shaping the war effort um and the the the problem of course becomes when those powerful Visionary kings are succeeded by fools and weaklings and Scots um you know the the the stewards are utterly desire I mean really you know one just has to face it the the the uh with I suspect with rather good luck I mean I can imagine nothing worse than the monarchy that would have emerged in England if Edward VI that lived we'd have been we'd have been like Sweden at its worst you would have been this radical Protestant state with no see Edward Edward again is a convinced radical Protestant you would have had no music you would you'd have completely destroyed the tradition of church music you would have stripped out every single surviving image of the Middle Ages would have nothing you on the country we'd be very good at Latin um another would be compensations and you you but I think you would have actually had Imperial expansion much earlier Edward Edwards saw himself as a Future warrior Prince so but but what happens is of course a completely different story Henry is succeeded by a minor by by Mary who married it was actually in many ways an exceedingly good Monarch issued a single failure she failed to produce a child if Mary had produced a child there wouldn't have been a Reformation we'd become part of the Habsburg Empire um you know it's all things hang upon threads there are these big patterns that I've been drawing but there's also the absolute importance of the specificity the moment the accident English History turns at the moment in the summer of of 1555 that Mary realizes and well Mary doesn't realize but everybody else realizes that Mary isn't going to have a child and the rumors circulate in London that after having allegedly been about to give birth since Easter by the time it's the middle of August something's gone wrong and and though the rumors that she's been delivered of a French lap dog or a monkey and the entire humiliation of the monarchy but it hangs on that sort of thread that sort of threat this will happen with the last question um yes oh well actually you've got your hand up first can you wait for the microphone well couldn't you argue that um the power of parliament stems from the fact that Henry VII um used all the money that was available and every king after him was broke that Henry I didn't effectively used all the money every King that came after Henry was broke because he was broke they were well again we've got to be careful here the taxi what Henry does cromwell's original intention when there was the confiscation of the monasteries was that you were going to endow the monarchy with a vast landed estate that would actually make Parliament redundant Jeffrey Elton doesn't realize this that was cromwell's original intention it was to make Parliament redundant by endowing the monarchy which he would have done this if you kept the monasteries you know whatever it is the court of the wealth of England uh you would a a monarchy endowed with that but Henry blows it because he wants a nice war against France and so you blow the lot and from that point onwards you have no Monarch who establishes a national purpose if you look at Edward III he establishes a national purpose which is defeating France and he persuades parliament of the fact from that point on was Elizabeth might have had if she'd been prepared to mount a Protestant Crusade but she won't and the result is the tax base erodes steadily until William III from the moment of William III in the Glorious Revolution from 1689 what happens is immediately there is a total transformation of the English system of public Finance Parliament votes substantial revenues the English are able to borrow at three to five percent at the time when France is borrowing it up to 20. and the result is that England defeats France in uh at Blenheim in 1705 and is then able to make Mount this astonishing series of Victories right through the 18th century the first world war as Churchill says it's the Seven Years War of of of of uh of um 1756 to 1763 that's the war in which the France loses India and Canada and if you go into the Guild Hall of the city of London you will see what it's all about William Pitt is there William Pitt the Elder and it's about the relationship between the city and War 18th century England discovers how to wage war at a profit this is the key to the 18th century this is why England dominates the world because of this astonishing Financial machine on the one hand the fact you can borrow these tiny rates of interest because you always England has never gone bust since since some since since 1689 every other European country has done so several times the French ruined themselves trying to defeat England after the war of 1760 the the Seven Years War that's why the French intervene on behalf of the American revolutionaries and it's a delight to acknowledge that's why they have a revolution they bankrupt themselves supporting the Americans and you know you had the idiot Marian Antoinette wandering through Versailles saying and she found when the so I'm sorry the bankruptcy of the English Monarchy as the 17th century English public finances from the uh from the uh from 17 from 1689 are unique in Europe in their profitability and in their sustainability and the lowneness of interest rates and the absolute solidity all the things we talk about consoles and all the rest of them you know why London turns into the world financial center all sustained by this structure of a parliament and Monarch bound together by the position of premier why are you smiling I mean sorry that is what happened well no so sorry but isn't it yeah good no no no but but sorry but sorry it really is just it's we've got so we've again I I sorry I I I've been I've been I hope occasionally light and and funny and whatever but I'm being deadly serious in this we have got an appalling record in teaching and understanding our history appalling it is either rejected and mocked or it's sentimentalized neither is appropriate for adults I've been trying talk this evening as overall adult and if we again it's not it's not simply you know to compound but there is an element of that we need to understand and we also need to understand that despite the fact that what I've been describing is not remotely moral or virtuous Notions of morality and virtue barely enter into it but Heavens does it work human being we're not perfect animals were Rough and Ready and were driven by lost and were driven by greed and were driven by Envy and occasionally virtue and exactly what's going on this evening we're a mixed bag we've got a system which is a pretty well perfectly functioning mixed bag thank you very much no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no

Channel: David Starkey Talks

Views: 106,956

Keywords: David Starkey, History, Henry VIII, The Tudors

Id: EVOJ59yEfRs

Length: 77min 17sec (4637 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 15 2021