Hello everyone and welcome to the History of England episode 300H2, The War of Words.

Last time on the Gum Bleeding Strand, we heard one of those big moments in English history,

thoroughly dramatic, and one of the very best bits in the film Cromwell,

Alex Guinness there, was at his most Alex Guinnessy. Although, you know, Cromwell's was not,

as it was in the film one of the five members, he was just a bloke. Now look, with hindsight,

that looks it. Of course, it must now be war. But sadly, people at the time were nowhere nearer

as clever as we are now, a nation of Mr. and Mrs. Thicke's, basically, and Charles's flight from

London was accompanied instead by the sound of jaws hitting toecaps. Ballstrode Whitelock in

particular was astounded at the King's flight. He confided to his diary that it was,

another, and great wonder to many prudent men, the Thickeying should leave this city.

The place of his and his predecessors is usual residence, where most of his friends and servants

were about him. The magazine of all provisions, both the war and peace. This ought not to have

been done advisedly. Today then, you and I, against talk about the options facing Charles now,

and about how he begins to recover from this disaster of a failed coup. How he and his chumps

built a story, a message and banner around which royalists could gather. The message of this,

and the next episode is this, basically, that Charles had shown himself to incompetent to create

unity in his kingdom and rule accordingly. But sadly and tragically, he was now to prove

that he was not sufficiently incompetent because he proved rather good at building a party around him.

So a big story of the Civil War is that Charles was neither competent enough,

nor incompetent enough to avoid civil war. If he had been too incompetent to create a party,

he might simply have been sidelined. Charles had fled so abruptly that when they arrived at Hampton

Court, none of the beds were made up already for them, and the whole family were forced to sleep

...