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Trains, now on Uber. T's and C's apply. Check the Uber app. The key. You're going to do. Hello everyone and welcome to the history of England. This is episode 388,

Runaway Down. Last time there we were folks, girding our loins before the fightingness to come.

This is a phrase I have to say which raises disturbing images in my mind, but look, we were preparing ourselves essentially. We'd heard about

how Charles's constant desire to get involved in secret plans and clever tricks had blown

his chances of building a sympathetic party in both Scotland and England.

The Scottish Commissioners were messed about and finally abandoned Oxford in Dudgeon higher

than Scarfele Pike and went home to look for other friends, where they found

Harry Vane from the English Parliament waiting to talk to them. They will start to discuss a covenant.

The Walla plot in London further solid any remaining trust in his good faith in England.

The Oxford Treaty has failed so that in April 1643, Essex's main army would finally start trundling out of London.

Henrietta Maria is working her way south from Bridlington to arrive in Oxford with arms for Charlie and into the

welcoming arms of Charlie. So here we go. Game on, pistols at dawn. What I'm

going to do is work my way around the country, but just a preliminary word before we do.

As I said last week, the story of the Civil Wars are of a vast number of local conflicts of a full range of sizes from a little tiny

handful of people at all points north of that up to 25,000 plus. To give you a

couple of examples from my own hood. Let me introduce you to one

Samuel Luke. Samuel Luke was the parliamentarian Scoutmaster in the South Midlands

amongst other things and we have still some of his journals remaining.

In 1643 he recorded that some royalist cavaliers appeared in the little village of Nettlebed

which is just a mile down the road from me,

...