Hello and welcome to a history of the United States, Episode 13, The New Aristocracy.

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In addition to that, you also get access to exclusive membership episodes. You can do that by going to the website, the history ofpodcast.com,

and clicking on the PayPal subscription button. James I. D. James I died.

So began the reign of Charles I.

We're not covering British history here.

I am Jamie Redfern, not Jamie Jeffers, after all,

whose British history podcast I fully recommend, by the way.

But we are the history of the United States, so I don't want to say too much about Charles, but we do need to say something. Charles was never supposed to be king.

He was the second son of King James, six years younger than his older brother Henry.

Charles was born in 1600, and would have spent his early years in his older brother Henry. Charles was born in 1600 and would have spent his early

years in his brother's shadow. Everyone was excited about Henry, who was involved with politics

from a young age. He was an early backer of the Virginia Company and supported English colonization efforts. Henry's death in 1612

was a national tragedy, and it pushed Charles into the public eye, a place he never really

wanted to be. He would gain his political education as the 30 years war began to develop

across Europe.

I'm not going to cover that war right now, mostly because I think it would take several

hours of talking to get through it. It's kind of important in what's going on, though,

and in understanding the various diplomatic power plays throughout the middle of the 17th century,

and so I expect I'm going to have to work it in somehow, but that's future Jamie's problem. He's a smart guy, I'm sure

he'll think of something. The very, very, very simple version is that Europe had a war between

...