September the 11th, 1649. We're in Drocada, Ireland, 30 miles north of Dublin. It's a damp evening but mild, the last vestiges of summer.

The town is surrounded by thick medieval walls, on the battlements the defenders steal themselves.

In the fields to the south have mass 12,000 red-coated men, a ferocious fighting machine, the new model army.

Rochadir is garrisoned with a mixture of troops, Irish Confederates and refugee English

Royalists, all still loyal to the House of Stuart.

Under a white flag a roundhead messenger rides up.

He has a request for Drohada's English governor,

Sir Arthur Aston. For the sake of the defenders lives,

will his lordship agree to a surrender?

The response is yelled down.

Under no circumstances will they entertain such a cowardly notion.

He who could take Drochada, as Aston puts it, could take hell.

The messenger wheels his horse around and digs in his spurs.

Back at his lines he delivers delivers his commander the news.

Lieutenant General Oliver Cromwell nods,

There is work, God's work to be done.

From Noiser, this is the final part of the Cromwell story and this is real dictators. Let's rewind eight months to the beginning of 1649. The execution of the King on January 30th means that England is without a monarch.

Charles the first successors have also been barred from ascending to the throne,

at least until Parliament figures out what it's going to do next.

Professor Claire Jackson.

The Regicide itself is a massive leap in the dark.

I mean the English Parliament put this king on trial

...