I'm John Batchel with Professor Jonathan Healy, whose new book is The Blood in Winter, England on the brink of Civil War, 1642.

This is a backstory to the American Revolution, in addition to all the other, the tumult of the last 400 years.

We need to be very careful about who are the contestants.

We have Charles I, who is a king by right.

He is the younger son of James I, the man they believe was going to be the king.

Henry died suddenly at the age of 18,

breaking the heart of his father, James I. James died in 1625. Charles has been king since 1625

and has been up against Parliament for some occasions beforehand, including not calling

Parliament for, I think, 11 years a long time because

he didn't want to deal with him. However, he's now riding back to a parliament that's very much

in session, and we need to meet the expectations of Parliament. Jonathan, it's divided into two

pieces, the commons and the lords, but very profoundly different

attitude towards each other than that we know now. What power did the lords have? What power

did the commoners have between them? And what was their position of Charles? Was it united in any

fashion? Well, at this point, unlike today, the commons and the Lords were sort of, you know,

roughly equal partners in many ways. And theoretically, the Lords was superior. But the Lords

was much smaller in terms of numbers than the Commons. The Commons had about 500 members,

the Lords, you know, around about 100.

So, and at this point, a lot of the real kind of political, sort of momentum is coming,

coming from the Commons.

And the, as a general rule in this period, the Commons is more radical than the Lords.

They're more oppositional when it comes to the crown, sorry.

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