The English revolution on screen in the UK
The two executioners waiting on the small scaffold erected outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall were disguised in masks and long grey wigs, adding to the macabre theatricality of the occasion. The wooden platform on which they stood was sprinkled with sand to soak up the blood that would shortly be spilled, and scattered about were staples and lengths of rope to tie down the condemned man in the event he became difficult. An open coffin lay nearby, with a folded black velvet pall. And, of course, there was the block and, beside it, the axe. In the open space below, mounted troopers mingled with the crowd. Soldiers took up position between them and the scaffold. It was a bitterly cold day. That winter the Thames froze.
Early in the afternoon, Charles Stuart, "that man of blood", stepped through one of the Banqueting House's windows and on to the scaffold. Seventeenth-century executions were highly ritualised affairs and the crowd would have known the order of play. There were prayers to be said, farewells to be made and declarations of serenity to be uttered. It was important for everybody that the prisoner made a good death. Charles performed the expected tasks, took off his cloak, tucked his long hair into a cap and laid his head on the low billet of wood. A moment later, he stretched out his arms in a prearranged signal. The first executioner swung the axe; the second held up the severed head for the crowd to see.
Charles I was not the first English king to die violently or to suffer deposition, but this was different. This king of England was put to death for high treason after being convicted of levying an unjust and cruel war against his own subjects. Charles rejected the charges, but though he publicly forgave his enemies he was in no doubt about the historic constitutional and political significance of what was unfolding on that cold winter's day. Speaking of the people he still claimed as his subjects, he said: "I must tell you their liberty and freedom consists in having of government, those laws by which their life
and their goods may be most their own. It is not having a share in government. Sir, that is nothing pertaining to them. A subject and a Sovereign are clear different things."
Charles Stuart was beheaded shortly before 2pm on Tuesday, January 30 1649. A week later, the parliament voted to abolish the House of Lords, and the following day it decided that, having done away with the monarch, it might as well dispense with the institution of monarchy itself. The necessary legislation was enacted within a month and England became officially a republic. The unthinkable had happened: it was, in a phrase from the time
and much used since, "the world turned upside down".
These momentous episodes, and the events surrounding them, are the subject of The Devil's Whore, Channel 4's new four-part drama written by the excellent Peter Flannery, best known for his ground-breaking television serial Our Friends in the North (1996). Any attempt to dramatise a 20-year period of such turbulent, crowded and confusing events is fraught with difficulty for the film-makers. Inevitably, much has been left out and much of what remains has been simplified. This is what drama on such an immense canvas has to do - there is no other way. Some of Flannery's choices will doubtless be questioned. Where are John Pym, the Earl of Bedford, Sir Thomas Fairfax, Denzil Holles and Edward Hyde? Why show the attempted arrest of the "five members" but not Pride's Purge, the army's forcible exclusion of the king's supporters from parliament. Why show Edward Sexby and not Colonel John Hutchinson? Why is the Bishops' war with the Covenanting Scots, the event that triggered the civil wars, left out? Indeed, why is Scotland not mentioned at all? The contradictions of big ambitions and smaller budgets will also be evident to viewers. The vast African skies (the series was shot in South Africa) over Angelica Fanshawe's Oxfordshire home is one such, and there are others.
But The Devil's Whore has a great deal to commend it, in particular Flannery's focus on the radical spirits who flourished as the old order faltered, before they were themselves crushed as the new regime under Cromwell turned against the very militancy that had propelled it to power. It would have been easier - and probably more crowd-pleasing - to have retold the already familiar story of cavaliers and roundheads, avoiding politics for a dashing romp among the young blades and buxom lasses of merry old England. Instead, Flannery does us all a great service in reminding us of a revolutionary past of which the English often seem embarrassed, ignorant or in denial...
Read entire article at Guardian (UK)
Early in the afternoon, Charles Stuart, "that man of blood", stepped through one of the Banqueting House's windows and on to the scaffold. Seventeenth-century executions were highly ritualised affairs and the crowd would have known the order of play. There were prayers to be said, farewells to be made and declarations of serenity to be uttered. It was important for everybody that the prisoner made a good death. Charles performed the expected tasks, took off his cloak, tucked his long hair into a cap and laid his head on the low billet of wood. A moment later, he stretched out his arms in a prearranged signal. The first executioner swung the axe; the second held up the severed head for the crowd to see.
Charles I was not the first English king to die violently or to suffer deposition, but this was different. This king of England was put to death for high treason after being convicted of levying an unjust and cruel war against his own subjects. Charles rejected the charges, but though he publicly forgave his enemies he was in no doubt about the historic constitutional and political significance of what was unfolding on that cold winter's day. Speaking of the people he still claimed as his subjects, he said: "I must tell you their liberty and freedom consists in having of government, those laws by which their life
and their goods may be most their own. It is not having a share in government. Sir, that is nothing pertaining to them. A subject and a Sovereign are clear different things."
Charles Stuart was beheaded shortly before 2pm on Tuesday, January 30 1649. A week later, the parliament voted to abolish the House of Lords, and the following day it decided that, having done away with the monarch, it might as well dispense with the institution of monarchy itself. The necessary legislation was enacted within a month and England became officially a republic. The unthinkable had happened: it was, in a phrase from the time
and much used since, "the world turned upside down".
These momentous episodes, and the events surrounding them, are the subject of The Devil's Whore, Channel 4's new four-part drama written by the excellent Peter Flannery, best known for his ground-breaking television serial Our Friends in the North (1996). Any attempt to dramatise a 20-year period of such turbulent, crowded and confusing events is fraught with difficulty for the film-makers. Inevitably, much has been left out and much of what remains has been simplified. This is what drama on such an immense canvas has to do - there is no other way. Some of Flannery's choices will doubtless be questioned. Where are John Pym, the Earl of Bedford, Sir Thomas Fairfax, Denzil Holles and Edward Hyde? Why show the attempted arrest of the "five members" but not Pride's Purge, the army's forcible exclusion of the king's supporters from parliament. Why show Edward Sexby and not Colonel John Hutchinson? Why is the Bishops' war with the Covenanting Scots, the event that triggered the civil wars, left out? Indeed, why is Scotland not mentioned at all? The contradictions of big ambitions and smaller budgets will also be evident to viewers. The vast African skies (the series was shot in South Africa) over Angelica Fanshawe's Oxfordshire home is one such, and there are others.
But The Devil's Whore has a great deal to commend it, in particular Flannery's focus on the radical spirits who flourished as the old order faltered, before they were themselves crushed as the new regime under Cromwell turned against the very militancy that had propelled it to power. It would have been easier - and probably more crowd-pleasing - to have retold the already familiar story of cavaliers and roundheads, avoiding politics for a dashing romp among the young blades and buxom lasses of merry old England. Instead, Flannery does us all a great service in reminding us of a revolutionary past of which the English often seem embarrassed, ignorant or in denial...