I'd rather be a Roundhead than a Cavalier

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Filmed at the Royal Institution of Great Britain on 17th November 2014.
In the 1640s England was devastated by a civil war that divided the nation into two tribes - Roundheads and Cavaliers. Counties, towns, even families and friends were rent apart as the nation pledged its allegiance either to King Charles I (supported by the Cavaliers) or to Parliament (backed by the Roundheads). Some 200,000 lives were lost in the desperate conflict which eventually led to the victory of the Roundheads under Oliver Cromwell and the execution of the king in 1649.
The ideas that circulated in that febrile climate 350 years ago have shaped our democracy and also created a cultural divide that still resonates today. The Cavaliers represent pleasure, exuberance and individuality. Countering them are the Roundheads who stand for modesty, discipline and equality.
To debate both the historical and present-day significance of this divide, Intelligence Squared brings together two acclaimed historians: Charles Spencer to defend the Roundhead cause (in spite of the fact that his forebear the Ist Baron Spencer fought for the Royalists), and Anna Whitelock to make the case for the Cavaliers.
For Earl Spencer the defeat and execution of Charles I mark the beginning of the end of the ‘ridiculous’ concepts of medieval kingship and the birth of constitutional rule that we take for granted today. The Roundheads, he’ll argue, fought for respect for the fundamental rights of man, against the arrogance of Charles I and his belief in the Divine Right of Kings. In Spencer’s opinion this process left the British monarchy in a state that has been broadly palatable over the succeeding centuries.
This would all be compelling stuff if it were entirely true, thinks Anna Whitelock, but to her mind it’s a rather selective polemic. The ‘victory’ of the Roundheads, she’ll point out, was emphatically reversed with the restoration of Charles II in 1660 and one only needs to look to the 1680s when the Crown humbled Parliament to argue that the Roundhead cause did not irrevocably set a course towards constitutional monarchy. Moreover, Whitelock will argue that the Cavaliers have been maligned by history: while largely remembered for their long locks, loose living and doomed royalism, these men and women were in fact remarkable witnesses to their age: freethinking individuals, many of them artists and intellectuals, who maintained their activities in the face of puritan suppression and sobriety.
Which side are you on - Roundhead or Cavalier?

[@TheMangoDeluxe]

How can she keep a straight face telling us not to stereotype cavaliers whilst sporting the exact same haircut as Charles II?

[@Infernal460]

TheMangoDeluxe What about those boots. = )

[@patrick6110]

Not just the hair style but also the love of women.

[@pjacobo]

By reducing Calvinism to one single point, Whitelove caricatures what has probably been the most significant movement in European history in the last 500 years, with adherents numbering in the millions in the 16th century and for centuries afterwards. The french Huguenots were Calvinists and were about 1/8 of the french population in the mid-1500s. Their emigration as refugees over 150 years from France to the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, the Americas, and South Africa has had a profound impact on world history. Some estimates of this emigration put the number as high as 1M, but not less than 200K. The Huguenots were a major factor in the revolt of the Netherlands to the despotic King Philip II of Spain in the late 1500s that established the Dutch Republic. The influx of French Huguenots and Flemish Protestants to the Netherlands was an essential feature of the Dutch Golden Age and the global empire of the Netherlands. And it was the Dutch Republic which sent William III of Orange (with Huguenot forces) to England in 1688. And of course the folks on the Mayflower were Calvinists. I think it was Palmer who said that the history of Europe is the history of France, and the history of France is the history of Europe, and that the history of the Huguenots is the history of France. So if you think you can understand history without understanding the Huguenots, think again. And you can't understand the Huguenots or British history without understanding Calvinism. So I wouldn't be taking your lessons in Calvinism from either of these speakers, but particularly not Whitelove (whose basic argument seems to be that Cavaliers ought to run the country then and now because they are more likable, more fun, and more hip).

[@clivejones5880]

When the debate started, I immediately assumed Charles would side with the Royalists, what a pleasant surprise!

[@hoytayer4429]

Fascinating debate. Maybe, by being an American, I see that war as having a Tolstoyan importance that directly impacted both the English Constitution of 1689 and the American Constitution's separation of powers (and possibly the American Revolution itself). It was a constitutional crisis like the American Civil War. The proximal cause tends to obscure that fact in both cases. At a governmental level, the English Civil War looks like an unfolding conflict over the military powers of the Sovereign, which had been slowly transferred to Pariliament for centuries (as a surrogate for the armies provided for defense purposes by powerful nobles.) When a Scottish King accustomed to far greater military powers attempted to assert armed power over Parliament (in defense of his also newly-asserted taxation power), Parliament grew its own military powers, and turned them against him. The outcome of the years-long struggle was the monumental decision to divide the power to declare war and the power to wage war between the Executive and Legislative Branches. At present both Britain and the USA have uncomfortable divisions of that power. The Sovereign's royal prerogative includes the power to declare war, but Parliament wages it through the true executive (the PM and Cabinet), so the declaration power is merely a rubber stamp for a pre-existing political consensus. The US President is the commander in chief, but Congress possesses the power to declare war -- a meaningless power since it does not compel the President to wage a war, or even to acquire prior consent for use of his war powers. Judging from what happened during the two Iraq Wars, both countries still experience periodic bouts of Executive-Legislative conflict over the precise meaning of the power to declare war. It may be a sinkhole, but it's a major piece of constitutional architecture that is vital to both countries, and that was a direct product of the English Civil War.

[@thomasmante780]

It was Isaac Foot (Michael's father) who made the comment about all he needed to know about anyone was which side they would have fought on at Marston Moor. Freedland really ought to know better but he is a Guardian journo.

[@AbuLaith1963]

Charles Spencer is a descendant several times over I believe of Charles II. I was greatly surprised that he is here defending the Parliamentary cause. Good for him.

[@thomasemlyn1477]

Cavalier. Without question. Now, who's for some wine?

[@kevinjamesparr552]

really. Your name is not listed in the ranks of the Royal army. My lot led it and now looking back we lost all and lied to by that kings son we would have been better fighting for the people.

[@andrewlong5207]

get drunk over the tyranny of a papist authoritative regime, the wine won't last long lad - the revolution is coming

[@wildandbarefoot]

Does a Knight in the retinue of John Talbot Count. ?

[@marksip01234]

Well, put all prejudices that I had aside, Charles Spenser put forward a great argument - well done him - respect

[@tyrion3575]

One of Britian's Best Generals/Leaders. and Least effected by corruption.

[@janniedresser8566]

As a descendant of Puritans getting the Hell out of a repressive monarchical state, and of Patriot fighters during the American Revolution, I have to admit I would have been a Roundhead. Although, I do like following the tidings of the Royal Family.

[@MackerelCat]

Hahaha the puritans fled a repressive state? The puritans were so horrible and repressive that people were pleading for the monarch to come back!

[@robinusher5707]

Is this really the best panel I-squared could manage?

[@davemojarra2666]

To summerize the lady: "Prince Rupert was really hot!"

[@kevinashcroft2028]

The great reign of the Elizabethans was probably a difficult act to follow ; one could argue that the conflict of the civil war set the tone for a dualistic future of one degree or another .

[@Survivethejive]

roundheads are like Isis, cavaliers like Assad's army

[@MatthewMcVeagh]

Jamie Hughes Actually we don't know what would have happened if Parliament hadn't triumphed over Charles I... similarly if Charles II hadn't been restored. That's the problem with counterfactual, alternative or "what if" history, it's unknown, so even if we can see patterns there might be unexpected things that would make a big difference cancelling out our assumptions. An example is that if we see a strong force like Divine Right Monarchy we assume that if it defeats a challenge that it's just going to go on and keep politics over that side of the possibilities. Actually if you look at France you see that their strong absolutist system generated a powerful opposition in response which led to the Revolution, rationalism and a strongly egalitarian system. If Charles' equivalent had continued we might have had the same - not a total rout of progressivism in the Civil War but a continuing groundswell of resentment which may have led to a more effective break later as the French had. We then would have not the still-lingering monarchy and figurehead aristocracy but a more democratic and less class-ridden British Republic. What happened in the Civil War certainly led to specific political traditions, including ones we're relatively glad of. But it's not necessarily the case that if things had turned out worse in the short term they might not have become better in the long term.

[@MatthewMcVeagh]

Jamie Hughes You do what?

[@MatthewMcVeagh]

Jamie Hughes LOL well I don't know who pissed in your corn flakes. You have no particular reason for assuming my projections a fantasy and yours some kind of shadow of the truth.

[@MatthewMcVeagh]

Jamie Hughes LOL so much for phrenology - and given your reliance on phrenology, so much for you and your knowledge!

[@MatthewMcVeagh]

Jamie Hughes LOL well you may have found things I've written before but your assessment of me on the basis of it is all due to your own prejudices and assumptions. Also if you haven't read my post on this thread then you're not in a position to judge it. It's only if you've read it that you know what you're talking about. It doesn't matter if you don't find me insightful elsewhere. All that matters is if what I say in my post has any merit, and if you can answer it. And since you're finding a very roundabout way to excuse your avoiding having read it I suspect you have read it but can't answer my points, and then can't admit it.

[@patrick6110]

Brilliant expose by Charkes Spencer. This truly is a great lesson on public speaking. One debater showing how to do it and the other what not to do.

[@developmentcom]

80's hair bands were defiantly Cavalier

[@williamarthurfenton1496]

What a complete sham of a debate; maybe they might define the parameters of it before starting, no? They are constantly arguing across purposes. She is basically talking more about archetypal examples of both - or, indeed stereotypes - and he's more talking about individuals and historic events.

[@MatthewMcVeagh]

William Fenton I agree, they are basically playing to the strengths of their positions, which is the history for the Roundheads and aesthetics for the Cavaliers. The archetypal difference reminds of that explored in Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, between the romantic-aesthetic ideal and the classic underlying form.

[@fwily2580]

Why is it that I can’t understand what she is saying?

[@WORLD8NSH5KNIGHT1]

War of the Three Kingdoms is a much more accurate term. The English Civil Wars were a large portion of a larger conflict.

[@BrianLeighton-wn6hc]

57:06 preach it, my puritan brother

[@bensintes3745]

Being a roundhead or a cavalier is not the problem, getting killed is. ......

[@ericsteele6941]

All Cavaliers will please combine! God save King Charles the Martyr!

[@wildandbarefoot]

Digger, True Leveller. I'd rather Have a Brazilian than he Cavalier

[@Nevermindwhat2358]

Why is Ed Miliband so disliked?

[@BattlestarZenobia]

Probably because he stabbed his brother in the back

[@wrightplacewrighttime.5834]

roundhead. the king was never absolute. King Charles overstepped his mark, and he got ultimately what he deserved.

[@papasha408]

And I'd rather be a 'Cavalier.'

[@mrmuttley1]

It is 2024 Boris a Cavalier's Cavalier.

[@kurtbrayford6491]

oh god I can do beter than that woman

[@kevinjamesparr552]

So boring this is school lecture better left to preaching. Repeat three times hammer home the bits she loves and the rest is the love of her own voice. Like children we sleep when history is a moving story in the hands of a well sung historian. The only thing that moves here is her hands.

[@Raiderthepirate]

Cromwell, a scrawny tyrant that felt he was the "Archangel of the Lord" that held England a prisoner under Puritan law.

[@sandromnator]

That's based

[@wildandbarefoot]

U kippers would be "Ranters".

[@tlhockey]

I don't think it's quite right to cast Charles as a king that went to war with his own country (more than once), as if his actions occurred in a vaccuum. It is important to remember that large chunks of parliament remained with the king. And that he was able to spur public support from political isolation (that he had backed into) in order to form a royalist faction both within parliament and the general public. After all, spurned on by its more radical members, parliament had been gobbling up executive powers from the crown. Even attempting to seize the army. The House of Commons even disregarded the House of Lords. Leaders in parliament had conspired to promote the Scottish rebellion. There was a sense of lawlessness or disorder growing that Charles positioned himself as a rallying figure against. Then of course after the parliamentarian victory we see the further religious persecution of Catholics. Judicial murders carried out through sham trials. The further prevention of elections and them a military coup. Higher taxes than what Charles had invoked. The purges of parliament by its more radical members and the army, to the point that only a handful of the parliamentarian rebels remained to condemn the king and so on. Not that there aren't grievances against Charles. But I do think there's a lack of goodwill on the side of many of the parliamentarians that, through their past actions, would have caused Charles to believe they couldn't be trusted. Even beyond some of the conditions that Charles was unwilling to compromise on.

[@themysterysuk2097]

Turkeys vote for Christmas

[@MatthewMcVeagh]

A plague on both their houses. Preening privileged autocracy vs. boring holier-than-thou strictness. The Diggers are the only people from this time that I have any time for.

[@ishmaelforester9825]

+Matthew McVeagh If it were as simple as, 'Preening privileged autocracy vs. boring holier-than-thou strictness,' then fair enough. The idea that seventeenth century English society descended into brutal Civil War on account of such a piddling conflict is utterly nonsensical, however. The motives and values at stake were a great deal more complex and interesting from an historical and even philosophical viewpoint, but if the Diggers are truly the only people from that time that you have any time for then you cannot be expected to understand or appreciate that whatsoever. What we get in this debate is the superficiality f the classic Whig history from the Roundhead and the most superficial defense of the royalist position imaginable from the Cavalier. What both are lacking is any deep understanding whatsoever as to the traditional order and values that were in question during the conflict, or at least the ability to express such an understanding: it is practically impossible to fairly defend or attack Charles and his supporters without that basic knowledge and ability.

[@MatthewMcVeagh]

Ishmael Forester Well I guess I can't be expected to understand or appreciate this whatsoever!

[@ishmaelforester9825]

Matthew McVeagh Okay what I mean is the traditional idea of monarchy was based in the religious metaphysics of Christendom and the organic hierarchy derived from that. Here we have the characterization of the conflict as a war of the people against Charles, which is nonsense, because there was no more essential identification of people with Parliament than King in those days: that was mere Parliamentary propaganda, and the King himself considered himself to be defending the common people from the religious fundamentalism and economic exploitation by the parliamentary parvenu (mostly businessmen, puritan fanatics and enclosing landowners, and thus by no means champions of general social justice as subsequent events proved irrefutably). The idea of the monarch in the Middle Ages was not the same as a modern autocrat; it had a sacred basis and the divine right came with responsibilities of which Charles was aware and much of his rule exhibits; none of this is recognized by the audience in this video, for example, among whom it seems to be simply assumed he was a kind of Hitler. Why then defend the cavalier cause on a ridiculous aesthetic basis when Charles himself was willing to go to the block professing that he fought and died to defend the rights of the people from Parliament, as is recorded in his last words? So of course the whole dichotomy of the debate is nonsense. The words of Charles himself upon the very block: 'For the people. And truly I desire their Liberty and Freedom as much as any Body whomsoever. But I must tell you, That 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 for having share in government that is nothing pertaining to them. A subject and a soveraign are clean different things, and therefore until they do that, I mean, that you do put the people in that liberty as I say, certainly they will never enjoy themselves.' Is that a man perishing for the opportunity to prance and preen himself? It was a war for the people on either side, something this debate does not acknowledge and is little acknowledged anywhere in fact. But what happened in England afterward proved the fears of Charles and Wentworth in regard to the motives of the Parliamentarians fight for so-called 'liberty.' The condition of the people in general, if not the suddenly up-jumped class of bourgeois merchants, by whom they were exploited, deteriorated from then on, as no honest historian denies, even unto the disgraceful misery and poverty and near revolutions of the nineteenth century.

[@MatthewMcVeagh]

Ishmael Forester I don't think the form of monarchy that was around in Europe was purely based on the notion of a sacred defender of the people. On the contrary I think the main energy of monarchy since the fall of the Western Roman Empire has been the non-divine right of strongarm rulers to rule without question from the people. Kings and queens regularly oppressed the people with no sense that this was breaking any kind of oath or duty, and the main checks and opponents were the nobles, viz Magna Carta or Simon de Montfort. The 'divine right of kings' concept was not mediaeval but early modern, beginning with self-important rulers like Henry VIII; in the Middle Ages there was a notion that kings had to obey God and pay heed to the Church (hence what happened to Henry III), but not that God had granted them some special license as rulers as 'divine right'. In any case the deterioration of the Catholic Church towards the end of the Middle Ages meant that it became dominated by the French monarchy and its leadership widely disputed, which contributed to the Reformation in which self-seeking rulers like Henry VIII or German princes took the opportunity to create a new church that was more under their control. Thus began an era of self-aggrandisement on the part of the more powerful European rulers which included presuming to be appointed specially by God and thus to be inviolable in their rule. But while Charles in the bits you quoted may have professed to be defending the 'freedom' of the common people his actions during his reign suggest otherwise. There was no general 'freedom' for the poor anyway; in addition he persecuted people through the Star Chamber, and the Puritans and others he fought were *part* of the common people. He only called a Parliament when he absolutely had to, when he needed more taxes. He was not interested in the advice or opinions of anyone who didn't go along with his intentions. He started a war against Parliament not to defend the people, but to pursue his own personal, selfish ambitions and needs. As for this documentary... it may well not have covered the things you mention. But it makes no difference to my opinion as stated in my OP. On the basis of this doc I can say a plague on both their houses, and the issues you've raised don't alter that.

[@MatthewMcVeagh]

mao sef 'Fanatical' would be a term of art. I don't agree with their religion but I certainly agree with their politics.

[@jamesfinlay7836]

I am ex British Army, Queens Guard and Gulf War Veteran. and I swore an oath before God, and will be forever a royalist.

[@DalekSec4]

Roundhead down with the monarchy!

[@CAP198462]

I’d rather have been a Cavalier. Life as a Roundhead wouldn’t be much fun at all.

[@jeffreysommer3292]

I couldn't help but think she was wasting time on biographical trivialities instead of making the main point that the Cavaliers represented freedom and Cromwell represented tyranny.

[@davemojarra2666]

Fox Viewers woulda been Cavaliers.

[@TheMacedonianGeneral]

1688 was illegal.

[@mercomania]

I do not know the name of the moderator of this debate, but what a ponce. Cromwell was the greatest Englishman ever to have been in charge of this country. This debate took place in 2014 and we have not learned over three hundred years that we. in a democratic society, do not need or require an heridority ruling class.

[@leod-sigefast]

How they ignored that US American lady after her question. I found very rude. This seminar seems such English snobbery.

[@stephenede-borrett1452]

What a terrible and very selective assessment of civil war history from Charles Spencer. He is a better historian than that but, I am guessing, assumes that his audience wouldn't have the depth of knowledge to question the veracity of a large number of the statements that he presents. Debate the facts please without inventing... But it got off with a bad start when the moderator doesn't even know that it was Isaac and not Michael who made that statement. (And wouldn't Alex Salmond have been a Covenanter?)

[@yuckfooh9299]

Cavaliers get knob-cheese. Roundheads don't.

[@conorward4364]

Yuck Fooh Well the Roundheads balls hang really low

[@davemojarra2666]

Roundheads woulda been Fox News viewers.