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00:04The Stuarts, a bloody reign.
00:07It's an evocation of the extraordinary era
00:10when these four Stuart kings lived through turbulent times.
00:19Catholic versus Protestant.
00:22Parliament against King.
00:25The English Civil War.
00:28Europe torn apart by religious conflict.
00:32The plague. The Great Fire of London.
00:36And finally, a Catholic king fled his country and his throne.
00:46Charles II finally came to the throne after years in exile
00:50following the execution of his father, Charles I,
00:53who had struggled to be the king that everyone longed for.
00:57The restoration would bring unity and glamour back to the country.
01:01The people worn out by the austerity of Cromwell in the parliamentarian era
01:06and they ecstatically welcomed the new king.
01:10People always say,
01:11Oh, gosh, Charles, he was so relaxed, you know, just interested in a luxurious life.
01:15But there was one part of him that was unforgiving.
01:18And that was his attitude towards those who had been involved in the death of his father.
01:23I've always thought that the key to understanding Charles II's reign
01:26is he spends 11 years just desperately wanting to be king.
01:31So once he becomes king, he doesn't want to do anything.
01:34In the reign of Charles II, you have the birth of modern times.
01:37Clever people who were literally rebuilding England.
01:40And then the fire in London which enabled London to be rebuilt.
01:44It must have been so exciting by the time you got to about 1700
01:48to look around and find yourself in this spanking new city.
01:53In this series, we're examining the reigns of the Stuart Kings
01:57through the lives of the Wynne family here at Gwydir Castle in North Wales.
02:02The Wynne's had flourished during the reign of King James I
02:05and his son, King Charles I.
02:08Sir John Wynne, the patriarch of the family,
02:10had been knighted and honoured with a baronetcy.
02:13His son, Sir Richard Wynne, was a friend of King Charles I
02:17and had been appointed first gentleman of the bedchamber
02:20as well as treasurer to the new queen, Henrietta Maria.
02:24But now the situation had reached an all-time low
02:28for both the Stuarts and the Wynne's.
03:03King Charles I was executed on the 30th of January 1649.
03:08The royalists had lost the civil war.
03:12The reign of the Stuarts appeared over.
03:14The entire system of monarchy appeared over.
03:17In its place was now the Commonwealth, a new system of government
03:21where England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland
03:23were ruled over by Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector.
03:29The hero of the new model army was Oliver Cromwell
03:33and he had a spectacular career.
03:34From the minute he gets into Parliament
03:36as the poorest man to make it to Parliament in 1640,
03:39he is a dynamo.
03:41I mean, he's a man totally committed to godly reformation,
03:45completely convinced of the fact that God has called him
03:48to some great cause.
03:50And he just rises from being a captain in 1642
03:54and then becomes the lieutenant general
03:56and the head of the cavalry for the new model army.
03:59Eventually, of course, the head of the whole army leading
04:02and paralleled the successful and brutal campaigns
04:06in Ireland and Scotland.
04:13After the execution of Charles I, his wife Henrietta Maria
04:17had to escape and found refuge in the French court.
04:21His son, Charles, attempted to muster forces in France
04:24and the Netherlands.
04:27They became royal prey.
04:29They were pursued out of the country.
04:31Henrietta Maria fled in a ship from the south-west to France
04:35under gunfire from Parliament.
04:37The future James II, as a young boy,
04:39managed to escape from Sion House in Middlesex,
04:43dressed as a girl and was spirited away to the Netherlands.
04:46And there was a little Princess Elizabeth
04:49who sadly sort of faded away and died in Carersbrooke Castle
04:53in the Isle of Wight.
04:55Between 1646 and 51, the future Charles II
04:59endures a really humiliating exile.
05:02The story is that nobody dared tell Charles II
05:05that his father had been executed
05:07and they didn't know what to do.
05:08So one of the senior courtiers went in to see Charles II
05:12and instead of saying, Your Royal Highness,
05:15which would have been his title as Prince,
05:17bowed and said, Your Majesty, meaning you are now the King.
05:21And Charles took a moment to understand it,
05:24but when he did, it was an absolute body blow.
05:30The Wynne family at Gwydir Castle
05:33were deeply affected by the execution of Charles I.
05:36Sir Richard Wynne had lost both his King
05:39and his seat at Parliament
05:41as he'd been expelled by the Pride's Purge of 1648,
05:45orchestrated by Oliver Cromwell.
05:48Sir Richard was heartbroken, he would never recover
05:50and he died just a few months after King Charles was beheaded.
05:56Succeeding Sir Richard as the new head of the Wynne family
06:00would be his younger brother, Sir Owen Wynne.
06:03Owen was a very different character, bookish,
06:07endlessly intrigued by the possibilities of alchemy.
06:14It wasn't easy for poor old Sir Owen Wynne.
06:16He was the third son and he was the more bookish one.
06:19He wasn't the sort of glamorous courtier
06:21as his brother Richard had been.
06:23And so he was given all the kind of difficult jobs.
06:26He had to look after the estate for his brother.
06:28His brother gave him an allowance to do so.
06:31And he was at the brunt of it here during the Civil War.
06:34He and of course Lady Grace's wife.
06:37So it can't have been easy during the Civil War
06:39having all of this going on, being twice sacked,
06:42being seriously squeezed in terms of finances.
06:48Sir Owen had to be especially careful under this new Commonwealth.
06:52The Wynne family had been close to the deposed royal house of Stuart.
06:56And there was a very real threat that the Wynne estate
06:59could be seized by force at any moment.
07:02Just like royalist families up and down the country.
07:07Following the end of the English Civil War
07:10and the battles that occurred across Wales, Scotland and Ireland,
07:13known as the War of the Three Kingdoms,
07:15Oliver Cromwell had firmly established his grip on power.
07:19He'd been sworn in as Lord Protector in 1653
07:22and drastically altered the cultural landscape of the country.
07:27Theatre was outlawed.
07:28Celebration of Christmas and Easter was banned.
07:32For quite a lot of 1650s,
07:35Oliver Cromwell is ruling England as Lord Protector,
07:38refusing to take the title of king,
07:40but very much like a king.
07:41And his policy of promoting religious liberty,
07:45you know, does benefit a lot of people,
07:47including, of course, former Anglicans and even Catholics,
07:50who had a much easier time under Cromwell
07:52than they had under any of the Stuarts.
07:54If Cromwell had lived beyond his 60th birthday,
07:58the real possibility that the Stuart option might have faded away.
08:04In 1658, Oliver Cromwell fell ill and died and was succeeded by his son, Richard Cromwell.
08:12But Richard lacked any real authority,
08:15because if the position of Lord Protector could be inherited,
08:18so how was that any different from the monarchy?
08:21A power vacuum was developing,
08:23and the Booth Rebellion was one of several attempts to fill it.
08:27Sir George Booth was a foreign member of parliament
08:30who organised an uprising against Richard Cromwell in 1659.
08:35Joining him in his efforts would be another foreign member of parliament,
08:39Sir Thomas Middleton,
08:40and Middleton's son-in-law,
08:43Sir Richard Wynne the Younger, son of Sir Owen.
08:49The Booth Rebellion had been planned in the regions near Gwydir Castle,
08:53North Wales, and the north-west of England.
08:56The forces assembled were able to take the important city of Chester,
09:00but although Cromwell's power was undoubtedly failing
09:04and the Commonwealth was weak,
09:06Booth Rebellion was still put down.
09:08Booth himself managed to escape capture dressed as a woman,
09:12but Sir Richard Wynne was not quite so fortunate.
09:19When Booth's Revolt happens in 1659,
09:22it is Sir Thomas Middleton and Sir Richard Wynne,
09:26they are rising North Wales at the same time
09:29as George Booth is rising Cheshire.
09:33It was supposed to happen all over Britain,
09:35but the problem is these were the only two areas that did rise,
09:38so the full weight of the New Model Army under General Lambert
09:42were there waiting for them,
09:43and they didn't stand a chance, as you can imagine.
09:46Sir Richard Wynne is caught in the fallout of that, obviously.
09:51He's one of the casualties of being mopped up,
09:55and he's dragged off to Carnarvon Castle,
09:58where he's a prisoner.
10:06I would have had you in the dungeon.
10:08Mother, I did not think to see you.
10:10My keeper permits me no letters.
10:12I've met the Colonel.
10:13He's a villain, is he not?
10:15I found him amenable.
10:16He is Parliament's creature.
10:20Courtesy will loosen a door rather than spite Richard,
10:23and a ready purse is more persuasive still.
10:26I think he will see you released.
10:28His expectation was to be courted.
10:30I'm in no mood for wooing.
10:33Perhaps you were enjoying your little game too much.
10:36There was a time to end this tyranny under which we live, Mother.
10:40If General Monk had joined us.
10:42But he did not.
10:43He waited to see how the die would fall.
10:47Parliament and the army are in dispute.
10:50Our king may return, and our prayers rest upon that hope.
10:54But some new Lord Protector may rise in Cromwell's place.
10:58We have weathered this long darkness estate and family intact.
11:04But you do not throw away your winter garb at the first bud of spring.
11:07Snows may return as quickly as they are banished.
11:11You are of no use to me here.
11:14Recall the habits of a courting youth and practise them upon the Colonel.
11:18My purse will do the rest.
11:25The failure of the Booth Rebellion.
11:28A terrible blow to Sir Richard Wynne the Younger
11:30and all royalists across the country.
11:33Even in its weakened state,
11:35Cromwell's Commonwealth has somehow hung on.
11:38But their disappointment wouldn't last for long.
11:40Across the English Channel, King Charles I's son and heir
11:45was patiently waiting in exile.
11:48Within a year, he would be summoned back to London
11:50and a new Stuart King would be back on the throne.
11:59The Booth Rebellion of 1659 had failed to bring down the Commonwealth,
12:04but it hadn't been totally in vain.
12:06The actions of Sir George Booth, Sir Thomas Middleton
12:09and Sir Richard Wynne the Younger
12:11had inspired another key figure of the era.
12:15George Monk, Governor of Scotland.
12:18Monk was a man of floating allegiance.
12:21At one point, he considered defending Richard Cromwell.
12:25Later, he thought of joining Booth Rebellion.
12:27But now in 1660, he was launching his own uprising.
12:32He led his army of loyal soldiers down from Scotland to London
12:36and no one could stop him.
12:37He became the most powerful man in the country.
12:40But Monk was not in the mould of Oliver Cromwell.
12:44There would be no new Lord Protector.
12:46He made overtures to the Stuart family in exile.
12:50They were the only ones who could offer the country
12:52the stability it so desperately needed.
12:57General Monk realised that the mood in the country
13:01was fed up with Cromwell,
13:03fed up with the rule of the Major Generals.
13:05The army had stopped being on the side of the revolution.
13:08The army was reverting to the king.
13:11And once that happened,
13:12there was no hope of keeping Richard Cromwell.
13:14He didn't have any of his father's bullying strength.
13:20He was a quieter man.
13:22And anyway, there's something absurd
13:24if you've given up the concept of monarchy,
13:26thinking that there should be a hereditary protectorate.
13:30Even though the Great Rising didn't happen
13:32and it was put down,
13:34nevertheless, all eyes were on it.
13:36And at that moment, George Monk makes his move.
13:38And he could have been king, of course.
13:40And in fact, the throne was offered to him tentatively
13:45in the way of him becoming the inheritor of the protectorship.
13:52But wisely, he decided, no,
13:55it's much better to be the kingmaker than the king.
13:57So he is the grand choreographer who brings Charles back
14:02or enables Charles to come back.
14:05Of course, Charles doesn't actually win back the throne.
14:08It's Parliament and the Commonwealth that lose it.
14:11They haven't got somebody to succeed Oliver Cromwell
14:14who has the substance or the respect of both Parliament
14:17and the army to take his place.
14:19So it's really because of Oliver Cromwell's death
14:23and the inability of anyone following him to grab that power
14:27that eventually the English resort to a default
14:30and think, well, we'll have a king back then.
14:37Charles had spent most of his exile in the Dutch city of Brede.
14:42And on the 4th of April 1660, he issued the Declaration of Brede,
14:47promising a general pardon for crimes committed during the Civil War,
14:51recognition of property rights, religious toleration
14:54and payment of army wage arrears.
14:58Four days later, the Parliament in London proclaimed Charles King.
15:03At once, the young exile made preparations in Europe to return home.
15:14Charles II and his advisers, they were convinced
15:18that if there were conditions, they were going to be very onerous
15:21and they'd be probably close to what Charles I had turned down
15:25before his trial and execution.
15:27But actually, the English Parliament had turned around on its head
15:30in just two months in early 1660.
15:33Although he has promised everything to be settled by Parliament,
15:36he has returned unconditionally.
15:39I mean, Parliament passed the declaration that he has been king
15:42since the moment of the death of his father of royal memory.
15:46So they say, come back unconditionally, but thank you for your promise
15:49that you will accept any settlement we make on the most neuralgic terms.
15:57Charles landed at Dover on May 25th.
16:00He made his way to London, which he reached four days later.
16:04He had deliberately timed it so that he'd re-enter the city on his birthday.
16:10He was exactly 30 years old.
16:13The people of London were lining the streets.
16:16The crowds were so thick that it took seven hours to cross the still familiar city.
16:22Perhaps some of them had been there that cold January morning,
16:26more than a decade earlier when the king's father had been beheaded in Whitehall.
16:31Now they were cheering the return of the Stuarts.
16:35Charles II had come home to claim his crown.
16:45So great a multitude.
16:47And in so merry a spirit too.
16:49Holding the king's picture aloft that was near a hanging mat a bit weeks ago.
16:54It must be all of London.
16:56We shall know of his coming from the crowd.
16:58They line the streets like this from Dover to Whitehall.
17:03In all the years of Cromwell did you ever see such a thing?
17:06No.
17:08Nor can I remember when last we two had an afternoon of leisure such as this.
17:13He will be a fine king, I'm sure of it.
17:19Despite the general pardon offered by Charles in his declaration at Breda,
17:23not every crime was forgotten.
17:2550 people were deliberately excluded from Charles's acts of forgiveness.
17:31Nine men who'd signed his father's death warrant were executed.
17:34The identity of the executioner who actually carried out the beheading of King Charles I
17:38is still a mystery to this day.
17:41As for Oliver Cromwell, the man who usurped Charles's father,
17:45even after death, he would be held accountable.
17:49As would the judge who oversaw Charles's trial, John Bradshaw and Henry Ireton,
17:54who'd signed the king's death warrant.
17:57The three of them were removed from their graves and hung up for the crowds to witness
18:01before they were all decapitated and their heads placed on spikes.
18:10There was one part of him that was unforgiving.
18:13And that was his attitude towards those who had been involved in the death of his father.
18:17And that's the 59 men who signed the death warrant,
18:20and another 20 or so who were either legal officers in the court case or on the scaffold at the
18:26execution.
18:27And Charles's hatred for them never ended.
18:31The people he most blames for his father's death, their heads were cut off and their bodies thrown into a
18:38lime pit,
18:39and the heads stuck on spikes on the Palace of Westminster.
18:43I think he just adored his father and couldn't believe that these people could expect any sort of sympathy at
18:50all.
18:51And there was also an underlying point, too, that if he had been soft with them,
18:55what would it have said about him as a monarch?
18:58So I think that there was a cold part of Charles II,
19:02and it was absolutely focused on those who had killed his father.
19:13Life would change drastically with the return of the king.
19:17Puritan repression was lifted almost at once.
19:19A new age of liberty, and even debauchery, took hold.
19:23Amid a dazzling cultural rebirth, poetry and the arts would prosper,
19:27theatres reopened with women appearing on stage for the first time.
19:32The sciences flourished as well, with luminaries such as Sir Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle expanding the horizons of human
19:41knowledge.
19:43I think there was an enormous mood of optimism when Charles II came back, partly because he did this clever
19:50thing.
19:50He was prepared to tolerate an awful lot of people who had supported the Civil War.
19:55Therefore, because he was a genial person on some levels, and certainly politically very intelligent,
20:03he was able to create an atmosphere in which political reconciliation could happen.
20:10Charles is very keen to work with as many people who'd worked with Cromwell as possible.
20:15He wants to see healing and settling.
20:17His former enemies were much more likely to send him on his travels again than his former friends.
20:22He'd rather disappoint his friends than his enemies, because his aim is not to have to go away again.
20:31Charles himself would be the founder of the Royal Observatory, which you can see here in this painting from its
20:37earliest days.
20:38He had an interest in the burgeoning field of natural sciences, and he would grant a charter to the Royal
20:44Society.
21:05Sir Owen Wynne would not get to see much of the restoration.
21:09He died in the same year as King Charles II was crowned.
21:12The period that Sir Owen Wynne had lived under so cautiously in the last years of his life was now
21:19called the Interregnum.
21:22Sir Owen's son, Sir Richard Wynne the Younger, freshly released from Carnarvon Castle, inherited the Wynne estate.
21:30Sir Richard Wynne's uncle had been such a key figure in the court of Charles I.
21:34There was no reason to believe that the Wynne family would not prosper once again, now that the Stuarts were
21:41back.
21:46King Charles II was finally on the throne and he needed a queen.
21:51During the reign of King Charles I, there had been negotiations with the Royal Family of Portugal for the hand
21:57of Catherine of Braganza.
21:59This arrangement had been put on permanent hold thanks to Oliver Cromwell, but it was brought back to life following
22:05the restoration.
22:07King Charles II married Catherine of Braganza in 1662 and a nation of tea drinkers was born.
22:14Catherine brought over the custom of tea drinking from Portugal and it quickly became popular amongst the aristocracy in the
22:21reign of King Charles II.
22:23Sir Richard Wynne the Younger would be a key part of this restored royal court, taking up the position of
22:30Chamberlain to Charles' new queen.
22:32A delighted nation dubbed the new king the Merry Monarch, but just like his father, Charles had married a Catholic
22:40and the religious difficulties that had so blighted the past did not simply disappear.
22:46However, there were far more pressing problems just around the corner.
22:50The worst outbreak of plague since the Black Death and the Great Fire of London.
23:10Your fire was dying.
23:12Lady Grace, let me summon the maid.
23:15I have brought it back to life.
23:17It is quite alright.
23:17I can manage a fire.
23:20Sit.
23:32I thought I heard the footpost not long ago, yet I know that cannot be.
23:38I forbade the London Post from approaching our gates and none would be so disrespectful as to disobey my wishes.
23:47Do not blame the poor man.
23:49No, I do not.
23:50You commanded him and he obeyed as he should.
23:54I had not heard from Richard in so very long.
23:57He lives then.
24:02The existence of the letter was all you needed to know that.
24:06I fear it is very bad this time.
24:09I remember the plague in 1625.
24:12I was younger than you, not long married.
24:16Old Sir John kept carts of London cloth outside for days at a time.
24:22Happier as he was to see his finest purchases ruined than risk plague within our walls.
24:30He must be destroyed.
24:32It is one letter.
24:34That is passed through what hands and what parts of the country we know not.
24:38Every moment it is in this house, the danger deepens.
24:44I will have it removed from you if I must.
25:05In 1665, the Great Plague of London hit the city.
25:09There had been large outbreaks throughout the 17th century, particularly in 1625 and 1636,
25:16but nothing as bad as this.
25:18It would be the last major outbreak of the disease to occur in England.
25:23A quarter of the population of the capital died in little over a year.
25:30Plague had been something they'd all lived with forever.
25:33It's something that they were pretty wised up to.
25:38And there are accounts of bolts of cloth, for example, being sent up from London,
25:43which would be kept outside the gates of Guida for up to two weeks.
25:47So the carters would not be allowed into the great court.
25:54They would be kept outside by the porter and they would observe for two weeks.
26:01They knew that one thing was certain.
26:04If you have an infected cargo that came into somewhere like Guida, the house would get it.
26:13King Charles II and the family escaped to Salisbury and England's parliament relocated to Oxford.
26:20By the spring of 1666, the outbreak had died down and it was deemed safe for the Stuarts to return
26:26to London.
26:27But just as life was returning to normal, yet another disaster unfolded.
26:37The Great Fire of London broke out on the 2nd of September 1666.
26:43What began in a Pudding Lane bakery spread out of control and burned for three days straight.
26:49The fires gutted the medieval heart of the city and the ancient St. Paul's Cathedral was utterly destroyed.
26:57Fears abounded that the fire was a foreign plot and King Charles II worried that the entire city might fall
27:03into anarchy.
27:05England was at war with the Netherlands at the time.
27:08The Dutch saw the fire as a divine retribution for the actions of the English Navy and Rear Admiral Robert
27:14Holmes,
27:14who'd set the town of West Teleshing ablaze in what became known as Holmes' Bonfire.
27:23The disasters that befell Charles, the hammer blow of the plague, the fire, the wars with the Dutch.
27:30Meanwhile, the people of England were predominantly in favour of the Dutch.
27:34So he was out of kilter with the political feeling of his parliament for a lot of his reign.
27:41These were terrible things because the mentality of the time was somehow that the monarch was responsible for life, everyday
27:49life.
27:53King Charles II was facing battles on all fronts, just like the Stuart kings who'd come before him.
27:59His capital burned to the ground, the economy in the doldrums.
28:03The only reason why he'd gone to war in the first place was to try to help the economy.
28:08The Dutch Republic was in the midst of its golden age, lucrative trade routes across the globe.
28:13Charles' longer brother James had suggested they seize lucrative colonial possessions from the Dutch, disrupt their trading dominance.
28:21Charles agreed he was keen for a popular war to boost his standing.
28:25The war was not a success.
28:27The Netherlands may have been a smaller nation, but they had a far superior navy and much more money.
28:33Disasters such as the Great Fire of London further sacked England's ability to prosecute the war.
28:51By 1667, the Dutch controlled much of the waters around the south of England.
28:56They'd secured pivotal European alliances, and that June, they staged a devastatingly bold naval assault dubbed the raid on the
29:03Medway.
29:03They attacked the English fleet at anchor in the mouth of the Thames.
29:07Many ships were destroyed, and it remains one of the greatest disasters in the history of the Royal Levy.
29:13Charles, crushed, had to sue for peace.
29:25The Royal Oak burned, the loyal London and the Royal James too.
29:30The flagship carried off without a single shot fired in her defence.
29:34I thought the Dutch are much lesser power than England.
29:37We are the more numerous, but they are richer, and they have directed their wealth with far greater wisdom.
29:44Since the last war, they've rebuilt their navy and plain-made expert study of river navigation and warfare.
29:51And what have we done?
29:53Beggared our garrisons with masks and courtly merriments.
29:59I have no place there.
30:00Then be done with London. Go not there again.
30:04The pride and pomp and luxury.
30:06All the jails of England hold no more cunning a collection of thieves than court.
30:11They never leave off robbing his majesty.
30:14Even his dogs are target for pilfering.
30:17It was thought the Dutch could not even set out a fleet this year.
30:21It will have to be peace, or the Kingdom hold may be undone.
30:29The treaty ending the war was signed in 1667 in the town of Breda, where Charles had made his famous
30:36declaration that allowed him to return to the English throne several years earlier.
30:41Charles was humiliated, but it did at least bring the war to an end and allow London to be rebuilt.
30:48Charles encouraged the greatest architects to come forward with radical plans for the city.
30:53Had these been realised, London today would be a completely different place.
30:57But in the end, practicalities, money, meant most of the city was rebuilt on the same plan as before.
31:04But the buildings themselves were much changed.
31:07Here, the genius of Sir Christopher Wren did have the opportunity to shine, and his design remained some of the
31:12most famous in the London skyline.
31:25Because there was a sense of a new beginning, but a new beginning not out of total novelty, but out
31:30of something that was old.
31:32All sorts of exciting things happened during the restoration, and then as it unfolded, the full reign of Charles II.
31:38The birth of the Royal Society. Figures like Boyle. Figures like Christopher Wren.
31:44And clever people who were scientists, who were architects, who were literally rebuilding England.
31:49And then the rather good luck, as it happened, of the fire, which enabled London to be rebuilt and gloriously
31:56rebuilt.
31:57It must have been so exciting to look around and find yourself in this spanking new city,
32:01with so many absolutely mind-bogglingly beautiful buildings all around you.
32:08On a river Thames which was crammed with ships, commerce, entertainment, theatres.
32:16It really was bliss to be alive, I think, in the reign of Charles II.
32:24As King Charles arranged for his city to be rebuilt, he was also building up the forces for another battle
32:30with the Dutch Republic that had so humiliated him.
32:33In secret, a new alliance was forged with Louis XIV of France.
32:38Together, they take on the Dutch.
32:43In 1670, King Charles II made a monumental decision.
32:48He signed a secret agreement with the French known as the Treaty of Dover.
32:53Charles had been humiliated by a loss to the Dutch Republic three years earlier.
32:57He was determined to gain revenge by joining forces with France to conquer the Dutch.
33:03But one of the provisos of the pact was that Charles would convert to Catholicism.
33:15Perhaps the thing which historians are most divided about over Charles II is what on earth he was doing in
33:20the Treaty of Dover
33:21when he told Louis XIV that he would become a Catholic
33:25if Louis would give him the men and the money and the troops to make good his claim.
33:31Now, there are plenty of people who think that he's being too clever by half,
33:34that he's simply using this as a device to get Louis to leave him and give him other things.
33:40I've always been inclined to think that Charles always yearns to become a Catholic,
33:46that for most of his reign he can see that it will be very dangerous,
33:50that he will cause a huge amount of political reaction.
33:54But there's a point around then when, you know, he's under such pressure from his Catholic wife, his Catholic mistress,
34:03and there's just a moment at which he thinks everywhere in Europe where monarchy is strong, Catholicism is strong.
34:13Catholics have been the people who have been my most loyal supporters.
34:17But for the Catholics I would not have escaped after the Battle of Worcester.
34:21It was the Catholics who risked their lives to hide me, get me out of the country.
34:24And it's just possible that he went through a moment when he thought,
34:30I wonder if I can get away with becoming a Catholic.
34:37England was still fiercely divided by religion.
34:41A Catholic king would rip open old wounds.
34:44In March 1672, Charles made the first moves towards fulfilling part of the secret deal with King Louis XIV of
34:52France
34:52by making the Royal Declaration of Indulgence.
34:55It promised religious toleration for all, including Catholics,
35:00and seemed to be a first step towards some kind of reconciliation between England and Rome
35:06following the great break of Henry VIII's reign.
35:19You seek stained glass for the new chapel?
35:22I shall not ask how you came by such intelligence.
35:25Lest you implicate the walls and doors of my chamber.
35:29I had thought it an art lost in this country.
35:32There are men in Paris who preserve the skill.
35:34Why not Rome?
35:36The King has declared indulgence on matters of religion.
35:39And Parliament?
35:41I care not.
35:42Is his declaration even legal?
35:44I care not.
35:45I have an image in my mind, Mother.
35:48The chapel shall not be complete without it.
35:51It is a cross.
35:53It is a cross.
35:54A fine cross.
35:55I must have it.
35:59It was working too long of a day that took your father ill.
36:02It is not that.
36:03Yes, you must.
36:04Mother, it is not that.
36:06We shall consult physicians.
36:08I have.
36:09The outward applications having proved unsuccessful.
36:13They now prescribe inward medicines.
36:17And what course do they predict?
36:19I must have that glass, Mother.
36:23After the Declaration of Indulgence, things become obviously much easier for not just Catholics, but crypto-Catholics.
36:31We don't know precisely where Sir Richard Wyndham the Younger stood on this.
36:38But we know that he is the Chamberlain of Queen Catherine of Braganza.
36:43And we know that he is trying to get a stained glass cross for the new chapel he is building
36:48in 1673-4.
36:50If you look at the chapel, you would think it was a Catholic chapel actually.
36:56In April 1672, just a month after the Royal Declaration of Indulgence, England and France declared war on the Netherlands.
37:04It did not go according to plan.
37:07The money promised by France to Charles was not enough to cover the military expenses.
37:12The King was forced to recall Parliament, and it contained many members who were fiercely opposed to the Royal Declaration.
37:18They deemed it far too generous to Catholics, and they now had the King in a bind.
37:24Parliament refused to fund the war until the Declaration was withdrawn.
37:28Charles had to comply.
37:31But worse was to come for the King.
37:33The details of his secret pact with Louis XIV were leaked.
37:36The public was furious.
37:38Charles quickly realised that to defend his own position,
37:41he had to pull out of the alliance with France, end the war with the Netherlands.
37:45In early 1674, the Treaty of Westminster was signed,
37:49which brought peace between England and the Netherlands.
37:52The war had achieved precisely nothing.
38:00Fortunately, the full details of what he'd agreed to never did come out, but it clearly helps to build the
38:05climate of anxiety in the 1670s about whether there is a drift back towards Catholic monarchy.
38:13There was still a lot of political tensions and the constant question of, if Charles couldn't produce a legitimate heir
38:22with Catherine of Braganza, who was going to succeed?
38:25And then the realisation that his brother, James, Duke of York, was a Roman Catholic.
38:33It led to a flaring up of intense anti-Catholic feeling, and part of that was driven by a wish
38:41to make sure that James could not become the future King of England.
38:46So all in all, I think Charles II would have preferred a much quieter time than he was handed.
39:061674 also saw the death of Sir Richard Wynne the Younger.
39:10He'd been a Member of Parliament for a total of 20 years, both before and after the Interregnum.
39:16Without any male heirs, the Wynne estate passed to his daughter Mary, but his title of Baronet would be given
39:23to his cousin, John Wynne.
39:26The strength of the Wynne family seemed to be dissipating.
39:29Charles II had returned to England, and so many across the country had had such high hopes.
39:35But his reign was turning out to be a disappointment.
39:38Just like the Wynne's, the Stuarts were losing power.
39:41Despite having many children with his numerous mistresses, King Charles had no legitimate heirs with his wife, Catherine of Braganza.
39:51Nor would any be born in the remaining 11 years of his life.
39:56The heir apparent throughout was his younger brother, James.
40:00Many suspected that James was a Catholic, though right.
40:04In fact, Charles II himself converted to the Catholic religion on his deathbed.
40:11He became incredibly ill in February 1685, very, very quickly, and suddenly he had a massive seizure.
40:18And then, poor man, he was handed over to the combined ignorance of the royal physicians, who did not know
40:24what to do.
40:25And they took a view that the best thing they could do was stimulate him and get his whole energy
40:30pulsing through him, I suppose.
40:32So they shaved off his hair and applied white-hot glass to his scalp.
40:40They put a sort of acid in his nostrils.
40:42They pumped him full of laxatives and enemas.
40:45And they gave him tonics of ground-up man's skull and put poultices of pigeon droppings on his feet.
40:54And although occasionally, bizarrely, he seemed to be getting better, the general flow was towards death.
41:00And one of his mistresses, Louise de Kerouet, took James, Duke of York, the king's brother, aside and said,
41:06Look, please don't tell anyone I've said this.
41:09But his one wish has always been that he dies a Catholic.
41:12The evidence that Charles II, the version of his deathbed, is in the end the testimony of the tiny number
41:20of people who are witnesses to it.
41:22It is very widely accepted that it was so.
41:27The man who is supposed to have received him into the church was someone who had helped him during his
41:34escape after Worcester in 1651
41:37and had been, in that sense, someone he trusted for many years.
41:40And for me, at any rate, it is a logical outcome.
41:44Out of the shadows, James brings a man called Father Huddleston, who had helped Charles survive during his six weeks
41:51on the run after the Battle of Worcester.
41:53And James utters the immortal line of,
41:56Sire, I bring you now a man who once saved your life, and now he'll save your soul.
42:02And Huddleston sits with the king and takes him through the various processes to bring him to Catholicism.
42:10Including what I'd imagine was rather a long confession by Charles.
42:15And he dies the following day, having just reconnected briefly with the six weeks in his life of which he
42:22was most proud,
42:22when he had shown himself to be brave and resilient.
42:31If anyone thought that the controversial issue of religious tolerance had gone away, they were mistaken.
42:37The reign of James II would bring with it another crisis in England and another war.
42:48In the next episode of The Stuarts of Bloody Reign, we see how the committed Catholic James II ascends to
42:55the throne of England, succeeding his brother.
42:58What had seemed an impossibility decades earlier, was now a reality.
43:04The religious tensions across the British Isles reached fever pitch.
43:08And they would test the loyalties of the Wynne family at Gwydir Castle in their relationship with the House of
43:13Stuart.
43:14All across the country, plans were made to usurp the Catholic king.
43:19But the real danger lay very close to home.
43:23James' own daughter Mary and her husband, the Protestant William of Orange of the Dutch Republic, were the greatest threat
43:30of all.
43:31This would spell the end of the House of Stuart and the beginning of the glorious revolution.
43:38The
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43:39.
43:39.
43:39.
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