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Alice is in London to try to make sense of the brief but eventful Restoration period, exploring the plague, St Paul's, the story of crown and slavery and the birth of modern science. And in theatreland, women taking to the stage.
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00:06The secrets of the past are all around us, hidden in our streets, buried under our feet.
00:12And in this series, I'll be uncovering those secrets as I explore Britain's most historic towns.
00:19I'll decipher physical clues.
00:22Look at that. It's covered with lizard-like scales.
00:25And get to know some extraordinary characters who are often overlooked.
00:30She sounds like an extraordinary woman.
00:33Nicola really was an Iron Lady of her day.
00:35With the help of Ben Robinson's Eye in the Sky, I'll discover which towns across the UK reveal the most
00:42about each period in British history.
00:45And find out how those stories still resonate today.
00:49If the French had won this battle, history would have played out very differently.
00:53Yes, we would have had a French monarchy.
00:56Oh my goodness.
00:59From the adventurous Elizabethans to the elegant Georgians, from medieval knights through to the height of empire,
01:06I'll tell the story of an era through the story of a single town.
01:15Today, I've come to the heart of the epic drama that was Britain's restoration.
01:20It changed the world and it happened here.
01:22A place where a new king created a boom in science, economics and put women on the stage.
01:29This was an incredibly erotic proposal for the men of London town.
01:34But also helped build a slave trade of brutal efficiency.
01:38And everybody's doing it, so you have to.
01:40Yes, but you have to do it better.
01:42It's a metropolis that was at war, would be engulfed in fire and devastated by a plague with chilling echoes
01:50for today.
01:50And having, as it were, got master of us all, made a most terrible slaughter.
01:57If you really want to understand the political, economic, cultural revolution that was the restoration,
02:06London is the place to come.
02:35The 21st century London is a city that has been built in the world.
02:38It's a city that's always changing, always in flux.
02:41There were constantly new buildings going up.
02:45And it's always been this magnet for people and for ideas going back through the centuries.
02:51And so many projects, creative, scientific, industrial, have started off right here.
03:00Love it or loathe it, it's our capital.
03:03Love it or loathe it, it's our capital.
03:072,000 years ago, the Romans established Londinium on the banks of the Thames, right where today's city stands.
03:15After the Romans, a few centuries of decline were reversed as the Normans made London England's centre of trade, government
03:23and crown.
03:25A role it's never relinquished.
03:30London is brimming with evidence of the powerful empire that Britain once controlled.
03:36But these days, it represents a culturally rich, high-tech modern age.
03:42A modern age that begs a simple question.
03:46Where did all this start?
03:49And I think we have the answers here in London.
03:52Not just London actually, but this nucleus between Tower Bridge to the east and St Paul's to the west.
04:02It's here, in this few square miles, that the seeds of global dominance were sown in an astonishing quarter of
04:09a century.
04:10The white-hot years of the Restoration.
04:17The Restoration refers to the period between 1660 and 1688, when the monarchy was restored to the throne following the
04:25collapse of Cromwell's Republic.
04:29Cromwell's short-lived Commonwealth had been created after a bloody civil war had ended with the capture and execution of
04:37Charles I.
04:39It was a tumultuous era for England, as the new king, Charles II, removed the shackles of Puritanism.
04:49So, it's 1660.
04:51Oliver Cromwell's deeply unpopular son, Richard, has been deposed, and Parliament is in disarray.
04:57It was a year of frantic politics, with Republicans and Royalists vying for power.
05:02And meanwhile, Charles I's son, also very originally called Charles, is in exile in the Netherlands, planning his return.
05:14To find out what happened next, I'm meeting historian Professor Kate Williams on the way to Westminster Abbey,
05:21the crowning place of British kings and queens since 1066.
05:28It seems that Charles II achieves what should have been impossible.
05:33His father was executed, and then he comes back as king.
05:38How does he do it?
05:39It's incredible, isn't it?
05:4011 years after his father's executed, and really, he's always waiting for the moment he can come back and be
05:46king.
05:46He's got the faith.
05:47He thinks one day he'll come back.
05:48And when Oliver Cromwell, he dies, his son Richard is very unpopular, and people are saying,
05:53well, why are we passing it down between father and son?
05:56There's a great series of instability.
05:58And essentially, there is this moment in which everyone says, why don't we just invite the king back?
06:04But the king can't come back before he's essentially signed a job contract,
06:10because we can't have the king back in the old way.
06:12We can't have divine right.
06:14We can't have him chopping off heads of whoever he wants.
06:16So what he signs is the Declaration of Breida, named after where he is at the point in the Netherlands.
06:22And this is a declaration in which Charles says, I am going to introduce religious toleration,
06:27so whatever religion you want to be.
06:30I'm not going to have vengeance on those who attacked my father.
06:34And also, people who got their property from royalists who lost property can keep it.
06:39So these key things that Parliament wants, Charles agrees to.
06:44And once he agrees to, it's like a trigger.
06:46That is when everyone says, he can come back.
06:49And that is when Charles II sets off to be king.
06:58Almost a full year since arriving back on English soil, Charles entered Westminster Abbey
07:04to be adorned with new crown jewels, the previous ones having been melted down by Cromwell.
07:20Kate, what would it have been like if we were here in that year, in 1661, for the coronation?
07:27What would you have seen?
07:28Charles II's coronation was completely mind-blowing.
07:31This was the biggest coronation people had seen since Elizabeth I, almost 100 years earlier.
07:36It was the biggest royal PR setup you can imagine.
07:44This was the first coronation they actually had tiered seating to cram everyone in because it was so popular.
07:50There's this incredible show of status, of wealth and power.
07:58Every monarch is the beginning of a new era, none so much as Charles II.
08:03Everyone knew that society would be different.
08:06Entertainment, theatres, sports, everything that had not been allowed under Cromwell is now suddenly permitted.
08:14And we start to see, in the coronation, the beginning of the mythology of Charles II as popular, as the
08:21Merry Monarch.
08:22Among those who witnessed the overblown coronation was a certain diarist.
08:28Samuel Pepys, who, by the way, seemed to be everywhere in Restoration London, saw it all and was incredibly impressed.
08:36His diary entry for the 23rd of April, 1661, read,
08:42I may now shut my eyes against any other objects, or for the future trouble myself to see things of
08:47state and show,
08:48as being sure never to see the like again in this world.
08:52He thought he was witnessing a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle.
08:56And, of course, this tradition would continue down through the centuries.
09:00I mean, what new monarch is going to pass up the PR opportunity offered by a coronation?
09:09The chance to dazzle people?
09:11The chance, some might say, to distract?
09:15Don't ask awkward questions about the Constitution and where power lies in Britain.
09:20Look at the shiny things!
09:33The pomp and ceremony was a fresh start for a king who'd already shown his teeth.
09:39Charles had returned to the English throne with an assurance to those he'd signed off on the execution of his
09:45father,
09:45who was beheaded here at Banqueting House in 1649.
09:51In the declaration of Breida, Charles had promised clemency.
09:57But the wording was vague. It was open to interpretation.
10:02So the final decision would rest with a future Parliament as to who was punished and how.
10:09And it seemed to be clear that for those directly involved with the execution, there would be no clemency.
10:18The regicides were a group of 59 men who'd signed Charles' death warrant, plus the judges who'd presided over them.
10:27For those that declined to flee, a brutal fate awaited.
10:34Thomas Harrison was the first to be executed, and he was hanged right here at Charing Cross,
10:40where this equestrian statue of Charles I now stands.
10:44And, of course, Samuel Pepys was there, displaying his flair for dark humour.
10:51I went out to Charing Cross, he wrote, to see Major General Harrison hanged, drawn and courted,
10:57he looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition.
11:03Five more of the 59 signatories were executed in the same thorough manner in 1660.
11:11Historian Dr. Onyeka Nubia has studied the fates of the regicides.
11:18At some point, something seems to have gone wrong, or it's been misinterpreted,
11:23because Charles II starts off by saying,
11:26if I'm put on the throne, everything's forgiven, and that doesn't seem to be quite what happened.
11:31Well, we presume that when he says what he says, he means what he says.
11:35You don't think he meant it?
11:36Because kings in these days are politicians.
11:40Everybody who writes on court politics would say,
11:44look, do not allow the murderers of your father to live.
11:48So then we have this situation where the regicides are hunted down,
11:52but presumably a lot of them had already made themselves scarce.
11:56I mean, they would have known what was coming.
11:58Well, some of these regicides are, in fact, dead already.
12:01Oliver Cromwell, for example, was dug up, hung,
12:04and then his head was put through a spike at Whitehall in London,
12:08and it was left there to rot.
12:11He's dead already.
12:12He's dead already.
12:13He's dead already.
12:14Telling other people.
12:15Yeah, it's about telling other people.
12:16It's ascending a message, a sign.
12:19So what about the ones he had fled the country then?
12:22Right.
12:22I mean, how were they found?
12:24Well, people turned and changed sides.
12:27People like George Downing, they hunted them down,
12:30and they knew how to hunt them down because they were their old friends.
12:33So George Downing was basically turning his old friends over.
12:38He's a remarkable individual,
12:40someone who raises himself from quite a low position,
12:42and he uses the Civil War to become a Republican
12:46and to be an ardent member of that faction that wants to kill the king.
12:52As soon as that's done, he then becomes a supporter of Oliver Cromwell.
12:57And then, when Oliver Cromwell dies, he switches sides again and says,
13:02look, in fact, we need to invite the king back.
13:04We need the stability of the king.
13:06So he's someone who's politically expedient,
13:08but also willing to sacrifice his friends.
13:12Yeah.
13:12He operated like a spymaster.
13:14He had a ring of agents that worked for him.
13:18They lied, they deceived, they cheated,
13:21so that they could make sure that all the regicides were captured,
13:25and then seeing that they are dispatched.
13:29Downing's operation ensured three more of the regicides
13:32were tracked down and brought back to London
13:34to be publicly tortured and dissected.
13:37The surviving fugitives lived out their lives abroad,
13:41terrified of the king's revenge.
13:44Well, you won't be surprised to hear that Pepys had something to say
13:47about George Downing.
13:48He called him a perfidious rogue,
13:51but the king had an entirely different opinion,
13:54rewarded him handsomely with a plot of land
13:56on which Downing built a terrace of houses.
13:59And if you ever thought,
14:00will Britain turn into a republic at some point,
14:04well, just reflect on the fact
14:05that our leaders live on Downing Street.
14:21I'm in London,
14:23the best place to understand Restoration Britain.
14:28Charles II had been crowned
14:30in a lavish ceremony at Westminster Abbey,
14:33but had shown his steel by wreaking bloody vengeance
14:36on those who'd executed his father.
14:40Revenge is one thing,
14:42but what Charles II really needed
14:44was to create political stability.
14:46He needed popular appeal,
14:48and he set out to win hearts and minds
14:50by rolling back some of the severe restrictions
14:53that had been placed on society
14:55during Cromwell's Commonwealth.
14:57Top of his list, reopening the theatres.
15:01Puritanism was out,
15:02entertainment was in.
15:05I've come to London's West End
15:07to meet theatre historian Dr Lucy Powell,
15:10who can help me understand
15:12how bringing plays back to the stage
15:14transformed the city's cultural life.
15:17So was it just a question
15:19of taking the theatres out of Mossfalls then
15:21and just picking up where they'd left off?
15:23Not at all.
15:24So in Shakespeare's day,
15:26theatres had been these huge open-air arenas,
15:29and they were in these seedy backquarters
15:32like Southwark on the other side of the river,
15:34which in those days was
15:35where the leather tanneries of London were happening,
15:37so they were incredibly stinky.
15:39And what happens when Charles arrives back in London
15:41is he issues two patents to two of his followers
15:43to build these big, fashionable, closed theatres,
15:48which were also incredibly large,
15:50right here in Covent Garden,
15:52so in the middle of what was becoming
15:54the fashionable area of town.
15:57So is this really the beginning
15:58of West End Theatre in London?
16:01Yes.
16:01Was Charles II actually coming out to the public theatre?
16:06Indeed, he was.
16:07And he had done this on the continent,
16:08in France and in places like Italy,
16:11where women were allowed on stage.
16:13In this country, that wasn't the case.
16:15And one of the first things Charles does
16:16when he comes back to the throne in 1660
16:20is he issues a patent which says that
16:21from this time forth,
16:23all female parts must be played by women.
16:26And the reason he said that this law was necessary
16:29was to suppress obscene and scurrilous passages
16:33in plays being spoken by boys pretending to be women
16:37in an effort, he says,
16:38to suppress unnatural vice is the euphemistic phrase.
16:43Now, what happens is exactly the opposite of this attempt
16:47to kind of make theatre more morally respectable.
16:49It becomes a place of incredibly sort of sexual freight.
16:55People go to the theatre in order to look at this new drawer
16:58of these handsome young women in various states of undress,
17:03and you can actually see it in the fabric of the plays
17:06that are written for them.
17:07So this new form of part for women called the breeches roll
17:11became immensely popular in the Restoration period.
17:14So walking around the streets of London,
17:16cleavage and breasts, ten a penny,
17:19they were everywhere on show,
17:20so you had these incredibly low-cut dresses.
17:22But the bit of women that you would never normally see
17:25would be hips, thighs and buttocks.
17:28So if a woman actress is wearing a man's clothing,
17:33the breeches part,
17:35you would be able to make out the shape of her hips
17:37and her thighs and her bum,
17:38and this was an incredibly erotic proposal
17:40for the men of London Town
17:42who would flock to go and see women
17:44in these states of theatrical undress.
17:46They have legs!
17:47They have legs and bums, yeah.
17:49It was thrilling for the male populace.
17:54The fun-loving Mary Monarch
17:56was a successful PR image for Charles,
17:58but he also had serious ambitions
18:01for Britain to become a major player on the world stage.
18:06He knew cutting-edge technology
18:08and new scientific ideas would lead the way.
18:12This is now the site of Tower 42,
18:15but in 1660,
18:17some of the country's most brilliant minds
18:20gathered right here.
18:22They'd come to hear a lecture by Christopher Wren,
18:25and then they held the very first meeting
18:28of what would become the most widely respected
18:30and influential scientific society in the world.
18:35With Charles' blessing,
18:36they called it the Royal Society.
18:39Former presidents include
18:41Sir Isaac Newton,
18:43Sir Christopher Wren,
18:45Samuel Pepys, of course,
18:47and Nobel Prize-winning geneticist
18:50Sir Paul Nurse,
18:52who I'm meeting in the City of London.
18:55Well, what was the purpose of the Royal Society?
18:59I mean, was it just a club of scientists?
19:01Well, it was a club.
19:03It was called the Invisible College,
19:05and they met regularly
19:07to talk about scientific issues,
19:09and the motto of the Royal Society in Latin,
19:13nullius in verbia or something like that,
19:18means don't take everybody's word for it.
19:21Yeah.
19:22And that had some critical consequences, actually,
19:24because it meant that you had to show
19:26that you'd really thought about it,
19:28you'd really made the observations,
19:30made the experiments,
19:31done the calculation,
19:32and demonstrate it to others.
19:34And that led to something we call peer review,
19:38which is that if you provide evidence,
19:41then others should look at it
19:42to see if it looks good.
19:44And if it's good,
19:45then it would be worth publishing.
19:47Talking about the Royal Society,
19:48why are we here by the monuments?
19:50Well, it was designed by Robert Hooke
19:53and Christopher Wren
19:54to celebrate the Fire of London,
19:56or at least to remember it.
19:58But actually, it was also a scientific instrument.
20:02Really?
20:03It's a telescope.
20:04So at the top, they had a lens, a big lens.
20:07Yeah.
20:08And then that focused the light down
20:09into the basement below it,
20:12where they could look up.
20:14And what they wanted to do
20:15was to make very precise measurements
20:18of the stars at opposite sides of the Earth's orbit.
20:23Did it work?
20:24No.
20:24Oh.
20:25Now, why didn't it work?
20:26It didn't work because there was so much traffic
20:29going past all the time over cobblestones,
20:31so you can imagine,
20:32and it wobbled
20:33so they couldn't get precise enough measurements.
20:36But Hooke,
20:38I mean, he made some amazing discoveries.
20:39He worked with lenses at the other extreme as well,
20:43didn't he?
20:44Microscopy.
20:45Hooke was more of an artisan.
20:46He did all these drawings.
20:48There's a magnificent book called Micrographia.
20:50I know we've got a version of it at the University of Birmingham,
20:53and it's huge.
20:54It's about that big.
20:55It's massive.
20:56Gorgeous big.
20:57It's got the details of a flea under the microscope.
21:00A wonderful flea.
21:01Can you imagine?
21:02Nobody had ever seen this before,
21:04and it must have looked like some monster.
21:07And the second thing that really excites me
21:10is that he used a razor and cut a thin slice of a plant
21:15and looked at it underneath the microscope,
21:18and he discovered cells.
21:21And cells are the basic unit of life,
21:24and I've spent all my life studying them,
21:26so that's why I particularly like Robert Hooke and Micrographia.
21:29Sometimes I can overuse the word world-changing,
21:33but this did change the world, then.
21:35This really did.
21:36It changed the world, and it happened here.
21:37It happened in here, in London, in the 1660s,
21:40and it dominated science,
21:43which, of course, has dominated many other things
21:45ever since those 350 or more years.
21:50Those brilliant scientists were crucial
21:53to King Charles getting what he wanted
21:54more than anything, a booming economy.
21:59The key to that was having a navy
22:02that could command the oceans,
22:06protecting trade and battling for new territories.
22:10The problem was, sailing on the open seas
22:14was still a haphazard, treacherous task.
22:20Navigating the globe relied on knowledge
22:23of the heavens,
22:24aerial archaeologist Ben Robinson is in Greenwich
22:27to find out about the founding of the Royal Observatory.
22:38There we go, just a bit more height.
22:41Wow.
22:42And that's all spread out before me.
22:44This is one of the most recognisable views
22:47of the most recognisable city in the world.
22:50There's the Isle of Dogs, the Thames snaking round.
22:54But I've got to sweep all of that away
22:56and think back to the 17th century,
22:58and this is what I'm interested in.
23:01Greenwich Park.
23:03Back in the 17th century, this was Kent.
23:06This was the countryside.
23:07It was away from the smog, from the clutter.
23:10There were clear skies.
23:11And that's why they chose this spot for this observatory.
23:17This is what Christopher Wren was tasked with building.
23:21And, in effect, it was a house for the Astronomer Royal,
23:25a new post that Charles had created.
23:28And that Astronomer Royal was John Flamsteed.
23:32So this is Flamsteed's house.
23:33And his purpose was to make accurate star charts
23:37and try and capture this elusive way of understanding longitude.
23:43If they could work out longitude and latitude,
23:46then they'd got accurate navigation.
23:49And if you've got accurate navigation, you rule the world.
23:53But he didn't manage it.
23:54It would take decades before they did that.
23:57And it was decades after that
23:59that finally Greenwich was fixed as the point of the prime meridian.
24:04And thereafter, Greenwich became the centre of world time,
24:08Greenwich Mean Time.
24:09And the foundations for all that were laid in the Restoration period.
24:20The scientific breakthroughs that happened during the Restoration period
24:23allowed ships to travel much further
24:25into what was still a largely uncharted world.
24:30So that in itself necessitated another revolution,
24:33because where do you get the money to go on such risky ventures
24:38to buy new ships and to insure yourself against disaster,
24:44against potential loss of those ships on the high seas?
24:47And rather strangely, the answer lay with a warm beverage.
25:07I'm in England's capital, London,
25:11trying to take in the cascade of era-defining events
25:14that made Restoration Britain
25:16a unique melting pot of innovation that changed the world.
25:21With this new vibrancy in London came a need for more places
25:25for the movers and shakers to discuss deals and debate ideas.
25:31You had official but exclusive institutions like the Royal Society,
25:36but there were places where people were starting to come together
25:40in a much less formal way,
25:41where ideas could bubble up and propagate,
25:44and they were being drawn in to those places
25:47by the lure of a powerful new drug.
25:52In 1652, a man called Pasqua Rosé started pushing that drug
25:57here on St Michael's Alley.
25:59It created an instant high and the city boys just couldn't get enough of it.
26:04It may not be what you think.
26:06It was coffee, but it was very potent.
26:11I've ventured deep into the labyrinth of the financial district
26:15to meet Dr Matthew Green,
26:18who has studied the impact of Restoration London's coffeehouse scene.
26:22So, Matthew, if we'd have been here in the middle of the 17th century,
26:26we would have been able to buy a coffee from Pasqua.
26:29That's absolutely right.
26:30On this site was the coffee shack, I would call it,
26:34because it didn't really have tables and chairs,
26:36it was shrouded in smoke, sometimes actually on fire.
26:39But if we were to drink the coffee now, you'd be horrified.
26:42I don't know if you're, like, a flat white kind of person, but...
26:45I like an Americano.
26:46You like an Americano? Yeah, me too.
26:47If you're used to, you know, beautifully filtered,
26:51delicious Epicurean coffee,
26:52the taste of the 17th century stuff
26:54would have you heading for the nearest vomit bucket.
26:58Presumably it was the effects of it,
27:00rather than the taste of it, then.
27:02It was the effect.
27:02Now, remember, until the arrival of coffee,
27:04most people in the city were either slightly or very drunk all day long.
27:09The habitual drink would be ale, watered-down ale.
27:12So the arrival of coffee would trigger a dawn of sobriety.
27:15Imagine if you were kind of emerging from this, like, haze,
27:19this alcoholic fog... Exactly.
27:21..and then turning to coffee and suddenly...
27:24And suddenly... Full of ideas.
27:26Exactly, and it all can be traced to the impact
27:28of this disgustingly bitter black drink.
27:32And would there be different coffee houses
27:33for different groups of people?
27:36I mean, when I was at university,
27:37there was one pub where the lawyers used to go
27:39and another pub where all the medical students used to go.
27:41Was it that kind of thing?
27:42Yeah, exactly right.
27:43In the heart of the city,
27:45there was a triptych of monumentally significant coffee houses.
27:49For example, Jonathan's Coffee House,
27:51which was the birthplace of the stock markets.
27:53You had Garraway's, which is just round the corner from that,
27:56which was the birthplace of international auctioneering.
27:59So you could bid for Rottenboroughs or a nice mansion
28:02in Edmonton or Tottenham.
28:03So that business was happening in the coffee house?
28:05It was happening inside, yes, with a face-to-face interaction.
28:08And perhaps most strikingly, there was a place called Lloyd's
28:11that opened in the 1690s by a boy called Edward Lloyd,
28:15who had cultivated excellent links with the maritime community.
28:20And this meant that it was a natural meeting place
28:22for people involved in overseas trade.
28:27At the time, the British economy was expanding.
28:29The tentacles of the overseas trading empire
28:32are reaching ever further afield.
28:34They need to find a way of financing these voyages
28:38without facing ruin.
28:40So you need to mitigate against the risk.
28:42And that meant almost organically,
28:44the insurance industry coalesced
28:46within the smoky candlelit forum that was Lloyd's.
28:50And we still have Lloyd's today.
28:52That comes from the coffee house?
28:54It began as a direct link, yes.
28:56The porters are still called waiters
28:57in an illusion to its caffeinated origins.
29:00But even though the original buildings
29:02have long since crumbled or were burnt down,
29:04the capitalist concoctions that took place there
29:07are still with us.
29:10Caffeine-powered innovations in business,
29:13banking and marine insurance
29:15meant that Britain would soon be nosing ahead
29:17of her European competitors
29:19in the race to trade and exploit commodities
29:22on a global scale.
29:25There was one business that was really taking off
29:28in the second half of the 17th century
29:30and Charles II and his aristocratic friends
29:32wanted a piece of the action.
29:35But it was the cruelest and most inhumane business imaginable.
29:40It was slavery.
29:41And the British establishment was right at the heart of it.
29:49I've come to the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich
29:53to find out just how complicit the British establishment was
29:57in the enslavement of Africans.
30:02This is one of those times I feel really privileged
30:05because this is a print which has been taken
30:08out of the archives in the museum.
30:10It's not normally on display to the public
30:12and I'm lucky enough to be able to see it up close.
30:16It's quite chilling, actually.
30:18What this is depicting is some of the forts
30:22that dotted the coast of West Africa
30:25in the 17th century.
30:27And in the dungeons of these castles
30:29are African prisoners
30:32and those African prisoners
30:35are going to become slaves.
30:37They're going to be transported across the Atlantic
30:41to what developed into the plantations.
30:44So this is the beginnings of the slave trade.
30:48And it's with the...
30:49It's not even the collusion of the state.
30:52It's state-sponsored.
30:53And we see that so clearly when Charles II comes to the throne.
30:57So what I've got here are photographs of a document
31:02which is a patent for the company that will have the monopoly
31:06over this West African trade, the slave trade.
31:09So this is Charles II, by the grace of God, King of England.
31:15And he is granting this patent
31:18to his dearest brother, James, Duke of York.
31:26So James is effectively the chief executive
31:30of what was then the Company of Royal Adventures of England
31:35trading into Africa.
31:36That's what would become the Royal Africa Company.
31:39And he's granting the patent for 1,000 years.
31:43And here are some of the other beneficiaries of it.
31:47The Royal Consulate, Queen Catherine.
31:51Mary, the Queen Mother.
31:53And dearest sister, Henrietta.
31:55It just goes on and on and on.
31:5820 of the 66 beneficiaries listed here
32:02are members of the Royal Family.
32:08To try to interpret that shocking evidence,
32:12I'm catching up with Dr Onyeka Nubia again.
32:15I've just been looking at these remarkable documents
32:17from the archive.
32:18And it seems as though what Charles II was essentially saying,
32:22you know, this is where we make money.
32:23And we need to regulate that.
32:25We need to govern it.
32:27I need to be in control.
32:28At least my brother needs to be in control of it.
32:30I don't know if it's Charles II saying that.
32:31I think it's the people that are advising him
32:33that are saying that.
32:34I think that he's advised,
32:36look, this is what Spain has done.
32:38This is what Portugal has done.
32:40This is what we can do.
32:42And if we don't do it, they will do it.
32:44And they'll become too powerful and they'll conquer us.
32:47So it's about the balance of power in Europe
32:50and getting rich at the same time.
32:51It is 100% about the balance of power in Europe.
32:54And everybody's doing it, so you have to?
32:56Yes, but you have to do it better.
32:58And England would end up doing it very well.
33:00Yeah, well, exactly.
33:01That's the point.
33:02Not only does that well,
33:03but then does colonialism and imperialism
33:05better than any other nation?
33:06And does the exploitation better than any other nation?
33:09Because it's coming in a way after the other nations.
33:13And so it learns from their mistakes.
33:16And because it's a very good student,
33:17it doesn't make the same mistakes
33:19that Spain made or Portugal made.
33:21I know that you don't like to put numbers on it
33:25because the numbers are actually impossible to get at.
33:28Yeah.
33:29But is there some kind of idea of the scale of this?
33:32OK, well, that's an impossible figure to give.
33:35I'll tell you why.
33:36Because the figure that I would give you would be wrong.
33:39It would only ever be a gross, gross underestimation.
33:44It does not give account to the millions of people
33:48who would have died en route,
33:49the millions of people who died as a result of civil war
33:52and civil conflict,
33:53the millions of people that died of starvation and hunger,
33:56the millions of people that died of disease
33:58and malnutrition as a result of the conflict.
34:02We just don't know the number.
34:04But what we do know is that by 1884 and 1885,
34:09the entire continent of Africa did not have,
34:13with the exception of Ethiopia,
34:14one single unitary African state run by African people.
34:20What?
34:21That we do know.
34:23So whatever went on was continuously systematic
34:27over several hundreds of years,
34:29resulting in the destabilisation of an entire continent.
34:37In the 1660s, that royal family firm set out to profit,
34:43both by enslaving Africans
34:45and through the global trade that would enable.
34:50Control of shipping routes was crucial,
34:52but to achieve that control, Britain would have to fight.
34:55It would have to fight.
34:56War always gets in the way of making money
34:59and throughout the middle of the 1600s,
35:02Britain's upstart empire had been battling it out
35:06with a much richer country, the Dutch Republic.
35:11This was a naval war.
35:14To understand how much was at stake,
35:17Ben Robinson has taken his drone downriver to Tilbury.
35:22That's a great view down the Thames towards the estuary here.
35:26And this was the gateway to the world in the Restoration period.
35:29But like any gateway, it could let in trouble.
35:33And in 1667, the Dutch sailed into the Thames estuary,
35:38down to Chatham.
35:39They burnt the English fleet at anchor.
35:42They trashed the dockyard there.
35:44They towed away the Royal Charles,
35:47the pride of the English fleet.
35:49This was an utter humiliation,
35:52an embarrassment unparalleled in British military history.
35:55Something had to be done.
35:57And this is what they came up with, Tilbury Fort.
36:01You can see how it utterly controls the Thames.
36:05The gun batteries could fire across the river here.
36:08No Dutch ship would be able to get through this.
36:12But also, the Dutch fleet might have moored further up the river here,
36:17disembarked troops,
36:18and they could have come round and attacked a fort from the land side.
36:22So they had an answer to that.
36:23These wide moats here.
36:26An inner one and an outer moat.
36:30And these were controlled by sluices,
36:32so in times of trouble you could flood them quickly.
36:34And these spearhead bastions, look at its symmetrical shape.
36:38They allow covering fire of every square inch of ground.
36:43This was a complete defensible island, utterly impregnable.
36:53Fortification helped Britain defend itself against the Dutch,
36:58but London was about to face a much deadlier enemy.
37:19I'm in London uncovering what happened during the restoration of the 1660s,
37:24the moment that innovations in science, business and brutal human exploitation combined
37:31to elevate England to the top tier of the world's power players.
37:37By the start of the restoration period, London was experiencing rapid growth.
37:43Its population had doubled since 1600.
37:48These new residents almost all moved into outer areas near the city's Roman walls.
37:55The poorest were crammed into damp, overcrowded, filthy housing.
38:01Ideal conditions for the return of a deadly disease, the bubonic plague.
38:06In 1664, people started to die.
38:11But really that was unremarkable.
38:14London's poor were dying all the time
38:15and the authorities could afford to turn a blind eye to it.
38:20But in the summer of 1665, the plague really took off.
38:25Mortality was rising week on week.
38:27Thousands of people were dying and there was no cure in sight.
38:32It all sounds chillingly familiar.
38:35Part of our pandemic experience has been to witness health workers
38:39risking their lives to treat the ill.
38:42But during the restorations epidemic,
38:45almost everyone who could fled for the countryside.
38:48One of the few brave doctors who remained in London
38:52also uniquely recorded his experience.
38:57I've come to London's Welcome Collection
39:00to meet Pooja Swali, who studies ancient pathogens.
39:06The book she's retrieved from the archive is by Dr Nathaniel Hodges.
39:12This is his account then, is it?
39:14Yeah, of the spread of the plague and he notes how it changes.
39:18And it's called Loimologia, so that actually means study of the plague.
39:21So he says there, in the months of August and September,
39:25the contagion changed its former flow and languid pace.
39:29And having, as it were, got master of us all,
39:33made a most terrible slaughter,
39:35to that three, four or five thousand died in a week,
39:39and once eight thousand.
39:41It's just horrendous, isn't it?
39:42Actually, there's an account of who it affected the most.
39:46He goes,
39:48But it is incredible to think how the plague raged amongst the common people,
39:52in so much that it came by some to be called the poor's plague.
39:57Really?
39:57And we start to see a lot of parallels with today,
40:00in terms of how coronavirus is having an effect on the working class,
40:07in that they don't have the option of having someone cover their work,
40:11and they don't have the opportunity of self-isolation.
40:15They just don't have the access to a lot of these things.
40:17What was his idea?
40:18What was he trying to do?
40:20So a lot of his book, he does put an emphasis on social isolation and quarantine,
40:26as a way of slowing down the actual spread of the disease.
40:30I think it's really easy to look back to the 17th century,
40:32and to think that they're all kind of, you know,
40:34just, they don't really know what's going on,
40:35they're reaching out in the dark,
40:37but actually, there's a lot of evidence-based thinking going on.
40:43Nathaniel Hodge's courage and thorough methods
40:47epitomised an empirical approach to medicine,
40:49leaving medieval quackery behind.
40:53In this city of statues, there surely should be one to him.
41:00Despite the plague having killed over 70,000 Londoners,
41:04around 100,000 remained,
41:06still living within the ancient city walls,
41:09in houses made largely of wood and thatch.
41:13It was a disaster waiting to happen,
41:16and on Sunday, the 2nd of September, 1666,
41:19a fire broke out in the house and bakery
41:22of Thomas Farriner on Cudding Lane.
41:25The mayor of London, Thomas Bloodworth,
41:27woke up, saw the fire,
41:30and famously claimed,
41:31a woman could piss it out,
41:34and then, obviously exhausted by this hilarious witticism,
41:37went back to bed.
41:38Samuel Pepys obviously saw the fire as well,
41:42and also thought it was insignificant and went back to bed.
41:46How wrong can two men be?
41:50To start with, the fire spread east, towards the Tower of London,
41:54but then the wind changed, fanning the flames westwards,
41:58pushing it remorselessly one and a half miles as far as Fleet Street.
42:03By day four, although only six people had died,
42:09436 acres, the very heart of medieval London,
42:13had been turned to ash.
42:15Most powerfully of all,
42:17it had completely destroyed London's single greatest building,
42:21St Paul's Cathedral,
42:22just as Christopher Wren had started a comprehensive renovation.
42:28I'm meeting Dr Hannah Dawson to see
42:30how an architectural phoenix arose from the ashes.
42:33So the previous cathedral is basically raised to the ground,
42:37and they demolish it,
42:38so Wren has got a very different prospect then.
42:40Rather than renovating an existing building,
42:43he's basically building a completely new one.
42:44That's right.
42:46The entire project becomes a completely different, enormous one.
42:50Wren is now engaged not just to rebuild St Paul's Cathedral,
42:53but actually to rethink the whole of London.
42:57It takes him nine years in the planning.
43:01It's an unbelievably complicated back-and-forth process,
43:04but then finally they agree on his plan with his dome,
43:08and the scaffolding goes up,
43:09but even then, once the scaffolding is up,
43:12Wren actually takes the opportunity
43:13behind the secrecy of the scaffolding
43:15to slightly do his own thing again against the orders of Charles.
43:19Just adjusts it back.
43:20Yeah, exactly.
43:21Actually, this is what they wanted to do.
43:22Just barrocks it up a bit.
43:23Yeah.
43:26Alongside designing 50 new churches for London,
43:29Wren collaborated with his friend, Robert Hook,
43:32to create the new St Paul's.
43:38At 365 feet high, its dome would be taller than any other building in London
43:44for over 250 years.
43:48How far is he pushing this design?
43:50Because that is a huge dome to build.
43:52It's so enormous, and because they didn't want,
43:54they wanted it to look beautiful from the outside as well as from the inside,
43:57they had to therefore make two domes.
43:59And so to work out how to connect them such that they wouldn't fall in,
44:03they'd never done it before.
44:04And so in keeping with the spirit of the scientific revolution,
44:08which was all about experiment and empiricism and trial and error,
44:12this was really a case of, let's see if this is going to work.
44:16Yeah.
44:16It was very much an experiment which they pulled off.
44:25In St Paul's, Charles II and Christopher Wren
44:29had created an indestructible stone phoenix,
44:33rising from the devastation of civil war, regicide and cataclysmic fire.
44:44An unmissable statement that a new age had been born,
44:49with Britain at its centre.
44:59This building is the greatest physical symbol of the restoration,
45:04but our story of Restoration London doesn't finish here.
45:09It ends over there at the building affectionately known as the cheese grater.
45:17This is 122 Leadenhall Street.
45:22The giant slanting steels of this glass monolith
45:26stand astride an area that was just beyond the reach of the Great Fire.
45:33With most of London in tatters,
45:36deal-hungry businessmen flocked here,
45:38creating a vibrant new financial district
45:41as London was rebuilt, fit for the modern age.
45:47It's quite strange, really, isn't it,
45:49to think that the foundations of this building, Leadenhall,
45:54go right back to the restoration.
45:56It wouldn't be here if it wasn't for that supernova
46:01that ignited down there and lit up the world.
46:05It was a few short years when this city exploded with the ideas and innovations
46:13that changed the course of humanity,
46:16often for the better, sometimes for the worse.
46:19An era that didn't just help create modern Britain,
46:23but forged the way our whole world is today.
46:26That's why London is the city at the centre of Britain's world-changing restoration.
46:37Historic Towns is at the earlier time of a quarter to eight next Saturday.
46:41Dispatch is Monday night at eight,
46:43asking how green are the tech giants?
46:45Is your online habit killing the planet?
46:48Next up tonight here on Channel 4,
46:50Jennifer Lawrence enters the dark work of sexual espionage
46:53in the spy thriller Red Sparrow.
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