I was happy to speak with Linda Porter, author of several really great books (listed below) and was a consultant on the new Six Wives series on BBC One. Thanks to Linda and her publisher for giving away three copies of her new book to three winners.
Enter here for a chance to win.
Order Linda’s books here:
Royal Renegades: The Children of Charles I and the English Civil Wars by Linda Porter (2016-10-06)
The Myth of “Bloody Mary”: A Biography of Queen Mary I of England
Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr, the Last Wife of Henry VIII
Crown of Thistles
Rough Transcript: Linda Porter on the Children of Charles I
Speaker 1: (00:00)
[inaudible]
Speaker 2: (00:11)
Welcome to the Renaissance English history podcast. I’m your host, Heather Tesco. This is episode 63. It’s an interview with Linda Porter. She was the historical consultant on the new BBC one series six wives. She also has a new book out on the children of Charles the first and the English civil Wars. Before we get started, though, I need to mention that the Renaissance English history podcast is a proud member of the Agoura podcast network. Ni a Gora podcast of the month is the history of Egypt podcast. The history of Egypt podcast is available on iTunes and also at Egypt history, podcast.com. So check that out. It’s a really interesting podcast to listen to. So let me introduce Linda Porter for you. Also, you can get links and show notes and everything like that. At my website, England cast.com E N G L a N D C a S T England cast.com.
Speaker 2: (01:11)
And you can get more information about Linda and all the links to get her books there. Linda Porter has a BA and a doctor of philosophy from the university of York. She spent nearly 10 years lecturing in New York at Fordham and city universities among others before returning with her American husband and daughter to England, where she embarked on a complete change of career for more than 20 years, she worked as a senior public relations practitioner in BT introducing a groundbreaking international public relations program. During the years of BTS international expansion, the attractions of early retirement were too good to miss, and she has gone back to historical writing as well as reviewing for the BBC history magazine, the literary review and history today. She is now on her fourth book, Royal renegades, the children of Charles, the first and the English civil Wars. I am so grateful to Linda Porter for taking the time to speak with us. We started off the interview with me asking her about Charles, the first view of monarchy and how that influenced his children’s views, especially Charles and James.
Speaker 3: (02:18)
Okay, well I’m Charles is you have monarchy is a fairly straight forward one. Actually he felt the team with answerable to no one, but God, and that as such, he couldn’t really be questioned or held to account by his subjects and this divine right of Kings view, um, which is often associated rather closely with his father James, the first, but actually had pervaded that the whole of, of monarchy as an institution for me, hundreds of years before that really, I mean, that that’s, I suppose, does find its most literal expressing if you like in, in Charles first, um, quite how much his children, uh, follow that, um, is interesting. I think, um, because Charles is second having seen what had happened to his father as a result of being entirely unwilling to, uh, negotiate or compromise, uh, managed his reign far more successfully really then than any of the other stewards.
Speaker 3: (03:25)
Uh, he was a clever cynical, uh, man who, uh, knew how to charm people, but could also be quite ruthless. And he managed to balance the, and, and almost, I suppose in a way develop the role of a, what we would call a constitutional Monarch, but one still with very considerable powers. And, and in particular, he managed to, to cope with his parliaments and even dispense with them when necessary in a way that was far more effective than his father had ever done. Uh, but I don’t think he, while he might privately have supported his father’s views on the monarchical institution and it’s, it’s a responsibility only to the deputy. Uh, I think he wasn’t willing to pursue this too far in practice and certainly didn’t wish to end up with the same fate as his other. Now James is a bit different cause James, I think had absorbed at his father’s knee.
Speaker 3: (04:23)
Um, despite having been deserted by his father on a couple of occasions, I think he had absorbed, um, the belief that, uh, Kings could do no wrong. And when he came to the throne in 1685 on his brother’s death, having been the air, of course, throughout Charles, his reign, he, he really did have an agenda to try and, um, bring the Catholic faith, which he had converted to probably sometime in the late 1660s when we don’t know exactly when, um, as a boy, he hadn’t shown a great deal of interest in it. And he’d been brought up as a Protestant of course, as were all of Charles’s children. But James, the second I think came to the throne, um, at least determined that, uh, Catholics would have the same rights, um, civil legal, um, uh, and things like that as, as, uh, Protestants, which they didn’t.
Speaker 3: (05:19)
Of course they, the one thing that the restoration settlement didn’t do, uh, was to, um, bring full citizenship back for either Catholic or Protestant non-conformist and James dressed up his ideas. If you like in the, uh, in the kind of package that he thought would appeal to both his Catholic subjects and his Puritan stroke non-conformist subjects, but his agenda was really always to, um, restore Catholicism to full Acceptibility and full legal and civil status. And his subjects were just not willing to have that happen by the time that he lost his throne. About three years later, it’s interesting that he survived, um, the insurrection around his nephew, uh, childhood illegitimates from the Duke of Monmouth and people were still willing to, to work with James the second at that point. But he, he was a man who’d never really accepted that you shouldn’t push your luck and his brother Charles, the second habit accepted that during a long and paneer is exile. I think that’s the difference between the two of them, of the two in terms of his belief, James, the second was much closer to his father tells the first than the second was whatever childhood second might’ve privately wanted or believed he knew that to pursue it too far would probably send him abroad on his travels again.
Speaker 2: (06:50)
Cool. Can you give me a, I’m going to skip ahead here, a couple of questions just to kind of get an overview of the time period in your book, which is a little bit later than I normally cover in the podcast. So I think for some of the listeners, uh, it might be a little bit unfamiliar. And so this is of course the period of the English civil war and the protector. And, um, can you just kind of give us a little bit of a, an overview though?
Speaker 3: (07:12)
Well, Charles, when the civil war began in 1642, um, it did, so it was a result of a long, long background of rising, um, discontent, uh, amongst the sort of craft of men who represented, um, the English constituencies in parliament, who were, I suppose for want of a better term now. I mean, they were nearly all men of property. They were not, um, um, men from, from, uh, uh, lower social orders. But, um, because, uh, the Stewarts found themselves in a situation largely financial to try and, and, um, uh, finance various Wars in Europe during childhood, the first, the early part of Charles, the first reign, uh, their relationship task. The first relationship with parliament became very, very fraught. Uh, he, wasn’t the sort of person who would listen to any demands for a, a larger role for parliament. He didn’t think that the constitutional situation needed any changing, whereas the parliamentarians in return for giving him money, wanting something back, um, parliaments under the Tudor period had been very much sort of forelock tugging the tutors managed parliaments far more successfully than the students did, but there, the, the sort of parameters of the world were slightly narrower and more in the favor of monarchy in the 16th century than they were in the, in the 17th.
Speaker 3: (08:45)
Uh, and, uh, really it was the years that childhood first ruled without parliament in the 1630s and were eventually things broke down. And his, um, the troubles that the setting were not just in England, but in the other two kingdoms that he ruled as well, Ireland and Scotland. And in fact, it was Scotland, uh, that first rebelled against Charles the first in the late 1630s, because he tried to impose the, um, form of worship, the prayer book of, of the church, England on Scotland, which was by that time sort of fully Presbyterian the Kirk didn’t like bishops and the whole hierarchy of the church of England. And when the Scots rebelled, Charles sent an army against them, which was hugely unsuccessful, he needed money. If he was going to sort of keep up any pretense of trying to keep the Scots at Bay and in order to get money, had to recall parliament after a gap of 11 years.
Speaker 3: (09:43)
And in 1640, there were two parliaments, the short parliament, which he very unwisely dissolved after just three weeks cause they wouldn’t do what he wanted. And then by the 1640 had to call them what becomes known as the long part of them, which effectively lasted for 20 years on and off during the Oh period of the civil Wars. And there was growing discontent with Charles and his ministers. There was a very serious outbreak of rebellion in Ireland, which field anti Catholicism in England, uh, the queen herself Henrietta Maria was French Catholic and extremely unpopular, uh, and, and had absolutely no political sense whatsoever and tended to try and encourage her husband down roots, which avoided so that I don’t think anybody wants, she’d a war in 1642. Um, and it was told who raised his standard, first of all, at Nottingham in, in August, 1642. Um, but parliament was not well prepared to fight, but it was committed to doing so now of course, during the civil war years, really the high point of royalist success was in the second year of the war in 1643, when they, uh, based in Oxford, uh, and seemed perhaps to be able to repel the parliamentary forces.
Speaker 3: (11:03)
And of course during that period of time, the parliamentarians themselves became much, much more split. Um, they, they split along religious lines. Um, the idea of greater tolerance for people of different branches of Protestantism gain ground, uh, that was a split between people who were broadly speaking Presbyterians and those who were known as independence, um, I suppose with the forerunners of, uh, Protestant, uh, affects like baptism and things like that, but who, who essentially believes that men should be allowed to worship without the folded roles of, of bishops and, and music and all the kinds of things that, that, um, uh, supporters of the church of England really enjoyed. And also there were fundamentally different, uh, developing about, um, who should be allowed to vote, you know, what the role of the army was and, uh, and all that kind of thing. And the more extreme people were actually in the army rather than the left behind in parliament, all of this Charles, the first trying to manipulate, he thought that because his enemies were split, he, he would survive and eventually come out of it with precisely what he wanted.
Speaker 3: (12:20)
And certainly he was right that nobody, absolutely nobody until perhaps well into 16, 48 had ever considered that they would need to get rid of him, uh, at least not by killing him, but by the late 16, 40 some people had taken the view that he really ought to be encouraged to abdicate probably in favor of one of his sons. But, um, as the 1640s went on and the first civil war ended in 1645 to 1646 and splits amongst the, uh, the Kings opponents grew, uh, Charles was able to, uh, manipulate that to what he hoped he could to, to some degree, uh, and eventually having been, uh, having handed himself over to the Scottish army because the Scots entered the civil war on the side of the English parliament and Charles handed himself over to the Scots army who were actually encamped at Newark and in Nottingham shirt in 1645, which turned out 1646, actually, which turned out to be a big mistake because he thought he a guest, but of course he was basically a hostage.
Speaker 3: (13:30)
Uh, and eventually the following year, they sold him literally after money, back to the English. Um, he was brought back down to North Hamptonshire, uh, where he lived rather restricted, but very genteel life until of course the army decided that he would be better off under their control. Uh, and, uh, it, he was well-treated and brought back to London. He lived in Hampton court for awhile, and he escaped from there on November the 11th, 1647 with apparently absolutely no plan of where he would go and what he would do. Uh, and he went to the isle of white, which was a disastrous thing to do, of course, because it was a very difficult place to get away from at all much to the horror of its newly appointed governor who desperately did not want this responsibility. And so the King essentially sucked out, what’s known as the second civil war, but the one which by this time has got to change side and invaded England on the side of tiles the first and what Randy defeated at Preston in the summer of 1648, um, thereafter Charles whose existence was I think, uh, pretty much under threat because people have been willing to do deals with him.
Speaker 3: (14:41)
Um, Chrome, well, um, Fairfax who was the head of the army, uh, they had given the King in the summer of, uh, 1647, uh, a set of ideas called the heads of the proposals, uh, which would have limited somewhat his power as a Monarch. Um, but not as much as had originally been thought. And again, at that stage, there was no idea of, of, um, getting rid of him altogether, but he spurned this offer. Uh, and because he did so, and had tried to get away from those who were attempting to do a deal with him, it was thought that he had brought about, you know, the second war and the bloodshed that went with it, and really within the army feelings were gaining a great deal of, uh, well, this taste for the King, uh, the movement that’s known as the level of movement, which was both within the army and outside it and grew, uh, there were calls for, you know, the entire voting system and constitution to be changed, to include far more people.
Speaker 3: (15:52)
Um, most of the leading army officers didn’t like that idea incidentally. Um, there were not Democrats in the modern sense at all. Uh, but, uh, eventually, um, by the time Charles was brought from the isle of white, um, back to the English mainland, um, and eventually by Christmas 1648 to Windsor, the idea had gained currency that he must be brought to trial because he had essentially committed treason against his subject samples. Charles familicide did nonsensical. Um, he, he went to his death thing, his subject and the sovereign were clean different things. Uh, but he was eventually put on trial after desperate attempts were made, which are not well known, I think, but really desperate attempts were made over the Christmas period. Try and get him to, uh, advocate in favor of his third son, his youngest son, Prince Henry, the Duke of Gloucester, but he wasn’t having any of it.
Speaker 3: (16:48)
And by doing that, he eventually sealed his own fate. Uh, my view, and I think that of other, a number of other historians is that even when he was brought to trial, he didn’t think that they would go through with it, that they would find him guilty and that he would be executed. But of course he had made a rather major mistake by then. And I think events were sort of spiraling out of control. There was no other, there was no other outcome after he’d been brought to trial. And by that time, of course his children were scattered throughout Europe, though. Two of them remained in England, Elizabeth and Henry two of the, the younger children. Uh, and, uh, Charles took her desperately sad farewell of them the night before he was executed, which traumatized Elizabeth. She never really recovered from it. Um, uh, and, and of course in his trial and at his execution, he, he managed to find a kind of greatness, which had certainly alluded him as a Monarch. It was his finest hour, but in a nutshell, the civil Wars took place because, um, the relationship between parliament and the Monarch was breaking down, um, then once the fighting broke out, it became apparent that there were all sorts of different threads of ideas and beliefs and opinion amongst his opponents. And those eventually became more and more extreme in the face of a man who was totally intransigent. And couldn’t understand that he might do better if he actually, uh, agreed in good faith to some of the ideas that were put to him.
Speaker 2: (18:25)
And this, this idea though must have been so foreign for a King who did think he was answerable only to God. And it must’ve just been so horrifying to the idea of regicide. And I mean, how, how do you kind of heal from that as a country?
Speaker 3: (18:44)
People did react with horror yes. Throughout Europe. Um, and it’s often said that, you know, the crowd that was she’s execution groaned, but actually they seem to watch it in silence. And he was too far away from them for them to hear his final speech. So they didn’t know, um, what he actually said. And, uh, I mean the, the country had not those who brought him through execution had not intended to, um, to form a Republic, but there wasn’t, there were other republics in Europe. Um, there was one in Venice, which was ancient and sort of decaying by that time. But there was also one in, in the Netherlands. Um, what is now the Netherlands, it was known as the United provinces of the Netherlands then, uh, which was much younger and had fought its way to independence against the Spanish in the late 16th and early 17th century so that there were other, uh, there were other models of Republic.
Speaker 3: (19:44)
Um, but no registered was considered, um, very much as a last resort for people who couldn’t get the King to, to, uh, accommodate himself to their views in, in any way. But I think once they were committed to it, they did go through with it. Of course, not a lot of the people that Cromwell knew, including some of his closest allies, didn’t actually sign child’s first death warrant. Um, his commander in chief Thomas Fairfax, didn’t sign it and neither did his, his Coventry commander and on Lambert. Uh, and there were others who, who did balk at the idea of it, I think, but once transferred gone, um, the general mood in the country was, was one of, I think, just waiting to see what would happen. I mean, his, his family may have been horrified. We don’t precisely know how the information was conveyed, then living with his sister Mary in, in the Netherlands, in the Hague.
Speaker 3: (20:45)
Um, but he was what, 18, 19 years old. And I think it is probably true that he burst into tears when he’s addressed as your majesty, which kind of gave the game away. It’s. Uh, but, uh, yes, there, there, there was horror, but within England, not Scotland, which of course was a separate kingdom in those days. Um, it didn’t become part of the crowns had been, uh, of the two countries where United, but the two countries were not they’ve followed different systems. Um, the Scott’s came out for Charles the second, within a month or third child, the first death. And it was via Scotland that Charles the second initially trying to regain his unsuccessfully as it turned out his English kingdom. And, but I mean, yes, the children were horrified. I think he may certainly the younger children, Henry and Elizabeth, who, who had to go through this, this incredibly harrowing parting from, from their father the night before he was educated. They had lived in England in, in a kind of, well, it’s not an imprisonment because that isn’t quite the right way to describe it. They were effectively, they were left behind, which is quite extraordinary, but they were when a thousand Henrietta Maria fled from London at the beginning of 1642, after his famous attempt to enter the house of commons and arrest the members of parliament, he thought were the heads of the rebellion against him. Um, Henrietta,
Speaker 4: (22:17)
Maria and Charles took. Uh, so
Speaker 3: (22:20)
The future tells the second James Duke of York and princess Mary, um, with them down river to Hampton court. Um, but Henry and Elizabeth were left behind in st. James’s palace. I don’t know what the Royal family thought they were doing at that time. I suppose it was just impractical. They must, the other children were closer to hand. And the other two who were younger were, were simply left behind. Um, and the succession of guardians was appointed for them by parliament, but they were affectively porns and in a way, hostages, um, their father wasn’t allowed to see them. Um, he wasn’t allowed to communicate with them. He was allowed to write letters, um, throughout all of, of, of the civil war period. It was even allowed to write letters of course, to his wife and to his son, Charles, when, um, they both went overseas and he exchanged letters with Elizabeth and almost until, you know, the moment of his death.
Speaker 3: (23:20)
So the younger children were left behind, um, to be brought up and educated as Protestants, um, with perhaps the view at the back of people’s minds, that if the situation did get worse, um, there was in Prince Henry, a young boy, and he was eight when his father died, who could be molded into an acceptable constitutional Monarch. And they still pondering that as a possibility, even in 1653, when after the death of his sister, he was still on the isle of Wight, Elizabeth and Henry ended up on the isle of Wight themselves, uh, after their father’s death. Um, they spent a year living near where I living in Kent in pentose place with the, uh, with the Earl and Countess of Leicester. The Countess of Lester was the sister of the man. Who’d been their guardian for most of the civil war, the Earl of Northumberland.
Speaker 3: (24:14)
Um, these were families who were of the nobility, but had opposed the King of home, their work quite a few, in fact, uh, and, and they had had a very pleasant time, um, with the counters of Lester who had a large family of her own and treated them very kindly. Uh, but when their brother tiles, the second invaded Scotland, it was thought that they might become the focus for discontent within England. And they were sent across to the isle of white where Elizabeth soon died. Um, she’d been ill for actually quite a long time. She probably had TB, um, uh, and, uh, she eventually caught a chill while out playing bowls. And she, she got absolutely drenched in a shower of rain and it turned very quickly to pneumonia and she died leaving Henry alone. And he was finally allowed to go to, uh, to leave England in 1653.
Speaker 3: (25:10)
Um, he has had a remarkable upbringing really, um, quite separate from his parents, of course. And he didn’t know, uh, the story is that when he met his father again in 1647, when Charles was allowed to see his younger children, uh, after he’d been, um, put under army control, uh, the King said to him, do you know me, child? And Henry said, no, because he didn’t see. And he’d been one years, one year old when he, his parents had fled. And one of the questions you asked, um, which might be relevant to this is that, um, the family seemed to have been very close knit. Well, they were up to a point. Um, I think it’s possible to overstress this aspect actually. Um, even in the 17th century, Royal children was still brought up in pretty much the same way they had been in medieval times.
Speaker 3: (26:03)
Um, they did not live with their parents. Um, they did live together, all of them. Um, they spent winters in London in st. James’s palace and some advisor at Richmond or Hampton court to get away from the city when it was unhealthy. And you were likely to get the plague when Charles the second was about eight years old, the future child’s the second he was given a household of his own, which had always happened to be the heir to the throne. And he didn’t live with his siblings any longer than he did see them fairly, fairly often. Charles and Henrietta, Maria were certainly much more interested in affectionate parents while Charles was anyhow. It’s hard to describe Henrietta. Maria is an affectionate mother, really, but they certainly were closer to their children. They came to visit them often. They took an interest in their education.
Speaker 3: (26:54)
Um, the children came to court to be sort of schooled in how one behaved under such circumstances as Royal children, but they didn’t live together as a family. They never did. Uh, that is one of the reasons why Elizabeth and Henry were left behind in, in London, in, in 1642. And so the children would have always been educated separately to ask, does seem to have been a very fond father. And his children were very, very fond of him as well. Uh, their mother was a rather more shrill and forbidding figure, I think, which is strange because she had grown up in a very, um, in a very sort of loving and social household with her brood of brothers and sisters, some of whom were religious summit and some who weren’t. She was the youngest of the legitimate children of Henry, the fourth of France in that the medic, she, uh, and she had a very happy childhood. Um, but she doesn’t seem to have, um, uh, felt quite the same way about her own children. Uh, unfortunately, I mean, she did take a great interest in them, but it was a rather sort of proprietorial thought.
Speaker 3: (28:10)
It was young when she married. She was young when she married solves the first year, she was 15. Um, and she didn’t have, well, she had a child in 16, 29. The marriage was extremely stormy and difficult to begin with. Um, Charles was a remote young man, nearly 10 years older than her who was trying to come to grips with being King himself. He’d only been on the throne for three months when they married. Uh, and he, he had many things to occupy him. Um, uh, he, he was greatly influenced by the Duke of Buckingham, who was his favorite. Uh, some people think that docking them deliberately tried to sort of exclude Henrietta Maria from the marriage, make things difficult for her. Um, he certainly succeeded in doing that even if he hadn’t set out deliberately to do it. Uh, and really she and her husband fought almost constantly, uh, until Buckingham was assassinated, which was probably, I should think.
Speaker 3: (29:13)
And it was only after that, that she became pregnant for the first time in her first child born in 16, 29 was a boy. And he died within a few hours of being born. Um, I mean, we, we tend to think that in those days people accepted this sort of thing because it’s happened so often, but it must have been quite shattering, I think. But yes, at that age, she was about, um, 19, um, uh, and that wasn’t terribly young for a, for a queen to be giving birth in, in those days. Um, but she, she, um, she never really seems to have used a modern word bonded with her children successfully and their relationships with her as adults were always quite, quite difficult as small children. They seem to have been extremely fond of their father. Amy. The one exception to that is, is the youngest child, princess Henrietta, who eventually ends up being only yet.
Speaker 3: (30:10)
And when she went to France, who was born in Exeter in the middle of the civil war in 1644, when Henrietta Maria left London with her husband in January, 1642, she took him immediately took princess Mary to the Netherlands because Mary had been married at the tender age of nine, uh, to William of orange, the air of the, um, leading Dutch noble house. It was a marriage that Henrietta really didn’t want. And Mary who was chanting very strongly resembled her father, both physically. And in terms of her personality, uh, she viewed it as beneath her for the entirety of her life. Um, but our mother went across with her, um, to try and get arms and support for her husband in the, uh, uh, struggle that was everyone knew was going to ensue and made herself very unpopular in the Netherlands. And eventually came back in 1643 and, and princess Henrietta was conceived while the Royal couple were in Oxford and was actually born in exited because it was obvious that that, um, Henrietta Maria needed to get away from, in circling parliamentarian armies, who would have arrested her, if they could have found her, is they held her largely responsible for, uh, much of the King’s attitude.
Speaker 3: (31:25)
Um, that probably isn’t true. Uh, she was a very, um, she wasn’t backwards in coming forwards when it came to giving advice and instructions, but by no means did what she said. And in fact, he occasionally said, will you step up and sit down? And then he did love her very much, I think, but he wasn’t a yes man for his wife. So it was easy to depict him that way and propaganda. Um, but, um, uh, the children were part of, uh, they were close to each other. They were a happy family unit. Um, James rejoined, his younger brother and sister in, in 1645 after him, 1646 after his father abandoned him in Oxford. Uh, and, uh, he lived with them for several years. So they knew each other well and spent a lot of time in each other’s company. Um, Henrietta was eventually spirited to France by her readable governance and grew up very much under the sun with her mother and all day she’d been baptized in Christian as a Catholic you next to cause, uh, sorry, as a Protestant in next to cathedral, uh, she was actually of course brought up by her mother as a, as a Catholic, even though it was expressly against father’s wishes.
Speaker 3: (32:40)
And they’re very pathetically. And sadly Charles did meet his daughter, his little daughter. He saw her just once he entered Exeter after his wife had fled and the baby baby Henrietta was, was not well when she was first born. Um, I don’t think her life was actually in danger, but she was certainly rather a sickly baby. And he was sort of much moved by her powerlessness, I think, and what he had. He and others had brought the family too. So it is a very sad story from a family perspective. And it, it mirrors that of many other families in the civil war of families who were divided by geography, um, by religion because of course Charles, his children. So theoretically brought up as Protestants and Mary Henry and Elizabeth definitely work committed Protestants. Uh, Henrietta Maria tried unsuccessfully on several occasions to get her eldest daughter Mary to convert and was completely repulsed.
Speaker 3: (33:43)
Uh, you know, she, she was told to go away, but that marriage with her mother very well, poor princess Mary, she had a very sad life, too. Um, well having said that she lived in the Netherlands quite close to her aunt, the exiled queen of Bohemia, um, another princess Elizabeth Stewart. And so she did have family near her and Nancy was very affectionate and keen to try and support her. So she wasn’t as isolated as, as perhaps she might have tried to make out. And of course, Elizabeth and Henry were brought up very closely together and educated together. Um, Henry had acquired habits of sort of resilience and independence of thought, uh, which his mother found most distasteful when they finally met again, uh, when he went to France in 1653, uh, and she set about trying to convert him to Catholicism. And he got torn between his mother and his brother who was trying to regain the throne and said to him, if you convert, you know, my chances are absolutely mil.
Speaker 3: (34:55)
You must not do this. Uh, and eventually of course, Henrietta Maria dismissed him and disowned him and said she would never see him again. And indeed she never did of course, because when he and James returned with Charles, the second in 1660, uh, Henry who was not quite 21 at the time, um, uh, took his seat in the house of Lords. And at times had the luxury of having two brothers, his heirs, which was, was most done. And two brothers that he got on with as well, which was most unusual, but Henry caught smallpox in September 16, 60 and died. Um, at the end of, uh, he was a Prince of great promise, I think. And, uh, his, his life was, was very sad as we sat in his sister whom he had, you know, uh, grown up with and, and must’ve missed desperately when she, she died on the art of white, he was left with a very caring and considerate tutor, an elderly gentleman called Richard Lovell, who was known to the Leicester family and Kent.
Speaker 3: (35:57)
That was how he got appointed. And his mother tried even to separate him from, from his tutor when he got to, to Paris, she dismissed Richard Lovell. So all in all, it was a difficult time to be a steward child, really, I think, but they were a close family and Charles remained child the second close to his younger brother, James, uh, throughout the whole of his reign. He didn’t always agree with him. Um, but he would not countenance the idea that any illegitimate child of his should somehow leapfrog into the succession and remove his brother from it. Uh, so they, uh, they were all close to one another. And without princess Mary in the Netherlands, uh, who’d become a widow. Um, by the year 1650, her a young husband predeceased her, um, the marriage hadn’t been happy anyhow, by that time she had a son, of course, who would become the future William, the third of England. Uh, but she, she, um, although not supposed to gave her brothers in exile, a great deal of financial, uh, and personal support. Uh, and without that, I think their situation would have been even more difficult than, than it already was. And her, her loyalty to the family was absolutely unstinting.
Speaker 3: (37:20)
It seems an interesting soggy. Yes. And the very sad one I’m afraid. It isn’t one that has a happy ending, really, because of course, what happened to princess Anne whose name was changed to the French version. And then the, uh, the name of her aunt, the French region town of Austria was, was added onto it. Um, her life was probably the strangest of all really, I think because she had been patronized and looked down upon by Louis the 14th, um, and members of the, the French court for all of the time that she and her mother were eating out a rather meager existence in the palak layout, you know, with very little furniture and not even enough firewood for heating in the winter. And, uh, he had been brought up under her mother’s farm. She was desperately sad about what happened between her mother and her brother, Prince Henry.
Speaker 3: (38:14)
Uh, and she was just a little girl of 10 at the time. Um, uh, and of course her life changed when her brother was restored to the throne. And suddenly she became one of the most marriageable young ladies in Europe. Uh, and she married Louis the 14th younger brother, uh, Phillipe, the Duke of [inaudible] who himself had, had a very difficult childhood, uh, being brought up as second fiddle to his brother and constantly reminded of the fact that you didn’t have a role was inferior and was generally useless. Uh, uh, and he had rebelled in all sorts of ways. Um, he was bisexual, um, and had a series of male lovers, which princess knew all about. Of course, I mean, she probably didn’t know necessarily before she married him though in those sorts of ports, rumors were rife, but one doesn’t know how protected people were from them.
Speaker 3: (39:10)
Uh, and the marriage was spectacular, really ghastly and unhappy. Um, although they both shared quite a number of interests, oddly enough, um, they were both great patrons of the arts. Uh, they loved the theater, they love dancing. Um, they weren’t greatly into hunting and sporting activities or anything like that, but they were much more divided by personalities and they’re interested in unhappily really bring them together. And, uh, uh, his marriage to Alia tan had actually deliberated Phillipe of all animals, quite considerably from his brother’s control because he suddenly got a household and finances and income and all that sort of thing of his own. Uh, he was a great, um, builder. He set about restoring sound clue and the Palo Hoyle and all that. It, again, things that his wife approved off, um, but his wife had become a hopeless flirt. I don’t know whether this was a reaction to the strict upbringing she’d had from her mother.
Speaker 3: (40:12)
Um, but she did flirt with almost everyone, including Louis the 14th and not surprisingly Felipe didn’t like it. And, uh, his way of keeping her under control was to keep her almost constantly pregnant throughout their marriage. Um, various children came and went and died. Eventually two girls survived. Um, the line of the younger girl, um, uh, have a legitimate claim to the English throne, of course, in the [inaudible]. Uh, and, uh, eventually she came back to England as far as Dover to negotiate a secret treaty with her brother on behalf of her brother in law, Louis the 14th in which tells the second effectively sold his country for money, um, to Louis the 14th, being Charles, the second he took the money, but didn’t do anything else he was supposed to do. And he was clever was charged for a second. But when I got back to France, she, um, uh, she had obviously been unwell for quite a long time. She was incredibly thin, um, and, and a very sort of hyper young woman, she suffered from insomnia and, and, uh, was, was generally sort of unwell. Uh, and she collapsed one evening. Um, she thought she might’ve been poisoned, but to an autopsy showed that she died of peritonitis probably caused by a birth stomach calls. So she too was dead by the age of six,
Speaker 2: (41:43)
But you’ve been so generous with your time. Can you just tell us really briefly a little bit about the six wives show and what your work was on that?
Speaker 3: (41:51)
Yes, of course I can. Yes. The first episode, which aired last night, I think I probably seen it about half a dozen times actually, but my husband hasn’t seen it yet.
Speaker 2: (41:59)
I just watched it on I player this morning, actually.
Speaker 3: (42:03)
Well, there’s been an interesting reaction to it over here, I suppose, perhaps a fairly predictable one, um, uh, many viewers on Facebook and all that sort of thing seem to have really loved it, but the critics are fairly sniffy about it. Um, uh, it, it, wasn’t very interesting, um, project work on, uh, because I was involved not right from the beginning, but, but fairly early on, uh, was about this time last year might have been even late November that I was first contacted to work on it with the, uh, the team at wall-to-wall who were producing it. And, uh, uh, yeah, I said, yes, I would do it without quite realizing how much repair involved in it. And my, my role was, um, it was rather more than just checking for horrible errors in factual inaccuracies because they needed advice on all sorts of things from, um, costumes to, uh, you know, what sort of prayers would be used to bless marriage beds.
Speaker 3: (43:08)
And it even took me into areas that I hadn’t been in before. Um, uh, there were quite considerable gaps when I wasn’t involved. And then when I was brought back in and had to respond to things in, in very quick time, because as you know, if you’re working with the media, you can’t say, Oh, well, I’ll just go to the archives for the next week and look that up because you know, that isn’t the kind of time timescale, they can relate to it. So, uh, so you, you, you do need to be able to, to respond quite quickly, which I suppose means that you need to fairly broadly based and knowledge of the period. Um, it, it’s, it’s an interesting approach to have Lucy sort of embedded as a servant in the court to, to watch what’s going on. Um, and, and mince divided into the three episodes.
Speaker 3: (43:55)
The first is on Catherine of Aragon, the second on and Belinda and Jane Seymour. And the third looks at the last three wines out of creeds, Catherine Highland and Catherine Parr. And I, um, I think as a historical consultant, you have to step back from it a little bit. There were some scenes that were included, which only know did not take place historically and would not have done. So in fact, um, but, um, after some discussion, um, I let them pass because it, you know, the idea is to try and tell a story after. Um, uh, and so that was why, I mean, if you’re a purist, I’m a real purist in the period, I’m sure you will find things to object to. I mean, one example is there is a scene in which it’s in the first one, you must have seen it yesterday in which princess Mary is sort of running around before the sat over there.
Speaker 3: (44:51)
Well, I pointed out that, you know, any certainty, let her Royal child do that. We’d probably have been for the job quite literally. And that even nowadays, I don’t suppose in public functions like that, Prince George and princess Charlotte are allowed to run around by themselves. Um, but I was overruled. Uh, that’s why when she, but again, I don’t think it’s important in the overall aspect of, of, of the program. Uh, and I think it looks very beautiful in it and the ideas, of course, it will engage a, an audience who aren’t accustomed to watching history programs,
Speaker 2: (45:31)
Many thanks to Linda Porter for taking the time to speak with us. Remember that you can get links to buy all of her books, including the new one Royal renegades, the children of Charles, the first and the English civil Wars at my website, England cast.com. Also, I’m happy to announce or say that, uh, her publisher has given us three copies of the new book to give away. So you can enter the contest to get a free copy of the book@englandcast.com as well. So thank you to Linda and her publisher for that. I will be back again very soon to talk about the tutor times person of the month, which is best of Hardwick. We talked about best of Hardwick about a year ago or so. So instead of rehashing her life, we actually focus the conversation around widow’s rights and the role of women in finance and careers, things like that in the 16th century, because best of Hardwick is an amazing example of what intelligent women could do and how they could rise. So stay tuned for that very soon. Thank you so much for listening and thanks to Linda Porter. Again,
Speaker 5: (46:47)
[inaudible].
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Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast, the original Tudor history podcast, started in 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. In 2019 she created Tudorcon, which is now a yearly event, in addition to writing books, and running TudorFair.com - a whimsical Tudor Merch shop.
She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 30 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history (how exciting when she got to interview Alison for the first time!). In addition to history, she is passionate about travel, and has lived in 3 countries and 4 states (not counting her perpetual state of confusion), and her family (who help her host her YouTube channel occasionally).
