BBC, "The Stuarts"

[mme_hardy]

Dr Clare Jackson of Cambridge University "argues that the Stuarts, more than any other, were Britain's defining royal family."  (That's the tagline of the show, on BBC Two's page.

[In the coming century, seven Stuarts will rule the three separate kingdoms of  over Scotland, England, and Ireland]  Through bloodshed and civil war, they will refashion them into the Great Britain that we know today.

Entirely by accident and in many cases against their will.

They are the first family of Great Britain.  They are ... the Stuarts.

I have no idea what that first sentence is supposed to mean.

“His distant cousin, the childless Queen Elizabeth”

 

HIS FIRST COUSIN ONCE REMOVED.  Sigh, pause, open Google Docs window.

 

Today, we tend to take the modern kingdom of Great Britain for granted…

 

AHAHAHAHAHA referendum . (Note:  This series aired in January 2014.)

 

[at Berwick, James I and XI declares that Scots and English should become brothers] “That would require a leap of faith, and would require them to become more intimate with one another.”
 

Hey, I consider centuries of raiding, killing, and marrying each other pretty damn intimate.  Ask anybody on the Borders, or read the superb The Steel Bonnets by George Macdonald Fraser.

 

“but he was the first fully to confront confront the new religious tensions brought about by the Protestant Reformation”

 

That would be news to Mary, Queen of Scots, looking back on her long, mutually enjoyable relationship with John Knox.

 

“James was a wonderful wordsmith ... It must have been quite unnerving for the English MPs, after decades of taciturn Tudor rule, suddenly to have a Stewart king in their midst, engaged in a massive PR exercise.”

 

[insert Tilbury speech here]

 

“England’s Kings and Queens had a troubled past in Ireland.”

 

No shit, Sherlock.

 

“[Tyrone and Tyrconnell's] destination was  Spain, a Catholic superpower, but it was what  they left behind troubled James most: a power vacuum that stretched across the north of Ireland.

 

Because Spain had no history at all of supporting Catholic revolts.  no, no.  He just didn't want a power vacuum in Northern Ireland.

 

James set up a scheme to send loyal citizens from his other two realms to live in Ireland.  

 

Er… way to plaidwash.

 

They were given land, the land of the earls, and it was called plantation.  The land was also used by the native Irish population. who herded cattle and moved with the seasons.    [photos of an Irish cattle auction?!?!?]

 

!!!!!!  

 

...In the darkest, most impenetrable part of the Gaelic north, James knew he would need help.

 

...Ironically, during the early years of James’s reign, Ireland was more settled than it had been, or would be, for centuries.  James had done what previous English monarchs had failed to do: planted something stronger than army.  James had planted an idea.  The idea of loyalty.

 

I could quote much more of the narration about Ireland, but I’m losing the will to live.

 

“But why would someone give a suit of armor to a fourteen-year-old?”
Oh, I dunno, it's not as if kings had been doing it for centuries.

 

 

INTERRUPTION:  In my googling for examples, I was devastated to find out that the Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester, Mass closed in 2013.   Aiiieee.

 

“[Prince Henry]  is a kingdom united, in flesh and blood, the first British prince.”

… I think his father might disagree with you.

 

“How would Charles convince?  How would he control?  If he was unable to speak properly?”

 

Like his father, you mean?  Whose not only had a speech impediment ("tongue too big for his mouth") but  whose habits  of spitting and drooling during speech you seem to have overlooked?

 

[in the context of Charles I's visit to Spain in the attempt to marry the Infanta] “This is Corpus Christi, … the body of Christ in the form of a communion wafer being paraded through the streets." [street shots of Corpus Christi in Spain] "In the 17th century,  it powerfully confirmed how central the Catholic religion was to Spanish identity.  And today, it seems as if little has changed.  It’s certainly like nothing I’VE ever witnessed before.”
... Don't get around much?

 

“Corpus Christi is a massive assault on the senses.”
...

 

“[Charles I]  controlled his church through bishops, and kept dissenting voices out.”

 

King James I and VI: If you aim at a Scottish presbytery, it agreeth as well with monarchy, as God and the devil. ... No bishop, no King!

 

"[the Kirk] had become a wellspring of Scottish identity since the departure of the Royal Court.  You might say it had become a law unto itself."

 

I’m assuming that the Royal Court whose departure you’re referring to was Mary, Queen of Scots heading off to France ?  

 

"[The National Covenant of Scotland]  To my mind, it was a traditional way of registering serious discontent.  A yellow card, if you like.  An invitation to Charles to reconsider his religious policy.  Charles, however, regarded it as an outrageous attack on his authority."

That would be the one that offered him conditional allegiance, as in ". And because we perceive that the quietness and stability of our religion and Kirk doth depend upon the safety and good behaviour of the King's Majesty, as upon a comfortable instrument of God's mercy granted to this country for the maintenance of His Kirk, and ministration of justice among us, we protest and promise with our hearts under the same oath, hand-writ, and pains, that we shall defend his person and authority with our goods, bodies, and lives..."

 

“The three kingdoms had been united under their first Stuart king.”

 

Er,  Ireland?  Seriously?

Comments

[legionseagle]

James set up a scheme to send loyal citizens from his other two realms to live in Ireland.

Er… way to plaidwash.

They were given land, the land of the earls, and it was called plantation. The land was also used by the native Irish population. who herded cattle and moved with the seasons. [photos of an Irish cattle auction?!?!?]

!!!!!!

Scene: A script planning conference, SOMEWHERE IN CAMBRIDGE

Dr Clare Jackson: James I continued the genocidal settlement policy pioneered under Elizabeth...

Editorial assistant: You can't call it genocide! This programme's going out in July! They're restive enough over there at this time of year as it is.

Dr Clare Jackson: Can I call it ethnic cleansing?

Editorial assistant: Done by a Scottish King? With the referendum poised on a knife-edge and the Commonwealth Games about to start in Glasgow? Do we look as if we painted a target on our foreheads marked "Daily Mail: Aim here"?

[mme_hardy]

Dr. Jackson did not give me the impression of being overly concerned with the pre-existing inhabitants of Northern Ireland. They were just inconvenient, was all. She was amazingly insular -- her comments about Corpus Christi in Spain sounded as if she had never been to any sort of street festival in her life.

[legionseagle]

She ought to be better than that.

[mme_hardy]

I was admittedly pretty cranky by that point, but she sounded like a Victorian travel manual, the kind that is constantly exclaiming about how strange and smelly all these foreigners are. (She went on about the smells of incense and rosemary and thyme.)

[wordweaverlynn]

My brain broke at the taciturn Tudors.

[legionseagle]

Quite. Though, if we're going Horrible Histories (they went for "Terrible Tudors" iirc):

The Slobbering Stuarts
The Horrific Hanoverians
The Shitty Saxe-Coburg-Gothas

[mme_hardy]

The Wearying Windsors?

[lilliburlero]

I'm just so glad I didn't see this programme. (I'd kind of like to have seen the bit where Irish Gaelic pastoralism was represented by a cattle mart, though, so I tell a lie.) As an English person living in Ireland, I have plenty of opportunity to get cross about ahistorical Irish republicanism, but it is salutary to be reminded that the BBC can still cheerfully say something like 'to send loyal citizens from his other two realms to live in Ireland.'

[mme_hardy]

Oh, wow. I just looked up the Flight of the Earls in Wikipedia, and the documentary entirely failed to mention the Nine Years' War in Ulster that immediately preceded it.

[legionseagle]

Which, you will note, began under Elizabeth & was all tied up with Essex's rebellion.

[mme_hardy]

I was growling "Loyal TO WHOM?" because if the 99 people who followed the two earls to Spain weren't loyal, I'd like to know who is.

[lilliburlero]

Seriously, the BBC using roughly the same definition of 'loyal' as the UVF. Educate, inform and entertain. Stay classy.

[kore]

'Today, we tend to take the modern kingdom of Great Britain for granted'

WHUT

[sara]

"“England’s Kings and Queens had a troubled past in Ireland.”"

I LOLed.

It sounds very reminiscent of that series I watched about the history of the English language, in which the BBC narrator had to periodically digress into talking smack about the French.

"The land was also used by the native Irish population. who herded cattle and moved with the seasons."

You know, I live in a part of the world where the indigenous people engaged in a seasonal round of subsistence activities (and, indeed, still do, if the man I saw walking up the main road in Bandon on Monday, carrying a forty-pound salmon, is any indication) but I was under the impression -- do correct me if I am mistaken -- that the IRISH had been sedentary for some years now.

[mme_hardy]

They "moved with the seasons" in the sense that they had a pasture rotation that continued unchanged from year to year, and that depended on commons. Just like the Swiss, in short. Clearly James should have invaded Switzerland.

http://www.libraryireland.com/SocialHistoryAncientIreland/III-XIX-4.php

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was usual for all the people of a village or townland, after putting down the crops in spring, to migrate to the uplands with their families and cattle, living there in temporary settlements during the summer, and returning to their homes in the beginning of autumn in time to gather in the crops. An upland settlement of this kind was called a buaile [booley]: and the custom—which descended from early times—was known as booleying by Anglo-Irish writers, several of whom have described it.

[sara]

Hunh. That is not at all unlike how things were done around here, back in the day.

(Indeed, I plan to emulate this practice myself next week because it's too fricking hot in this town right now, I need some MOUNTAINS.)

[legionseagle]

"migrating to the uplands with their family" sounds like the British Raj and Simla.

[mme_hardy]

To be fair, they didn't take their cattle with them.

[legionseagle]

They took the Civil Service. You've seen The Thick of It. Go figure.

[mme_hardy]

I sniggered out loud. Speaking of TToI, I was flashing on Malcolm quite hard during the current Cabinet shuffle.

[legionseagle]

Also, coff coff, I know the problem with the Scots was too many Jameses, ed. but I think you mean James I and VI, not I and XI, unless this series was even more AU than it sounds.

[mme_hardy]

No, that was my mistake rather than theirs.

[legionseagle]

“[Prince Henry] is a kingdom united, in flesh and blood, the first British prince.”
… I think his father might disagree with you.

To be fair, I can see what they mean, here. Of course, like many British princes before and since Henry was half foreign, his parents had a somewhat peculiar relationship and there were a lot more than two people in *that* marriage, but in terms of being a symbol of something other than himself there was a massive cult around Prince Henry, such that when he died court music went completely bonkers and that's why there are so many early 17th C choral settings of David's lament over Absalom*.


*Yes, I know; one can only think the masters of the Royal Music hoped none of the audiences actually read the Bible, otherwise it wouldn't have done Elizabeth of Bohemia's reputation any good at all.

[aella_irene]

I don't know about that. A reputation for decisive action, be it ever so fratricidal, would have done her a world of good.

(I may have gone around Prague Castle trying to find the very nursery where she left two of her children in her flight from Prague. The one caused by the loss of the battle which her husband missed due to an urgent lunch engagement with the English Ambassador.)

[legionseagle]

It's not the decisive action, it's the having been incestuously raped bit.

[mme_hardy]

I was thinking that James himself, being a quarter French, a quarter Scots, and half English, would have qualified just as well (assuming that, yet again, Ireland doesn't count.)

[legionseagle]

No; it's more like being Edward the Black Prince in terms of symbolism; the first prince born heir to both crowns.

[mme_hardy]

Fair point. It's not as if James was born heir to England and Scotland, Mary, Q of Idiots's assertions notwithstanding.

[kerrypolka]

They are the first family of Great Britain. They are ... the Stuarts.

I have no idea what that first sentence is supposed to mean.

I think it's supposed to mean, the earliest (first) royal dynasty ('first family') to rule a united Great Britain, rather than England and/or Scotland, but the wording of 'first family' is confusing and it seems to think James VI/I taking the English throne automatically created the union, which I think Anne would have some things to say about.

[liadnan]

I read it as in "pre-eminent". Which is itself ridiculous on a number of levels, but I think it's what was intended.

[mme_hardy]

I was shouting "Hello??!?!? Plantagenets?!?!?!" IIRC.

[julian]

Yes, I am verysad about the Higgins Armory. I did get there once (as an adult) before it closed, but it's truly a loss. I mean, most of the collection still exists elsewhere, it's just that museum was The Best.

Also, this program sounds... rather questionable.

[mme_hardy]

I got there once while we lived there, I think. I am so sad that they mismanaged (my guess based on the newspaper story I found) the endowment.

[marymac]

I think the only thing I've ever seen all of Ireland united about anything is that time the All Blacks dropped Brian O'Driscoll on his head...

(We watched five minutes of that thing and then Mike started shouting at the telly, and he's not the historian in this relationship.)

[legionseagle]

Actually, I thought the only thing all of Ireland was united about was in asserting they'd all been at the game, that time Munster defeated the All Blacks ("If all the vampires who claimed to have been at the Munster/All Blacks game had been at the Munster/All Blacks game it'd have been like Woodstock...")

[marymac]

Nah, no self-respecting Ulsterman would admit to supporting a Munster game...

[liadnan]

Whatever type of Ulsterman they are.

[legionseagle]

Dr Clare Jackson of Cambridge University "argues that the Stuarts, more than any other, were Britain's defining royal family."

Um---
They were incompetent.
Their legitimacy ("His father was also called David and played on the harp") and sexuality were the constant source of public speculation
Large numbers of people hated them, to the extent that 2/7 of the dynasty were removed by revolutionary action over a period of less than half a century.
The most affectionate associations they have in the public mind concern dogs and racehorses.

Yanno, I can sort of see her argument.

[clanwilliam]

I started frothing at the mouth at the "kingdom of Great Britain" and it all went downhill from there.

Excuse me, people are slightly worried I've contracted rabies.

[legionseagle]

How nonchalant they are in your office.