Off with their heads

At a time when that Prince 'All is good in the Empire' Harry continues to try to inspire more young people in Britain facing economic uncertainty, shit jobs and low wages to go and fight and die for the profits of gigantic multinational oil companies and arms manufacturers in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is worth remembering the radical popular traditions of revolutionary democracy that have existed in the past - and continue to express themselves on anti-war demonstrations and the like up to the present day. The following conference organised by the London Socialist Historians Group should therefore be very timely indeed, and should be attended by all those who feel it is not those racists like Prince Harry deem 'ragheads' that are in particular need of a 'civilising mission' but rather the likes of Prince Harry and the British ruling class...

1649 and the Execution of King Charles

30 January 1649 is the day when King Charles 1st was beheaded and the Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell, the foundation of modern Parliamentary democracy, came into effective being. It was a revolutionary moment and it brought onto the historical stage people, ideas and movements that went well beyond anything that Cromwell and the senior leadership of the New Model Army had in mind. Brian Manning in his seminal book on 1649 notes that this was a year when popular mobilisations did not happen. There was no popular uprising to mark the Commonwealth, and no popular protest at the execution of the King. There was however an Army revolt at Burford, also celebrating its anniversary this year, which was brutally put down by Cromwell. 1649 was also the year when Cromwell landed in Dublin to initiate brutal episodes in Ireland. This conference will look at the liberties and democratic practices
ushered in by 1649 and at those who wanted to take them further.

1649 and the execution of King Charles

Saturday 7 February 2009
Venue: Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, London.

Programme

9.30 – Registration (Wolfson Room)

10.00-11.15 Welcome and Keynote addresses (Wolfson Room)
Chair: Keith Flett, LSHG
Geoffrey Robertson, author of The Tyrannicide Brief
John Rees, author of A Rebel's Guide to Milton, forthcoming

11.15-11.30 Coffee

11.30-12.30 PANEL ONE: Cromwell's coalition and its critics (Wolfson Room)
Chair: David Renton, LSHG
Martyn Everett, 'The Agitators – between Rebellion and Reaction'
Dr. Ariel Hessayon, Goldsmiths College, 'Early modern Communism: the
Diggers and community of goods'

11.30-12.30 PANEL TWO: 1649 in contemporary eyes (Pollard Room)
Chair: Tobas Abse, LSHG
Claudia Guli, University of Melbourne, 'Historical Precedent in
Contemporary Justifications of the Trial of Charles I'
Ángel Alloza, CSIC (Spain), '"An Outrageous Incident": the execution
of Kings Charles seen from Abroad'

12.30-1.30 Lunch

1.30-2.30 PANEL THREE: The regicide, terror and Restoration (Pollard Room)
Chair: David Renton, LSHG
Jerome de Groot, University of Manchester, '"Original Villany":
Foundational Terrorism'
Alan Marshall, Bath Spa University, 'The Trials of Thomas Harrison, regicide'

1.30-2.30 PANEL FOUR: The Republic and something more (Wolfson Room)
Chair: Paul Burnham, LSHG
Alejandro Doering De Rio, Queen's College Cambridge, 'James Harrington
as a theorist of political of equality'
Dr John Seed, Roehampton University, 'The politics of remembering: the
execution of Charles in C18 England'

2.30-2.45 Coffee

2.45-4.00 Closing Plenary (Wolfson Room)
Chair: Keith Flett
Norah Carlin, author of The Causes of the English Civil War
Geoff Kennedy, author of Diggers, Levellers and Agrarian Capitalism

£10 waged, £5 unwaged. Order from Keith Flett keith1917@btinternet.com

Conference: 1649 and the execution of King Charles

Call for papers: 1649 and the execution of King Charles

Conference to be held at the Institute of Historical Research Senate House, Malet Street London WC1

Saturday 7 February 2009

30 January 1649 is one of the key dates in the history of British democracy but it is commemorated nowhere in Britain. It was the day when King Charles 1st was beheaded and the Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell, the foundation of modern Parliamentary democracy, came into effective being. It was a revolutionary moment and it brought onto the historical stage people, ideas and movements that went well beyond anything that Cromwell and the senior leadership of the New Model Army had in mind. Brian Manning in his seminal book on 1649 notes that this was a year when popular mobilisations did not happen. There was no popular uprising to mark the Commonwealth, and no popular protest atthe execution of the King. There was however an Army revolt at Burford, also celebrating its anniversary this year, which was brutally put down by Cromwell. 1649 was also the year when Cromwell landed in Dublin to initiate brutal episodes in Ireland. This conference will look at the liberties and democratic practices ushered in by 1649 and at those who wanted to take them further.

Keynote speakers confirmed so far include

Geoffrey Robertson (author,The Tyrannicide Brief),
Geoff Kennedy (author, Diggers, Levellers and Agrarian Capitalism, forthcoming),
John Rees (author, A Rebel's Guide to Milton, forthcoming)
and Norah Carlin (author, The Causes of the English Civil War).

Papers will be considered on any aspect of the year and its legacy, but suggested topics that might be addressed include:
i) The origins of the decision to execute: in parliamentary discussions or outside parliament
ii) The relationship between execution and the civil war
iii) Discussion of whether the decision to execute King Charles was justified
iv) The connection between tyrannicide and the republican political movements or theory of the 1640s
v) The demands of the New Model Army, its relationship to parliament,and its part in the decision to execute
vi) The discussion of tyrannicide in Royalists or Parliamentarian literature after 1649
vii) The impact of the execution on movements such as the Levellers or Diggers, or on the religious movements of the time; their discussion of the execution, or its impact on their fortunes after 1649

For further information or to send abstracts of papers (up to 1,000 words) until 31 November 2008 contact the organisers at conference2008@londonsocialisthistorians.org.

Find out more about the LSHG

Who was the worst ever British monarch?

Apparently English Heritage want to know who was the worst British monarch ever. Still, I guess it makes a nice change from the recent media fawning over Princes Harry and William on the grounds that they have now apparently at long last started 'working'. The problem of course in choosing the worst ever British royal is knowing where to start amid the incompetent, corpulent, tyrannical, pretentious, tight-fisted, greedy, war-mongering, despotic, pompous, cruel, militaristic, imbicilic, power-hungry, blood-thirsty, flatulent, imperialist, greedy, half-witted, obnoxious, warmongering, murderering, slave-trade sponsoring, Nazi-supporting bastards.

Still, at least one of them was held to account, and next year in February 2009 the London Socialist Historians Group are holding a conference to mark the 360th anniversary of that glorious moment in British history.

Dead King Watch: Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley died thirty years ago and there is a great article in this week's Socialist Worker by Ian Birchall about how socialists might remember 'The King of Rock 'n' Roll'. Birchall notes that the contradictions of rock and of Elvis in particular were missed at the time by most of the Left:

Unfortunately the left was looking the other way. The New Left that had emerged after the Suez crisis defeat for British imperialism and the revolt against Stalinism in Hungary in 1956 preferred jazz and folk music. Communist intellectual Eric Hobsbawm declared that "the habitual rock-and-roll fan, unless mentally rather retarded, tended to be between ten and 15 years of age."

One might take issue here with Birchall a bit - surely Hobsbawm's hostility to rock came out of the rather crude anti-Americanism which affected members of the Communist Party of Great Britain at this time (Americans were routinely labelled 'Yanks' in the context of the Cold War) - and so perhaps Hobsbawm (who stayed in the CPGB after 1956) is here far more representative of the 'Old Left' rather than the 'New'? However, Birchall was around at the time - I wasn't. Yet Birchall is right to take issue with the Left's general dismissal of rock music - I am personally well up for watching the Smashing Pumpkins later this month - yet we wouldn't have got to the heights of the Pumpkins (whose excellent new Kafka-referencing album 'Zeitgeist' surely marks a political turn of sorts) without Elvis - and so it is surely right to salute 'the King' (even if this post was really an excuse for me to discuss the Pumpkins).

Should Prince Harry go (and get a job)?

As the compiler of the official Dead King Watch, you can imagine how often I am asked by journalists to comment on matters concerning the royal family. The recent controversy over whether or not Prince Harry should serve in Iraq is obviously a question which is close to my heart. According to many bourgeois historians - to pick one at random, say, Tristram Hunt, Harry should go as after the Royal Navy's hostage fiasco, a bit of 'gung-ho militarism' could restore a bit of 'lost mettle...a touch of Old Britain might not come amiss.'
The young aristocrat certainly symbolises the Old British imperial spirit alright - ever since he attended a 'colonials and natives' party (dressed in a tasteful German Nazi desert uniform and a swastika armband in the run up to Holocaust memorial day) - there have been no worries on that score. Whether the presence of Harry's 'gung-ho militarism' would have been enough to turn the tide in Iraq is more questionable. Yet the fact that Harry is not now due to go to Iraq does indeed raise some awkward questions, one of which Hunt did put his finger on - if Harry had gone, this would have shown 'not only that there remains a continuing connection between monarchy and militarism but that the wider royal family still has a purpose. For if he can't join his fellow Sandhurst cadets in the back of a Scimitar, what can he do?' Indeed - Harry is now 21 years old and despite the most privileged education he hasn't actually ever really had a job - though there is form here among the upper class and particularly the monarchy. But more to the point, the whole catastrophe of Iraq and the fact it is 'too dangerous' for Harry to go surely underlines the need to bring all the British troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan now - unless we really do want them all to come back in bodybags. Socialists in Britain need to be agitating through the Stop the War Coalition and making sure that if it is 'too risky' to send a rich braindead drink-sodden ex-Nazi little shit like Harry to Iraq, then it is also too politically risky for Brown to act as an imperial overlord and maintain New Labour's disastrous occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Dead King Watch: George V

Today marks the 71st anniversary of the death of King George V, who reigned as King of Britain and 'King-Emperor' of India from 1910 until his death in 1936. Born on 3 June 1865, his official biographer gives a good insight into what he was like as a young man: 'He did nothing at all but kill [i.e. shoot] animals and stick in stamps.' In 1901, Queen Victoria died, and George's father, Albert Edward, ascended the throne as King Edward VII, and when he died in 1910, George became King George V.

In 1911, the new King and Queen travelled to India where they were presented to an assembled audience as the Emperor and Empress of India. In India, George took the opportunity to indulge in hunting tigers, shooting 21. On 18 December 1913 George shot over a thousand pheasants in six hours at the home of Lord Burnham, later acknowledging that 'we went a little too far' that day. Perhaps so.

The outbreak of World War I was difficult for the Royal Family, as they were kind of on the 'wrong side'. George had many German relatives and the family name was Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. The German Emperor Wilhelm II was the king's first cousin, 'Willy.' The King had brothers-in-law and cousins who were British subjects but who bore German titles such as Duke and Duchess of Teck, Prince and Princess of Battenberg, Prince and Princess of Hesse and by Rhine, and Prince and Princess of Schleswig-Holstein-Sønderburg-Augustenberg. It is not therefore surprising writer H G Wells wrote about Britain's 'alien and uninspiring court'.

King George V's first cousin was Russian Tsar Nicholas II (their mothers - Queen Alexandra of the United Kingdom and Empress Maria Fyodorovna of Russia - were sisters)and when so the Tsar was overthrown in the Russian Revolution of February 1917, it came as a bit of a shock. The British Government offered asylum to the Tsar and his family but worsening conditions for the British people, and fears that revolution might come to the British Isles, led George to think that the presence of the Romanovs might seem 'inappropriate' under the circumstances. However, they decided in 17 July 1917 to change the name of the British Royal House from the German-sounding House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to the House of Windsor.

During and after World War I, many of the monarchies which had ruled most European countries fell. In addition to Russia, the monarchies of Austria, Germany, Greece, and Spain also fell to revolution and war, although the Greek monarchy was restored again shortly before George's death. Most of these countries were ruled by relatives of George.

To get some idea of how his subjects came to view King George's time in power, it is hard to do better than quote from a 1935 pamphlet - The Jubilee-and how - written by the British Communist writer T. A. Jackson to counter the rubbish coming out at the time of the Silver Jubilee held to celebrate twenty five years of King George's reign.

'On May 6th we shall all have a holiday. For most of us this will be without pay; but all of us will be (officially) expected to rejoice! Why? Because King George the Fifth has kept his job for twenty-five years. To hold a job in a competitive market market for a quarter of a century, is nowadays, no small feat. And although the post of King can hardly be said to fall within the competitive category, there have been in the past twenty-five years so many cases of Kings deposed, dethroned, and otherwise placed on the retired list that we can well understand why King George and all his fans find the occasion one for sincere gratitute and rejoicing.'

After noting the fall of the Kaisers in Germany and Austria, the Tsar of Russia, the Sultan of Turkey, the Emperor of China, the Kings of Bulgaria, Greece, Spain, Portugal, the Shah of Persia and the King of Siam, Jackson notes that the Jubilee was however a 'trade stunt'. 'Selling' Royalty to the Public began with the cunning Disraeli 'advertising' Queen Victoria, which was useful as people needed to be 'persuaded that but for the King and the Royal Family the world would stop spinning on its axis and the British Empire would blow up with a bang!' Queen Victoria was made out to be 'just like us' but at the same time always achieving 'more than we could do' - 'her domestic virtues were exploited to the full...her bourgeois respectability and the piety and diligence of her spouse were of immense importance in the period when all the thrones of Europe were rocking under the impact of the forces generated by the Industrial Revolution.' Victoria was 'a petty bourgeois monarch around which was organised the cult of Empire worship' - becoming Empress of India in 1877 and then Jubilees were organised in 1887 and 1897 to celebrate her reign.

The Jubilee then was not really for the monarch - who had no power - but to 'hide the reality of the capitalist plutocratic dictatorship of Government', a 'Lord Mayor's show on a world scale'. What exactly are we celebrating 25 years of?

George V's reign saw the bloody First World War which left one million British troops dead and a further million wounded - while elections were suspended at home, followed by economic crisis, high unemployment and repression in the colonies. From the Black and Tans in Ireland, the Meerut Trial in India, as well as events in Egypt these years are marked by a fear of nationalist revolution. And now we have seen the rise of Fascism - 'Hitler's "Aryan" dominance myth is simply the practice of British Imperialism' together with 'bogus science and developed to its logical absurdity'. And now we have the new threat of war.

'To celebrate the Jubilee is to rejoice over the fact that whereas the reign began with the British Government in general sympathy with the Tsar and the Kaiser, its twenty fifth birthday finds it in no less sympathy with Mussolini and Hitler' [His successor, Edward VIII would take 'sympathy' for Mussolini and Hitler to even greater heights]. Jackson noted it is not a question of the personality of the monarch - 'so far as essentials are concerned George V has had no more to do with determining the historical sequence of events and their economic and political outcome than you or I. To blame George V for the present situation at home and abroad would be as foolish as the praise lavished upon him by the press hirelings of capitalist imperialism and by its political mouthpieces'. 'The Jubilee celebrations are deliberately determined to divert public attention - particularly that of the workers from realities to fake issues. They constitute as a whole one elaborate "circus" staged expressly to divert attention from the fundamental rottenness of the social structure for which the British monarchy serves as a single figurehead' - the monarchy is but 'a puppet of Finance State Capital'.

Of the Silver jubilee King George could not really understand why there was so much to celebrate about his reign either, saying in response to the crowd's adulation, 'I cannot understand it, after all I am only a very ordinary sort of fellow.' The shock of war and revolution did seem to take its toll on George's health, which now began to deteriorate. He had always had a weak chest, a weakness exacerbated by heavy smoking. A bout of illness saw him retire to the sea, by Bognor Regis in West Sussex. A myth later grew that the King's last words, upon being told that he would soon be well enough to revisit Bognor Regis, were "bugger Bognor!" In the evening of 15 January 1936, the King took to his bedroom at Sandringham House complaining of a cold; he would never leave the room alive. The King became gradually weaker, drifting in and out of consciousness. The diary of his physician, Lord Dawson of Penn, reveals that the King’s last words, a mumbled "God damn you!", were addressed to his nurse when she gave him a sedative on the night of the 20 January.

Dead King Watch: Edmund Ironside

Edmund Ironside was pleasantly surprised on being told he had made it onto Dead King Watch.

After ruling for a mere seven months, Edmund Ironside died on November 30 1016, which makes this the 990th anniversary of his death.

Born in 989, Edmund was the second son of King Ethelred the Unready , but when his elder brother Ethelstan died in 1014 Edmund was heir. A power-struggle began between Edmund and his father, but this was put on hold when Canute attacked England with his Viking forces. When Ethelred II, who had earlier been stricken ill, died suddenly on April 23, 1016 Edmund succeeded to the throne, though with little support from the Southern nobility who preferred Canute.

When Edmund forcefully recovered Wessex from Canute’s previous invasion in 1015, Canute responded by laying siege to London, yet Edmund’s defence was successful earning him the name 'Ironside'. Despite the victory, conflict continued until Edmund was defeated on October 18 by Canute at the battle of Ashingdon in Essex. After the battle the two kings negotiated a peace in which Edmund kept Wessex while Canute held the lands north of the River Thames. In addition, they agreed that if one of them should perish, territories belonging to the deceased would be ceded to the living. Sadly for Edmund, he died first and his territories were ceded to Canute who then became King of England.

Dead King Watch: Edred

On 23rd November 955, King Edred passed away, which makes this the 1051st anniversary of his death. Born in 923, he became King aged 23 and then ruled for about ten years before dying of an illness in his mid to late thirties. I know one can't judge anyone by their appearance, but I think an exception can be made for Kings and Queens. Just look at Edred. And then laugh.

Dead King Watch: Canute

'Cnut' is the bloke on the right.

Today marks the 871st anniversary of the death of Canute, a Danish King who ruled England and so gets to be part of Dead King Watch. Lucky old Canute. Canute is perhaps best remembered while King of England for the legend of the waves, about how he commanded the waves to go back. Was 'Cnut' simply a Cnutter? Well, according to the legend, not really. Apparently, Canute grew tired of flattery from his courtiers and when one such flatterer gushed that the King could even command the obedience of the sea, Canute got so annoyed that he took the courtier down to the seaside to prove him wrong. However, Wikipedia notes that 'It is quite possible that the legend is even simply pro-Canute propaganda' and I find the idea of any feudal King getting 'tired of flattery' a little far fetched myself. Still, whether true or not - it means old Canute gets to be remembered for something.

Canute was born in about 995, son of Sweyn I of Denmark. Little is known about his life before 1013, but that year, in August, he accompanied his father on his successful invasion of England. While King Sweyn was off conquering England, Canute was left in charge of the remainder of the Danish army at Gainsborough. Upon the sudden death of his father the following February, in 1014, Canute was proclaimed king by the Danish army. However, the assembly of magnates refused to accept him and instead voted to restore the defeated king Ethelred the Unready from exile in Normandy.

Ethelred quickly raised an army, forcing Canute to abandon England and sail back to Denmark with the remnants of his army. When he sailed past Sandwich, Canute was so pissed off that he mutilated hostages given to his father as pledges of support from local nobles. Nice.

Canute’s older brother Harold became the King of Denmark on their father’s death. Canute suggested that the two brothers should jointly rule the Kingdom, which found little appeal with his brother. However, Harold promised him assistance and support for his conquest of England if Canute renounced his rights to the Danish throne. Canute kept silent and waited for an opportunity to present itself when he would 'reclaim' his throne in England.

Canute did not wait long, but returned to England in the summer of 1015 with a Danish force of approximately 10,000 men. The invasion force landed in Essex, which was occupied quickly. Northumbria fell next, and Canute executed its Earl Uhtred for breaking an oath pledged to Sweyn Forkbeard two years earlier. In April 1016, Canute entered the Thames with his fleet and besieged London. King Ethelred died suddenly during the siege, and his son Edmund Ironside was proclaimed king. When Edmund left London to raise an army in the countryside, he was intercepted by Canute at Ashingdon, Essex. After a decisive victory for Canute in the Battle of Ashingdon, Edmund was forced to negotiate under unfavourable circumstances.

Meeting on an island in the Severn River, King Edmund II was forced to accept defeat and sign a treaty with Canute in which all of England except for Wessex would be controlled by Canute, and when one of the kings should die, the other king would take all of England; his sons being the heir to the throne. After Edmund's death (possibly murder) on 30 November, Canute ruled the whole kingdom. Canute was recognised by the nobility as the sole king in January 1017.

By dividing the country (1017) into the four great earldoms of Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia and Northumbria, Canute instituted the system of territorial lordships which would underlie English government for centuries. The very last Danegeld ever paid, a sum of £82,500, went to Canute in 1018. He felt secure enough to send the invasion fleet back to Denmark with £72,000 that same year. After about two decades of presiding over relative social peace, no mean achievement, Canute died in 1035, at Shaftesbury in Dorset, and was buried in the Old Minster in Winchester. On his death, Canute was succeeded in Denmark by his son Harthacanute.

Dead King Watch: Athelstan

Today marks the 1067th anniversary of the death Athelstan, who ruled England from 924-939, not that one would know it from reading the bourgeois press of course. What are they trying to hide, (no) one wonders?

Athelstan was born in 895, the son of King Edward the Elder of the Anglo-Saxons, and grandson of Alfred the Great. In 924, Edward died and so Athelstan became King of Mercia and eventually King of Wessex (both in the South of England). Yet rather than rest contented, his desire for more power meant he soon made a move up North, to wage war on the Viking Kingdom of Northumbria - conquering them to become ruler of more territory than any other Anglo-Saxon before him. The other rulers of tribes in Great Britain seem to have now submitted to Athelstan: 'first Hywel, King of the West Welsh {Cornish}, and Constantine II, King of Scots, and Owain, King of the people of Gwent, and Ealdred...of Bamburgh' records the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Athelstan was effectively now the first real King of England worthy of the name, extending his rule to Wales and Cornwell. When he died in 939, he chose to be buried in Malmesbury rather than at Winchester, and apparently in Malmesbury if few other places his name lives on into the 20th and 21st centuries, 'with everything from a bus company and a second-hand shop to several roads and streets named after him'. Such a commemoration seems to me to be more than enough a tribute to this warmongering, power-hungry King.

Dead King Watch: Alfred the Great

It has been a while since I updated Dead King Watch, and so how better to relaunch the thing by remembering the 1107th anniversary of the death yesterday of King Alfred the Great, who apparently died on 26 October 899. He styled himself 'King of the Anglo-Saxons', though because of his defence of his Kingdom of Wessex (in the South of England) against the Vikings he is known as 'Alfred the Great'. It is telling that no other English monarch has been deemed worthy enough to have been called 'the Great', though does Alfred really deserve the accolade?

Alfred was born in Oxfordshire in about 849, a son of King Ethelwulf of Wessex - who has quite a cool name and who made his name conquering Kent. Alfred was sent to Rome age 5 apparently, where he met the Pope of the day, along with other tribal leaders. Yet his father was soon to die and Alfred's elder brothers ruled. When about 18, Alfred began to fight alongside his brother against the invading Danes - who had been invading since about the 790s - and Alfred made his name in a series of intensive battles in Wessex around 870. However, the Vikings by now had seized York, established their own Kingdom in southern Northumberland, and defeated two other Kingdoms (East Anglia and Mercia) leaving only Wessex as the last surviving Anglo-Saxon Kingdom. In 871, his brother King Ethelred died - possibly from wounds recieved in battle - and Alfred became King of Wessex over Ethelred's young sons. For most of the 870s, Alfred fought a kind of guerilla war against the Viking invaders - famously staying undercover in a peasant woman's hut and letting her cakes burn, though whether there is any evidence for this legendary story is debatable. By the end of the decade, he had turned the tide in defeating the Vikings, achieving his greatest victory in May 878, at the battle of Edington.

According to his contemporary biographer Bishop Asser, 'Alfred attacked the whole pagan army fighting ferociously in dense order, and by divine will eventually won the victory, made great slaughter among them, and pursued them to their fortress (Chippenham) ... After fourteen days the pagans were brought to the extreme depths of despair by hunger, cold and fear, and they sought peace'. Good old divine will, eh?

Alfred then set about negotiating for peace while improving Wessex's defences - building a series of fort like garrison 'boroughs' around his base in Winchester and even developing some sort of navy. His rule now extended to West Mercia and Kent - the rest of the country was under 'Danelaw'. Despite several other attempted invasions, by the 1890s the Danes gave up trying to conquer Wessex. Alfred therefore seems to have had more time to translate and write, and so probably died quite happy.

Dead King Watch: Henry V

Apparently when the current Queen saw that Henry V didn't look anything like Kenneth Branagh she was not amused.

Yep, another Dead King ('Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more'). King Henry V died on August 31st 1422, which makes today the 584th anniversary of his death.

He was born at Monmouth, Wales, in either 1386 or 1387, the son of Henry of Bolingbroke, who in 1399 became Henry IV, and Mary de Bohun. Henry IV's reign was troubled, and the young Henry grew up fighting various rebels against his father. Indeed, in 1403, the sixteen-year-old prince was almost killed by an arrow which became lodged in his face. After his father Henry IV died on March 20, 1413, Henry V succeeded him to the throne.

Henry was lucky in that he came to power at a time of rare social peace at home - and so took the opportunity to do what all powerful rulers tend to do at such times - wage war abroad. In 1415, he invaded France but his campaign was a complete disaster - and his army was saved only from total annhilation when the French lost the tactical battle at Agincourt (October 25), probably one of the most famous battles in English history. Today, that battle is held up by right wing historians to show how glorious history can be. David Starkey would doubtless see this battle as one episode of which English people should all be proud. Writing in July 8th's Daily Telegraph, Starkey writes that 'Liberty is something more than an aspiration, it is something which if you are British or English is built into your ancestors. They fought for liberty, they died for it, they struggled for it and we should be doing the same'.

The lines given to Henry V on the eve of Agincourt by Shakespeare certainly make this King sound cool.

'We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.'

But 'liberty' had nothing do with any of this. In 1417, Henry returned to France and this time he strategically outwitted the French and in two years had reached Paris. The French collapsed, and Henry ruled as King of both England and France until his death. If he is to be remembered, it should be as a tyrannical leader who liked to wage bloody wars of aggression abroad. Thank goodness, over five hundred years after Henry V's death, modern rulers are so different today.

Dead King Watch: Richard III

The late great Peter Cook as Richard III (yes, I know, I have used this picture on my blog before)

Richard III died on 22 August 1485, killed by the army of Henry Tudor at the Battle of Bosworth, which makes today the 521st anniversary of his death. Richard appears in the 2002 List of '100 Great Britons' (sponsored by the BBC and voted for by the public) though the BBC History Magazine lists him under 'doubtful entrants, based on special interest lobbying or "cult" status', and comments: 'On the list due to the Ricardian lobby, but a minor monarch'. The Ricardian lobby? Eh? Who the hell are these guys? And why have they formed a cult around someone who died 521 years ago? Well, this is apparently a frequently asked question on their site...

Q:Why do you believe Richard was a good king?

A: 'As king, Richard attempted to provide justice for all, including the poor and the vulnerable and this was demonstrated in his parliament. Richard understood the value of peace and trade, and he encouraged foreign trade and immigration of skilled craftsmen. He had an open mind with regard to invention and innovation and he encouraged the fledging printing industry. He was a talented administrator and following his elevation to the crown established the Council of the North to govern his former palatinate, an organisation that was so successful it was retained by the Tudors and survived until the mid-seventeenth-century. As duke, Richard had a reputation for being good and fair in his dealings but his reign as king was too short for his potential to be fully realised.'

Well - I am no medieval historian, and while it is true that if Richard III did encourage the immigration of skilled craftsmen to England he was a braver man than most of today's politicians, overall this is about as convincing as the stories - given colour by Shakespeare - which simply portray him as an evil 'poisonous hunch-backed toad'.

Richard was born in 1452 at Fotheringay Castle, the eighth and youngest and fourth surviving son of Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York and Cecily Neville, and there had therefore been no thought of him ever becoming King. However, his Dad did have a minor claim to the throne and when he was just three years old, the Wars of the Roses began - between his dad and the House of Lancaster - another noble family over this. When his father was killed in 1460, at the Battle of Wakefield, Richard's older brother, the 18 year old Edward, took charge of the Yorkist forces and led them to victory at the battle of Towton in 1461 - claiming the throne in the process and becoming Edward IV.

At this time, Richard was just nine years old and, bless him, he didn't really have a clue what the fuck was going on. One moment he was told that his dad and one of his brothers had been killed and their heads placed on spikes for the public to see at York - and the next moment another of his brothers was declared the King of England. Richard spent much of his childhood at Middleham Castle in Wensleydale, under the tutelage of his uncle Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick - a family friend.

During the reign of his brother, King Edward IV, Richard demonstrated his loyalty as well as his skill as a military commander. He was small, stocky but a good jouster. He was rewarded with large estates in Northern England, and given the title Duke of Gloucester and the position of Governor of the North, becoming the richest and most powerful noble in England and a loyal aide to Edward IV. By contrast the other surviving brother, George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence, was executed by Edward for treason.

By 1471 - the Lancastrians - and others who had stood in Edward's way like Warwick - were completely crushed. Henry VI was murdered in order to make sure of their defeat - and the only rival left was Henry Tudor - in exile abroad. In 1472 - at this time of peace, Richard married Anne Neville, Warwick's daughter and a childhood friend. He lived in York.

Then in 1483 - his brother Edward died, leaving his sons age 12 and 9 the heirs to the throne and Richard as Lord Protector. However, Edward's wife - their mother - Elizabeth Woodville - did not want Richard around exerting influence while the boys were growing up, so Richard had the Woodville's executed and the boys imprisoned in the Tower of London and then murdered. Richard was now King. When one of his supporters - Lord Hastings - thought Richard was in danger of becoming a tyrant, Hastings too was arrested and executed. This act of despotism horrified even his closest supporters like Buckingham - but when Buckingham rebelled he was also executed on the orders of Richard.

As AL Morton notes, Richard's struggle with the nobles who had helped him to power was an 'inevitable struggle [which] involved all the kings of the period in a contradiction that remaned insoluable till almost all the great families had become extinct.'

Rather like Stalin later on, even Richard's family were now stressed by the whole power struggle thing. Richard's son died in childhood in 1484, and the sadness of this prompted his wife, Anne to illness and also death. Richard was now completely alone - and deeply unpopular - save for a few sycophantic hangers on.

The exiled Henry Tudor now saw his chance to return to England and place his claim to the throne, promising to marry the daughter of Edward IV and so unite the Houses of York and Lancaster in peace if he won. Richard stood only for eternal war - he wanted his enemies and rivals destroyed.

As Morton notes, 'When Henry Tudor, who produced a remote claim to the throne, landed at Milford Haven, the treason and desertion that had been a constant feature of the age reasserted itself and Richard found himself almost without supporters. The Battle of Bosworth field, fought on August 22nd, 1485, by a mere handful of men on either side, ended the Wars of the Roses and with them a whole historic epoch in Britain.'

In the battle, Richard led his 120 strong hand-picked mounted bodyguard into a suicide attack in order to try and reach Henry Tudor and kill him, and in doing so achieve an instant victory. Richard cut through Henry's men but at the crucial moment was let down by the Duke of Northumberland, who refused to join battle and help him out. Richard was cut down crying 'treason, treason' to Northumberland - making him the only King to have been killed in battle. The battle stopped and the Crown was placed on the head of Henry Tudor.

According to local tradition in Leicester, Richard had gone to see a seer in the town before heading off for the Battle of Bosworth Field. She told him 'where your spur should strike on the ride into battle, your head shall be broken on the return'. On the ride into battle his spur apparently struck the bridge stone of the Bow Bridge. Afterward, as his naked dead body was being carried from the battle over the back of a horse, his head struck the same stone and was broken open. With all due respect to the people of Leicester, this story strikes me as being complete and utter bollocks. Richard's corpse was then left exposed in a house by the river for two days so all could see him, before it was placed in an unmarked grave.

Dead King Watch: George IV

One French Romantic painter, Gericault's, portrait of young George.


Another portrayal of the Prince Regent with his loyal servants...

King George IV died on the 26 June 1830, which meant the 176th anniversary of his death took place a couple of days ago.

George, the eldest son of George III and Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, was born in St. James's Palace in 1762. At the time of his birth, he automatically became Duke of Cornwall and Duke of Rothesay, which doubtless made the people of Cornwall and Rothesay very happy. George, who also became the Prince of Wales, was a talented student, quickly learning to speak not only English but also French, German and Italian. This highlights the effect of inbreeding on the Royal Family - Prince Harry for example had to cheat in order to pass 'A-level' Art, let alone manage a foreign language.

The Prince of Wales turned 21 in 1783, when he obtained a grant of £60,000 from Parliament and an annual income of £50,000 from his father. He then established his residence in Carlton House, where he lived a profligate life of luxury annoying his father who thought more frugal behaviour on the part of the heir-apparent might look better. Yet as Prince Regent he continued to amass enormous debts - for example inn 1796 reaching the extraordinary sum of £660,000 - and Parliament (ie. the British taxpayer) had to bail him out. Being unwilling to make an outright grant to relieve these debts, Parliament provided him an additional sum of £65,000 per annum. In 1803, a further £60,000 was added, and the Prince of Wales's debts were finally paid. See Blackadder III - picture above - for more on his greed.

In 1811, his father's illness got so bad, George had to become Prince Regent. While the Napoleonic wars raged, George took an active interest in clothes. He took matters of style and taste very importantly, and his associates such as the dandy Beau Brummell and the architect John Nash created the 'Regency style'. In London Nash designed the Regency terraces of Regent's Park and Regent Street. George took up the new idea of the seaside spa and had the Brighton Pavilion developed as a fantastical seaside palace, adapted by Nash in the "Indian Gothic" style inspired loosely by the Taj Mahal, with extravagant "Indian" and "Chinese" interiors. Again see Blackadder III for his love of socks.

When George III died in 1820, the Prince Regent ascended the throne as George IV, with no real change in his powers. George's coronation was a magnificent and expensive affair, costing about £943,000. By the time of his accession, he was obese and utterly useless for anything except buying clothes. He was also showing signs of having inherited his father's mental illness.

On George's death in 1830 - having done nothing to improve the lives of his subjects - even the establishment paper The Times commented unfavourably: There never was an individual less regretted by his fellow creatures than this deceased king. What eye has wept for him? What heart has heaved one throb of unmercenary sorrow? [...] If he ever had a friend - a devoted friend in any rank of life - we protest that the name of him or her never reached us.

Dead King Watch: Edward III

King Edward III died on 21 June 1377, which meant the day before yesterday was the 629th anniversary of his death. His reign lasted over fifty years making him one of the longest reigning English monarchs. Ironically, though he lived a long time during his reign saw the Black Death which meant the lives of his subjects was often very short indeed.

Edward was born in 1312, and so crowned aged only 14 in 1327. He got married at 15,
to Philippa of Hainault. The couple produced thirteen children, including five sons who reached maturity. Their eldest son and Edward's heir apparent, Edward the Black Prince (so called because he wore a black suit of armor) who was doubtless an inspiration for the TV character Edmund Blackadder, was born in 1330 and was a famed military leader.

Edward's accession to the English throne was of questionable legality as his father, Edward II, was still alive at the time and was deposed in order for Edward to become king. There is still a debate today whether anyone had the authority to depose him. As Edward was still a teenager at the time the main actors were his mother Isabella of France and her lover, Roger Mortimer, who proceeded to rule the country in Edward III's name. In 1330, the seventeen-year old Edward seized control over the English court, overthrowing Mortimer, who was executed, and removing Isabella from power.

The reign of Edward III was marked by continued war with Scotland, but much more by the war with France - The Hundred Years War. This sounds grand but was really a series of raids along the French coast by English armies. After Edward declared himself king of France on January 26, 1340 the French unsurprisingly decided to fight back and the wars continued sporadically up to the 1450s. While early victories were eventually reversed, English and, later, British monarchs would continue to claim the title "King of France" until the Treaty of Amiens in 1802. Edward III quartered his coat of arms with "France Ancient", the Azure semé-de-lis (a blue shield with a tight pattern of small golden fleur de lis of the French royal house), and it remained a part of the English Coat of Arms until removed by George III.

While the king and the black prince campaigned abroad, the government was left largely in the hands of the prince's younger brother, John of Gaunt. Economic prosperity from the developing wool trade created new wealth in the kingdom, but the ravages of the bubonic plague, or Black Death, had a significant impact on the lives of his subjects. Commercial taxes became a major source of royal revenue, which had previously been largely from taxes on land. The Parliament of England became divided into two houses. At the beginning of Edward's reign, French was still the language of the English noblesse, following the Norman invasion, but by the end this had changed - in 1362 English was made the official language of the law courts.

The king also founded an order of knighthood, the Order of the Garter, allegedly as a result of an incident when a lady, with whom he was dancing at a court ball, dropped an item of intimate apparel (possibly a sanitary belt, though sources describe it as being made of velvet). Gallantly picking it up to assuage her embarrassment, Edward tied it around his own leg, and remarked Honi soit qui mal y pense ('Shame on him who thinks evil of it'), which became the motto of the Order of the Garter.

Despite having an unusually happy marriage, and producing thirteen children with Philippa, Edward was a notorious womaniser. After Philippa's death in 1369, Edward's mistress, Alice Perrers, became a byword for corruption. Facing a resurgent French monarchy and losses in France, Edward asked Parliament to grant him more funds by taxing the wine and wool trades, but this was badly received in 1374–1375 as a new outbreak of bubonic plague struck. The "Good Parliament" of 1376 criticised Edward's councillors, including Alice Perrers' family, and advised him to limit his ambitions to suit his revenues.

Edward died of a stroke brought on by severe constipation in 1377. He was said to have been infected with gonnorhoea by Alice Perrers. Supposedly, she was there when he died and removed the rings from his fingers before fleeing. Edward was buried in Westminster Abbey. His son Edward, the Black Prince, predeceased him in 1376, and Edward III was succeeded by his young grandson, King Richard II of England.

Dead King Watch: George I

George was not born in England but came to rule it

King George I died on 11 June 1727, and so it is a little belatedly that I bring up the 279th anniversary of his death.

George Ludwig was born in 1660 in Hanover in Germany, and was born into the ruling class, becoming His Serene Highness, Duke Georg Ludwig of Brunswick-Lüneburg. In 1692, he became Prince Elect of Hanover and then from 1698 his full title was 'His Serene Highness Georg Ludwig, The Elector of Hanover, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg.' His court in Hanover was graced by many cultural icons, such as the mathematician Gottfried Leibniz and the composer Händel. George himself was described by one observer to be 'low of stature, of features coarse, of aspect dull and placid.'

Fine, you are thinking, but how the hell did this dull German prince get to be King of England? Well, his mother Sophia, the daughter of Elizabeth Stuart, was herself the eldest daughter of James I. In 1701, the English passed the Act of Settlement whereby she was designated heir to the British Throne if the then-reigning monarch (William III) and his sister-in-law Princess Anne of Denmark (the later Queen Anne)) both died without issue. The succession was so designed because Sophia was the closest Protestant relative of the British Royal Family; numerous Catholics with superior hereditary claims were bypassed. In England, the Tories generally opposed allowing a foreigner to succeed to the Throne, whilst the Whigs favoured a Protestant successor regardless of nationality. George is said to have been reluctant to accept the English plan, but his Hanoverian advisors suggested that he should acquiesce so that his German possessions would become more secure.

The problem was this pissed off some members of the Scottish ruling class, who thought they had a better claim to the throne of England than some German prince. Yet as Neil Davidson notes, 'The English ruling class wanted Scotland to accept the Hanoverian succession to the three thrones of Britain—essentially to end any possibility of the Scots restoring the Stuart dynasty, which had been overthrown for the second time in 1688 and was now backed by France. The feudal ruling class in Scotland was divided, and the English regime concluded that it would have to incorporate Scotland into a new British state.'

In 1707, the Act of Union was passed; it united England and Scotland into a single political entity, the Kingdom of Great Britain. Davidson again: 'The formation of the British state was part of the conflict for global supremacy between capitalist-constitutional England and feudal-absolutist France...The Scottish bourgeoisie was almost totally opposed to the union of England and Scotland, and so were the popular classes—there was of course no working class at the time. For several months the Edinburgh crowd were in an almost permanent state of anti-union insurgency outside the Scottish parliament. They rightly feared that the union would bring higher taxes and the Anglicisation of the Church of Scotland, virtually their only democratic institution. The riots and demonstrations did not stop the treaty going ahead. But they did manage to get several of the most offensive clauses changed or deleted. In the end, the lords pushed the treaty through parliament because the English regime was prepared to guarantee the preservation of their feudal jurisdictions and legal system—their class position.'

By the time Anne died on 1 August 1714, George's mother was dead and so he was now King of England. The English were singularly unimpressed with their new sovereign. George I was a short, irascible German who did not even speak English and could hardly be bothered to learn the language. He was a man of limited intelligence and aims. Landing in England at Greenwich, on 18th September, 1714, in a thick fog, he was accompanied by his tall, thin and rapacious mistress Mademoiselle Schullenberg. George's other mistress. Madame Keilmansegge, was conversely very obese. The English irreverently dubbed the pair the "the Elephant and the Maypole." Even whilst he was in Great Britain, the King occupied himself with Hanoverian concerns.

Yet in 1715, when not even a year had passed after George's accession, he was faced with a Jacobite Rebellion, which became known as "The Fifteen". The Jacobites sought to put Anne's Catholic half-brother, James Francis Edward Stuart (whom they called "James III", and who was known to the English as the "Old Pretender") on the Throne. The Pretender instigated rebellion in Scotland, where support for Jacobitism was stronger than in England. John Erskine, 6th Earl of Mar, an embittered Scottish nobleman who had previously supported the Glorious Revolution, led the rebels. The Fifteen, however, was a dismal failure; Lord Mar's battle plans were poor, and the Old Pretender had not arrived in Scotland in time. By the end of the year 1715, the rebellion had all but collapsed. Faced with impending defeat, Lord Mar and the Pretender fled to France in the next February. After the Fifteen was crushed, the British government dealt with the insurgents harshly. Several prisoners were executed; the remainder were enslaved in the colonies. Numerous Scottish noble families lost their estates.

Davidson describes Jacobitism thus: 'Jacobitism was a counter-revolutionary political movement whose formal goal was to restore the Stuarts. Behind this, however, lay a deeper motivation. Although the union was deeply conservative in Scottish terms, it did open up the country to greater capitalist development, through trade with the Americas (which had previously been illegal), the beginnings of agricultural improvement, and so on. The Jacobite social base was among the lairds (equivalent to the gentry in England) and some of the great magnates who were unwilling or unable to make the transition to capitalist production. Unlike every other feudal class west of Poland they still had the power to raise their tenants to fight, but they also relied on support from the Britain’s European rivals.'

Several members of the Tory Party sympathised with the Jacobites. George I began to distrust the Tories, and power thus passed to the Whigs. Whig dominance would be so great under George I that the Tories would not return to power for another half-century. In general power passed from the Crown somewhat in this period to instead his chief minister Sir Robert Walpole. During one of his frequent visits to his beloved Hanover, George I suffered a stroke and died at Osnabruck on 11th June, 1727, he was buried in the Chapel of the Leine Schloss

Dead King Watch: William IV

William IV


David Cameron

William IV died on 20 June 1837, which makes today the 169th anniversary of his death. The current leader of the Conservative Party, David Cameron, is a distant relative of William IV, so it might be worth looking at the life of William IV to see if it sheds any light on what sort of man Cameron is...

Prince William
William was born on 21 August 1765 at Buckingham House, the son of King George III and Queen Charlotte. He had two elder brothers (Prince George, Prince of Wales and Prince Frederick, Duke of York), and so was not expected to inherit the Crown. At the age of thirteen, he joined the Royal Navy as a midshipman, and aged 15 was present at the Battle of Cape St. Vincent against the Spanish in 1780. He served in New York during the American War of Independence, trying to retain the colony for the British. While the prince was there, George Washington approved a plot to kidnap the prince, writing to congratulate the cunning behind it. "The spirit of enterprise so conspicuous in your plan for surprising in their quarters and bringing off the Prince William Henry and Admiral Digby merits applause, and you have my authority to make the attempt in any manner, and at such a time, as your judgment may direct." The plot sadly did not come to fruition; the British heard of it and doubled the prince's guard.

William became a Lieutenant aged 20 in 1785 and a Captain the following year. In 1786, he was stationed in the West Indies. Horatio Nelson wrote of William, "In his professional line, he is superior to two-thirds, I am sure, of the [Naval] list; and in attention to orders, and respect to his superior officer, I hardly know his equal." What a grovelling sycophant Nelson was. What were the Royal Navy doing in the West Indies at this time, one might be prompted to enquire? Ah yes, overseeing a slave system that saw millions toil and labour to death in order that rich British merchants might profit from the production of sugar.

Duke of Clarence.
Yet while life on the sea was all very well, William did think life would be more comfortable if he could become a Duke and sit around doing nothing back in England. Accordingly, in 1790 he ceased active service in the Navy and became Duke of Clarence. He was promoted to 'Rear-Admiral' upon retirement - presumably because title befitted someone whose preferred position during battles was to sit very far behind the lines of the actual conflict while the poor seamen did all the actual fighting and dying. Yet when the French Revolution developed into a mass popular uprising against privilege, symbolised by the regicide of Louis XVI in January 1793, William's anger against this new dangerous 'democracy' boiled over. When England declared war on revolutionary France in 1793, William was anxious to do his bit for those fighting to restore monarchy and privilege. Yet, despite his position as 'Rear-Admiral' during this war, William decided his military 'talents' - remember Nelson's words 'in his professional line William was superior to two thirds' - could be best employed in the, er, House of Lords. There William Duke of Clarence defended the exorbitant spending of his greedy brother, the Prince of Wales, who had applied to Parliament for a grant for relief of his debts. In Parliament he also spoke in favour of slavery, a system which the English at the time were desperately involved in trying to extend through military force to former French colonies like San Domingo whose slaves had risen up against their oppressors. In 1811, having clearly proved himself worthy of the job through such clearly vital work in Parliament William was appointed Admiral of the Fleet. In 1827 he became Lord High Admiral where he commissioned the first steam warship.

In 1830, aged 64, he became King when George IV died without surviving legitimate issue, and so was the oldest man ever to assume the throne. Unlike his extravagant brother, William was unassuming, discouraging pomp and ceremony. In contrast to George IV, who tended to spend most of his time in Windsor Castle, William was known, especially early in his reign, to walk, unaccompanied, through London or Brighton. He was initially apparently quite popular, probably because those he succeeded had been so bad.

Yet once more, Revolution was in the air in England following a political revolution in France and the English ruling class were in trouble. Parliament at that time very clearly represented only property, not the people at all. One third of MPs represented tiny constituencies of a few rich aristocrats, and one little village in Suffolk had two MPs while some huge growing Northern industrial cities had no political representation at all. In 1832, the rich Whigs realised unless they carried out a reform of this system there would be revolution - which as EP Thompson has shown, there very nearly was. Yet the 'Great' Reform Act of 1832 only gave the vote to men (not women of course) and only if they were rich - so only one in seven adult males got the vote. Nor were the constituencies now of an equal size. Whereas 35 constituencies had less than 300 electors, Liverpool still had a constituency of over 11,000. Yet William never quite got the idea of 'democracy' - and in 1834 when he didn't like the Prime Minister Melbourne he simply got rid of him and replaced him with Sir Robert Peel.

Yet something had changed as a result of the Act - the principle that the people should have some political power had been reaffirmed - even if in practise it was still to be denied. The resulting reduction in the influence of the Crown was clearly indicated by the events of William's reign, especially his dismissal of the Melbourne ministry. During the reign of George III, the King could have dismissed one ministry, appointed another, dissolved Parliament, and expected the people to vote in favour of the new administration. Such was the result of a dissolution in 1784, after the dismissal of the Coalition Ministry; such was the result of a dissolution in 1807, after the dismissal of William Wyndham Grenville, 1st Baron Grenville. But when William IV dismissed the Melbourne ministry, the Tories under Sir Robert Peel were not able to win the ensuing elections. Thus, the King's ability to influence the opinion of the people, and therefore generally dictate national policy, had been reduced. None of William's successors has attempted to remove a ministry and appoint another against the wishes of the people. Then again, the Labour Party have always been so craven in the face of authority and hereditary rule that the rich have never felt their power threatened enough to feel it necessary to use the monarchy in this way.

One nice postscript is that a long arc of heroic slave revolts across the Caribbean following the Haitian Revolution and going on up to 1831 in Jamaica finally succeeded in overthrowing colonial slavery in the 1830s - which hopefully provided such a shock to William IV that it led to his death through cardiac failure in 1837.

Overall, William's life was spent defending the interests of the privileged and looking out for the interests of the British Empire. So quite, quite different from David Cameron's 'modern, compassionate conservatism' then...

Dead King Watch: Harthacanute

I don't think this coin shows his best side, to be honest.

Harthacanute (sometimes Hardicanute, Hardecanute; Danish Hardeknud, Canute the Hardy) died on June 8th 1042, which made yesterday the 964th anniversary of his death.

He was born in either 1018 or 1019, the only son of Canute the Great and Emma of Normandy, and succeeded his father as King of Denmark and England in 1035, reigning as Canute III, but conflict with Magnus I of Norway prevented him from sailing from Denmark to England to secure his position there. Consequently, it was agreed that his elder illegitimate half-brother Harold Harefoot would be regent in charge of England.

Harold took the English crown for himself in 1037 — Harthacanute being 'forsaken because he was too long in Denmark'. After Harthacanute had settled the situation in Scandinavia through an agreement (in 1038 or 1039) with Magnus in which they agreed that if either of them should die without an heir, the other would be his successor, Harthacanute prepared an invasion of England to depose Harold. In 1039, he arrived
at Bruges in Flanders, where his exiled mother was, but before he could invade Harold died in March 1040. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Harthacanute then landed at Sandwich on June 17 with a fleet of 62 warships. Being unable to exact vengeance upon his brother while he was still alive, he 'had the dead Harold dragged up and thrown into a fen.' Nice.

Harthacanute was a harsh and very unpopular ruler: to pay for his fleet, he severely increased the rate of taxation, and perhaps the most notable event of his reign in England was a revolt at Worcester in 1041 against these high taxes. This revolt was crushed, with the near-destruction of Worcester. The story of Lady Godiva riding naked through the streets of Coventry to persuade the local earl to lower taxes may come from the reign of Harthacanute.

Harthacanute invited his half-brother Edward the Confessor (his mother Emma's son by Ethelred the Unready) back from exile in Normandy to become a member of his household, and may have made Edward his heir. Harthacanute was unmarried and had no children. In June 1042, he died at Lambeth. Apparently, he 'died as he stood at his drink, and he suddenly fell to the earth with an awful convulsion; and those who were close by took hold of him, and he spoke no word afterwards...'. He was buried at Winchester. Edward assumed the throne on Harthacanute's death, restoring the Saxon royal line for his lifetime.

Dead King Watch: Edward VIII - The Nazi King

King Edward VIII died on 28 May 1972, which makes this Sunday the 34th anniversary of his death. Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David Windsor was born in 1894, the eldest son of The Duke of York (later King George V), and a great grandson of Queen Victoria. Edward VIII was styled 'His Highness Prince Edward of York' at his birth, possibly as his full name was rather long and ridiculous. Indeed, for the rest of his life, he was known to his family and close friends, by his last name, David.

He automatically became Duke of Cornwall and Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Baron Renfrew, Lord of the Isles, and Prince and Great Steward of Scotland when his father, George V, ascended the throne on 6 May 1910. The new King created him Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester on 2 June 1910 and officially invested him as such in a special ceremony in 1911. It must have been difficult for him to keep track of exactly which parts of the UK he was supposed to be a ruler of at this time.

Like many sons of royalty, he went into the armed services for a 'career'. As of 1911 he was a Midshipman in the Royal Navy, making Lieutenant in 1913. When the First World War (1914–18) broke out Edward had reached the minimum age for active service and expressed keenness to participate. He is rather reminiscent of Prince Harry at this stage - and Edward was allowed to join the army, serving with the Grenadier Guards. Although Edward expressed a willingness to serve on the front lines, the British government refused to allow it, citing the immense harm that the capture of the heir to the throne would cause. Despite this Edward witnessed at first hand the horror of trench warfare, and attempted to visit the front line as often as he could, leading to his award of the Military Cross in 1916. What a hero.

Throughout the 1920s the Prince of Wales represented his father, King George V, at home and abroad on many occasions. Abroad the Prince of Wales toured the Empire, undertaking 13 tours between 1919 and 1935. At home, he took a particular interest in visiting the poverty stricken areas of the country during the Great Depression. Yet in reality, he preferred to hang out with his rich friends - and by the late 1920s had fallen in love with an American woman Wallis Simpson. This weakened his poor relationship with his father, King George V. The King and Queen refused to receive Mrs Simpson at court, and his brother, Prince Albert, urged Edward to seek a more suitable wife.

Edward's affair with the American divorcée led to such grave concern that the couple were followed by members of MI5, to examine in secret the nature of their relationship. A MI5 report detailed a visit by the couple to an antique shop, where the proprietor later noted that: "the lady seemed to have POW [Prince of Wales] completely under her thumb." The prospect of having an American divorcée with a questionable past having such sway over the Heir Apparent filled the Establishment with great misgiving.

King George V died on January 20, 1936, and Edward ascended to the throne as King Edward VIII. His full title now was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas, and Emperor of India. It was now becoming clear that the new King wished to marry Mrs Simpson, especially when divorce proceedings between Mr and Mrs Simpson were brought at Ipswich Crown Court. Powerful figures in the British government deemed marriage to Mrs Simpson impossible for Edward, even if Wallis obtained her second divorce, because he had become the Supreme Governor of the Church of England which prohibited remarriage after divorce. Edward's alternative proposed solution of a morganatic marriage (where his wife and any future children would not have recieved any privileges) was rejected by the Tory Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin and the Dominion governments.

Yet the real reason King Edward caused unease in government circles were to do with his actions that were interpreted as interference in political matters. His visit to the economically impoverished coal mining villages in South Wales saw Edward call for "something to be done" for the unemployed and deprived coal miners. This went against the Tory 'National' Government's policy of doing absolutely nothing to help the millions of unemployed at the time. Yet there was also a slight difficulty with what Edward favoured as the 'something' that should 'be done'.

Nazi King

King Edward, you see, was a Nazi sympathiser who was quite taken by the Fascist 'solution' to unemployment, being carried out in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany at the time. US FBI agents later interviewed the one time Duke of Wurttemberg, a minor German royal with connections to Queen Mary, the duke's mother, and her brother, the Duke of Athlone, then governor general of Canada. He told them that Joachim von Ribbentrop, then the Nazis' foreign minister - had been Wallis Simpson's lover when he was ambassador to Britain in 1936.

According to the FBI report, "He knew definitely that von Ribbentrop, while in England, sent the then Wallis Simpson 17 carnations every day. The 17 supposedly represented the number of times they had slept together." He also revealed that the Duchess of Windsor had told guests at a Paris party that: "The duke is impotent and although he had tried sexual intercourse with numerous women they had been unsuccesful in satisfying his passions...The duchess [Simpson] in her own inimitable and unique manner has been the only woman who had been able to satisfactorily gratify the duke's sexual desires."

The apparent close links between the Nazi leadership and King Edward were increasingly problematic for the British Government, which increasingly was seeing a rearming Nazi Germany in close alliance with Mussolini's Italy as a potential challenge to British imperial power. On November 16, 1936, Edward met with Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin at Fort Belvedere and expressed his desire to marry Wallis Simpson when she became free to do so. The Prime Minister responded by presenting the King with three choices: he could give up the idea of marriage; marry Wallis against his ministers' wishes; or abdicate. It was clear that Edward was not prepared to give up Wallis. By marrying against the advice of his ministers, it was likely that he would cause the government to resign, prompting a constitutional crisis. Edward chose to abdicate and departed the United Kingdom for France, though he was unable to join Wallis until her divorce became absolute, several months later.

His brother, Prince Albert, Duke of York succeeded to the throne as King George VI, with his eldest daughter, The Princess Elizabeth first in the line of succession, as the heir presumptive. On March 8, 1937, George VI created his brother, Edward, the former king, Duke of Windsor. The Duke of Windsor married Mrs. Simpson, who had changed her name by deed poll to Wallis Warfield, in a private ceremony on 3 June 1937 at Chateau de Candé, Monts, France. None of the British royal family attended.

Reunited, that year the Duke and Duchess visited Germany as personal guests of the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, a visit much publicised by the German media (see picture above). It is likely that Edward continued to leak secret information to Joachim von Ribbentrop, who had remained in constant contact with him. When the Second World War broke out, the Duke of Windsor gave a "defeatist" interview (calling for the defeat of Britain at the hands of Nazi Germany) that received wide distribution. This served as the last straw for the British government: in August a British warship dispatched the pair to the Bahamas. The Duke of Windsor was installed as Governor, and became the first British monarch to ever hold a civilian political office.

Many historians have suggested that Hitler was prepared to reinstate Edward and Wallis as King and Queen of Britain, if he conquered the country, and is apparently to have said to Wallis, "you would make a good Queen." Many top officers in the British Army, as well as more than a few members of the civilian population, believed that Edward had passed details of the movements of the British Expeditionary Force in France, leading to the disaster at Dunkirk. U.S. naval intelligence revealed a confidential report of a conference of German foreign officials in October 1941, that judged the Duke "no enemy to Germany" and the only English representative with whom Hitler would negotiate any peace terms, "the logical director of England's destiny after the war".

After the war, the couple returned once again to France in Neuilly near Paris, where they spent much of the remainder of their lives essentially in retirement, as the Duke never occupied another professional role after his wartime governorship of the Bahamas. They hosted parties and travelled extensively, shuttling between Paris and New York; in 1951 the Duke produced a ghost-written memoir, A King's Story. Nine years later, he also penned a relatively unknown book chiefly about the fashion and habits of the Royal Family, and their evolution throughout his life, from the time of Queen Victoria through his grandfather, father, and his own tastes. The book is entitled, Windsor Revisited. It seems a suitable time to revisit the Duke of Windsor - the Nazi King - today in the light of Prince Harry's apparent love of German Wehrmacht uniforms - as well as the common belief that British Fascism has some sort of natural constituency in the 'white working class'. On the contrary, British Fascism has always tended to be rather popular among the very 'cream' of society, from where it draws its leaders like Sir Oswald Mosley and Nick Griffin - and would be leaders like King Edward VIII. Racism trickles down from the very top of a rotting capitalist society built on wage slavery at home and imperialist domination abroad.

Dead King Watch: King Edmund I

King Edmund I died on May 26 946, which makes today the 1060th anniversary of his death. Edmund was born in 921, son of Edward the Elder and half-brother of Athelstan. Athelstan died on October 27, 939, and Edmund succeeded him as King. Shortly after his proclamation as King Edmund had to face several military threats. King Olaf I of Dublin conquered Northumbria and invaded the Midlands. When Olaf died in 942 Edmund reconquered the Midlands and then Northumbria. In 945 Edmund conquered Strathclyde but conceded his rights on the territory to King Malcolm I of Scotland. In exchange they signed a treaty of mutual military support. Edmund thus established a policy of safe borders and peaceful relationships with Scotland. During his reign, the revival of monasteries in England began. In 946, Edmund was at a party in Pucklechurch, when he spotted an exiled thief Leofa, in the crowd. After the outlaw refused to leave, the king and his advisors fought Leofa. Edmund and Leofa were both killed. This goes to show why knives should not be carried around in public, especially not to parties...