​Acclaimed historical biographer, Linda Porter, has turned to the children of Charles I and the English Civil Wars for her latest book. 

An ambitious project with daunting scope Royal Renegades shines a light on a royal family swept away by political forces ultimately beyond their control. The combination of Porter's impeccable research, sharp sense of irony and fluent writing style transforms a period of history renowned for its dryness and impenetrability. The political and martial narrative is cast in a new light when set against the intimacy of the family story, which takes us out into parallel events in France and the Netherlands, allowing us to understand  the wider European impact of the conflict.

Both fascinating and, at times, deeply poignant, Royal Renegades will have you in its thrall until the final page.

INTERVIEW WITH  LINDA PORTER

EF: As with your previous bookCrown of Thistles, the scope ofRoyal Renegades is vast, covering not only the period running up to the English Civil Wars, the wars themselves and the protectorate that followed, but also parallel events in both France and the Netherlands. Do you enjoy the challenge of depicting the ‘big picture’?

LP: Yes, I do. I think it is important to convey the wider backdrop of the story. Events in Europe had a significant impact on the lives of the Stuart royal children, especially after their father’s execution. It is also important to remember that their mother was French – their Bourbon inheritance is often overlooked. I also wanted to convey something of the complexity of the period, both within Charles I’s three kingdoms of England, Ireland and Scotland, and beyond. It is a wonderful period to write about, perhaps the richest in our history. I would have liked to write more about the eleven years of the English republic but it was beyond the scope of this book. However, I felt it necessary to include a chapter on the background to the restoration of Charles II because I had never really understood what happened in England after the death of Oliver Cromwell. I now feel that I do and hopefully readers of my book will as well.

EF: With your focus on the Royal children you manage to make the political highly personal and very poignant. What inspired you to approach this period of history in such a way?

LP: I think because it is very much an untold story. Most people I have spoken to about the book are unaware of the fact that Charles I had six children living at the time of his death, and know nothing about their fates, beyond the fact that Charles II was restored in 1660. It is also a story that mirrors that of many families during the Civil Wars – of dislocation and loss, of a world turned upside down. I don’t think even I had realized quite how sad it was before I began to work on it.

EF: I have the impression that you didn’t warm to Queen Henrietta. I wonder if you could explain why this is and whether you developed particular favourites from your cast of characters.

LP: You are right, I don’t care much for Henrietta Maria. This may be a little harsh. She has had a bad press – then and subsequently – but she is not an easy woman to like, though her husband came to adore her after a very rocky start to their marriage. In portraits of her in her twenties you can see something of the youthful charm that won him over. But she had no political sense at all, was always, at heart, contemptuous of the English and she was a very difficult mother. Her treatment of Prince Henry, her youngest son, was utterly deplorable. She was, however, a loyal wife and her many years in exile were stoically born.

EF: The Civil Wars are notorious for their complexity, yet you have managed to write about them in a way that is so clear. What were the particular challenges of achieving this?

LP: The main challenge was to digest a great mass of material without getting sucked into years of research. When I first had the idea for Royal Renegades I thought it would be an easier topic than my previous book, Crown of Thistles, which was on the rivalry between the Tudors and the Stewarts in the previous century. After all, a book about six royal children should be relatively straightforward, or so I thought. This was naïve, to say the least. Nothing about the Civil Wars is straightforward. And I had not worked on the 17th century since I was an undergraduate, when I did my long essay (a seemingly quaint term these days for something that was actually not really the same as an undergraduate dissertation) on the Civil Wars. Scholarship on the period has changed beyond recognition in the years since then, and I like to reflect the latest scholarship in my books. I think it is something I owe to the reader.

EF: I have the sense that people are turning from the Tudors to the Stuarts. As someone who has written acclaimed works about Tudor figures would you agree with this and why do you think it is the case?

LP: Yes, I think there is a change. I certainly hope so. Charles Spencer has written about Prince Rupert and about the regicides to great effect. Anna Keay’s biography of the duke of Monmouth, Charles II’s illegitimate son, has led the way on reviving interest in the 17th century among women writers. It has previously been very much a male preserve. Leanda de Lisle, Anna Whitelock and Jessie Childs are also moving away from the Tudors. I think that we have just about reached saturation point with Tudormania though it may take a while before the media and even the general public catch on to this. The effect of Tudormania has been to give a very Anglocentric view of our history but the truth of the matter is that England was not a major player on the international stage in Tudor times and the compulsive fascination of Henry VIII and his six wives has skewed our understanding of our past. Having said that, I’ve just been working as historical consultant on Lucy Worsley’s upcoming BBC I series on Henry and his wives and it has quite a novel approach to the topic, which is what you would expect from Lucy, and I’m very much looking forward to seeing the end product.
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EF: What’s next for you as a writer?

LP: I’m starting work on a companion volume to Royal Renegades with the working title of Godly People: the family and friends of Oliver Cromwell. And you haven’t asked, but, yes, I am at heart, a supporter of the other side. This is my chance to give them their due.

Royal Renegades is out now in hardback and published by Macmillan.

It is unsurprising that there seems to be a new appetite for the Stuart period, given the seventeenth century brought us some of the best and most enduring drama ever written, a regicide, a civil war, a republic, a restoration and, in the aftermath of all this, one of the most dramatically eventful and devastating years in England’s history. 1666 is, like 1066, a date that even those who weren’t listening in history class remember. It was, of course, the year London was burned to the ground. This cataclysmic event came in the wake of a significant and humiliating naval defeat against the Dutch at Bergen and an epidemic of bubonic plague, the virulence of which hadn’t been experienced in England for hundreds of years.

Rebecca Rideal’s book 1666: Plague, War and Hellfire skilfully contextualises these events in a way that allows us to understand how they touched society from top to bottom. With a cinematic eye for detail Rideal throws us into the action, circulating between vivid descriptions of the cityscape and those bustling through it, before sweeping us out into the English Channel, into the naval action against the Dutch, and back again to teeming London. Rideal’s style is vivid and fluent, dextrously incorporating a multitude of quotes from primary material, demonstrating that the London she describes is not the work of her imagination but a patchwork vision stitched entirely from fragments of contemporary commentary.

Rideal’s London pulsates with humanity. We feel bustled along the narrow streets, fighting for a safe path close to the wall, the stench of ordure all around us with the cries of the hawkers and the scurry of sedan chairs. The rendition of the many personal stories of the city dwellers, and the minutiae of their lives, through all strata of society, lends the narrative a touching richness. The diarists Pepys and Evelyn are a constant presence, offering commentary as events unfold.
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We witness the Earl of Rochester, better known as the pox-ridden rake of fable, aged sixteen, demonstrating enormous courage aboard ship whilst pounded by artillery at Bergen. We have a glimpse, too, of Aphra Behn’s career as a female spy, long before her great success as a playwright and see Newton sitting in his rural orchard and Milton at his desk. The womanising Charles II is vibrantly depicted, as is his Catholic brother and heir, James, both out fighting the inferno shoulder-to-shoulder with their subjects. We also learn of a multitude of other Londoners, like the Mitchells, a family of Westminster booksellers, following their individual fates as the devastating events unfold. Rideal has excavated entries in parish registers and the anecdotes of contemporary commentators to animate her city with those who might otherwise have been forgotten.

We come to understand how the plague crept up on the population, the death toll increasing week by week, and the way in which it disproportionately affected the poor who hadn’t the means to leave the capital for cleaner air. These people were so devastated by the epidemic they can barely have been aware of England’s catastrophic defeat at Bergen.

Rideal describes the second Dutch War in detail, demonstrating the impact of human failing and poor communication that led to England’s humiliation. If the book has a weakness perhaps it lies in the exhaustive rendering of the sea campaign, which becomes a little over-complicated at times. Though Rideal deftly remedies this by frequently returning to parallel events. In London the plague was receding. Those who had fled the epidemic were returning to the capital, to grieve their dead and resume their lives, when the famous conflagration took hold in Pudding Lane.

Restoration Londoners sought ways to explain this relentless series of misfortunes. Some saw it as God’s punishment for the regicide of Charles I, an act that even seventeen years on continued to hang heavily over the English psyche. Millenarist cults had long associated the year with the demonic connotations of the number 1666, identifying it as marking the final destruction of the world. Others, in a way that is grimly familiar, blamed England’s enemies, particularly for the fire, and raging xenophobia raised its head. Dutch and French were assaulted in the streets and stories abounded of foreign operatives flinging fireballs through windows. The truth about the fire was simply too prosaic to be believable. But the quality that shines through the pages is the resilience of the human spirit, that sense of grace under fire that can only be found in the darkest of times.

It is Rideal’s vivid and confident style, teamed with meticulous research and a curiosity for the quotidian that makes 1666: Plague, War and Hellfire a memorable, gripping and very satisfying read.

1666: Plague, War and Hellfire is published in hardback on 25th August, 2016 by John Murray.