After Cromwell who obviously was quite dictatorial, when Charles returned he
made a big show about saying that he's going to govern consulting the people
that he was going to be really engaging with what his subjects had to say, but it was quite
obvious after the first six years of his reign that wasn't happening at all
because what he was doing was he had this small court of people (a cabal if
you like) who it was all quite centralized and in fact quite
interesting to compare it to present day, because you got a sense of a small indeed
actually unelected group of people, who had all the influence and of course for
people in the country didn't have any, that was something that I think that
people were quite angry about because the restoration was something that the
country welcomed when it happened, because after 13 years of Cromwell and
the Protectorate, people really sick of the idea, it was really harsh, really grim and
everyone wanted a bit of colour and a bit of life, but in fact it proved to be a
massive disappointment. I mean I I've always had mixed feelings about Charles
cuz on the one hand he was a playboy, he was somebody who had all this
potential which he squandered, on the other hand he was a man of immense charm, immense
charisma, great bravery I mean in 1651 after he'd lost a battle of Worcester he
he fled the country and if he was doing all these amazing things hiding up trees
and so on so from that perspective he was different kind of monarch, he's very
different to his father, for instance, his father was quite an old-fashioned King
just believed in the Divine Right of Kings and Charles had all these interests
and things like the arts and science you know he put all his architects and
writers and poets who he kept who got on board and it was it was very different from
that perspective, because he was really into the idea of
creating a New England but it doesn't really work that was the problem. What
happened is that Charles came to the throne and he offered religious freedom
because obviously before he'd arrived there was all this talk about how it was
going to be Puritan rule forever and Charles was much more open-minded; he
wasn't particularly religious himself (he converted to Catholicism on his deathbed)
but his brother James was a Catholic; initially he offered freedom and
tolerance but it became very obvious quite quickly that wasn't going to happen,
so what happened after that was that the Quakers were very powerful, John
Bunyon's was the best-known who wrote Pilgrim's Progress when he was
in prison, he'd been arrested for his faith and actually after the first
couple of years, tolerance of religion didn't really happen anymore so it was
something that there'd been the expectation that it would happen I mean
it didn't really which is I think a lot of people were very angry about that. Well it
was the first time in English history I think the people felt they had more of
a say than if the didn't in fact, it was people didn't ask why anymore they asked
why not and so you had the playhouses, you had actresses for the first time, had
all these amazing advances in science and technology it was very much a sense that
things, I suppose you would argue that Europe had had all these innovations and
England had been stuck because of the civil war and actually ever since Queen
Elizabeth, there hadn't been much progress, there was this very short brilliant time of the
restoration, everything seemed like it was possible again and of course the
problem is is that, what I would argue that after 1666 after the great fire,
that really changed because it wiped out the country to an extent, even though the
damage was not terminal, it wiped out the sense of innovation it wiped out the sense of
progress and ever since then it just didn't work in the same way. Well I don't think
there was actually a conspiracy, because if you look at the origin of the fire, it
was just literally a baker left his oven on and actually it's as banal as
that but if you look at the four days that the fire
spread across London, there's never been destruction like it in this country, I
suppose that's why we're so fascinated by it
and I think the people wanted somebody to blame and the Dutch were very much
you know, we'd just fought a war against them 2 months before, Catholics were blamed
because obviously Catholicism, despite the Kings brother being a Catholic, is very
much evil, and it's I think that what's so interesting about the fire is that we
don't know the true story, I mean for instance something that I was always told
when I was growing up was only seven people died in the Great Fire of London
and I thought - can't be true can it? I looked into it and the fact is is that
hundreds if not thousands of people died in the fire London, it's just that because
they were normally poor, and they were probably illiterate, they didn't leave
any journals or diaries behind, so we and also their bodies would have been
destroyed, so we have absolutely no idea the records that we have is how many
people did die in the fire London and so because of that, there's always stories
myths would have grown up and I think that it's important for any writer to try
and debunk them a bit. Well what you've got I mean now as then is that London
was the centre of England, London was where everyone lived and if you
didn't have a presence in London you were nobody, so actually the thing was it
was interesting with my research for restoration, it's like I kept trying to
find major figures outside of London; it's very difficult to because the
diaries the journals of the time, they all relate to Metropolitan Life
so that established, you look at how I suppose Oxford was an intellectual,
place because there you have Kings caught in the plague of 1665 and
then 1666 but also you had all these people like Christopher Wren, like Isaac
Newton like the Earl of Rochester, who are doing all these things which, for good or
for ill, changed the face of history and I what I would say it's Charles'
patronage of all those people was immensely important because if he hadn't
said to them - go off and explore ideas, go off and try something I don't think that
we'd have the country we have now.