THE BLOOD IN WINTER

Parliamentary machinations leading to the English Civil War.

In historian Healey’s thoroughly researched and compelling account, England in 1641 was jammed between choices for parliament or king; two Houses (the Lords and the Commons); and wars with Scotland and Ireland. This is the prelude to the country’s civil war, now regarded as either the last of the wars of religion or the first modern revolution—albeit fewer peasants and pitchforks and more revolt within a political elite dominated by nobles. The crux of the dispute was over “Remonstrances,” a series of objections to Charles the First’s desire for absolute rule. Paramount among these were Parliament’s right to assemble and whether bishops should be allowed to sit in the House of Lords. No issue arose without provoking opposition. “Ship money,” a levy on coastal communities to fund the Royal Navy, was a classic example. The king tried to extend the levy to inland counties without parliamentary consent. This galvanized such opposition that when Charles and his army turned up at Parliament searching for five members whom Charles regarded as traitors, they had already fled downriver. They’d been tipped off by Lucy Hay, close companion to the queen and one of history’s great eavesdroppers. It is to Healey’s credit that, while giving a detailed discussion of the complex arguments, he also evokes the many colorful characters involved. Alongside a king who teeters between pomposity and timidity, a queen who sells her jewelry in exile, and the humble-born Sir John Bankes, stuck “between a sow’s ear and the silken purse,” readers are treated to a portrait of a smoke-, smog-, and mud-filled London, together with its inhabitants. Water poets and priggish Puritans may dominate, but who can forget a particular candidate for Constable of the Tower: Thomas Lunsford, who was “heavily in debt, rarely seen at church. Some said he was a cannibal.”

Lively and engaging political intrigue, with surprisingly contemporary parallels.