It does in some ways, but

I mean, James is pretty busy.

James does certainly try and extract information maximal political capital from the event.

I mean, three, four days after the plot is discovered, he addresses Parliament.

The main source that historians have to find out about the sequence of events in the Gunpowder Plot is often described as the King's book.

Probably most of it was written by one of his senior lawyers, Francis Bacon.

But James also claimed personal responsibility for the plot's discovery.

Claire, you've researched this topic a great deal, and we'd love to ask you, from your experience, what might you recommend us to look at if we're new to this history, both of the coinage of England as well as the gunpowder plot more generally? Where should we begin if we want to learn more?

So how would you describe the state of hydrogen in the UK? I mean, in terms of policy, investors, investors' confidence, and basically what is the market doing now?

Yeah.

So we're in a sort of a strange place at the moment in that, you know, what we've done over the last few years is we put a lot of time in both within government and within industry to developing investable policy frameworks, to developing the projects that are ready to be invested on with that sort of policy framework.

And in many ways, we're in a fantastic position in that we've got a pipeline full of fantastic projects that are well thought through, well designed.

A lot of investment has already gone into, which is great.

We've got £20 billion worth of private sector investment that is ready to go and really wants to invest in the UK hydrogen sector.

And we have investable business models.

Claire, if you could have a conversation with Ed Miliband and present a wish list of things that you believe are required to really stimulate growth of the UK's hydrogen sector, what would be on that list?

Can you set the scene for us? What was England like at this time?

So I think the moment we'll be talking about most today when the level of ideas, the movement, the voices are heard most prominently are the years 1645 to 1647.

And this is the point at which militarily the English Parliament has been victorious in the first civil war period.

Parliament had been fighting the King, Charles I, since 1642.

But as we know, as much today as in the 17th century, wars aren't decided permanently on the battlefield.

There needs to be truces, ceasefires and some kind of peace settlement.

In terms of why Parliament and King had gone to war...

Well, Clarke

Can you set the scene for us? What was England like at this time?

So I think the moment we'll be talking about most today when the Leveller ideas, the movement, the voices are heard most prominently are the years 1645 to 1647, and this is the point at which militarily the English Parliament has been victorious in the First Civil War.

Parliament had been fighting the King, Charles I, since 1642, but as we know, as much today as in the 17th century, wars aren't decided permanently on the battlefield.

There needs to be truce, ceasefires, and some kind of peace settlement.

In terms of why Parliament and, uh, King had gone to war, Charles I had acceded to the thrones of Scotland, England, and Ireland in 1625.

He was a deeply authoritarian monarch, believed very strongly in the divine right of kings, did not really believe in the right of others to counsel him, and also had a specific vision of the Church, the, the national church, the Church of England, that many people found unacceptably popish.

And Charles found it very difficult to work with the English Parliament.

Presumably he had to decode the shorthand first of all.

And I wonder if you can take us through a bit of the changing images and depictions of this king, and where your biography sits in this story.

Yeah.

It probably won't be comprehensive, 'cause that would probably take the rest of the podcast.

But I think one of the themes of the biography is that James prized Most people.

It certainly surprised the English.

I mean, they were surprised, first of all, that his succession to the crown in 1603 was as peaceful and uncontested as it turned out to be.

And then he sort of continued sort of disconcerting English contemporaries at any rate.

From a browse to a bike ride, this summer find more on Facebook.

Oh, yeah.

...

there are attacks.

Um, and James says, "Now, actually, I think I do need to take control of this." And Virginia does become the first crown colony.

Uh, unfortunately for James, um, he is one of the first really rabid anti-smoking campaigners who writes to, um, tracks about tobacco.

And initially he is, you know, he's, he's appalled that Virginia, uh, economy is so dependent on tobacco.

So he's very interested in trying to offer them alternatives.

Is that correct or was it... were there moments?

Was it a, a need to talk to somebody intimately? Was it love? What, what do you make of it, Professor?

I don't know.

I think the ways in which, um, early modern, so people in the sort of 16th and 17th century, um, conceived their remo- uh, romantic and emotional entanglements is, is very different to how we conceive sexuality and identity now.

And I think one can get quite con- sort of muddled and, and, and fall into a lot of anachronistic traps by trying to label things.

I think one thing to realize is that James had always had deep, effective relationships with young men.

Um, as he gets older, they're, they're older men when he's younger.

Very early on, as a teenager, his very handsome French cousin in his 30s, he'd had a very kind of close relationship.

But Villiers didn't seem to mind that, or did he? Did he complain about being treated as if he was a, a hanger-on?

Is that correct?

I think left...

As he makes very clear...

I mean, James is amazingly upfront in the communications with his subjects, and when he decides to go and, uh, collect Anna from Denmark, he writes a letter to his subjects of Scotland, and he says, "Left to my own devices, I would be in no hurry to marry.

However, I am not anybody.

I'm a king." And he makes a few jibes about, um, the irresponsibility of monarchs who don't marry and secure the succession, and that's sort of in, in Elizabeth's direction.

But he regards it as his dynastic duty.

Did he think of it that way?

Professor, what did James make of his mother's deposition and imprisonment all those years? Did he think it was something he could solve? Thank you.

He grows up, it's- it's something he can never remember not being king.

So all of his life, um, he is aware that the only reason he is king is because his mother was deposed.

Uh, probably as a very young child, um, you know, he doesn't He only has the most shadowy notion.

Um, part of, uh, the difficulty that confronts him as he goes into teenage years is that Mary develops ideas of joint rule.

She, by this stage, is- is- is imprisoned in England.

She is there for 20 years, um, under house arrest, and she wonders whether one of the ways she might be able to get out of prison is to imagine a joint rule with, um, her son, uh, that J- James is very determined to resist this.

Was she playing with him in correspondence, or was she sincere?

(smacks lips) Clare Jackson, The Mirror of Britain.

Not at all.

It's one of the things that I wanted to include because normally it's kind of seen as an idiosyncratic footnote, but it is jaw-dropping.

Um-

Yes.

There's been this whole discussion for many years that one of the ways in which James will settle these big Protestant/Catholic divisions in Europe is to marry his daughter to a Protestant and to marry his son to a Catholic Spanish Habsburg, and that will solve the problem.

A lot of people don't like this idea, and the Spanish are quite keen to sort of string James along.

But then suddenly out of the blue, Charles as Prince of Wales when he's 22, 23, uh, decides that he should just go and land up in Madrid in a very kind of chivalrous way.

Is that, is that a good th- a way to approach how he would s- how he would speak peacefully and everybody would turn violent quickly?

Yes.

I think James is an, uh, um, in the religious sphere, I think he's instinctively an ecumenicalist.

I mean, I think he, he feels that, um, the best way in which Christianity can be supported is by, um, themes of accommodation and toleration.

His main, uh, the, the, the, the, the, the, the red line for him, the, the, the one he won't cross is anybody using religion for political ends, so whether Catholics, uh, as per the Gunpowder Plot, are, um, using what they regard as, as their faith as a justification to contemplate atrocity, or, um, at the, at the other end of the spectrum as he would see, radical, uh, Protestants who also, uh, say that a king is, is not a sort of divine, um, body.

I mean, he's raised by George Buchanan, who is a phenomenal intellectual, humanist poet, but also one of the great minds behind Mary Queen of Scots' Deposition.

So he's raised on this diet as a child of Protestant, Presbyterian resistance theory.

Is that the Negative Confession you're referring to?

Did they find this a burden? Were they paid for what they did, uh, those years?

That's a very good question.

I don't, I don't think so.

Um, I think it was regarded as a, um, you know, as a, as a, as an honor and as part of discharging their, um, uh, their, you know, their duties.

And I think, I think they were given a small honorarium and sort of expenses.

Interestingly, it was an idea to have a new translation of aspects of scripture that had been discussed by the Church of Scotland when James had been king of Scotland in the, in the first years of the 17th century.

In 1601 and 1602, it had, it had just been discussed at the general assembly.

But in fact it was, it was common parlance for the well-educated.

It's, uh, it's dizzying, Professor.

It's very complicated, very, um, sort of, as you say, um, events happen at kind of breakneck speed.

But James is born in June 1566.

He is the son of his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, um, and her second husband.

So Mary's first husband had been Francois, who became, uh, king of France.

Unfortunately, he died very young and they didn't, um, have any children.

Mary left the French court very young still, um, in her late teens, early 20s, came back to Scotland, uh, and that was a country that had undergone a radical reformation.

And the last, the last he sees his mother, he's 10 months old, the last he sees-

... we were-

Thank you very much for having me.

What do we need to know about the Gunpowder Plot? What was driving it to, to set up such a s- a large-scale terror act in the m- in the middle of the beginning of a king who had hardly offended anyone at that time? Good evening to you, Professor.

Good evening.

It is, uh, an anniversary that in Britain is still marked every year.

Remember, remember the Fifth of November.

And ironically, it is m-marking, celebrating a kind of counter-terrorism success.

This is a plot that didn't happen, uh, but it was a plot on a huge scale.

Pictured in it-

Oh, sorry.

The gem.

Sorry.

The, the jewel itself, sorry.

Yes.

Um, uh, no.

Uh, it's, it's a bit of a kinda metaphor for everything that went wrong in the 17th century.