Monarchy, with David Starkey, Series 2: War of the Roses to Cromwell (2005)

Revolution and the Republic

6. Revolution and the Republic: Ironically when Elizabeth I died childless, the son of her great nemesis, Mary Queen of Scots, became the King of England. And so begins the line of the House of Stuart. Unfortunately the Stuarts neither liked nor understood the English Parliament. That fact along with their diffident and elitist attitudes towards the role of the monarchy contributed to the greatest crisis the Crown has ever known – the execution of a King. Revolution and the Republic sheds light on the death of Charles I, the English Civil War, the reign of the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell and the eventual Restoration of the Monarchy by Charles II in 1660.

Dr David Starkey presents the second part of his complete history of the British monarchy, which he portrays as a crucial and sometimes violent dialogue between the people and the monarch, through which the very nature of our society was forged.