Today, Britain stands at a fork in its crossroads.
And its people are asking questions.
Now we've got our country back what actually is it?
Who are we? And why?
The best way to find out where Britain's heading is to
look behind us into something called "history"
a sort of "rear view mirror" for time.
So that's where I'm going.
Back there.
It's a journey that'll take me the length
and width of the country,
from the white cliffs of Dovver to the
Scottish high lands of the Scottish Highlands.
On my odyssey, I'll be starting sentences in one location,
and finishing them in another.
And looking at some of the biggest faces in British history,
and asking other people's faces about them.
Henry didn't get arrested after he killed his first wife, did he?
What sort of mistakes did the Tudor police make that led him
to kill again?
All of it taking place in this skepterred isle we call home.
So join me, Philomena Cunk, as I take you right up
the history of The United Britain of Great Kingdom.
This...is Cunk On Britain.
Last week we discovered how God invented Britain,
who the Romans were, and why we went to war with the roses.
But that was just the beginning.
By the time the Wars of the Roses ended, Britain was literally
on the map, somewhere near the top, showing how important it was.
The British had a firm grasp of the solid parts of the country,
like this rock, but there was a load of stuff round the edges that
wouldn't do as it was told.
It was wet.
It was full of fish.
And it wouldn't make up its mind how close to the rock it wanted to be.
In this episode, I'll discover how Britain came to rule the waves
and invent the Umpire.
It's a story about events beyond Britain's coastline.
So I'll be using the C-word a lot.
Sea.
HARPSICHORD MUSIC This is Hampton Court Palace,
a building so impressive it has to be accompanied by harpsichord music.
These days Hampton Court is open 10.00 till 4.30 in the winter,
10.00 till 6.00 in the summer,
with last entry to the maze 45 minutes before closing.
Prices start at £18.40 per adult and £9.20 per child.
A family ticket will set you back at least £32.30 - unless you're buying
that ticket in the 15th century, and your family name is Tudor.
But what do we mean by the word "Tudor"? Let's ask an expert.
What do we mean by the word "Tudor"?
Er... The word "Tudor" is quite controversial
because the Tudors, at the time, didn't call themselves "Tudor".
Tudor is the family name, the Welsh family name,
of the ancestors on the father's side of King Henry VII
but the only person who calls Henry VII "Henry Tudor"
is Richard III when he's trying to stop him becoming king.
And he uses the name "Tudor" just to mean "this is some random Welsh
"person, rather than an appropriate person to replace me as king".
So the Tudors don't use the name Tudor very much at all.
Some people refer to it as being their family name later on.
Sorry, I had that thing you know where you just,
your brain stops listening?
If the Tudors were the Kardashians of their time, this was their Kim -
Henry of Eight, the kingiest king who ever kinged over Britain.
If you had to draw a king, you'd definitely draw him.
Although maybe not as well as this,
unless you're a 16th century portrait artist.
But what was so great about Henry of Eight?
Why is he the king we all still remember, unlike, say,
Richard V.
Well, for one thing he was fat, so he takes up more room in the memory.
But Henry's also memorable for his chronic wife addiction.
He had six wives - all called Catherine.
He was a Catherine-aholic.
Or "Catholic" for short.
He got through so many Catherines he actually got bored of killing
them, and had to invent a new way of getting rid of them, called divorce.
The Pope hated divorce, so Henry decided to divorce him.
He took back control, broke with Europe, and made up a new religion,
which it turns out is easier to do than Popes like to pretend.
Henry created the Church of England, didn't he?
And did he have to find a British Pope?
He didn't need to find a British Pope.
You could just have bishops.
You can just use the bishops
and people that you've got in there already.
If you had to find a British Pope now, who would you go for?
You couldn't use the Archbishop of Canterbury?
No. You have to have someone else.
Someone from without the church.
Yeah, like Matt Baker, off The One Show.
Erm...so that... So you...
Matt Baker off the One Show... He's not an obvious choice, you see.
That's why I think he'd be good.
But the more you think about it, the more it makes sense.
Henry of Eight kept having a go on new wives
because he wanted a boy to pop out of one of them.
And eventually one did - called Edward.
When Henry died, Edward became king, aged just nine years old.
Edward died aged 15 - the youngest anyone had ever died of old age.
He was followed as king by Lady Jane Grey.
She ruled for nine glorious days - almost a week.
These were among the fastest royals we've ever had.
After Jane came this woman - Queen Mary.
And there really was "something about Mary" - but not
something funny like Cameron Diaz with all dried spunk in her hair.
Mary's something was religious intolerance.
She had so many Protestants burned at the stake
she became known as Bloody Mary.
Because, like the drink, she was horrible.
The next Queen was Queen Elizabeth, who, in the first of many
such coincidences, appeared just in time for the Elizabethan era.
Queen Elizabeth One got her crown screwed on here,
in West Minister Abbey.
Elizabeth One was a new sort of king, in that she was a queen,
which meant she got paid less and sat on horses sideways.
To stop persecution, Elizabeth allowed her subjects to
practice whatever religion they liked, as long as
they pretended to be Church of England when asked, like middle
class people do when they want their kids to go to a posh school.
During Elizabeth's reign British culture flourished, especially
the world of theatre, which is sadly still with us to this day.
The greatest playwrighter of the age was Will.i.am Shakespeare.
It's often said if Shakespeare were alive today,
he'd be sending his scripts to television and film companies,
who wouldn't make them because they were so long and boring.
But while audiences thrilled to the tedious drama of Shakespeare's
terrible plays, some pioneering Britons were experiencing
real drama - by going out exploring.
It was now the British got really into boats -
by getting into boats.
Sailors of the time were like spacemen,
but on water, exploring the unknown armed only with an engineless
wooden car called a boat,
and a sort of basic paper sat nav called a map,
which had hardly anything on it
because hardly anything had been found yet.
On maps of the sea, do they show the hills?
You know, the little moving hills with the white bit on top?
The waves?
Is that what they call the moving hills with the white bits on top?
I think, I think that's what you mean.
Did an explorer ever try to sail into the sky?
You know, find a bit of sea that's sort of going up and...
No.
Despite the difficulty, King Queen Elizabeth sent
a load of sailors over the sea to nick treasure off the Spanish,
and then to nick whole countries off whichever brown people were
standing on them at the time.
The first British explorer to do this was Sir Walter Raleigh.
Sir Walter Raleigh was a great sailor, wasn't he?
So why is it today we only remember him for his bikes?
Well, there might have been a connection between that
branch of the Raleigh family and the later bike manufacturer,
but I very much doubt it.
People weren't using cycles of any kind in Sir Walter Raleigh's days.
Oh, really?
I think we really have to accept that Sir Walter Raleigh was
really just an expert sailor.
How did Sir Walter Raleigh invent the potato?
Well, he didn't invent the potato, in that
I don't think anyone actually has ever invented a root vegetable.
Because they were obviously being cultivated
and used by people living in the Americas when he arrived there.
When Sir Walter Raleigh first saw potatoes, was he scared of them?
I think that when Sir Walter Raleigh first saw potatoes, not that
we've any documented records on the moment when he first beheld
a potato or a field of potatoes, but I don't think he was scared of them.
This is a buccaneering character.
And I think he probably was able to take on and
manage his emotions whilst engaging with potatoes at first sight.
We still celebrate potatoes to this day - by buying and eating them.
It's amazing to think that Queen Elizabeth was the first
British monarch to be impressed by a baked potato.
And the last.
Walter Raleigh was big news
but he wasn't quite as big news as Sir Francis Drake.
This is Drake's ship, The Golden Hind, which is
Tudor for "Arse of Gold".
It was in this ship Drake became the first person to circumcise the
globe, which is probably why this sort of ship is called a "clipper".
Imagine being on deck in that perilous age.
You're in the middle of the ocean.
A mighty thunderstorm's brewing.
There's a sailor over there.
Another one over there.
The king sailor turning the...the steering wheel thing.
Potatoes and spare wooden legs rolling around the deck.
A seagull up that, er...pole thing.
Someone reading a treasure map through a telescope.
A bloke with a white beard carrying a tray of fish fingers.
Pirates all laughing in that sort of horrible throaty way that they do.
And, at any moment,
the prospect that you might just sail off the edge of the world.
It's a sobering thought.
Which they'd have needed
because they were all pissed to the bollocks on rum.
The British's mastery of the oceans made
Catholic King Philip of Spain furious, in Spanish.
So he sent his secret weapon to attack England -
a woman called Spanish Amanda.
The story goes that Drake was playing a leisurely
game of bowls on Plymouth Hoe when the Spanish attacked.
But Drake didn't let the Spanish attack put him off his stroke.
He just carried on playing with his balls.
According to records, when he'd finished,
Drake changed back into his normal shoes, and thrashed the Spaniards.
At war, not bowling.
England was victorious.
Meanwhile in Scotland there was another Mary on the scene -
Mary Queen Offscots.
Mary and Elizabeth were rivals for the throne.
Catholics loved Mary, because they go mad for anyone called Mary.
So Elizabeth cut her head off, which made it harder for Mary to
take the throne, because she could no longer see where it was.
Elizabeth had ended the rivalry.
The final score was one head, to nil.
Elizabeth died without ever marrying,
so has gone down in history as the Vegan Queen.
She left no heirs, which was the olden word for children,
making her the season finale of the Tudors.
The next top Royal was King James, who luckily
hadn't inherited his mum's missing head,
and so could become King of Scotland and England at the same time.
King James I of England was also King James VI of Scotland,
wasn't he? He was.
Was he also the other five King James' in between?
No, but he was rather conscious of those other five James'.
Do you think he ever forgot which James he was?
No, I'm pretty sure that he knew there'd been all five before him
and they'd had rotten lives.
Oh. The first had been murdered by his subjects,
the second killed by an exploding cannon, the third was murdered
by his subjects after losing a battle, the forth was killed in
battle and the fifth died of nervous exhaustion after losing a battle.
So was it just bad luck being called James then, do you think?
No, the Stuarts are an astonishingly accident-prone family.
King James brought England, Scotland and Wales together, didn't he?
King James brought England, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall
and Ireland together.
So he brought all those together. That's right.
Like Simon Cowell when he brought together...
One Direction.
Yes, except it lasted a bit longer.
Which is your favourite?
Of the kingdoms?
No, of One Direction.
Er...I don't have one.
Yeah, very wise.
Thanks to King James, Great Britain was born.
And with it came a new flag, the Onion Jack -
a sort of megamix of the nations' previous flags.
The Onion Jack has it all - the white and red of England,
the blue of Scotland,
and from Wales, red again, from the dragon,
but not the actual dragon
even though it's the best bit of the flag.
Basically, whoever was doing this probably just had a ruler
and couldn't face doing the dragon.
King James was Protestant, and knew that Catholics wanted to
kill him, so he had all his clothes padded in case he was stabbed.
Unfortunately, he didn't have the Houses of Parliament padded,
and that's where the Catholics chose to attack,
using explosions.
This photo from the time shows the Gunpowder plotters,
in the hats and false beards they used to hide their identities.
What they didn't know is that someone had written
their names on the wall behind - which is why they all got caught.
But one man was about to cause even more explosive changes to Britain -
Oliver Cromwell.
Some of Cromwell's fellow Puritans had sailed away from Britain's
shores, hoping to forge a new life of Spartan misery in the
new-found land of America.
But Cromwell stayed behind to fall out with King Charles One.
He wanted Parliament dissolved, but nobody could find a glass big
enough, so they decided to have a civil war instead.
They called it a Civil War because there was a swear jar,
and people apologised after killing each other, like in tennis.
The Civil War was a clash of styles.
The King's Cavaliers had panache, and weird outfits,
while Cromwell's Roundheads were basic, brutish little bulldog men.
It was like a fight between Wayne Rooney and Noel Fielding.
But not as funny.
Eventually, after many re-enactments just like this,
the Roundheads won, 1-0.
Charles was caught in a big king net,
and executed here, in Whitehall.
A proud man to the last, he wore two shirts so no-one could see him
shiver, to preserve his regal dignity.
And according to witnesses it worked.
His severed head rolled regally along the ground,
pumping blood everywhere and getting covered in hay and dirt
and dried-up flecks of dignified fox shit,
and no-one mentioned the rest of him shivering at all.
Under Cromwell, Britain became less fun than ever before,
including when it was just rocks.
As a Puritan, Cromwell outlawed popular entertainment -
effectively turning the entire country into BBC FOUR.
Little wonder that after Cromwell died,
everyone decided it would fun having a king once more.
Charles II came down from the tree he'd been hiding in and everyone
was happy again until suddenly, in 1665, the plague happened.
Again.
Why did they decide to have the plague twice?
More than anything it must have just been boring.
Well, they had many, many more times than twice.
Did we get the plague because of the European free movement of rats
and fleas and our inability to control our borders?
It certainly looks as though the epidemic came to England by ship.
Mmm.
So in that sense, yes, it's imported.
They are immigrant rats and fleas.
And they wouldn't integrate, except when they bit us.
The Great Plague of London finally petered out in 1666 - just in time
for The Great Fire of London which started here, in Pudding Lane.
It was a hot, dry summer
when a thatched wooden bakery full of highly combustible flour
and flaming ovens inexplicably caught fire for some reason.
How hot was The Great Fire of London?
Could you, like, stand in somewhere like Maidenhead
and sort of warm your hands on it like that?
You couldn't warm your hands but you probably could see it.
How many other cities did The Great Fire of London burn down?
No other cities, it was The Great Fire of London.
But lots of other places were affected.
But how do we know no other cities burnt down
because it would have burnt them down?
Yes, but we know that London was burnt, even though
it was burnt down.
So we would have the same sorts of information about other
places that didn't burn down.
But there might have been another place burnt down,
that just burnt down completely.
And now we don't know cos it's not there cos it was burnt down.
But then that wouldn't be part of The Great Fire of London, would it?
No, it would be outside, wouldn't it? Yes.
So were there any others that burnt down?
There don't seem to have been any other fires at the same time.
Although we don't know cos they burnt down.
Well, that's one way of looking at it.
We know a lot about the plague
and the Fire of London from the diaries of this man - Samuel Pepys.
Samuel Pepys is probably the most famous diarist in the world.
Apart from Anne Frank, but no-one knows what happened to her.
We do know what happened to Pepys, because he put it in his diary.
Pepys was brave, wasn't he,
writing his diary at the time of The Great Fire of London?
You know, all that paper.
He risked his life for us really, didn't he?
I don't think he risked his life for us.
It was for himself.
If Pepys was alive today, do you think he'd be doing Snapchat?
And it's best to say yes
because we're trying to attract younger viewers.
Yes, I'm sure he would be. Yeah. Definitely, yeah.
After the fire was blown out by the King, London was extensively
rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren -
the most significant bird in British history since Francis Drake.
This is his finest achievement.
Sir Paul's Cathedral -
built on a site of spiritual significance near the
Sainsbury's Local and the restaurant where they do First Dates.
As well as being big,
the Cathedral was the first building in the world with a hat.
It would get ten out of ten in Cathedral Review Monthly,
if that magazine existed, which it doesn't.
Meanwhile, London wasn't the only thing that was being burned -
witches were too.
People genuinely believed witches were amongst them,
their fear fuelled by leaked photos like this.
There wasn't a clear-cut way of telling
whether someone was a witch if they weren't wearing their pointy hat.
So Britain appointed its first and only Witchfinder General.
Who was the Witchfinder General?
The Witchfinder General was a young man called Matthew Hopkins.
Matthew Hopkins?! He went to my school.
This was a different Matthew Hopkins, I hope.
How'd you know? He's an IT consultant now.
Well, the Matthew Hopkins I'm talking about died 350 years ago.
He went on a witch hunt which covered the whole of East Anglia
and resulted in the death of about 100 women.
Yeah, it's not the same Matthew Hopkins.
No. My Matthew Hopkins is going through a divorce.
Well, I think that's pretty harrowing,
but compared with stringing up aged women upon scaffolds
and torturing them into confession, it's probably fairly minor.
Yeah, puts everything in perspective, doesn't it?
That's the great thing about history. Mmm.
Matthew Hopkins devised a method to test if a woman was a witch.
Hopkins' method was absolutely fool-proof.
Which was handy, because it had to be done by village idiots.
The accused woman was lowered into water.
If they floated they were a witch and were killed.
If they drowned they were innocent,
and could go on living a normal life,
underwater, for two to three seconds.
But the irrational world of witches
and wizards was about to be blown away by the rational
world of science - and geniuses like Sir Isaac Newton.
In 1665, Newton ran away from London because the plague was after him.
So he came here, to Woolsthorpe Manor in Lincolnshire -
a National Trust property that he was allowed to live in
because he was famous.
The story goes that an apple fell from this tree
and landed on Newton's head.
Despite his amazing hair,
the force of the fruity blow caused several of his brain cells to
rub together - and just like that he invented gravity.
What was the world like before Isaac Newton discovered gravity?
Was everything just floating up to the sky?
Well, gravity was always there so it just took...
But he just took the credit for it.
Because he had come up with laws of motion and things like that,
gravity was a major part of his understanding of the world.
If gravity's real, as you seem to be claiming,
how come it doesn't work on kites?
In all things there's a balance of forces, and so a kite stays
in the air because of forces that are keeping the kite in the air.
Would you say the best example of gravity today is the game show
Tipping Point,
cos without gravity that wouldn't work, would it?
For sure. Mmm.
But I wouldn't say it's the best example of gravity.
There's way more exciting examples than that.
Go on. Tell me.
Well, there's flight and...there's walking on the moon.
Oh, I thought you meant "what's the best game show version of gravity".
Oh, erm...
Deal or No Deal?
It doesn't really use gravity.
Well, I thought you said everything uses gravity. Erm...
Cos Noel Edmonds would be up in the roof otherwise, wouldn't he?
That's true.
We're all subject to gravity without realising it. Mmm.
But the game would still go on... Mmm.
...even without gravity.
Or maybe not actually.
I've thrown you now, haven't I?
You have.
Made you think.
But gravity had a dark side.
While everyone in Britain was busy thinking about why things fall,
across the Atlantic an entire nation was about to tumble,
just like an apple,
onto Britain's head.
On 4th July, 1776,
America officially declared a war of independence from the British.
It was a brutal conflict,
with the British eventually suffering a humiliating defeat
a mere 210 years before the premiere of the BBC sitcom Brush Strokes.
# Because of you, these things I do
# Because of you #
# Because of you, oh... #
Losing America was a real knee in the balls for Britain,
but fortunately for national pride,
one great British hero was about to rise -
Vice Admiral Viscount Lord Horrorshow Nelson.
What was Lord Nelson all about?
Why did his parents call him Horrorshow?
Well, I think they probably intended it to be pronounced Horatio.
But it just got mish-mashed up and became Horrorshow?
No, I think that most people still know him as Horatio Nelson.
As well as being a sailor, Nelson found time to
star in lots of old paintings, doing his weird signature pose.
Why did Nelson always have one hand up his jumper?
What was he doing up there?
He'd lost most of his right arm, so it wasn't really trying to
conceal his hand, he was actually missing an arm.
Oh, God.
How do we know that that's true, though?
Cos, you know, Rod Hull,
he used to have his arm round an emu, didn't he?
It might have just been that.
He didn't have it blown off at all.
He was just trying to make his story more interesting.
Well, I don't see why he would bother to do that.
He was already a heroic figure,
so I don't think he needed to sort of feign, you know,
serious injury to, if you like, deepen his growing legend.
So I think we can probably say that, unlike some things, this is true.
Yeah, and the eye was true.
The eye was true as well, yes, he wore a patch.
So he was like a pirate, but like a boring one.
Not being able to clap wasn't the most annoying
thing in Nelson's life, he had an arch-enemy -
the annoyingly similar French pirate Napoleon Cumberbatch.
The fearsome French Emperor had conquered most of Europe
and was on the verge of having a conquer at Britain.
But before he could,
he had to have a Battle of Trafalgar against Nelson.
The Battle of Trafalgar was one of the most famous water
fights in British history.
And it took place, of course, here in Trafalgar Square.
It's amazing to think that back then,
all of this would have been under water.
Only the top of the column would have been visible.
On this side, Nelson's English ships.
On this side, by the Pret A Manger, the French fleet.
And overseeing it all was Nelson,
stranded on top of his stone stick - where he remains to this day.
If Nelson was such a hero, why did we banish him up that big pole?
Well, it's not a banishment, this was a national celebration.
So this was very much, if you like, a symbol of British victory
and pride, and honouring of the man who had been
so intimately associated with delivering victory at Trafalgar.
But he's so high up, isn't he?
He's sort of out of eye shot.
Well... And he's getting shat on by birds.
Yeah, I mean, it's...it's a....
Couldn't we have had him a little bit lower
so that we can have a look at him?
Well, it's a fair point, I mean... It's just like a joke.
Yeah.
Nelson's great victory at Trafalgar was sadly spoiled for him
when he was shot by a French sniper.
Taken below decks, he was comforted by his Naval colleague Hardy,
who kissed him to death.
If Hardy was kissing Nelson at the exact moment he was dying,
to what extent would that make him a necrophile?
Cos that's a serious offence.
Well, it took him three or four hours to die, and this particular
famous moment took place when Nelson was still very much alive.
So there was nothing dodgy about it?
Nothing dodgy at all.
Nelson may have died,
but a whole new chapter of British history was about to be born.
And it was all thanks to one woman.
Queen Victorian Era.
But that's a story for another time and place -
next week and here.
Next time, I'll be looking at the 19th century
and asking the big questions.
Who was Albert Hall?
Why did Oliver Twist?
And what are Words Worth?
Wordsworth wrote "I wandered lonely as a cloud",
but clouds don't have legs, do they?
No.
So how was he allowed to get away with that kind of stuff?