Republic: When the UK Brought Down Its Kings

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[00:00:03.640] - Oliver (Host)

In 1649, Britain did something almost unthinkable. It executed its own king. It killed its own monarch. Charles I, chosen by God, in his own words, was found guilty of treason against his people, guilty of betraying his country, of being disloyal to Britain. And on a cold January afternoon, outside the palace of Whitehall, he was led to a wooden platform built for these public executions. He was to be beheaded in front of his fellow Britons. The executioner raised his weapon, a sharp axe, and brought it down on the king's neck. The crowd felt silent. For a moment, it must have felt like their world had changed. The monarchy was gone. The British people, not the Crown, were now in charge. Slowly, the crowd began to drift away, and with it went centuries of royal rule. What came next was Britain's great experiment, 11 years as a Republic under a man called Oliver Cromwell. Britain must have been full of hope and excitement, but the new regime was so strict, so joyless, and so deeply divided, that in the end, the British came crawling back to the monarchy, and we've kept a monarchy ever since.

[00:01:35.040] - Oliver (Host)

Welcome back to English and Beyond: Intermediate English Podcast. I'm Oliver, an English teacher from the United Kingdom. As always, you can find the free transcript and vocabulary flashcards at morethanalanguage.com. And in fact, please do go and check out that website. I just updated it all by myself last week, so hopefully you will be able to see an improvement. Plus, a final request. If you find these resources or the podcast itself useful or interesting, please do click Follow or Subscribe. It makes a huge difference to the growth of the podcast. So back to King Charles.

[00:02:17.660] - Oliver (Host)

To understand how Britain reached the point of killing its king, we need to go back a few years. In the early 1600s, power in England was already shifting. Parliament, a group of politicians and landowners, was growing in confidence. But King Charles I, believed in what was called the divine right of Kings, the idea that his authority came directly from God, not from the people. He refused to compromise with Parliament. Money, as it so often is, was the principal cause of these problems. Charles kept asking Parliament for new taxes to pay for wars. When Parliament said no, he dissolved it. He sent everyone home, and he ruled alone for 11 years.

[00:03:08.260] - Oliver (Host)

During that time, he raised money in creative but unpopular ways: forced loans, new fines, and religious policies that angered Protestants. When he finally called Parliament back in 1640, they didn't forget. They wanted limits on royal power. Charles, on the other hand, wanted obedience. Neither side gave in. Civil war broke out. King versus Parliament, Crown versus country. Families were divided. Towns were destroyed. Around 200,000 people across Britain and Ireland died, roughly 2.5% of the population then, the equivalent of almost 2 million people today. When the King was captured, he was brought to trial, but Charles refused to defend himself. He told the judges that they had no right to try their monarch, no right to put their monarch on trial because his power came from God, not from them. The court, unsurprisingly, disagreed. He was found guilty of treason and sentenced to death. After the King's execution, England declared itself a Republic, officially called the Commonwealth. For the first time, there was no monarch, no royal court, no House of Lords. Parliament was supposed to run the country, but soon things began to fall apart. Different groups inside Parliament argued endlessly about religion, money, and who should have the final word, who should have the ultimate control.

[00:04:50.920] - Oliver (Host)

The army, which had won the Civil War, was growing impatient, and its commander, Oliver Cromwell, decided to act. In 1653, he entered Parliament with a group of soldiers. He accused the politicians of corruption, and he ordered them out of Parliament. According to witnesses, he shouted, "You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately. In the name of God, go!" And they did. He locked the doors behind them, and he took control himself. Soon after, Cromwell was made Lord Protector, the head of state for life. He promised promised not to be a king, but he lived awfully like one: coaches, guards, palaces, and foreign ambassadors treating him as royalty. Cromwell wanted to build what he called a godly nation. As a strict Puritan, he believed England should live by the Bible, and that meant cutting out anything sinful or wasteful. Theatres were closed because plays were seen as immoral. Christmas celebrations were banned because they had become, in his view, noisy and unholy. Even football on Sundays was forbidden. He imagined a pure and disciplined country. But what he created instead felt cold and joyless. Ordinary people missed laughter, colour, celebration. By the time Cromwell died in 1658, the nation was tired, tired of war, of rules, of being told how to live.

[00:06:32.460] - Oliver (Host)

His son, Richard Cromwell, tried to take power, but failed. Within two years, Parliament invited Charles II, the executed King's son, to return. When Charles II rode back into London in 1660, crowds filled the streets, cheering, drinking, and dancing. After years of war and sermons, the return of the King felt like a national party. There were fireworks, feasts, and dancing in the pubs. It was called the Restoration, and it brought back everything Cromwell had tried to erase: theatre, fashion, laughter, and a little chaos. Britain's eleven-year experiment with the Republic was over, and the monarchy was back, along with the music and mischief that Cromwell had tried to silence. But the new king also understood something his father hadn't: you cannot rule Britain by divine right anymore. He accepted that Parliament would share the power and that the monarchy's survival now depended on compromise. That was the deal that has kept the Crown alive since then. Parliament made the laws, the King provided stability. The royal family would stand above politics, a symbol rather than a real power. And somehow, somehow, that arrangement has lasted. Over the centuries, the monarchy has survived wars, scandals, divorces, and declining popularity.

[00:08:09.460] - Oliver (Host)

It has adapted, step by step. Today, the royal family is about ceremony and tradition, not real political power. Nonetheless, regardless of that, even today, Britain remains divided about the monarchy. Support for the monarchy has recently fallen sharply. In 1983, 86% of Britons thought it was important to keep the monarchy. By last year, that number had dropped to about half, the lowest ever recorded, while support for abolishing it has risen from 3% to 15. But that final figure is in itself very important. Despite all the scandals, only 15 % of Britons want to get rid of the monarchs. How, in 2025, can that figure be so low, you might ask. Well, maybe it's habit, maybe it's nostalgia, maybe deep down, the British are just a little scared about what the alternative could be if we tried to get rid of the monarchy again. The people who ended the monarchy imagined freedom, fairness, and a government run by the people. But what they got was soldiers, moral lectures from a religious fanatic, and something approaching a dictatorship. When the Crown disappeared, the country didn't suddenly become democratic. It just found, unfortunately, a different kind of autocratic ruler. And when Charles II returned, people realised something important.

[00:09:49.980] - Oliver (Host)

It's possible to dislike your leaders and still prefer them to the alternative. Maybe that's why, centuries later, the idea of a British Republic still feels almost unthinkable. We tried it once. It didn't end that well, and we've been pretty loyal, though very sarcastic, monarchists ever since. Thank you very much for listening. I hope you found the episode useful. Please give me a review, follow, etc, and I will see you next time. Bye-bye.