Horrible Histories, Incredulity, and Democracy

“We are the Roundheads; we don’t want kings no more.

That’s why we started the English Civil War.

People say we’re no fun, but we disagree,

Especially when explaining parliamentary democracy.”

Horrible Histories S3 E11 (2011)

 

The parliamentarian victory at the Battle of Naseby, by an unknown artist who I’m sure would be thrilled to know that the fruit of his efforts is now firmly in the public domain and requires no attribution.

Remember Horrible Histories?¹ What a programme. Very few sketch comedy serials written for adults come close to the quality of this momentous bit of children’s broadcasting. Over its five thirteen-episode series (I refuse to acknowledge the subsequent ‘specials’ as a true continuation of the same piece of media), the jokes got increasingly clever, the parodies got increasingly slick, the material got increasingly different-and-interesting, and we got to know and love a wonderfully versatile cast that you could just tell were having the absolute time of their lives. The programme is a fine achievement and deserves all the applause it’s garnered from various quarters since it was first broadcast a decade ago.²

You can hear the ‘but’ coming already, can’t you? After all, I hardly ever lavish such a great degree of praise on anything of earthly origin unless my real purpose is to pick out some specific aspect of it that, despite my fondness and respect for the entity as a whole, I have a problem with, and do my best to surgically tear it to pieces. Today is no different, I’m afraid, though I must stress that I’m really more interested in what I can learn about how the thing was composed in the first place by taking it apart, than I am in merely dismantling it because I don’t like it and want it to go away.

So what is the thing? Well, if you were to find that the above has whetted your appetite for an episode or two of Horrible Histories and you’d really rather go and watch it now than read my ramblings any further, I’d politely ask you to take a pen and paper with you and keep a tally of how many times during your viewing session the characters responsible for narration and continuity-announcement express contemptful incredulity at such beliefs or practices of some past society as are being described. You know the kind of thing: “We Saxons really believed all that!” or, “The Romans certainly did have some very strange ideas about such-and-such,” or, “And if you think that was weird, just wait until you see this!” I do get that Horrible Histories consciously and deliberately makes it its business to track down tidbits of historical information that are likely to prove most strange and gross and amusing to its audience of twenty-first-century Brits; indeed, if it weren’t able to present the facts it deals with as hilariously unbelievable, the programme would have very little in the way of a premise. I get that. But surely there’s a very substantial degree to which the facts speak for themselves on this front? We don’t need to be told to find it weird that certain people of the Tudor period thought swallowing live buttered spiders was a good cure for sickness;³ we’re perfectly capable of finding that weird without the helpful prompting of an incredulous narrator, thank you very much. On top of that, the format of the sketch will undoubtedly frame the issue in such a way as to highlight its weirdness, because that’s how the comedy is achieved. These little inter-sketch comments of “We really believed all that!” and so forth are thus entirely superfluous, and only serve to reinforce the idea that people in the past were extremely stupid to think and do what they did, whereas we today are all terribly astute and well-informed about everything, and so vastly superior to our forebears.

Now, I’m not denying that the developments in science and technology and so forth that have taken place over the past several centuries have indeed been developments; we obviously know more about how the universe and the things in it work than our ancestors did – but only by standing on their shoulders, only by learning from their mistakes, as future generations doubtless will from ours. Just because people in the past believed things that have since been disproven or at least widely discredited, that doesn’t mean they were any stupider than we are, and it’s surely rather rude and arrogant to talk about them as if they were. It’s not, after all, as if we ourselves have lived our lives immune from ever holding beliefs or engaging in practices or making statements that have subsequently been demonstrated false or denounced as unreasonable by the general consensus. But actually, having said all that, the matter I really want to draw attention to isn’t so much the mere fact that Horrible Histories engages in this sort of astonished mockery in the first place, but rather the decisions it makes about against which targets to employ it, and which, concomitantly, not.

A favourite target, that I’ll make a bit of a case-study of today, is the Puritans. Can you believe, kids, that Puritans thought that drinking and dancing and theatre were sinful? Can you believe that they called their children things like Silence-Discipline-Search-the-Scriptures and If-Christ-Had-Not-Died-Thou-Hast-Been-Damned? Can you believe that Oliver Cromwell banned sport, make-up, and Christmas? (In fact, there are hardly any sketches that mention Cromwell without sliding that last fact in somewhere; based purely on the Horrible Histories portrayal of him, you’d have thought that was the core component of his policy.) And all right, to the ears of most modern Brits, those things probably do sound pretty weird, just as the buttered spiders or whatever, so you can see why the demand for comedic effect prompts Horrible Histories to form its caricature of the Puritans around these kinds of facts. The resultant caricature is entirely boring and miserable and judgemental and self-righteous, ironic as that last one is given that the Puritans of course knew very well that if Christ had not died they had been damned. The caricature of the Cavaliers or Restorationists against whom the Puritans sat so at odds, however, is very much more favourable: they’re the fun ones, the friendly ones, the ones you’d want to hang out with. One of the programme’s most beloved recurring characters is Charles II – ‘The King Who Brought Back Partying’, as he dubs himself in his own parody rap song⁴ – played with great charm and enthusiasm by Mat Baynton, and the portrayal is indeed a lovable one: the guy just wants to have a good time, bless him, and if he ends up successfully halting the Great Fire of London while he’s at it, well, so much the better.

 

Charles II - and we know who painted this one; it was a Dutch-born chap called Peter Lely. Still public domain though, yay.

Granted, it’s easier to sell partying than piety to almost any audience, and no less so to the youngsters who constitute Horrible Histories’ primary target market, but I’m rather struck that that opposition often seems to be presented as if it were the only issue on the table when Puritans and Restorationists clashed, particularly given that the real issues at hand were in fact pretty fundamental to the shaping of the Britain we live in today. We’re encouraged to boo the Puritans for certain aspects of the way they thought the country should be run – banning Christmas and so forth – but there’s then no nuance drawn to the effect that maybe we shouldn’t boo them for every aspect of the way they thought the country should be run. There’s no safeguard to stay us from tarring every Puritan tenet with the same brush. And so can you believe, kids, that the Puritans preferred democracy to autocracy? Can you believe that they thought real political power should be wielded by a parliament of popularly elected representatives rather than one man entirely unaccountable to the public he ruled? Can you believe that they challenged the principle of the divine right of kings?

Because the divine right of kings – that the monarch reserves the right to exercise control over a country in whatever fashion he sees fit, purely on grounds of his ancestry – is another one of those beliefs that sounds crazy to the ears of most modern Brits, isn’t it? And not just crazy, mind you, but dangerous, more dangerous than, you know, giving your child a silly-sounding forename or abstaining from certain kinds of popular entertainment. It’s surely fertile turf for a “We really believed that!”, and yet Horrible Histories never invites us to jeer at the Cavaliers for holding to it. Maybe that would come across a bit too much of a political statement – as if the alternative weren’t inevitably just as much of a political statement too; maybe they were worried about coming across as a bit anti-monarchy or something – as if that were worse than coming across as a bit anti-democracy. Or maybe criticism of this type just wouldn’t fit with their portrayal of the Cavaliers, any more than approval for being forward-thinking and concerned with freedom would fit with their portrayal of the Puritans.

There is perhaps one exception to this trend in the form of another of the programme’s parody songs, which describes the Civil War in the style of ‘Cool’ from West Side Story. Here’s a selection of the lyrics, with the Roundheads’ lines in italics, and the Cavaliers’ in bold:

We are the Roundheads; we don’t want kings no more.

That’s why we started the English Civil War.

People say we’re no fun, but we disagree,

Especially when explaining parliamentary democracy.

We are particularly excited by the notions of jurisprudence –

That’s enough dullness; we’re the Cavalier crew,

Supporting King Charles and everything that he’ll do.

Puritans bore us; it’s really a crime

When your parliamentary business cuts our partying time.

Roundheads, sound heads, keep the music down heads,

Rules and regulations led – dull but fair.

Cavaliers, three cheers, wackier headgears.

We live to boogie with our peers. Unfair? Don’t care.

I’ll stop there; you get the gist. The song is acknowledging that the Roundhead view of how a country ought to be run, parliamentary democracy, is very much in line with what we in modern Britain conceive of as right and fair, whereas the Cavalier view, absolute monarchy, is not. But, then again, because these characters still sit within the categories of caricature, dull versus fun, that Horrible Histories has already established – and yes, Cromwell later gets a verse where he talks about banning Christmas – the Cavaliers somehow still come across as the lovable ones. Look, they have cool hats and like partying! Isn’t that fun, kids? And indeed, within the Horrible Histories fandom, at least the corners of it that I’ve seen, the monarchists get a great deal of love and appreciation, the parliamentarians none.

Of course, I’ll allow for a generous extent to which that love and appreciation is merely for the portrayal of the historical figures within the programme, rather than for the figures themselves or what they stood for; Mat Baynton really is a lot of fun to watch as Charles II. That said, though, the portrayal is kind of the whole point that I’m concerning myself with here; if Horrible Histories chooses to portray a character in a particular way, that is, quite obviously, not totally detached from what it wants to communicate about what that character was actually like.

Why is it, then, that the programme sides with the Cavaliers? Both parties had their fair share of beliefs that could easily be touted as ludicrous compared to the general consensus these days; why plump for that side over the other? Just because partying is an easier sell than piety? Well, so is democracy than dictatorship, and I know it’s a children’s series, but surely it’s not too much to expect of children that they understand that it’s not great to be told what to do by someone who can’t get into trouble for making bad decisions. Or just because the idea of anyone banning Christmas is simply too horrendous for him and his faction not to then be painted as the bad guys? Is that really the message we want to put forward about what it’s important to prioritise? Is Horrible Histories suggesting that it’s more important to be allowed to celebrate Christmas than to be governed by elected representatives instead of an autocrat? I mean, think about it: at least if you’re governed by elected representatives, you stand some chance of challenging and changing laws you don’t like, bans on Christmas or otherwise.

I’ll freely admit that I have my own biases: like most evangelicals, I look rather fondly on the Puritans, because they got an awful lot right about the gospel that other factions of the Church have often got very wrong.⁵ So maybe it’s fair to suggest that this particular portrayal decision irks me more than it would otherwise. But I hope you can nonetheless see the state of affairs I’ve tried to outline: it is, surely, a very strange thing that a programme produced in modern Britain should portray a dictatorial movement more favourably than a democratic one – a very strange thing indeed. Can you believe that, kids?

Footnotes

¹ You can get quite a few episodes on iPlayer right now: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/b00sp0l8/horrible-histories.

² Just look at this slew of awards, notably including ‘Best Sketch Show’ – not best kids’ sketch show, just best sketch show of any sort – at the British Comedy Awards two years in a row: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1400819/awards.

³ Just for the sake of citing my source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FL8uBxPjtw&t=84s. It’s distressingly difficult to get hold of good clips of individual Horrible Histories sketches on YouTube.

⁴ That one you can get on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA5abHKvUBQ&list=PLk2uTpq_0-GXRDKCWiUAK6yM3A08yi8_R.

⁵ I was at a Christian event last month where one of the speakers said that he was basically getting most of his points out of John Owen, so I thought, right, well, I’ll just go and read John Owen then. I’m working through Communion with God, which I obtained for free here, https://www.apuritansmind.com/free-ebooks-from-a-puritans-mind-and-puritan-publications/ (yay expired copyright!) on my snazzy new Kobo ereader, https://uk.kobobooks.com/products/kobo-clara-hd (it’s better than a Kindle because you don’t have to get your books through Amazon; you can get them from randomers on the Internet, like the last link). Not far enough in to provide much of a review yet.