Ten worst Britons

[chickenfeet]

The BBC has had a bunch of historians select a list of the ten worst Britons of the last millenium, one for each century. Here's the list:

1900 to 2000: Oswald Mosley (1896-1980)
1800 to 1900: Jack the Ripper
1700 to 1800: Duke of Cumberland (1721-1765)
1600 to 1700: Titus Oates (1649-1705)
1500 to 1600: Sir Richard Rich (Lord Rich of Leighs) (1496/7-1567)
1400 to 1500: Thomas Arundel (1353-1414)
1300 to 1400: Hugh Despenser (The Younger) (died 1326)
1200 to 1300: King John (1167-1216)
1100 to 1200: Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury (c.1120-1170)
1000 to 1100: Eadric Streona (died 1017)

Now the first thing that strikes me is that they are all English (or Anglo Norman) so the claim to be the worst "Britons" looks a bit dubious.

Anyway, here are my thoughts:

Mosley. Bad for sure but worse than say Douglas Haig, incompetent slaughterer of nearly a million of his countrymen (and a Scot)? And how about the grocer's daughter; prop to apartheid and mainstay of torturers around the world as well as being one of the all around malevolent figures in British politics ever.

Jack the Ripper. Be serious! He murdered a handful of people. He's small beer. My vote would go to Lord Cardigan for a lifetime spent as a pernicious booby. The Duke of Cambridge would be a close second.

The Duke of Cumberland. ROTFLMAO. Why not Charles Edward Stuart whose ridiculous pretensions triggered that relatively minor incident? In fact my vote would go to Henry Dundas, another Scots crook and one of the great embezzlers of all time.

Titus Oates. This from a century that produced Charles I and Judge Jeffries. I think not!

Sir Richard Rich. No way. Henry VIII himself gets the nod. Why shoot the monkey when you can have the organ grinder?

Thomas Arundel. Maybe. I don't think the century is rich in major villains. Henry Tudor would be a candidate and maybe Henry Percy.

Hugh Despenser. I think a century that has Edward II, Richard II, Piers Gaveston, Roger Mortimer, Queen Isabella and Thomas Holland can do better than Hugh Despenser. Richard II gets the nod.

King John. I think John has had a bad press. He inherited a mess and did his best to sort it out with little help from his fractious subjects. My vote goes to Simon de Montfort, an all around trouble maker and particularly greedy and murderous extirpator of Occitan culture.

Thomas Becket. Too much competition here, principally from England's most overrated monarch, Richard I. He bled the country white to finance his overseas ambitions. If one were looking for the worst of the lot he would be high on the list.

Eadric Streona. Interesting choice. The only other candidate I would offer would be Edward the Confessor. By not clearly sorting out the succession he caused a major calamity.

Comments

[frankie-ecap.livejournal.com]

I have never heard of Eadric Streona, and I think that Hugh Despenser is nastier than Piers Gaveston. (Don't know who Sir Richard Rich is, but your argument holds for all values of n.) Otherwise can't disagree with any BUT have no idea what Occitan culture is.

I'm glad you're a defender of King John. So am I.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Occitan - the language spoken in what is now southern France. There was a flourishing culture in the Langue d'Oc quite independent of the french kingdom until it was wiped out under the guise of a crusade against the Cathars which, in practice, was a big land grab by de montfort and his mates.

[frankie-ecap.livejournal.com]

As in vin de Pays d'Oc?

I'm that cultured, me.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Basically yes. Medieval French had two principal groups of dialects separated by whether "oeil" or "oc" was the word for yes. hence the pays d'oeil being the north and the pays d'oc the south. Modern French cleaves more to the dialect of the Ile de France and Occitan is more or less obsolete. I would imagine a Catalan speaker would manage quite well with occitan. FWIW, I can read medieval northern French though with difficulty but I can't understand Occitan at all.

[frankie-ecap.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Can you speak Castilian Spanish? I can, a little, and was surprised by how much more intelligible I found Catalan than I expected.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I don't speak Spanish at all.

[frankie-ecap.livejournal.com]

What's your Latin like?

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Very rusty. I did 'O' level and have brushed it off a few times since but it's not good.

Kind pity chokes my spleen, brave scorn forbids...

[oursin.livejournal.com]

This is such a crappy list - building on ideas of 'monsters' that people already have - which is why I didn't post a link myself, because where does one start unpicking something like this.

Yes to Simon de Montfort.

Wot no Lord George Gordon of the Gordon anti-Catholic riots? General Dyer? all the members of the government which let the Irish Potato Famine happen and still refused to repeal the Corn Laws? Everybody who made their fortunes out of the slave-trade? Lords Cardigan and Raglan for the ongoing ballsup of the Crimean War (of which Charge of LB probably rather less in terms of mortality than disease)? Oh yes, and as various commentators of the 1880s remarked, the slum landlords of the East End and those who let Whitechapel seethe and pullulate with crime were far more dangerous than Jack, whoever he was. And why Mosley, rather than 'Lord Haw-Haw' Joyce (or being Irish does he not come in under the wire?)?

Re: Kind pity chokes my spleen, brave scorn forbids...

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

George Gordon is a good one.

Brigadier Dyer would be competing in the 20th century category which has a much higher standard of evil than, say, the 19th.

I picked Cardigan rather than Raglan because he was a pernicious oaf all his life not just in the Crimea.

I don't see Joyce as particularly evil and he certainly wasn't British at any time that he was a bit evil having at various times American and German nationality. One might perhaps choose Joyce's judges who presided over one of the more flagrantly rigged trials in modern British history.

The 19th century is hard because there are lots of little villains whose collective nastiness is considerable but no-one really stands out.

[a-d-medievalist.livejournal.com]

Er ... trying to understand why Becket at all? (It's Becket's feast today, I think). Don't really understand John as a choice, either, unless you count the 'lost most of the family possessions on the Continent' -- on sheer nastiness, I'd say Longshanks wins (not a Scots nationalist supporter here, just sayin'). And there are even others at Henry VIII's court -- Cromwell? Cranmer?

I'm not impressed. I think your list is a bit better.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Yes it is Becket's feast day.

I think John is sheer laziness. Let's pick the villain everyone knows from the Robin Hood movies type "logic".

Not sure about Edward I. Being beastly to the Scots is usually fairly justifiable IMO.

The 16th century offers a real plethora of villains so choice of one is pretty hard. I chose Henry VIII for sheer megalomania.

[a-d-medievalist.livejournal.com]

I wasn't thinking in terms of being beastly to the Scots, but in terms of megalomania as well. I don't know much about Rich, except that he was supposed to have pushed for More's trial.

Why Becket?

[rosinarowantree.livejournal.com]

Basically skipped deep analysis of the Becket problem in history - not much more that 'meddlesome priest' quotes, but I later did study Anouilh's Becket for French A-level and saw it with appropriate pro-Henry (Peter O'Toole) stance. This is also suspect as a source, but the argument that did strike me in the O'Toole/Burton scenes was over benefit of clergy, and that this was a genuine factor in the split between church and state I have read and seen elsewhere.

The Church wanted to retain the right to punish evil-doers who successfully pleaded benefit of clergy, (and the bar was set as low that to be proved literate created a prima facie case that you were a cleric), removing them from the Royal Justice. Thus a man who raped, murdered a child, stole from peasants and drove them from their home (I meant three different men, not one versatile felonius monk). If the recreant was a member of the clergy, or could just read a passage from the bible, he passed from the civil to the clerical courts. In the civil courts he might be executed: a clerical judgement was more likely to impose a sentence so lenient that the paedophile or other would be able to carry on with his ways, and never face state justice.

Henry however was setting up proper justice systems, with jury trials, by your peers, one law for all (sort of) and did not like to see that those guilty of raping peasant girls - or killing his tax-collectors - got away to do it again, with the blessing of the Church, and his former friend Thomas Becket.

I suspect, without proof, that Thomas Becket's elevation to 'most evil' is because this argument, previously dismissed as a 900 year old squabble over ancient doctrine, has shown itself to be alive and well and living in Catholic hierarchy all over the world: and the voters are showing that this time, they are with Henry II.

Re: Why Becket?

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

From the BBC website:

The "greedy" Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, was nominated by Professor John Hudson, of St Andrews University, as the 12th century's worst villain.

"He divided England in a way that even many churchmen who shared some of his views thought unnecessary and self-indulgent," he said.

"He was a founder of gesture politics."

Re: Why Becket?

[a-d-medievalist.livejournal.com]

Nice try, but not really accurate, I'm afraid. Consider first that most of the people who ran the clerical courts were of the same social group as the people who ran the non-ecclesiastic courts, i.e., nobles. Henry II was trying to assert royal control over all courts, not just ecclesiastical ones. It would be nice to think it was because Henry had a superior sense of justice and duty to the common man, but I'd bet it had a lot more to do with a general concentration of power and money -- court cases meant fees and fines -- rather than any particular sense of offense at people skipping to ecclesiastic trials. It's important also to remember that ecclesiastic courts could be as lenient or as strict as the court of a local noble -- by the 12th c. this was not as much a problem in England as on the continent, but the rights of many nobles included holding their own courts. In practice, this often meant that, if a complaint were raised against a member of the nobility or one of his retainers, the charges would be heard (and possibly dismissed) by the accused. IIRC, this becomes a particular problem in central and eastern Europe as serfdom expands there (Blum, I think, is the ref).
In the case of Becket, there at least seems to have been a genuine belief in the separation on canonical grounds. Whether or not one agrees, Becket's stance can be likened to Thomas More's much more easily than to the recent horrific justifications by canon lawyers to why they should have authority over people the Church has clearly failed to police.

Re: Why Becket?

[rosinarowantree.livejournal.com]

I agree - at least, I don't have any sense that Becket was the most evil man in Britain in the 12th century, whatever the arguments for and against secular justice were. My points were directed at why people had chosen him as most evil - under the impression that there was some sort of vote involved. I was suggesting why opinion might have turned against him, based on a non-expert view of where he stood. I now see that the selection was based solely on the personal prejudices of one historian per century, and the reasons are therefore not really worth discussing. But I suppose Professor Hudson's description of him as having 'divided' England refers to setting Church against State, rather than North against South or other physical divisions.

[gillo]

Does the really vicious Simon de Montfort count as a Brit? The Simon who did so much nastiness to the Cathars was the father of the Simon who summoned the first Parliament (from just up the road here in Kenilworth, as it happens). While I agree Simon père was as nasty a thug as you could hope to avoid in any century, he was definitely French. Simon fils wasn't hugely lovable, but not in the same league of nastiness, and he is the only one you could really count as a Brit, though I'm not convinced such a definition would have meant anything to that family at that time.

Why is Richard II your nastiest villain? At least as much sinned against as sinning, I'd have said - and at least he encouraged the arts and tried to put an end to the war with France. (I'm currently reading Terry Jones's book "Who Murdered Chaucer", so I may be biased.)

Edward I was beastly to the Welsh as well as the Scots. That should count against him a bit.

I tend to agree about Margaret Hilda. Not so sure about Haig - modern historians (I am told) are less inclined to see him as the villain. Mosley was pretty thoroughly nasty, though but.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Richard II inherited a reasonably stable kingdom and through his own megalomania managed to completely alienate the peerage whose support his grandfather had done so much to cultivate with disastrous immediate and longer term consequences. I think he had probably devolpoed acute paranoia by the end.

de Montfort - good points. I guess I get confused between the two.

Haig. Haig has his apologists. I don't buy it. It's not just that his battlefield generalship was inept. To be fair I think the problems were insoluble though it doesn't say much for his intelligence that he kept on battering away. The first key point against Haig is his failure to recognise that an army of volunteers offered a very different set of challenges and opportunities than one that had the composition of the pre war army. His failure to use the talents available to him was huge. Why would you staff the military justice system with desperately needed combat officers with no legal training while you've got barristers serving as infantry subalterns? That's just one example. FOr a viw of how things could have been done look at the British Army in WW2 where effective use was made of war service personnel. Montgomery's Intelligence Chief was a Balliol don. That couldn't have happened in Haig's army. Underestimating the calibre of his men also led to horrible tactical decisions like those used on the Somme. It didn't have to be that way. The Canadians and Australians, with fewer regular officers, used much more intelligent tactics based on French practice.

Second count in the indictment. Haig's real skill was intriguing. The one thing he did really well was to intrigue at court to keep his own job and, crucially, to sideline anyone whose ability might have made him an alternative. Maxse's considerable talents were minimised in this way for example.

Thirdly, Haig's failure to give honest and accurate situation reports to either the CIGS or the Cabinet seriously distorted Allied strategy. If London had known in a timely fashion just how unproductive the western front battles were there is at least some likelihood that other strategic options would have been taken more seriously.

[gillo]

Hmm. As I said, I'm deeply into "Who Murdered Chaucer" just at present - it makes quite a few good points about the presentation of Richard's "megalomania" by the winning side after his deposition. After all, teh Lords Appellant were hardly a fair or likeable bunch. Richard inherited the throne at the age of ten, and most of his life was spent struggling to create his own identity.

The Somme tactics were pretty stupid, I agree, but I think teh consensus was that slow, steady walking was better than running uphill at the enemy. I'm not sure Haig's military ideas were much different from his contemporaries'.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

The Somme tactics were pretty stupid, I agree, but I think teh consensus was that slow, steady walking was better than running uphill at the enemy.

Well that was the consensus among a bunch of not very bright British cavalry generals. The French on the other side of the Somme, using leapfrog tactics, achieved most of their objectives. Every army in the world, from 1918 (or earlier) to today, has used some version of leapfrog as its basic infantry tactic. The sad fact is that Haig and Rawlinson didn't trust their volunteers to advance in leaps. They assumed that as soon as they went to ground they would stay there. Of course, a shortage of light machine guns didn't help. A shortage caused in large measure by Haig's view that no infantry battalion needed more than two machine guns. Canadian battalions had about five times as many m/c guns as the British.

[gillo]

Every army in the world, from 1918 (or earlier) to today, has used some version of leapfrog as its basic infantry tactic.

But how many did before 1916?

I'm not putting Haig forward as a hero, just not the worst villain of the Twentieth Century.

Did you read some of the things Churchill wanted to do in the recently released Cabinet Papers, BTW?

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

But how many did before 1916?

The French and the Germans had it pretty well worked out by about the middle of 1915 and certainly both sides used those sort of tactics at Verdun.

Haig's basic problem is that he was too blinkered to listen to anyone who wasn't a regular British army officer, and even then was inclined to disregard any but the most conventional. He wasn't "evil" but he was wilfully stupid and sent more British soldiers to unnecessary deaths than any other commander in British history. That to me is what makes him "worst" though nit necessarily "most evil".

Did you read some of the things Churchill wanted to do in the recently released Cabinet Papers, BTW?

I did. I didn't think they were much worse than other things I already knew about Churchill. I did think of him as a candidate for "worst Briton of the 20th century" but for all his many and manifest failings he did have a few good points.

[gillo]

The French and the Germans had it pretty well worked out by about the middle of 1915 and certainly both sides used those sort of tactics at Verdun.

You feel the French at Verdun were conspicuously more successful than the British on the Somme?

I didn't think they were much worse than other things I already knew about Churchill. I did think of him as a candidate for "worst Briton of the 20th century" but for all his many and manifest failings he did have a few good points.

He wasn't the hero our parents and grandparents idolised, but he was the man we needed at the right time. I'm glad he lost the election in 1945, though.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

The French situation at Verdun isn't really comparable with the British on the Somme so comparisons are difficult. The French were on the defensive at Verdun. Insofar as they held on they have to be accounted successful. They certainly managed, intentionally or not, to throw the Germans off their game plan. The Somme has to be seen as a failure. It didn't lead to a breakthrough and produced minimal territorial gains that didn't hurt the Germans at all.

I think I've said before that I don't blame Haig for not winning the war in 1916 or 1917. I don't think it was winnable (by either side). I don't even think that the tactics envisaged for 1919-20 would have succeeded against a resolute Germany. Ultimately the command and control technologies available weren't capable of co-ordinating an offensive on the scale needed for breakthrough. Haig's fault lies in his sheer pig headed refusal to look at facts which didn't suit him, to listen to commanders who told him what he didn't want to hear, to heed intelligence that contradicted his a priori views etc.

[gillo]

The French held Verdun mostly for non-military rasons, though - it was hardly the best moment in French military history.


I think I've said before that I don't blame Haig for not winning the war in 1916 or 1917. I don't think it was winnable (by either side). I don't even think that the tactics envisaged for 1919-20 would have succeeded against a resolute Germany. Ultimately the command and control technologies available weren't capable of co-ordinating an offensive on the scale needed for breakthrough. Haig's fault lies in his sheer pig headed refusal to look at facts which didn't suit him, to listen to commanders who told him what he didn't want to hear, to heed intelligence that contradicted his a priori views etc.

How much does that matter if he wasn't going to succeed anyway? The political pressure on the military to start some sort of campaign at around the time of the Somme was well-nigh irresistible, I'd have said.

It wasn't really until 1918 that they really worked out how to fight this kind of war.

I visited Vimy Ridge a couple of years ago, BTW. The Canadian achievement there was impressive. (They didn't have quite the terrain problems of teh area around Bapaume/Albert, mind you.)

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

This is where it starts to get more complex.

First, I think that trying to win the war on the Western Front was a huge mistake. There was a serious split in Cabinet over the issue. Haig's politicking and dissembling materially aided the Western Fronters so the pressure for an all out offensive in the West was at least partly of his own making.

Second, the political pressure in 1916 was to take pressure off the French at Verdun. That could have been done in ways other than an all out offensive battle lasting several months.

Third, by failing to heed the intelligence that was flooding in prior to July 1 about the failure of the preliminary bombardment, Haig committed his assault divisions to a plan that could not possibly succeedd. 60,000 casualties in the first hour was the result. The only comparable failure to heed intelligence on anything approaching that scale that I can think of is Montgomery's decision to go ahead with Market Garden in the face of Ultra intelligence that SS Panzertruppen were in Arnhem.

Fourth, Haig continued to reinforce failure for several months. Basic military doctrine should have told him that, at a minimum, he should have changed his axis of attack. Frankly the offensive should have been shut down at least two months before it was.

Fifth, he repeated most of the mistakes in 1917. One of the reasons the Canadians succeeded at Vimy is that the Canadian commander refused Haig's repeated orders to attack until he considered the battle had been properly prepared. he could do that because he had a direct line to the Cabinet in Ottawa. No British general could do that.

Finally, I don't the British won the battles of 1918 so much as the Germans collapsed after the failure of Ludendorff's offensive.

Bottom line, some effort had to be made on the British sector in France in 1916. The cost/benefit should have been much more favourable. Again, compare the relative success of the french south of Albert on the opening day to what happened to the British. Mercifully the 19th division was in support that day or I likely wouldn't exist to write this.

[gillo]

First, I think that trying to win the war on the Western Front was a huge mistake. There was a serious split in Cabinet over the issue. Haig's politicking and dissembling materially aided the Western Fronters so the pressure for an all out offensive in the West was at least partly of his own making.

Considering that the ostensible reason for the entry into the war was "gallant little Belgium", I'm not sure giving up on the Western Front was ever an option - and sitting in stalemate didn't sell terribly well at home or with the Allies.

Bottom line, some effort had to be made on the British sector in France in 1916. The cost/benefit should have been much more favourable. Again, compare the relative success of the french south of Albert on the opening day to what happened to the British. Mercifully the 19th division was in support that day or I likely wouldn't exist to write this.

On the whole I think I agree with you, though I don't think Haig was the worst this country produced in a century of monsters. You had a grandparent at the Somme?

Frankly, I think one has to argue someone like Fred West is a contender for Worst Briton.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Considering that the ostensible reason for the entry into the war was "gallant little Belgium", I'm not sure giving up on the Western Front was ever an option

Yeah but by the end of 1915 it wasn't a promising front for victory. Obviously it had to be defended but I think Lloyd George's view that opening a serious offensive in southern Europe was a better bet had much to recommend it.

You had a grandparent at the Somme?

Sapper F. Evenson, 19th Divisional Signals Company, RE. Poor bastard was also in France in 1939-40

[gillo]

Ouch. My grandfathers more or less avoided active duty in both wars, though the older of the two (Born March 1900) was according to family legend in the RFC. The other grandfather went straight down the coal mines when he reached 14 on 1918. Both were in reserve occupations in 1939-45. It's pretty bad luck to have been the right age to fight in both wars.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Yes, my grandfather was briefly in the RFC too. He volunteered for pilot training late in the war but the war ended before he qualified as a pilot. He went back to France in 1939 as a sergeant in the Royal Signals, got out on the last day at Dunkirk (officially "missing" at that point) and spent the rest of the war as an instructor at Catterick.

[gillo]

He was clearly lucky, though it probably didn't feel that way at the time.

Wow!

[albionwood.livejournal.com]

What a great discussion you all are having here! Sorry I can't contribute a whole lot, other than:

1. Agree re: H VIII. One of the rottenest buggers of all English history. Why is he so popular? I actually taught several of my friends to spit whenever anyone said his name.

2. Also agree about John and Simon de Montfort pere, even if the latter was French. But I think the worst 13th c. Brit had to be Ed I - his treatment of the Welsh and Scots, and his nasty personality, really stand out from the crowd. Bon besoigne qui fait de merde se delivrer sounds like something GWB might say, if he spoke French.

3. Finally, have to agree on Richard as well. Not only did he drain the Kingdom's resources for his overseas ambitions, he then proceeded to bollix up those very overseas efforts. Hey, but he had a heart like a lion, right?

Re: Wow!

[gillo]

Finally, have to agree on Richard as well. Not only did he drain the Kingdom's resources for his overseas ambitions, he then proceeded to bollix up those very overseas efforts. Hey, but he had a heart like a lion, right?

Er - are you talking about Richard I here? It's looking like any king called Richard is in trouble.

Re: Wow!

[albionwood.livejournal.com]

Yes, Richard I the Vastly Overrated was my target. I don't know that much about Rich II - did he have any overseas ambitions?

Re: Wow!

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I think he wanted to be French!

Re: Wow!

[albionwood.livejournal.com]

Can't blame him for that!

Re: Wow!

[gillo]

Only the normal 100 Years War "We deserve to own all of France" variety - not exactly out of the ordinary.