Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So today's episode involves a kooky scenario of a war being declared and then paperwork regarding that war really dragging. But the whole thing involves needing to have a big chunk of context about the English Civil Wars. So we're going to talk specifically about what is considered the first English Civil War today, basically the beginning of that larger conflict, So just to set expectations, not a comprehensive exploration of all the mechanisms involved in that massive set of conflicts. So this one, we'll talk a little bit about the Isles of Silly in terms of their early history, and then we're gonna do that context part and that will then lead into explaining how this small set of islands ended up in a centuries long war, and we have to put air quotes around war there. The Isles of Scilly are southwest of Cornwall, England, twenty five miles or about forty kilometers from the mainland shore. Like the coast of Cornwall, these islands are largely granite, but unlike Cornwall, the climate is a bit milder than the rest of England. It tends to be warmer. That's possible that the Isles of Silly were once one large island, which likely separated off from the mainland of England more than twelve thousand years ago. That one large island was probably visited by humans as far back as six thousand BCE. According to doctor Catherine Sawyer, an archaeologist who offers guided tours of the islands, the earliest people on the island during the Mesolithic air Bah, lived there seasonally. Over time, these part time occupants brought livestock to the island, and by about two thousand BCE there was a permanent settlement of a couple hundred people living there. The settlement was referred to by the Cornish word for great island, which is Enner. There have been numerous archaeological finds indicating that there were people on the island dating to the Bronze Age, Iron Age and Romano British period, well after the island's initial settlement was abandoned. The Isles of Scilly are believed to have experienced flooding during sea level rise in the fifth century that separated it by water from one land mass into several islands comprised of its highest points, and there are now a group of, roughly because it does change because counting them is difficult, fifty small islands and dozens of islets. The number of total separated piece of land is often noted as more than two hundred, but to be clear, some of those are very small rocks, like you could maybe stand on them, but not even turn around. They're little. Five of the islands are named and have people living on them. Saint Mary's is the largest and has the biggest population. It's about six square miles and has about eighteen hundred inhabitants centered around its main municipality of hugh Town. The remaining named islands are Tresco, Saint Martin's, Briar, and Saint Agnes. The rest of the islands in some cases have little nicknames from the locals, but they do not have formal names. The islands have changed hands and been under a mix of leadership over the centuries since their history has been recorded, and this is because as various kings reigned, they granted and regranted lands to different people, mostly men of the Church. Sometime around the reign of Edward the Confessor, who ruled England from ten forty two to ten sixty six, monks lived on the modern day island of Tresco, which at the time was known as Saint Nicholas. They had been given portions of the various islands that make up the Isles of Scilly. During the reign of King Henry the First, which ran from eleven hundred to eleven thirty five, the king granted those lands previously held by the monks and hermits, plus all the churches in their surrounding lands, to the Abbot of Tavistock. Then, in eleven ninety three, the pope at the time, Celestin, reasserted the land that the church held to the abbey. In that same period, the Earl of Cornwall, Reginald, also stated that any shipwrecks were also the property of the monks, unless they were entire ships or wales. That's wales, not the place the animal, Yes, not the place I was imagining that people could I'd miss hear that one just because of the context that we're talking about. Entire ships or whales would have monetary value. In their whole states. Now, all of this does not mean that the monks who lived on the isles of Silly had autonomy. There there were various secular land and titleholders who did things like demand taxes on the properties where the abbeys operated, and there were also men who governed the isles that were not related to the church, and some did not hold any property on the isles, but were given the title of governor over the island chain as an honorific In cases of property ownership, this often meant paying certain fees to retain that land and thus that power. In one particularly charming example, for a while, that fee was paid in puffins. I feel like this is the most charming. If you're imagining that they're going to a little puffin sanctuary where they're going to have long and happy lives, they're not. No. Uh. This is explained in a twenty ten paper by R. D. Penaleric titled Ancient and Early Medieval Coins from Cornwall and Silly. This paper notes that there's a drop off in coinage use in the area in the late medieval period, and it discusses the puffins this way. Quote markets operate well enough through barter and the dearth of Saxon coinage in Cornwall proves this. The later medieval payment of rent in puffins maybe of significance. Here. Margaret Midgley showed that on Silly payment in twelve ninety six to ninety seven consisted of three hundred puffin annually valued at six shillings eight pence. In thirteen thirty six to thirty seven, John de Ellett agreed to pay Sir Ralph Blanchemister one hundred and fifty puff owes for his land on Briar in Saint Martin's in default of which payment was lawful at the rate of one pence for three birds. Such payment may well date back to eleven when Reginald de Dunstanville was created Earl of Cornwall and silly because an annual cull of birds may have long existed in the islands, in spite of a lack of archaeological evidence to prove it. Similar payments in gulls are recorded in Cornwall from the late sixteenth century to seventeen fourteen, although then it reflected the Tudor predilection for gulls as well as puffins for the dinner table. Through all of this the Isles of Scilly were privately owned, but the end of that status came from Thomas Seymour, first Baron Seymour of Sudeley, who had inherited most of the estates and owned them. When King Edward the sixth reigned. Thomas was the brother of Jane Seymour, who was King Henry the Eighth's third wife, and that made him the uncle of King Edward the sixth, who took the throne in fifteen forty seven. When Henry the eighth died, Edward was only nine years old, so Thomas's Edward was made the young boy's chief counselor, while Thomas became Lord High Admiral. This did not please Thomas one bit, because he wanted the same level of power as his brother, or more. He would go on in the two years that followed to basically be jealous of anyone who was charged with advising the young king, and even considered kidnapping the king in the guise of securing his safety. None of his various efforts to expand his influence and power in regards to King Edward the sixth really worked, and instead it made him very unpopular with the people who were actually in charge. Coming up, we will talk about some of the scandals that defined Thomas Seymour's life and how they led to the Islands of Silly becoming the property of the crown. First, though, we will pause for a sponsor break. There is so much drama and intrigue to Thomas Seymour's story. For one, he married Catherine Parr, Henry the Eighth's widow, after he failed to secure a marriage to the thirteen year old Princess Elizabeth destined to become Elizabeth the First. When Catherine Parr died after giving birth in fifteen forty eight, there were rumors almost instantly that Elizabeth was going to become his wife, and it seems that Thomas Seymour himself circulated those rumors, or at least he encouraged them. He was also rumored to have killed Catherine with the intent to use her death as a means to secure money and power, and those Elizabeth rumors did not help his image in that regard. Thomas and his brother, who was officially recognized as the King's protector, argued constantly, and often those arguments happened in public. All of Thomas's various machinations and angling from more power eventually got him in very deep trouble. He was arrested for treason in January fifteen forty nine. Thirty three articles of treason were charged against him. This was a unique case and that he should have been tried before his peers, but the King's Privy Council had made arrangements to sidestep that process. A Bill of attainder was introduced in the House of Lords on February twenty fifth regarding what was to be done with Seymour, and then it passed the House of Commons. It was determined by vote on Seymour's accusations that quote the said offenses of the Lord Admiral for diverse causes were in the compass of high treason. That meant that with no one willing to defend him against those charges, and if the King approved, the Council could handle the matter as they saw fit. Eleven year old King Edward did approve, and on March twentieth Seymour was executed by beheading. And all of this is Germane to the Isles of Scilly, because when Seymour was executed, his significant landholdings on the islands passed into the ownership of the Duchy of Cornwall. The Duchy of Cornwall was established in thirteen thirty seven by Edward the third. He had wanted to set up an estate for his son and the heir to the throne, Prince Edward, and the charter that created the duchy also established that going forward the eldest son of the English monarch and heir to the throne would inherit the Duchy and would receive the income that the estate generates. That estate, which still exists today, is only part of the County of Cornwall, but in fifteen forty nine the Isles of Scilly became part of the Duchy. From there the Isles of Silly were leased to a series of governors who paid a yearly rental fee on the land. In sixteen oh four, for example, that annual fee was twenty pounds out published in eighteen fourteen by topographers and antiquarians Daniel and Samuel License, they note of the islands quote except what relates to their trading connections with the Phoenicians and Romans, and the circumstance of their having been occasionally appropriated by the latter as a place of banishment for state criminals. The first mention we find of the Silly Islands in history is in the tenth century, when they were subdued by King Ethelstan. After this we hear nothing of them till the time of the Civil War, when they became of considerable importance. So the English Civil Wars took place over the year sixteen forty two to sixteen fifty one, and they boiled down in the most basic sense to a conflict between Royalists and non Royalists, though there were multiple non Royalist groups involved coming from England, Ireland and Scotland. The seeds of the English Civil Wars really were planted some years earlier, with King Charles the First engaging in conflicts with Scotland and Ireland. Charles the First took the throne in sixteen twenty five, and at the end of the sixteen thirties he became embroiled in a religious battle with Scotland that became known as the Bishop's Wars. Scotland at this point was largely Presbyterian and had developed a political movement known as the Covenanters. The hierarchical structure of the Scottish Church placed bishops in the position of leadership and governance. While in terms of religious ideology Scotland's Presbyterian Church wasn't super different from the Anglican Church, the leadership, structure and specific rights in practice were quite different, and Charles the First wanted Scotland to adhere to the Anglican ways. The first implementation of this plan was the mandatory introduction of an Anglican prayer book in sixteen thirty seven in Scotland, which led to riots and people organizing to resist Anglicanization of Scotland's church. Charles was not particularly interested in hearing Scotland out on all this, and instead decided it was time for military actions, so he started marching on Scotland. But this was not the best planned offensive. There really wasn't money in the Royal coffers to pay for it, and the military wasn't especially well prepared, so this resulted in a peace treaty instead of combat. That treaty, known as the Pacification of Berwick, ended what came to be known as the First Bishop's War, and its terms included things like Scotland releasing its English prisoners and Charles agreeing to call a general assembly of the Church of Scotland so they could work out all their differences. So though this is called the First Bishop's War, there was no actual combat. Yeah, it's more like the First Bishop's heated discussion. Uh. But the peace over the matter did not last for even a year. Charles was really heated over this whole thing to begin with, and then he found out that Scotland was talking to France about it, so he decided that he had to invade Scotland. That's same money issue still existed. It wasn't like he had magically conjured a lot of extra income. So he called a meeting of Parliament, a governing body that he had dissolved by the way in sixteen twenty nine, and asked them to hash out a plan and get the funding arranged. But that did not go his way either. Once that matter was discussed and examined, Charles the First did not get the backing he had hoped for, so he kind of went rogue and he dissolved the parliament again and he mounted an attack on Scotland without support for most of England, and as you can guess, it went really poorly. Charles's troops were completely overpowered and Scotland managed to not only defend itself but also took control of Northumberland and Durham in northern ECAs. This Second Bishop's War left Charles the First in such dilemma that he summoned another Parliament in the spring of sixteen forty. He needed it to get money for what had escalated into an ongoing war with Scotland. This gathering, known as the Long Parliament, in contrast to the Short Parliament, where he didn't get his way and kind of stomped off, led to events that plunged England into a civil war. Charles was in constant conflict with Parliament, and when England also had to fight Ireland after the sixteen forty one Ulster Rebellion, there was not only a need for more money, but there were also arguments about who would lead the military action against Ireland. The Ulster Rebellion has come up a few times lately, so as a quick recap, Charles was sending so called English settlers to Ireland to shore up his support there, sometimes seizing land to do so. This led to attacks on English Protestants in the area in sixteen forty one as part of a larger offensive, and demand for the return of Catholic Land, as well as calls for Irish independence. With the growing financial needs of military actions that were catalyzed by Charles the First policies that were not especially popular with Parliament in the first place, things got really tense, particularly with the House of Commons. This was on top of ongoing issues with the King's various policies and behaviors since taking the throne in sixteen twenty five, and as sixteen forty one came to a close, politician John Pim compiled a detailed account of all of the things that he and several other politicians felt Charles had done wrong in his sixteen years on the throne. This document, called the Grand Remonstrance, was voted on by the House of Commons and was able to get through the vote with enough support to validate it, but it did not pass to the House of Lords. Instead, it was brought directly to Charles the First. He did not care for it, and he decided that it was treasonous. That led to the King entering the House of Commons on January fourth, sixteen forty two, to arrest Pim and four of his collaborators on charges of high treason. Believing that they were collaborating also with Scotland. Those men were William Strode, John Hampton, Denzil Hollis and Arthur Haselring. But the men were no longer at the House of Commons, and the House Speaker, William Lenthal, was questioned by the King as to their whereabouts. Lenthal did not give up the men, and his reply, which is often quoted, was, may it please your majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place, but as the House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here? I e? You're not the bossomy in this building. Charles had made a serious blunder. He had completely broken protocol and procedure by entering the House, and his inability to take those five men into custody also made him look weak. Then, as the year played out and Parliament made clear that they wanted no part of a war with Ireland, Charles ignored that he tried to go around them to create an army by decree. By the late summer, England was officially engaged in a civil war. So it was Charles the First and his Royalist supporters versus the Parliamentarians at home, the Covenanters of Scotland and the Confederates of Ireland. This set of conflicts is also known as the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. We're going to talk about how that played out after we hear from the sponsors to keep stuff you missed in history class going. Charles and the Royalists did not farewell in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, and they slowly gave up ground in England. Eventually they were sort of backed into the corner of the island of Great Britain, with Cornwall as their last hold. What the Royalists had in their favor at this point was the Royal Navy, which meant that Royalist forces could retreat to safety on the Isles of Scilly and still have a pretty good chance of defending themselves from there. Roughly one thousand troops occupied the Isles of Scilly as a safe harbor, making use of a castle on the island of Trusco as their base of operations. That castle had been built almost one hundred years earlier in the fifteen fifties when King Edward the sixth rained, and for a time it had been the main stronghold of the islands, though forty years later another castle was built on Saint Mary's called Star Castle, which then became the main fortification on the islands, and that also made the Trescoe Castle somewhat obsolete, but it was very important to the Royalists who took refuge there in sixteen forty eight. Though there were Royalists ensconced on the islands, Charles the first was not. He was captured by the Scottish Army in battle and then handed over to the parliamentarian forces led by Oliver Cromwell in sixteen forty seven. He was held in various locations, then escaped and was recaptured in sixteen forty nine. He faced a convoluted series of trials in which there were arguments about exactly what to charge him with. The idea of trying a king for treason had some fundamental problems, particularly for people who believed in the idea that God granted monarchs their power, but he was ultimately charged with treason based on the accusation that he had used his power to benefit himself at the cost of his people. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. His execution by beheading was carried out on January thirtieth, sixteen five forty nine. At that point, Prince Charles, who was already staying on the Isles of Scilly, became ruler in the eyes of the Royalists. The parliamentarians, of course, rejected the monarchy and established the Commonwealth of England. But the important part in regards to the Isles of Scilly was that the governor of the islands was John Granville, first Earl of Bath, and he was a Royalist who fortified the islands as a safe haven for Charles the second. Grenville also welcomed privateers willing to work for the monarchy, and with them, combined with the remaining naval forces that the Royalists commanded, he was able to make a lot of trouble for trade in the surrounding waters. Granville was consistently able to disrupt trade by launching ships from the islands to intercept ships that were sanctioned by Parliament. That was a significant issue the trade that came through the Western Approaches, those are the waters to the immediate west of Britain and Ireland. It was vital to the English economy in disrupting it. The Royalists were able to really hurt their opponents. Enter the Netherlands, the Dutch had been engaged in their own lengthy conflict, the Eighty Years War, with Spain. It was over, among other things, Dutch independence. The Eighty Years War had only just ended in sixteen forty eight with the Piece of Munster, in which Spain recognized the Netherlands as its own independent nation, and with its independence, the Netherlands, long an ally of England, had to choose a side in England's civil war. Believing the Parliamentarians had the upper hand. That's where the Dutch allied themselves. As part of that alignment, the Netherlands sent its own naval resources to assist the Parliamentarians. That meant that the Dutch also suffered at the hands of the fleet that launched ships from the Isles of Scilly. Several Dutch vessels were seized in this ongoing conflict, and that is why in early sixteen fifty one, the Dutch sent a dozen ships to the Isles of Scilly under the command of Admiral Martin Trump, who had fought in the Eighty Years War and had an excellent reputation as a naval commander. His mission was to demand reparations from the Royalists. The Netherlands had suffered significant losses in those Royalist raids of Dutch ships, and they wanted their ships and their cargo back. But the Royalists didn't really even acknowledge this demand, and so Admiral Trump declared war on the Isles of Scilly. It's a bit unclear whether he actually had the authority to make such a declaration, but he did it just the same. This also has the complication of him declaring war on an entity that was not a nation or an independent territory. But a few months after the Dutch demand and war declaration, the Parliamentarians sent to Admiral Robert Blake in Sir George Ayscue to capture the islands of Silly once and for all. The Parliamentarians were able to gain control of Tresco and Bryer, but Granville was dug in on Saint Mary's. Blake and Ayscue fortified the islands they held and mounted their offensive. Soon they also held Saint Mary's and the Royalist occupation of the Isles of Scilly was over. By this time, Charles the Second was already gone. He had left the country well before any of these events in the sixteen forties, Blake and Ayscue handed the Isles of Scilly over to Parliament, and a garrison of eight hundred Parliamentarian soldiers occupied the isles. The Dutch, seeing that things were over, sailed for home. So conflict done sort of, And now we're jumping to three hundred and thirty five years later on April seventeenth, nineteen eighty six, when Dutch ambassador Junkier Heydekoper traveled to the Isles of Scilly to formally end that war. That ceremonial visit included the presentation of an old fashioned calligraphy scroll which declared the war officially terminated. And this entire event was catalyzed by a man named Roy Duncan. Roy was a local historian who had served in leadership positions on the Isles of Scilly since the age of twenty one. When he was first elected to the Council of the Isles in nineteen eighty five, Duncan was researching the events of the English Civil Wars as they related to the Isles of Scilly, and he decided to hunt down information on the local story that the islands were still at war with the Netherlands. There were apparently jokes on the islands that Dutch tourists could technically be taken prisoner and that the Netherlands could attack at any time. Duncan reached out to the Dutch embassy for an assist, but that did not lead to the unearthing of any kind of resolution. It turned out that while Trump had declared war, he never followed up to file any sort of treaty paperwork. After the Parliamentarian forces took control of the islands, and once all of this was verified, plans were made to rectify the situation and end the conflict, which, unlike most wars, involved no actual combat whatsoever and no lives lost. In a statement to the press during the lead up to the ceremony, Roy Duncan said, quote, it's all fairly lighthearted and good fun, but it's all factual. Dutch holidaymakers are amazed to learn they are officially at war with us. During his visit to the islands, Ambassador Heydekoper joked in a statement, quote, I am extremely pleased to be able to visit the islands and tell the people who live here that the war is finally over. It must have been awful to know we could have attacked at any moment. While the end of the war didn't materially impact anyone in either of the countries, it did get a decent amount of press, which no doubt bolstered the Isles of Scilly's tourism industry. Today, the Isles of Silly remain part of the Duchy of Cornwall, and they are still primarily a tourist destination, with one hundred thousand people visiting annually. According to the Duchy of Cornwall's website, Tourism is the source of employment for seventy percent of the population of the Isles of Scilly, and it accounts for eighty five percent of a local economy. Flowers make up a significant part of the remaining fifteen percent of the economy, since the island's mild climate compared to the rest of England allows for longer growing seasons. And to end this story with yet another interesting form of rent payment, the Isles of Silly Wildlife Trust, which protects the wildlife of the islands, pays rent to the Duchy of Cornwall, and that rent costs one daffodil per year. Oh Isles of Scilly, Okay, And then I have also some sort of fun listener mail that's sort of fun. It's fun. Uh. This is from our listener Erica, who writes, Hi, Tracy and Holly. I listened to your podcast on the history of Christmas decor and the behind the scenes you had asked if anyone had any information about the supposed German pickle ornaments. While I don't have any actual info on it, I do have fun memories of them. In high school and college, I worked at Peer one Imports. Every Christmas. We would get in glass pickle ornaments to sell, and they did come with a little tag saying they were a German tradition. My coworkers and I made our own tradition with the pickles who found them first? When our Christmas stock came in in September. Because it's retail, we'd get boxes of ornaments to open and hang up for sale. The only label on the boxes for the ornaments was just glass ornaments, so we never knew what would be in each box. This is where the pickle ornaments came in. Whoever randomly opened the box containing them was deemed the winner when they got to loudly shout I got the pickles. No one actually ever won anything except the bragging rights to having found the pickles. It's a fun memory that I think about when I decorate my Christmas tree, because I had finally bought myself a pickle ornament the last Christmas I worked at Peer Women. My children laugh at the pickle each year, but we don't do the tradition of getting an extra present if they find it. For my pet tax I've included a photo of my son's fish that he got this past Christmas, which he named dragon Bite. I have horrible allergies to pet danders, so a fish made the perfect pet. My son loves his fish, and it's so wonderful to see him take ownership of his pet. Thank you for all the wonderful podcast episodes. Eric m Okay. Dragon Bite is a very beautiful beta. I have a soft spot for betas. I love them very much. I do not keep them um because we have kiddies and one of our cats, who is no longer with us, used to terrorized the fish by running full tilt like a linebacker into the tank and just slamming against it, and we're goodness fretting them all out, so we don't do that. But Erica, thank you for this because it enables me one to share a funny version. I love the idea of retail making a fun version of the pickle game. But two, we have gotten a lot of listener mail about the pickles, many from people who grew up in Germany or had parents that did. And I'm actually surprised at the split that there are a lot of them who are like, no, we didn't. I don't know what the pickle thing is. That's clearly made up by Americans. But there were some that were like, oh, yeah, my grand my German grandmother's always done that. So that makes me think it might be hyper regional. Yeah, I was gonna say a very regional thing, like it might be a very small pocket of somewhere in Germany. That. Yeah, some person from the US visited once and said, I can market this, make a lot of pickle ornaments. It's my guess. Anyway. I love it all. Send me your fish pictures, send me your plant picture, send me your puppet. Anything joyous. We need it. Uh. You can write to us with that, your pickle ornament commentary, or whatever else you'd like to at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also subscribe to the podcast. It's just as easy as finding a pickle on a tree, probably easier. You need that on the iHeartRadio app, or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So today's episode involves a kooky scenario of a war being declared and then paperwork regarding that war really dragging. But the whole thing involves needing to have a big chunk of context about the English Civil Wars. So we're going to talk specifically about what is considered the first English Civil War today, basically the beginning of that larger conflict, So just to set expectations, not a comprehensive exploration of all the mechanisms involved in that massive set of conflicts. So this one, we'll talk a little bit about the Isles of Silly in terms of their early history, and then we're gonna do that context part and that will then lead into explaining how this small set of islands ended up in a centuries long war, and we have to put air quotes around war there. The Isles of Scilly are southwest of Cornwall, England, twenty five miles or about forty kilometers from the mainland shore. Like the coast of Cornwall, these islands are largely granite, but unlike Cornwall, the climate is a bit milder than the rest of England. It tends to be warmer. That's possible that the Isles of Silly were once one large island, which likely separated off from the mainland of England more than twelve thousand years ago. That one large island was probably visited by humans as far back as six thousand BCE. According to doctor Catherine Sawyer, an archaeologist who offers guided tours of the islands, the earliest people on the island during the Mesolithic air Bah, lived there seasonally. Over time, these part time occupants brought livestock to the island, and by about two thousand BCE there was a permanent settlement of a couple hundred people living there. The settlement was referred to by the Cornish word for great island, which is Enner. There have been numerous archaeological finds indicating that there were people on the island dating to the Bronze Age, Iron Age and Romano British period, well after the island's initial settlement was abandoned. The Isles of Scilly are believed to have experienced flooding during sea level rise in the fifth century that separated it by water from one land mass into several islands comprised of its highest points, and there are now a group of, roughly because it does change because counting them is difficult, fifty small islands and dozens of islets. The number of total separated piece of land is often noted as more than two hundred, but to be clear, some of those are very small rocks, like you could maybe stand on them, but not even turn around. They're little. Five of the islands are named and have people living on them. Saint Mary's is the largest and has the biggest population. It's about six square miles and has about eighteen hundred inhabitants centered around its main municipality of hugh Town. The remaining named islands are Tresco, Saint Martin's, Briar, and Saint Agnes. The rest of the islands in some cases have little nicknames from the locals, but they do not have formal names. The islands have changed hands and been under a mix of leadership over the centuries since their history has been recorded, and this is because as various kings reigned, they granted and regranted lands to different people, mostly men of the Church. Sometime around the reign of Edward the Confessor, who ruled England from ten forty two to ten sixty six, monks lived on the modern day island of Tresco, which at the time was known as Saint Nicholas. They had been given portions of the various islands that make up the Isles of Scilly. During the reign of King Henry the First, which ran from eleven hundred to eleven thirty five, the king granted those lands previously held by the monks and hermits, plus all the churches in their surrounding lands, to the Abbot of Tavistock. Then, in eleven ninety three, the pope at the time, Celestin, reasserted the land that the church held to the abbey. In that same period, the Earl of Cornwall, Reginald, also stated that any shipwrecks were also the property of the monks, unless they were entire ships or wales. That's wales, not the place the animal, Yes, not the place I was imagining that people could I'd miss hear that one just because of the context that we're talking about. Entire ships or whales would have monetary value. In their whole states. Now, all of this does not mean that the monks who lived on the isles of Silly had autonomy. There there were various secular land and titleholders who did things like demand taxes on the properties where the abbeys operated, and there were also men who governed the isles that were not related to the church, and some did not hold any property on the isles, but were given the title of governor over the island chain as an honorific In cases of property ownership, this often meant paying certain fees to retain that land and thus that power. In one particularly charming example, for a while, that fee was paid in puffins. I feel like this is the most charming. If you're imagining that they're going to a little puffin sanctuary where they're going to have long and happy lives, they're not. No. Uh. This is explained in a twenty ten paper by R. D. Penaleric titled Ancient and Early Medieval Coins from Cornwall and Silly. This paper notes that there's a drop off in coinage use in the area in the late medieval period, and it discusses the puffins this way. Quote markets operate well enough through barter and the dearth of Saxon coinage in Cornwall proves this. The later medieval payment of rent in puffins maybe of significance. Here. Margaret Midgley showed that on Silly payment in twelve ninety six to ninety seven consisted of three hundred puffin annually valued at six shillings eight pence. In thirteen thirty six to thirty seven, John de Ellett agreed to pay Sir Ralph Blanchemister one hundred and fifty puff owes for his land on Briar in Saint Martin's in default of which payment was lawful at the rate of one pence for three birds. Such payment may well date back to eleven when Reginald de Dunstanville was created Earl of Cornwall and silly because an annual cull of birds may have long existed in the islands, in spite of a lack of archaeological evidence to prove it. Similar payments in gulls are recorded in Cornwall from the late sixteenth century to seventeen fourteen, although then it reflected the Tudor predilection for gulls as well as puffins for the dinner table. Through all of this the Isles of Scilly were privately owned, but the end of that status came from Thomas Seymour, first Baron Seymour of Sudeley, who had inherited most of the estates and owned them. When King Edward the sixth reigned. Thomas was the brother of Jane Seymour, who was King Henry the Eighth's third wife, and that made him the uncle of King Edward the sixth, who took the throne in fifteen forty seven. When Henry the eighth died, Edward was only nine years old, so Thomas's Edward was made the young boy's chief counselor, while Thomas became Lord High Admiral. This did not please Thomas one bit, because he wanted the same level of power as his brother, or more. He would go on in the two years that followed to basically be jealous of anyone who was charged with advising the young king, and even considered kidnapping the king in the guise of securing his safety. None of his various efforts to expand his influence and power in regards to King Edward the sixth really worked, and instead it made him very unpopular with the people who were actually in charge. Coming up, we will talk about some of the scandals that defined Thomas Seymour's life and how they led to the Islands of Silly becoming the property of the crown. First, though, we will pause for a sponsor break. There is so much drama and intrigue to Thomas Seymour's story. For one, he married Catherine Parr, Henry the Eighth's widow, after he failed to secure a marriage to the thirteen year old Princess Elizabeth destined to become Elizabeth the First. When Catherine Parr died after giving birth in fifteen forty eight, there were rumors almost instantly that Elizabeth was going to become his wife, and it seems that Thomas Seymour himself circulated those rumors, or at least he encouraged them. He was also rumored to have killed Catherine with the intent to use her death as a means to secure money and power, and those Elizabeth rumors did not help his image in that regard. Thomas and his brother, who was officially recognized as the King's protector, argued constantly, and often those arguments happened in public. All of Thomas's various machinations and angling from more power eventually got him in very deep trouble. He was arrested for treason in January fifteen forty nine. Thirty three articles of treason were charged against him. This was a unique case and that he should have been tried before his peers, but the King's Privy Council had made arrangements to sidestep that process. A Bill of attainder was introduced in the House of Lords on February twenty fifth regarding what was to be done with Seymour, and then it passed the House of Commons. It was determined by vote on Seymour's accusations that quote the said offenses of the Lord Admiral for diverse causes were in the compass of high treason. That meant that with no one willing to defend him against those charges, and if the King approved, the Council could handle the matter as they saw fit. Eleven year old King Edward did approve, and on March twentieth Seymour was executed by beheading. And all of this is Germane to the Isles of Scilly, because when Seymour was executed, his significant landholdings on the islands passed into the ownership of the Duchy of Cornwall. The Duchy of Cornwall was established in thirteen thirty seven by Edward the third. He had wanted to set up an estate for his son and the heir to the throne, Prince Edward, and the charter that created the duchy also established that going forward the eldest son of the English monarch and heir to the throne would inherit the Duchy and would receive the income that the estate generates. That estate, which still exists today, is only part of the County of Cornwall, but in fifteen forty nine the Isles of Scilly became part of the Duchy. From there the Isles of Silly were leased to a series of governors who paid a yearly rental fee on the land. In sixteen oh four, for example, that annual fee was twenty pounds out published in eighteen fourteen by topographers and antiquarians Daniel and Samuel License, they note of the islands quote except what relates to their trading connections with the Phoenicians and Romans, and the circumstance of their having been occasionally appropriated by the latter as a place of banishment for state criminals. The first mention we find of the Silly Islands in history is in the tenth century, when they were subdued by King Ethelstan. After this we hear nothing of them till the time of the Civil War, when they became of considerable importance. So the English Civil Wars took place over the year sixteen forty two to sixteen fifty one, and they boiled down in the most basic sense to a conflict between Royalists and non Royalists, though there were multiple non Royalist groups involved coming from England, Ireland and Scotland. The seeds of the English Civil Wars really were planted some years earlier, with King Charles the First engaging in conflicts with Scotland and Ireland. Charles the First took the throne in sixteen twenty five, and at the end of the sixteen thirties he became embroiled in a religious battle with Scotland that became known as the Bishop's Wars. Scotland at this point was largely Presbyterian and had developed a political movement known as the Covenanters. The hierarchical structure of the Scottish Church placed bishops in the position of leadership and governance. While in terms of religious ideology Scotland's Presbyterian Church wasn't super different from the Anglican Church, the leadership, structure and specific rights in practice were quite different, and Charles the First wanted Scotland to adhere to the Anglican ways. The first implementation of this plan was the mandatory introduction of an Anglican prayer book in sixteen thirty seven in Scotland, which led to riots and people organizing to resist Anglicanization of Scotland's church. Charles was not particularly interested in hearing Scotland out on all this, and instead decided it was time for military actions, so he started marching on Scotland. But this was not the best planned offensive. There really wasn't money in the Royal coffers to pay for it, and the military wasn't especially well prepared, so this resulted in a peace treaty instead of combat. That treaty, known as the Pacification of Berwick, ended what came to be known as the First Bishop's War, and its terms included things like Scotland releasing its English prisoners and Charles agreeing to call a general assembly of the Church of Scotland so they could work out all their differences. So though this is called the First Bishop's War, there was no actual combat. Yeah, it's more like the First Bishop's heated discussion. Uh. But the peace over the matter did not last for even a year. Charles was really heated over this whole thing to begin with, and then he found out that Scotland was talking to France about it, so he decided that he had to invade Scotland. That's same money issue still existed. It wasn't like he had magically conjured a lot of extra income. So he called a meeting of Parliament, a governing body that he had dissolved by the way in sixteen twenty nine, and asked them to hash out a plan and get the funding arranged. But that did not go his way either. Once that matter was discussed and examined, Charles the First did not get the backing he had hoped for, so he kind of went rogue and he dissolved the parliament again and he mounted an attack on Scotland without support for most of England, and as you can guess, it went really poorly. Charles's troops were completely overpowered and Scotland managed to not only defend itself but also took control of Northumberland and Durham in northern ECAs. This Second Bishop's War left Charles the First in such dilemma that he summoned another Parliament in the spring of sixteen forty. He needed it to get money for what had escalated into an ongoing war with Scotland. This gathering, known as the Long Parliament, in contrast to the Short Parliament, where he didn't get his way and kind of stomped off, led to events that plunged England into a civil war. Charles was in constant conflict with Parliament, and when England also had to fight Ireland after the sixteen forty one Ulster Rebellion, there was not only a need for more money, but there were also arguments about who would lead the military action against Ireland. The Ulster Rebellion has come up a few times lately, so as a quick recap, Charles was sending so called English settlers to Ireland to shore up his support there, sometimes seizing land to do so. This led to attacks on English Protestants in the area in sixteen forty one as part of a larger offensive, and demand for the return of Catholic Land, as well as calls for Irish independence. With the growing financial needs of military actions that were catalyzed by Charles the First policies that were not especially popular with Parliament in the first place, things got really tense, particularly with the House of Commons. This was on top of ongoing issues with the King's various policies and behaviors since taking the throne in sixteen twenty five, and as sixteen forty one came to a close, politician John Pim compiled a detailed account of all of the things that he and several other politicians felt Charles had done wrong in his sixteen years on the throne. This document, called the Grand Remonstrance, was voted on by the House of Commons and was able to get through the vote with enough support to validate it, but it did not pass to the House of Lords. Instead, it was brought directly to Charles the First. He did not care for it, and he decided that it was treasonous. That led to the King entering the House of Commons on January fourth, sixteen forty two, to arrest Pim and four of his collaborators on charges of high treason. Believing that they were collaborating also with Scotland. Those men were William Strode, John Hampton, Denzil Hollis and Arthur Haselring. But the men were no longer at the House of Commons, and the House Speaker, William Lenthal, was questioned by the King as to their whereabouts. Lenthal did not give up the men, and his reply, which is often quoted, was, may it please your majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place, but as the House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here? I e? You're not the bossomy in this building. Charles had made a serious blunder. He had completely broken protocol and procedure by entering the House, and his inability to take those five men into custody also made him look weak. Then, as the year played out and Parliament made clear that they wanted no part of a war with Ireland, Charles ignored that he tried to go around them to create an army by decree. By the late summer, England was officially engaged in a civil war. So it was Charles the First and his Royalist supporters versus the Parliamentarians at home, the Covenanters of Scotland and the Confederates of Ireland. This set of conflicts is also known as the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. We're going to talk about how that played out after we hear from the sponsors to keep stuff you missed in history class going. Charles and the Royalists did not farewell in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, and they slowly gave up ground in England. Eventually they were sort of backed into the corner of the island of Great Britain, with Cornwall as their last hold. What the Royalists had in their favor at this point was the Royal Navy, which meant that Royalist forces could retreat to safety on the Isles of Scilly and still have a pretty good chance of defending themselves from there. Roughly one thousand troops occupied the Isles of Scilly as a safe harbor, making use of a castle on the island of Trusco as their base of operations. That castle had been built almost one hundred years earlier in the fifteen fifties when King Edward the sixth rained, and for a time it had been the main stronghold of the islands, though forty years later another castle was built on Saint Mary's called Star Castle, which then became the main fortification on the islands, and that also made the Trescoe Castle somewhat obsolete, but it was very important to the Royalists who took refuge there in sixteen forty eight. Though there were Royalists ensconced on the islands, Charles the first was not. He was captured by the Scottish Army in battle and then handed over to the parliamentarian forces led by Oliver Cromwell in sixteen forty seven. He was held in various locations, then escaped and was recaptured in sixteen forty nine. He faced a convoluted series of trials in which there were arguments about exactly what to charge him with. The idea of trying a king for treason had some fundamental problems, particularly for people who believed in the idea that God granted monarchs their power, but he was ultimately charged with treason based on the accusation that he had used his power to benefit himself at the cost of his people. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. His execution by beheading was carried out on January thirtieth, sixteen five forty nine. At that point, Prince Charles, who was already staying on the Isles of Scilly, became ruler in the eyes of the Royalists. The parliamentarians, of course, rejected the monarchy and established the Commonwealth of England. But the important part in regards to the Isles of Scilly was that the governor of the islands was John Granville, first Earl of Bath, and he was a Royalist who fortified the islands as a safe haven for Charles the second. Grenville also welcomed privateers willing to work for the monarchy, and with them, combined with the remaining naval forces that the Royalists commanded, he was able to make a lot of trouble for trade in the surrounding waters. Granville was consistently able to disrupt trade by launching ships from the islands to intercept ships that were sanctioned by Parliament. That was a significant issue the trade that came through the Western Approaches, those are the waters to the immediate west of Britain and Ireland. It was vital to the English economy in disrupting it. The Royalists were able to really hurt their opponents. Enter the Netherlands, the Dutch had been engaged in their own lengthy conflict, the Eighty Years War, with Spain. It was over, among other things, Dutch independence. The Eighty Years War had only just ended in sixteen forty eight with the Piece of Munster, in which Spain recognized the Netherlands as its own independent nation, and with its independence, the Netherlands, long an ally of England, had to choose a side in England's civil war. Believing the Parliamentarians had the upper hand. That's where the Dutch allied themselves. As part of that alignment, the Netherlands sent its own naval resources to assist the Parliamentarians. That meant that the Dutch also suffered at the hands of the fleet that launched ships from the Isles of Scilly. Several Dutch vessels were seized in this ongoing conflict, and that is why in early sixteen fifty one, the Dutch sent a dozen ships to the Isles of Scilly under the command of Admiral Martin Trump, who had fought in the Eighty Years War and had an excellent reputation as a naval commander. His mission was to demand reparations from the Royalists. The Netherlands had suffered significant losses in those Royalist raids of Dutch ships, and they wanted their ships and their cargo back. But the Royalists didn't really even acknowledge this demand, and so Admiral Trump declared war on the Isles of Scilly. It's a bit unclear whether he actually had the authority to make such a declaration, but he did it just the same. This also has the complication of him declaring war on an entity that was not a nation or an independent territory. But a few months after the Dutch demand and war declaration, the Parliamentarians sent to Admiral Robert Blake in Sir George Ayscue to capture the islands of Silly once and for all. The Parliamentarians were able to gain control of Tresco and Bryer, but Granville was dug in on Saint Mary's. Blake and Ayscue fortified the islands they held and mounted their offensive. Soon they also held Saint Mary's and the Royalist occupation of the Isles of Scilly was over. By this time, Charles the Second was already gone. He had left the country well before any of these events in the sixteen forties, Blake and Ayscue handed the Isles of Scilly over to Parliament, and a garrison of eight hundred Parliamentarian soldiers occupied the isles. The Dutch, seeing that things were over, sailed for home. So conflict done sort of, And now we're jumping to three hundred and thirty five years later on April seventeenth, nineteen eighty six, when Dutch ambassador Junkier Heydekoper traveled to the Isles of Scilly to formally end that war. That ceremonial visit included the presentation of an old fashioned calligraphy scroll which declared the war officially terminated. And this entire event was catalyzed by a man named Roy Duncan. Roy was a local historian who had served in leadership positions on the Isles of Scilly since the age of twenty one. When he was first elected to the Council of the Isles in nineteen eighty five, Duncan was researching the events of the English Civil Wars as they related to the Isles of Scilly, and he decided to hunt down information on the local story that the islands were still at war with the Netherlands. There were apparently jokes on the islands that Dutch tourists could technically be taken prisoner and that the Netherlands could attack at any time. Duncan reached out to the Dutch embassy for an assist, but that did not lead to the unearthing of any kind of resolution. It turned out that while Trump had declared war, he never followed up to file any sort of treaty paperwork. After the Parliamentarian forces took control of the islands, and once all of this was verified, plans were made to rectify the situation and end the conflict, which, unlike most wars, involved no actual combat whatsoever and no lives lost. In a statement to the press during the lead up to the ceremony, Roy Duncan said, quote, it's all fairly lighthearted and good fun, but it's all factual. Dutch holidaymakers are amazed to learn they are officially at war with us. During his visit to the islands, Ambassador Heydekoper joked in a statement, quote, I am extremely pleased to be able to visit the islands and tell the people who live here that the war is finally over. It must have been awful to know we could have attacked at any moment. While the end of the war didn't materially impact anyone in either of the countries, it did get a decent amount of press, which no doubt bolstered the Isles of Scilly's tourism industry. Today, the Isles of Silly remain part of the Duchy of Cornwall, and they are still primarily a tourist destination, with one hundred thousand people visiting annually. According to the Duchy of Cornwall's website, Tourism is the source of employment for seventy percent of the population of the Isles of Scilly, and it accounts for eighty five percent of a local economy. Flowers make up a significant part of the remaining fifteen percent of the economy, since the island's mild climate compared to the rest of England allows for longer growing seasons. And to end this story with yet another interesting form of rent payment, the Isles of Silly Wildlife Trust, which protects the wildlife of the islands, pays rent to the Duchy of Cornwall, and that rent costs one daffodil per year. Oh Isles of Scilly, Okay, And then I have also some sort of fun listener mail that's sort of fun. It's fun. Uh. This is from our listener Erica, who writes, Hi, Tracy and Holly. I listened to your podcast on the history of Christmas decor and the behind the scenes you had asked if anyone had any information about the supposed German pickle ornaments. While I don't have any actual info on it, I do have fun memories of them. In high school and college, I worked at Peer one Imports. Every Christmas. We would get in glass pickle ornaments to sell, and they did come with a little tag saying they were a German tradition. My coworkers and I made our own tradition with the pickles who found them first? When our Christmas stock came in in September. Because it's retail, we'd get boxes of ornaments to open and hang up for sale. The only label on the boxes for the ornaments was just glass ornaments, so we never knew what would be in each box. This is where the pickle ornaments came in. Whoever randomly opened the box containing them was deemed the winner when they got to loudly shout I got the pickles. No one actually ever won anything except the bragging rights to having found the pickles. It's a fun memory that I think about when I decorate my Christmas tree, because I had finally bought myself a pickle ornament the last Christmas I worked at Peer Women. My children laugh at the pickle each year, but we don't do the tradition of getting an extra present if they find it. For my pet tax I've included a photo of my son's fish that he got this past Christmas, which he named dragon Bite. I have horrible allergies to pet danders, so a fish made the perfect pet. My son loves his fish, and it's so wonderful to see him take ownership of his pet. Thank you for all the wonderful podcast episodes. Eric m Okay. Dragon Bite is a very beautiful beta. I have a soft spot for betas. I love them very much. I do not keep them um because we have kiddies and one of our cats, who is no longer with us, used to terrorized the fish by running full tilt like a linebacker into the tank and just slamming against it, and we're goodness fretting them all out, so we don't do that. But Erica, thank you for this because it enables me one to share a funny version. I love the idea of retail making a fun version of the pickle game. But two, we have gotten a lot of listener mail about the pickles, many from people who grew up in Germany or had parents that did. And I'm actually surprised at the split that there are a lot of them who are like, no, we didn't. I don't know what the pickle thing is. That's clearly made up by Americans. But there were some that were like, oh, yeah, my grand my German grandmother's always done that. So that makes me think it might be hyper regional. Yeah, I was gonna say a very regional thing, like it might be a very small pocket of somewhere in Germany. That. Yeah, some person from the US visited once and said, I can market this, make a lot of pickle ornaments. It's my guess. Anyway. I love it all. Send me your fish pictures, send me your plant picture, send me your puppet. Anything joyous. We need it. Uh. You can write to us with that, your pickle ornament commentary, or whatever else you'd like to at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also subscribe to the podcast. It's just as easy as finding a pickle on a tree, probably easier. You need that on the iHeartRadio app, or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.