Part 1 : How The History of England Podcast members decided once and for all, who was The “Greatest Ruler of England”?

Even if you are not a true-born red blooded Englishman or Englishwoman or other, you no doubt are aware the you need to know more about the history of the nation that is the envy of the rest of the world; the nation that is packed with the greatest people on earth, those beautiful islands of humble, modest, unassuming folk, not given to hyperbole, over-statement or self aggrandising. In short if you are of the species Homo Sapiens then the History of England podcast is for you.

The creator and narrator of this wonderful piece of historical endeavor is David Crowther, a leading light of the independent podcaster and a genuinely all round decent bloke, with a wonderful sense of humour and a dedication to his audience that is admirable and heartwarming. It’s still in progress, we’ve just come to the restoration of the monarchy with Charles II, and there is so much more to cover, I can’t wait.

The History of England is inexorably tied to the monarchy and rulers of this green and pleasant land, and the narrative of the podcast very much covers the lives of those monarchs and rulers, as they have driven the political direction of the nation across the centuries. These people themselves have been varied in character, length of reign, motivation, interests, so the History of England podcast members decided to have a vote on who was the “greatest” of the English rulers?

Three problems arise, from this decision, the first is what defines “greatest”? We decided to avoid the whole issue on that and just have some fun by going with whatever people felt at the time about the individual. Some rulers were voted for on their achievements, their policies, some on their wit, some on their looks, their dress-sense, their creation of “spin” and propaganda to support their legitimacy and dynasty. Anything really, with enough people voting, it all averages out after all.

Second issue, was define “English ruler”. For those of you who are not English and even for some English people, this is not as straightforward as it might seem. Firstly, and most importantly, England is not the same as Britain or the United Kingdom or the British Isles. See this 20 second explanation of the different geographical and political divisions of the British Isles.

Alfred the Great (who would not have won the Great British Bake Off), was never King of England, though he did proclaim himself “King of the English”, setting out his stall that it was his intention to unite the lands under one monarch, but he never lived to fulfill that dream. That was left to his grandson Aethalstan who is now viewed as the first King of England. He united many kingdoms of Britain under his rule in 925 AD to form roughly what is considered England today. Then we have issues like the contested monarchies of Matilda and Stephen. We have uncrowned monarchs like Lady Jane Grey and Edward VI. We have the issues of dual monarchies like James I (England) & VI (Scotland), then we have the Commonwealth and the Protectorate under the Cromwells. We have the double monarchies of William III and Mary II (do we vote for both together or as individuals?). We have the issue of the Union of England and Scotland which gives rise to the United Kingdom, and finally we have the issue of the rise of the House of Commons and the role of the Prime Minister. Post 1700 it was elected politicians who become the de facto “rulers” of the United Kingdom (not England) , as the monarchy veered away from the more absolutist tendencies of the Stuarts to the constitutional monarchs of the Hanovers, Saxe-Coburgs/ Windsors.

To solve this conundrum, we agreed in the end, well, I (in the spirit of absolutists) decided, that any monarch or ruler of the United Kingdom was by default the Ruler of England. I also decided that we would define “ruler” as actually “Head of State” which got rid of all the Prime Minsters but left in the Cromwells. I also decided that all monarchs proclaimed by parliament or those by the recognized rights of hereditary at the time would also be included, whether they were crowned or not, that then was the likes of Lady Jane Grey and Edward VI included. So we eventually arrived at a total of 58 rulers, from which we would choose the “greatest”.

Third issue was, how to run the competition? As I was the quiz master on this I went for a standard, world-cup approach with pools of monarchs, each from which we would vote 2 to go through to a head-to-head contest. This would whittle the contestants down to 32 individuals from the initial 58 contestants. From then on we randomly allocated monarchs in head-to-heads until we got to our winner. There was no official seeding, but I was careful to try to not have the “big hitters” come up against each other in the early rounds. We didn’t want Edward III and Henry II knocking seven bells out of each other in Round 1, when they are both generally considered key monarchs in the history of England.

So there we were we had our contest or tournament as we called it, set up ready to go. In the end it took nearly two months of voting, discussions, the occasional argument, but lots of good banter and humour along the way before we came to the final definitive answer to the question: Who was England’s Greatest Ruler?

In Part 2 we will continue with how the voting went in Round 1 and who went through to Round 2. In Part 3 we will look at the final run in to the Grand Finale.

Don’t forget to check out The History of England Podcast!

Cheers