Late-Night Talk. Sean Sullivan. A Historian Explains How Words Like Nation Fueled The English Civil Wars

Sean Sullivan, welcome to PhD Lounge and it's great to hearing you again because it's been a while, because how long did how, when was the time did you move back to the States? I've been back in the States since about the start of September of 2025, so I don't know where the months have gone, but they've somehow gone somewhere and here I am, still back in the good old US of A. Oh my. But, but it feels like it's been quite, quite a while since the last time we had a chat and we were talking about me and Ella and other PhD students that most of us have finished now or about to finish. And we were talking about, oh, how's, how's Sean? How is he? Is he? Well, I haven't been in contact with him since, since he left, but trying to trying to keep up the pace and trying, trying to talk about it. So, but now here we are at in a podcast format and you've been, we've been in talks and you've passed the Viber, didn't you? No, I've not passed yet, yet I have submitted. Few. Weeks ago, but Viva won't be until sometime in summer. That remains to be seen with speaking with my advisors who will eventually get back from Easter break I'm sure. Yeah, not it's way. Too long over there in the UK. I I don't understand how it's so long compared to the states. I went to a Catholic undergrad and we got Holy Thursday and the Monday after Easter off and then was right back to work. I don't know how anyone gets anything done in the UK. I don't know. It's for it seems strange for us who are not accustomed to the UK educational system, because now they have this, some of them have returned to the office and but still there is, there is this week which is to to come to an end. And next week it will be varsity, of course. So always something other than education to do in a British educational establishment. Well, but how was how was the whole process, man? How was the the, the, the the submission? You had lots of stress over the last over the last three months, then to for for each submission I'd assume. I mean, I've had lots of stress since like, middle school. Otherwise, you know, dissertation actually went fairly well. I made contact with an editor here in the States. Shout out to Jennifer. And you know, for a good amount of money I was able to pay her for a professional edit, you know, cleaning up all the sources, the citations, which is what I really needed because I am very lazy when it comes to citations in the course of my writing. It's just there's a book and there's a page number and I'll fix it later and later never comes. So anyway, I got that done, which helped a lot with the editing, and then was really a matter of going through compiling, putting everything together, realizing I had copied my 4th chapter into the master document twice, which is why it ended up being 30,000 words longer. And I'm really glad I caught that before I submitted it. Wow, so. I was like, I have a few 100 words over, but I'm not 17,000 words over. There's still a way that could that could possibly be right? Yeah. So good thing I went through and caught that. And otherwise, I'd say the submission process actually went pretty smoothly. It's really just a matter of wait and see now and basically just prepare, you know, go through every question I can possibly imagine for the Viva only to have questions I won't imagine be thrown at me, which is always fun. Yeah, I think there's like, it's feels like this boogeyman thing where we all fear the Viva and we come up to the stress of the submission. And you seem, you seem to talk about the, the X rods. You, you had to, well, in this case, your copywriter had to wipe out in order to fit the 100. Ki had only 10,000. And when I asked Stephen to, to had some help, he, he miscalculated all the words because he included the, the footnotes and the acknowledgments and the, and the summary, the FISA summary itself. So I had to, I had to double check that and say, no, this is, I think he miscalculated this and it will only 10K left. So I had only one month to wipe everything. And I'm glad that I've, I had that month only to Polish everything I could. I had my girlfriend as well to help me out with that. So I really thank her on that on that process and everything went smooth sailing to towards Survivor. Yeah, I it, it's definitely interesting when you step out into the broader academic world, you know, it can be easy because we both do history to kind of take for granted that things are done a certain way. And then, you know, like, I've ended up speaking with a lot of people who worked more for the sciences, social sciences, hard sciences when it came to copy edit. And you don't quite appreciate the different standards between the disciplines until it's suddenly like, OK, well, this is how something's supposed to be formatted and done appropriately. And you're like, no, no, no, no, no. This is how the department wants it. This is how we do it. And then you look at the sizes and you see what they do. And you're like, you people are insane. Why would you ever write something like this? You know, I mean, in citation style is a great example of that. You know, in the humanities, we use, you know, here in the States, we have Chicago to Arabian MHRA, which is fairly similar over in the UK. And that's really great if you've got footnotes at the bottom of a page when you're flipping through a book and you want to quickly see the where someone getting their data from. Yeah. And then you have the sciences using, you know, stuff like APA or any of the other particular styles for the sciences. And it's just like shove everything in the back and people will look through it at some point and figure it out. Which, you know, causes all the problems that the, yeah, excuse me, that the sciences have at the moment with verifying data. But, you know, it's just different disciplines ultimately go about things like citation and style in very different ways. And when you get too much in the bubble, you can kind of lose track of that. So it's, it's good to get out there, talk with the editors and see how other people do stuff and remind yourself, oh, right. You know, academia is a much broader discipline than I've been pigeonholed into over the last couple of years. Yeah, I think it is. It is indeed a, a broader world and it's, it's also a matter of fact to keep updated to anything that comes. I know now there's been this crisis of teachers and I assume in the, in the United States as well, they're going into a crisis of redundancies. At least I have known about here as well with the, with the teachers. And so it's just like keeping updating. And I say, Oh my gosh, we're going to lose the jobs. What we're going to do the whole, the whole thing is the whole academic world is a mess at them right now. So. I mean, there's always been a mess in some way or another. It's just a matter of who bears the brunt of cleaning up that mess, which just happens to be more and more people. Yeah, that's hard for me. More people than they they haven't even less the budget to to have to have they don't they have less to come up with a budget in order to hire students, but it's it's always health and sciences they have the higher the higher budget threshold, which to some point. Yeah, everyone's getting old and sick. Yeah, everyone's getting old. An entire generation of baby boomers to take care of. It's the only people that are getting any jobs. The people left to take care of them. Yeah. But it's shifting. This is the way it is. It's the way no one's going to write the history of the baby boomers. But, you know, we'll be sure as hell we'll throw all of our health care at them. And I, I sound like such an entitled millennial. But yeah, that's, that's kind of the way it is, especially here in the States. It's like, you know, the recent jobs numbers for like the last year, the only sector that's grown has been healthcare and Hospice, which is not exactly a good sign if you're looking for a young, vibrant country. Oh yeah, take a take a look at if someone will have a course in as a mortician. Oh. I've, I've, I've been getting some gig work at a Funeral Home recently, so, you know, I am considering it. You did How so? Yeah. You know, just some work as a dressman, you know, opening the door. Hi. How are you? Sorry for your loss. All that stuff. OK. But you know, if I can get over my apprehension towards squishy things, I could. You know, mortician's not the worst job I could go into. Oh, so was that the job interview you had? You told me you would have. No, that was for an adjunct position at a local university, which, you know, part of the course. They turned me down. Everyone so far has, but that's just the state of the job market. It's even worse than the dating market, which is itself disheartening. How was the interview then? Oh, the interview was fine, except for the fact that one of the people I was interviewing, her camera was like facing really high, so I could only see her forehead and I didn't have the wherewithal to ask her to move it 'cause I thought that would be rather rude. So yeah, I mean, I went, well, you know, I can read people's voices fairly well, I like to think. But yeah, I know that was that. Did they ask anything like something complex or out of the blue? I'll just the generic questions or tell me about yourself, what kind, What publications did you have so far Generic. Yeah, that was that was mostly generic stuff. There was another position for a high school I had a screening interview for recently. They asked me an interesting question of, you know, what were the two books that have most influenced you over the course of your life? Which I I wasn't ready for that one. So I gave him a fiction and a non fiction entry. Fiction was Huxley's Brave New World, which you know, brought to me by the power of Iron Maiden because when you write songs about literature, it gets people to read, especially when you're an impressionable middle schooler. And non fiction was Robert Darnton's the forbidden bestsellers of pre revolutionary France. Something like that. It's the particular title, a very interesting book looking at the process of censorship publication, how ideas trickle down into public consciousness, which is an idea that I'm generally very interested in. You know, it's a book I first learned about an undergrad from an enthusiastic professor and I sense read it on my own. It's proven very influential. So that that would be an interesting question. Maybe it's just a a way to of swerving the initial question of say, tell me about yourself and then what what kind of books do you like? And then so. But the books that I like are ones I can put on a bookshelf and not read. That's why I have an addiction to buying stuff at second hand book shops that my friends are probably planning an intervention for me on at some point. Because I just keep buying them and the piles just keep growing and growing and growing. I'd say staring at several bookshelves of old literature right now that I mostly have not read. So does that do you also count with the hats you have so far? Well, I mean, hats are a little more difficult. You know, they, they just get expensive used books. I can get like 5 for the price of four at a thrift shop. A good hat is that that's an investment. Yeah, so. That's long term money storage the. Hats. How so? How many hats do you have so far? Currently have 4, two I wear pretty regularly, one for special occasions and one that is so utterly ostentatious that I don't even know when I'd wear it. Maybe if I go down to Mardi Gras New Orleans, though to that point I probably have to like buy a muscle shirt and, you know, probably some other very revealing clothing if I'm ever going to get get away with that one. But that's a story for another day when I'm really drunk. And then you just get to know at some some of the dances that are like passing by and wearing the hats and probably some necklaces around around your neck. Oh yeah, jump in, shake that pelvis, you know, prove that going to the gym and actually works out in the long run so. You've been hitting the gym lately then? Oh yeah, you gotta find something to do in in between job rejections. Yeah. How did you how did you feel then? And physically I I feel quite well, probably better than I have in several years. Though pumping myself full of vitamin D is also probably helpful. I was diagnosed with a deficiency in that a couple of years ago, which would explain the terrible depression I had when I was overdoing my PHDI thought it was just the stress and was like, no, your body's actually like withering away. So you know that helps. Oh well, so glad that everything is going well despite the job rejections, which I'm also being rejected as well in some some of the jobs I still keep active in terms of seeking jobs. I mean, tomorrow I'm going to the careers wills department with my not with my CV because they are they already have and they will help me and my girlfriend as well to seek a job in the UK and wills as well. But I think it's mostly in the UK overall. And well, you didn't get to to witness, but the the Public Library is now by my flat. So yeah. So they the the building that was opposite to Taco Bell in McDonald's, they were with the scaffolding and all that they converted into the Public Library. So we do not have to go to the Civic Council anymore. And so I think it's very accessible and they, there's, it's really beautiful. They have three stores. Obviously the, the upper store is for the staff, the 2nd floor, they have a conference room and they have, you know, those old school disc readers with an 80s and 90s look alike computer. So they have one of those for, for, for the, for archival work. And then just the, the ground floor is where the careers wills department is, where you can pay your council tax. There's also a kids section, children's section for, for children to read the books and also have, have some fun. And then basically that's basically it. They have the reception. It's it's really looking good, really looking great. So if it's just have some time to research the Welsh name called Estorfa, then also just saying civic Council library and then you'll be able to see it and it looks, it looks pretty, that's all. The phones are moved out of that old building. That's good. I think it's an eyesore, so the less people have to go into that, the better. I was curious about what's going to happen to the to the City Council library. Oh, everything is empty. They just they will do something there soon with the council tax paying money, but we don't know yet. I mean, hopefully they just tear it down. I mean, it, it it's just such it that that that old council is just so ugly like it. It's the epitome of, you know, post war British throw some concrete and fix it later and later never came. It is it, it, it looks like an oversized World War 2 bunker that's fallen on hard times. You have to really fall on hard times if you're a World War 2 bunker. Well, I don't know. You're already made for hard times. Yeah, I don't know whoever, whoever's happened, whether it is reform, which is getting a lot of strength here in Wales and the UK overall and just I just received a letter from them a month ago and yesterday from the Labour Party. But politics aside, I don't really give a damn and just wanted to just give you a heads up on the update. Any and updates about that so? I mean, reform getting traction in Wales is probably the most interesting part of it all, but that's another story for another day. Yeah, it's another story, Sean. It's another story. So you told me you had you were doing your thesis on the English Civil Wars. But tell us about your, your academic backgrounds and why you decided to come to the UK and do a, a dissertation on it which you already submitted. And you just can you tell us about the whole process of it from the beginning till the end then? In the beginning. Wow. Well. God created the heavens and the earth, and then a whole bunch of stuff happened and then I was born. And that's pretty much how I view most of, you know, life. So basically I started my undergrad in 2014, that was in Worcester, just nearby to where I live. Worcester, MA did that and my master's, both in Worcester. During my undergrad, I was really more interested in history of sex and sexuality, its intersection with religion. I had a double major in theology for that purpose. When I got to my master's, I really just came down to resources weren't there at the school. I was out to do what I wanted to do, especially when it came to my master's thesis, and I gradually grew, gravitated to medieval and then early modern England. Both are something that was accessible. I mean, there's just so much written about it, especially in English, which is helpful, but also just out of curiosity. I was originally working on the early English Reformation and the role of Magna Carta within it, sort of the interplay between medieval law and the birth of the early modern state under Henry the Eighth and questions about law, legality of the Reformation. What is the intersection between law and faith, especially in a state that has a particular confession? That was my master's thesis, which I defended in January of 2020, graduated, you know, shortly thereafter, 2020, then proceeded to become 2020, which threw kind of a bit of a wrench to my plans. I was already, you know, planning on taking a year off from academia before moving into my PhD, which is always the plan. It's just that instead of a year off doing anything interesting, I was either stuck inside or working in a warehouse. So I worked in a warehouse then between the autumn of 2021 up to the spring of 2022, when I got into Swansea University for my doctoral studies, got over there and was then told that my master's thesis would not cut it for PhD work, which is fun. I'm really glad they didn't actually read my thesis before accepting me. Which is, you know, a question I will always have when it comes to Swansea's admissions department. But you know what? I'm not going to look at gift force in the mouth. At that point, I locked myself in a room for four days, pouring over whatever books I brought with me and thought, all right, well, you know, I've got to do something about early modern England, law, idea of the state. What am I going to do? And I gravitated towards the English Civil Wars thanks to some passages in a book by Janelle Greenberg. The ancient thing was like the something face of the ancient Constitution. I can't remember the title off the top of my head. Greenberg had done a lot of work on the nature of the early modern state and ideas of statecraft, and I started to gravitate towards the idea of early modern national identity. And how can we understand that? How do we interpret what early modern people are saying about how they relate to the state, their country, the land that they're in, their fellow people, and really the question of nationalism, Nationalism, and yeah, excuse me. Nationalism itself is, of course, a contentious idea within academic circles because you have a very strong orthodoxy that's emerged in the last 40 odd years thanks to the work of Benedict Anderson, Eric Hobbsbaum, Ernst Gellner or Eric Ernst Gellner. Ernst Gellner to a lesser degree, which is focused on this idea that nationalism is a strictly modern phenomenon that only emerges in the late 18th century in the United States and in France. And that expands outward depending on the whole variety of factors that you don't have prior to that period in time. I personally disagree with that assessment because I think it puts too much of an onus on the mass interaction with politics of nationalism and not the actual feeling of national identity itself. The fact that Anderson and Hobbsbaum are both working within a Marxist lens to a certain point also makes me reticent because I feel like they're just kind of cordoning off one section of history to tell their story as long as it conforms to a greater Marxist orthodoxy, which I'm never a fan of. So I gradually took that and went into early modern England and the civil wars in particular, because it's a period where you have a lot of big questions being raised about what is England? What is the nature of the English state? What is the nature of English religion? How do these forces interplay with one another? What is the role of the individual with regard to either of these pillars of existence as it is for most people in the early modern period? And after about a year of kind of spinning my tires trying to really come up with how it's going to approach this topic, I decided to do what I do best. And that is to nitpick what people say without any chance for them to actually respond because they're dead. I mean, that's what historians love to do. So I settled on the idea of the the word nation, the word people, the word country. Let's take these ideas. Let's look at how different important people and unimportant people of all stripes in the civil wars are using these terms. Let's really get into the granular level of what they write and what they say when they use these terms. Who are they referring to? What are they talking about? How does their idea differ from someone else's idea? So I really honed in on this idea of political language was first sort of built by JGA Pocock, later reiterated by some of his disciples or admirers like Mark Goldie. This idea that language is like a toolbox and different words have different meanings and you can apply those words in different ways. Well then, if we take that, we apply it to these 3 words which all have this emphasis on group identity, group mentality. What does that tell us about how the different factions and sides and writers of the civil wars are all thinking about the same concept, but in very different ways? So the thrust of my dissertation was really asking the question, can we explain to a certain degree why England fell into civil war by looking at the differing semantics of these words and how people use them? And does this, in part explain why the crises that led to war or couldn't be solved without conflict? And so that's basically how I spent the last two years, writing that up amid sojourns back to the States and one to Europe and traveling around Britain where I could. And yeah, so that's now submitted and I anxiously await the vivo with trepidation. Oh my God, it's it is interesting how language is used and it's also depends how these how they spoke and we all what we can grasp of it is the the the present day. And when we see the historians, the politicians and whoever who has a degree of enthusiasm to seek out historical books and trying to look for what do they mean by this? And it also it also differentiates from 17th century, I'd, I'd assume it's where the the English civil wars have had begun and to to the present day. I see what we can say. What is the sense of Britishness? What is Britain, What is England? How do you how people feel about being, as we said about we talked about this long time ago about what did you mean by being a royalist? What you mean by being a parliamentarian? Why'd you follow this? Why'd you follow that? What is in your feel? What is your feeling and how you portray that out loud? And, and what is semantically, what do you semantically mean by that? It is. I mean, there's you think? Yeah, there's an important distinction in your question. Are you talking about British identity or are you talking about English identity? And yeah, this is, you know, we're both not, you know, native Britain. So it's easy for us to make this mistake. But like, that is an important question because English and British aren't synonymous terms at this time. They often are treated that way now, but they weren't at the time. In fact, I specifically focus on England really in the dissertation because Scotland and Ireland and to a degree Wales, they each have their own questions and issues that are being raised during this very turbulent time. And I wanted to stick with England itself because it's really the epicenter of this broader Stuart dominion that exists in 17th century Britain. When it comes to particularly British identity, I'd of course, you know, refer to you to Linda Collie, her work on, you know, British national identity in the 18th centuries. Of course, you know, kind of the gold standard, you know, even among among revisions that have happened over the last couple of years when it comes to English identity itself. That's what makes the civil wars interesting to me is because it's a fundamental point where you're not. The civil wars are not like prior civil wars in a very technical sense that England has, whether it's the anarchy between Empress Matilda and King Stephen or the Wars of the Roses, where you have conflicts that are fought over who has the rightful claim to the throne. This person, OK, we're going to fight the guy currently on the throne to give you the throne. That's not what the English Civil Wars are. They're about important questions of one religion because you are now into the well into the Reformation. You have a Protestant England that is itself divided between your high church Episcopal structure and your low church Puritans. And then you have, you know, other scattered denominations that have a chance to, you know, rise up and define themselves in the wake of the English Civil Wars. The Quakers are the most notable, of course, and also questions of state. You're moving outside the traditional medieval understanding of what the state. I mean, really, you have a state as a concept, really in the early modern period, how you want to define a medieval state versus a realm or just a Kingdom, that that's a whole other semantic question. But the question of what are the royal prerogatives? What can the king do? What can he not do? What can Parliament do? What can Parliament not do? Who can be a part of Parliament? Parliament's franchise expands significantly in the early 17th century compared to what it was. You have a whole new group of professional people who've risen up the ranks to a certain degree. I mean, many of them are still coming from the lower Gentry, but lower Gentry up to, you know, the heights of the aristocracy. That's quite a jump. Yeah. And they're all asking the question of, OK, who are we as Englishmen? You know, if you're an English, you're well educated Englishmen in 1640, you're looking at the rest of Europe, which is at that time embroiled in constant war. The 30 years war happening in modern day Germany is, of course, the prime example. OK, well, who are we as Englishmen? Well, we're Protestant. Well, what kind of Protestant are we? Because, you know, I may be to devout, churchgoing Episcopalian, but they're all those Puritans out in the countryside and they think very differently than I do. Well, I may support the king, but I don't really support the King's policies. I don't like the fact that he caused a war with Scotland that caused Scotland to invade England, of which Charles the 1st is the king of both. So that's fun. How do I support the king? If the king does this, is that within his power to do, you know, through Charles's personal rule in the 1630s? Do I support things like ship money that are taxes and all, but name, because that's just what the royal prerogative is? Do I support the king dragging up all these old medieval laws that haven't been used in 200 years to suddenly support himself without calling a parliament like he's always done? These are important questions in the minds of Englishmen in the 1640s. And when you gradually have these spiraling crises that happen, starting with the bishops wars and going thereafter, it begs the question of, you know, what are we going to do and how should we do it? And suddenly, if you're thinking, oh, well, you know, we have to, you know, defend the King's prerogatives because Parliament is, you know, going after them or they're infringing on what the king can do. Is that within Parliament's power to do? Is that the English way? Is that what we've always done? Or is that what we did back hundreds of years ago? Has the king usurped our prerogatives or are we imposing on the king? You know, these are questions that fascinate me and the kind of what my dissertation spiraled out of. So in that case, all of these skirmishes, politics, it mostly political politics, political and religious, religious skirmishes around who who I follow, who I what I do feel. I don't I disagree with what Charles the 1st is doing for England. Also for Scotland too I would assume. And Ireland. And Ireland too, but. Ireland, Ireland's a whole basket case during this period. They're they're, they're rough. And so he's he's taking all the tax paying money to to hit to him, not just to himself, but also to the royal family and us. We just getting like slim to none, which is barely survive for us to survive. And just bear in mind, so you said on the 17th century, at around that time there was a great fire of London as well, right? Well, yeah, that's going to be in 1666. Yeah, right around that. It was around that. It was close around that time. After the Civil War, so into Charles the Second Restoration. So then if that's would be the case, then a solution would go, let's, let's get into war, even though it's would, wouldn't be the the best solution of all because lots of casualties have happened. But they found a way of we need to reclaim what is right, right to us in their own, in their own sense. And it's all like, OK, let's provoke a war then. Well, it becomes a solution really, because neither side can trust one another. Conrad Russell, you know, really makes this point emphatically in one of his major works is that by the end of the winter of 1641, and especially with Charles the First's famous storming of the House of Commons, neither side trusts the other to act in good faith and to not kill the other if given the choice. So Charles, of course, flees London. He, you know, goes to Oxford, Oxford, and he sets up a second court there. The Commons, of course, remains in London. And it's, you know, one of Charles's great blunders is abandoning London to Parliament because he loses access to, you know, much of the treasury and to the fleet. But it really comes down to a question of neither side trusts one another and how are you going to fix this? Much of 1642 becomes this whole process of negotiation and arbitration and trying to come to an accord of some kind. But both, you know, Parliament at that point really led by John Pym and of course the Royalist Party that emerges in 1641 and 1642 out of frustration with Parliament and fear that Parliament is attacking the King's just prerogatives and of course the Episcopal establishment. Neither one of them is working with the same goal in mind. Parliament sees Charles as untrustworthy and wants to further try and rein in his power and to otherwise make him work alongside them in a more of a power sharing agreement. Charles does not trust Parliament to not kill him, as they'd basically forced him to kill one of his best friends in the Earl of Strafford through an bill of attainder, which Charles himself feels very guilty for, and likewise doesn't think that they're acting in the best interest of the realm in terms of faith, because Parliament or the Parliamentarian party becomes increasingly beholden to its Puritan wing. And also, can they necessarily be trusted to not go after the king personally or his family there, You know, riots for breaking out in London in late 1641? Charles believes to a certain degree that these are being riled up by a malignant faction within Parliament. And the same way that Parliament thinks that there's a malignant faction of advisors around the king, neither side really wants to attack each other directly, especially Parliament attacking the king. You don't attack the king directly in this time period, at least not until the end of the civil wars, but both. Basically, imagine that there's this grand conspiracy to destroy England in some way or another, and that the other side is the one that's really behind it. And it's this inability to garner trust and an inability to work together that ultimately leads to the full breakdown in communication that leads to civil war by the end of 1642. What was that conspiracy then? Well, it really depends on who you ask at the time. Catholics are of course scapegoated everywhere because of course they are. This is 17th century England among, you know, among a lot of the Parliamentarians, the people who gravitate to the parliamentarian 'cause it's the belief that there is this group of ministers around the king, which is, you know, manifested in the like of the Earl of Strafford, who had been the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland of William Laud, who's the Archbishop of Canterbury. And who'd been enacting a lot of these reforms that were perceived as making the Church of England more like the Catholic Church or preparing to reunite with the Catholic Church, which is of course, a non starter for Protestants. William Finch, who was the speaker of the House of Commons, who is believed to have enriched himself at the expense of the state or to have otherwise been corrupt and basically believe that all the people around the king, his Charles's wife, Henrietta Maria, of course, a French Catholic. So the worst possible thing you can be in England in 1640. You know, they all get caught up in this belief that they're all conspiring around the king and making him do all of these things, which is just kind of the what you do at the time. Again, you don't attack the person with the king, you attack everyone around the king. To the royalists in Parliament, you have a malignant faction who are believed to be trying to usurp the constitution of the realm, implement religious reforms that are not theologically justified, basically Puritanism that are driven by the lower sorts of society who are trying to upend the social order. And that they're all gathered around these particular people, in parlance, John Pym, John Hampden, all the people that Charles tried to arrest famously in his March in the Commons, They're all trying to basically overthrow the ancient constitution of the realm. And so therefore, they're the malignant faction. And the more the two sides separate and the more these factions develop over 1641 and into 1642, the more entrenched this belief ultimately becomes, at least for the people who are, you know, willing to actually go to war and fight, which most Englishmen in 1642 and into 1643 really don't want to do. England does not have an appetite for war, civil or otherwise. In the first half of the 17th century. They were famously pretty much one of the worst military powers in Europe. In the first half of the 17th century, people, you know, foreigners commented, you know, they had forgotten how to fight war because they had been at peace for so long, which you know, if you're if you're an enjoyer of peace, this is great. If you're a militant Protestant who wants to go and help the Protestant forces in the 30 years War on the continent, that's not great. And it's especially not great if you're Charles the 1st and you end up provoking a massive rebellion in Scotland, where you have a lot of people who served as mercenaries in the 30 Years War suddenly rising up against you. And you don't have any experienced soldiers whatsoever to actually fight them with, or any weapons or any cannons or really anything like they were trying to get old long bows to. You said that the bishops wore. It was a mess. So everything, everyone who were involved in this, they, a few of them or probably the majority of them were, were untrained. They didn't have any military skills and so they were basically cannon father for both the royalists and the parliamentarians. Yeah, definitely. At first you don't have a lot of trained soldiers in England. England doesn't have a standing army during this period, which is in a large part why despite there being all the prerequisite ideas and circumstances for civil war at the end of 1641, it's not until the end of 1642 that either side can really get a military together to start fighting one another because it just takes time. There's very, you know, you basically have the King's Guard and these groups called the trained bands, which are like local militias raised on the county level. Trained is also really doing some heavy lifting there, which most of the soldiers did not themselves do. Many of them were, you know, out of shape or, you know, wore uniforms for ceremonial purposes. Like these were not full time professional soldiers by any stretch of the imagination. And so it takes time get going through 1642 for either side to raise anything resembling a military force capable of actually going out and fighting a protracted campaign. You you, you know, royalists bring in, you know, foreign mercenaries or, you know, famously you have Prince Rupert who's related to King Charles. He comes back from the Rhine and he's, you know, forward thinking with the latest military tactics, one of which is, you know, driving off the enemy cavalry and then not swooping around to hit the enemy infantry in the rear, which any other military commander would do, but Rupert did not because he'd love to just chase after random horses. You know, Parliament is, you know, bringing in whatever people have some military experience or frankly, people who've just read a lot of the military manuals that are being published at this time. It's sort of like Nathaniel Greene in the American Civil War. Sorry, in the American War of Independence, where it's like, oh, you know, I've never actually, you know, held a sword in my life. But I've read a lot of books about how to wield swords, and I've read a lot of books about how to command troops. Yeah. So 1640 Q is basically just a scramble to get anyone You they can't stick a Pike in their hand or, you know, put them on a horse and say, all right, now we're ready to actually go and have a war. It's a very weird conflict in that it takes so long for war to actually start after all the requirements. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that there is no standing army, which also puts England way behind the rest of Europe by this point in terms of, you know, military organization. You know, this is the 17th century is the point at which you start to move out of the mercenary dominated military organization of the 16th century and towards the full time professional armies of the 18th century. You know, states like France, you know, the Austrian dominions, Spain, they're building up these professional forces. And England's still, like, I'll just grab the militia who practice, you know, once a weekend, once a month. They'll be fine. And both sides quickly learned that does not work when you have to actually fight a civil war. It's interesting that they they only get a vision of military training when they so so speaking. It's not essentially military training, but they have those military like wounds when they are, when they are on the battlefields. And as you said, everyone was updating it kind of reminds me when Portugal and Spain, they were the Iberian Union. And at the same time that they had, they had lost during the naval that that invincible naval battle. It was denominated when they fought against England and the Dutch. And I was always photo. Oh, they have a great Navy and but from now what you're saying on the land, on the on, on the land itself, England, they, they weren't not, they were not ready to to withhold the battles of of such of such gravity. And I was, well, it's two different stories that you, that's me as a non-english speaker, learn something. And then when you now that I'm hearing your, your perspective, then it was a different thing. And that's what makes history so, so great. Sorry, I mean I might I might digress because I'm not knowledgeable about this, but it was interesting. No, I, I, I get what you're saying. You know, there's definitely a problem where we tend to, like, think back of, you know, where a country is now. Well, then it must have been like this at some point in the past. You know, and England's a great example of this when it comes to like, it's Navy, for instance. Like, you know, England's Navy even during this period, not up until basically the 1650s, during the Commonwealth period, where it starts to be seriously improved under Cromwell. England's neither a major naval power nor a major land power in the first half of the 17th century. And you know, it hadn't, I mean, to speak of England as a naval power of like, you know, you have all this propaganda over the other feet of the Armada and everything in 1588. But again, projecting that back to the Middle Ages, that's not really a thing. The the British Navy becomes the British Navy in the 18th century, especially, you know, after the War of Spanish Succession, the War of Jenkins Ear and especially during the Seven Years War, that's when the British Navy becomes the British Navy and you know, maintains that title up through the end of World War 2. It's kind of, but 17th century England, yes, military backwater. Military it's also it's also another funny, funny side. The funny part that everyone in Europe, the Dutch, the the not this. Yeah, the French as well. They were preparing professional military military personnel. It feels like a, it felt like I was thinking on, or this might be a call to over the what, what what happened over the next centuries, which would be the time of the colonial periods and, and oh, OK, this, this might be, this would be a call up for that. Haven't you thought about that as well? When you were doing the thesis, when you said when thinking about this, I, I. Mean, I didn't pay much attention to, you know, European well. But slightly, slightly paying attention. Well, I mean it, it's worth considering, obviously, I'm from Massachusetts, and Massachusetts gets its first charters, both the Plymouth Colony and Massachusetts Bay under King Charles the First during the 1620s and 1630s. And so you do have early English settlement in the New World or really in North America during that time and thereafter, especially including during the Commonwealth and Protectorate, which is itself interesting because how the civil wars end up playing out in those colonies, which, you know, general, you know, the New England colonies generally align or are sympathetic to the parliamentarian cause. Virginia, the Old Dominion is a bit more dominated by royalists, which, you know, American historians are kind of trying to play up. It's like foundational to American identity. I think that perspective is, you know, taking things a little too far, in my opinion, but it's definitely there in terms of general expansion. Even before the Civil wars, Englishmen going abroad have this expanding sense of the world that in turn effects their idea of how they think of themselves as English. You know, what does it mean to belong to the English nation as opposed to the French nation or the Russian nation or the Turkish nation? You know, as Englishmen go across the world, yeah, they widen their horizons. But widening your horizons can also narrow your point of reference. You know, once you've seen enough of the world, you start to appreciate more and more where do you come from? What makes you unique, what makes you who you are. I mean, I can say being overseas, you know, both in the UK and parts of Europe for some time has made me much more conscious, conscious of myself as an American and what what sets me apart as an American as opposed to, you know, someone from the UK or Germany or the Netherlands or France. And you have that same phenomenon going on with those Englishmen who can go abroad in the early 17th century who bring these stories home. These perspectives get published, disseminated throughout, you know, the literate English population. And that in turn effects this growing sense of, OK, what does it mean to be English? Well, I'm a Protestant and, you know, perhaps I'm a certain kind of Protestant. I have ancestry that comes from this. I speak a certain language that's derived from of, you know, whatever languages came before me. This is, this is kind of the birth of philology at this time, which is an inexact science in the 17th century, but is developing, you know, what's the history of my people and its relationship to the people outside me. You know, the idea of the Norman conquest. I I talk about a lot in my disserta what I talk about in my the 4th chapter of my dissertation, this idea of Englishman as opposed to the Normans who conquered them in 1066, what makes them different? Are we living as a conquered people or did we willingly embrace, you know, William the Conqueror? Did William the Conqueror accept our laws? And is the, you know, King William's descendants, are they obliged to follow these ancient laws, this ancient constitution of freeborn Englishman? All these questions really are made possible by the widening of Englishman's horizons, both through literal travel and through print in the early 17th century. And that informs their perspectives going into the 1640s. Well, again, it's, it is interesting to make a contrast between these things. And then again, as we were talking earlier, this sense of nationalism and asking the questions, what, what does it mean to be English? And it's in specifics around that time of period. And then when they start to, to going abroad and widening their their horizons. And so, as you said as well for an American perspective would be quite exaggerated, as you said previously, and you disagreed upon that. So from, from you, you, you as an American, how did you see that? How, how did you see this topic overall as yourself as an American? And you, Sean, who wrote this decision? It's interesting because in America you kind of get like little snippets of reference to the English Civil Wars, especially I think in the East Coast and in New England, especially because we have that very old, you know, tie to the mother country. So to say. You know, we have such an old history when it comes to the rest of the United States as opposed to, you know, say California, which is always, you know, great to dunk on people from California for that anyway. So you get some exposure to it, but you never talk about it much. You know, my knowledge of the English Civil Wars going into this was, you know, fairly generic. The king and Parliament have a fight because King Charles wanted to impose an absolute monarchy, which the more you look into the term, becomes more difficult to even define. So going into it, I thought, ha, you know, a lot of the political theory, the rhetoric, the mental world of the generations leading up to the American War of Independence, they're coming out of this conflict. You know, their fathers, their grandfathers, their great grandfathers, they'd either been on one side or the other. The people who go and settle in the New World, who formed the English colonies, all of their families have been affected by this conflict. They're all living within a mental world that is defined by the English Civil Wars. And so the more I got into the conflict, and especially the more I got into the political debates that are going on between royalist supporters, parliamentarian supporters, the Levellers or this unique sociopolitical movement in the later 1640s. The arguments they're making end up having an impact on the founding fathers of the United States. And people like Henry Parker and his focus on, you know, the safety of the people being the ultimate law and that the king is only obligated to respect that. King Charles answer to the 19 propositions and its focus on three branches of government that all have responsibilities to one another really kind of in a staff a foundational document in the idea of the separation of powers and in constitutional law. These ideas have such are they're important to me because I see the origins of my country in them. But it's also, you know, shaped how I now see my country. When you have a much better grounding on where we come from. Obviously, it impacts how you perceive the world around you now. And for me, it's almost disheartening now because I realize how little these conflicts and these ideas, you know, especially outside, you know, the Academy, Obviously, you know, we get into undergraduate and graduate level of courses focused on British history. Obviously you're going to get into this. But when it comes to what the average person, high school education or undergrad, but focused in an entirely different field, doesn't get this kind of education that is so important to forming this idea of who you are as an American and where you come from. So it's been enlightening for me, but also a bit disheartening because you suddenly realize, ha, a lot of my fellow voters don't quite appreciate the broader, you know, intellectual world that made the American Republic possible. But you know that that that's his own kind of crisis. But I mean, it's definitely interesting as an American certainly also being over in the UK, getting a sense of who the British people are nowadays and their own relationship to the conflict, which is to say not much from my experience. I, I was very disheartened to find a lot of the British people I talked to had at best a very cursory knowledge of what is such an important event in their own history, which is compounded by the fact that I think it is they don't teach history beyond the age of like 15 in high school, which I think is absolutely absurd. But that's don't problem. And you know, I talked to people they go like oh you know, we had a civil wars. I don't know much about them. I you know, talked to 1 undergrad who was like oh we had a civil war. Who did we fight? Best, best reaction I ever got. And it was just kind of disappointing. It's like, you know, this is so central to your history. I mean, it's like if you, it's like in the United States, if you didn't know anything about the American Civil War, which is the Nexus around which American history revolves. I mean, we divide history courses by American history up to the Civil War, American history after the Civil War. And with English history, it's like, oh, we're going to do everything up to like, Elizabeth, there's the whole Stewart, you know, monarchy for 100 years, and then we're just gonna pick it up with the Hanoverians and we're gonna move on. We're just gonna not talk about the 17th century because it's too complex and people get too passionate about it, which it's really a shame. But then I mean, perhaps for the best when it comes to being British school children. As I was told by a colleague at a conference in Kent, Charles the First attracts the eccentrics. And as a self-proclaimed eccentric, yeah, I I can see how people can get really heated talking about the civil wars. Yeah, I think then he, Charles the First had always a red dot, a red dot up up with his foreheads. And even when we, as you said, now that's talking about them today, it still grants their gears to to any Englishman then. He, he's a, he's a fascinatingly divisive figure. You know, when you get more and more into the study of it and you talk to other people who study the Civil Wars a lot, your perspective on Charles the 1st, and also, you know, other major players during the period like Oliver Cromwell and John Pym, John Lillaburn, the opinions get more and more granular and qualified and there's just a lot more. He was kind of good. He was kind of bad. He did this. I don't like that the English Civil wars are, so I've heard described as like the wrong but righteous versus the right but repugnant. And the more you get into the study of the subject, the more you really appreciate that because both sides are making some interesting points, but it really depending on your personal perspective, one of them just becomes utterly abhorrent and the other one becomes begrudgingly accepted. I mean, it's the problem with any, I mean, let's just say with any, but with a lot of civil wars is picking a side, especially as a matter of historical debate becomes more and more difficult the more you under the conflict, which really puts you in the mindset of the very people who are fighting it. You know, if I'm an English farmer out living in, you know, the Midlands in 1643 and you know, two officers come riding into opposite sides of the village. One says come fight for the king and the other one says come fight for Parliament. And I'm standing around thinking, I thought King and Parliament were supposed to be working together. What the hell is this? I mean that that had to be an incredibly difficult choice. And I it's one of the problems where knowledge makes it more difficult to understand something. It's like if I knew everything I know and you put me back into 1642, I don't know who I'd necessarily support. I'm more sympathetic to the royalists, I admit, but God, that would be a tough decision. I'd almost want to be ignorant to just go like, oh, yeah, the King's in trouble. All right, I'll grab my pitchfork and I'll go help him or, oh, you know, Parliament is under attack by the king. Oh, yeah. You know, I demand my ancient liberties. Like, God, I wish I was more ignorant about this. I hate that I know so much about this now because I can't make an informed decision because I'm too well informed. Oh, well, that's it's so difficult to pick up a side to pick up a side that and I'd like to ask you then about the conferences because you said it gets heated up when talking about Charles the first. Have you ever cut came up come up to a conference where you presented the paper or even if you had attended the conference, you attended the conference. Sorry if you added that. If you attended the conference and you witnessed a a heated argument, did you did you ever encounter that or did you get into a heated argument once at a conference I. I, I, I got into some discussion about like the your personal character of Charles the 1st and how it affected his decision making. But that was with someone who was themselves fairly sympathetic. And that's what I find interesting is at least among a lot of those who are specials in the time period that I've talked to at the conferences I've been to, they do generally tend to be way more sympathetic to Charles the first than a lot of historiography tends to be. Or how you'd often see him presented in like secondary education or in popular media. It it's really interesting of Kevin Sharp. He's he's a notable historian. He wrote like a very lengthy book on the personal rule of Charles the first, the period between 1629 and 1640 when he didn't call Parliament. And he hones in a lot on Charles's personality and it's an incredible yeah. It's like an 8 or 900 page book. And it's almost like Stockholm syndrome, like the longer Sharp spends talking about Charles Devore and more sympathetic he becomes. And I I, I talk to people at conferences, they're like, oh, you know, I am, I admit I am more sympathetic to the Royals cause and I'll you know, I've got people saying, oh, you know, me too. Yeah, I probably would have gone with them as well. And like, ha, you know, we're, you'd think like, you know, we're, we're, you know, people in the humanities, you know, we get stereotypist, you know, pie in the sky, ivory tower, fanciful ideas of humanities and the liberalism and personal liberty and everything. And we're all like, yeah, yeah, yeah. We probably side with the probably side with the king over anything else. And it's just kind of interesting. It's, it's like the, the more time you spend with an historical subject, especially one who is as captivating and controversial as Charles the 1st, the more you start to kind of empathize with them. I I don't think this is the case with all historical figures, certainly. I mean, you know, there's some outright villains out there that I'd be rather concerned if a rider ever was a little too sympathetic to them. But with Charles the First, he still just attracts this kind of sympathy. Yeah. I like, I open up my dissertation with a quote by David Como in a work fairly recent of his. The English Civil Wars have never truly ended because whenever you get, you know, a couple of historians talking about the conflict, you start to notice. So one guy's going to start gravitating a lot towards the parliamentarian side, the one guy's going to start gravitating a lot towards the royalist side, and they have very different perspectives of the other. It it's rare to find a historical subject at this point. It's so old That generates, you know, such passionate disagreement, at least among, you know, the stuffy nerds who still study this stuff. I mean, obviously, you know, more modern conflicts are more in the public knowledge, but it's fun when you get into those, you know, long winded historical debates and you're suddenly like, yeah, you know, we're both like the only two people in this room that understand what we're talking about, what we're very passionate about, what we're talking about. I mean, if that isn't the nature of an academic conference, I don't know what is. Well, if it if there isn't anything passionate around the subject that you that you are, and then all you have to say that this academic conference is that. Yeah, I mean, an academic conference where everyone's in agreement is no fun. It's like, what are we supposed to do here? We're all just sitting in a room nodding at each other saying, oh, yes, you've very, yes, very correct. That's that's not fun. That's boring. If I wanted to, you know, be surrounded by people who agree with me, I just go on social media. Yeah, also that and I'd like to ask you now that you that you've submitted and whilst waiting for your Viva, how did it, how, how your perception of the, the civil ones, the civil wars changed from your first year until the submission? Well, like I said, you know, I, I came into the conflict not having a, a good appreciation of the complexities of it. And I'd say that's the first and foremost thing is that I did not know how complex a conflict it really was until I dived into it. You know, the factions, the personalities, you know, the overlapping interests. You don't get that in the kind of general education about the civil wars that you get in America. So doing the deep dive you're getting into the meat of everything was really revelatory. I mean, then again, is also just kind of is par for the course of 17th century European politics and warfare, which is just by its nature incredibly complex. I mean, there's like five guys alive who understand the 30 Years War. I'm convinced because it's just so complicated in terms of perspective how it changed. You know, again, you develop certain Stockholm syndrome with Charles the First, but you also develop a better perspective on the role of religion in public life in the 17th century in a way that's not quite present nowadays, I'd say. John Morel famously described English civil wars as the last war of religion. I I don't agree with War of religion as a helpful describer of most conflicts, but it is an important way of understanding that this was a conflict really driven by anxieties over what is the Church of England. What does it mean to be a good and proper Christian? What does it mean to be aligned with the great enemy of potpourri, the boogeyman, The stalk? 17th century written. Yeah. Would you like to be part of the state of England? Yeah. Would you like, you know, what's the state of England and you know, what's, what are your obligations to it? Yeah, these kind of questions, you start to appreciate the very finer nuances of them, especially when you compare it to, you know, contemporary political discourse, which is, you know, so fragmented and atomized and is all about attention grabbing and the propagation of AI slop that just ruins everything. Sitting down with 100 page pamphlet that some guy wrote thinking someone's going to buy this, sit down, read the whole thing, and is then going to write like a 50 page response to me over the next two months and then I'll write something back to as a response to him. That kind of literary culture surrounding politics and religion, where you have such a focus on long form content as well as, you know, short form propaganda of the time. You know your story, short pamphlets, broadsides the like. But this? Focus on like people really sitting down and engaging with these lengthy sermons or pamphlets or speeches or essays, really tackling with difficult questions with, you know, extensive sources, appeals to the common language of Scripture that really pervades the entirety of the culture where everyone can just, you know, cite Old Testament people at a whim and just, you know, base arguments off of that. You don't have that in contemporary politics, at least in America. And I, I don't think from what I've seen in Britain and it's just such an interesting and different world. When you think about, you know, nowadays in the age of mass democracy, it's almost like we care less and less about actually engaging with the important questions that make a democratic process function. Whereas in early modern England, you have very limited franchise. You still have, you know, Parliament as a voting body and you have, you know, the king and the royal prerogatives. But everyone just seems more engaged, or at least be the people who are engaging are enthusiastic about being engaged. I mean, obviously, again, farmers off in the middle of the Midlands don't have much in the way of interacting if they choose not to read whatever newspapers come by. But especially for the, you know, folks in London and those who are really plugged into the political world at the time, the perspective on politics, the perspective on religion and how you engage with people who disagree with you, It's just very different from the modern day. And I gained much more of an appreciation of that, which is also really depressing when you when you turn on cable news and you're just getting, you know, flashy dreck that's not really based on adequate sources. And that's just trying to keep your attention for a few minutes before moving on to the next story. Compared to let's sit down and read this 200 page books of Gyro just to prove one point about one person and his divine right to rule, it's a very different world. Kind of wish BBC would, you know, be a little more formal on how they present things. They now think of American cable news. Not just the and it's not just BBC and it's also GB News as well and but we understand and we know it already how dishonest they are. And even with this rise of AII mean Sam Altman gave an interview not long ago this it's got to say we this is scary. Obviously we don't know what's going to happen, but there is one thing that AI will not replace, which is the human brain. Not long ago, I don't know if you had the time to check on my check on my latest talks on my podcast, I had a talk with an art historian about the provenance research and date. She told me that AI won't replace this this art provenance research to to some extent. She said I can use AI just to make me an Excel spreadsheet, but deep diving into the origins of an artwork that was commissioned by a priest, for example, right. And asking that to hey, I asking to Hey, I how this this come up and then AI gives you a brief answer and that's not what it is. So that guest asked even more difficult questions until AI simply stopped and say I have no more answers to give, please stop contacting me. And that's it. It's based on it's based on memories and it's based on generic questions. And The thing is the more the more we deep dive into a research that is brilliant that we have on our human brain is asking questions, not throwing public, public questions. And that AI readily shares, shares that, but we ask questions tirelessly and we ended up earning a skill on that, let's say earning and developing, so to speak. And that's I think what AI will never replace that. Oh, and here's hoping. But yeah, that is obviously the problem with AI is that it can only work with the knowledge that's publicly available to it. And if you, you know, if it doesn't have access to either physically combing through an archive that it hasn't digitized yet or actually, you know, inferring reasonable questions based on the data available, then you know, it can only give you what it knows. It's, it's basically the equivalent of just putting a lot of, you know, a lot of words into the hat and pulling out the words until you get the sentence you want. I mean, as things change again, who knows? I mean, it's a very rapidly developing technology and frankly, just waiting for the stock market bubble to burst so we can all just kind of relax and like actually seriously consider how to appropriately use this technology because there are appropriate uses for it, obviously. But you know, people are vastly over expecting what it is you're getting out of a technology that like, let's not forget, you know, Chachi BT comes on the market in what, 2022? I mean, do you have predecessor technologies going back decades of, you know, large language model word guessing, you know, trying to comb through large bodies of data and pulling out what you can adequately find and trying to, you know, bring out about answers from that. There's no amount of Polish that's going to change the fundamental model until you, you know, change the fundamental model, whatever that change might look like. How fast it happens, I don't know. I, I am proud to say I've never actually used ChatGPT for anything or NBLLM for that matter, in my research at this point, more out of grumpy old man's spite than anything else. But, you know, again, it remains to really be seen. I'll. See how long my spite lasts. Did you have also opportunities to deep dive into volumes that are not that are not publicly accessed? No, because that also really wasn't the focus of my research. I relied a lot on early English books online. There's a fantastic database with a lot of pre modern English publications that itself is drawn from a lot of other prior databases that's digitized them and made them readily accessible. And with the purpose of my research, I was really looking for stuff that was published is directly accessible because I wanted stuff that people are going to be reading, people are going to be analysing and people are going to be responding with. I was really looking for, through most of my research, how, you know, the words nation, people and country are used in the public sphere because, you know, if you're trying to justify this war in England, you have to reach out and garner support and justify your cause. And how you do that is increasingly in the 16, you know, 20s and 30s and 40s that's through print. That's through, you know, reaching the widest amount of people possible with what is at the time, the fastest and most effective way of conveying information to people. So whatever gets published, you know, it, it at this point, it's already been digitized. It's the, you know, benefit of the English Civil War is, is that so much has been digitized because for a lot, at least for some people, it is a very important topic. And, you know, there's a lot of physical documents to go through. But no, I I wish I could have been in those, you know, dusty libraries, you know, pouring over something that hasn't been, you know, gone over in 50 years. But, you know, the only books like that were all the secondary sources in Swansea's library that apparently no one went but me had touched in the last two decades, which is a a testament to the lack of interest in the subject as of late. Not kidding. Like genuine, like there were dust bunnies growing on the the top some of these books, like, it was bad. Wow. Oh, yeah. I know that. I it was a couple books I opened up, I know started to run. There was so much dust coming off of them. Jeez, I wonder how I wonder how they look. And they still wouldn't let me take any home. They still wouldn't like in taking home. Oh man, no, wouldn't be able to, would you? Wouldn't you be able to digitize it? Or they already digitized digitalized anyway? The primary sources are mostly digitized, but the secondary sources, yeah, some of them are digitized too. I just, you know, like the physical feel of paper in my hands. I stare at screens enough all day. I'll take any chance to take a break from it. See, I mean, APHD is basically you have to browsing the physical books and and touching the the material of the of the the source itself and like, Oh yeah. It's not the fun. Right. So well, it kind of has it's fun. Obviously it's not being desktop dependent obviously because that's where we write not not anymore in on on pen and paper, I mean. No, thank goodness too. I could not imagine typing this thing out even on a typewriter, let alone handwriting it. No, it'd be so annoying for us. We us as millennials, we obviously we still witnessed bits of the typewriter, but doing like a things like felt like a cash register. So I mean, maybe, maybe for you, I'm just young enough like at the very end of the millennial wave. So I I can probably say I was never exposed to typewriters growing up outside of cartoons. Yeah, it's, I think it's just, yeah, I witnessed once a typewriter, someone doing a typewriter. I was too young. I was AI was a toddler. So what I mostly witnessed were VHS, the emergence of the DVD, the disk file, the disk readers and the CD readers as well. So. Yeah. I mean, that's, you know, that's the interesting thing about, you know, being especially in the later side of millennials that you have, you know, these like scattered membranes of some of this old technology that's still around when you were a kid. But, you know, we were the generation that was raised alongside the Internet. And then you have Gen. Z, which is raised on the Internet. I, I say in my grumpy old man voice, but like, I as though I'm not an Internet addict myself. But yeah, that's that's kind of an interesting part of the experience, especially, you know, growing up now, you know, reaching 30 and looking back now on, you know, last two decades of technological progress, you know, from when I was 10 years old, you know, playing flash games and when YouTube had like just came out. And, you know, considering, you know, the technological possibilities of IT now and the fact that YouTube has way too many ads and it should be free because it was free when it came out. Damn you, Google. Yeah, I do remember that time when YouTube came in 2005 and most of the international TV that that came to Portugal, everything was pixelized at the time. Wow, it was amazing. Now I'm looking back, I'm 32 now. I've obviously was really. You were young but, but and literate. Welcome to the old man feeling. But looking. Back shaking your fist at kids on your lawn soon enough. Yeah, hopefully we'll see what will happen, but but looking back, man, it was it was great. We had my my cousin was still using MSN. Facebook was still a mirage was in its early, it was in its infancy years. Then we had YouTube also coming up. We had Myspace as well, which is amazing by the time. So yeah, cool shit. At the time it was cool shit. We had some some good memories riding the bicycle, playing flat, playing the what do you guys call the when you grab this? I don't know the the the English term which, but you grab the you have AY shaped thing, a slingshot. That's it. Oh. Yeah, yeah, Slingshot. The Slingshot and we're just going playing football, in this case soccer or even rugby. And yeah, good times. Yeah, we're the last generation to play outside. So just another question for going back to the to the civil wars. Did you also had an opportunity to check any sources that tell the tales of the civic life in not just in England, but also in Ireland, Scotland or maybe Wales? I'll just. Focus on England. Yeah, you get that, like through newspapers, for instance. I consulted newspapers at a few points I was kind of considering what primary sources I wanted to use, and they definitely give some perspective of ordinary life. I've more familiarized myself with some of the historiography about it. There's a book that's name I cannot remember because I'm terrible at remembering book names. You know, basically to deal with, like, you know, tabloid miracles and, you know, witchcraft and things like that that occurred at the time, which was like, really drove a lot of early newspaper sales, was, you know, sensational stuff that really appealed to, you know, the expanding market of everyday people during this period. Because the great thing about the early modern period is that there are points at which it feels very much not the Middle Ages. And then there are points where it feels way too much the Middle Ages. And then there are parts that feel like they should be Middle Ages but aren't as and you know, period on the civil wars is fascinating because you have, on the one hand, very modern stuff like, you know, these theories of popular sovereignty that really get expressed very effectively among certain parliamentarian authors. And you know, this gradual movement towards, you know, what I would describe as a kind of modern style professional army. And at the same time you have very medieval stuff. You know, some of the laws that Charles the first tries to utilize during his personal rule, the idea of the divine right of kings through its medieval conception of and it really it being challenged by parliamentarian thinkers. And then you have stuff that's feels medieval but very much isn't. Witch hunts, for instance, you know, 1648 is the only time that England has like a real mass witch hunt hysteria, mostly in around the area like East Anglia and the eastern part of England led by the self appointed witch Finder, General Matthew Hopkins, which feels medieval to people who, you know, aren't familiar with the history of witchcraft. But it's very much an early modern phenomenon because that's really when witch hunts thrive is the 17th century, 16, late 16th and early 17th century, which is always interesting to read about, especially when you consider that with everything else going on, there were still rural villages where the biggest, you know, crisis was a cow got sick. And I've got to blame that younger harlot down the street. You know who winked my way once and clearly cast a spell on me? And this random guy who walked into town is now going to poke her with a stick and check for warts on her ass to see if she's communing with devils. Fun stuff. Did you also have did you also check the the 2nd and the 3rd civil wars? Yeah. So my dissertation covered the period between basically 1639 to 1651. So the first Civil War as like a proper conflict lasts from between late 1642 first skirmish, the Poic Bridge, and that's in September, so September 1642 to basically June of 1646. After that, Charles the 1st is captured. He first becomes a prisoner of Parliament, then he gets, you know, captured by the New Model Army, and he's made a prisoner of them who are then in service to Parliament. But the New Model Army in Parliament are at odds, and they're both at odds with the Presbyterians in Scotland who don't like the fact that the king is being, you know, kept as a prisoner. Charles the First basically plays all these factions against one another throughout 1647 and into 1648. And in 1648, you have what's often called the Second Civil War, which is really a series of rebellions within England that are all kind of separated geographically, as well as a much smaller than anticipated invasion from Scotland to help those uprisings. It gets crushed by the New Model Army in a matter of months. I think it's by like September, October. It's effectively crushed after beginning in May, June. And so after that, you know, opinion in the New Model Army and in Parliament swings decisively against Charles, who's portrayed as this man of blood who is still just trying to, you know, crawl back to the position of power that he had. He gets put on trial. He gets executed in January 1649. And then you have what's sometimes called the third civil War, which is waged, I get between the Commonwealth and really the New Model Army under Oliver Cromwell against Charles the second. Charles the son who basically sets up camp in Scotland, makes a deal with the Presbyterians and the the Covenanters there to the crowned king. The I, I don't really like calling it a civil war because while you do have like a few scattered like risings in England and English, you know, royalists who moved to Scotland to help Charles fight, most of the fighting takes place in Scotland itself against Scottish troops. It's it's sometimes referred to as like the Anglo Scottish War of 1650. Of course, the, you know, climactic battle is in Worcester, English Worcester in 1651. Charles the second has his whole, you know, famous, you know, flight from the battle, hiding in an oak tree and gradually slipping out of England, which Charles the second would then go on to repeat ad nauseam to basically everyone for the rest of his life because he was very proud of it. But I, I didn't really cover the third Civil War as an event particularly. I just didn't find it particularly relevant. So my last chapter, which covered Charles, the first trial and execution, I spent the last section of that talking about John Milton instead. And Milton's apologia for the Commonwealth regime, his justification of the regicide and his first defense of the English people, which is really a great defense of the idea of the new republican Commonwealth that England establishes and the justification it derives from the English people. Even though Milton's idea of English people is basically the middle sword, who are neither too rich nor too poor, who are not excessively virtuous nor under virtuous, but are properly blessed by God. Because Milton wears his Calvinism on his sleeve in the first defense, and it's really fun. So of all these civil wars, which one had was more impactful and I was betting the first civil war? That, that is the tempting answer. I would actually say the second, not because it's militarily very dynamic, but because it squanders so much of the goodwill that Charles has among a lot of people. And while he's able to recoup a lot of that goodwill through his execution and which is played up as a martyrdom for the Episcopal establishment, he had a position in 4748 where he was valuable and people wanted to work with and negotiate with him. But his inability to make adequate concessions and his conviction that he could effectively play the army, Parliament and the Presbyterians against one another led to him overplaying his hand and squandering his ability to more effectively negotiate thereafter. I think if he'd been able to make a deal in 46, I think won the, you know, single civil war between 42 and 46 would be remembered better by more people. And it would also be seen as falling in with a more general trend in English history of when the king oversteps his bounds. You know, people bat, you know, group together and they ensure their ancient rights and liberties, which you see with Magna Carta and the Oxford provisions back in the Middle Ages, and which I think Charles could have cut a deal that would have fell into that line and would have helped justify. The English monarchy as a constitutional one, yes, but one that is still balancing its constitutional prerogatives with the needs of securing the liberties of its people. I think Charles squandering is the goodwill he had with a lot of people and ultimately being executed and the political revolution that follows that ultimately taints the first of all, it taints the memory of the parliamentarian cause because it goes from we're just defending Englishmen's liberties to we are overthrowing our government and we're forming something else in its place, which is doesn't really sit well in the grand course of English history. And you know, as a person who's generally more conservatively minded, I'm not entirely fond of, you know, violent political revolutions like that to begin with. But then when you think about the effects of that execution, how it goes on to effect, you know, like the philosophs of 18th century France who are thinking about the English constitution, how it develops and the role of the civil wars in developing that constitution and the impact on European political thought that that has. I would say the civil war is more impactful because it leads to that outcome. Whereas the first civil war is a military defeat for the royalist shore. But it was a much more salvageable situation than the royalist cause at the end of 1648. And then I, I, I, I will agree with you, then I cannot say much of it. If I, if I was a modern historian as just like yourself, then I would disagree or maybe agree. So all I can say is you have your own take and it's a respectful opinion and you are the one who deep dive. So I just want to say first in first of all, congratulations on submitting the the thesis. I should have said that at the beginning of the of the talk. I'll say thanks for I can get them, so thank. You and I'll ask you what will which hat will he wear for the fever? Oh, the cavalier hat, obviously. It's going to be online, but pretend you're. Not obviously, absolutely the Cavalier hat. No, there there is. There's no other two ways about it. You got to, you got to root for the local team, probably, you know, terrify the external reader, at least initially. That's the thing, you know, got to be aggressive. You got to got to put them off their game. You got to take control of the situation. Will you wear a suit? Probably as long as you don't have to wear a necktie. I hate neckties. Yeah. I mean, that's not mandatory, but using your, your, your, what's it called? I think you had something that's the sleeves are quite bulky. It's more. Of a Oh yeah, my, my nice German collar puff shirts. That's it, You know, look right out of a, you know, 16th century Lench necked company. Yeah. Did you? Yeah. I don't know, made one of those as well. Just going off topic, have you improved your wardrobe lately? Not too much, no. Namely for lack of funds. So you're kind of waiting on that so, you know, when a job finally does come through and if any listeners happen to know of an open position for an early modern British story and do let me know, Shameless plug, you know, you will help me in improve my wardrobe by giving me access to money. So fund Sean's wardrobe by giving him a job. That is my best pitch to the historian's community. Yeah, nowadays we just like the dressing. Well, and I think for I've been in talks with my girlfriend about going to when I'm going to the graduation ceremony, which will happen in July. Don't ask me which day because I still don't know. You're saying you're going to wear the a gown that is black and have some burgundy stripes and say, OK, so we have to make some inquiry and go to a suit shop because there's a few, there's only two of them and you could inquire about of a black cotton three piece suit and burgundy shoes. They say for the physical store, I don't go for burgundy shoes because they don't have it. If they have, then it's a mix of leather and suede. I have to go online, right? So that would be good. That would be her suggestion. I still don't know what will be the color of the gown that I'm going that I will hire. So I'll just have to wait and see. There's another alternative would be the the charcoal double breasted suit I have that will be an option and going along with my black loafers or my black monk straps. But I'd rather tend to look at the at the the black three piece suits. So, but we'll see. Can't go wrong with black three piece suit, you know, Chanel said. Woman can't go wrong with little black dress. A man cannot go wrong with a three piece black suit. Yeah, that's it. Or at least if he if he does, then he's got much bigger problems to worry about. Oh, well, look, Sean, let's wrap it up and thank you. Thank you for your time for having the the availability of showcasing a bit of your research now that you've recently submitted and I think you you're well prepared for the Viva take take consider this as a as a warm up, so to speak. One of many warmups no doubt be stretching mind and body alike in anticipation. Do you have any advice for the students and graduates who are tuning in to to this late time talk? And what advice would you like to give to them if they want to go on a PhD adventure or if they are currently doing their PhD? I would, I would say if you're going overseas, you know, make sure you put in some effort to developing a social circle around you. The, the whole thing can be very lonely. It can be very, very atomizing, I would say, especially because if you're like me, you get so invested in making sure you just do some work every day. And you know, and with research like mine, that's very textual. It's about constantly rereading and re analyzing, you know, a given passage, you're brooding on it for two hours all the way to 300 words. Making sure you stay social and as well as staying active is really important for your mental health. That's a lesson I had to learn the hard way over in Swansea and I would say don't underestimate how dangerous that sense of isolation can become. It will sneak up on you and it will really make completing your work difficult. That'll probably be my biggest advice. And I think they will take that positively. So do you have any? That is the goal I generally give positive. Advice. Yeah. I can berate you if you want, it can be very negative, but I don't know if this is a late night podcast. I don't want to bring everyone down into Dumer hours. Do you have anything else to would you like to to share any any social media or? I'm afraid I'm a bit of a hermit myself for the time being. I mean, you know, when once a job opens up, you'll have more professional emails and, you know, probably have to finally put my name and image out there on the Internet. I'll be swallowed up by some AI algorithm that'll be churning out deep bakes of me soon enough, I'm sure. But you know, I've, for the time being, I'm just going to keep grinding away in my little hidey hole and, you know, eventually one day go out and make it big, I say, staring down the barrel of 30. But that's its own problem. So, Sean, once again, thank you so much for for the time and all the best in your Viva and also in your future endeavours. And it was great. It was great to talk to with you again. It's it's, it's been a fucking while, honestly. It has the time moves faster than you'd expect. No. Especially for an historian. Especially for an historian. Now that for me, as the PhD dissertation is is done now I don't have more free time. I've luckily I've been working as a freelance. I still, I still flip chicken at Nando's, but I, I got some work to do. I'm helping a community in Neath Port Talbot to set up a podcast around mental health and I'm enjoying it so much. I'm really enjoying it and been invited by my, my external examiner to the to go to the Cardiff ancient history seminar series. So I'm tend to go next week and to come up with a paper idea which I have in mind. I still need to work around because I'm I'm prioritizing now an article that I'm writing and looking out for jobs, this included because it's now it's an official trademark business and I employ students as well under the under the under some small funding. But either way, man, it was great to see you. It's glad. It's a glad it's a pleasure to to to speak with you and we ought to catch up again soon man and to have a few to have another if you want to have another talk soon to to know any updates and talking about the good old days. I mean, I I can talk about anything forever. It's why my friends avoid me. Oh yeah, no, I I'd be down now. You know, name, name the subject, and I can find stuff to rattle on ad nauseam about. Not just the subject, it's just also around if you become a a research assistant. I mean anything about that and but and also talking so so Sean. We'll see what the job market takes us. Yeah, let's see. Let's see what the future holds. So, Sean, thank you again so much and for the students and graduates tuning in, thank you all for tuning in and it's been a pleasure. A. Pleasure.