This isn't today's action that is garnering such headlines as:
Times of Israel - Tens of thousands set to rally in London for concurrent far-right, anti-Israel protests
BBC - Tens of thousands descend on London for rival protests
No, this is about an earlier episode. From the Washington Independent Review of Books, December 2025:
A brilliant account of how the seeds of battle were sown.
Should one feel sorry for beleaguered King Charles I of England? Such empathy will come easily for readers of the excellent The Blood in Winter by Oxford don Jonathan Healey. Inheriting the British throne in 1625, Charles was immediately besieged by uppity members of Parliament seeking to chip away at his monarchical powers. These attackers never gave up, and their persistence led, in the summer of 1642, to civil war and (sadly for him) Charles’ beheading in 1649.
As tensions rose in January 1642, Charles, in an effort to reassert his absolute rule, charged five Members of Parliament with high treason. To arrest them, His Majesty himself, accompanied by armed men, knocked on the House of Commons’ door. Absent, the alleged traitors were never taken into custody. Who tipped them off that the king was coming?
Well, Lucy Hay, Countess of Carlisle, played an enthralling role. Twice painted by Sir Anthony Van Dyck in “stunning” and “suggestive” images, “She was what one smitten courtier…called ‘the killing beauty of the world,’” writes Healey. “Spurning opposition from her father, the youthful Lucy had married a well-connected Scot, James Hay, a man described by the king’s sister as ‘Camel-face.’”
The then Prince Charles, his father, King James I, and other notables had attended Lady Carlisle’s wedding (although marriage didn’t deter her from having a long-term affair with Charles’ senior minister, the Duke of Buckingham). After Buckingham’s assassination in the 1620s, and her husband’s later death, Lady Carlisle continued her close, personal relationship with Charles’ wife, Queen Henrietta Maria.
Given her ties to the royal family, did the wealthy, well-connected Londoner really tip off the rabble-rousers about to be seized by Charles? Apparently, yes.
“[W]e can say with pretty good assurance…that [Lady Carlisle] did betray the king,” states Healey, who cites considerable evidence to support his view.
The author’s picture of the noblewoman is but one of his many arresting portraits of participants in the intrigue. Brilliantly written, the book recounts numerous sub-dramas in the unfolding road to bloody war. This is not to mention Healey’s many engaging descriptions of London itself and its rowdy crowds of protesters, both royalist and rebel. This reviewer, fascinated by the engrossing detail of Healey’s accounts, wished he had sources describing the Washington, DC, events of Jan. 6, 2021, that were even half as good.
Another intriguing individual was Giovanni Giustinian, the Venetian ambassador....
....MUCH MORE
