Rebecca Rideal sees violence in 17th-century Britain as “arguably incidental” (The ugly lesson of Gunpowder, Opinion, 24 October). Unfortunately, that’s the sense here because of an absence of political context. So the execution of Charles is difficult to understand unless one knows that by the end of 1648, parliament decided it could no longer negotiate with him because of his duplicitous nature. Major-General Harrison was executed at the Restoration because, as a signatory to Charles’s death warrant, he was considered a regicide.
She is disingenuous too in suggesting the feeding of a public “appetite for appalling violence” in the wake of the 1641 Irish rebellion. True individually perhaps; of far more significance was pamphleteering for propaganda purposes, in this case to inflame anti-Catholic sentiment. The interesting stuff is not so much a history of violence but the long road to the supremacy of parliament and our democratic institutions.
Robert Lawrence
Oxford
• It wasn’t just Protestants torturing Catholics. What happened in the 16th century continued the persecution of those who dissented from the “orthodox” teaching of the Catholic church in earlier times. Witness the brutalities inflicted on the Cathars in southern France, the Bulgars in Bulgaria, the Hussites in Bohemia, the Lollards in England.
While Protestants and Catholics were torturing one another in 16th- and 17th-century Europe, Christian missionaries were using torture to forcibly convert native peoples in the Americas. Time was when the figure on top of the bonfire was not an effigy but a living human being. Perhaps that’s what we should remember when we light the blue touch paper on the fifth of November.
Ian Beckwith
Church Stretton, Shropshire
• Contrast the recent production of Wolf Hall, which showed the execution of Anne Boleyn; the detail where the executioner slipped off his shoes, so tellingly revealing the dreadful anticipation of the victim, the brutality of beheading, without actually showing it. The gratuitous gore of Gunpowder is amateurish and unnecessary. We don’t want our history sugar coated but this purports to be a drama, employing the techniques of narrative, image and, crucially, editing. Gunpowder falls far short of this.
Denise McSheehy
Morchard Bishop, Devon
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters
