WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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- This windswept hilltop
is Old Sarum in Wiltshire.

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It's an enormous Iron Age hillfort

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and... you know what?
Actually, the best way to see it

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is not from down here.

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This is one of the most important
historical sites in Southern England.

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An Iron Age fortification
from more than 2000 years ago.

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Then in the 11th century, a castle
was built for William the Conqueror

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and the Catholic church
built a cathedral here.

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You can see the foundations
of all those surviving centuries later.

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This was a thriving bit of England.

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But it fell from grace.

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There's a lot of complicated reasons why,
but one of the main ones is:

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a windswept hilltop
is a terrible place for a cathedral.

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- Much as that looks impressive

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and you can dominate a landscape

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that brings a number of problems with it.

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Supplies of water from wells
were just not adequate

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to support a large population.

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Even to the extent that they
actually needed to buy

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the water that they needed to drink.

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When the weather isn't good,

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the wind is blowing over,
the rain is coming at you,

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when thunderstorms are going,
it's a very, very bad place.

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- As well as that,
the local bishop, Roger,

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fell out with the new king Stephen,

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and that's in a period of history

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when "falling out with the king"
was very serious indeed.

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- Bishop Roger falls out with the king.

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He falls out with pretty much everyone.

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That is the price you pay for being active
within politics and within religion

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and he plays the game at very high levels.

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And he does come crashing down.

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There's also an institutional problem.

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The king's men in the castle and
the bishop's men around the cathedral,

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you get a few references to conflict there

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where, for example,
a procession of clergy was stopped

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by some of the king's
soldiers behaving churlishly.

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They would easily go, look,
we don't want anymore of this.

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Begging the pope to release
them from all of this,

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and the pope saying absolutely,

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you can have somewhere that will be
all your own, down at the bottom.

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And giving them licence for it.

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- So the clergy moved a couple of miles away
to a new cathedral,

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in a place that would eventually
become known as Salisbury.

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The buildings here started
to fall into disrepair

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and the once-busy town
declined and declined and declined.

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But despite that, for some reason,
the landowners of Old Sarum

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were invited to send two
representatives to Parliament.

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This was the 14th century, now,

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when the rules of Parliament
were still being written.

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And the reason why they were invited is...

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a bit of a mystery.

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- Historians still aren't sure.

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One of the things that modern archaeology
is starting to tell us quite a bit about

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is whether there was stuff going on
outside the hillfort on lower ground

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that we don't know about,

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that's nearer in to Old Sarum
than the new city of Salisbury.

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There's a fairly strong likelihood

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that while the hillfort itself
had been abandoned

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there was a bit more
settlement further down.

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And probably in the later middle ages

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it wouldn't have been regarded
as such a complete nonsense

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of two MPs being elected
for a place with no population at all.

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- So this hill had two
members of Parliament.

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And that didn't change for centuries.

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It didn't change as the
population dwindled,

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it didn't change when King Henry VIII

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signed over possession
of all the buildings

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to a local official who
ordered them dismantled

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and used for building material.

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By the 17th century, no one lived here.

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But you didn't have to live here to vote.

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Anyone who was nominated by the landowner

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as being one of the tenants in this area,

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that was enough.

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And of course they voted
for the person who'd nominated them.

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So this hill became a rotten borough.

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If you owned the land,
then you and a friend,

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or whichever two people you chose,
had seats in Parliament.

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Representing basically just yourself.

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And if you were particularly
rich and well connected

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you might own a couple
of other boroughs nearby

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which would elect your friends.

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Meanwhile, places like
the city of Manchester

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eventually growing to a
quarter of a million people

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had no one representing
them at all.

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For centuries.

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By the 19th century, it was clear
that something had to be done,

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but how do you change something like that?

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How do you convince people with
power to give up that power?

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Public outrage. Radicals. Protests,
including one where 60,000 people

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were attacked by the military

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which came to be known
as the Peterloo Massacre.

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In May 1832, riots broke out

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when the third attempt at a reform bill
was blocked in Parliament.

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And Britain likely came
close to revolution.

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After all, the French Revolution

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was still very much in, uh,
living memory then.

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In short, the reformers won.

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And historians can argue
about how much of that

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was political wrangling by
the people who gained power,

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and how much of that was the
very real threat of violent revolution.

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When the dust settled,
the law was changed,

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the rotten boroughs were abolished,

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and there were 130 new seats
in Parliament.

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Voting was still only for men
with land or money though.

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It took until 1918 for that to become
"all men and some women",

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and it was 1928 before it was "all adults".

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These days parliamentary boundaries

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are drawn by an independent group
based on population.

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This hill is managed by a charity
called English Heritage,

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and one Member of Parliament for Salisbury
represents this whole area

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and the roughly 70,000 people
who live in it.

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It's important to remember
that history is fractal.

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You could spend days
or years or a lifetime

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studying everything that happened
over those few days in 1832.

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Or you could sum up
centuries in a few minutes.

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But there's one thing that
Old Sarum shows very clearly,

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it is extremely difficult to
convince people with power

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to give it up willingly.

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Thanks to English Heritage for
letting me film at Old Sarum,

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you can find out more about them
and about visiting here on their website.

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The link is in the description.