0:15

Pushkin High

0:20

deep Cover listeners. It's Jake

0:23

Today. I'm back in your feed to bring you an

0:25

episode from Revisionist History, another

0:27

Pushkin podcast. This season,

0:30

on Revisionist History, Malcolm

0:32

Gladwell is diving into one of the most

0:34

controversial corners in American life,

0:37

guns. The six episode

0:39

series looks at America's gun problem

0:41

through topics like TV westerns,

0:44

the assassination of Robert Kennedy, and

0:46

the insanity of the Supreme Court. In

0:48

the first episode, Malcolm takes a

0:51

close look at a name that popped up

0:53

in a recent landmark Supreme Court ruling

0:55

on the Second Amendment, a seventeenth

0:58

century Englishman named John Knight.

1:01

He'll discover who this man is

1:03

and why so much about twenty first century

1:05

American gun control hinges on

1:07

his story. All right, here's

1:09

the episode. You can binge listen to all

1:11

six episodes early and add

1:14

free by subscribing to Pushkin

1:16

Plus on Apple Podcasts, or

1:18

by visiting Pushkin dot fm,

1:20

Slash Plus, or hear the episodes

1:23

weekly in the Revisionist History podcast

1:26

feed. It's

1:33

sixteen eighty six in Bristol,

1:35

a major port and manufacturing center

1:38

on the southwest coast of England, a

1:40

local merchant named John Knight.

1:43

Sir John Knight is riding up

1:45

a steep road outside the city

1:47

to an Anglican church, Saint

1:50

Michael's on the hill gray

1:52

stone slate roof sturdy

1:54

walls built during medieval times

1:57

to withstand the full brunt of hostile

1:59

force. The city of Bristol

2:02

spread out below. Sir

2:05

John Knight bursts in and then,

2:09

oh, my god,

2:12

John, my

2:27

name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist

2:29

History, my podcast about things overlooked

2:32

and misunderstood. In

2:35

this episode, I invite you to descend

2:37

with me into the deep and bottomless

2:40

historical pit that is Sir

2:43

John Knight, the

2:45

irrepressible Englishman who has

2:47

achieved more than three centuries

2:49

after his death, a sudden

2:52

and extraordinary celebrity.

3:12

How was it that the John

3:14

Knight case came to such problems?

3:16

Who uncovered it? It doesn't sound

3:18

like this wasn't a case that was in There wasn't a

3:20

famous case name at the time. I

3:23

don't. I hate to say. It's like, you know, if

3:25

you talk about history like you know, you can go to Africa and

3:27

find a rock with somebody's name on it. This is,

3:30

you know, founded by white guy in nineteen eighteen.

3:32

No, it was existent,

3:34

right, it was there. It's always been there, So

3:37

I want to I wanted to explain how

3:40

that happened and why he matters.

3:43

And I know that this is something you've thought

3:45

about, so I naturally wanted to call

3:47

you. First

3:49

question settled for me. Who is

3:52

the first modern legal

3:55

scholar to reference

3:59

Sir John Knight? Depends on what you

4:01

mean by William Pokers

4:03

into seventy six in his seventeen sixteen

4:05

treatise, I mean last fifty

4:08

years, his recent celebrity

4:12

who well, I mean he was around in case

4:15

law, you know, not as common as he's been

4:17

on the twenty first century, but he was. He

4:19

was always around in

4:21

case law to some degree. You know, shows

4:24

up in a major eighteen forty three case

4:26

in North Carolina and then another

4:28

nineteen sixty eight North Carolina case

4:31

among others. So yeah, thank

4:33

you. I you know, I was. I

4:36

got really interested in the

4:38

way the Second Amendment debate has

4:40

been transformed and

4:43

in this sort of focus on history, and I

4:45

got the reason I got into his egg. I really fascinated

4:48

by the Sir John Knight case. Now,

4:50

oh yes, right, and everyone

4:53

says, oh, the person you have to talk to

4:55

is Joyce Malcolm. So here I

4:58

am, and here you are, here

5:00

I am. When you were doing

5:02

your book, your original work on this, how

5:04

did you come across the Sir John Knight

5:06

case? Ah, well, it's

5:09

a long time gone out. John

5:11

Knight's name is spoken first only in the

5:13

smallest of historical circles. Then

5:16

it gets repeated again and

5:18

again with increasing frequency

5:20

in bigger and bigger rooms. I

5:23

was at a conference in DC where they

5:25

were discussing Second Amendment issues,

5:27

and they had people giving papers from all perspectives,

5:30

and I was just there to offer some historical

5:33

input, and I found myself having to clarify some

5:35

of the basic details and mis assertions

5:37

have been made about what had actually

5:40

happened. So I said, I happened to know about this

5:42

because I've read a lot of the sources. Do we

5:44

know what Sir John looked like, his family

5:46

life, his personal circumstances,

5:49

Not really, but we do know something

5:51

of his character. Principled to

5:53

a fault, contentious, possessed

5:56

of a steadfastness of mind.

5:58

Indeed, so he

6:00

was a Bristol merchant. He

6:03

was from quite an important

6:06

Bristol Mercantile family, and

6:08

perhaps because his father had been a

6:11

sugar maker. Sir

6:13

John Knight appears to have gone out to

6:15

the West Indies and spent a period of time

6:18

there, apparently rather controversially,

6:20

because when he then applied a

6:22

couple of years before the period we're dealing

6:25

with to be the governor of the Leeward Islands,

6:28

he appears to have been vetoed by

6:30

the people there, saying that from their experience

6:32

of him, he was the last person that they wanted to

6:34

come out as the governor, and

6:37

it may have been partly his resentment

6:40

at that throwback, people have suggested

6:43

may have been one reason why he turned

6:45

against the government of James

6:47

the Second, which up until that point he had

6:49

been very strongly supporting.

6:52

So he appears to have been a man

6:54

of a short temper, much disliked

6:57

by many other people, and highly manipulative.

7:05

But do we need to make friends of our heroes,

7:08

No, we don't. What we demand

7:10

of our heroes is that they serve some

7:12

larger cause, that they stand

7:14

for something that their name would be

7:17

uttered with reverence on some

7:19

grand stage. I know you've

7:23

had a substantial debate with your friends

7:25

on the other side, about the Statute of Northampton.

7:28

Do you know who that is? Neil Gorsich,

7:30

Supreme Court Justice during or

7:33

of arguments in November of twenty

7:35

twenty one, posing a question to

7:37

the legendary appellate lawyer Paul

7:39

Clement. We haven't heard about

7:41

that today, and I just wanted to give you a chance. Thank

7:45

you, Justice Gorsich. I'd say just a couple of quick

7:47

things about the Statute of Northampton. Wait

7:49

for it. Wait for it. First

7:52

of all, I think that it was very

7:54

clear from the Knight's case and

7:56

the treatises that this Court relied on

7:59

in Heller that by the time

8:01

of the framing of the Night's case,

8:13

when the final accounting is done of the twenty

8:15

first century, a handful of Supreme

8:17

Court cases will stand out as landmarks.

8:20

The Citizens United Case from twenty

8:23

ten, for example, which freed corporations

8:25

to spend enormous amounts of money on political

8:28

candidates, the decision to

8:30

overturn abortion rights, and

8:33

very high on that list, a pivotal

8:35

gun rights case that came before

8:37

the Court in late twenty twenty

8:39

one. We

8:43

will hear argument this morning in case

8:45

twenty eight forty three New York

8:47

State Rifle and Pistol Association

8:50

versus Brun, New

8:52

York Rifle and Pistol otherwise

8:54

known as the Bruin Case. Brun

8:57

was about the Second Amendment to the Constitution,

9:00

a well regulated militia comma

9:02

being necessary to the security

9:04

of a free state Comma the right

9:06

of the people to keep and bear arms

9:09

shall not be infringed. What

9:12

does that sentence mean? For

9:15

years and years scholars have argued about

9:17

that. We even weighed in on it here at Revisionist

9:19

History if you remember in Season

9:21

three's Divide and Conquer episode

9:24

with an investigation of the significance

9:26

of the commas that surround the phrase being

9:29

necessary to the security of

9:31

a free state. But

9:33

then along comes the Bruin

9:35

Case. For

9:38

a hundred years, a law has been on the books

9:40

in New York State that says you can only

9:42

get a handgun if you prove you need

9:44

one for some specific purpose. And

9:47

the gun lovers of New York are

9:49

unhappy about this. They sue.

9:52

The Supreme Court agrees to take the case,

9:55

and in November of twenty twenty one, lawyers

9:58

for both sides gather for what is the

10:00

first stage in all Supreme Court cases, oral

10:03

arguments. They're in the Court's

10:05

Central chamber on First Street, across

10:07

from the Capital, an imposing

10:10

room in the grand Neoclassical Revival

10:12

style, forty four foot ceilings,

10:14

twenty four ionic columns, and marble

10:16

ship from Naguria, Italy. The

10:19

justices are sitting all in a row

10:21

behind a long curved mahogany table,

10:24

there to hear the lawyers on both sides of the Bruin

10:26

case present their oral arguments.

10:29

Droom's packed. A sense of

10:31

anticipation is in the air, Mister

10:35

Chief Justice, and may it pleads the Court the

10:38

text of the Second Amendment in shrines

10:40

or right not just to keep arms but to

10:42

bear them, and the relevant history

10:45

and tradition exhaustively surveyed

10:47

by this Court in the Heller decision, confirm

10:50

that the text protects an individual

10:52

right to carry firearms

10:54

outside the home for purposes of

10:56

self defense. Paul

10:58

Clement, lawyer for the Gun Rights

11:01

Group, I'm happy to continue by points

11:03

Clement side to interrupt

11:05

you. That's Supreme Court Justice Clarence

11:08

Thomas. Thomas would go on to

11:10

write the Court's majority opinion in the case.

11:13

This is the moment where he tips

11:15

his hand shows us where

11:17

he's leaning. If we analyze

11:19

this and

11:23

use history, tradition, texts

11:26

of the Second Amendment, we're going to have to do it by

11:29

analogy. So

11:31

can you give me a regulation

11:35

in history that is

11:38

a basis that would form a basis

11:40

for a legitimate regulation today,

11:42

and we're going to do it by analogy? What would

11:44

we analogize it to? What would that look

11:47

like? If you were a law

11:49

student armed with a yellow highlighter,

11:51

you would underline the words history

11:54

and tradition. Why Because

11:56

Thomas is telling us something crucial

11:58

here. He doesn't care about the commas

12:00

in the Second Amendment. He doesn't care about

12:02

the arcane theories of the legal scholars. He

12:05

doesn't even care about what the citizens of New

12:07

York State may or may not think about stricting

12:09

handguns. He cares about what the

12:11

founders thought when they wrote

12:14

the Second Amendment. And when he says

12:16

you're going to have to do it by analogy, what

12:18

he means is the only way to decide

12:21

whether a restriction on guns is

12:23

valid, is consistent

12:26

with the Second Amendment? Is did the founders

12:28

way back when ever, consider a

12:30

restriction that looks like this

12:32

New York law? Would they have been

12:34

okay with it, and Clement agrees.

12:37

So can you give me a regulation

12:41

on in history

12:44

that is a basi that would

12:46

form a basis for a legitimate regulation

12:49

to day. Yes, that's

12:51

what this case is about. We're arguing

12:54

history here, mister Chief

12:56

Justice, and may it please the court. Then

12:58

the attorney for the other side stands up, Barbara

13:01

Underwood, Solicitor General of

13:03

the State of New York. For centuries,

13:05

English and American law have imposed limits

13:08

on carrying fire arms in public and the

13:10

interests of public safety. The

13:12

history runs from the fourteenth

13:14

century Statute of Northampton, which prohibited

13:17

carrying arms in fairs and markets

13:19

and other public gathering places,

13:22

to similar laws adopted by half

13:24

of the American colonies and states

13:26

in the Founding period. The Statute

13:29

of Northampton, that's the third

13:31

time we've heard it mentioned. In a

13:33

case heard in the twenty first century about

13:36

a law passed in the twentieth century.

13:38

The court is asked for insight into how the

13:40

founders felt in the eighteenth century,

13:43

and the lawyers said, well, then we

13:45

need to look to the fourteenth century

13:48

thirteen twenty eight to

13:50

be precise, your honor, during

13:53

the reign of Edward, the second, the English

13:55

Parliament passed the Statute of Northampton,

13:58

which says that no man shall

14:00

disturb the peace by riding armed

14:03

night or day without

14:06

forfeiting their bodies to prison at

14:08

the King's pleasure. The

14:10

Statute of Northampton is part

14:12

of English common law. English common

14:14

law is what the first English settlers

14:17

brought with them on the Mayflower. English

14:19

common law is what the founding fathers learned

14:21

in school. You want an

14:24

analogy from history, you want to play

14:26

early history. I give you a

14:28

crucial law from thirteen twenty

14:30

eight which absolutely the

14:32

founders knew about, that restricts guns

14:35

way more than anything we're talking about

14:38

in this court, Your honor.

14:41

If court cases are chess, this

14:44

is check. The only way the gun rights

14:46

crowd can win is if they can find

14:48

their own bit of ancient history

14:50

that trumps the Statute of

14:53

Northampton, and incredibly

14:57

they do. John Law,

15:04

Yeah, yeah, Going back to when

15:07

you were doing your book, your original work

15:09

on this, how did you come across the Sir

15:11

John Knight case. Ah,

15:13

well, it's a long time ago now, but I

15:17

looked through all of the cases and there

15:19

are these little handbooks on what the law

15:22

was at different times that were published

15:24

to help justices of the Peace and judges.

15:27

I looked through the laws. I did a

15:29

lot of manuscript

15:33

reading and really investigating

15:36

what Parliament was doing, what was happening

15:38

at that time. Joyce Malcolm the

15:40

Patrick Henry Professor of Constitutional

15:43

Law and the Second Amendment at the

15:45

Ententninskalia Law School at George

15:47

Mason University in Virginia.

15:50

In a world where history matters more

15:52

than law or public sentiment, historians

15:55

become heroes. The magazine

15:58

National Review once described Joyce

16:00

Malcolm as the nice girl who

16:02

saved the Second Amendment. She quote

16:05

looks nothing like a hardened veteran

16:07

of the gun control wars. Small,

16:10

slender, and bookish.

16:12

She's a wisp of a woman who enjoys

16:14

plunging into the archives and sitting

16:17

through panel discussions at academic

16:19

conferences. Malcolm

16:21

felt the argument over gun rights had

16:24

been set adrift from history. If

16:26

we didn't know what the founders thought, how

16:28

would we know what we should think. In

16:31

her most famous book, To Keep in Bear

16:33

Arms, The Origin of an American Right, She's

16:35

set out to answer that question, and while

16:38

pouring through case books from the eighteenth

16:40

and nineteenth century, she

16:42

found it the key that unlocked

16:45

the whole mystery no more than

16:47

a handful of paragraphs and a short summary,

16:49

but the story it told was riveting.

16:54

It's sixteen eighty six. England

16:57

is overwhelmingly Protestant, legally

16:59

and officially dominated by the Church

17:01

of England, but for a brief

17:04

period in the sixteen eighties, the

17:06

king was James the Second, who was

17:08

Catholic, and Church of England loyalists

17:11

were outraged by the possibility

17:13

that the king might try and empower his fellow

17:15

Catholics, and one of those outraged

17:18

Church of England loyalists was a merchant

17:21

from the coastal town of Bristol, a

17:24

man named Sir John

17:26

Knight. One

17:34

day, Knight rides up a steep road outside

17:37

Bristol to the Anglican Church of Saint

17:39

Michael. On the hill. He

17:41

bursts in the story, goes waving

17:43

his guns, gives an impassioned

17:46

speech. James the Second hears

17:49

of it and has Knight arrested,

17:51

charges him under the Statute

17:53

of Northampton. The

17:57

information sets forth that the defendant did

18:00

walk about the streets armed with guns, and that

18:02

he went into the Church of Saint Michael in Bristol

18:04

in the time of divine service with a gun

18:07

to terrify the King's subjects. And

18:09

what happens. The jury decides

18:12

not guilty. Joyce

18:15

Malcolm reads this and it takes her

18:17

breath away. Everyone thinks that English

18:19

common law, on which the American legal

18:21

tradition is based was hostile

18:23

to people walking around with guns. But

18:26

that is not true. John Knight

18:28

was acquitted. John Knight goes up

18:30

against the Statute of Northampton and

18:33

John Knight wins. One

18:35

side says the Statute of Northampton.

18:38

Check. The other side counters

18:41

John Knight, checkmate. So

18:45

there's been this big debate about what

18:47

the Statute of Northampton meant.

18:50

But I can say that if it was archaic

18:53

by the seventeenth century, it was certainly archaic

18:56

by the eighteenth century when we've

18:58

got the Second Amendment, and for sure the

19:01

twenty first century the nice

19:03

girl who saved the Second Amendment.

19:06

And if you read through the briefs file before the Supreme

19:09

Court in Bruin, what do you find

19:11

John Knight. Everywhere we

19:14

hear about the famous case of Sir John

19:16

Knight, we get history lessons on

19:18

John Knight. We learn that the legal entanglement

19:20

he found himself in after he burst

19:22

into the church at Saint Michael's on the

19:25

Hill is the most quote significant

19:27

precedent quote in understanding

19:29

a crucial turn in Second Amendment

19:32

law. During oral arguments,

19:34

Neil Gorsuch lobs a softball

19:37

up Paul Clement about the Statute of

19:39

Northampton. I know you've

19:42

had a substantial debate, was your friends on

19:44

the other side about the Statute of Northampton?

19:47

And Paul Clement knocks the

19:49

question out of the park John

19:52

Knight Baby. Then

19:59

six months later comes the final ruling

20:02

in Bruin, Just as Clarence

20:04

Thomas promised, It's all about

20:07

history. Eight pages the

20:09

period between twelve eighty five and seventeen

20:11

seventy six, five pages on Colonial

20:14

America, nine pages on seventeen

20:16

ninety one to the Civil War. Six

20:18

pages on the Path to reconstruction. One

20:21

of the most important cases

20:23

of our generation, a landmark that

20:26

once and for all clarifies the most

20:28

controversial of all the amendments

20:30

to the US Constitution. The debate

20:33

is over now we know. Were

20:35

the founders under the sway of the Statute of

20:37

Northampton? No, they were not. The

20:39

court rules history teaches

20:42

us. Otherwise the founders would

20:44

have frowned on the way in New York State tried

20:46

to regulate handguns. And we know this

20:48

because of one man's heroic

20:50

acquittal. If you read

20:52

the Bruin ruling, John Knight looms

20:55

over it like a colossus.

20:58

John Knight, John Knight, John Knight.

21:00

He pops up again and again like

21:02

a late seventeenth century whack

21:04

a mole. I've

21:07

been really drawn this morning. I was reading

21:10

over again the stuff about

21:12

the Rex Vy Night, the John

21:14

Knight case. I called up a

21:16

Second Amendment scholar named Patrick Charles

21:18

before long talk swung to John

21:21

Knight. Of course it did. There's no

21:23

quitting John Knight once you catch John

21:25

Knight fever. But you know that it's

21:28

a totally fascinating history taken

21:30

in itself, but in context. The

21:32

idea that you

21:34

know, in the middle of a contemporary

21:37

debate about how to handle

21:40

the possession of dangerous

21:43

weapons in America, that we're spending our

21:45

time obsessing about

21:47

a case from the seventeenth

21:49

century in Bristol and England. It is hilarious.

21:53

Yes, on the one level, you're absolutely great, Patrick

21:56

Charles, and I agreed that it was hilarious

21:58

to spend so much time on John Knight. And then

22:00

what do we do We continue

22:02

talking about John Knight. John

22:04

Knight is the groundhog who emerges from

22:07

his musty English lair every

22:09

spring to cast a shadow across

22:11

twenty first century jurisprudence, the

22:14

beaver who stealthily builds a legal

22:16

edifice out of mud and

22:18

styx, The

22:20

constitutional scholar, and a founding

22:22

member of the John Knight fan Club. David

22:24

Coppele once combed through the library

22:27

of an eighteenth century law professor named George

22:29

Wythe, who taught law to a Supreme

22:31

Court justice, a couple of presidents,

22:34

some founding fathers, and he found

22:36

that John Knight's name was all

22:38

over lawbooks back then. Surely

22:41

this is all the founders were talking about over

22:43

a good pipe and a bottle of claret in

22:46

the drawing rooms of colonial Philadelphia.

22:50

You were in Bristol not long ago. I

22:53

was my wife and I were on vacation, and

22:56

as we were on our way from Cornwall to Wales,

22:59

I did we did stop

23:02

at Saint Michael Church in

23:04

Bristol where all this stuff happened,

23:06

because I wanted to see it, maybe see

23:09

if Sir John Knight was buried in that graveyard.

23:12

David Copple, on vacation, says

23:14

to his wife, we cannot quit this

23:16

storied aisle without paying homage

23:19

to the man whose brave example saved

23:22

America from the tyranny

23:24

a restrictive gun laws. And

23:27

it was interesting. It's not a huge cathedral

23:29

type church. It's a medium sized church.

23:31

But it's up on the hill, as

23:34

I learned the hard way, because I was

23:36

driving a step shift and getting

23:38

up that very steep hill was quite

23:41

a challenge. Yeah. Yeah,

23:43

but you're in the area and you couldn't resist to

23:45

stop by. And actually I kind of wanted to see,

23:47

saying, Michael's myself, go ahead, tell

23:49

me why you want to You want to see it too, of

23:51

course I do. I mean, who wouldn't

23:53

want to learn of this giant in the place of his

23:56

birth and death. But then,

23:59

just as I was packing my bags

24:01

for Bristol, I thought, wait, let me

24:03

check in with a more disinterested

24:06

historian of that period. I called

24:08

around. Someone recommended a man

24:10

named Jonathan Barry of the University

24:13

of Exeter. When you, as

24:15

a historian of this period, see

24:17

the way that that John Knight

24:19

has suddenly popped up in American gun

24:23

rights discourse, what's your reaction,

24:26

Well, I find it bizarre because nobody

24:28

that's ever heard of him or the case, and

24:31

it has no implication, you know, as far as

24:33

I know, in the English, Jurish,

24:35

Britons, nor the Laagers. But you know it's

24:38

it's of no significance. Huh.

24:41

So in England John Knight is

24:43

a nobody, But in the hallowed halls

24:45

of the Supreme Court three and a half

24:47

thousand miles away, he's a superstar.

24:52

It's a puzzle, and it is

24:54

for puzzles like these that God

24:57

invented revisious history.

25:15

One of the problems associated with the

25:18

coronation of John Knight as the

25:20

savior of the gun rights movement is

25:22

that our understanding of the details of his arrest

25:24

and acquittal was limited. We

25:27

had the verdict, but not much

25:29

else. After all, it happened

25:32

in sixteen eighty six. It's not like

25:34

there are digital records somewhere in

25:36

the Bristol courthouse. What was

25:38

known about the case came from legal catalogs

25:41

from the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the

25:43

kind that a lawyer or a judge might subscribe

25:45

to that offer brief summaries,

25:48

news briefings of the goings on in

25:50

various courthouses around England. That's

25:53

what Joyce Malcolm found in her Eureka

25:55

moment, a brief write up from

25:57

a long ago legal newsletter on a

25:59

matter of Rex v. Night. It

26:02

was about a paragraph long, but

26:04

let's be honest, one paragraph

26:07

in a legal digest is not exactly

26:09

the strongest of foundations for

26:11

completely overturning our understanding

26:14

of the Second Amendment. And perhaps

26:17

more ominously, the newly inaugurated

26:20

members of the Sir John Knight Fan Club

26:22

tended to be lawyers, and lawyers

26:25

deal in black and white, hard facts,

26:27

the letter of the law, tangible evidence.

26:30

But now they had crossed over into

26:32

the land of history. And history

26:34

is not like the law at all. History

26:37

is a living, organic thing that gets rewritten

26:39

all the time. I mean, why do you think we call

26:41

this podcast revisionist history?

26:44

Because historians love to say, wait

26:46

a minute, I found something new that

26:48

makes me think we didn't quite realize

26:50

what we were talking about before. And

26:53

in the case of Sir John Knight,

26:55

that something new was

26:57

the newsletter of the Intrepid

27:00

Roger Morris. J.

27:08

Roger Morris was a journalist who

27:10

wrote a private newsletter in the sixteen eighties

27:13

for a variety of well connected clients.

27:16

Roger Morris knew everyone and

27:19

everything in late seventeenth century England.

27:21

He passed on high end gossip. He

27:23

told stories known had ever heard before

27:26

about brothels and prostitutes and somebody

27:28

bearing their breasts to the Moroccan ambassador.

27:31

He wrote about how the ice was so thick in the long

27:33

cold winter of sixteen eighty four that people

27:36

roasted an ox on the River Thames.

27:39

He saw the King's baby and air up close

27:42

and reported, and you have to love this

27:44

little bit of late medieval trolling. The

27:47

child was a large, full child

27:50

in the head and the upper parts, but

27:52

not suitably proportioned in

27:54

the lower parts. Roger

27:57

Morris was a gold mine. But

27:59

there were a few problems.

28:04

The first was that Roger Morris's reputation

28:06

did not extend beyond the late seventeenth

28:08

century. His newsletters ended up

28:10

in an obscure library in central London,

28:13

where no one paid attention to them

28:15

for several hundred years. The

28:17

second problem, Roger Morris

28:20

was incredibly prolific. The

28:22

Roger Morris archives extend into

28:24

the millions of words, so if

28:26

you wanted to find out what Roger Morris

28:29

had to say about this or that you

28:31

had to make a commitment. Third,

28:35

and maybe the biggest problem of all, Roger

28:38

Morris's entire life work

28:40

was written in code. I

28:43

mean, if you're going to diss the private

28:45

parts of the air to the throne, you have

28:47

to take some precautions. There

28:53

was an attempt by a historian called Douglas

28:55

Lacy to try and to start

28:58

to work on a volume. That's

29:00

the historian Tim Harris. He did

29:02

a book in the nineteen fifties. He

29:05

couldn't break the shorthand couldn't break the

29:08

code, and it's too my for one person's take

29:10

on. A cryptographer from Oxford

29:12

had to get involved. Teams of historians

29:14

volunteered, passing the job down from

29:17

one generation to the next, until

29:20

finally there it was a

29:22

full shelf of encyclopedia

29:24

sized volumes offering hitherto

29:27

unknown insights into one of the most

29:29

complex eras in British history,

29:32

and Roger Morris, it turns out,

29:34

had a lot to say about

29:37

Sir John Knight. It's a seven

29:39

volume edition and there was

29:41

a team of this who did it, and now

29:43

it's widely available. And because it's widely available.

29:45

People are looking at it more once they oh's not more

29:47

we can find out about the Sir John Knight

29:50

case. It's an incredible

29:52

source. It has lots of very valuable information

29:55

and it's clearly well informed and

29:58

if you could check his information guests other sources,

30:00

it's clearly accurate. But he also gives you additional

30:03

information which you won't get elsewhere. So

30:05

much additional information. Oh

30:08

my god. So he was a Bristol

30:11

merchant. He was from

30:14

quite an important Bristol mercantile

30:16

family. Jonathan Barry,

30:18

historian at the University of Exeter. The

30:21

Knights ran sugar refineries, they

30:23

had plantations in the Caribbean. They

30:26

were politically well connected, and their sympathies

30:29

did not lie with the Catholic King of England,

30:31

James the second. John Knight

30:34

hated Catholics. One

30:36

day he learns that a group of Irish Catholics

30:39

are holding a secret mass in a

30:41

house in Bristol. He arranges

30:43

to have the priest arrested, so

30:46

he gets the Lord May another magistrates to

30:48

raid this Catholic chapel

30:51

to A couple of weeks later, there's an anti Catholic ritual

30:54

in Bristol, which the government suspects

30:56

the magistrates of Bristol and

30:58

maybe Sir John Knight were involved in encouraging

31:01

where they parade through the city scoffing

31:03

the mass. They hold a piece

31:06

of bread up in the air, and they

31:08

have someone dressed as a Virgin Mary and someone

31:10

dressed as a monk at the monk is fondling the

31:12

Virgin Mary. The monk is fondling

31:15

the Virgin Mary. So the government is

31:17

upset about this. The King of England

31:19

is a Catholic, remember, And after

31:22

that, Sir John Knight claims that he's threatened

31:24

and he is beaten up by a

31:27

couple of irishments. So Sir John Knight was advised

31:29

to retire to a house in the country,

31:32

but because he was in fear of beaten up,

31:35

he was quite They beat

31:37

him and kicked him when they attacked him. When

31:39

he came into Bristol. Subsequently,

31:43

he came with a company of people carrying

31:45

swords and muscus

31:48

in front before him, but

31:50

he left these at the walls

31:52

of the city because you're

31:54

not allowed to carry arms into the

31:56

city and Bristol, Bristol had his own by

31:58

laws. Yes you heard that correctly.

32:01

He checks his guns at the gate.

32:04

Now this is worth a slight digression.

32:06

We tend to forget how violent

32:09

and militaristic seventeenth

32:11

century England

32:14

in general, and a place like Bristol in particular

32:16

were. Jonathan Barry. Again, one

32:19

reflection of the fact is that Bristol was

32:21

a leading place for private teering were

32:24

basically you capture the ships of your

32:26

rival traders, as it were, so you load yourself

32:29

up. Bristol is just beginning to

32:31

get this period to get involved in

32:33

the slave trade with

32:36

Africa, which of course both involved

32:39

the use of military force, but also, as you may

32:41

know, that the chief one of the chief products

32:43

that you actually took there to trade was

32:46

arms, and one

32:48

of the things that Bristol and places around it were

32:50

producing, in fact, were lots of arms. But

32:52

also they needed weapons,

32:55

cannons for their ships and so

32:57

on. So we have to imagine a society

33:00

in which there are a lot of people that are used to

33:02

using weapons. So why would

33:04

the night case represent some kind of turning

33:06

point in British attitudes towards

33:08

guns. Bristol was a washing guns,

33:11

so much so that they were forced to put gun control

33:13

measures in place that put anything

33:15

in America today to shame.

33:18

I mean, I think it's absurd to think

33:20

that the crucial issue here was about whether a

33:22

man was bearing arms or not because

33:24

of lots of people wandering around bearing

33:27

arms. Anyway, back

33:29

to our story with Tim Harris, and then

33:31

on one day he goes to church, and

33:34

he does go with his attendant and goes

33:36

with a gun and sword,

33:39

but he leaves these, he says, he leaves these

33:41

at the porch with his attendant. The

33:44

church is Saint Michael's on the hill, his

33:47

church, the one overlooking Bristol.

33:49

He gets off his horse, checks

33:52

his weapons at the door. Isn't

33:55

an enormously significant here, So here

33:57

we have a case that Second Amendment

33:59

types are claiming, is this enormously

34:01

important precedent for the right of an

34:03

individual to bear arms? But the individual

34:06

in question checks his arms

34:08

at the door the church. I

34:12

mean, it's like this

34:15

is something to do. He's not even he's not waving his gun

34:17

around or claiming he can wave his gun around. He quite

34:21

willingly adheres to local

34:23

norms about where guns should and shouldn't

34:26

be carried. Yes,

34:28

that seems to be the

34:31

case. Okay, So

34:34

Night enters the church and he shouts out,

34:36

the Catholics are trying to kill me, and

34:38

they're gonna try and kill you too. Another

34:41

quick digression. I asked Jonathan

34:44

Barry about that moment one question

34:46

before we go on with the story. I wanted to go back

34:49

how Catholic was

34:51

Bristol in this era? So if if

34:53

almost almost non existent?

34:56

Oh wait wait, so wait. So John

34:59

Night is going into this parish

35:01

church and saying we're all in danger

35:04

of being God freed by the Catholics

35:06

somebody, and the number

35:08

of Catholics in Bristol to have conducted

35:10

such a plot was minuscule. So

35:12

he goes into this church and he

35:14

says he tries to kind

35:17

of whip the church

35:19

up into a frenzy about the Irish threat,

35:21

and the government says, you've gone too far.

35:24

He's implying that the Catholic king is

35:26

somehow conspiring against

35:28

his own people, and that's when

35:31

he gets in trouble with the law. Yes,

35:34

he doesn't sound very likable, Sir John Knight. Nobody

35:36

appears to have liked Sir John Knight. No,

35:40

the government goes after John Knight because

35:43

he's a jackass. He's running

35:45

around conjuring up ridiculous conspiracy

35:47

theories about Catholics.

35:49

So the charge, all the newsletter

35:52

accounts I've read emphasize

35:55

that it's the words that he spoke

35:58

in the church, which therefore

36:01

this was proof of his disloyalty. That

36:05

was a key issue for why they wanted

36:07

to arrest him. That I just side

36:09

to get him on the Statute

36:11

of Northaptain, which

36:13

is a statute from thirteen twenty

36:16

eight, saying it's a breach of the piece, and

36:18

he pleaded not guilty.

36:20

He claims that he

36:23

didn't take the gun or the sword into the

36:25

church. They left it outside. And

36:28

the church is actually just outside the wars

36:30

of the city of Bristol, as it was back then

36:33

as a Protestant church, obviously, and

36:36

he leaves the gun and the sword outside,

36:39

and the jury said he's

36:42

got a proven track record of being

36:44

loyal to the government, and

36:47

so they found him not guilty because

36:49

he didn't brandish a gun in church. The

36:52

jury didn't find him disloyal

36:54

because they knew he'd been loyal to the previous

36:56

Protestant king. He wasn't armed,

36:59

so they couldn't get him on that. He just

37:01

didn't like Catholics, And so what

37:04

this is Bristol in sixteen eighty

37:06

six. No one in Bristol in

37:08

sixty six likes Catholics.

37:11

The case against him is dead on arrival.

37:14

And by the way, no one knows this better

37:16

than the government. So they actually

37:19

don't want to prosecute Knights.

37:21

They actually want Knight to apologize,

37:23

and then they try and bury the case. That seems

37:26

to be he was implied in the newsletter

37:28

accounts I've read. That doesn't happen.

37:31

They would have preferred if he'd apologized,

37:33

and they could have said, okay, well let it go. So

37:37

to recap, John Knight's episode

37:39

in the Church of Saint Michael has become

37:42

a heroic moment to the American gun rights

37:44

movement, even though John Knight wasn't

37:46

actually carrying a gun when he entered

37:48

the Church of Saint Michael, even though

37:50

the case against him had nothing to do

37:53

with guns, even though Bristol in fact

37:55

had gun control ordinances that puts

37:57

every gun control ordinance in America today

37:59

to shame, And even though the

38:02

whole breuh was just

38:04

about him being a bigot who was terrified

38:06

of a Catholic conspiracy taking

38:08

over Bristol, even though there were

38:11

hardly any Catholics in Bristol,

38:13

and even though the whole case was dead

38:16

on arrival, and I could have apologized

38:18

and made it all go away, and just

38:21

didn't feel like it. But

38:23

the only way you would know all this is

38:25

if you were willing to wade to the seven

38:28

volumes of Roger Morris's

38:30

coded newsletters. And

38:33

who has time for that? I

38:35

was reading the did

38:38

you read there's the historian Tim Harris

38:41

rode an essay on Yeah. I was amused

38:43

to see there was a in he talks

38:46

about the John Knight case about

38:48

how when he goes to

38:50

the church, the Protestant

38:53

Church, to speak to what

38:55

he thought it was the threat being posed

38:58

by the Catholics in Bristol, he

39:01

insists that he checks his weapons

39:03

at the front of the church, and he also

39:05

says that when he goes into

39:08

Bristol, he abide I did by the by laws of Bristol

39:10

and didn't carry his weapons into

39:13

the past

39:15

the city's limits. I

39:18

wondered how Joyce Malcolm made sense of

39:20

all these new facts. The Roger Morris newsletters

39:22

were finally decoded more than

39:25

ten years after she wrote her opus

39:27

to keep him bare arms.

39:30

So I'm just curious to think

39:33

how did those sort of two facts fit into

39:35

this story. So even if we have if

39:38

the just Sir John Knight case represents

39:41

some kind of affirmation

39:44

of the individual right to peaceable carry,

39:46

so John Knight himself is complying

39:50

with some pretty strict

39:52

gun control laws, isn't he? I

39:55

think, to be honest that I think

39:57

that Professor Harris is wrong. First

40:02

of all, because there was such a there was

40:04

all of these duties and requirements to protect

40:06

yourself. And in the in the judge's

40:09

opinion in the in there, Sir John Knight case,

40:12

he says that the law allows

40:15

gentlemen to go about with arms

40:18

as long as they're not you know, unusual

40:20

and dangerous weapons. So

40:23

the judge seems at odds with Professor

40:26

Harris. But what

40:28

do you what do you make of Sir

40:30

John Knights claim that he checked

40:33

his weapons at the front of the church and didn't

40:35

carry his weapons into the city of Bristol. I

40:40

find that very odd because

40:43

if that were the case, if there was a law that he

40:45

couldn't carry his weapons into the city of

40:47

Bristol at all, that the whole city

40:49

was what we would now call a sensitive place. That

40:52

no one could work. It goes

40:54

against your right to protect yourself.

40:56

It goes against your right to protect yourself in your house,

40:59

it goes against the judge's ruling. And

41:02

and to be honest, I don't

41:05

Professor Harris is British. They

41:08

don't think much of right to be armed. The

41:11

homicide rate in the United States, if

41:13

you're wondering, is four and a half times

41:16

higher than the United Kingdom. When

41:19

I explored that right

41:22

and told my British

41:24

friends about it, most of them didn't

41:26

even realize they ever had had a right

41:28

to be armed. There's this whole history

41:31

and that they haven't looked at. And I think

41:33

it was because I said earlier, I

41:36

asked an American question we were

41:38

interested in that. They

41:40

weren't particularly interested in a

41:44

right to be armed, and so it

41:47

wasn't something that they had studied or been been

41:49

even very curious about until I

41:51

started to write about it. Yeah.

41:53

Yeah, But if the British aren't

41:56

interested in a right to bear arms,

41:59

then why are we drawing on British Why is

42:01

the British tradition relevant to

42:03

the discussion of American

42:05

individual gun rights. I

42:08

think this was a history that was lost to them.

42:10

I think modern British people have a

42:12

different view of it. They're much

42:14

more dependent on the state taking care

42:16

of them, particularly

42:18

since World War Two. This

42:22

is earlier British history. Is there a history

42:25

that they really were not that familiar with? You

42:28

know, they were looking at other things, and

42:31

I think that one of the I guess the

42:33

contribution I made was that I was an American

42:35

that looked at British history in English history

42:38

with American questions, with the things we

42:40

were interested in. Yeah,

42:44

and what did the Supreme Court? How did

42:46

the highest legal body in the land, in

42:48

the landmark ruling of New York State Pistol

42:51

and Rifle Association v. Brewin handle

42:53

the fact that their hero has

42:55

feet of clay? I know I had a summary

42:58

Summer Melan, I see,

43:03

I think this is it. Yes,

43:07

I asked Patrick Charles to read

43:09

me the relevant section to

43:11

the extent that there are multiple plausible

43:14

interpretations of Sir John Knight's case. We

43:16

will favor the one that is more consistent

43:18

with the Second Amendment's command, which,

43:24

in other words, there's a whole long

43:27

list of words we can make sense of. Us We're going to

43:29

pick the one we liked the most Okay,

43:33

that's the one that makes our life easiest in

43:35

arguing the case we've already decided we

43:37

want to argue. It's like,

43:40

it's like history is cherry picking. Oh,

43:42

it's so cherry picked. The

43:45

Supreme Court decides to clear up

43:47

the ambiguity over the Second Amendment.

43:49

Let us leave the verdict to history, they

43:52

declare. But then their

43:54

hero turns out to have feet of clay, so

43:56

they shrug and go on with the things

43:58

that they had already made up their mind to do before

44:01

they tried to convince us that they wanted

44:03

to play historian and go

44:05

to England and make their pilgrimage

44:08

to Saint Michael on the Hill and pretend

44:10

that the men whom they have chosen to symbolize

44:13

the grand tradition of American gun rights

44:15

is something other than a jackass.

44:18

And after far too many hours reconstructing

44:21

the history of this jackass, I

44:23

realized that I had fallen into

44:25

the same trap that we've all fallen

44:28

into in this country when it comes to gun

44:30

violence. We're talking about

44:32

the wrong things, telling irrelevant

44:35

stories. And over the course of

44:37

the next five episodes of Revisionist

44:40

History, I want to try and change that

44:42

conversation. I'm going to take

44:44

you to North Carolina to shoot guns,

44:46

visit an old man in Alabama with a crazy

44:48

store to tell, revisit the assassination

44:51

of Robert Kennedy, on and on, but

44:54

no more John Knight. I promise we've

44:57

all had it with John

44:59

Knight. What

45:08

kind of person was he? Not

45:11

sort of person I want to have a drink with. He was

45:14

a nasty piece of work. Really, he was

45:16

vindictive, in spiteful. He's a bigot, He's

45:19

a trouble maker. He's obviously deliberately

45:21

going out to try and provoke trouble

45:24

in April sixteen eighty six when he gets

45:26

is press arrested because he's stirring

45:29

things up. So yeah, not a nice

45:31

piece of work, that's my basic view of him.

45:33

He's involved in the slave trade as sugar

45:35

refiner. I would hardly see

45:37

that he was a sort of hero figure that

45:40

champions of American liberty would want to

45:42

celebrate, although maybe that's not the point.

45:46

Oh.

46:03

Our revisionist history gun series was

46:06

produced by Jacob Smith, Bend

46:08

Didaf Halfrey, Kiara Powell,

46:10

Tally, Emlyn and Leem and Gistu. We

46:14

were edited by Peter Clowney and Julia

46:16

Barton. Fact checking by Arthur Gompertz

46:18

and Cashelle Williams. Original

46:21

scoring by Luis Guerra, with vocals

46:23

in this episode by the magnificent

46:26

Ethan Herschenfeldt. Mastering

46:29

by Flawn Williams, Engineering

46:31

by Nina Lawrence. I'm

46:33

Martain Gladwell.