Program Title
By the Sword Divided, I

Based On
Original material

Adapted By
Alfred Shaughnessy, Jeremy Paul, Alexander Baron, John Hawkesworth

Number of Episodes:
9

Description
"By the Sword Divided" focuses on the aristocratic Lacey family, living peacefully in their Arnescote castle before the English Civil War erupts and tears them apart. Sir Martin Lacey is the family head, unswervingly loyal to the King. His troubles start when his elder daughter, Anne, weds John Fletcher, scion of a merchant-class family who support the Cromwell forces....


Original broadcast date
1986-03-23

Cast	Characters
Julian Glover	Sir Martin Lacey
Sharon Maugham	Anne Lacey Fletcher
Rob Edwards	John Fletcher
Timothy Bentinck	Tom Lacey
Lucy Aston	Lucinda Lacey
Bert Parnaby	Sir Austin
Richard Syms
Rosalie Crutchley	Goodwife Margaret
Joanna Myers
Andrew Maclachlan	Cropper
Simon Butteriss	Hugh
Claire Davenport
Eileen Way	Minty
Simon Dutton	Will Saltmarsh
Frank Mills
Tim Brierley	Edward Ferrar #2
Peter Guinness	Dick Skinner
Ben Aris
Marsha Fitzalan
Michael Heath
Hubert Rees
Jerome Willis	Pym
Chistopher Baines	Prince Rupert
Janet Price
Judy Buxton	Susan Protheroe
Adam Blackwood
Debbie Goodman	Rachel
Jeremy Clyde	King Charles I
Barbara Shelley
Patrick Drury
Macolm Stoddard	Captain Marsh
Edward Peel
Andrew Bicknell
Andrew McCullock	Leckie

Credits
Executive Producer: John Hawkesworth
Producer: Brian Spiby
Director: Henry Herbert, Brian Farnham

Intro
BY THE SWORD DIVIDED/Episode 1/Intro by Alistair Cooke

Good evening, I'm Alistair Cooke.

Tonight we begin a nine-part series, the latest work of John Hawkesworth and several of his writing team that first stormed and then conquered American television with Upstairs/Downstairs. This latest work is also about a family as close and united in the beginning as the Bellammys. But whereas the Bellammys were almost a society unto themselves, the Laceys are a microcosm of English society in the seventeenth century's English Civil War--an upheaval of the whole of England that was as devastating, as messy, and as tragic in its time as the American Civil War.

The antagonist on one side is the king, on the other side, the Parliament. The men who fought the war were recruited from every county and every class. There were nobles, merchants, farmers, mechanics, and tradesmen on each side, though you could say that the people who most regretted the religious break with Rome were on the king's side whereas most Protestants were on the Parliament's side. This fascinating, though appalling, chapter of English history is where we begin. May 1640 is a year away. King Charles I has been on the throne for fifteen years and throughout that time has been at odds with Parliament, mainly through his habit of arbitrary taxation without Parliament's permission to fight failed wars in France and Spain and now in Scotland. Whenever Parliament refused him legal right to these monies he simply dissolved it.

Well, these troubles and the cataclysm that it will unleash are not the main preoccupation of the household of Sir Martin Lacey, a country squire who is preparing to marry off his elder daughter to a young lawyer, the son of a self-made North Country shipping magnate. Sir Martin is hoping without much hope to betroth his younger daughter to the son of an earl she does not love and in fact does not even like. We come in on these touchy preliminaries at Arnescote, the Lacey Castle in May of 1640.

By the Sword Divided, episode one.





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