If Cummings is a cavalier, who are the roundheads?

One commentator described the attitude of Dominic Cummings towards observance of the lockdown restrictions as “cavalier”. Thereon turns a greater truth. This is not just an archaic reproach leftover from the 17th century, when Cavaliers fought Roundheads in the bitter and savage English civil war. Cavaliers and Roundheads have been fighting each other ever since. They are not purely political labels. They are also psychological types.

Gone with the Wind perceptively begins with an analysis of the war between northern and southern states of America as a reopening of the feud between Roundhead and Cavalier, a rerun of Cromwell versus Charles I, Puritan versus Episcopalian, the common man versus the gentry, Yankee versus Reb. Kevin Phillips, in his book The Cousins' Wars, identifies three Anglo-Saxon conflicts of this type, not just the two civil wars but also the American War of Independence. He categorises that as also a form of civil war, despite the way American history books tend to downplay the extent to which the conflict set brother against brother, neighbour against neighbour, preferring to see it as a united patriotic surge for freedom.

The word “freedom” is key. Take the phrase: “Freedom under the Law.” Both are necessary in a well-ordered society. But cavaliers value freedom, roundheads value law. We are in uncharted territory here, as neither liberal nor conservative ideologies honour their roots in these differences.

But as psychological types we are on more familiar ground. Take, for instance, the weekly gladiatorial contest between Boris Johnson, certainly a cavalier, and his new opponent, Labour's recently elected leader, Sir Keir Starmer – a roundhead if ever there was one. They are on the same page, which makes the exchange interesting, but Johnson is focused on the first part, freedom, and Starmer on the second, law.

These distinctions can be traced back the so-called Elizabethan Settlement of the 16th century – no Settlement at all from a Roman Catholic perspective, naturally – when a state church was invented that could contain both high church and low church, Puritan and Anglo-Catholic (though not called that at the time). The Settlement fell apart in the quarrel between Charles I and Parliament, but was patched up in the Restoration under Charles II. Those two tendencies survive in the modern Church of England, with mainly “liberal” Catholics on one side (the more conservative having gone over to Rome) and Evangelicals on the other.

Indeed we can plot the progress of the rival camps by studying the succession of top episcopal appointments. For example, Archbishops of Canterbury, starting with William Temple, high. His successor Geoffrey Fisher, was low; then Michael Ramsey, high, followed by Donald Coggan, low; Robert Runcie, high, was followed by George Carey, low, in turn came Rowan Williams, high, and then Justin Welby, low. We can easily substitute cavalier for high and roundhead for low.

As we can with the occupants over the same period of 10 Downing Street. Chamberlain, roundhead, was followed by Churchill, cavalier; Attlee was a roundhead, then came Churchill again and Eden, both cavaliers. Macmillan strikes one as a roundhead; then came Douglas Home, cavalier, followed by Wilson, roundhead. What was Heath – a roundhead trying to be a cavalier? Callaghan was a cavalier, Thatcher a roundhead, Major a cavalier, and then came Blair, also a cavalier. Brown was a roundhead, Cameron a cavalier, then May, a roundhead, and Johnson, certainly a cavalier. It wasn't quite the neat alternation we get with Archbishops of Canterbury, but close.

So what view you take of the alleged transgressions of Dominic Cummings may depend on which of these two ancient English tribes you belong to, the cavaliers or the roundheads. Cummings stretched the rules to give himself the freedom to cope with a family emergency, to which cavaliers will say well done and roundheads will cry foul. There are plenty of roundheads about. The police have recorded hundreds of thousands of reports from members of the public about people breaking the lockdown rules. But plenty of cavaliers too, who were waiting for a sign that it is now OK to lie on the beach at Bournemouth or Blackpool. As one such sunbather put it: “If the police question me I shall just say my name is Dominic Cummings.”

And the outcome may well depend on whether the police officer is a cavalier (who will enjoy the joke) or a roundhead (who will not be at all amused).