116 CHARLES I. OF ENGLAND 



CHARLES II. OF ENGLAND 



reign ; then for eleven years Charles ruled without 

 one, in its stead with subservient judges and the 

 courts of Star Chamber and High Commission. In 

 1627 he had blundered into an inglorious French 

 war; but with France he concluded peace in 1629, 

 with Spain in 1630. Peace, economy, and arbitrary 

 taxation were to solve the great problem of his 

 policy how to get money, yet not account for it. 

 Not that Charles cared for money in itself, or had 

 far-reaching projects of tyranny ( he failed to enter 

 into Stratford's scheme ). But he had inherited a 

 boundless egoism, and, content with his own petty 

 self, had little sympathy with the dead heroism of 

 the Tudor age, none at all with the nascent ardour 

 if democracy. The extension of the ship-tax to 

 the inland counties was met by Hampden's passive 

 resistance ( 1637 ) ; Laud's attempt to Anglicise the 

 Scottish Church, by the active resistance of the 

 whole northern nation (1639). Once more Charles 

 had to call a parliament : two met in 1640 the 

 Short Parliament, which lasted but three weeks, 

 and the Long, which outlasted Charles. 



It met to pronounce Stratford's doom ; and, his 

 plot with the army detected, Charles basely sac- 

 rificed his loyal servitor, his own kingly word, 

 to fears for the queen's safety : no act weighed 

 heavier on him afterwards. The same signature 

 that sent Stratford to the block gave assent to a 

 second bill by which the existing parliament might 

 not be dissolved without its own consent. That 

 pledge, as extorted by force, Charles purposed to 

 disregard ; and during his visit to Edinburgh, in 

 the autumn of 1641, he trusted by lavish concessions 

 to bring over the Scots to his side. Instead, he got 

 entangled in dark suspicions of plotting the murder 

 of the Covenanting lords, of connivance even in the 

 Ulster massacre. Still, his return to London was 

 welcomed with some enthusiasm, and a party was 

 forming in the Commons itself of men who revolted 

 from the sweeping changes that menaced both 

 church and state. Pym's ' Grand Remonstrance ' 

 justified their fears, and Charles seemed to justify 

 the ' Grand Remonstrance ' by his attempt to arrest 

 the five members (4th January 1642); but that ill- 

 stricken blow was dictated by the knowledge of an 

 impending impeachment of the queen herself. On 

 22d August he raised the royal standard at Not- 

 tingham ; and the four years' Civil War commenced, 

 in which, as at Naseby, he showed no lack of 

 physical courage, and which resulted at Naseby in 

 the utter annihilation of his cause ( 14th June 

 1645). 



No need here to track him through plot and 

 counterplot, with Catholics, Presbyterians, and 

 Sectaries, with the Scots and the Irish, with the 

 parliament and the army ; enough, that, quitting 

 his last refuge, Oxford, he surrendered himself on 

 5th May 1646 to the Scots at Newark, and by 

 them in the following January was handed over 

 to the parliament. His four months' captivity at 

 Holmby House, near Northampton ; his seizure, on 

 3d June, by Cornet Joyce ; the three months at 

 Hampton Court; the flight on llth November; the 

 fresh captivity at Carisbrooke Castle, in the Isle of 

 Wight these lead up to the ' trial ' at Westminster 

 of the ' tyrant, traitor, and murderer, Charles 

 Stuart.' He had drawn the sword, and by the 

 sword he perished, for it was the army, not parlia- 

 ment, that stood at the back of his judges. Charles 

 faced them bravely, and with dignity. Thrice he 

 refused to plead, denying the competence of such a 

 court ; and his refusal being treated as a confession, 

 on the third day fifty-five out of seventy-one judges 

 sixty-four more never were present affixed their 

 names and seals to his death-warrant ; four days 

 later, sentence was pronounced. 



No need here to tell the well-known story of his 

 meekness towards his persecutors, of the pathetic 



parting from two of his younger children, of his 

 preparation for a holy death ; or how, on the 

 morning of the 30th January 1649, he passed to that 

 death on the scaffold in front of Whitehall, with a 

 courage worthy of a very martyr. On the snowy 

 7th of February they bore the ' white king ' to his 

 grave at Windsor in Henry VIII. 's vault ; in 1813 

 the Prince Regent had his leaden coffin opened. 

 Six children survived him Charles and James, hia 

 successors; Mary, Princess of Orange (1631-60); 

 Elizabeth (1635-50); Henry, Duke of Gloucester 

 (1639-60); and Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans 

 (1644-70), the last born ten weeks after Charles's 

 final parting from his queen. At the Restoration 

 Charles II. appointed, on his sole authority, a 

 ' form of prayer, with fasting, for the day of the 

 martyrdom of the Blessed King Charles I.,' to be 

 annexed to the Common Prayer-book ; with the 

 other ' state-services, ' it kept its place there till 

 1859. 



A far stronger man than Charles might scarcely 

 have extricated himself from the difficulties that 

 beset him ; true, those difficulties were largely of 

 his own creating. But was he right in abandoning 

 Stratford ? should he also have sacrificed wife, faith, 

 and crown ? If yes, then was he wholly in the 

 wrong ; if no, he was partly for once at least in 

 the right. Vices, other than duplicity, he had 

 none, as we use the word. He was vague, vacil- 

 lating, obstinate ; unable to lead or be led ; super- 

 stitious, heedful of omens ; unsympathetic and 

 reserved where he did not love ; intolerant of opposi- 

 tion to his will. But he was a good husband, a 

 good father, a good churchman no man so good- 

 was ever so bad a king ; no man so fallible believed 

 so honestly in his infallibility. For Charles was 

 honest to his own convictions. His very duplicity 

 was due sometimes to schooling in 'kingcraft,' 

 but oftener to inability to see two sides of a 

 question. Now he saw one, and now the other, but 

 never both sides at once ; and, just as he saw, so 

 he spoke. He was not a liar because he loved a lie. 

 Milton's charges against him of ' all manner of lewd- 

 ness ' rank with Milton's charge that he poisoned his 

 father ; and Bishop Heber's rash statement that 

 Jeremy Taylor's second wife was ' generally believed 

 to be a natural daughter of Charles, when Prince of 

 Wales,' is backed by no tittle of evidence. Indeed, 

 as a pattern of culture and purity, one prince alone 

 is worthy to be named beside him the late Prince 

 Consort ; and had Charles's lot fallen, like his, on 

 peaceful days of settled monarchy, admiration, not 

 pity, might now be our feeling towards him. But 

 I Charles was predestined to sorrow. ' A tragic 

 face !' said the sculptor Bernini, as he looked on 

 the triple portrait by Vandyke ; already, the 

 shadow of a violent death overclouded those fine, 

 weak features. 



See the articles EIKON BASILIKE, HENRIETTA MARIA, 

 ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, IRELAND, LAUD, STRAFFORD, 

 ELIOT, HAMPDEN, PRYNNE, PYM, CROMWELL, BRAD- 

 SHAW, &c. ; the Histories of Clarendon, Hallam, Green, 

 Guizot, and Ranke ; I. D'Israeli's ('ommen taries on the 

 Life and Rmjn of Charles I. (5 vols. 1828-30) ; Letters of 

 Charles I. to Henrietta Maria (Camden Soc. 1856); 

 Chancellor's Charles I., 1600-25(1886) ; Calendar of State 

 Papers 1625-45 (20 vols. 1858-90); three long articles 

 on the trial in the Athenceumim Jan. and Feb. 1881 ; the 

 sumptuous Life by Sir J. Skelton ( 1898 ) ; and, specially, 

 S. R. Gardiner's Puritan Revolution ( 1876 ), History of 

 England, 1603-42, (10 vols. 1863-82 ; new ed. 1883-84 ), and 

 History of the Great Civil War, 1642-49 (3 vols. 1886-91). 



Charles II., born at St James's on 29th May 

 1630, was present at Edgehill (1642), and in 1646, 

 after a twelvemonth in the western counties, 

 escaped to France by way of Scilly and Jersey. He 

 got little good from two years spent in Paris ; then 

 he passed on to Holland, where he met with a better 

 reception, and whence in 1648, with nineteen 



