Chapter XII: Part VI: After the Reformation (6)

Several months followed spent in manoeuvres to obtain the control of the forces and in a paper war of controversy. On the 23rd of April Charles was refused entry into Hull, and on the 2nd of June the parliament sent to him the "Nineteen Propositions," claiming the whole sovereignty and government for the parliament, including the choice of the ministers, the judges, and the control of the army, and the execution of the laws against the Roman Catholics. The military events of the war are described in the article GREAT REBELLION. On the 22nd of August the king set up his standard at Nottingham, and on the 23rd of October he fought the indecisive battle of Edgehill, occupying Oxford and advancing as far as Brentford. It seemed possible that the war might immediately be ended by Charles penetrating to the heart of the enemy's position and occupying London, but he drew back on the 13th of November before the parliamentary force at Turnham Green, and avoided a decisive contest.

Next year (1643) another campaign, for surrounding instead of penetrating into London, was projected. Newcastle and Hopton were to advance from the north and west, seize the north and south banks of the river below the city, destroy its commerce, and combine with Charles at Oxford. The royalist force, however, in spite of victories at Adwalton Moor (June 30th) and Roundway Down (July 13th), did not succeed in combining with Charles, Newcastle in the north being kept back by the Eastern Association and the presence of the enemy at Hull, and Hopton in the west being detained by their successful holding out at Plymouth. Being too weak to attempt anything alone against London, Charles marched to besiege Gloucester, Essex following him and relieving the place. Subsequently the rival forces fought the indecisive first battle of Newbury, and Charles failed in preventing the return of Essex to London. Meanwhile on the 1st of February the parliament had submitted proposals to Charles at Oxford, but the negotiations came to nothing, and Charles's unwise attempt at the same time to stir up a rising in his favour in the city, known as Waller's Plot, injured his cause considerably. He once more turned for help to Ireland, where the cessation of the campaign against the rebels was agreed upon on the 15th of September 1643, and several English regiments became thereby available for employment by the king in England. Charles also accepted the proposal for bringing over 2000 Irish. On the 22nd of January 1644 the king opened the rival parliament at Oxford.

The campaign of 1644 began far less favourably for Charles than the two last, principally owing to the alliance now made between the Scots and the parliament, the parliament taking the Solemn League and Covenant on the 25th of September 1643, and the Scottish army crossing the border on the 19th of January 1644. No attempt was this year made against London, and Rupert was sent to Newcastle's succour in the north, where the great disaster of Marston Moor on the 2nd of July ruined Charles's last chances in that quarter. Meanwhile Charles himself had defeated Waller at Cropredy Bridge on the 29th of June, and he subsequently followed Essex to the west, compelling the surrender of Essex's infantry at Lostwithiel on the 2nd of September. With an ill-timed leniency he allowed the men to go free after giving up their stores and arms, and on his return towards Oxford he was confronted again by Essex's army at Newbury, combined now with that of Waller and of Manchester. Charles owed his escape here from complete annihilation only to Manchester's unwillingness to inflict a total defeat, and he was allowed to get away with his artillery to Oxford and to revictual Donnington Castle and Basing House.

The negotiations carried on at Uxbridge during January and February 1645 failed to secure a settlement, and on the 14th of June the crushing defeat of the king's forces by the new model army at Naseby practically ended the civil war. Charles, however, refused to make peace on Rupert's advice, and considered it a point of honour "neither to abandon God's cause, injure my successors, nor forsake my friends." His chief hope was to join Montrose in Scotland, but his march north was prevented by the parliamentary forces, and on the 24th of September he witnessed from the walls of Chester the rout of his followers at Rowton Heath. He now entered into a series of intrigues, mutually destructive, which, becoming known to the different parties, exasperated all and diminished still further the king's credit. One proposal was the levy of a foreign force to reduce the kingdom; another, the supply through the marquis of Ormonde of 10,000 Irish. Correspondence relating to these schemes, fatally compromising as they were if Charles hoped ever to rule England again, was discovered by his enemies, including the Glamorgan treaty, which went much further than the instructions to Ormonde, but of which the full responsibility has never been really traced to Charles, who on the 29th of January 1646 disavowed his agent's proceedings. He simultaneously treated with the parliament, and promised toleration to the Roman Catholics if they and the pope would aid in the restoration of the monarchy and the church. Nor was this all. The parliamentary forces had been closing round Oxford. On the 27th of April the king left the city, and on the 5th of May gave himself up to the Scottish army at Newark, arriving on the 13th with them at Newcastle. On the 13th of July the parliament sent to Charles the "Newcastle Propositions," which included the extreme demands of Charles's acceptance of the Covenants, the abolition of episcopacy and establishment of Presbyterianism, severer laws against the Roman Catholics and parliamentary control of the forces, with the withdrawal of the Irish Cessation, and a long list of royalists to be exempted from pardon. Charles returned no definite answer for several months. He imagined that he might now find support in Scottish royalism, encouraged by Montrose's series of brilliant victories, but these hopes were destroyed by the latter's defeat at Philiphaugh on the 3rd of September. The Scots insisted on the Covenant and on the permanent establishment of Presbyterianism, while Charles would only consent to a temporary maintenance for three years. Accordingly the Scots, in return for the payment of part of their army arrears by the parliament, marched home on the 30th of January 1647, leaving Charles behind, who under the care of the parliamentary commissioners was conducted to Holmby House. Thence on the 12th of May he sent his answer to the Newcastle Propositions, offering the militia to the parliament for ten years and the establishment of Presbyterianism for three, while a final settlement on religion was to be reached through an assembly of twenty divines at Westminster. But in the midst of the negotiation with the parliament Charles's person was seized, on the 3rd of June 1647, by Cornet Joyce under instructions of the army, which soon afterwards occupied London and overpowered the parliament, placing Charles at Hampton Court.

If Charles could have remained firm to either one or the other faction, and have made concessions either to Presbyterianism or on the subject of the militia, he might even now have prevailed. But he had learned nothing by experience, and continued at this juncture his characteristic policy of intrigue and double-dealing, "playing his game," to use his own words, negotiating with both parties at once, not with the object or wish to arrive at a settlement with either, but to augment their disputes, gain time and profit ultimately by their divisions. The "Heads of the Proposals," submitted to Charles by the army on the 28th of July 1647, were terms conceived on a basis far broader and more statesmanlike than the Newcastle Propositions, and such as Charles might well have accepted. The proposals on religion anticipated the Toleration Act of 1689. There was no mention of episcopacy, and its existence was thereby indirectly admitted, but complete religious freedom for all Protestant denominations was provided, and the power of the church to inflict civil penalties abolished, while it was also suggested that dangers from Roman Catholics and Jesuits might be avoided by means other than enforcing attendance at church. The parliament was to dissolve itself and be succeeded by biennial assemblies elected on a reformed franchise, not to be dissolved without their own consent before 120 days, and not to sit more than 240 days in the two years. A council of state was to conduct the foreign policy of the state and conclude peace and war subject to the approval of parliament, and to control the militia for ten years, the commanders being appointed by parliament, as also the officers of state for ten years. No peer created since May the 21st, 1642, was to sit in parliament without consent of both Houses, and the judicial decisions of the House of Lords were to be ratified by the Commons. Only five persons were excepted from amnesty, but royalists were not to hold office for five years and not to sit in the Commons till the end of the second biennial parliament. Proposals for a series of reforms were also added. Charles, however, was at the same time negotiating with Lauderdale for an invasion of England by the Scots, and imagined he could win over Cromwell and Fairfax by "proffers of advantage to themselves." The precious opportunity was therefore allowed to slip by. On the 9th of September he rejected the proposals of the parliament for the establishment of Presbyterianism. His hopes of gaining advantages by playing upon the differences of his opponents proved a complete failure. Fresh terms were drawn up by the army and parliament together on the 10th of November, but before these could be presented, Charles, on the 11th, had escaped to Carisbrooke Castle in the Isle of Wight. Thence on the 16th he sent a message offering Presbyterianism for three years and the militia for his lifetime to the parliament, but insisting on the maintenance of episcopacy. On the 28th of December he refused his assent to the Four Bills, which demanded the militia for parliament for twenty years and practically for ever, annulled the honours recently granted by the king and his declarations against the Houses, and gave to parliament the right to adjourn to any place it wished. On the 3rd of January 1648 the Commons agreed to a resolution to address the king no further, in which they were joined by the Lords on the 15th.

Charles had meanwhile taken a further fatal step which brought about his total destruction. On the 26th of December 1647 he had signed at Carisbrooke with the Scottish commissioners the secret treaty called the "Engagement," whereby the Scots undertook to invade England on his behalf and restore him to the throne on condition of the establishment of Presbyterianism for three years and the suppression of the sectarians. In consequence the second civil war broke out and the Scots invaded England under Hamilton. The royalist risings in England were soon suppressed, and Cromwell gained an easy and decisive victory over the Scots at Preston. Charles was now left alone to face his enemies, with the whole tale of his intrigues and deceptions unmasked and exposed. The last intrigue with the Scots was the most unpardonable in the eyes of his contemporaries, no less wicked and monstrous than his design to conquer England by the Irish soldiers; "a more prodigious treason," said Cromwell, "than any that had been perfected before; because the former quarrel was that Englishmen might rule over one another; this to vassalize us to a foreign nation." Cromwell, who up to this point had shown himself foremost in supporting the negotiations with the king, now spoke of the treaty of Newport, which he found the parliament in the act of negotiating on his return from Scotland, as "this ruining hypocritical agreement." Charles had engaged in these negotiations only to gain time and find opportunity to escape. "The great concession I made this day," he wrote on the 7th of October, "was made merely in order to my escape." At the beginning he had stipulated that no concession from him should be valid unless an agreement were reached upon every point. He had now consented to most of the demands of the parliament, including the repudiation of the Irish Cessation, the surrender of the delinquents and the cession of the militia for twenty years, and of the offices of state to parliament, but remained firm in his refusal to abolish episcopacy, consenting only to Presbyterianism for three years. Charles's devotion to the church is undoubted. In April 1646, before his flight from Oxford, inspired perhaps by superstitious fears as to the origin of his misfortunes, he had delivered to Sheldon, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, a written vow (now in the library of St Paul's cathedral) to restore all church lands held by the crown on his restoration to the throne; and almost his last injunction to the prince of Wales was that of fidelity to the national church. His present firmness, however, in its support was caused probably less by his devotion to it than by his desire to secure the failure of the whole treaty, and his attempts to escape naturally weakened the chances of success. Cromwell now supported the petitions of the army against the treaty. On the 16th of November the council of officers demanded the trial of the king, "the capital and grand author of our troubles," and on the 27th of November the parliamentary commissioners returned from Newport without having secured Charles's consent. Charles was removed to Hurst Castle on the 1st of December, where he remained till the 19th, thence being taken to Windsor, where he arrived on the 23rd. On the 6th "Pride's Purge" had removed from the Commons all those who might show any favour to the king. On the 25th a last attempt by the council of officers to come to terms with him was repulsed. On the 1st of January the remnant of the Commons resolved that Charles was guilty of treason by "levying war against the parliament and kingdom of England"; on the 4th they declared their own power to make laws without the lords or the sovereign, and on the 6th established a "high court of justice" to try the king. On the 19th Charles was brought to St James's Palace, and on the next day his trial began in Westminster Hall, without the assistance of any of the judges, who all refused to take part in the proceedings. He laughed aloud at hearing himself called a traitor, and immediately demanded by what authority he was tried. He had been in treaty with the parliament in the Isle of Wight and taken thence by force; he saw no lords present. He was told by Bradshaw, the president of the court, that he was tried by the authority of the people of England, who had elected him king; Charles making the obvious reply that he was king by inheritance and not by election, that England had been for more than 1000 years an hereditary kingdom, and Bradshaw cutting short the discussion by adjourning the court. On the 22nd Charles repeated his reasoning, adding, "It is not my case alone; it is the freedom and liberty of the people of England, and do you pretend what you will, I stand more for their liberties, for if power without law may make laws ... I do not know what subject he is in England that can be sure of his life or anything that he calls his own." On the 23rd he again refused to plead. The court was adjourned, and there were several signs that the army in their prosecution of the king had not the nation at their back. While the soldiers had shouted "Justice! justice!" as the king passed through their ranks, the civilian spectators from the end of the hall had cried "God save the king!" There was considerable opposition and reluctance to proceed among the members of the court. On the 26th, however, the court decided unanimously upon his execution, and on the 27th Charles was brought into court for the last time to hear his sentence. His request to be heard before the Lords and Commons was rejected, and his attempts to answer the charges of the president were silenced. Sentence was pronounced, and the king was removed by the soldiers, uttering his last broken protest: "I am not suffered to speak. Expect what justice other people will have."

In these last hours Charles, who was probably weary of life, showed a remarkable dignity and self-possession, and a firm resignation supported by religious faith and by the absolute conviction of his own innocence, which, says Burnet, "amazed all people and that so much the more because it was not natural to him. It was imputed to a very extraordinary measure of supernatural assistance....; it was owing to something within himself that he went through so many indignities with so much true greatness without disorder or any sort of affectation." Nothing in his life became Charles like the leaving it. "He nothing common did or mean Upon that memorable scene." On the morning of the 29th of January he said his last sad farewell to his younger children, Elizabeth and Henry, duke of Gloucester. On the 30th at ten o'clock he walked across from St James's to Whitehall, calling on his guard "in a pleasant manner" to walk apace, and at two he stepped upon the scaffold from a window, probably the middle one, of the Banqueting House (see ARCHITECTURE, Plate VI., fig. 75). He was separated from the people by large ranks of soldiers, and his last speech only reached Juxon and those with him on the scaffold. He declared that he had desired the liberty and freedom of the people as much as any; "but I must tell you that their liberty and freedom consists in having government. ... It is not their having a share in the government; that is nothing appertaining unto them. A subject and a sovereign are clean different things." These, together with his declaration that he died a member of the Church of England, and the mysterious "Remember," spoken to Juxon, were Charles's last words. "It much discontents the citizens," wrote a spectator; "ye manner of his deportment was very resolutely with some smiling countenances, intimating his willingness to be out of his troubles."[3] "The blow I saw given," wrote another, Philip Henry, "and can truly say with a sad heart, at the instant whereof, I remember well, there was such a grone by the Thousands then present as I never heard before and desire I may never hear again. There was according to order one Troop immediately marching fromwards Charing-Cross to Westminster and another fromwards Westminster to Charing-Cross, purposely to masker" (i.e. to overpower) "the people and to disperse and scatter them, so that I had much adoe amongst the rest to escape home without hurt."[4]

Amidst such scenes of violence was at last effected the destruction of Charles. "It is lawful," wrote Milton, "and hath been held so through all ages for any one who have the power to call to account a Tyrant or wicked King and after due conviction to depose and put him to death."[5] But here (it might well be contended) there had been no "due conviction." The execution had been the act of the king's personal enemies, of "only some fifty or sixty governing Englishmen with Oliver Cromwell in the midst of them" an act technically illegal, morally unjustifiable because the supposed crimes of Charles had been condoned by the later negotiations with him, and indefensible on the ground of public expediency, for the king's death proved a far greater obstacle to the re-establishment of settled government than his life could have been. The result was an extraordinary revulsion of feeling in favour of Charles and the monarchy, in which the incidents of his misgovernment were completely forgotten. He soon became in the popular veneration a martyr and a saint. His fate was compared with the Crucifixion, and his trials and sufferings to those of the Saviour. Handkerchiefs dipped in his blood wrought "miracles," and the _Eikon Basilike_, published on the day of his funeral, presented to the public a touching if not a genuine portrait of the unfortunate sovereign. At the Restoration the anniversary of his death was ordered to be kept as a day of fasting and humiliation, and the service appointed for use on the occasion was only removed from the prayer-book in 1859. The same conception of Charles as a martyr for religion appeals still to many, and has been stimulated by modern writers. "Had Charles been willing to abandon the church and give up episcopacy," says Bishop Creighton, "he might have saved his throne and his life. But on this point Charles stood firm, for this he died and by dying saved it for the future."[6] Gladstone, Keble, Newman write in the same strain. "It was for the Church," says Gladstone, "that Charles shed his blood upon the scaffold."[7] "I rest," says Newman, "on the scenes of past years, from the Upper Room in Acts to the Court of Carisbrooke and Uxbridge." The injustice and violence of the king's death, however, the pathetic dignity of his last days, and the many noble traits in his character, cannot blind us to the real causes of his downfall and destruction, and a sober judgment cannot allow that Charles was really a martyr either for the church or for the popular liberties.

The constitutional struggle between the crown and parliament had not been initiated by Charles I. It was in full existence in the reign of James I., and distinct traces appear towards the latter part of that of Elizabeth. Charles, therefore, in some degree inherited a situation for which he was not responsible, nor can he be justly blamed, according to the ideas of kingship which then prevailed, for defending the prerogatives of the crown as precious and sacred personal possessions which it was his duty to hand down intact to his successors. Neither will his persistence in refusing to yield up the control of the executive to the parliament or the army, or his zeal in defending the national church, be altogether censured. In the event the parliament proved quite incapable of governing, an army uncontrolled by the sovereign was shown to constitute a more grievous tyranny than Charles's most arbitrary rule, and the downfall of the church seen to make room only for a sectarian despotism as intolerable as the Laudian. The natural inference might be that both conceptions of government had much to support them, that they were bound sooner or later to come into collision, and that the actual individuals in the drama, including the king himself, were rather the victims of the greatness of events than real actors in the scene, still less the controllers of their own and the national destiny. A closer insight, however, shows that biographical more than abstract historical elements determined the actual course and issue of the Rebellion. The great constitutional and religious points of dispute between the king and parliament, though doubtless involving principles vital to the national interests, would not alone have sufficed to destroy Charles. Monarchy was too much venerated, was too deeply rooted in the national life, to be hastily and easily extirpated; the perils of removing the foundation of all government, law and order were too obvious not to be shunned at almost all costs. Still less can the crowning tragedy of the king's death find its real explanation or justification in these disputes and antagonisms. The real cause was the complete discredit into which Charles had brought himself and the monarchy. The ordinary routine of daily life and of business cannot continue without some degree of mutual confidence between the individuals brought into contact, far less could relations be maintained by subjects with a king endowed with the enormous powers then attached to the kingship, and with whom agreements, promises, negotiations were merely subterfuges and prevarications. We have seen the series of unhappy falsehoods and deceptions which constituted Charles's statecraft, beginning with the fraud concerning the concessions to the Roman Catholics at his marriage, the evasions with which he met the Petition of Right, the abandonment of Strafford, the simultaneous negotiation with, and betrayal of, all parties. Strafford's reported words on hearing of his desertion by Charles, "Put not your trust in princes," re-echo through the whole of Charles's reign. It was the degradation and dishonour of the kingship, and the personal loss of credit which Charles suffered through these transactions--which never appear to have caused him a moment's regret or uneasiness, but the fatal consequences of which were seen only too clearly by men like Hyde and Falkland--that were the real causes of the rebellion and of the king's execution. The constitutional and religious grievances were the outward and visible sign of the corroding suspicions which slowly consumed the national loyalty. In themselves there was nothing incapable of settlement either through the spirit of union which existed between Elizabeth and her subjects, or by the principle of compromise which formed the basis of the constitutional settlement in 1688. The bond of union between his people and himself Charles had, however, early broken, and compromise is only possible between parties both of whom can acknowledge to some extent the force of the other's position, which can trust one another, and which are sincere in their endeavour to reach agreement. Thus on Charles himself chiefly falls the responsibility for the catastrophe.

His character and motives fill a large place in English history, but they have never been fully understood and possibly were largely due to physical causes. His weakness as a child was so extreme that his life was despaired of. He outgrew physical defects, and as a young man excelled in horsemanship and in the sports of the times, but always retained an impediment of speech. At the time of his accession his reserve and reticence were especially noticed. Buckingham was the only person who ever enjoyed his friendship, and after his death Charles placed entire confidence in no man. This isolation was the cause of an ignorance of men and of the world, and of an incapacity to appreciate the ideas, principles and motives of others, while it prepared at the same time a fertile soil for receiving those exalted conceptions of kingship, of divine right and prerogative, which came into vogue at this period, together with those exaggerated ideas of his own personal supremacy and importance to which minds not quite normal are always especially inclined. His character was marked by a weakness which shirked and postponed the settlement of difficulties, by a meanness and ingratitude even when dealing with his most devoted followers, by an obstinacy which only feigned compliance and by an untruthfulness which differed widely from his son's unblushing deceit, which found always some reservation or excuse, but which while more scrupulous was also more dangerous and insidious because employed continually as a principle of conduct. Yet Charles, in spite of his failings, had many fine qualities. Clarendon, who was fully conscious of them, who does not venture to call him a good king, and allows that "his kingly virtues had some mixture and alloy that hindered them from shining in full lustre," declares that "he was if ever any, the most worthy of the title of an Honest Man, so great a lover of justice that no temptation could dispose him to a wrongful action except that it was disguised to him that he believed it just," "the worthiest of gentlemen, the best master, the best friend, the best husband, the best father and the best Christian that the age in which he lived produced." With all its deplorable mistakes and failings Charles I.'s reign belongs to a sphere infinitely superior to that of his unscrupulous, corrupt, selfish but more successful son. His private life was without a blemish. Immediately on his accession he had suppressed the disorder which had existed in the household of James I., and let it be known that whoever had business with him "must never approach him by backstairs or private doors."[8] He maintained a strict sobriety in food and dress. He had a fine artistic sense, and Milton reprehends him for having made Shakespeare "the closest companion of his solitudes." "Monsieur le Prince de Galles," wrote Rubens in 1625, "est le prince le plus amateur de la peinture qui soit au monde." He succeeded in bringing together during twenty years an unrivalled collection, of which a great part was dispersed at his death. He showed a noble insensibility to flattery. He was deeply and sincerely religious. He wished to do right, and was conscious of the purity of his motives. Those who came into contact with him, even the most bitter of his opponents, were impressed with his goodness. The great tragedy of his life, to be read in his well-known, dignified, but weak and unhappy features, and to be followed in his inexplicable and mysterious choice of baneful instruments, such as Rupert, Laud, Hamilton, Glamorgan, Henrietta Maria--all in their several ways working out his destruction--seems to have been inspired by a fateful insanity or infirmity of mind or will, recalling the great Greek dramas in which the poets depicted frenzied mortals rushing into their own destruction, impelled by the unseen and superior powers.

The king's body, after being embalmed, was buried by the few followers who remained with him to the last, hastily and without any funeral service, which was forbidden by the authorities, in the tomb of Henry VIII., in St George's Chapel, Windsor, where his coffin was identified and opened in 1813. An "account of what appeared" was published by Sir Henry Halford, and a bone abstracted on the occasion was replaced in the vault by the prince of Wales (afterwards Edward VII.) in 1888. Charles I. left, besides three children who died in infancy, Charles (afterwards Charles II.); James (afterwards James II.); Henry, duke of Gloucester (1639-1660); Mary (1631-1660), who married William of Orange; Elizabeth (1635-1650); and Henrietta, duchess of Orleans (1644-1670).

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The leading authority for the life and reign of Charles
I. is the _History of England_ (1883) and _History of the Great Civil
War_ (1893), by S.R. Gardiner, with the references there given. Among
recent works may be mentioned _Memoirs of the Martyr King_, by A. Fea
(1905); _Life of Charles I, 1600-1625_, by E.B. Chancellor (1886);
_The Visits of Charles I. to Newcastle_, by C.S. Terry (1898);
_Charles I._, by Sir J. Skelton, valuable for its illustrations
(1898); _The Manner of the Coronation of King Charles I._, ed. by C.
Wordsworth (Henry Bradshaw Soc., 1892); _The Picture Gallery of
Charles I._, by C. Phillips (1896). See also _Calendars of State
Papers_, _Irish_ and _Domestic Series_; _Hist. MSS. Comm. Series_,
esp. _MSS. of J. Eliot Hodgkin, F.J. Savile Foljambe, Lord Montagu of
Beaulieu, Duke of Rutland at Belvoir Castle, Marquis of Ormonde, Earl
Cowper (Coke MSS.), Earl of Lonsdale_ (note-books of parliaments of
1626 and 1628), _Duke of Buccleuch at Montagu House, Duke of
Portland_, 11th Rep. app. pt. vi., _Duke of Hamilton_, pt. i.,
_Salvetti Correspondence_, 10th Rep. pt. vi., _Lord Braye_; _Add.
MSS._ Brit. Mus., 33,596 fols. 21-32 (keys to ciphers), 34,171,
35,297; _Notes and Queries_, ser. vi., vii., viii., ix. indexes; _Eng.
Hist. Rev._ ii. 687 ("Charles and Glamorgan" by S.R. Gardiner), vii.
176; _Cornhill Mag._ vol. 75, January 1897, "Execution of Charles," by
C.H. Firth. (P. C. Y.)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Hist. MSS. Comm._ 11 Rep. app. Pt. iv. 21.

[2] _Hist. MSS. Comm.: MSS. of Lord Montagu of Beaulieu_, 141.

[3] _Notes and Queries_, 7th ser., viii. 326.

[4] _Letters and Diaries of P. Henry_ (1882), 12.

[5] _Tenure of Kings and Magistrates_.

[6] _Lectures on Archbishop Laud_ (1895), p. 25.

[7] _Remarks on the Royal Supremacy_ (1850), p. 57.

[8] Salvetti's Corresp. in _Hist. MSS. Comm._ 11th Rep. app. pt. i.
p. 6.

CHARLES II. (1630-1685), king of Great Britain and Ireland, second son of Charles I. and Queen Henrietta Maria, was born on the 29th of May 1630 at St James's Palace, and was brought up under the care successively of the countess of Dorset, William Cavendish, duke of Newcastle, and the marquess of Hertford. He accompanied the king during the campaigns of the Civil War, and sat in the parliament at Oxford, but on the 4th of March 1645 he was sent by Charles I. to the west, accompanied by Hyde and others who formed his council. Owing, however, to the mutual jealousies and misconduct of Goring and Grenville, and the prince's own disregard and contempt of the council, his presence was in no way advantageous, and could not prevent the final overthrow of the king's forces in 1646. He retired (17th of February) to Pendennis Castle at Falmouth, and on the approach of Fairfax (2nd of March) to Scilly, where he remained with Hyde till the 16th of April. Thence he fled to Jersey, and finally refusing all the overtures from the parliament, and in opposition to the counsels of Hyde, who desired the prince to remain on English territory, he repaired to the queen at Paris, where he remained for two years. He is described at this time by Mme de Motteville as "well-made, with a swarthy complexion agreeing well with his fine black eyes, a large ugly mouth, a graceful and dignified carriage and a fine figure"; and according to the description circulated later for his capture after the battle of Worcester, he was over six feet tall. He received instruction in mathematics from Hobbes, and was early initiated into all the vices of the age by Buckingham and Percy. In July 1648 the prince joined the royalist fleet and blockaded the Thames with a fleet of eleven ships, returning to Holland, where he received the news of the final royalist defeats and afterwards of the execution of his father. On the 14th of January 1649 he had forwarded to the council a signed _carte blanche_, granting any conditions provided his father's life were spared. He immediately assumed the title of king, and was proclaimed in Scotland (5th of February) and in some parts of Ireland. On the 17th of September, after a visit to his mother at St Germain, Charles went to Jersey and issued a declaration proclaiming his rights; but, owing to the arrival of the fleet at Portsmouth, he was obliged, on the 13th of February 1650, to return again to Breda. The projected invasion of Ireland was delayed through want of funds till it was too late; Hyde's mission to Spain, in the midst of Cromwell's' successes, brought no assistance, and Charles now turned to Scotland for aid. Employing the same unscrupulous and treacherous methods which had proved so fatal to his father, he simultaneously supported and encouraged the expedition of Montrose and the royalists, and negotiated with the covenanters. On the 1st of May he signed the first draft of a treaty at Breda with the latter, in which he accepted the Solemn League and Covenant, conceded the control of public and church affairs to the parliament and the kirk, and undertook to establish Presbyterianism in the three kingdoms. He also signed privately a paper repudiating Ormonde and the loyal Irish, and recalling the commissions granted to them. In acting thus he did not scruple to desert his own royalist followers, and to repudiate and abandon the great and noble Montrose, whose heroic efforts he was apparently merely using in order to extort better terms from the covenanters, and who, having been captured on the 4th of May, was executed on the 21st in spite of some attempts by Charles to procure for him an indemnity.

Thus perjured and disgraced the young king embarked for Scotland on the 2nd of June; on the 11th when off Heligoland he signed the treaty, and on the 23rd, on his arrival at Speymouth, before landing, he swore to both the covenants. He proceeded to Falkland near Perth and passed through Aberdeen, where he saw the mutilated arm of Montrose suspended over the city gate. He was compelled to dismiss all his followers except Buckingham, and to submit to interminable sermons, which generally contained violent invectives against his parents and himself. To Argyll he promised the payment of L40,000 at his restoration, doubtless the sum owing as arrears of the Scottish army unpaid when Charles I. was surrendered to the English at Newcastle, and entered into negotiations for marrying his daughter. In August he was forced to sign a further declaration, confessing his own wickedness in dealing with the Irish, his father's blood-guiltiness, his mother's idolatry, and his abhorrence of prelacy, besides ratifying his allegiance to the covenants and to Presbyterianism. At the same time he declared himself secretly to King, dean of Tuam, "a true child of the Church of England," "a true Cavalier," and avowed that "what concerns Ireland is in no ways binding"; while to the Roman Catholics in England he promised concessions and expressed his goodwill towards their church to Pope Innocent X. His attempt, called "The Start," on the 4th of October 1650, to escape from the faction at Perth and to join Huntly and the royalists in the north failed, and he was overtaken and compelled to return. On the 1st of January 1651 he was crowned at Scone, when he was forced to repeat his oaths to both the covenants.

Meanwhile Cromwell had advanced and had defeated the Presbyterians at Dunbar on the 3rd of September 1650, subsequently occupying Edinburgh. This defeat was not wholly unwelcome to Charles in the circumstances; in the following summer, during Cromwell's advance to the north, he shook off the Presbyterian influence, and on the 31st of July 1651 marched south into England with an army of about 10,000 commanded by David Leslie. He was proclaimed king at Carlisle, joined by the earl of Derby in Lancashire, evaded the troops of Lambert and Harrison in Cheshire, marched through Shropshire, meeting with a rebuff at Shrewsbury, and entered Worcester with a small, tired and dispirited force of only 16,000 men (22nd of August). Here the decisive battle, which ruined his hopes, and in which Charles distinguished himself by conspicuous courage and fortitude, was fought on the 3rd of September. After leading an unsuccessful cavalry charge against the enemy he fled, about 6 P.M., accompanied by Buckingham, Derby, Wilmot, Lauderdale and others, towards Kidderminster, taking refuge at Whiteladies, about 25 m. from Worcester, where he separated himself from all his followers except Wilmot, concealing himself in the famous oak during the 6th of September, moving subsequently to Boscobel, to Moseley and Bentley Hall, and thence, disguised as Miss Lane's attendant, to Abbots Leigh near Bristol, to Trent in Somersetshire, and finally to the George Inn at Brighton, having been recognized during the forty-one days of his wanderings by about fifty persons, none of whom, in spite of the reward of L1000 offered for his capture, or of the death penalty threatened for aiding his concealment, had betrayed him.

He set sail from Shoreham on the 15th of October 1651, and landed at Fecamp in Normandy the next day. He resided at Paris at St Germain till June 1654, in inactivity, unable to make any further effort, and living with difficulty on a grant from Louis XIV. of 600 livres a month. Various missions to foreign powers met with failure; he was excluded from Holland by the treaty made with England in April 1654, and he anticipated his expulsion from France, owing to the new relations of friendship established with Cromwell, by quitting the country in July. He visited his sister, the princess of Orange, at Spa, and went to Aix-la-Chapelle, thence finally proceeding in November to Cologne, where he was hospitably received. The conclusion of Cromwell's treaty with France in October 1655, and the war between England and Spain, gave hope of aid from the latter power. In April 1656 Charles went to Bruges, and on the 7th of February 1658 to Brussels, where he signed a treaty with Don John of Austria, governor of the Spanish Netherlands, by which he received an allowance in place of his French pension and undertook to assemble all his subjects in France in aid of the Spanish against the French. This plan, however, came to nothing; projected risings in England were betrayed, and by the capture of Dunkirk in June 1658, after the battle of the Dunes, by the French and Cromwell's Ironsides, the Spanish cause in Flanders was ruined.

As long as Cromwell lived there appeared little hope of the restoration of the monarchy, and Charles and Hyde had been aware of the plots for his assassination, which had aroused no disapproval. By the protector's death on the 3rd of September 1658 the scene was wholly changed, and amidst the consequent confusion of factions the cry for the restoration of the monarchy grew daily in strength. The premature royalist rising, however, in August 1659 was defeated, and Charles, who had awaited the result on the coast of Brittany, proceeded to Fuenterrabia on the Spanish frontier, where Mazarin and Luis de Haro were negotiating the treaty of the Pyrenees, to induce both powers to support his cause; but the failure of the attempt in England ensured the rejection of his request, and he returned to Brussels in December, visiting his mother at Paris on the way. Events had meanwhile developed fast in favour of a restoration. Charles, by Hyde's advice, had not interfered in the movement, and had avoided inconvenient concessions to the various factions by referring all to a "free parliament." He left Brussels for Breda, and issued in April 1660, together with the letters to the council, the officers of the army and the houses of parliament and the city, the declaration of an amnesty for all except those specially excluded afterwards by parliament, which referred to parliament the settlement of estates and promised a liberty to tender consciences in matters of religion not contrary to the peace of the kingdom.

On the 8th of May Charles II. was proclaimed king in Westminster Hall and elsewhere in London. On the 24th he sailed from the Hague, landing on the 26th at Dover, where he was met by Monk, whom he saluted as father, and by the mayor, from whom he accepted a "very rich bible," "the thing that he loved above all things in the world." He reached London on the 29th, his thirtieth birthday, arriving with the procession, amidst general rejoicings and "through a lane of happy faces," at seven in the evening at Whitehall, where the houses of parliament awaited his coming, to offer in the name of the nation their congratulations and allegiance.

No event in the history of England had been attended with more lively and general rejoicing than Charles's restoration, and none was destined to cause greater subsequent disappointment and disillusion. Indolent, sensual and dissipated by nature, Charles's vices had greatly increased during his exile abroad, and were now, with the great turn of fortune which gave him full opportunity to indulge them, to surpass all the bounds of decency and control. A long residence till the age of thirty abroad, together with his French blood, had made him politically more of a foreigner than an Englishman, and he returned to England ignorant of the English constitution, a Roman Catholic and a secret adversary of the national religion, and untouched by the sentiment of England's greatness or of patriotism. Pure selfishness was the basis of his policy both in domestic and foreign affairs. Abroad the great national interests were eagerly sacrificed for the sake of a pension, and at home his personal ease and pleasure alone decided every measure, and the fate of every minister and subject. During his exile he had surrounded himself with young men of the same spirit as himself, such as Buckingham and Bennet, who, without having any claim to statesmanship, inattentive to business, neglectful of the national interests and national prejudices, became Charles's chief advisers. With them, as with their master, public office was only desirable as a means of procuring enjoyment, for which an absolute monarchy provided the most favourable conditions. Such persons were now, accordingly, destined to supplant the older and responsible ministers of the type of Clarendon and Ormonde, men of high character and patriotism, who followed definite lines of policy, while at the same time the younger men of ability and standing were shut out from office.

The first period of Charles II.'s reign (1660-1667) was that of the administration of Lord Clarendon, the principal author of the Restoration settlement. The king was granted the large revenue of L1,300,000. The naval and military forces were disbanded, but Charles managed to retain under the name of guards three regiments, which remained the nucleus of a standing army. The settlement of estates on a legal basis provided ill for a large number of the king's adherents who had impoverished themselves in his cause. The king's honour was directly involved in their compensation and, except for the gratification of a few individuals, was tarnished by his neglect to afford them relief. Charles used his influence to carry through parliament the act of indemnity, and the execution of some of the regicides was a measure not more severe than was to be expected in the times and circumstances; but that of Sir Henry Vane, who was not a regicide and whose life Charles had promised the parliament to spare in case of his condemnation, was brought about by Charles's personal insistence in revenge for the victim's high bearing during his trial, and was an act of gross cruelty and perfidy. Charles was in favour of religious toleration, and a declaration issued by him in October 1660 aroused great hopes; but he made little effort to conciliate the Presbyterians or to effect a settlement through the Savoy conference, and his real object was to gain power over all the factions and to free his co-religionists, the Roman Catholics, in favour of whom he issued his first declaration of indulgence (26th of December 1662), the bill to give effect to it being opposed by Clarendon and defeated in the Lords, and being replied to by the passing of further acts against religious liberty. Meanwhile the plot of Venner and of the Fifth Monarchy men had been suppressed in January 1661, and the king was crowned on the 23rd of April. The convention parliament had been dissolved on the 29th of December 1660, and Charles's first parliament, the Long Parliament of the Restoration, which met on the 8th of May 1661 and continued till January 1679, declared the command of the forces inherent in the crown, repudiated the taking up of arms against the king, and repealed in 1664 the Triennial Act, adding only a provision that there should not be intermission of parliaments for more than three years. In Ireland the church was re-established, and a new settlement of land introduced by the Act of Settlement 1661 and the Act of Explanation 1665. The island was excluded from the benefit of the Navigation Laws, and in 1666 the importation of cattle and horses into England was forbidden. In Scotland episcopacy was set up, the covenant to which Charles had taken so many solemn oaths burnt by the common hangman, and Argyll brought to the scaffold, while the kingdom was given over to the savage and corrupt administration of Lauderdale. On the 21st of May 1662, in pursuance of the pro-French and anti-Spanish policy, Charles married Catherine of Braganza, daughter of John IV. of Portugal, by which alliance England obtained Tangier and Bombay. She brought him no children, and her attractions for Charles were inferior to those of his mistress, Lady Castlemaine, whom she was compelled to receive as a lady of her bedchamber. In February 1665 the ill-omened war with Holland was declared, during the progress of which it became apparent how greatly the condition of the national services and the state of administration had deteriorated since the Commonwealth, and to what extent England was isolated and abandoned abroad, Michael de Ruyter, on the 13th of June 1667, carrying out his celebrated attack on Chatham and burning several warships. The disgrace was unprecedented. Charles did not show himself and it was reported that he had abdicated, but to allay the popular panic it was given out "that he was very cheerful that night at supper with his mistresses." The treaty of Breda with Holland (21st of July 1667) removed the danger, but not the ignominy, and Charles showed the real baseness of his character when he joined in the popular outcry against Clarendon, the upright and devoted adherent of his father and himself during twenty-five years of misfortune, and drove him into poverty and exile in his old age, recalling ominously Charles I.'s betrayal of Strafford.

To Clarendon now succeeded the ministry of Buckingham and Arlington, who with Lauderdale, Ashley (afterwards Lord Shaftesbury) and Clifford, constituted the so-called Cabal ministry in 1672. With these advisers Charles entered into those schemes so antagonistic to the national interests which have disgraced his reign. His plan was to render himself independent of parliament and of the nation by binding himself to France and the French policy of aggrandizement, and receiving a French pension with the secret intention as well of introducing the Roman Catholic religion again into England. In 1661 under Clarendon's rule, the evil precedent had been admitted of receiving money from France, in 1662 Dunkirk had been sold to Louis, and in February 1667 during the Dutch war a secret alliance had been made with Louis, Charles promising him a free hand in the Netherlands and Louis undertaking to support Charles's designs "in or out of the kingdom." In January 1668 Sir W. Temple had made with Sweden and Holland the Triple Alliance against the encroachments and aggrandizement of France, but this national policy was soon upset by the king's own secret plans. In 1668 the conversion of his brother James to Romanism became known to Charles. Already in 1662 the king had sent Sir Richard Bellings to Rome to arrange the terms of England's conversion, and now in 1668 he was in correspondence with Oliva, the general of the Jesuits in Rome, through James de la Cloche, the eldest of his natural sons, of whom he had become the father when scarcely sixteen during his residence at Jersey. On the 25th of January 1669, at a secret meeting between the two royal brothers, with Arlington, Clifford and Arundell of Wardour, it was determined to announce to Louis XIV. the projected conversion of Charles and the realm, and subsequent negotiations terminated in the two secret treaties of Dover. The first, signed only, among the ministers, by Arlington and Clifford, the rest not being initiated, on the 20th of May 1670, provided for the return of England to Rome and the joint attack of France and England upon Holland, England's ally, together with Charles's support of the Bourbon claims to the throne of Spain, while Charles received a pension of L200,000 a year. In the second, signed by Arlington, Buckingham, Lauderdale and Ashley on the 31st of December 1670, nothing was said about the conversion, and the pension provided for that purpose was added to the military subsidy, neither of these treaties being communicated to parliament or to the nation. An immediate gain to Charles was the acquisition of another mistress in the person of Louise de Keroualle, the so-called "Madam Carwell," who had accompanied the duchess of Orleans, the king's sister, to Dover, at the time of the negotiations, and who joined Charles's seraglio, being created duchess of Portsmouth, and acting as the agent of the French alliance throughout the reign.