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- {geni:occupation} King of England, Scotland & Ireland
{geni:about_me} Charles I of England http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_I_of_England
(English)
Charles Ier d'Angleterre http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Ier_d%27Angleterre (French)
Karl I av England http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_I_av_England
(Norweigan)
Charles I (November 19, 1600 X January 30, 1649) was King of England, Scotland and Ireland from March 27, 1625 until his execution. Charles famously engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England. He was an advocate of the Divine Right of Kings, and many citizens of England feared that he was attempting to gain absolute power. Many of his actions, particularly the levying of taxes without Parliament's consent, caused widespread opposition.
Religious conflicts permeated Charles's reign. He married a Catholic princess, Henrietta Maria of France, over the objections of Parliament and public opinion. He further allied himself with controversial religious figures, including the ecclesiastic Richard Montagu and William Laud, whom Charles appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. Many of Charles's subjects felt this brought the Church of England too close to Roman Catholicism. Charles's later attempts to force religious reforms upon Scotland led to the Bishops' Wars that weakened England's government and helped precipitate his downfall.
His last years were marked by the English Civil War, in which he was opposed by the forces of Parliament, which challenged his attempts to augment his own power, and by Puritans, who were hostile to his religious policies and supposed Catholic sympathies. Charles was defeated in the first Civil War (1642 - 1645), after which Parliament expected him to accept demands for a constitutional monarchy. He instead remained defiant by attempting to forge an alliance with Scotland and escaping to the Isle of Wight. This provoked a second Civil War (1648 - 1649) and a second defeat for Charles, who was subsequently captured, tried, convicted, and executed for high treason. The monarchy was then abolished and a republic called the Commonwealth of England, also referred to as the Cromwellian Interregnum, was declared. Charles's son, Charles II, became King after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660.[6]
Early life
The second son of James VI, King of Scots and Anne of Denmark and Norway, Charles was born at Dunfermline Palace, Fife, on November 19, 1600.[3][7]He was an underdeveloped child who was still unable to walk or talk at the age of 3. When Elizabeth I died in March 1603 and James VI became King of England as James I, Charles was originally left in Scotland in the care of nurses and servants because it was feared that the journey would damage his fragile health. He did make the journey in July 1604 and was subsequently placed under the charge of Alletta (Hogenhove) Carey, the Dutch-born wife of courtier Sir Robert Carey, who taught him how to walk and talk and insisted that he wear boots made of Spanish leather and brass to help strengthen his weak ankles. When Charles was an adult he was 5 feet 4 inches (162 cm) tall.
Charles was not as well-regarded as his elder brother, Henry, Prince of Wales; Charles himself adored Henry and tried to emulate him. In 1603, Charles was created Duke of Albany in Scotland. Two years later, Charles was created Duke of York, as was then customary in the case of the Sovereign's second son. When his elder brother died at the age of 18 of typhoid in 1612, two weeks before Charles's 12th birthday, Charles became heir apparent and was subsequently created the Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester in November 1616. His sister Elizabeth married Frederick V, Elector Palatine in 1613 and moved to Heidelberg.
The new Prince of Wales was greatly influenced by his father's favourite, George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham.[8] The two of them travelled incognito to Spain in 1623 to reach agreement on the long-pending Spanish Match between Charles and the daughter of the Spanish King Philip III, Infanta Maria Anna of Spain. The trip ended badly, however, as the Spanish demanded that Charles convert to Roman Catholicism and remain in Spain for a year after the wedding as a sort of hostage to ensure England's compliance with all the terms of the treaty. Charles was outraged, and upon their return in October, he and Buckingham demanded that James I declare war on Spain.
With the encouragement of his Protestant advisers, James summoned Parliament so that he could request subsidies for a war effort. James also requested that Parliament sanction the marriage between the Prince of Wales and PrincessHenrietta Maria of France, whom Charles met in Paris whilst en route to Spain. It was a good match since she was a sister of Louis XIII (their father, Henry IV, had died during her childhood). Parliament agreed to the marriage, but was extremely critical of the prior attempt to arrange a marital alliance with Spain. James was growing senile and as a result was finding it extremely difficult to control ParliamentXthe same problem would later haunt Charles during his reign. During the last year of James' reign, actual power was held not by him but by Charles and the Duke of Buckingham.
Both Charles and James were advocates of Divine Right monarchy, but James listened to the views of his subjects and favoured compromise and consensus. Charles I was shy and diffident, but also self-righteous, stubborn, opinionated, determined and confrontational. Charles believed he had no need to compromise or even explain his rules and that he was only answerable to God. He famously said: "Kings are not bound to give an account of their actions but to God alone", "I mean to show what I should speak in actions". Those actions were open to misinterpretation, and there were fears as early as 1626 that he was a potential tyrant.
Early reign
On 11 May 1625 Charles was married by proxy to Henrietta Maria of France, nine years his junior. In his first Parliament, which he opened in May, many members were opposed to his marriage to Henrietta Maria, a Roman Catholic, fearing that Charles would lift restrictions on Roman Catholics and undermine the official establishment of Protestantism. Although he stated to Parliament that he would not relax restrictions relating to recusants, he promised to doexactly that in a secret marriage treaty with Louis XIII. The couple were married in person on 13 June 1625, in Canterbury. Charles was crowned on 2 February 1626 at Westminster Abbey, but without his wife at his side due to the controversy. Charles and Henrietta had nine children, with three sons and three daughters surviving infancy.[11]
Distrust of Charles's religious policies increased with his support of a controversial ecclesiastic, Richard Montagu. In a pamphlet, Montagu had argued against the teachings of John Calvin, thereby bringing himself into disreputeamongst the Puritans. After a Puritan, John Pym, attacked Montagu's pamphlet during debate, Montagu requested the king's aid in another pamphlet entitled "Appello Caesarem" (Latin "I appeal to Caesar", a reference to an appeal against Jewish persecution made by Saint Paul the Apostle).[12] Charles made the cleric one of his royal chaplains, increasing many Puritans' suspicions as to where Charles would lead the Church.
Charles's primary concern during his early reign was foreign policy. The Thirty Years' War, originally confined to Bohemia, was spiralling out of control into a wider war between Protestants and Catholics in Europe. In 1620, Frederick V, Elector Palatine, the husband of Charles's sister Elizabeth, had lost his hereditary lands in the Palatinate to the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II. Having agreed to help his brother-in-law regain the Palatinate, Charles declared war on Spain, hoping to force the Catholic Spanish King Philip IV to intercede with the Emperor on Frederick's behalf.
Parliament preferred an inexpensive naval attack on Spanish colonies in the New World, hoping that the capture of the Spanish treasure fleets could finance the war. Charles, however, preferred more aggressive (and more expensive)action on the Continent. Parliament only voted to grant a subsidy of £140,000; an insufficient sum for Charles. Moreover, the House of Commons limited its authorization for royal collection of tonnage and poundage (two varieties of customs duties) to a period of one year, although previous sovereigns since 1414 had been granted the right for life. In this manner, Parliament could keep a check on expenditures by forcing Charles to seek the renewal of the grant each year. Charles's allies in the House of Lords, led by the Duke of Buckingham, refused to pass the bill. Although no Parliamentary authority for the levy of tonnage and poundage was obtained, Charles continued to collect the duties anyway.
The war with Spain went badly, largely due to Buckingham's incompetent leadership. Despite Parliament's protests, however, Charles refused to dismiss him, dismissing Parliament instead. He then provoked further unrest by trying to raise money for the war through a "forced loan" -- a tax levied without Parliamentary consent. Although partially successful in collecting the tax, Charles let the money dribble away in yet another military fiasco led by Buckingham. Summoned again in 1628, Parliament adopted a Petition of Right, calling upon the King to acknowledge that he could not levy taxes without Parliament's consent, impose martial law on civilians, imprison them without due process, or quarter troops in their homes. Charles assented to the petition, though he continued to claim the right to collect customs duties without authorization from Parliament. Then, on 23 August 1628, Buckingham was assassinated. Although the death of Buckingham effectively ended the war and eliminated his leadership as an issue, it did not end the conflicts between Charles and Parliament over taxation and religious matters.[13]
Personal rule
In January 1629, Charles opened the second session of the Parliament, which had been prorogued in June 1628, with a moderate speech on the tonnage and poundage issue. Members of the House of Commons began to voice their opposition in light of the Rolle case. Rolle was an MP who had his goods confiscated for not paying tonnage and poundage. Many MPs viewed the confiscation as a breach of the Petition of Right, arguing that the petition's freedom-from-arrest privilege extended to goods. When Charles ordered a parliamentary adjournment in March, members held the Speaker, John Finch, down in his chair whilst three resolutions against Charles were read aloud. The last of these resolutions declared that anyone who paid tonnage or poundage not authorised by Parliament would "be reputed a betrayer of the liberties of England, and an enemy to the same". Though the resolution was not formally passed, many members declared their approval. The fact that a number of MPs had to be detained in Parliament is relevant in understanding that there was no universal opposition towards the King. Nevertheless, the provocation was too much for Charles, who dissolved parliament the same day.[15][16] Charles resolved never again to rely on Parliament. Immediately, he made peace with France and Spain. The following eleven years, during which Charles ruled without a Parliament, have been known as both the Eleven Years Tyranny or simply as the Personal Rule. (Ruling without Parliament, though an exceptional exercise of the royal prerogative, was supported by precedent. By the middle of the 17th century, opinionhad shifted, and many held the Personal Rule to be an illegitimate exercise of arbitrary, absolute power.)
Economic problems
Even after making peace, Charles still had to acquire funds in order to maintain his treasury. To raise revenue without reconvening Parliament, Charles first resurrected an all-but-forgotten law called the "Distraint of Knighthood," promulgated in 1279, which required anyone who earned £40 or more each year to present himself at the King's coronation to join the royal army as a knight. Relying on this outdated statute, Charles fined all individuals who had failed to attend his coronation in 1626.
Later, Charles reintroduced an obsolete feudal tax known as ship money, which proved even more unpopular. Under statutes of Edward I and Edward III, collection of ship money had been authorized only during wars. Charles, however,sought to collect the tax during peacetime. Although the first writ levying ship money, issued in 1634, did not provoke much immediate opposition, the second and third writs, issued in 1635 and 1636, aroused strong opposition, asit was now clear that the ancient prohibition on collecting ship money during peacetime had been swept away. Many attempted to resist payment, but the royal courts declared that the tax was within the King's prerogative. The collection of ship money during peacetime was a major cause of concern among the ruling class.
Personal Rule ended after the attempted enforcement of the Anglican and increasingly Arminian styled prayer book under Laud that precipitated a rebellion in Scotland in 1640.
Religious conflicts
Charles wished to move the Church of England away from Calvinism in a more traditional and sacramental direction. This goal was shared by his main political adviser, Archbishop William Laud. Laud was appointed by Charles as the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633 and started a series of unpopular reforms in an attempt to impose order and authority on the church. Laud attempted to ensure religious uniformity by dismissing non-conformist clergymen and closing Puritan organizations. This was actively hostile to the Reformist tendencies of many of his English and Scottish subjects. His policy was obnoxious to Calvinist theology, and insisted that the Church of England's liturgy be celebrated using the form prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer. Laud was also an advocate of Arminian theology, a view whose emphasis on the ability to reject salvation was viewed as heretical and virtually "Catholic" by strict Calvinists.
To punish those who refused to accept his reforms, Laud used the two most feared and most arbitrary courts in the land, the Court of High Commission and the Court of Star Chamber. The former could compel individuals to provide self-incriminating testimony, whilst the latter could inflict any punishment whatsoever (including torture), with the sole exception of death.
The lawlessness of the Court of Star Chamber under Charles far exceeded that under any of his predecessors. Under Charles's reign, defendants were regularly hauled before the Court without indictment, due process of the law, or right to confront witnesses, and their testimonies were routinely extracted by the Court through torture.
The first years of the Personal Rule were marked by peace in England, to some extent due to tighter central control. Several individuals opposed Charles's taxes and Laud's policies. For example, in 1634, the ship Griffin left forAmerica carrying religious dissidents, such as the Puritan minister Anne Hutchinson. However, the overall trend of the early Personal Rule period is one of peace. When, however, Charles attempted to impose his religious policies in Scotland he faced numerous difficulties. The King ordered the use of a new Prayer Book modelled on the English Book of Common Prayer, which, although supported by the Scottish Bishops, was resisted by many Presbyterian Scots, who saw the new Prayer Book as a vehicle for introducing Anglicanism to Scotland. When the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland abolished Episcopalian government (that is, governance of the Church by bishops) in 1638, replacing it with Presbyterian government (that is, governance by elders and deacons), Charles sought to put down what he saw as a rebellion against his authority.
In 1639, when the First Bishops' War broke out, Charles sought to collect taxes from his subjects, who refused to yield any further. Charles's war ended in a humiliating truce in June of the same year. In the Pacification of Berwick, Charles agreed to grant his Scottish subjects civil and ecclesiastical freedoms.
Charles's military failure in the First Bishops' War in turn caused a financial and military crisis for Charles, which caused the end of Personal Rule. Due to his financial weakness, Charles was forced to call Parliament into session by 1640 in an attempt to raise funds. While the ruling class grievances with the changes to government and finance during the Personal Rule period were a contributing factor in the Scottish Rebellion, the key issue of religion was the main reason that forced Charles to confront the ruling class in Parliament for the first time in eleven years. In essence, it was Charles's and Laud's confrontational religious modifications that ended what the Whig historians refer to as "The Eleven Years of Tyranny".
The "Short" and "Long" Parliaments
Disputes regarding the interpretation of the peace treaty between Charles and the Church of Scotland led to further conflict. To subdue the Scots, Charles needed more money; therefore, he took the fateful step of recalling Parliament in April 1640. Although Charles offered to repeal ship money, and the House of Commons agreed to allow Charles to raise the funds for war, an impasse was reached when Parliament demanded the discussion of various abuses of power during the Personal Rule. As both sides refused to give ground on this matter, Parliament was dissolved in May 1640, less than a month after it assembled; thus, the Parliament became known as the "Short Parliament."
In the meantime, Charles attempted to defeat the Scots, but failed miserably. The humiliating Treaty of Ripon, signed after the end of the Second Bishops' War in October 1640, required the King to pay the expenses of the Scottisharmy he had just fought. Charles took the unusual step of summoning the magnum concilium, the ancient council of all the Peers of the Realm, who were considered the King's hereditary counsellors. The magnum concilium had not beensummoned for centuries. On the advice of the peers, Charles summoned another Parliament, which, in contrast with its predecessor, became known as the Long Parliament.
The Long Parliament assembled in November 1640 under the leadership of John Pym, and proved just as difficult for Charles as the Short Parliament. Although the members of the House of Commons thought of themselves as conservatives defending the King, Church and Parliamentary government against innovations in religion and the tyranny of Charles's advisors, Charles viewed many of them as dangerous rebels trying to undermine his rule.
To prevent the King from dissolving it at will, Parliament passed the Triennial Act, to which the Royal Assent was granted in February 1641. The Act required that Parliament was to be summoned at least once every three years, andthat when the King failed to issue proper summons, the members could assemble on their own. In May, he assented to an even more far-reaching Act, which provided that Parliament could not be dissolved without its own consent. Charles was forced into one concession after another. He agreed to bills of attainder authorising the executions of Thomas Wentworth and William Laud. Ship money, fines in destraint of knighthood and forced loans were declared unlawful, and the hated Courts of Star Chamber and High Commission were abolished. Although he made several important concessions, Charles improved his own military position by securing the favour of the Scots. He finally agreed to the official establishment of Presbyterianism; in return, he was able to enlist considerable anti-parliamentary support.
In November 1641, the House of Commons passed the Grand Remonstrance, a long list of grievances against actions by Charles' ministers that were asserted to be abuses of royal power Charles had committed since the beginning of hisreign. The tension was heightened when the Irish rebelled against Protestant English rule and rumours of Charles's complicity reached Parliament. An army was required to put down the rebellion but many members of the House of Commons feared that Charles might later use it against Parliament itself. The Militia Bill was intended to wrest control of the army from the King, but Charles refused to agree to it. However, Parliament decreed The Protestation as an attempt to lessen the conflict.
When rumours reached Charles that Parliament intended to impeach his Catholic Queen, Henrietta Maria, he took drastic action. It was possibly Henrietta who persuaded him to arrest the five members of the House of Commons who wereperceived to be the most troublesome on charges of high treason, but the MPs had already slipped away by the time Charles arrived. Charles entered the House of Commons with an armed force on 4 January 1642, but found that his opponents had already escaped, with exception to Oliver Cromwell who had not fled the house of commons, but avoided arrest. He asked the Speaker, William Lenthall, where the MPs had fled, and Lenthall famously replied, "May it pleaseyour Majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as the House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here."[18] This move was politically disastrous for Charles. It caused acute embarrassment for the monarch and essentially triggered the total breakdown of government in England. Afterwards, Charles could no longer feel safe in London and he began travelling north to raise an army against Parliament; the Queen, at the same time, went abroad to raise money to pay for it.
English Civil War
The English Civil War had not yet started, but both sides began to arm. Following futile negotiations, Charles raised the royal standard (an anachronistic mediæval gesture) in Nottingham on 22 August 1642. He then set up his court at Oxford, when his government controlled roughly the north and west of England, Parliament remaining in control of London and the south and east. Charles raised an army using the archaic method of the Commission of Array. The Civil War started on 26 October 1642 with the inconclusive Battle of Edgehill and continued indecisively through 1643 and 1644, until the Battle of Naseby tipped the military balance decisively in favour of Parliament. There followed a great number of defeats for the Royalists, and then the Siege of Oxford, from which Charles escaped in April 1646.[19] He put himself into the hands of the Scottish Presbyterian army at Newark, and was taken to nearby Southwell while his "hosts" decided what to do with him. The Presbyterians finally arrived at an agreement with Parliament and delivered Charles to them in 1647. He was imprisoned at Holdenby House in Northamptonshire, until cornet George Joyce took him by force to Newmarket in the name of the New Model Army. At this time, mutual suspicion had developed between the New Model Army and Parliament, and Charles was eager to exploit it.
He was then transferred first to Oatlands and then to Hampton Court, where more involved but fruitless negotiations took place. He was persuaded that it would be in his best interests to escape X perhaps abroad, perhaps to France, or perhaps to the custody of Colonel Robert Hammond, Parliamentary Governor of the Isle of Wight.[20] He decided on the last course, believing Hammond to be sympathetic, and fled on 11 November.[21] Hammond, however, was opposedto Charles, whom he confined in Carisbrooke Castle.[22]
From Carisbrooke, Charles continued to try to bargain with the various parties, eventually coming to terms with the Scottish Presbyterians that he would allow the establishment of Presbyterianism in England as well as Scotland for a trial period. The Royalists rose in July 1648 igniting the Second Civil War, and as agreed with Charles the Scots invaded England. Most of the uprisings in England were put down by forces loyal to Parliament after little more than skirmishes, but uprisings in Kent, Essex and Cumberland, the rebellion in Wales and the Scottish invasion involved the fighting of pitched battles and prolonged sieges. But with the defeat of the Scots at the Battle of Preston, the Royalists lost any chance of winning the war.
Trial
Charles was moved to Hurst Castle at the end of 1648, and there after to Windsor Castle. In January 1649, in response to Charles's defiance of Parliament even after defeat, and his encouraging the second Civil War while in captivity, the House of Commons passed an Act of Parliament creating a court for Charles's trial. After the first Civil War, the parliamentarians still accepted the premise that the King, although wrong, had been able to justify his fight, and that he would still be entitled to limited powers as King under a new constitutional settlement. It was now felt that by provoking the second Civil War even while defeated and in captivity, Charles showed himself incorrigible, dishonourable, and responsible for unjustifiable bloodshed.
The idea of trying a king was a novel one; previous monarchs had been deposed, but had never been brought to trial as monarchs. The High Court of Justice established by the Act consisted of 135 Commissioners but only about half of that number ever sat in judgement (all firm Parliamentarians); the prosecution was led by Solicitor General John Cooke.
His trial on charges of high treason and "other high crimes" began on 20 January 1649, but Charles refused to enter a plea, claiming that no court had jurisdiction over a monarch.[23] He believed that his own authority to rule had been given to him by God when he was crowned and anointed, and that the power wielded by those trying him was simply that which grew out of a barrel of gunpowder. In fact, when urged to enter a plea stated his objection to entering a plea: "I would know by what power I am called hither, by what lawful authority...?"[23] The court, by contrast, proposed that no man is above the law. Over a period of a week, when Charles was asked to plead three times, he refused. It was then normal practice to take a refusal to plead as [pro confesso]: an admission of guilt, which meant that the prosecution could not call witnesses to its case. However, the trial did hear witnesses. Fifty-nine of the Commissioners signed Charles's death warrant, possibly at the Red Lion Inn in Stathern, Leicestershire[24] on 29 January 1649.
When Cooke began to read the indictment, Charles I tried to stop him using the poke of his cane. The ornate silver tip of the cane fell off and Cooke refused to pick it up. After a long pause, King Charles I stooped to retrieve it. This is considered an important moment that may symbolize the divine monarch bowed before the human law.[23]
After the ruling, he was led from St. James's Palace, where he was confined, to the Palace of Whitehall, where an execution scaffold had been erected in front of the Banqueting House.
Execution
Charles was beheaded on Tuesday 30 January 1649,[25][26][27]though at the time the new year did not occur until March, so his death is often recorded as occurring in the year 1648.[28] At the execution it is reputed that he wore two cotton shirts as to prevent the cold weather causing any noticeable shivers that the crowd could have mistaken for fear or weakness. He put his head on the block after saying a prayer and signalled the executioner when he was ready; he was then beheaded with one clean stroke. His last words were, "I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible Crown, where no disturbance can be."[3]
Philip Henry records that moments after the execution, a moan was heard from the assembled crowd, some of whom then dipped their handkerchiefs in his blood, thus starting the cult of the Martyr King. However no other eyewitness source, including Samuel Pepys records this. Henry's account was written during the Restoration, some 12 years after the event though Henry was 19 when the King was executed and he and his family were Royalist propaganda writers.[29]
There is some debate over the identity of the man who beheaded the King, who was masked at the scene. It is known that the Commissioners approached Richard Brandon, the common Hangman of London, but that he refused, and contemporary sources do not generally identify him as the King's headsman. Ellis's Historical Inquiries, however, names him as the executioner, contending that he stated so before dying. It is possible he relented and agreed to undertake the commission, but there are others who have been identified. An Irishman named Gunning is widely believed to have beheaded Charles, and a plaque naming him as the executioner is on show in the Kings Head pub in Galway, Ireland. William Hewlett was convicted of regicide after the Restoration.[30] In 1661, two people identified as "Dayborne and Bickerstaffe" were arrested but then discharged. Henry Walker, a revolutionary journalist, or his brother William,were suspected but never charged. Various local legends around England name local worthies. An examination performed in 1813 at Windsor suggests that the execution was done by an experienced headsman.
It was common practice for the head of a traitor to be held up and exhibited to the crowd with the words "Behold the head of a traitor!"; although Charles's head was exhibited, the words were not used. In an unprecedented gesture, one of the revolutionary leaders, Oliver Cromwell, allowed the King's head to be sewn back on his body so the family could pay its respects. Charles was buried in private and at night on 7 February 1649, in the Henry VIII vault inside St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle. The royal retainers Sir Thomas Herbert, Capt. Anthony Mildmay, Sir Henry Firebrace, William Levett Esq. and Abraham Dowcett (sometimes spelled Dowsett) conveyed the King's body to Windsor.[31][32] The King's son, King Charles II, later planned an elaborate royal mausoleum, but it was never built.
Ten days after Charles's execution, a memoir purporting to be from Charles's hand appeared for sale. This book, the Eikon Basilike (Greek: the "Royal Portrait"), contained an apologia for royal policies, and proved an effective piece of royalist propaganda. William Levett, Charles's groom of the bedchamber, who had accompanied Charles on the day of his execution, would later swear in a statement that he had witnessed the King writing the Eikon Basilike.[33] John Cooke published the speech he would have delivered if Charles had entered a plea, while Parliament commissioned John Milton to write a rejoinder, the Eikonoklastes ("The Iconoclast"), but the response made little headway against the pathos of the royalist book.[1]
Various prodigies were recorded in the contemporary popular press in relation to the execution - a beached whale at Dover died within an hour of the King; a falling star appeared that night over Whitehall; a man who had said thatthe King deserved to die had his eyes pecked out by crows.
Legacy
With the monarchy overthrown, power was assumed by a Council of State, which included Oliver Cromwell, then Lord General of the Parliamentary Army. The Long Parliament (known by then as the Rump Parliament) which had been called by Charles I in 1640 continued to exist until Cromwell forcibly disbanded it in 1653. Cromwell then became Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland; a monarch in all but name: he was even "invested" on the royal coronation chair. Upon his death in 1658, Cromwell was briefly succeeded by his son, Richard Cromwell. Richard Cromwell was an ineffective ruler, and the Long Parliament was reinstated in 1659. The Long Parliament dissolved itself in 1660, and the first elections in twenty years led to the election of a Convention Parliament which restored Charles I's eldest son to the monarchy as Charles II.
The Colony of Carolina in North America was named for Charles I. Carolina later separated into North Carolina and South Carolina, which eventually declared independence from Great Britain during the formation of the United States. To the north in the Virginia Colony, Cape Charles, the Charles River, Charles River Shire, and Charles City Shire were named for him. Charles himself named the Charles River after himself.[34] Charles City Shire survives almost 400 years later as Charles City County, Virginia. The Virginia Colony is now the Commonwealth of Virginia (one of the four U.S. states that are called commonwealths), and retains its official nickname of "The Old Dominion" bestowed by Charles II because it had remained loyal to Charles I during the English Civil War.
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Charles I (19 November 1600 X 30 January 1649) was the second son of James VI of Scots and I of England. He was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649.[1] Charles engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England, attempting to obtain royal revenue whilst Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which Charles believed was divinely ordained. Many of his English subjects opposed his actions, in particular his interference in the English and Scottish Churches and the levying of taxes without parliamentary consent which grew to be seen as those of a tyrannical absolute monarch.[2]
Religious conflicts permeated Charles's reign. His failure to successfully aid Protestant forces during the Thirty Years' War, coupled with such actions as marrying a Catholic princess,[3][4] generated deep mistrust concerning the king's dogma. Charles further allied himself with controversial religious figures, such as the ecclesiastic Richard Montagu, and William Laud, whom Charles appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. Many of Charles' subjects felt this brought the Church of England too close to the Catholic Church. Charles' later attempts to force religious reforms upon Scotland led to the Bishops' Wars, strengthened the position of the English and Scottish Parliaments and helped precipitate the king's downfall.
Charles' last years were marked by the English Civil War, in which he fought the forces of the English and Scottish Parliaments, which challenged the king's attempts to overrule and negate Parliamentary authority, whilst simultaneously using his position as head of the English Church to pursue religious policies which generated the antipathy of reformed groups such as the Puritans. Charles was defeated in the First Civil War (1642X45), after which Parliament expected him to accept its demands for a constitutional monarchy. He instead remained defiant by attempting to forge an alliance with Scotland and escaping to the Isle of Wight. This provoked the Second Civil War (1648X49) anda second defeat for Charles, who was subsequently captured, tried, convicted, and executed for high treason. The monarchy was then abolished and a republic called the Commonwealth of England, also referred to as the Cromwellian Interregnum, was declared. Charles' son, Charles II, though he became king at the death of his father, did not take up the reins of government until the restoration of the monarchy in 1660.[2] In that same year, Charles I was canonised as Saint Charles Stuart and King Charles the Martyr by the Church of England and is venerated throughout the Anglican Communion.[5]
Contents [hide]
1 Early life
2 Early reign
3 Personal rule
3.1 Economic problems
4 Religious conflicts
5 The Second Bishops' War
6 The "Long Parliament"
6.1 The Irish Rebellion
7 English Civil War
8 Trial
9 Execution
10 Legacy
10.1 Sainthood
10.2 Assessments
11 Titles, styles, honours and arms
11.1 Titles and styles
11.2 Honours
11.3 Arms
12 Ancestry
13 Marriage and issue
14 See also
15 Notes
16 References
17 Further reading
18 External links
18.1 Books about Charles I available online
[edit] Early lifeThe second son of James VI of Scotland and Anne of Denmark, Charles was born in Dunfermline Palace, Fife on 19 November 1600.[2][6] His paternal grandmother was Mary, Queen of Scots. Charles was baptised on 2 December 1600 by the Bishop of Ross, in a ceremony held in Holyrood Abbey and was created Duke of Albany, Marquess of Ormond, Earl of Ross and Lord Ardmannoch.[7]
Charles was a weak and sickly infant. When Elizabeth I of England died in March 1603 and James VI of Scotland became King of England as James I, Charles was not considered strong enough to survive the journey to London due to hisfragile health. While his parents and older siblings left for England in April and May that year, Charles remained in Scotland, with his father's friend and the Lord President of the Court of Session, Alexander Seton, Lord Fyvie,appointed as his guardian.[7]
By the spring of 1604, Charles was three and a half and was by then able to walk the length of the great hall at Dunfermline Palace unaided. It was decided that he was now strong enough to make the journey to England to be reunited with his family, and on 13 July 1604 Charles left Dunfermline for England, where he was to spend most of the rest of his life.[8] In England, Charles was placed under the charge of Alletta (Hogenhove) Carey, the Dutch-born wifeof courtier Sir Robert Carey, who taught him how to walk and talk, and insisted that he wear boots made of Spanish leather and brass to help strengthen his weak ankles.[9] However, Charles apparently eventually conquered his physical infirmity,[10] which may be attributable to rickets[9] and grew to an about average height of 5 feet 4 inches (162.56 cm).
Charles as Duke of York and Albany, c. 1611Charles was not as valued as his physically stronger, elder brother, Henry, Prince of Wales; whom Charles personally adored and attempted to emulate.[11] In 1605, Charles was created Duke of York, which is customary in the case of the sovereign's second son. However, when Henry died of suspected typhoid (or possibly porphyria)[12] at the age of 18 in 1612, two weeks before Charles' 12th birthday, Charles became heir apparent. As the eldest living son of the sovereign Charles automatically gained several titles (including Duke of Cornwall[13] and Duke of Rothesay), and subsequently was created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester in November 1616.[14]
Charles as Prince of Wales by Isaac Oliver, 1615.In 1613, his sister Elizabeth married Frederick V, Elector Palatine and moved to Heidelberg.[15] In 1617 the Catholic Ferdinand II was elected king of Bohemia. The following year, the people of Bohemia rebelled against their monarch, choosing to crown Frederick V of the Palatinate, and leader of the Protestant Union in his stead. Frederick's acceptance of the crown in November 1619 thus marked the beginningof turmoil which would develop into the Thirty Years' War. This conflict made a great impression upon the English Parliament and public, who quickly grew to see it as a polarised continental struggle between Catholic and Protestant.[16] James, who was supportive of Frederick, and had been seeking marriage between the new Prince of Wales and the Spanish Infanta, Maria Anna of Spain, since Prince Henry's death,[15] began to see the Spanish Match as a possible means of achieving peace in Europe.
Unfortunately for James, this diplomatic negotiation with Spain proved generally unpopular, both with the public and James' court,[17] with 'Arminian' divines providing a unique source of support for the proposed union.[18] Parliament was actively hostile towards the Spanish throne, and thus, when called by James, hoped for a crusade under the leadership of the king[19] to rescue Protestants on the continent from Habsburg rule.[20] Attacks upon the monopolists by Parliament for the abuse of prices led to the scapegoating of Francis Bacon by George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham,[21] leading to Bacon's impeachment before the Lords; the first of its kind which was not officially sanctioned by the King in the form of a Bill of attainder since 1459. The incident set an important precedent in terms of the apparent authority of Parliament to safeguard the nation's interests and its capacity to launch legal campaigns, as it later did against Buckingham, Archbishop Laud, the Earl of Strafford and Charles I. However, parliament and James came to blows when the issue of foreign policy was discussed, with James insisting that the Commons beexclusively concerned with domestic affairs. The members of the Commons, meanwhile, protested that they had the privilege of free speech within the Commons' walls.[22] In January 1622 James dissolved the Parliament.[23]
Charles, and the Duke of Buckingham, James' favourite[24] and a man who had great influence over the prince, together travelled incognito to Spain in 1623 in an attempt to reach agreement on the long-pending Spanish Match.[25] The trip ended as an embarrassing failure however as the Spanish demanded that Charles must convert to Roman Catholicism and remain in Spain for a year after the wedding as hostage to ensure England's compliance with all the terms of the treaty. Moreover, a personal quarrel erupted between Buckingham and the Spanish nation between whom was mutual misunderstanding and ill temper.[26] Charles was outraged, and upon their return in October, he and Buckingham demanded that King James declare war on Spain.[25]
With the encouragement of his Protestant advisers, James summoned Parliament in 1624 so that he could request subsidies for a war.[27] At the behest of Charles and Buckingham, James assented to the impeachment of the Lord Treasurer, Lionel Cranfield, 1st Earl of Middlesex by the House of Commons, who quickly fell in much the same manner as Bacon had.[27] James also requested that Parliament sanction the marriage between the Prince of Wales and Princess Henrietta Maria of France,[28] whom Charles had met in Paris while en route to Spain.[29] It was a good match since she was a sister of Louis XIII[30] (their father, Henry IV, had died during her childhood). Parliament reluctantly agreed to the marriage,[30] with the promise from both James and Charles that the marriage would not entail a liberty of religion being accorded to any Roman Catholic not of the Princess' own household.[30] By 1624, James was growing sick, and as a result was finding it extremely difficult to control Parliament. By the time of his death, February 1625, Charles and the Duke of Buckingham had already achieved de facto control of the kingdom.[31]
Scottish and English Royalty
House of Stuart
Charles I
Charles II
James II & VII
Henry, Duke of Gloucester
Mary, Princess Royal
Henriette, Duchess of Orléans
Elizabeth
Both Charles and James were advocates of the divine right of kings, but whilst James' lofty ambitions concerning absolute prerogative[32] were tempered by compromise and consensus with his subjects, Charles I believed that he hadno need of Parliamentary approval, that his foreign ambitions (which were greatly expensive and fluctuated wildly) should have no legal impediment, and that he was himself above reproach. Charles believed he had no need to compromise or even explain his actions and that he was answerable only to God, famously stating: "Kings are not bound to give an account of their actions but to God alone".[33][34]
[edit] Early reignOn 11 May 1625, Charles was married by proxy to Henrietta Maria in front of the doors of the Notre Dame de Paris,[35] before his first Parliament could meet to forbid the banns.[35] Many members were opposed to the king marrying a Roman Catholic, fearing that Charles would lift restrictions on Roman Catholics and undermine the official establishment of Protestantism. Although he stated to Parliament that he would not relax restrictions relating to recusants, he promised to do exactly that in a secret marriage treaty with Louis XIII of France.[36] Moreover, the price of marriage with the French princess was a promise of English aid for the French crown in the suppressing of the Protestant Huguenots at La Rochelle, thereby reversing England's long held position in the French Wars of Religion. The couple were married in person on 13 June 1625 in Canterbury. Charles was crowned on 2 February 1626 at Westminster Abbey, but without his wife at his side due to the controversy. Charles and Henrietta had seven children, with three sons and three daughters surviving infancy.[37]
Sir Anthony Van Dyck: Charles I painted in April 1634Distrust of Charles' religious policies increased with his support of a controversial ecclesiastic, Richard Montagu. In his pamphlets A New Gag for an Old Goose, a reply to theCatholic pamphlet A New Gag for the new Gospel, and also his Immediate Addresse unto God alone, Montagu argued against Calvinist predestination, thereby bringing himself into disrepute amongst the Puritans.[38] After a Puritan member of the House of Commons, John Pym, attacked Montagu's pamphlet during debate, Montagu requested the king's aid in another pamphlet entitled "Appello Caesarem"(1625), (a reference to an appeal against Jewish persecution made by Saint Paul the Apostle).[39] Charles made the cleric one of his royal chaplains, increasing many Puritans' suspicions as to where Charles would lead the Church, fearing that his favouring of Arminianism was a clandestine attempton Charles' part to aid the resurgence of Catholicism within the English Church.[40]
Charles' primary concern during his early reign was foreign policy. The Thirty Years' War, originally confined to Bohemia, was spiralling into a wider European war. In 1620 Frederick V was defeated at the Battle of White Mountain[41] and by 1622, despite the aid of English volunteers, had lost his hereditary lands in the Palatinate to the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II.[42] Having agreed to help his brother-in-law regain the Palatinate, Charles declared war on Spain, which under the Catholic King Philip IV had sent forces to help occupy the Palatinate.[43]
Parliament preferred an inexpensive naval attack on Spanish colonies in the New World, hoping that the capture of the Spanish treasure fleets could finance the war. Charles, however, preferred more aggressive (and more expensive)action on the Continent.[44] Parliament only voted to grant a subsidy of £140,000; an insufficient sum for Charles.[45] Moreover, the House of Commons limited its authorisation for royal collection of tonnage and poundage (two varieties of customs duties) to a period of one year, although previous sovereigns since 1414 had been granted the right for life.[45] In this manner, Parliament could keep a check on expenditures by forcing Charles to seek the renewal of the grant each year. Charles' allies in the House of Lords, led by the Duke of Buckingham, refused to pass the bill. Although no Parliamentary Act for the levy of tonnage and poundage was obtained, Charles continued to collect the duties.[46]
The war with Spain under the leadership of Buckingham went badly, and the House of Commons began proceedings for the impeachment of the duke.[47] Charles nominated Buckingham as Chancellor of Cambridge University in response[48] and on 12 June 1626, the House of Commons launched a direct protestation, stating, 'We protest before your Majesty and the whole world that until this great person be removed from intermeddling with the great affairs of state, we are out of hope of any good success; and we do fear that any money we shall or can give will, through his misemployment, be turned rather to the hurt and prejudice of your kingdom.'[48] Despite Parliament's protests, however, Charles refused to dismiss his friend, dismissing Parliament instead.
Charles provoked further unrest by trying to raise money for the war through a "forced loan": a tax levied without Parliamentary consent. In November 1627, the test case in the King's bench, the 'Five Knights' Case' X which hinged on the king's prerogative right to imprison without trial those who refused to pay the forced load X was on a general basis, upheld.[49] Summoned again in 1628, Parliament adopted a Petition of Right on 26 May, calling upon the king to acknowledge that he could not levy taxes without Parliament's consent, impose martial law on civilians, imprison them without due process, or quarter troops in their homes.[50] Charles assented to the petition,[51] though he continued to claim the right to collect customs duties without authorisation from Parliament.
Despite Charles' agreement to suppress La Rochelle as a condition of marrying Henrietta Maria, Charles reneged upon his earlier promise and instead launched a poorly conceived and executed defence of the fortress under the leadership of Buckingham in 1628[52] X thereby driving a wedge between the English and French Crowns that was not surmounted for the duration of the Thirty Years' War.[53] Buckingham's failure to protect the Huguenots X indeed, his attempt to capture Saint-Martin-de-Ré then spurred Louis XIII's attack on the Huguenot fortress of La Rochelle[54] X furthered Parliament's detestation of the Duke and the king's close proximity to this eminence grise.
On 23 August 1628, Buckingham was assassinated.[55] The public rejoicing at his death accentuated the gulf between the court and the nation, and between the crown and the Commons.[56] Although the death of Buckingham effectively ended the war with Spain and eliminated his leadership as an issue, it did not end the conflicts between Charles and Parliament over taxation and religious matters.[57][58]
[edit] Personal rule
Charles I, King of England, from Three Angles, the Triple Portrait by Anthony van Dyck.In January 1629, Charles opened the second session of the Parliament, which had been prorogued in June 1628, with a moderate speech on the tonnage and poundage issue. Members of the House of Commons began to voice their opposition in light of the Rolle case, in which the eponymous MP had had his goods confiscated for failing to pay tonnage and poundage. Many MPs viewed the confiscation as a breach of the Petition of Right,[59] arguing that the petition's freedom-from-arrest privilege extended to goods. When Charles ordered a parliamentary adjournment on 10 March, members held the Speaker, Sir John Finch, down in his chair so that the dissolving of Parliament could be delayed long enough for resolutions against Catholicism, Arminianism and poundage and tonnage to be read out.[60] The lattermost resolution declared that anyone who paid tonnage or poundage not authorised by Parliament would "be reputed a betrayer of the liberties of England, and an enemy to the same", and, although the resolution was not formally passed, many members declared their approval. Nevertheless, the provocation was too much for Charles, who dissolved parliament the same day.[61] Moreover, eight parliamentary leaders, including John Eliot, were imprisoned on the foot of the matter,[62] thereby turning these men into martyrs, and giving popular cause to a protest that had hitherto been losing its bearings.
Shortly after the proroguing of Parliament, without the means in the foreseeable future to raise funds for a European War from Parliament,[63] or the influence of Buckingham, Charles made peace with France and Spain.[64] The following eleven years, during which Charles ruled without a Parliament, are referred to as the Personal Rule or the Eleven Years' Tyranny.[65] (Ruling without Parliament, though an exceptional exercise of the royal prerogative, was supported by precedent. By the middle of the 17th century, opinion shifted, and many held the Personal Rule to be an illegitimate exercise of arbitrary, absolute power.)
[edit] Economic problemsThe reigns of Elizabeth I and James I had generated a large fiscal deficit for the kingdom.[66] Notwithstanding the failure of Buckingham in the short lived campaigns against both Spain and France, there was in reality little economic capacity for Charles to wage wars overseas. England was still the least taxed country in Europe, with no official excise and no regular direct taxation.[67] Without the consent of Parliament, Charles'capacity to acquire funds for his treasury was theoretically hamstrung, legally at least. To raise revenue without reconvening Parliament, Charles first resurrected an all-but-forgotten law called the "Distraint of Knighthood", promulgated in 1279, which required anyone who earned £40 or more each year to present himself at the King's coronation to join the royal army as a knight.[68] Relying on this old statute, Charles fined all individuals who had failed to attend his coronation in 1626.
Later, Charles reintroduced obsolete feudal taxes such as purveyance, wardship, and forest laws.[69] Chief among these taxes was one known as Ship Money,[69] which proved even more unpopular, and lucrative, than poundage and tonnage before it. Under statutes of Edward I and Edward III, collection of ship money had been authorised only during wars, and only on coastal regions. Charles, however, argued that there was no legal bar to collecting the tax during peacetime and throughout the whole of the kingdom. Ship Money provided between £150,000 to £200,000 annually between 1634X1638, after which yields declined steeply.[70] This was paid directly to Treasury of the Navy, thus makingNorthumberland the most direct beneficiary of the tax.[71] Opposition to Ship Money steadily grew, with John Hampden's legal challenge in 1637 providing a platform of popular protest.[70] However, the royal courts declared that the tax was within the King's prerogative.
The king also derived money through the granting of monopolies, despite a statute forbidding such action (The Monopolies Act, 1624), which, though inefficient, raised an estimated £100,000 a year in the late 1630s in royal revenue.[72] Charles also gained funds through the Scottish nobility, at the price of considerable acrimony, by the Act of Revocation (1625), whereby all gifts of royal or church land made to the nobility were revoked, with continued ownership being subject to an annual rent.[73]
[edit] Religious conflictsThroughout Charles's reign, the issue of how far the English Reformation should progress was constantly brought to the forefront of political debate. Arminian theology contained an emphasis on clerical authority and the individual's capacity to reject salvation, and was consequently viewed as heretical and a potential vehicle for the reintroduction of Roman Catholicism by its opponents. Charles's sympathy to the teachings of Arminianism, and specifically his wish to move the Church of England away from Calvinism in a more traditional and sacramental direction,[74] consistently affirmed Puritans' suspicions concerning the perceived irreligious tendencies of the crown. A long history of opposition to tyrants who oppressed Protestants had developed since the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, most notably during the French Wars of Religion (articulated in the Vindiciae contra tyrannos),[75][76] and more recently in the Second Defenestration of Prague and eruption of the Thirty Years' War.[77] Such cultural identifications resonated with Charles's subjects. These allegations would haunt Charles because of the continued exacerbating actions of both king and council, particularly in the form of Archbishop William Laud.
William Laud was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633,[78][79] and began a series of unpopular reforms such as attempting to ensure religious uniformity by dismissing non-conformist clergymen, and closing Puritan organisations.[80] His policy was opposed to Calvinist theology, and he insisted that the Church of England's liturgy be celebrated using the form prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer, and that the internal architecture of English churches be reorganised so as to emphasise the sacrament of the altar, thereby attacking predestination.[81] To punish those who refused to accept his reforms, Laud used the two most feared and most arbitrary courts in the land, the Court of High Commission and the Court of Star Chamber.[80] The former could compel individuals to provide self-incriminating testimony, whilst the latter, essentially an extension of the Privy Council, could inflict any punishment whatsoever (including torture), with the sole exception of death.
William Laud shared Charles's views on CalvinismThe first years of the Personal Rule were marked by peace in England, partly because of tighter central control. Several individuals opposed Charles's taxes and Laud's policies, andsome left as a result, such as the Puritan minister Thomas Hooker, who set sail for America along with other religious dissidents in the Griffin (1634). By 1633 Star Chamber had, in effect, taken the place of High Commission as the supreme tribunal for religious offences as well as dealing with Crown cases of a secular nature.[82] Under Charles's reign, defendants were regularly brought before the Court without indictment, due process of the law, or rightto confront witnesses, and their testimonies were routinely extracted by the Court through torture.
However, when Charles attempted to impose his religious policies in Scotland he faced numerous difficulties. Although born in Scotland, Charles had become estranged from his kingdom; not even paying visit until his Scottish coronation in 1633.[83] In 1637 the king ordered the use of a new Prayer Book to be used within Scotland that was almost identical to the English Book of Common Prayer, without consultation with either the Scottish Parliament or Kirk.[83] Although this move was supported by the Scottish Bishops,[84] it was resisted by many Presbyterian Scots, who saw the new Prayer Book as a vehicle for introducing Anglicanism to Scotland.[85] In 1637, spontaneous unrest erupted throughout the Kirk upon the first Sunday of its usage, and the public began to mobilise around rebellious nobles in the form of the National Covenant.[84] When the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland abolished Episcopalian government (that is, governance of the Church by bishops) in 1638, replacing it with Presbyterian government (that is, governance by elders and deacons),[86] Charles sought to put down what he saw as a rebellion against his authority.
In 1639, when the First Bishops' War broke out, Charles did not seek subsidies to wage war, but instead raised an army without Parliamentary aid.[71] However, Charles's army did not engage the Covenanters as the king was afraid of the defeat of his forces, whom he believed to be significantly outnumbered by the Scots.[87] In the Pacification of Berwick, Charles regained custody of his Scottish fortresses, and secured the dissolution of the Covenanters' interim government, albeit at the decisive concession whereby both the Scottish Parliament and General Assembly of the Scottish Church were called.[88]
Charles's military failure in the First Bishops' War in turn caused a financial and military crisis for Charles, which ultimately ended the period of Personal Rule.[89] Charles's peace negotiations with the Scots were merely a bid by the king to gain time before launching a new military campaign. However, because of his financial weakness, Charles was forced to call Parliament into session by 1640 in an attempt to raise funds for such a venture. The risk for the king lay in the forum that Parliament would provide to his opponents, whilst the intransigence of the 1628 Parliament augured badly for the prospects of obtaining the necessary subsidy for war.
[edit] The Second Bishops' WarMain article: Bishops' Wars
Charles collectively summoned both English and Irish parliaments in the early months of 1640.[90] In March, 1640 the Irish Parliament duly voted in a subsidy of £180,000 with the promise to raise an army 9,000 strong by the end of May.[90] However, in the English General Election in March, court candidates fared badly,[91] and Charles' dealings with the English Parliament in April quickly reached stalemate. Northumberland and Strafford together attempted to reach a compromise whereby the king would agree to forfeit Ship Money in exchange for £650,000 (although the coming war was estimated at around £1 million).[92] Nevertheless, this alone was insufficient to produce consensus in the Commons.[93] The Parliamentarians' calls for further reforms were ignored by Charles, who still maintained the support of the House of Lords. Despite the protests of Northumberland,[94] Parliament was dissolved less than a month after it assembled, in May 1640; thus causing it to be known as the "Short Parliament".[95]
Portrait of Charles I with Seignior de St AntoineBy this stage Thomas Wentworth, created Earl of Strafford and elevated to Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in January 1640,[96] had emerged as Charles' right hand man and together with Laud, pursued a policy of 'Thorough' in support of absolute monarchy.[97] Although originally a major critic of the king, Strafford defected to royal service in 1628 (due in part to Buckingham's persuasion),[98] and had since emerged as the most capable of Charles' ministers. Having trained up a large army in Ireland in support of the king and seriously weakened the authority of the Irish Parliament, particularly those members of parliament belonging to theOld English,[99] Strafford had been instrumental in obtaining an independent source of both royal revenue and forces within the three kingdoms.[71] As the Scottish Parliament declared itself capable of governing without the king's consent and, in September 1640, moved into Northumberland under the leadership of Montrose,[100] Strafford was sent north to command the English forces following Northumberland's illness.[101] The Scottish soldiery, many of whomwere veterans of the Thirty Years' War,[102] had far greater morale and training compared to their English counterparts, and met virtually no resistance until reaching Newcastle where, at the Battle of Newburn, Newcastle-upon-Tyne X and hence England's coal supply X fell into the hands of the Covenanter forces.[103] At this critical juncture, the English host based at York was unable to mount a counterattack because Strafford was incapacitated by a combination of gout and dysentery.[101]
On 24 September Charles took the unusual step of summoning the magnum concilium, the ancient council of all the Peers of the Realm, who were considered the King's hereditary counsellors, who recommended making peace with the Scots and the recalling of Parliament.[104] A cessation of arms, although not a final settlement, was agreed in the humiliating Treaty of Ripon, signed October 1640.[105] The treaty stated that the Scots would continue to occupy Northumberland and Durham and be paid £850 per day, until peace was restored and the English Parliament recalled (which would be required to raise sufficient funds to pay the Scottish forces).[104]
Consequently, in November Charles summoned what was later to become known as the Long Parliament. Of the 493 MPs of the Commons, 399 were opposed to the king, and only 94 could be counted on, by Charles, for support.
[edit] The "Long Parliament"Main article: Long Parliament
See also: Wars of the Three Kingdoms
The Long Parliament assembled in November 1640 and proved just as difficult for Charles as had the Short Parliament. The Parliament quickly began proceedings to impeach Laud of High Treason, which it succeeded in doing on 18 December.[106] Lord Keeper Finch was impeached the following day, and he consequently fled to the Hague with Charles' permission on 21 December. To prevent the king from dissolving it at will, Parliament passed the Triennial Act, to which the Royal Assent was granted in February 1641.[107] The Act required that Parliament was to be summoned at least once every three years, and that when the King failed to issue proper summons, the members could assemble on their own.
On 22 March 1641, Strafford, who had become the immediate target of the Parliamentarians, particularly that of John Pym, went on trial for high treason.[108] The incident provided a new departure for Irish politics whereby Old English, Gaelic Irish and New English settlers joined together in a legal body to present evidence against Strafford.[109] However, the evidence supplied by Sir Henry Vane in relation to Strafford's alleged improper use and threat to England via the Irish army was not corroborated and on 10 April Pym's case collapsed.[110] Pym immediately launched a Bill of Attainder, simply stating Strafford's guilt and that the Earl be put to death.[111]
Charles, however guaranteed Strafford that he would not sign the attainder, without which the bill could not be passed.[112] Furthermore, the Lords were opposed to the severity of the sentence of death imposed upon Strafford. Yet, increased tensions and an attempted coup by the army in support of Strafford began to sway the issue.[112] On 21 April, in the Commons the Bill went virtually unopposed (204 in favour, 59 opposed, and 250 abstained),[113] the Lords acquiesced, and Charles, fearing for the safety of his family, signed on 10 May.[113] The Earl of Strafford was beheaded two days later.[114]
In May 1641, Charles assented to an
- Charles I (of England) (1600-49), king of England, Scotland, and Ireland
(1625-49), who was deposed and executed during the English Revolution.
Charles was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, on November 19, 1600. The
second son of James I, Charles became heir apparent when his elder
brother, Henry (1594-1612), died, and was made prince of Wales in 1616. In
1623, during the Thirty Years' War, Charles visited Spain to negotiate his
proposed marriage with the Spanish infanta. The proposal had been made in
order to effect an alliance between Spain and England. When it became
apparent, however, that the Spanish had no intention of concluding such an
alliance, negotiations were begun for his marriage to the French princess
Henrietta Maria, and England formed an alliance with France against Spain.
In 1625 Charles succeeded to the throne and married Henrietta Maria, but
his marriage aroused the ill will of his Protestant subjects because the
queen consort was Roman Catholic.
Charles believed in the divine right of kings and in the authority of the
Church of England. These beliefs soon brought him into conflict with
Parliament and ultimately led to civil war. He came under the influence of
his close friend George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham, whom he
appointed his chief minister in defiance of public opinion and whose war
schemes ended ignominiously. Three Parliaments, convoked in four years,
were dissolved by Charles because of their refusal to comply with his
arbitrary measures. When the third Parliament met in 1628, it presented
the Petition of Right, a statement demanding that Charles make certain
reforms in exchange for war funds. Charles was forced to accept the
petition. In 1629, although the assassination of Buckingham had removed a
parliamentary grievance, Charles dismissed Parliament and had several
parliamentary leaders imprisoned. Charles governed without a Parliament
for the next 11 years. During this time forced loans, poundage, tonnage,
ship money, and other extraordinary financial measures were sanctioned to
meet governmental expenses.
In 1637 Charles's attempt to impose the Anglican liturgy in Scotland led
to rioting by Presbyterian Scots. Charles was unable to quell the revolt,
and in 1640 he convoked the so-called Short Parliament to raise an army
and necessary funds. This body, which sat for one month (April-May),
refused his demands, drew up a statement of public grievances, and
insisted on peace with Scotland. Obtaining money by irregular means,
Charles advanced against the Scots, who crossed the border, routed his
army at Newburn, and soon afterward occupied Newcastle and Durham. His
money exhausted, the king was compelled to call his fifth Parliament, the
Long Parliament, in 1640. Led by John Pym, it proceeded against the two
chief royal advisers and secured the imprisonment and subsequent
executions of the archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, and Sir Thomas
Wentworth, 1st earl of Strafford. In 1641 Charles agreed to bills
abolishing the prerogative courts, prohibiting arbitrary taxation, and
ensuring that this Parliament would not be dissolved without its own
permission. The king also agreed to more religious liberties for the
Scots. Soon after, Charles was implicated in a plot to murder the
Covenanter leaders, including Archibald Campbell, 8th earl of Argyll. When
Charles visited Scotland in August 1641, he promised Campbell that he
would submit to the demands of the Scottish Parliament. While still in
Scotland, the king received word of a rebellion in Ireland in which
thousands of English colonists were massacred. When he returned to London
in November, he tried to have Parliament raise an army, under his control,
to put down the Irish revolt. Parliament, fearing that the army would be
used against itself, refused, and issued the Grand Remonstrance, a list of
reform demands, including the right of Parliament to approve the king's
ministers. Charles appeared in the House of Commons with an armed force
and tried to arrest Pym and four members. The country was aroused, and the
king fled with his family from London. Both sides then raised armies. The
supporters of Parliament were called Roundheads, and those of the king,
Cavaliers. The first civil war of the English Revolution, now inevitable,
began at Edgehill on October 23, 1642. The Cavaliers were initially
successful, but after a series of reverses Charles gave himself up to the
Scottish army on May 5, 1646. Having refused to accept Presbyterianism, he
was delivered (June 1647) to the English Parliament. Later he escaped to
the Isle of Wight but was imprisoned there. By this time a serious
division had occurred between Parliament and the army. Oliver Cromwell and
his supporters, the Independents, compelled Parliament to pass an act of
treason against further negotiation with the king.
Eventually, the moderate Parliamentarians were forcibly ejected by the
Independents, and the remaining legislators, who formed the so-called Rump
Parliament, appointed a court to try the king. On January 20, 1649, the
trial began in Westminster Hall. Charles denied the legality of the court
and refused to plead. On January 27 he was sentenced to death as a tyrant,
murderer, and enemy of the nation. Scotland protested, the royal family
entreated, and France and the Netherlands interceded, in vain. He was
beheaded at Whitehall, London, on January 30, 1649. Subsequently Oliver
Cromwell became chairman of the council of state, a parliamentary agency
that governed England as a republic.
- King Charles suffered from an extreme form of depression. He died quite sick. He was executed during at the close of the English Civil War. Suffered the same fate as his mother, Mary Queen of Scots.
- CREATED 11TH PRINCE OF WALES 1616; DUKE OF YORK; KG; "OF DUNFERMLINE"; ACCEDED
3/27/1625 (CROWNED WESTMINSTER); RULED FROM 1625-1649; BEHEADED 1/30/1649 BY
FORCES OF OLIVER CROMWELL [COMMONWEALTH UNDER LORDS PROTECTOR OLIVER CROMWELL
12/1653-9/1658 & RICHARD CROMWELL 9/1658-5/1569]
- KING
- Charles I (1600-49), king of Great Britain and Ireland, in 1623 proceeded in company with Buckingham to the Spanish court, Madrid, to win the hand of the Spanish Infata. The English people, however, hailed with joy the rupture with Spain which ensued upon CharlesXs pique at his failure. But he immediately dashed his peopleXs Protestant hopes by marrying the French (Roman Catholic) princess Henrietta Maria by proxy. Succeeding his father in 1625, he was soon involved in controversy with Parliament, particularly regarding the revenues rendered necessary by the extravagant policy of Buckingham; after BuckinghamXs assassination (1628) he yielded his will to Queen Henrietta, whose influence over him was unbounded, and in the end fatal. In 1626, by the aid of loans and pawning the crown jewels, he fitted out two expeditions against Cadiz, which ended in failure. Charles was not by nature a tyrant, perhaps not even a bigot; but the force of his two chief advisors - Laud (made arcbishop of Canterbury, 1633) and Strafford drove him not only into violating the liberties which Englishmen held dear, but into irritating the conscience of England by carrying out LaudXs High Church ideas. He levied and raised money by granting monopolies and demanding ship money from the seaports (1634). In 1639 Laud drove the Scots to rebellion by his attempts to force a liturgy on them.These two events induced Charles to summon Parliament, of which two - the XShort ParliamentX (of three weeksX duration) and the XLong ParliamentX - met in 1640. The Long Parliament impeached Strafford and forced Charles to assentto a bill enacting that Parliament could not be dissolved save with its own consent. Thus began the long struggle between Charles and Parliament; and the Long Parliament outlasted him. Charles hoped to win the Scots to his side. His return to London was marked by the Grand Remonstrance. The royal standard was raised at Nottingham, and civil war broke out. It ended with the disastrous battle of Naseby (1645). He surrendered himself to the Scots at Newark in 1646, who gave him up to the English; the story of his execution at Whitehall has a dignity which in part redeems his character. He was a pattern of the domestic virtues, but he was both too obstinate and too weak to cope with the tremendous issues he raised. [World Wide Illustrated Encyclopedia, 1935]
Notes on Charles I, King of England
Charles, born at Dunfermline, was a sickly child, unable to speak till his fifth year, and so weak in the ankles that till his seventh he had to crawl upon his hands and knees. Except for a stammer, he outgrew both defects, and became a skilled tilter and marksman, as well as an accomplished scholar and a diligent student of theology. He was created Duke of Albany at his baptism, Duke of York in 1605, and Prince of Wales in 1616, four years after the death of Prince Henry had left him heir to the crown. The Spanish match had been mooted as early as 1614; but it was not till 17 Feb 1623, that, with Buckingham, Charles started on the romantic incognito journey to Madrid. Nothing short of his conversion would have satisfied the Spanish and papal courts; and on 5 Oct, he landed again in England, eager for rupture with Spain. The nationXs joy was speedily dashed by his betrothal to the French princess, Henrietta Maria (1609-1669); for the marriage articles pledged him to permit her the free exercise of the Catholic religion, and to give her the upbringing of their children till the age of thirteen. On 27 Mar 1625, Charles succeeded his father, James I; on June 13 he welcomed his little bright-eyed queen at Dover, having married her by proxy six weeks earlier. Barely a twelve-month was over when he packed off her troublesome retinue to France - a bishop and 29 priests, with 410 more male and female attendants. Thenceforth their domestic life was a happy one; and during the twelve years following the murder of Buckingham (1592-1628), in whose hands he had been a mere tool, Charles gradually came to yield himself up to her unwise influence, not wholly indeed, but more than to that of Strafford even, or Laud. Three parliaments were summoned and dissolved in the first four years of the 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. The extension of the ship-tax to the inland counties was met by HampdenXs passive resistance (1637); LaudXs 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. {BurkeXs Peerage and ChamberXs Biographical Dictionary} It met to pronounce StraffordXs doom; and, his plot with the army detected, Charles basely sacrificed his loyal servitor to fears for the queenXs safety, at the same time assenting 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 Ulstermassacre. 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. PymXs "Grand Remonstrance" justified their fears, and Charles seemed to justify the "Grand Remonstrance" by his attempt to arrest the five members (4 Jan 1642); but that ill-stricken blow was dictated by the knowledge of an impending impeachment of the queenherself. On August 22 he raised the royal standard at Nottingham; and the four yearsX 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 (June 14, 1645). Quitting his last refuge, Oxford, he surrendered himself on 5 May 1646, to the Scots at Newark, and by them in the following January was handed over to the parliament. His four monthsX captivity at HolmbyHouse, near Northampton; his seizure, on 3 Jun, by Cornet Joyce; the three months at Hampton Court; the flight on 11 Nov; the fresh captivity at Carisbrooke Castle in the Isle of Wight, these lead up to the XtrialX at Westminsterof the "tyrant, traitor, and murderer, Charles Stuart". He had drawn the sword, and by the sword he perished, for it was the army not parliament, 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 30 Jan 1649, he died on the scaffold in front of Whitehall, with a courage worthy of a martyr. On the snowy 7thof February they bore the "white king" to his grave at Windsor in Henry VIIIXs vault; in 1813 the Prince Regent had his leaden coffin opened. Six children survived him - Charles and James, his 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 CharlesXs final parting from his queen. [GADD.GED]
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1600 - 1649 (48 år)
