Charles I

King of England (r. 1625-1649)

• Born: November 19, 1600
• Birthplace: Dumferline Castle, Fife, Scotland
• Died: January 30, 1649
• Place of death: London, England

As king of England, Charles I became involved in a dispute with Parliament over the extent of his prerogative and the ordering of religion, a dispute that resulted in civil war, in Charles’s execution, and, ultimately, in the development of limited constitutional monarchy in England.

Early Life

Charles I was the second son of the Scottish king James VI and his queen, Anne of Denmark. Charles’s grandmother was Mary, Queen of Scots, whose lineal relationship to the Tudor monarchs resulted in James’s succession to the English throne in 1603.

A sickly child, Charles did not walk until he was almost four years old, the weakness in his legs probably resulting from rickets. He was also slow in learning to talk, and he spoke with a stammer to the end of his life. As he grew to young manhood, he did strengthen his physical stamina by rigorous exercise and equestrian pursuits, but he always remained short in stature, never attaining a height beyond five feet, four inches. His education was closely supervised by his father. He learned to read and write Greek and Latin, and he was said to have spoken French, Spanish, and Italian fluently.

On the death of his brother, Prince Henry, in 1612, Charles became heir apparent to the English throne. In the following year, his sister Elizabeth married a German prince, Frederick V , elector of the Palatinate. King James had long dreamed of a Spanish marriage for his heir, and when Prince Frederick’s patrimony was seized by Spanish forces in 1619, the king had all the more incentive to promote a dynastic alliance that would lead to the restoration of his son-in-law.

At the urging of his favorite, George Villiers, duke of Buckingham, the aging king granted Buckingham and Charles permission to travel incognito to Spain, there to woo the Infanta Dona Maria. After enduring the dalliance of the Spanish negotiators for eight months, the two young men returned to England without the infanta and determined on war against Spain. A strongly Protestant Parliament proved willing to declare war against Catholic Spain but reluctant to vote sufficient revenue for a land war. It was amid this situation that James died in March, 1625.

Life’s Work

As his father’s successor, King Charles I imparted a different character to the throne from that which had prevailed under James I. He rid the royal presence of drunkards and catamites, so that his court was dignified and well-ordered. He patronized the arts and was an excellent judge of artistic merit. He was temperate, chaste, and serious, slow of thought and sparing of words; his greatest fault was his deviousness in public matters. Charles soon welcomed his new queen, Henrietta Maria , the youngest sister of King Louis XIII of France. From the time Charles and Buckingham had left Spain, secret marriage negotiations had been conducted with France, and despite the difficult terms of a Catholic marriage, they were concluded not long before the late king’s death.

Between 1625 and 1629, Charles convened Parliament every year but one. From the outset, the king and Parliament fell into dispute over taxation, the influence of Buckingham, and ritual in the Church of England. In 1625, Parliament granted tonnage and poundage, a customs tax, for only one year, though it had been traditional to accord this revenue to a new monarch for the duration of his reign. In 1626, Charles dissolved his second parliament to save Buckingham from trial after he had been impeached in the Lower House.

Since Parliament had not voted sufficient money to conduct the war, Charles continued to collect tonnage and poundage and in addition imposed forced loans on affluent landowners. Those who refused to pay were thrown into prison. Meanwhile, Buckingham, the leader of repeated military expeditions that invariably ended in ignominious defeat, blundered into another war, this one against France. The Parliament of 1628 brought the king to account, compelling him to sign the Petition of Right ; Charles pledged himself not to imprison any subject without cause, not to collect taxes unauthorized by Parliament, not to billet soldiers on his subjects’ property, and not to declare martial law in time of peace.

Buckingham was assassinated by a disappointed office-seeker in August, 1628. It was at this time that the king fell in love with his queen. Henceforth, he was to be that rarity among monarchs of his day, an affectionate and loyal husband.

When Parliament reconvened in 1629, it turned at once to grievances. Believing that he had nothing to expect from this session, Charles ordered both houses dissolved, but before allowing themselves to be sent away, the Commons passed resolutions declaring anyone who supported the collection of tonnage and poundage, or who advocated innovations in the Church of England, to be a capital enemy of the realm. For the next eleven years, Charles did not call a Parliament. Without parliamentary revenues, he was forced to withdraw from expensive wars, signing peace treaties with France in 1629 and with Spain in 1630.

Charles had to raise money by any means he could devise under the royal prerogative. He revived old feudal dues and fines, such as penalties for infringement on the royal forests. He also continued to collect tonnage and poundage. The measure that raised the greatest protest, however, was the king’s decision to extend “ship money” (a rate levied for upkeep of the royal fleet) from coastal towns to inland counties. In the celebrated Ship Money Case, a panel of judges narrowly upheld the king’s right to collect the assessment from John Hampden, a wealthy landowner who had refused to pay. By reduction of expenses and the use of such expedients as were available, Charles collected sufficient revenue to meet current costs of his government, but not enough to defray extraordinary demands on the treasury.

Another troublesome issue in the 1630’s was what Puritans took to be a trend toward Catholicism in the Church of England. In 1633, Charles appointed William Laudarchbishop of Canterbury. Laud was the leader of that group of clergy who supported a more elaborate church ritual and emphasized episcopacy. Practices such as bowing at the name of Jesus and placing of the Communion table at the east end of the church suggested a drift toward Rome. Despite the misgivings of the Puritans, however, neither Charles nor Laud entertained any idea of returning to Catholicism.

Charles might have continued indefinitely to rule without Parliament had his Scottish subjects not rebelled. When, in 1636, he imposed episcopal control on the Scottish Church, the Presbyterian Scots resolved to defend their religion whatever the cost. After a futile attempt to send the militia against Scotland and an abortive Parliament in April and May, 1640 (afterward referred to as the Short Parliament), Charles convened the Long Parliament on November 3, 1640. Meanwhile, Scottish troops occupied two northern counties of England and held the king liable for the expense of occupation.

Parliament appeared little worried about the Scottish occupation but proceeded forthwith to reduce the royal prerogative. First, it condemned Thomas Wentworth, first earl of Strafford, by a bill of attainder for giving the king evil advice. Next, the king was shorn of his offending prerogative powers. The prerogative courts were abolished, ship money was declared illegal, feudal exactions were forbidden, and Parliament was to be dissolved only with its own consent.

On November 3, 1641, the members of Parliament were stunned when news arrived that the Catholic Irish had revolted and were slaughtering English settlers in Ireland. An army to quell the uprising would have to be raised, and it was the issue of who would control these forces, the king or Parliament, that proved to be the breaking point between the two. In violation of parliamentary privilege, Charles, accompanied by a body of guards, entered the House of Commons and attempted to arrest several of its members. A week later, on January 10, 1642, Charles and his family left London. The following August, he raised his royal standard near Nottingham. The First English Civil War began.

The Houses of Lords and Commons divided according to no particular pattern, some of them supporting the king and others the Parliamentary cause. The civil war dragged on for four years, at the conclusion of which Royalist arms had been defeated by Parliamentary forces and by the Scots, who had joined Parliament against the king in 1644. In the spring of 1646, Charles surrendered himself into the hands of the Scottish army. Negotiations for the restoration of the monarchy stalled on the questions of control over the army and the church. In 1647, the Scots gave their royal prisoner to the keeping of Parliament and marched back north of the border. During the following year, Charles temporarily escaped imprisonment. He reached an agreement with the Scots, who undertook his restoration in return for the establishment of Presbyterianism in England. Scottish designs to place Charles back on the throne were foiled, however, when Oliver Cromwell crushed their army at Preston.

To Cromwell and the remnant of members still sitting in Parliament, there appeared to be no future for Charles in the government of England. He was deceptive; he could not be trusted to keep even the most solemn promise. A special court, whose jurisdiction Charles refused to recognize, was established to try the king on charges of tyranny and subversion of the rights of the people. He conducted himself with calm dignity throughout the proceedings, which ended with a sentence of death.

Noble in adversity, Charles proved serene in the face of death. On January 30, 1649, he was taken to a scaffold built to extend from one of the windows of the banqueting hall at Whitehall Palace and was beheaded before a sympathetic crowd of onlookers.

Significance

Since the execution of Charles I, historians have variously interpreted the origins and underlying socioeconomic meaning of the English Civil War. If England was undergoing basic change, Charles I was hardly the person to lead his country through a transformation. He lacked breadth of understanding and imagination. He stubbornly resisted adaptation and connived to win out over his opposition. Despite the fine qualities he displayed in his private life, his public endeavors did not directly lead to any positive achievement.

Charles was more than a man who held the office of king of England, however. He was, as all monarchs are, a symbol of the royal office itself. His execution, in retrospect, can be seen to have been a traumatic event for the English people, who were not as ready to dispense with royalty as they may have seemed in the midst of the English Civil War. The execution left the English people with lasting feelings of uncertainty about the nature of government, as well as feelings of guilt over their willingness to kill a man who, in the eyes of some, had a divine right that should have placed him beyond their reach.

Bibliography

Ashton, Robert. The City and the Court, 1603-1643. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979. Probably the main reason Charles I lost the military conflict of 1642-1646 was that London, the nexus of English commerce and wealth, fell under the control of Parliament. Ashton explains how growing radicalism late in 1641 and early in 1642 led to the extremists’ seizure of power in the city.

Bowle, John. Charles I: A Biography. Boston: Little, Brown, 1975. Engagingly written, this is a narrative history without pretense of sociological or psychological analysis. Charles I is presented just as he appears from evidence gleaned by modern research.

Carlton, Charles. Charles I: The Personal Monarch. 2d ed. New York: Routledge, 1995. A highly praised, well-written biography that challenges conventional interpretations of Charles’s life and the origins of the English Civil War.

Durston, Christopher. Charles I. New York: Routledge, 1998. Analyzes Charles’s personality and the effects of his decisions as monarch.

Gregg, Pauline. King Charles I. London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1981. The best biography of Charles I, this work presents a balanced and judicious view of his kingship. The author writes understandingly of Charles’s motives but is not blind to his faults.

Hibbard, Caroline M. Charles I and the Popish Plot. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983. Explores the efforts of Catholics at Charles’s court to mitigate recusancy laws against English Catholics and possibly to align England with Catholic powers in the religious struggle of the seventeenth century. The fear of “popery” engendered deep distrust of the king and court among the populace.

Stone, Lawrence. The Causes of the English Revolution. New York: Harper and Row, 1972. The author shows that the monarchy in England, having no standing army, well-established bureaucracy, or independent source of royal revenue, governed by consent; this delicate balance was upset when economic and religious developments brought about a loss of confidence in the king’s leadership.

Wilson, Derek. The King and the Gentleman: Charles Stuart and Oliver Cromwell, 1599-1649. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999. Examines the formative years and religious convictions of Charles and Cromwell to explain their opposing visions of England and how these visions led to the English Civil War. The book is intended for readers with some knowledge of British history.

Zagorin, Perez. The Court and the Country. New York: Atheneum, 1969. In this analytical and interpretive work, the author does not attempt an extensive narrative of events but rather delineates the main social, political, and religious interests that were significant elements in the seventeenth century conflict. He concludes that the decisive factor in the conflict were constitutional issues rather than religious differences.