Charles I (England) (1600–1649; Ruled 1625–1649)

CHARLES I (ENGLAND) (1600–1649; ruled 1625–1649)

CHARLES I (ENGLAND) (1600–1649; ruled 1625–1649), king of Great Britain and Ireland. Charles I was born in Dumfirmline Castle on 19 November 1600, the second son of James VI of Scotland (ruled 1567–1625; James I of England, ruled 1603–1625) and Anne of Denmark (1574–1619). Charles's childhood and adolescence were unhappy. He suffered from rickets and a severe stammer that bedeviled him almost until his death. His parents had little to do with him, while his elder brother, Prince Henry, the charismatic heir, teased him mercilessly.

On 6 November 1612, however, Henry died unexpectedly from typhoid fever. The new heir took the bereavement badly, and he was almost as upset when his elder sister Elizabeth married and left England to live in Germany. The death of Charles's mother in March 1619 and the fact that his father, James I, found his son a prudish irritation, much preferring the company of his homosexual lovers, did nothing to enhance the adolescent's self-confidence.

Ironically it was one of those lovers, George Villiers (1592–1628), later duke of Buckingham, who liberated the heir from his insecure youth. Villiers befriended Charles, who responded avidly, accepting him as a substitute elder brother. In the spring of 1623 the pair secretly went to Spain to woo Infanta Donna Maria, the sister of Philip IV (ruled 1621–1665). After the Spanish humiliatingly spurned his terms—notwithstanding major concessions on his part—Charles angrily returned home. The trip to Spain not only exposed Charles to the work of artists such as Titian, Michelangelo, and Raphael but augmented both Villier's influence and the authoritarian side of Charles's character. A year later Charles told William Laud (1573–1645), the future archbishop of Canterbury, "I cannot defend the bad, nor yield in a good cause."

RELATIONSHIP WITH PARLIAMENT

For three years after Charles succeeded to the throne on 27 March 1625, Villiers dominated English politics. He and Charles were involved in a number of military expeditions, first against Spain and then France. All were humiliating and expensive failures. To pay for his expeditions, Charles asked Parliament to vote taxes, which that body refused to do unless Charles dismissed Villiers. To protect his friend, Charles dismissed Parliament and collected taxes anyway. In July 1628 the constitutional crisis reached a climax, when Parliament passed the Petition of Right, a statement of their major grievances. Charles assented to the petition with such ill grace that relations between the king and the Commons continued to deteriorate.

A month later John Felton, a deranged army officer, assassinated Villiers. Charles was devastated; his subjects were jubilant. On 2 March 1629 the House of Commons, defying the king's orders to adjourn, passed three resolutions condemning those who supported Catholicism and all who had paid illegal taxes such as the Forced Loan. Outraged by this open defiance of his authority, Charles determined to rule on his own and dissolved Parliament.

CHARLES'S PERSONAL RULE

For the next eleven years, from 1629 to 1640, Charles retreated from the world of politics to that of his court. He came under the malign influence of his wife, Henrietta Maria (1609–1669), a French Catholic who wanted to restore England to Rome. Charles also created one of the finest art collections ever assembled by a British monarch. He purchased the collection of the Gonzaga dukes of Mantua, who were desperate for money. The collection included some of best works by Raphael, Titian, Corregio (Antonio Allegri), and Andrea Mantegna. By the time of Charles's death, the royal collection totaled 1,760 paintings and nearly as many sculptures.

Charles's artistic taste and judgment were superb. At the age of twenty he knew enough to return a painting to Rubens because it was largely the work of an apprentice. He could also drive a hard bargain, reducing the price of a Van Dyck portrait by half. Nonetheless Charles's art did not come cheap. Parliament sold his collection in 1649 for £59,903. Its modern worth would be staggering.

Charles's art collection not only revealed his connoisseurship but shed light on his personality and policies. An example is the massive set of three paintings Rubens (1577–1640) did on the ceiling of the Banqueting Hall at Whitehall. Designed by Inigo Jones (1573–1652) in the Palladian style, Whitehall was the most significant building erected in England during the first half of the seventeenth century. Intended for the most important state occasions, such as the reception of ambassadors, its main themes were order and harmony. The interior's clean straight lines climaxed where the king sat on his throne. The central ceiling panel, The Apotheosis of James I, shows the old king as a divine right ruler ascending directly into heaven. The second panel praises James for uniting the crowns of England and Scotland, while the third acclaims him as a peacemaker and by implication supports Charles's refusal to get involved with the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), which was ravaging the Continent.

Perhaps the most important portrait the king commissioned was Van Dyck's (1599–1641) Charles I on Horseback, which hangs in the National Gallery in London. The masterpiece shows the king not just as a divine right monarch but as an absolutist who brooks no limits on his power. He is the knight-errant, whose sword could be unsheathed at any time to right wrongs, punish the evil, and bring law and order. Fully in control of his powerful stallion, this happy warrior is also a philosopher king—the confident master of all he surveys.

THE CIVIL WAR

By 1639 Charles's policies were coming apart in Scotland. While the taxes, such as ship money, which the king had raised without parliamentary approval, were far from popular, they were not oppressive enough to make his subjects rebel, but his religious policies were.

Apart from their king, the English and the Scots had little in common. The former were Episcopalians, the latter were Calvinists. When Charles introduced a new prayer book into Scotland in 1637, the results were explosive. Congregations rioted. In 1638 hundred of thousands of Scots signed a covenant—some with their own blood—vowing to fight to keep their old religion and to resist the imposition of bishops. Convinced that they in fact were determined not merely to abolish bishops but the monarchy itself, Charles vowed, "I will rather die than yield to their impertinent and damnable demands."

Charles fought two wars against the Scots. Although politically inconclusive, the First Bishops' War of 1639 forced the king to call the Short Parliament in April 1640. After impulsively dismissing this Parliament on 5 May, Charles fought the Second Bishops' War, which he lost. He thus had to call the Long Parliament that opened on 3 November 1640. For over a year the king and the Commons tried to compromise. Parliament wanted to control the crown; the king would accept no real limits on his powers. On 5 January 1642 Charles led a company of armed soldiers to the House of Commons to arrest the five ringleaders of parliamentary opposition, but just before he entered the house they escaped. The breach between the king and Parliament was irreparable. Both the king and Parliament collected arms and courted public opinion in a struggle to control the army raised to put down the revolt in Ireland that had broken out the previous October.

Soon after declaring war against his rebellious subjects on 22 August 1642, Charles raised an army that fought the parliamentary forces at Edgehill on 23 October. The two sides continued to spar during 1643. On 21 August 1643 Charles failed to lift the Siege of Gloucester, but he beat the parliamentarians at the First Battle of Newbury on 20 September. In 1644 the royalists were routed at Marston Moor (2 July), while the Roundheads (the Puritans) surrendered at Lostwithiel on 31 August. The year 1645 was decisive, for on 14 June, at the Battle of Naseby, the New Model Army of Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) decisively beat the king's forces.

The fighting dragged on for over a year, but on 6 May 1646 Charles surrendered to the Scots army, who on 30 January 1647 handed him over to Parliament. On 3 June 1647 the army seized the king, who on 11 November escaped to Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight. For the next two years Charles, hoping to divide and thus rule, bargained in bad faith with the Scots, the army, and Parliament. Instead of ruling he produced a second civil war, which was far more brutal than the first. As a result, on 19 December 1648 the army arrested the king and took him to London, where he was tried for treason. The result was inevitable. Charles was executed outside the Whitehall Banqueting Hall on 30 January 1649.

In a way the site was sublimely appropriate. The Banqueting Hall's magnificent ceiling painted by Rubens symbolized Charles's exquisite artistic tastes, which in turn were an excellent guide to his personality. The product of an oppressive childhood, Charles I was too much an authoritarian to deal with his subjects in good faith and too insecure to take decisive action. As Archbishop Laud bitterly concluded, he was "a mild and gracious prince, who knew not how to be, or be made great." For Charles, character was indeed fate.

See also Charles II (England) ; Church of England ; Cromwell, Oliver ; English Civil War and Interregnum ; James I and VI (England and Scotland) ; Laud, William ; Scotland ; Stuart Dynasty (England and Scotland) .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Carlton, Charles. Charles I: The Personal Monarch. 2nd ed. London, 1995. Originally published in 1983.

Cogswell, Thomas. The Blessed Revolution: English Politics and the Coming of War, 1621–1624. Cambridge, U.K., 1989.

Reeve, L. J. Charles I and the Road to Personal Rule. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 1989.

Sharpe, Kevin. The Personal Rule of Charles I. New Haven and London, 1992.

Young, Michael B. Charles I. Basingstoke, U.K., 1997.

Charles Carlton