Our new King is the third King Charles, although according to Jacobites and Stuart supporters, Charles III reigned from 1766 to 1788!
They all, however, made mistakes and faced problems and obstacles; one might say that two of our Charlies were exactly that!
To be precise, Charles I was a weak and sickly child who stammered all his life. He only became heir because his charismatic elder brother Henry, who he worshipped, died just before his twelfth birthday. His magic gift for making wrong decisions started before he became King; he and his father’s favourite the Duke of Buckingham pushed his reluctant and wiser father into war with Spain after a planned marriage with the Spanish Infanta broke down, James, near his deathbed, warned Charles about things like reviving impeachment and how to handle Parliament. Unfortunately, Charles did not inherit his father’s brains with his throne!
Shortly after his father’s death in March 1625, Charles married 15 year old French Princess Henrietta Maria, the King’s sister, by proxy. He actually met her six weeks later and wisely for once didn’t summon Parliament until after the marriage had been consummated; it turned out a very happy one after early teething troubles.
Henrietta was a Catholic; many MPs were worried that he’d relax religious restrictions and undermine the official position of the Church of England. With good cause, he had agreed to do that but denied it in public. His support for a controversial Arminian anti-Calvinist preacher named Richard Montagu and the Queen’s refusal to attend his Protestant Coronation didn’t exactly help!
The war with Spain was handicapped by Parliament’s refusing to vote enough money for full scale land war in Europe and limiting the monarch’s traditional right to collect customs duties.
Charles blocked Buckingham’s impeachment in 1626 after a naval expedition against Spain failed, as did another one to help French Huguenot rebels in 1627. Buckingham’s assassination in 1628 left the King but few other people heartbroken. It effectively ended the fight with Spain but not the non-stop one with Parliament, which he’d dissolved in 1628 after it adopted a petition calling on him not to levy tax without their consent, imposed martial law, jail people without legal consent or quarter troops in their homes. He continued to collect customs duties afterwards. The final breach with Parliament the following year, in which they held the Speaker in his chair to pass various resolutions, resulted in his ruling without it for eleven years.
While England was the least taxed country in Europe, Charles had to get money from somewhere, and only Parliament could legally raise taxes; this led to what can only be termed sharp practice, for instance, ship money meant to pay for the Navy was now levied throughout the country rather than on just seaports in war-time. Despite this, Charles was bankrupt in 1640 and those with money refused to make loans.
There had also been religious problems. Charles was essentially a High Church Anglican, not a believer in predestination, which the Puritans didn’t like. Nor did they like his failure to give sufficient support to the Protestant forces in the Thirty Years War.
He also made another daft mistake in that William Laud, his appointment of Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633, insisted that all churches adopted the Book Of Common Prayer. This and his reissuing a declaration of his father’s permitting secular activities on the Sabbath didn’t exactly please Scottish Presbyterians. His Star Chamber’s imposing degrading penalties like whipping and the pillory on gentlemen didn’t help him with the upper classes, and the Scots in general weren’t that impressed with his failure to visit his father’s country until his Scottish Coronation in 1633, conducted according to the Anglican rite – not a brilliant idea! The Book Of Common Prayer in 1637 led not only to its rejection by the Church of Scotland General Assembly and the national covenant of Scots pledging themselves to the old prayer book to the Bishops’ War of 1639 – reminiscent to me of Swift’s later war in Lilliput between the Little Endians and Big Endians!
He raised what army he could but had to call back the English and Irish Parliaments to raise the money for an army which unfortunately lost a battle to the Scots later that year. This forced him to summon what became the Long Parliament, the vast majority of whose members were opposed to him.
1641 was one of many annus horribili for him, his right hand man the Earl of Strafford was executed by Act of Parliament with his agreement, definitely a black mark in my eyes. Strafford had raised an army in Ireland which was disbanded due to lack of money, then a rebellion broke out there!
Parliament had also stripped the King of most of his powers, including his financial ones. That was essentially it, he broke with centuries of practice by leading soldiers into Parliament in January 1642 to arrest five MPs and a peer but “all my birds have flown” – they’d been forewarned.
This led to war, the first battle at Edgehill that October was indecisive, partly due to cavalry leader Prince Rupert’s men not returning to the field. Charles, left “exceedingly and deeply grieved”, refused to attack London. Rupert, a tall handsome dashing womaniser, has been described as the archetypal Cavalier.
The wars might be described as bloody, 6% of the population died over the years, but desultory; the first one ended after Roundhead victories at Marston Moor and Naseby with Charles surrendering himself to the Scottish Presbyterians in 1646 and becoming the prisoner of Parliament in 1647.
He escaped, made an alliance with the Scots, but the Second Civil War of 1648, when Charles was locked up on the Isle of Wight, was ended in a few months.
What followed was legally dubious, Parliament voted to continue negotiations, the Army ignored them and, through Pride’s purge, arrested MPs out of sympathy with them, the remainder being known as the Rump Parliament. They appointed 135 commissioners to try the King but only 68 of them turned up. Charles simply refused to recognise the Court, holding that he ruled by divine right and tradition and that most of Parliament had been excluded from what we today would call a show trial.
He was executed on January 30, 1649 and died bravely, wearing two shirts to avoid shivering and having people think him afraid and regretting his agreeing to the execution of Strafford: “An unjust sentence punished by an unjust sentence on me. I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown.” His head was ironically sewn back on the next day!
Historians’ views of him have naturally varied, there is still a Society of King Charles the Martyr. It’s hard to disagree with Archbishop Laud’s contemporary summing up of his royal master as “A mild and gracious prince who knew not how to be, or how to be made, great.” I would describe him as a nice chap but lousy politician with a magic gift for making the wrong decision.
In short, Charlie was a Charlie!
His son and heir was different in many respects: tall where his father was short, he learned from his mistakes, and led a very different private life!
At the Battle of Edgehill, he jumped forward with a pistol, shouting “I fear them not” before being pulled out of the way. He was parted from his father and went into exile first in France in 1646, and then to the Hague in 1648. His brother-in-law being Prince of Orange; his son William later married Charles’ niece. He also had an affair with an English girl called Lucy Walter, the result being James Scott, later Duke of Monmouth, his first son. She claimed that they secretly married, and there’s a legend that a descendant discovered a document to that effect but burned it to save a lot of trouble! After his father's execution, the Scottish Parliament proclaimed him King but refused to let him enter the country unless he agreed to make Presbyterianism the national religion. His agreeing to this lost hint support in England. The Anglo-Scots War of 1652 saw his defeat, while he was crowned King of Scotland in 1651. The Scots had been crushed at Dunbar in 1650, were divided amongst themselves, and the invasion of England in 1651 saw defeat and his hiding in what was later called the Royal Oak before he managed to escape.
He spent some years in exile but there was no real hope of a restoration before Cromwell died, and his son Richard wasn’t up to a job he didn’t want. General Mock, Governor of Scotland, took matters into his own hands and marched the Army on London forcing the Rump Parliament to restore the surviving excluded members and hold a General election, which resulted in a divided parliament on both religious and political grounds.
Negotiations resulted in the King coming into his own again on his thirtieth birthday on May 29, 1660. The deal was liberty of conscience, Church policy not to be harsh, pardons for all Parliamentarians bar the regicides; nine of them were executed, the rest generally jailed or barred from office, and Cromwell himself dug up and posthumously beheaded!
The Restoration meant people being able to enjoy life again; Puritanism had gone out of fashion. Charles licensed two theatre companies in London, actresses played women’s parts, bawdy “restoration comedy” and literature came on the scene, and the old sports were played again. Charles himself was known as both the Merry Monarch and “Old Rowley” after a well known stallion; he fathered a dozen known legitimate children. His descendants through them include both Queen Camilla and Prince William!
He was more than a playboy, a man of action who walked ten miles a day, was deeply interested in science and learning, granted a charter to the Royal Society. His finest hour in 1666 saw him and his brother James take the lead in fighting the Great Fire of London.
There was, however, the problem of Parliament. While he doesn’t seem to have had strong religious convictions, other people did, including the Cavalier Parliament of the 1660s, which essentially enshrined Anglicanism as the state religion by making office holders swear allegiance and making the Book Of Common Prayer compulsory, among other things. Being practical, the King went along, especially as Parliament wouldn’t vote him enough money! He later issued the Royal Declaration of Indulgence in 1672, suspending all penal laws against Catholics and other dissenters, but the Cavalier Parliament did not share his tolerance. As a pragmatist, he withdrew it and agreed to the Test Acts under which public officials had to both be C of E and openly denounce Catholicism.
While he was not credulous enough to believe the Popish Plot allegations of Titus Oates in 1678, he couldn’t stop the anti-Catholic hysteria that followed but did stop the Exclusion Bill to bar his Catholic brother James from the succession. Some Protestant extremists went to the lengths of trying to assassinate him and James in the Rye House plot of 1679, which led to a backlash in his favour.
His foreign policy involved some of his unfinest hours; selling Dunkirk to the French, presumably for financial reasons, in 1662 was not popular.
The second Anglo-Dutch war of 1665-7 saw the sinking of most of the fleet in a surprise attack and the third one, from 1672-4, saw an unpopular alliance with the French, partly for reasons of financial support, and was ended by Parliament refusing to vote any more money.
You’ve probably guessed that he’s one of my favourite monarchs – a man of wit and humour, even at his own expense. His retort to the Earl of Rochester observing that “He never said a foolish thing, And never did a wise one.” was “My words are my own, my deeds my ministers”’.
His last words in 1685 included “I am an unconscionable time a-dying” and “Let not poor Nelly starve”.
To his credit. James didn’t.
As final proof that Charlie wasn’t a Charlie, he had, in a secret treaty of 1671, promised to convert to Catholicism when the time was right. He did, on his deathbed!
We now have King Charles III. According to the Jacobites, we actually had one from 1766 to 1788, the gentleman known as Bonnie Prince Charlie.
He was Charles II’s great nephew; King James II fled into exile in 1688 and failed to get his throne back. His son James, known as the Old Pretender, made an attempt in 1715 which failed partly due to his procrastination.
The Young Pretender’s first military experience was spending ten days at the Siege of Gaeta at the age of 13 when he’d been officially “general of artillery.” His mother died the fol1owing year.
Sent on a tour of Italy to continue his education, he became a true aristocrat – fond of alcohol and fine clothes and spending more than his allowance. His father made him Prince Regent in 1743.
In 1744, the French agreed to support a planned invasion of England; however, their fleet was scattered by a storm. Charles, a true optimist, stayed in France, spent too much and borrowed enough money to fit out two ships, one of which, containing the arms, was unable to land due to a clash with an English ship.
Charles landed with seven companions landed at Eriskay only to have several clan chiefs advise him to go home. Ever the optimist, he failed to heed them, raised his father’s standard at Glenfinnan, and recruited an army, including Lord George Murray, whose experience of Highland soldiers gained him command.
He had little difficulty taking Edinburgh, due partly to the English General Cope having marched his forces to Inverness. Their return was followed by Charles’ greatest triumph, the Battle of Prestonpans. His army attacked in the dawn mists and scattered the government forces in seven minutes! This produced “Hey Johnny Cope” – the only “legendary” Jacobite song to be written at the time.
Morale was high but the seeds of defeat already sewn. Charles’ autocratic style and his over reliance on Irish advisers led to other chiefs insisting on setting up a council to advise the Prince.
Had he been content to stay where he was and simply hold Scotland, an agreement might well have been made with the Hanoverians, although even then Scotland would have been split. However, it was “all or nothing” for this believer in the divine right of Kings in general and Stuarts in particular. He persuaded them to invade England where they met very little opposition but also gained few new recruits. It seems that, between German George and Italian Charlie, most people were apathetic.
This culminated at Derby on December 4,1745; no more than 5,000 men could go on but there were rumours, well-founded-of armies in the field after them.
This is one of those “what ifs” of history, had they gone on to London, defended only by militia, who knows? The city was in a state of panic, the London mob could have gone either way, and a bold stroke just might have brought English Jacobites out of hiding and taken the throne. However, while he wanted to go on, the other leaders didn’t. I have a mental vision of King George personally leading the militia against the Jacobites, but that’s another matter!
This led to a retreat to Scotland accompanied by a fall in morale. While they did win the Battle of Falkirk in 1746, Culloden that April saw essentially the end. Charles insisted on fighting on open ground, and a night attack was called off; Charles also took advice to command from a place of safety, which meant that he couldn’t properly see the battlefield. If there’d been any chance of success, failure to launch the Highland Charge properly killed it.
It would have been possible, in theory, to continue the campaign; guerrilla warfare would have been feasible for a time. However, when the remnants of the army gathered at Ruthven, they received a message telling each man to “seek his safety the best way he can”. Charles himself, in perhaps his finest hour, spent several months among the rocks and moors in a way few contemporary aristocrats could have survived.
He later received a letter from Murray beginning “may it please your royal highness” – having read it, I can only say that it didn’t!
He returned to France to be acclaimed as a hero but with no practical help forthcoming; to the French, he was nothing more than a political tool. He became essentially a drunk and drifter, moving from place to place under assumed names, never seeing his father again. He even visited London in disguise in 1750 with the Government’s knowledge through their spies. He converted to Protestantism with no effect, King George commenting “let the gentleman look round” or words to that effect.
He fathered an illegitimate daughter, Charlotte, by his mistress Clementina Walkinshaw in 1753. She did have children of her own, but her daughters seem to have both lost, so to speak. He eventually married a minor noblewoman in 1772, but that also failed to produce any children, unsurprisingly.
He was actually approached about becoming King of Virginia in the 1770s but declined; he was a hopeful alcoholic by then and died in 1788. His successor was his younger brother, Henry Cardinal of York, successful in that he was a Cardinal for 56 years and generally led a quiet and comfortable life.
This Charlie was indeed a Charlie, you might say that the last forty years of his life were an anti-climax. However, there weren’t really many options open to him.
The Stuarts had lived on as one of those romantic causes, there is still a Royal Stuart Society. There is also a Stuart heir, Francis Duke of Bavaria, both ninety and homosexual. His heir is his 86-year-old brother w ho does at least have five daughters!
[The above speech was delivered at the Solace Centre, Ealing to a packed if not large audience on May 4, 2023 as part of the Coronation Party. Mark had promised to make it in a “weak moment” and got information from the Internet,Terry Deary and his own past knowledge (as a history graduate). He says it went down well.]
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