Charles I

I

Introduction

Charles I (1600-1649), King of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland from the death of his father, James I of England (James VI of Scotland) in 1625, until his execution in January 1649, following the defeat of his supporters in the English Civil War.

II

The Stuart Succession

Charles Stuart was born at Dunfermline, Scotland, on November 19, 1600, the second son and third child of James VI of Scotland. The Stuarts (originally the stewards of the royal household) had ruled Scotland since the 14th century. When his father succeeded Elizabeth I to the throne of England, Charles was kept for a time north of the border, for his health was uncertain and he was backward for his age. Several years younger than his elder brother Henry, he was clearly overshadowed by him. His father, mother (Anne of Denmark), and the whole court were devastated when the promising young Prince Henry died in 1612, and Charles became heir apparent. He was made Prince of Wales in 1616.

The ageing James came increasingly under the influence of his favourite, George Villiers, rapidly advanced as the Duke of Buckingham. The old king found his pacific policies increasingly difficult to maintain, with the loss in 1620 of the territory belonging to his daughter, Elizabeth of Bohemia and her husband Frederick V, Elector of the Palatinate in Germany, as the result of conquest by the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II in the Thirty Years' War. He sought to strengthen friendship with Spain by marrying his son to a Spanish infanta; and Charles and Buckingham went to Madrid, in disguise, to obtain her. They were rebuffed, and returned with ignominy, but to much popular relief at home, in 1623. Charles was to marry a French princess, Henrietta Maria, two years later, when he came to the throne.

III

Accession to Civil War

Charles reversed his father's policies, embarking on war with Spain, and eventually France, in 1625-1630. In order to finance expeditions against both enemies, the king needed the support of Parliament. That he did not easily obtain it was due to his own unskilful management of both houses, divisions among government ministers (many of whom were jealous of Buckingham's role), and the critical and often uninformed responses of Members of Parliament (MPs). That the expeditions were badly managed and achieved little also did not help. In 1628 the deeply unpopular Buckingham was assassinated. Charles was also forced by a fractious parliament—the third in four years—to accept the Petition of Right in 1628, obliging him to moderate his harsh and autocratic tax-gathering policies in exchange for more funds.

After 1629 Charles wanted to rule without recourse to troublesome parliaments, and did so for 11 years. His belief in the divine right of kings supported this choice. During that time he raised revenue by exploiting his royal prerogative to the full, resurrecting ancient fiscal dues, such as Ship Money (a levy for the support of naval forces), which was newly extended from coastal areas to inland shires, and raising loans through the City of London. The nation was kept out of the Thirty Years' War, and benefited economically from this neutral stance. Charles possessed the resources and the good taste to become a notable patron of the arts during the 1630s, commissioning portraits by Sir Anthony van Dyck, and buildings and designs for court masques from Inigo Jones.

Charles never forgot he was king of Scotland and Ireland as well as England and Wales, and he was anxious to bring his realms into conformity with each other, in government and in religion. He sent his most able minister, Thomas Wentworth, later 1st Earl of Strafford, to Ireland. To promote uniformity of worship, he lent his support to William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, whose policies emphasized the sacredness of monarchy, the intercessory role of the clergy, and ceremony and beauty in the Church of England. The more militant Protestants and Separatists (the so-called “Puritans“) were persecuted. In 1637, in line with this policy, a reformed Anglican liturgy, incorporated in a new Book of Common Prayer, was introduced into Scotland.

The result was an explosion of hostility, which united the Scots nobility, gentry, and Presbyterian ministers in a National Covenant against the prayer book and bishops. Charles found he was unable to quell this revolt of the Covenanters in the two Bishops' Wars of 1639-1640. The effort undermined his precarious finances; the City of London refused to lend him any more money, and he was forced to call first the Short Parliament (April-May 1640), and when that refused supply and he had lost the second war, another, in November 1640, known as the Long Parliament.

IV

The Outbreak of Civil War

The Long Parliament, sitting continuously, was at first almost united in its condemnation of the personal rule, and the wish to punish its leading agents. Strafford and Archbishop Laud were executed. Ship Money and other arbitrary measures were abolished. Charles had undoubtedly alienated many of his subjects, in all three kingdoms, by his personal, autocratic, and non-parliamentary government since 1629. In August 1641, when Charles went to Scotland to curry support against Scots religious extremists, he was discredited by a plot among his supporters at court (soon to be known as the Cavaliers) to murder the leading Covenanters, including Archibald Campbell, 8th Earl of Argyll, who forced him to submit to the demands of the Scottish Parliament. Fear of the Cavaliers, and alarm at the supposed growth of “popish” or Catholic infiltration, that the revolt of the Gaelic Catholic Irish (from October 1641) appeared to confirm, heightened political tensions: in May and December 1641 massive rioting in the capital intimidated the court. To raise an army to put down the Irish rebellion and to safeguard themselves from a royal counter-coup (the king's failed attempt to arrest five radical MPs in January 1642), John Pym, the leader of the “popular party” in the Commons, and his followers had to claim wide and novel powers for Parliament, which their control of the City and the money supply, and crowd pressure, made possible.

However, the more power Parliament exercised, and the more it was associated with radical measures and popular disturbances, the greater was the hostile reaction of the more conservative provincial gentry and clergy. The king was able to pose as the defender of the old order in church and state, and to raise an army, in the north, that met on almost equal terms with the army of Parliament, which was assembled mainly in London and its environs, and led by Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex. After the first, drawn, Battle of Edgehill on October 23, 1642, the king made his capital at Oxford.