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Charles I in three positions - multiple portrait by Sir Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641).
Charles I was born in Fife on 19 November 1600, the
second son of James VI of Scotland (from 1603 also James I of England) and Anne
of Denmark.
He became heir to the throne on the death of his
brother, Prince Henry, in 1612. He succeeded, as the second Stuart King of
England, in 1625.
Controversy and disputes dogged Charles throughout his
reign. They eventually led to civil wars, first with the Scots from 1637 and
later in England (1642-46 and 1648). The wars deeply divided people at the
time, and historians still disagree about the real causes of the conflict, but
it is clear that Charles was not a successful ruler.
Charles was reserved (he had a residual stammer),
self-righteous and had a high concept of royal authority, believing in the
divine right of kings. He was a good linguist and a sensitive man of refined
tastes.
He spent a lot on the arts, inviting the artists Van
Dyck and Rubens to work in England, and buying a great collection of paintings
by Raphael and Titian (this collection was later dispersed under Cromwell).
Charles I also instituted the post of Master of the King's Music, involving
supervision of the King's large band of musicians; the post survives today.
His expenditure on his court and his picture
collection greatly increased the crown's debts. Indeed, crippling lack of money
was a key problem for both the early Stuart monarchs.
Charles was also deeply religious. He favoured the
high Anglican form of worship, with much ritual, while many of his subjects,
particularly in Scotland, wanted plainer forms.
Charles found himself ever more in disagreement on
religious and financial matters with many leading citizens. Having broken an
engagement to the Spanish infanta, he had married a Roman Catholic, Henrietta
Maria of France, and this only made matters worse.
Although Charles had promised Parliament in 1624 that
there would be no advantages for recusants (people refusing to attend Church of
England services), were he to marry a Roman Catholic bride, the French insisted
on a commitment to remove all disabilities upon Roman Catholic subjects.
Charles's lack of scruple was shown by the fact that
this commitment was secretly added to the marriage treaty, despite his promise
to Parliament.
Charles had inherited disagreements with Parliament
from his father, but his own actions (particularly engaging in ill-fated wars
with France and Spain at the same time) eventually brought about a crisis in
1628-29.
Two expeditions to France failed - one of which had
been led by Buckingham, a royal favourite of both James I and Charles I, who
had gained political influence and military power.
Such was the general dislike of Buckingham, that he
was impeached by Parliament in 1628, although he was murdered by a fanatic
before he could lead the second expedition to France.
The political controversy over Buckingham demonstrated
that, although the monarch's right to choose his own Ministers was accepted as
an essential part of the royal prerogative, Ministers had to be acceptable to
Parliament or there would be repeated confrontations.
The King's chief opponent in Parliament until 1629 was
Sir John Eliot, who was finally imprisoned in the Tower of London until his
death in 1632.
Tensions between the King and Parliament centred
around finances, made worse by the costs of war abroad, and by religious
suspicions at home. Charles's marriage was seen as ominous, at a time when
plots against Elizabeth I and the Gunpowder Plot in James I's reign were still
fresh in the collective memory, and when the Protestant cause was going badly
in the war in Europe.
In the first four years of his rule, Charles was faced
with the alternative of either obtaining parliamentary funding and having his
policies questioned by argumentative Parliaments who linked the issue of supply
to remedying their grievances, or conducting a war without subsidies from
Parliament.
Charles dismissed his fourth Parliament in March 1629
and decided to make do without either its advice or the taxes which it alone
could grant legally.
Although opponents later called this period 'the
Eleven Years' Tyranny', Charles's decision to rule without Parliament was
technically within the King's royal prerogative, and the absence of a Parliament
was less of a grievance to many people than the efforts to raise revenue by
non-parliamentary means.
Charles's leading advisers, including William Laud,
Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Earl of Strafford, were efficient but
disliked.
For much of the 1630s, the King gained most of the
income he needed from such measures as impositions, exploitation of forest
laws, forced loans, wardship and, above all, ship money (extended in 1635 from
ports to the whole country). These measures made him very unpopular, alienating
many who were the natural supporters of the Crown.
Scotland (which Charles had left at the age of 3,
returning only for his coronation in 1633) proved the catalyst for rebellion.
Charles's attempt to impose a High Church liturgy and prayer book in Scotland
had prompted a riot in 1637 in Edinburgh which escalated into general unrest.
Charles had to recall Parliament. However, the Short
Parliament of April 1640 queried Charles's request for funds for war against
the Scots and was dissolved within weeks.
The Scots occupied Newcastle and, under the treaty of
Ripon, stayed in occupation of Northumberland and Durham and they were to be
paid a subsidy until their grievances were redressed.
Charles was finally forced to call another Parliament
in November 1640. This one, which came to be known as The Long Parliament,
started with the imprisonment of Laud and Strafford (the latter was executed
within six months, after a Bill of Attainder which did not allow for a
defence), and the abolition of the King's Council (Star Chamber), and moved on
to declare ship money and other fines illegal.
The King agreed that Parliament could not be dissolved
without its own consent, and the Triennial Act of 1641 meant that no more than
three years could elapse between Parliaments.
The Irish uprising of October 1641 raised tensions
between the King and Parliament over the command of the Army. Parliament issued
a Grand Remonstrance repeating their grievances, impeached 12 bisops and
attempted to impeach the Queen.
Charles responded by entering the Commons in a failed
attempt to arrest five Members of Parliament, who had fled before his arrival.
Parliament reacted by passing a Militia Bill allowing troops to be raised only
under officers approved by Parliament.
Finally, on 22 August 1642 at Nottingham, Charles
raised the Royal Standard calling for loyal subjects to support him (Oxford was
to be the King's capital during the war). The Civil War, what Sir William
Waller (a Parliamentary general and moderate) called 'this war without an
enemy', had begun.
The Battle of Edgehill in October 1642 showed that
early on the fighting was even. Broadly speaking, Charles retained the north,
west and south-west of the country, and Parliament had London, East Anglia and
the south-east, although there were pockets of resistance everywhere, ranging
from solitary garrisons to whole cities.
However, the Navy sided with Parliament (which made
continental aid difficult), and Charles lacked the resources to hire
substantial mercenary help.
Parliament had entered an armed alliance with the
predominant Scottish Presbyterian group under the Solemn League and Covenant of
1643, and from 1644 onwards Parliament's armies gained the upper hand -
particularly with the improved training and discipline of the New Model Army.
The Self-Denying Ordinance was passed to exclude
Members of Parliament from holding army commands, thereby getting rid of
vacillating or incompetent earlier Parliamentary generals. Under strong
generals like Sir Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell, Parliament won victories
at Marston Moor (1644) and Naseby (1645).
The capture of the King's secret correspondence after
Naseby showed the extent to which he had been seeking help from Ireland and
from the Continent, which alienated many moderate supporters.
In May 1646, Charles placed himself in the hands of
the Scottish Army (who handed him to the English Parliament after nine months
in return for arrears of payment - the Scots had failed to win Charles's
support for establishing Presbyterianism in England).
Charles did not see his action as surrender, but as an
opportunity to regain lost ground by playing one group off against another; he
saw the monarchy as the source of stability and told parliamentary commanders
'you cannot be without me: you will fall to ruin if I do not sustain you'.
In Scotland and Ireland, factions were arguing, whilst
in England there were signs of division in Parliament between the Presbyterians
and the Independents, with alienation from the Army (where radical doctrines
such as that of the Levellers were threatening commanders' authority).
Charles's negotiations continued from his captivity at
Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight (to which he had 'escaped' from Hampton
Court in November 1647) and led to the Engagement with the Scots, under which
the Scots would provide an army for Charles in exchange for the imposition of
the Covenant on England.
This led to the second Civil War of 1648, which ended
with Cromwell's victory at Preston in August.
The Army, concluding that permanent peace was
impossible whilst Charles lived, decided that the King must be put on trial and
executed. In December, Parliament was purged, leaving a small rump totally
dependent on the Army, and the Rump Parliament established a High Court of
Justice in the first week of January 1649.
On 20 January, Charles was charged with high treason
'against the realm of England'. Charles refused to plead, saying that he did
not recognise the legality of the High Court (it had been established by a
Commons purged of dissent, and without the House of Lords - nor had the Commons
ever acted as a judicature).
The King was sentenced to death on 27 January. Three
days later, Charles was beheaded on a scaffold outside the Banqueting House in
Whitehall, London.
The King asked for warm clothing before his execution:
'the season is so sharp as probably may make me shake, which some observers may
imagine proceeds from fear. I would have no such imputation.'
On the scaffold, he repeated his case: 'I must tell
you that the liberty and freedom [of the people] consists in having of
Government, those laws by which their life and their goods may be most their
own. It is not for having share in Government, Sir, that is nothing pertaining
to them. A subject and a sovereign are clean different things. If I would have
given way to an arbitrary way, for to have all laws changed according to the
Power of the Sword, I needed not to have come here, and therefore I tell you
... that I am the martyr of the people.'
His final words were 'I go from a corruptible to an
incorruptible Crown, where no disturbance can be.'
The Civil Wars were essentially confrontations between
the monarchy and Parliament over the definitions of the powers of the monarchy
and Parliament's authority.
These constitutional disagreements were made worse by
religious animosities and financial disputes. Both sides claimed that they
stood for the rule of law, yet civil war was by definition a matter of force.
Charles I, in his unwavering belief that he stood for
constitutional and social stability, and the right of the people to enjoy the
benefits of that stability, fatally weakened his position by failing to
negotiate a compromise with Parliament and paid the price.
To many, Charles was seen as a martyr for his people
and, to this day, wreaths of remembrance are laid by his supporters on the
anniversary of his death at his statue, which faces down Whitehall to the site
of his execution.
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