Charles I

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  Tudor and Stuart Britain

  1485-1714

  • Roger Lockyer, Peter Gaunt(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Charles I: Parliament and religion

  Charles I in perspective

  While the reputation of James I has generally been reappraised upwards in recent decades, the standing of his younger son and successor remains almost uniformly low. His virtues have been duly noted in many accounts – he was pious and chaste, he sought and often achieved order and efficiency, especially in his own court and household, and he was undoubtedly cultured and a connoisseur – but occasional attempts more broadly to rehabilitate Charles I and to suggest that he and his policies have been misunderstood and misinterpreted have attracted little support. For most historians, Charles was personally and temperamentally ill-suited to be king and to deal with the problems of his age, and they argue that, while some of those problems were longer-term and not of his own making, his policy choices often exacerbated those issues and in some areas created problems where none had previously been apparent. The emphasis is on a monarch who was prone to deceit and double-dealing, who failed to engage, to explain himself or to show much flexibility, a figure who was as chilly and remote as he was inept and politically out of touch. These shortcomings began to show themselves almost immediately, in the financial deterioration, disastrous foreign policy and resulting fraught relations with Parliament of the first four years of the reign, 1625–29, as well as in the King’s new and divisive religious policy and handling of the Church, again apparent during the opening years of the reign but pursued with greater vigour during the 1630s, when Charles governed without calling an English Parliament – matters explored in this chapter. The next chapter examines Charles’s handling of finance and aspects of his wider administration during the period of the Personal Rule, before moving on to explore the collapse of his government from the late 1630s, when he sought to deploy English and Irish resources in war against his Scottish subjects, down to the outbreak of civil war in England and Wales in summer 1642.

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  Tudor and Stuart Britain

  1485-1714

  • Roger Lockyer, Peter Gaunt(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  C H A P T E R 1 3 Charles I: Parliament and religion Charles I in perspective W hile the reputation of James I has generally been reappraised upwards in recent decades, the standing of his younger son and successor remains almost uniformly low. His virtues have been duly noted in many accounts – he was pious and chaste, he sought and often achieved order and efficiency, especially in his own court and household, and he was undoubtedly cultured and a connoisseur – but occasional attempts more broadly to rehabilitate Charles I and to suggest that he and his policies have been misunderstood and misinterpreted have attracted little support. For most historians, Charles was personally and temperamentally ill-suited to be king and to deal with the problems of his age, and they argue that, while some of those problems were longer-term and not of his own making, his policy choices often exacerbated those issues and in some areas created problems where none had previously been apparent. The emphasis is on a monarch who was prone to deceit and double-dealing, who failed to engage, to explain himself or to show much flexibility, a figure who was as chilly and remote as he was inept and politically out of touch. These shortcomings began to show themselves almost immediately, in the financial deterioration, disastrous foreign policy and resulting fraught relations with Parliament of the first four years of the reign, 1625–29, as well as in the King’s new and divisive religious policy and handling of the Church, again apparent during the opening years of the reign but pursued with greater vigour during the 1630s, when Charles governed without calling an English Parliament – matters explored in this chapter. The next chapter examines Charles’s handling of finance and aspects of his wider administration during the period of the Personal Rule, before moving on to explore the collapse of his government from the late 1630s, when he sought to deploy English and Irish

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  A Short History of Early Modern England

  British Literature in Context

  • Peter C. Herman(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  7 Charles I (1625–42): From Accession to the Beginning of the Civil Wars

  On the one hand, the shift from King James to his son, King Charles I, appears seamless, without any of the anxieties or sudden alterations in religion accompanying the previous monarchic transitions. Unlike his father, Charles was a known quantity in England, as he had started attending parliamentary sessions and participating in government in the early 1620s. Legally, Charles I became ruler of England, Scotland and Ireland the moment James died on March 28, 1625, but by that point, he was king in all but name. Indeed, the coronation ceremony in 1626 may have seemed a mere formality. The transition, however, brought about a number of important alterations. First, Charles, a fastidious man who loved order and hierarchy, had a very different personality than his father, and the style and culture of the court changed accordingly. Deeply impressed by the formality of the Spanish court, even before his father’s funeral he sought to import that sort of conduct into England. According to the Venetian ambassador:

  Figure 7.1

  King Charles I after Sir Anthony Van Dyck, c. 1635–36. © National Portrait Gallery, London.

  [Th]e king observes a rule of great decorum. The nobles do not enter his apartments in confusion as heretofore, but each rank has its appointed place … The king has also drawn up rules for himself, dividing the day from his very early rising, for prayers, exercises, audiences, business, eating and sleeping. It is said that he will set apart a day for public audience and he does not wish anyone to be introduced to him unless sent for.1

  Charles also got rid of the louche atmosphere and sleazy behavior characterizing the Jacobean court. “The face of the court,” Lucy Hutchinson recalled, “was much changed in the king, for King Charles was temperate and chaste and serious, so that the fools and bawds, mimics and catamites of the former court grew out of fashion.”2

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  British Monarchs

  • (Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • White Word Publications

    (Publisher)

  Religious conflicts permeated Charles's reign. His failure to successfully aid Protestant forces during the Thirty Years' War, coupled with such actions as marrying a Catholic princess, generated deep mistrust concerning the king's dogma. Charles further allied himself with controversial religious figures, such as the ecclesiastic Richard Montagu, and William Laud, whom Charles appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. Many of Charles' subjects felt this brought the Church of England too close to the Catholic Church. Charles' later attempts to force religious reforms upon Scotland led to the Bishops' Wars, strengthened the position of the English and Scottish Parliaments and helped precipitate the king's downfall. Charles' last years were marked by the English Civil War, in which he fought the forces of the English and Scottish Parliaments, which challenged the king's attempts to overrule and negate Parliamentary authority, whilst simultaneously using his position as head of the English Church to pursue religious policies which generated the antipathy of reformed groups such as the Puritans. Charles was defeated in the First Civil War (1642– 45), after which Parliament expected him to accept its demands for a constitutional monarchy. He instead remained defiant by attempting to forge an alliance with Scotland and escaping to the Isle of Wight. This provoked the Second Civil War (1648–49) and a ________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ second defeat for Charles, who was subsequently captured, tried, convicted, and executed for high treason. The monarchy was then abolished and a republic called the Commonwealth of England, also referred to as the Cromwellian Interregnum, was declared. Charles' son, Charles II, though he became king at the death of his father, did not take up the reins of government until the restoration of the monarchy in 1660.

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  Reformation England 1480-1642

  • Peter Marshall(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  215 8 Charles I’s Reformation 1625–42 Overview In the years after 1625, the course of the English Reformation took a strange and fateful turn. Once again, the Royal Supremacy was invoked to bring about a thor-oughgoing reform of the worship and theology of the Church, and of the fabric and furnishings of churches. Yet while the reformations of the Tudor period were either on their own terms broadly successful (Henry and Elizabeth) or terminated by the accident of the monarch’s death (Edward and Mary), the ecclesiastical ref-ormation (or counter-reformation) sanctioned by Charles I was, uniquely, halted and reversed by opposition from his subjects. The manner and scope of that failure set the terms for England’s future religious (and political) development. The later 1620s and 1630s are the point at which historians whose interests lie in the reception of the Reformation have conventionally passed the torch to those whose principal concern is to explain the outbreak of civil war in 1642. The stu-dent travelling across this traditional boundary is likely to notice an abrupt shift of gear, for the historiography of the immediate background to the English Civil War (or, more properly, British Civil Wars) is of an exceptional richness and com-plexity. While few would contend that the conflicts were solely ‘about’ religious issues, the role of religion has always loomed large in this scholarship and has, if anything, become more prominent in recent years. At the same time, any rigid distinction between Reformation and Civil War specialists is starting to erode, as scholars recognize the extent to which the conflicts of Charles’s reign represented continuation of earlier arguments about the meaning and pace of reform. From the nineteenth century through to the middle of the twentieth and beyond, the events of the 1640s were understood as a ‘Puritan Revolution’, launched against the Anglican establishment.

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  The Making of the Modern English State, 1460-1660

  • Philip Edwards(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  8 The Reign of Charles I to 1640 The accession of Charles I on 27 March 1625 was marked by broken promises, the first of many that would characterise his reign and leave the political nation alienated and disillusioned. He had vowed in the Parliament of 1624 to make no concessions to Catholics and to wage a war at sea against Spain. Despite these pledges, in the negotiations for his marriage to Henrietta Maria of France he agreed to relax the recusancy laws, while the war with Spain was being conducted on land ± in Germany ± in the shape of Count Ernst Mansfeld's expeditionary force to regain the Palatinate. Although revisionists have given us a probably exaggerated picture of harmony in James's reign, one must nevertheless con-cede that England at his death was not hurtling towards crisis, let alone revolution. Yet a great and dramatic change in atmosphere suddenly occurred in the first years of the new reign, so that already by 1628 John Hampden could fear for the `subversion of the whole state'. What had caused this early crisis? Was rebellion or revolution an imminent possibility? The answer must be no, but some fundamental issues were to be raised. Revisionists have argued that it was not absolutism which caused the early crisis of Charles's reign, but the sheer impact of war with the two great powers of Spain and France and the unwillingness of the House of Commons to shoulder the burden of a war that they had seemingly been clamouring for. A major reason for the gathering storm must be sought in the personality of the new monarch. It was an undoubted blow to the Stuart dynasty that James's elder son Prince Henry had died so young, as he had embodied the Protestant swashbuckling qual-ities of the Elizabethan age which had made him so popular. Not so the brother who replaced him. It would indeed be difficult to find someone temperamentally less suited to lead the nation at this, or any other, time.

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  Kings and Connoisseurs

  Collecting Art in Seventeenth-Century Europe

  • Jonathan Brown(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Princeton University Press

    (Publisher)

  I. Charles I and the Whitehall Group The events that unfolded in London on those frosty days of 1649 are among the most dramatic in the history of modern Europe. On 19 January Charles I, King of England since 1625, had been brought from Windsor to stand trial for conspiring to "overthrow the rights and liberties of the people" and taking away "the right and power of successive Parliaments," for which purpose he had "traitorously and maliciously levied war against the present Parliament and the people therein represented." Since 1642, the armies of the king and Parliament had been engaged in civil war, a war that had virtually ended with the defeat of the Royalist army at Naseby in June 1645. Over the next eighteen months, Charles sought to obtain through negotiation what he had failed to win on the battlefield, the unconditional recognition of his authority. This effort did not succeed, and in June 1647 he was taken prisoner by Parliamentary forces. His trial, which began on 20 January 1649, had a foregone conclusion. Charles had steadfastly refused to compromise on the crucial issues of religion and governance, forcing Parliament to a decision which many of its members feared to contemplate and refused to join. On 27 January, having listened to the king's eloquent defense of his rule, the court pronounced its sentence: that he should "be put to death by the severing of his head from his body." Three days later this awful punishment was carried out. A scaffolding was erected at the Banqueting House of Whitehall Palace, the ceiling of which, in better days, had been decorated with a series of paintings by Rubens exalting the glory of the Stuart monarchy. At 2 p.m. the king was called from St James' Palace to meet his fate, which he did with remarkable serenity and dignity (plate 1). With a swift stroke of the axe, his troubled reign came to an end. Once Parliament had disposed of the king, it decided to dispose of his property.

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  The Seventeenth-Century Literature Handbook

  • Robert C. Evans, Eric J. Sterling, Robert C. Evans, Eric J. Sterling(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Continuum

    (Publisher)

  Historical Contexts 3 Richard Harp Chapter Overview Introduction 43 The Sixteenth-Century Background to the Civil War 44 The Road to Civil War: Philosophy and Political Thought 44 The Road to Civil War: Church and State in the Reign of James I 46 The Road to Civil War: Church and State in the Reign of Charles I 48 The Road to Civil War: Arts and Popular Culture 49 The Civil War 50 The Era of Oliver Cromwell 51 Church and State, 1660–1888 53 London 55 London as Trade Center 55 Science 56 Introduction The watershed national event of the seventeenth century in England was the Civil War fought between the years 1642–1649. Among its consequences was the legal trial and execution of the King of England by some of his own countrymen and the firm establishment of Parliament as the most important governing body in the country. The reasons for this conflict were numerous and they had their origins at least as far back as the sixteenth century. Con-tributing factors included the religious quarrel between Protestants and Catholics and the rise of the gentry and the middle class as economically powerful elements in society. In addition, by the seventeenth century English social life was no longer limited to the three traditional divisions of nobility, clergy, and commoners. As a result, the monarch had great difficulty holding the country’s various political factions together. 43 The Sixteenth-Century Background to the Civil War The Protestant Reformation began in England when Parliament, in 1534, declared King Henry VIII, not the Roman Catholic Pope, the supreme head of the Church in the country. Henry desired this authority not out of any fundamental theological disagreement with Rome but because he wished to have his marriage to Catherine of Aragon annulled, as he had not been able to father with her a male heir to the throne of England.

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  Ontario Teachers' Manuals

  History

  • Ontario. Department of Education(Author)
  • 2005(Publication Date)
  • Perlego

    (Publisher)

  This rebellion forced Charles to summon Parliament in order to raise money. Parliament refused to give money till their grievances were redressed. It was dissolved in three weeks. Urgent need of troops to keep back the Scottish rebels made Charles summon Parliament again in six months (1640). This is known as the "Long Parliament."

  7. (a) Parliament first accused Laud and Strafford.

  (b) The "Grand Remonstrance" named the illegal acts of Charles.

  (c) This led to Charles' final blunder—the attempt to arrest the five members.

  8. Open war, now the only way out, went on till Charles was captured and beheaded, and Parliament held, for a time, entire control.

  SUGGESTIVE OUTLINES FOR REVIEWS

  FORM IV

  I. The Era of Reform in Britain:

  1. The Methodist Revival, which stirred the hearts of the people, and gave them higher ideals

  2. Social Reforms:

  (a) Canning, the friend of the oppressed

  (b) Wilberforce and the abolition of slavery

  (c) Elizabeth Fry and prison reform

  (d) Revision of the criminal code

  3. Political Reforms:

  (a) The Reform Bill

  (b) The Chartist Agitation

  (c) The repeal of the Corn Laws

  II. The Puritan Movement:

  1. Its beginning under Elizabeth 2. Its growth under James I 3. The struggle and victory under Charles I 4. Triumph and decay under the Commonwealth 5. Its dissolution under Charles II 6. It was the root of the resistance offered to the misrule of James II.

  FOR TEACHERS' REFERENCE

  THE STAGES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF CIVILIZATION

  CORRELATION OF HISTORY AND SCIENCE

  The purpose of these notes, which are condensed from the article on "Civilization" in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (latest edition), is to provide the teacher with some interesting material, by the use of which he may impress on the pupils the far-reaching effects of certain inventions and discoveries, which are in such common use to-day that they are very likely to be underestimated. The number of lessons must be left entirely to the discretion of the teacher.

  NOTES

  The close relation between the progress of civilization, as told in history, and scientific inventions and discoveries is shown by Lewis H. Morgan, who has indicated nine stages in the upward march of mankind from the earliest times to the present. There are three stages of savagery, three of barbarism, and three of civilization, the close of each stage being marked by an important discovery or invention. The problem method may be used, by asking what each invention or discovery would enable the people to do that they could not do before.

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  Pictorial Cultures and Political Iconographies

  Approaches, Perspectives, Case Studies from Europe and America

  • Udo J. Hebel, Christoph Wagner, Udo J. Hebel, Christoph Wagner(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter

    (Publisher)

  The paradigm of the English king shows the focus of content in the image – before it is viewed in depth – reduces the political frame to an invalid form. Charles I was beheaded on January 30, 1649. The execution took place in the center of London in front of Banqueting House. The wide street of :KLWHKDOO SURYLGHG VXIÀFLHQW VSDFH IRU D ODUJH QXPEHU RI ZLWQHVVHV 7KH not only watched the death sentence being carried out but were also wit-ness to the public having the power to dispose over a person. Legally the latter would have been an inevitable constituent part of the whole action, but this was actually inconceivable and impossible in the case of Charles I. A personage such as a seventeenth-century monarch could not be put on trial in an absolutist system of government. However in this case we VHH LQGLFDWLRQV RI D VLJQLÀFDQW GLVWLQFWLRQ 2QO WKH FRQGLWLRQ RI DEVROXWH self-determination made the ruler not just a king or an emperor but also a sovereign. How this could be accomplished in a picture can be witnessed in the example of the execution of Charles I – in two variant versions portray-ing the extremely dramatic situation. One presents the king as a monarch, and the other comprehends him as the sovereign to the very last, and even beyond this. A widespread Dutch copperplate engraving gives an account of the execution. It was printed and sold in two, even three 10 versions immediately after the event. The broadsides show the site where the execution took SODFH 0DVVHV RI SHRSOH ÀOO WKH DUHD LQ WKH LPPHGLDWH YLFLQLW RI WKH VFDIIROG as well as the windows, balustrade, and roof of Banqueting House. Most of the crowd, men, women, and several juveniles, direct their attention toward the event. Only a single woman on the left-hand side of the print and an old man further to the right are seemingly overwhelmed by what they are witnessing: while she seems to have fainted, he turns away from the scene and covers his eyes with his hand.

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