Charles II Biography

Dromo's Den

CHARLES II (1630–85). King of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 1649 (reigned from 1660) to 1685. He was the second, but eldest surviving, son of Charles I, and was Prince of Wales from his birth. He was born at St. James's Palace, London, May 29, 1630, and baptized by Bishop Laud on June 27, Louis XIII of France being one of his sponsors. At eight years of age an establishment was provided for him as heir apparent, with William Cavendish, Earl of Newcastle, as governor, and Dr. Brian Duppa as tutor. The following year he broke his arm, and his life was endangered by a severe illness. He took his seat in the House of Lords in 1641, and his first public act was to carry his father's letter in favor of Strafford to the peers. He held a nominal command in the early campaigns of the Civil War, and was present at Edgehill in 1642, where he narrowly escaped capture. Appointed general of the western forces, he parted from his father at Oxford, March 4, 1645, and remained in safety in Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall; after Naseby, he escaped by way of Scilly and Jersey and joined his mother in Paris, where he remained for two years, to his moral disadvantage. In July, 1648, he sailed from Helvoetsluis with a small fleet for the Thames, where he took several prizes. He issued a proclamation of conciliation to the Londoners and Scots, and returned to The Hague, where during his father's trial he did his utmost to save him, forwarding a blank charter with his signature attached for Parliament to inscribe its own terms of clemency. At his father's death he assumed the title of King and was proclaimed in Scotland, Ireland, the Channel Islands, and one or two places in England. After vacillating between Holland, France, and Jersey, with the intention of invading Ireland, he returned to Holland, and, embarking at Terheyden for Scotland, landed in Cromarty Firth, June 24, 1650, despite an attempt to intercept him. On September 3 a Scottish force fighting for him was defeated at Dunbar, and this hastened his coronation at Scone, Jan. 1, 1651, after an acknowledgment of his father's faults and various declarations and concessions of a feeble character. He suddenly invaded England the following August with 10,000 men and was proclaimed King at Carlisle and other places on his advance. Cromwell hastened to meet and surround him and after two encounters routed his army at Worcester, Sept. 3, 1651. Charles was hunted and a price was put upon his head, but after hiding at Boscobel and other places, through the loyalty of friends and his own courage and address, he safely embarked at Shoreham on October 15 and landed at Fécamp, Normandy, the next day. Eight years of impecunious and profligate exile were variously spent in France and at Cologne and Bruges, until not long after Cromwell's death, when, the country being threatened with military despotism, the popular wish throughout England for the restoration of royalty was consummated by General Monk (q.v.), after Charles's conciliatory Breda declaration, and he was proclaimed King at Westminster, May 8, 1660. He landed at Dover on the 26th, and was welcomed, at Whitehall, by the two Houses of Parliament on May 29, 1660, after an enthusiastic acclamation by thousands on his progress through London. He was crowned on April 23, 1661. His first Parliament, distinguished by abasement and insistence on "royal prerogative," gave him an untrammeled course. Clarendon, his dignified companion in exile, was appointed chief minister. Episcopacy was restored, and English and Scotch Nonconformists and Presbyterians subjected to persecution. He extended an indemnifying Act, dating from Jan. 1, 1637, to June 24, 1660 to all political offenders, excluding the regicides of whom 13 were executed, while the bodies of Cromwell and Ireton were hung in chains, and the remains of Blake, Bradshaw, and others cast out of Westminster Abbey into potter's fields. Extravagant, and always in want of money, Charles gladly assented to the abolition of the feudal rights of knight service, wardship, and purveyance in consideration of an annuity of £1,200,000, which, however, was never fully paid. On May 20, 1662, he married Catharine of Braganza for her large dowry. The failure of the subsidies to produce the amount agreed on and the chronic mismanagement of the English finances brought the King to a desperate need of money. The choice faced him of securing this from Parliament or else of selling the control of England's foreign policy to the highest bidder. But to accept the first alternative meant to become the slave of Parliament, and, beneath his easy-going exterior, Charles cherished the desire to recover the absolute power that had been lost by his father and grandfather. On the other hand, a ready purchaser of the foreign policy was found in Louis XIV, who desired to extend French power on the Continent and needed England's aid, or, at least, England's neutrality, for the success of his plans. In return for French subsidies Charles plunged England into a war with Holland in 1672, from which the country as a whole had little to gain. The war, however, was not unpopular; commercial rivalry had already brought about two wars between the two countries, the last one having occurred in the early years of the reign (1665–67). The Dutch War of 1672 did not prove a success, and some knowledge of the negotiations with France, joined with Charles's efforts towards absolutism, brought him into conflicts with his Parliament, which lasted nine years, until Charles, aided by French subsidies, was able to dissolve his last Parliament (1681). The last years of the struggle were especially embittered on account of fear of Roman Catholicism, towards which church the King was suspected to have leanings and to which his brother and heir, the Duke of York, confessedly belonged. This feeling culminated in the Popish Plot (see Oates), which resulted in the execution of many innocent victims. From 1681 to his death Charles ruled as an absolute king. An attempt, the Rye House Plot (q.v.), was made to check this, but failed, and Charles ruthlessly struck down all who opposed him. He never lost, however, the favor which his easy manners had won from the people, and at his death, Feb. 6, 1685, he was sincerely mourned. In his dying hours he received absolution from a Roman Catholic priest, although he had not previously avowed his attachment to that religion. Undoubtedly able, Charles's carelessness and love of ease prevented him from showing the ability he really had. To have maintained absolute rule in England for four years, and that within a half century from the Great Rebellion, is no small feat. Totally lacking in moral fibre and surrounded by men like himself, he made his court one of the most dissolute England has ever known. Yet in his easy way Charles fostered the arts and sciences and did much to bring to England the best results of continental learning.

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. V (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 63-64.