Charles II (of England)

King of England (r. 1660-1685)

• Born: May 29, 1630
• Birthplace: London, England
• Died: February 6, 1685
• Place of death: London, England

Charles II played a crucial role in the restoration of stable government in the aftermath of the English Civil War and the Interregnum. At ease in any company, he gave the monarchy a human dimension, and his understanding of the forces that motivated his subjects helped him steer the nation through troubled times.

Early Life

When Charles II was born on May 29, 1630, astrologers celebrated the event by predicting a brilliant future for this son of King Charles I and his queen, Henrietta Maria . For the first twelve years of his life, it seemed that all their glowing prophecies were correct. Blessed with parents who were genuinely fond of their children, Charles mastered all the princely arts under the watchful eye of his tutor, the duke of Newcastle. Then the First English Civil War erupted, and every member of the royal family was caught up in the struggle.

At the age of fifteen, Charles was sent to the west of England and assigned his first military command. Luckily, he was guided by prudent counselors such as Edward Hyde, first earl of Clarendon, who later became his chancellor. A boy could not hold back the hosts of Parliament, however, and in 1646 he was forced to retreat to the Scilly Isles, then to Jersey, and finally to exile in Paris, where his mother was desperately trying to raise support for her beleaguered husband. There Charles II remained for two years, under the instruction of Thomas Hobbes .

Charles II was in the Netherlands with his sister, Mary, and his brother-in-law, William II of Orange, in January, 1649, when his father was executed, and thus, at the age of eighteen, he inherited a crown without a kingdom. Nevertheless, Charles was proclaimed king in the Channel Islands, Scotland, parts of Ireland, and Virginia. In September, he sailed to Jersey, but the following February, he was forced to return to the Netherlands.

Against the warnings of some of his advisers, Charles II came to terms with the Scots, accepting their conditions in exchange for the crown of Scotland. This acquiescence on his part resulted in the failure of the efforts of James Graham Montrose to make military gains for the Royalist cause. To blame a youngster of nineteen for the judicial murder of the first marquess of Montrose, however, is to assign a depth of subtlety and understanding to the king that he did not yet possess. In time, Charles would avenge the death of Montrose, but in 1650 he was a virtual prisoner of the earl of Argyll and the Scottish Covenanters.

On January 1, 1651, Charles was crowned king of Scots at Scone, but he was a monarch in name only. Argyll and his associates used him as a pawn in a deadly game of politics with Oliver Cromwell . When the Royalist army marched south late in the summer of 1651, the king believed that he was on his way to liberate England, but the Covenanters had other plans for him. Trapped in Worcester on September 3, Charles had to fight his way out of the city without the help of the Scots, who refused to engage the enemy. Barely escaping with his life, the king found himself a fugitive in his own kingdom, and for the next six weeks he experienced a series of adventures that changed him and his perception of kingship forever.

At grave personal risk to themselves and their families, a number of ordinary Englishmen gave shelter to their sovereign. Some of them were Roman Catholics and therefore faced a double danger if they were caught. Charles, for his part, gained an intimate knowledge and a deep appreciation of his subjects; no other English monarch has enjoyed such an advantage. During the remaining years of his exile, he never betrayed any of the names, places, or actual details of his escape. Only after his restoration did he tell the truth. Each person who aided him was rewarded generously.

While eluding Cromwell’s troops, Charles had at one point found refuge in an oak tree; during the nine years of exile that remained to him, that bed of leaves and boughs seemed soft indeed compared to some of the privations he suffered. In 1654, France and Commonwealth England settled their differences, and Charles was deprived of an ally. He was forced to wander through Germany, existing on the charity of friends and relatives. Finally, in 1656, the Spanish crown provided him with a small pension and a place of residence at Bruges in Belgium, but his poverty was a topic of discussion in European courts.

Cromwell’s death in 1658 set in motion a chain of events beyond Charles’s control that would, within two years, see him restored to his father’s throne. It became increasingly obvious that England was on the verge of another civil war as rival generals and politicians jockeyed for a positions of power. Catching his opponents by surprise, General George Monck marched on London, seizing the capital and then restoring parliamentary government, step by step. The members of the Long Parliament who had been expelled were recalled, and then that legislative body, which in theory had existed for almost twenty years, was dissolved.

The Free Parliament was then summoned to meet in April, 1660, and it proved decidedly Royalist in sentiment. While Monck had been outwardly observing the laws and customs governing the nation, he was quietly negotiating with the king. On Monck’s advice, Charles issued the Declaration of Breda, promising that Parliament would ultimately declare a general amnesty, allow liberty of conscience, transfer property, and settle arrears in pay to all ranks of the army. Parliament immediately accepted the declaration, and on May 8, Charles II was proclaimed king of England. He landed at Dover on May 26, and on his thirtieth birthday he entered London.

Life’s Work

In forming his first ministry, Charles II sought to include both former rebels and Royalists; to hasten the healing of the nation’s wounds, he sought to pardon most of those who had overthrown his father’s government. Only thirteen regicides were executed, and twenty-five were imprisoned for life. The land settlement was also quickly made, and although not universally popular, it was final. All property seized by the successive rebel governments was returned to its former owners, but those persons who sold their land to pay taxes or fines received no compensation. Within a year of the Restoration, the army had been paid and disbanded.

Charles II favored a policy of religious toleration, but his new Parliament, which assembled on May 8, 1661, did not share his enlightened views. Instead, they devoted their attention to restricting further the liberties of the very groups the king was trying to help. Their efforts were embodied in a series of acts known as the Clarendon Code , although the hapless Chancellor Hyde was certainly not the author of those repressive laws. Throughout his reign, Charles tried to alleviate the difficulties of his non-Anglican subjects, but with limited success. In 1673, the Test Act further restricted the rights of Roman Catholics. Recognizing that he was a parliamentary monarch, Charles did not openly oppose the will of the legislature, but he tried by personal example to alter the attitudes of those governing the nation in regard to religious toleration.

The king’s foreign policy was more difficult to define than his approach to religion, and it has often led to a misunderstanding of his motives. Many of the decisions made by Cromwell were not reversed, including the Navigation Act of 1651, which restricted colonial commerce. Although peace was made with Spain, Jamaica was not returned, and Charles married a Portuguese princess, Catherine of Braganza , in 1662. Despite these seemingly contradictory decisions, Charles’s England maintained cordial relations with Spain, as it was no longer a rival.

On the other hand, the similarity of English and Dutch colonial and commercial ambitions was a constant source of friction between those two nations. England had already battled the Netherlands from 1652 to 1654. In 1665, war again erupted between them. The conflict abated two years later, but it ended indecisively and made another war inevitable. During the course of this Second Anglo-Dutch War, England suffered a series of three national disasters. In London during 1665, the Great Plague wiped out many thousands, and the following September, the Great Fire of London burned much of the capital. In 1667, the Dutch in a daring raid crippled the English fleet while it lay at anchor. The results of these events were three: the Treaty of Breda, signed in 1667; the dismissal of Clarendon, who was blamed for everything; and the acquisition of two new colonies, New York and New Jersey.

Freed at last from the vigilance of his chancellor, Charles was able to follow his own policies. The one principle that guided him in foreign affairs was simple: England first. Unfortunately for his reputation, this maxim often led him to make decisions that provoked not only debate but also, at times, strong opposition. Charles accepted thousands of pounds from his cousin Louis XIV of France in exchange for promises he never intended to keep. Charles was a good-natured cynic who could promise to become a Roman Catholic in the secret Treaty of Dover in 1670 with the intention of doing nothing but spending the subsidy Louis paid him. He used France in 1672 to help England wage another war against the Dutch, and when he was obliged to make peace in 1674, he did so, deserting France in the process. Three years later, Charles enraged the French by arranging the marriage of his niece, Mary, the eldest daughter of James, duke of York, to his nephew, William III of Orange. At the end of his reign, Charles was still taking money from Louis and ignoring his promises. Unfortunately, domestic problems were not so easily handled.

Political parties began to evolve during Charles’s reign, but their growth was erratic and at times violent. After the fall of Clarendon, the king tried to govern with the advice of five men (Sir Thomas Clifford; Sir Henry Bennet, earl of Arlington; George Villiers, second duke of Buckingham; Anthony Ashley Cooper, known as Lord Ashley; and John Maitland, duke of Lauderdale) whose initials spelled the name “Cabal,” by which they came to be known. Religious conflicts dissolved this body, however.

Clifford and Arlington were Roman Catholics. Ashley, now the first earl of Shaftesbury, went into opposition, collecting about him a faction that included remnants of the revolutionary groups that had destroyed the government of Charles I. From these unlikely elements would emerge the Whigs. Thomas Osborne, later earl of Danby and duke of Leeds, formed the nucleus of a court party that appealed to the more conservative elements in English society. In time, its members would be designated with the name Tory. As these two factions struggled with each other, they used bribery, corruption, patronage, and intimidation to gain control of the government. The most ambitious of these devices was the so-called Popish Plot , by which Shaftesbury sought to make himself master of the state.

The events of the Popish Plot began in August, 1678, when an adventurer named Titus Oates presented Shaftesbury with evidence that there was a Roman Catholic plot to murder Charles II and overthrow the government. The fact that Oates’s story was demonstrated to be composed of lies did nothing to calm a national panic. Before the resulting anti-Roman Catholic hysteria subsided, thirty-five innocent men were executed and hundreds of lives had been ruined.

Refusing to subvert the laws of the realm even in the name of mercy, Charles was finally able to stop Oates when he accused the queen of involvement in the plot. Oates was jailed, Shaftesbury fled abroad, and Parliament, which had been in session since 1661, was dissolved in January, 1679. Charles summoned two other Parliaments, one in 1680 and the Oxford Parliament of 1681. Both were dissolved because they insisted on ignoring the affairs of the nation to concentrate their energies on excluding James, duke of York, a Roman Catholic, from the throne in favor of the king’s eldest illegitimate son, James, duke of Monmouth.

During the first twenty-one years of his reign, Charles had governed in partnership with Parliament. Now, at the end of his life, he chose to rule without the advice of Parliament, because he realized that the tyranny of many can often be more destructive to the fabric of the state than the supposed subversion of one man. Save for the Rye House Plot in 1683, an abortive attempt by some of Shaftesbury’s associates to murder the king and the duke of York, the last four years of Charles’s life were peaceful. He died February 6, 1685, after suffering a stroke.

Significance

Schooled in adversity and familiar with all strata of his society, King Charles II was a professional politician in an age of amateurs. No English monarch before him had so complete an understanding of the ordinary citizen. Feigning an air of laziness and ease of manner, he masked a determined will and boundless energy. Coming to the throne in 1660, he restored the confidence of the English people in their system of government by striking a partnership with Parliament. As a result, he was the last English monarch who both reigned and ruled.

Bibliography

Bryant, Arthur. King Charles II. London: Longmans, Green, 1931. This remains the best-balanced biography of the king and his time.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Restoration England. London: Collins, 1960. Provides an overview of society in the reign of Charles II without being dull and fact-ridden. It is an excellent introduction to the period.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗, ed. The Letters of King Charles II. London: Cassell, 1935. A valuable resource for the general reader that provides a personal glimpse of the most charming of the Stuart monarchs.

Fraser, Antonia. Royal Charles: Charles II and the Restoration. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979. Popular biography, which at times betrays the author’s fondness for her subject.

Hutton, Ronald. Charles the Second: King of England, Scotland, and Ireland. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Scholarly biography providing a well-written, chronological treatment of Charles’s life, personality, and attempts to rule a unified Great Britain.

Matthews, William, ed. Charles II’s Escape from Worchester: A Collection of Narratives Assembled by Samuel Pepys. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966. Modern edition of the king’s account of his escape after the Battle of Worcester. It is a must for students of the period, but is also exciting reading for anyone who loves a good adventure story.

Miller, John. After the Civil Wars: English Politics and Government in the Reign of Charles II. London: Longman, 2000. Comprehensive study of English politics during Charles’s reign, based upon original research. Miller outlines the development of Parliament and local governments, changes in the Anglican church, and attempts to heal divisions created by the civil wars.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Charles II. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1991. Comprehensive biography by a recognized expert in late seventeenth century British history.

Ogg, David. England in the Reign of Charles II. 2 vols. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1963. The standard work on the period and likely to remain so. The scholarship is thorough, and while the style is not inspired, the work is nevertheless worthy of inclusion in any bibliography of the Restoration.

Pepys, Samuel. The Diary of Samuel Pepys. Edited by Robert Latham and William Matthews, 11 vols. London: Bell and Hyman, 1970-1983. A masterful edition of a classic that will long remain the standard rendition of Pepys’s diary. The notes alone are worth the price of the eleven volumes.

Scott, Eva. The King in Exile: The Wanderings of Charles II from June 1646 to July 1654. London: Archibald Constable, 1905. Chronicles the crucial years in which Charles Stuart became a king without a throne. Based on an impressive collection of manuscripts, it has served as a source for other historians.