Charles II (Charles Stuart; 29 May 1630 –
6 February 1685) was the King
of England, Scotland, and
Ireland.
According to royalists, Charles II became king when his father Charles I was executed at Whitehall on 30 January 1649, the
climax of the English Civil War. The English
Parliament did not proclaim Charles II king at this time, however, and England entered the period known to history as the
English Interregnum. The Parliament of
Scotland, on the other hand, proclaimed Charles II King of Scots on
5 February 1649 in Edinburgh. He was crowned King of Scots at Scone on 1 January 1651. Following his defeat at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651, Charles fled to the continent and spent the next nine years in exile in France, the United Provinces and the Spanish Netherlands.
After the Protectorate collapsed under Richard
Cromwell in 1659, General George Monck invited Charles to
return and assume the thrones in what became known as the Restoration. Charles II
arrived on English soil on 25 May 1660 and entered London on his thirtieth birthday, 29 May 1660. Charles was crowned King of England and Ireland at Westminster
Abbey on 23 April 1661.
Charles's English parliament enacted harsh anti-Puritan laws known as the Clarendon Code, designed to shore up the position
of the re-established Church of England.
Charles acquiesced to the Clarendon Code even though he himself favoured a policy of religious toleration. The major foreign
policy issue of Charles's early reign was the Second Anglo-Dutch War. In 1670,
Charles entered into the secret treaty of Dover, an alliance with
Louis XIV under the terms of which Louis agreed to aide Charles in the
Third Anglo-Dutch War and pay Charles a pension, and Charles promised to convert
to Roman Catholicism at an unspecified future date. Charles attempted to introduce
religious freedom for Catholics and Protestant dissenters with his 1672 Royal
Declaration of Indulgence, but the English Parliament forced him to withdraw it. In 1679, Titus Oates's revelations of a supposed "Popish Plot" sparked the
Exclusion Crisis when it was revealed that Charles's brother and heir (the future
James II) was a Roman Catholic. This crisis saw the birth of the pro-exclusion
Whig and anti-exclusion Tory parties. Charles sided
with the Tories, and, following the discovery of the Rye House Plot to murder Charles and
James in 1683, some Whig leaders were killed or forced into exile. Charles dissolved the English Parliament in 1679, and ruled
alone until his death on 6 February 1685. Charles converted to
Roman Catholicism on his deathbed.
He was popularly known as the Merrie Monarch, in reference to both the liveliness and hedonism of his court and the general relief at the return to normality after over a decade of rule by
Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans. Charles's wife,
Catherine of Braganza was barren, but Charles acknowledged at least 12
illegitimate children by various mistresses.
Early life
Charles Stuart, the eldest surviving son of King Charles I of England and
Scotland and Henrietta Maria of France, was born in St. James's Palace on 29 May 1630. He
was baptised in the Chapel Royal on 27 June by the
Anglican Bishop of London William Laud and brought up in the care of the Protestant
Countess of Dorset, though his godparents included his mother's
Catholic relations, the King and Queen Mother of
France.[1] At birth, he automatically became (as the
eldest surviving son of the Sovereign) Duke of Cornwall and Duke of Rothesay; at or around his eighth birthday he was designated Prince of Wales, though he was never formally invested with the Honours of the Principality of Wales.[2]
Charles II when Prince of Wales by
William Dobson, circa 1642 or 1643.
During the 1640s, when Charles was still young, his father fought parliamentary and Puritan
forces in the English Civil War. Charles accompanied his father during the
Battle of Edgehill and, at the age of fourteen, participated in the campaigns of
1645, when he was made titular commander of the English forces in the West Country.[3] By Spring 1646, his father was losing the war, and Charles left
England due to fears for his safety, going first to the Isles of Scilly, then to
Jersey, and finally to France, where his mother was already
living in exile and his cousin, eight-year-old Louis XIV, sat on the French
throne.[4]
In 1648, during the Second English Civil War, Charles moved to The Hague, where his sister
Mary and his brother-in-law William II, Prince of Orange seemed more likely to provide substantial aid to the Royalist
cause than the Queen's French relations.[5] However, the
royalist fleet that came under Charles's control was not used to any advantage, and did not reach Scotland in time to join up with the royalist Engagers army of the
Duke of Hamilton, before it was defeated at the Battle of Preston.[6]
At The Hague, Charles had a brief fling with Lucy Walter, who later falsely claimed that
they had secretly married.[7] Their son, James Crofts (afterwards Duke of Monmouth
and Duke of Buccleuch), was to become the most prominent of Charles's many
illegitimate sons in British political life.
Charles I was captured in 1647. He escaped and was recaptured in 1648. Despite his son's diplomatic efforts to save him,
Charles I was beheaded in 1649, and England became a republic. Immediately following the
execution of Charles I however, the Parliament of Scotland declared Charles II
King of Scots in succession to his father on 5 February 1649
provided he accept certain conditions. To succeed, Charles was reluctantly induced to make promises that he would abide by the
terms of a treaty agreed between him and the Scots Parliament at Breda, and support the Solemn League and Covenant, which authorized
Presbyterian church governance across Britain. Upon his arrival in Scotland on
23 June 1650, Charles formally agreed to the Covenant; his
abandonment of Episcopal church governance, although winning him support in Scotland,
left him unpopular in England. Charles himself soon came to despise the "villainy" and "hypocrisy" of the Covenanters.[8]
On 3 September 1650, the Covenanters' were defeated at the
Battle of Dunbar by a much smaller force led by Oliver Cromwell. The Scots forces were divided into royalist Engagers and Presbyterian Covenanters, who even fought each other. Disillusioned by the Covenanters, in October
Charles attempted to escape from them and rode north to join with an Engager force, an event which became known as "the Start",
but within two days the Presbyterians had caught up with and recovered him.[9] Nevertheless, the Scots remained Charles's best hope of restoration, and he was crowned King of Scots
at Scone on 1 January 1651. With
Cromwell's forces threatening Charles's position in Scotland, it was decided to mount an attack on England. With many of the
Scots (including Argyll and other leading Covenanters)
refusing to participate, and with few English royalists joining the force as it moved south into England, the invasion ended in
defeat at the Battle of Worcester on 3
September 1651, following which Charles hid in the Royal
Oak at Boscobel House. Through six weeks of narrow escapes Charles managed to flee England in disguise, landing in Normandy
on 16 October, despite a reward of £1,000 on his
head, risk of death for anyone caught helping him and the difficulty in disguising Charles, who was unusually tall at over
6 feet (185 cm) high.[10][11]
Cromwell was appointed Lord Protector and the British Isles were essentially under military rule. Impoverished, Charles could not obtain
sufficient support to mount a serious challenge to Cromwell's government. Despite the Stuart familial connections through
Henrietta Maria and the Princess of Orange, France and the United Provinces allied
themselves with Cromwell's government from 1654, forcing Charles to turn for aid to Spain, which
at that time ruled the Southern Netherlands. He attempted to raise an army, but
failed for lack of finance.[12]
Restoration
After the death of Cromwell in 1658, Charles's chances of regaining the Crown at first seemed slim as Cromwell was succeeded
as Lord Protector by his son, Richard. However, the new Lord Protector, with no power
base in either Parliament or the New Model Army, was forced to abdicate in 1659 and the
Protectorate was abolished. During the civil and military unrest which followed, George Monck, the Governor of Scotland, was concerned that the nation would descend
into anarchy.[13] Monck and his army marched into the
City of London and forced the Rump Parliament to
re-admit excluded members. The English Parliament dissolved itself and for the first time in almost twenty years, its members
faced a general election.[14] The outgoing Parliament
designed the electoral qualifications so as to ensure, as they thought, the return of a Presbyterian majority.[15]
The restrictions against royalist candidates and voters were widely ignored, and the elections resulted in a House of Commons which was fairly evenly divided on political grounds between Royalists and
Parliamentarians and on religious grounds between Anglicans and Presbyterians.[15] The new so-called Convention
Parliament assembled on 25 April 1660, and soon afterwards
received news of the Declaration of Breda, in which Charles agreed, amongst other
things, to pardon many of his father's enemies. The English Parliament resolved to proclaim Charles king and invite him to
return, which message reached Charles at Breda on 8 May 1660.[16] In Ireland, a convention had been
called earlier in the year, and on 14 May it declared for Charles as King.[17] Charles's reigns in all three kingdoms were subsequently dated from his
father's execution in 1649.
Charles set out for England, arriving in Dover on 25 May
1660 and reaching London on 29 May (which is considered the date of
the Restoration, and was Charles's thirtieth birthday). Although Charles and
Parliament granted amnesty to Cromwell's supporters in the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion, this made specific provision for 50 people to be
excluded.[18] In the end 9 of the regicides were executed:[19] they were hanged, drawn and quartered; others
were given life imprisonment or simply excluded from office for life. The bodies of Oliver
Cromwell, Henry Ireton and John
Bradshaw were subjected to the indignity of posthumous executions.[20]
Charles II was restored as King of England in 1660.
Charles agreed to give up feudal dues which had been revived by his father; in return, the
English Parliament granted him an annual income of £1,200,000 generated largely from customs
and excise dues with which to run the government. The grant, however, proved to be insufficient for most of Charles's
reign. The aforesaid sum was only an indication of the maximum the King was allowed to withdraw from the Treasury each year; for
the most part, the actual revenue was much lower, which led to mounting debts, and further attempts to raise money through
poll taxes, land taxes and hearth taxes.
In the latter half of 1660, Charles's joy at the Restoration was tempered by the deaths of his youngest brother,
Henry, and sister, Mary, of smallpox.
At around the same time, Anne Hyde, the daughter of the Lord
Chancellor Edward Hyde, revealed that she was pregnant by
Charles's brother, James, who she had secretly married. Edward Hyde, who had not known of either the marriage or the pregnancy,
was created Earl of Clarendon and his position as Charles's favourite minister was
strengthened.[21]
The Convention Parliament was dissolved in December 1660. Shortly after Charles's coronation at Westminster Abbey on 23 April 1661,
the second English Parliament of the reign assembled. This parliament, dubbed the Cavalier
Parliament, was overwhelmingly Royalist and Anglican. It sought to discourage non-conformity to the Church of England, and passed several
acts to secure Anglican dominance. The Corporation Act 1661 required municipal
officeholders to swear allegiance;[22] the
Act of Uniformity 1662 made the use of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer compulsory; the Conventicle Act
1664 prohibited religious assemblies of more than five people, except under the auspices of the Church of England; and the Five Mile Act 1665 prohibited
clergymen from coming within five miles (8 km) of a parish from which they had been banished. The Conventicle and Five
Mile Acts remained in effect for the remainder of Charles's reign. The Acts became known as the "Clarendon Code", after Lord
Clarendon, even though he was not directly responsible for them and even spoke against the Five Mile Act.[23]
Great Plague and Fire
In 1665, Charles was faced with a great health crisis: the Great Plague of
London. The death toll at one point reached a peak of 7000 in the week of 17
September.[24] Charles, his family and court fled
London in July to Salisbury; Parliament met in Oxford.[25] Various attempts at
containing the disease by London public health officials all fell in vain and the disease continued to spread rapidly.[26]
Adding to London's woes, but marking the end of the plague, was what later became famously known as the Great Fire of London, which started on 2 September
1666. The fire consumed about 13,200 houses and 87 churches, including St. Paul's Cathedral.[27]
Charles, and his brother James, joined and directed the fire-fighting effort. The public unfairly blamed Roman Catholic
conspirators for the fire.[28]
Foreign and colonial policy
In May 1662, Charles married in the parish of St Thomas à Becket,
Portsmouth Catherine of Braganza,[2] a Portuguese princess
who brought him the territories of Bombay and Tangier as dowry. During the same year, in an unpopular move, he sold
Dunkirk, which (although a valuable strategic outpost) was a drain on Charles's limited
finances,[29] to his first cousin King Louis XIV of France for about £375,000.[30]
Appreciative of the assistance given to him in gaining the throne, Charles awarded North
American lands then known as Carolina—named after his father—to eight nobles
(known as Lords Proprietors) in 1663.
A medal struck in 1667 by
John Roettier to commemorate the
Second Dutch War, showing Charles II's full titles around the edge
Whereas the Navigation Acts of 1650, which hurt Dutch trade by giving English vessels a monopoly, started the First Dutch War (1652–1654), the Second Dutch War
(1665–1667) was started by English attempts to muscle in on Dutch possessions in Africa and
North America. The conflict began well for the English, with the capture of
New Amsterdam (renamed New York in honour of Charles's
brother James, Duke of York) and a victory at the Battle of Lowestoft, but in 1667
the Dutch launched a surprise attack upon the English (the Raid on the Medway) when
they sailed up the River Thames to where a major part of the English fleet was docked.
Almost all of the ships were sunk except for the flagship, the HMS Royal
Charles, which was taken back to the Netherlands as a trophy.[31] The Second Dutch War ended with the signing of the Treaty of Breda (1667).
As a result of the Second Dutch War, Charles dismissed Lord
Clarendon, whom he used as a scapegoat for the war.[32] Clarendon fled to France when impeached for high treason
(which carried the penalty of death). Power passed to a group of five politicians known as the Cabal—Clifford,
Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley (afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury) and Lauderdale. The Cabal did not often act in consort, and the court was often
divided between two factions led by Arlington and Buckingham, with Arlington the more successful.[33]
In 1668, England allied itself with Sweden, and with its former enemy the Netherlands, in
order to oppose Louis XIV in the War of Devolution. Louis made peace with the
Triple Alliance, but he continued to maintain his aggressive intentions towards
the Netherlands. In 1670, Charles, seeking to solve his financial troubles, agreed to the Treaty of Dover, under which Louis XIV would pay him £160,000 each year. In exchange, Charles
agreed to supply Louis with troops and to announce his conversion to Roman Catholicism "as soon as the welfare of his kingdom
will permit".[34] Louis was to provide him with 6,000
troops to suppress those who opposed the conversion. Charles endeavoured to ensure that the Treaty—especially the conversion
clause—remained secret.[35] It remains unclear if Charles
ever seriously intended to convert.[17]
Meanwhile, by a series of five charters, Charles granted the British East
India Company the rights to autonomous territorial acquisitions, to mint money, to command fortresses and troops, to form
alliances, to make war and peace, and to exercise both civil and criminal jurisdiction over the acquired areas in
India.[36] Earlier in
1668 he leased the islands of Bombay for a nominal sum of £10 paid in gold.[37] The Portuguese territories that
Catherine brought with her as dowry had proved too expensive to maintain; Tangier was abandoned.[38]
In 1670, Charles also granted a royal charter to establish the Hudson's Bay
Company. The company eventually became the oldest corporation in Canada. It started out in
the lucrative fur trade with the native peoples, but eventually governed and colonized about 7,770,000 square kilometres
(3,000,000 square miles) of North America.[39]
Conflict with Parliament
Although previously favourable to the Crown, the Cavalier Parliament was alienated by the king's wars and religious policies
during the 1670s. In 1672, Charles issued the Royal Declaration of
Indulgence, in which he purported to suspend all penal laws against Roman Catholics and
other religious dissenters. In the same year, he openly supported Catholic France and started the Third Anglo-Dutch War.[40]
The Cavalier Parliament opposed the Declaration of Indulgence on constitutional grounds (claiming that the King had no right
to arbitrarily suspend laws) rather than on political ones. Charles withdrew the Declaration, and also agreed to the
Test Act, which not only required public officials to receive the sacrament under the forms prescribed by the Church of England,[41] but also later forced them to denounce certain teachings of the Roman Catholic Church as
"superstitious and idolatrous".[42] Clifford, who had converted to Catholicism, resigned rather than take the
oath, and died shortly after. By 1674 England had gained nothing from the Anglo-Dutch War, and the Cavalier Parliament refused to
provide further funds, forcing Charles to make peace. The power of the Cabal waned and that of Clifford's replacement,
Lord Danby, grew.
Charles presented with the first pineapple grown in England (1675 painting by Hendrik Danckerts).
Charles's wife Queen Catherine was unable to produce an heir; her four pregnancies ended in miscarriages and stillbirths.[2] Charles's heir-presumptive was therefore his unpopular Roman Catholic brother,
James, Duke of York. Partly in order to assuage public fears that the royal family was too Catholic, Charles agreed that James's
daughter, Mary, should marry the Protestant William of Orange.[43] In
1678, Titus Oates, who had been alternately both Anglican and a former Jesuit priest, falsely warned of a "Popish Plot" to assassinate
the king, even accusing the Queen of complicity. Charles did not believe the allegations, but ordered his chief minister Lord
Danby to investigate. While Lord Danby seems to have been sceptical about Oates's claims, the Cavalier Parliament took them
seriously.[44] The people were seized with an
anti-Catholic hysteria;[45] judges and juries across the
land condemned the supposed conspirators; numerous innocent individuals were executed.[46]
Later in 1678, Lord Danby was impeached by the House of Commons on the charge of high
treason. Although much of the nation had sought war with Catholic France, Charles had secretly negotiated with
Louis XIV, trying to reach an agreement under which England would remain neutral in
return for money. Lord Danby had publicly professed that he was hostile to France, but had reservedly agreed to abide by
Charles's wishes. Unfortunately for him, the House of Commons failed to view him as a reluctant participant in the scandal,
instead believing that he was the author of the policy. To save Lord Danby from the impeachment trial, Charles dissolved the
Cavalier Parliament in January 1679.[47]
The new English Parliament, which met in March of the same year, was quite hostile to Charles. Having lost the support of
Parliament, Lord Danby resigned his post of Lord High Treasurer, but received a
pardon from the king. In defiance of the royal will, the House of Commons declared that the dissolution of Parliament did not
interrupt impeachment proceedings, and that the pardon was therefore invalid. When the House of
Lords attempted to impose the punishment of exile—which the Commons thought too mild—the impeachment became stalled
between the two Houses. As he had been required to do so many times during his reign, Charles bowed to the wishes of his
opponents, committing Lord Danby to the Tower of London. Lord Danby would be held there
for another five years.[48]
Later years
Another political storm which faced Charles was that of succession to the Throne. The prospect of a Catholic monarch was
vehemently opposed by Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of
Shaftesbury (previously Baron Ashley and a member of the Cabal, which had fallen apart in 1673), and his power base was
strengthened when the House of Commons of 1679 introduced the Exclusion Bill, which
sought to exclude the Duke of York from the line of succession. Some
even sought to confer the Crown to the Protestant Duke of Monmouth, the eldest of
Charles's illegitimate children. The Abhorrers—those who thought the Exclusion Bill was abhorrent—were named
Tories (after a term for dispossessed Irish Catholic bandits), while the Petitioners—those
who supported a petitioning campaign in favour of the Exclusion Bill—became called Whigs (after a term for rebellious Scottish Presbyterians).[49]
Half-Crown of Charles II, 1683. The inscription reads CAROLUS II DEI GRATIA
(Charles II by the Grace of God).
Fearing that the Exclusion Bill would be passed, and bolstered by some acquittals in the continuing Plot trials, which seemed
to him to indicate a more favourable public mood towards Catholicism, Charles dissolved the English Parliament, for a second time
that year, in the summer of 1679. Charles's hopes for a more moderate Parliament were not fulfilled, within a few months he had
dissolved Parliament yet again, after it sought to pass the Exclusion Bill. When a new Parliament assembled at Oxford in March
1681, Charles dissolved it for a fourth time after just a few days.[50] During the 1680s, however, popular support for the Exclusion Bill ebbed, and Charles experienced a
nationwide surge of loyalty, for many of his subjects felt that Parliament had been too assertive. Lord Shaftesbury was charged
with treason and fled to Holland, where he died. For the remainder of his reign, Charles ruled as an absolute monarch.[51]
Charles's opposition to the Exclusion Bill angered some Protestants. Protestant conspirators formulated the Rye House Plot, a plan to murder the King and the Duke of York as they returned to London after horse
races in Newmarket. A great fire, however, destroyed Charles's lodgings at Newmarket, which
forced him to leave the races early thus, inadvertently, avoiding the planned attack. News of the failed plot was leaked.[52] Protestant politicians such as Arthur Capell, 1st Earl of Essex, Algernon
Sydney, Lord William Russell and the Duke of Monmouth were implicated in the
plot. Lord Essex slit his own throat while imprisoned in the Tower of London; Sydney and Russell were executed for high treason
on very flimsy evidence; and the Duke of Monmouth went into exile at the court of William of Orange. Lord Danby and the surviving
Catholic lords held in the Tower were released and the King's Catholic brother, James, acquired greater influence at
court.[53] Titus Oates was convicted and imprisoned for
defamation.[54]
Charles suffered a sudden apoplectic fit on the morning of 2
February 1685, and died at 11:45 a.m. four days later at Whitehall Palace (at the age of 54). The symptoms of his final illness are similar to those of
uraemia (a clinical syndrome due to kidney dysfunction).[55] On his deathbed Charles told his brother, James: "Let not poor Nelly starve."
