Charles I of England

“ They express throughout Charles I’s resolution not to let himself be degraded to the position of a king who may follow neither his reason nor his conscience: he believes himself to merit more gratitude from the people of England by the resistance he is now offering, than by the concessions which he had formerly allowed to be extorted. ”

“ Charles found himself sovereign of Spain, and America, of Sicily, Naples, Sardinia, the Low Countries, Franche Comté, Austria, and the duchies associated with it. The same year (1519) he was chosen King of Germany and Emperor-elect, after a keen contest over the imperial crown, in which Francis I. of France and Henry VIII. of England were his competitors. On attaining this dignity, he conferred the Austrian possessions on his brother Ferdinand. But he remained the most potent and imposing monarch that Europe had seen since Charlemagne. ”

“ On the outbreak of the civil war he took up arms for the king at Oxford, and obtained the rank of captain, but on the capitulation of the city to the parliament in 1646 appears to have resumed his studies. After Charles I's execution he was employed by Charles II in various negotiations, and finally received a commission to raise troops in England for the new king at the time of Charles's Scottish expedition in 1650. ”

“ Charles was in the forty-ninth year of his age, and the twenty-fourth of his reign, when he was brought to the scaffold. We regret that we cannot give a favourable character of this unfortunate person out of place—for he certainly was completely out of place on the throne of England. His disposition was mixed, like human nature in general; and indeed, what is mankind, as the philosopher would ask, but the "mixture as before" incessantly repeated? ”

“ Charles was King of Scotland as well as of England. The two countries were, however, as countries, distinct, each having its own laws, its own administration, and its own separate dominions. The sovereign, however, was the same. A king could inherit two kingdoms, just as a man can, in this country, inherit two farms, which may, nevertheless, be at a distance from each other, and managed separately. ”

“ It is very hard for a king to hold his scepter on conditions prescribed by his people. Charles tried every possible means to avoid submitting to this necessity. He found, however, that the only possible avenue of access to England was by first getting some sort of possession of Scotland; and so, signifying his willingness to comply with the Scotch demands, he set sail from Holland with his court, moved north ward with his little squadron over the waters of the German Ocean, and at length made port In the Frith of Cromarty, in the north of Scotland. ”

“ This night he hies to her bower in a strange habit, and hopes to win her thence; but let him take heed that more eyes look not on him than the young bird's; she may escape, and he be unmasked."
"Odds my life! my friend, I think thou knowest me," cried Charles, laughing, as he drew a purse from his belt.
"The stars proclaim thee England's king," replied the astrologer, as he bent his knee to the monarch.
Charles satisfied himself by asking a few more questions, then threw the doctor his purse, and, bidding him come to the palace to receive another, he departed. ”

“ Intentions of its leaders.No one had the least intention of upsetting the throne of King Charles. But in civil matters all were agreed in wishing to purify the Law Courts and to restore the ‘ancient constitution’, by which they meant the control of Parliament over the Crown, as it had existed before the Wars of the Roses. The ‘strong government’ of the Tudors, they said, had been necessary at the time; it was no longer necessary. The King of England ought to be a ‘limited monarch’, not an ‘absolute monarch’, and Charles must be made to realize the fact. ”

“ The father of Charles found himself stronger than his king, possessor not only of Burgundy, but of many other fiefs from Germany as well as France, and lord of the Netherlands as well. [8]
Charles was thus the last of those great, overgrown vassals so characteristic of feudal times. Like Hugh Capet in France, like William the Conqueror in England, he hoped to establish himself as an independent king. He opened negotiations for this purpose with the Emperor Frederick, Maximilian's father. He made himself practically independent of France. ”

“ When the Protestant mobs sought to drive her out of England he showed his courage and manliness by standing by her and refusing to allow her to be molested.
Indeed, had Charles been always at his best he would have had a very different name in history. He could be in every sense a king. He had a keen knowledge of human nature. Though he governed England very badly, he never governed it so badly as to lose his popularity.
The epigram of Rochester, written at the king's own request, was singularly true of Charles. No man relied upon his word, yet men loved him. ”

“ They destroyed each other's peace by petty disputes and jars about things of little consequence, in which they each had scarcely any interest except a desire to carry the point and triumph over the other. King Charles himself preserved a record of one of these disputes. The queen had received, at the time of her marriage, certain estates, consisting of houses and lands, the income of which was to be at her disposal, and she wished to appoint certain treasurers to take charge of this property. She had made out a list of these officers in consultation with her mother. ”

“ In Scotland James set up a tyrannical administration of the worst type. The royal enmity towards William of Orange was increased by a visit of the latter to England in July. No more parliaments were called, and Charles subsisted on his permanent revenue and his French pensions. He continued the policy of double-dealing and treachery, deceiving his ministers as at the treaty of Dover, by pretending to support Holland and Spain while he was secretly engaged to Louis to betray them. ”

“ The queen regent and her father urged Anne Maria now to consent to the proposal. They told her that Charles's prospects were brightening—that they themselves were going to render him powerful protection—that he had already acquired several allies—that there were whole provinces in England that were in his favor; and that all Ireland, which was, as it were, a kingdom in itself, was on his side. Whether they seriously desired that Anne Maria would consent to Charles's proposals, or only urged, for effect, what they knew very well she would persist in refusing, it is impossible to ascertain. ”

“ Charles was a very affectionate man, and he could not help loving and trusting others instead of making use of his own sense and trusting his people, as Queen Elizabeth had done. So he allowed the queen to advise him in most things, and Laud, Bishop of London, in others; particularly in matters of religion. So he began to oppress the Puritans in England. In poor Ireland, a harsh man, the Earl of Strafford, a great friend and favourite of King Charles, governed in such a cruel manner that everybody complained. ”

“ In the mean time, the family of the queen were very much separated from each other, the children having been left in various places, exposed each to different privations and dangers. Two or three of them were in London in the hands of their father's enemies. Mary, the young bride of the Prince of Orange, was in Holland. Prince Charles, the oldest son, who was now about fourteen years of age, was at the head of one of his father's armies in the west of England. Of course, such a boy could not be expected to accomplish any thing as a general, or even to exercise any real military command. ”

“ Blewer looked sharply round upon us, saying, with that evil smile of his,—
"Why, that is but a sorry shout for a new-made King; but perchance your loyal hearts are too full yet of grief for our noble King Charles to give a right royal welcome to his successor!"
"Ay, sir," said my uncle; "that is the case with us. We can scarce yet rejoice in the thought that any other sits in the place of good King Charles, be he never so great and good a prince. Prosperous and peaceful has England been beneath his fatherly sway ”

“ Charles was weak, selfish, unfit to rule England, unsettled as she was then, and a few years after the Restoration Lord Russell, together with others, joined the country party against the court. He was a generous, kind-hearted man, “raised by birth and fortune high above his fellows,” and he soon became one of the most powerful opponents of the court, one of the most influential leaders of the country party. By the Whigs he was honoured as a chief; he was one of those who wished to exclude the Duke of York, brother to Charles II., from the throne on account of his religion. ”

“ The sponsors, on this occasion, were certain royal personages in France, the relatives of the queen. They could not appear personally, and so they appointed proxies from among the higher nobility of England, who appeared at the baptism in their stead, and made the presents to the child. One of these proxies was a duchess, whose gift was a jewel valued at a sum in English money equal to thirty thousand dollars.
The oldest son of a king of England receives the title of Prince of Wales ”

“ But the civil war did not end with the death of Charles the First, for his son, prince Charles, who was in Holland at the time, went to Scotland, where the generality of the people were not disposed to have a republican government, so they made the prince promise not to interfere with their religion, but to join the Presbyterians, and then they proclaimed him king, and soon raising an army, he marched into England. ”

“ What injustice is done to Charles I by any one who accuses him of having negligently lost sight of the cause of his nephews! It is true that he would not draw the sword in their behalf: but they supplied the principal motive which guided him in his diplomatic transactions. His relations with the great parties and powers who were fighting for ascendancy on the Continent, were principally determined by regard for them: the ceaseless vacillation of his policy was due to nothing but the multiplicity of the circumstances which affected them. ”

“ CHAPTER IX. THE RESTORATION. As the readers of a tale are generally inclined to sympathize with the hero of it, both in his joys and in his sorrows, whether he is deserving of sympathy or not, they who follow the adventures of Charles in his wanderings in England after the unfortunate battle of Worcester, feel ordinarily quite a strong sensation of pleasure at finding him at last safely landed on the French shore. Charles himself doubtless experienced at first an overwhelming emotion of exultation and joy at having thus saved himself from the desperate dangers of his condition in England. ”

“ The third was undertaken by the king in pursuit of a policy arranged between him and his cousin Louis XIV. Their avowed object was a partition of Holland, but there was a secret understanding that King Charles II. was to establish Roman Catholicism, and to make himself despotic in England, with the help of the French king. This hidden purpose was suspected, and the war became intensely unpopular with the English parliament and nation. Parliament would grant the king no supplies, and he could find the means of fitting out a fleet only by defrauding his creditors. ”

“ Long negotiations and debates ensued, each party becoming more and more irritated against the other. At last, on one occasion, Charles lost his patience entirely, and made his escape into the mountains, in hopes to raise an army there among the clans of wild Highlanders, who, accustomed from infancy to the most implicit obedience to their chieftains, are always very loyal to their king. ”

“ Charles, Prince of Wales, &c., Regent of the Kingdoms of Scotland, England, France, and Ireland, and the dominions thereunto belonging:
“Whereas we have seen a certain scandalous and malicious paper published in the style and form of a proclamation, bearing date the 6th instant, wherein, under pretence of bringing to justice, like our royal ancestor King Charles the I. of blessed memory, there is a reward of thirty thousand pounds sterling promised to those who shall deliver us into the hands of our enemies, we could not but be moved with a just indignation at so insolent an attempt. ”

“ This association has since become one of the most celebrated learned societies in the world, and its establishment is one of the very few transactions of King Charles's reign which have been since remembered with pleasure. ”

“ The people of England were not yet prepared to return to royalty. Some few of the ancient noble families and country gentlemen adhered to the king's cause, but they came in to join his ranks very slowly. Those who were in favor of the king were called Cavaliers. The other party were called Roundheads. Queen Henrietta Maria had given them the name, on account of their manner of wearing their hair, cut short and close to their heads all around, while the gay Cavaliers cultivated their locks, which hung in long curls down upon their shoulders. ”

“ After a long and stormy passage, the squadron arrived off the Isle of Wight; the Duke of York came out to meet it there, with five other ships, and they all entered the harbor of Portsmouth together. As soon as Catharine landed, she wrote immediately to Charles to notify him of her arrival. The news produced universal excitement in London. The bells were rung, bonfires were made in the streets, and houses were illuminated. Every body seemed full of joy and pleasure except the king himself. ”