Charles II

“ Charles was determined to have his way, and Catharine was overwhelmed with anguish and grief. This lasted two days, when Charles made his peace with his wife by solemnly promising to give up Lady Castlemaine, and to have from that time forward nothing more to do with her.
King Charles II. has always been famed for his good nature. This was a specimen of it. He never liked to quarrel with any body, and was always ready to give up his point, in appearance and form at least, for the sake of peace and good humor. ”

“ CHAPTER XVIII. THE HOUSE OF BOURBON.
“The king is dead; long live the king!” Before Charles II passed away, weak and vacillating as he was, he bequeathed to his subjects a legacy of woe in the unfruitful “Wars of the Succession.” Finally, on his deathbed, through the influence of his confessor, and at the recommendation of Pope Innocent II, Charles made a will in favour of Philip of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV of France. When he received the news of this triumph, for which he had long been scheming, the French king joyfully exclaimed, “The Pyrenees no longer exist!” ”

“ Many people are no less fascinated by Charles II., that very different type, with his gaiety, his good-fellowship, and his easy-going ways. It is not surprising that his people, most of whom never saw him, were very fond of him, and did not know that he was selfish, a loose liver, and almost a vassal of the king of France.
So it is not strange that the Stuarts, with all their arts and graces, were very hard to displace. James II., with the aid of the French, fought hard before the British troops in Ireland broke the backs of both his armies and sent him into exile. ”

“ Indeed the whole policy of Charles II., when he was not forced off from his natural bias by the necessity he lay under of soothing his Parliament, was a constant, designed, systematical opposition to the interest of his people. His brother, though more sensible to the honour of England, was by his Popery and desire of arbitrary power constrained to lean upon France, and do nothing to obstruct her designs on the Continent or lessen her greatness. ”

“ Returning to rule over a nation which, during his absence, had been distracted by civil strife, King Charles, young in years, brave in deeds, and surrounded by that halo of romance which misfortune lends its victims, entirely gained the hearts of his subjects. Nature had endowed him with gifts adapted to display qualities that fascinated, and fitted to hide blemishes which repelled. ”

“ The document displays very genuine indignation and dismay at the possibility of the negotiations which were being carried on for restoring Charles II. as a "covenanted king" to the throne of his ancestors, being defeated, and of his coming back as an arbitrary ruler and oppressor of the Church. Those who have any doubt about the deterioration of both religion and politics when they are fused together, should read this and other State Papers of the period, and their eyes would be opened. ”

“ King Charles had been beheaded, the kingdom had been declared a Commonwealth with Cromwell at its head, but he was now dead, the Stuarts once more ruled, and King Charles II sat upon the throne. He cast a greedy eye upon New Netherland, for he wanted it for his brother, the Duke of York. ”

“ Now what could a wild headstrong duke, who took counsel with nothing but his own passions, and turned everything to the objects of his personal ambition, do against this cool, crafty, perfidious monarch, on whom no law, human or divine, had any binding force, who saw so clearly through his rival’s designs and could turn even his successes against him? The French nobles stirred up the war of the Public good, and Charles took their part. ”

“ They are not the graces and accomplishments of a Sovereign, but of a lord of the bedchamber. They do not shew a great mind, bent on great objects, and swayed by lofty views. They are rather foibles and blemishes in the character of a ruler, for they imply that his attention has been turned as much upon adorning his own person as upon advancing the State. Charles II. was a King, such as we have here described; amiable, witty, and accomplished, and yet his memory is equally despised and detested. Charles was without strength of mind, or public principle. ”

“ It is not even in our own day commonly known that the Duke of Monmouth, reputed the eldest of the sons of Charles II, had an elder brother. So well was the secret kept, that during the long struggle [26] to save the Protestant succession and to exclude the Duke of York from the throne, no man ever discovered that there was another whose claims were better than those of the popular favourite, and who had of his free will preferred the gown of an obscure clerk to the brilliant prospect of favour at court and the chance of wearing the English crown. ”

“ If he was unaware that the king’s life was aimed at directly and indirectly, it was because he had deliberately shut his eyes to the tendency of his own schemes and those of his associates.651 This must be the test of the value of such declarations. The unbounded immorality with which the politics of the reign of Charles II were stamped so clouded the minds of men that truth became for them almost indistinguishable from falsehood. ”

“ When Charles II. had strengthened himself by the return of the garrison of Tangier, "England (says Rapin) saw on a sudden an amazing revolution; saw herself stripped of all her rights and privileges, excepting such as the King should vouchsafe to grant her; and what is more astonishing, the English themselves delivered up these very rights and privileges to Charles II. which they had so passionately, and, if I may say it, furiously defended against the designs of Charles I." This happened only thirty-six years after this last prince had been beheaded. ”

“ The accession of Charles II. soon caused a change in the affairs of America. The new king assigned to his brother James, Duke of York, the whole territory of New Netherland, with Long Island and a part of Connecticut. Charles had no more right to that domain than to the central province of Spain; but the brutal argument that "might makes right" justified the royal brothers, in their own estimation, in sending ships, men and cannon, the "last argument of kings," to take possession of and hold the territory. ”

“ In 1629 he obtained a subordinate post in the great wardrobe office, in which he was still employed on the outbreak of the civil war. He was the officer sent to London to fetch the royal standard set up at Nottingham, and was in attendance on Charles I until after the battle of Naseby, when he joined his brother Henry [see below] in Spain. He returned to England on the execution of the king, and throughout the interregnum acted as Charles II's financial agent and secretary to the secret royalist council. ”

“ The duke had the imprudence immediately to publish these papers, and thereby both confirmed all the reproaches of those who had been the greatest enemies to his brother’s measures, and afforded to the world a specimen of his own bigotry.
If we survey the character of Charles II. in the different lights which it will admit of, it will appear various, and give rise to different and even opposite sentiments. When considered as a companion, he appears the most amiable and engaging of men; and indeed, in this view, his deportment must be allowed altogether unexceptionable. ”

“ Charles II had spent years in exile on the Continent. He was finally proclaimed King of England at Westminster, May 8, 1660. Pepys describes his convoy from Holland to Dover, and his reception by the people who had invited him to return to his country and his throne.
THOMAS CARLYLE
We have had many civil-wars in England; wars of Red and White Roses, wars of Simon de Montfort; wars enough which are not very memorable. But that war of the Puritans has a significance which belongs to no one of the others. ”

“ In the midst of these rejoicings Charles II. landed, and the gallant General Monk, who had been mainly instrumental in bringing his royal master to the throne without loss of blood, now fell upon his knees to greet his majesty. The king raised the general from the ground, embraced and kissed him. Then the nobility hastened to pay their duty likewise, and the Mayor and Aldermen of Dover presented him with a most loyal address. ”

“ I returned to England with the king, and, as balm to my wounded estate, was made Second Gentleman of the Wardrobe in that modern Sodom, Whitehall Palace, Westminster, where lived Charles II, who was said to have been appointed and anointed of God, king of our glorious realm. God makes some curious mistakes, if human opinion is to be accepted. ”

“ GENERAL CONDITIONS AND CHARACTERISTICS. The repudiation of the Puritan rule by the English people and the Restoration of the Stuart kings in the person of Charles II, in 1660, mark one of the most decisive changes in English life and literature. The preceding half century had really been transitional, and during its course, as we have seen, the Elizabethan adventurous energy and half-naif greatness of spirit had more and more disappeared. With the coming of Charles II the various tendencies which had been replacing these forces seemed to crystallize into their almost complete opposites. ”

“ Charles II. has often been accused of ingratitude, but at least he never forgot his obligations to, or his personal friendship for, Lord Sandwich, although His Majesty’s unconquerable indolence prevented his influence being as great and decisive as might have been expected in the Monarch of the Realm. ”

“ His immediate desire was to consolidate and extend France to the Rhine and Pyrenees, and to absorb the Spanish Netherlands; his remoter view saw the French Kings as the possible successors of Charlemagne in a recast Holy Roman Empire. He made bribery a state method almost more important than warfare. Charles II of England was in his pay, and so were most of the Polish nobility, presently to be described. His money, or rather the money of the tax- paying classes in France, went everywhere. ”

“ When Charles came into the World he had a Brother living who was born of the Arch-Duchess Mary-Maximilian, Emanuel's first Wife. This young Prince who all Europe expected wou'd be the Successor of Charles II. King of Spain, dying at Brussels the 6th of February, 1699, Charles thereby became the Electoral Prince: He was bred up at Munich with four of his Brothers, but both he and his Brothers surrender'd Prisoners to the Emperor Joseph after the Battle of Hochstet, which subjected all Bavaria to his Imperial Majesty. ”

“ Had Charles the First broken the fundamental laws of England?
No person can answer in the negative, unless he refuses credit, not merely to all the accusations brought against Charles by his opponents, but to the narratives of the warmest Royalists, and to the confessions of the king himself. If there be any truth in any historian of any party who has related the events of that reign, the conduct of Charles, from his accession to the meeting of the Long Parliament, had been a continued course of oppression and treachery. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The empire of Charles, however, was not lasting. In spite of his own wonderful genius the seeds of weakness were sown in his lifetime. The church was too powerful, an incipient feudalism was present, and there was no real bond of union between the different races that acknowledged his authority. All the vigilance of the emperor could not restrain the dishonesty and the cupidity of his servants, and no sooner was the strong hand of their ruler removed than they began to acquire territorial power for themselves. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Meanwhile Charles II had come to the throne, and, wanting to reward eight of his friends who had been staunch to him during the Commonwealth, in 1663 he gave them all the land between latitude 30° and 36° and from sea to sea. If you look on the map you will see that this takes in nearly the whole of the Southern States.
Sir Robert Heath was by this time dead, and his heirs had done nothing with his great territory in America, but as soon as it was given to others they began to make a fuss. Charles II, however, said as Sir Robert had failed to plant a colony his claim no longer held good. ”

“ It is difficult to imagine an era in English history more favourable to a young man of his type and fortune than the early years of Charles II, when the King himself was the ringleader in the outburst of revolt against that iron-grey period of Puritanism through which the country had just passed. ”

“ But that which marks the position of Charles V. as the representative man of his epoch, and as the founder of the policy of modern times, is that, wherever he was victorious, the effect of his success was to crush the last efforts of the spirit of the middle ages, and of the independence of nations. In Italy, in Spain, in Germany, and in the Low Countries, his triumphs were so much gain to the cause of absolute monarchy and so much loss to the liberty derived from the old state of society. ”