Charles I King of England (1600–1649)

CHARLES I (1600–1649), king of Great Britain and Ireland, the second son of James VI of Scotland and Anne of Denmark, was born at Dunfermline on 19 Nov. 1600), and at his baptism on 23 Dec. was created Duke of Albany. He was entrusted to the care of Lord and Lady Fyvie. His father having in 1603 succeeded to the English throne, he was brought to England in the following year and given into the charge of Lady Cary, many ladies having refused the responsibility of bringing him up on account, of his physical weakness. 'He was so weak in his joints, and especially his ankles, insomuch as many feared they were out of joint.' It was long, too, before he was able to speak, and Lady Gary had hard work in insisting that the cure of thtese defects should be left to nature, the king being anxious to place his son's legs in iron boots, and to have the string under his tongue cut. Gradually the child outgrew these defects, though he continued to retain a slight impediment in his speech (Memoirs of P. Cary, Earl of Monmouth, ed. 1759, p 203).

On 16 Jan. 1605 the boy was created Duke of York. On 6 Nov. 1612 the death of his brother, Prince Henry, made him heir-apparent to his father's crowns, though he was not created Prince of Wales till 3 Nov. 1616. Long before this last date negotiations had been opened in France for marrying him to a sister of Louis XIII, the Princess Christina, and in November 1513 the scheme was in a fair way to a conclusion. In June 1614 James was thrown, by his quarrel with his second parliament, into the arms of Spain, and, without allowing the French proposals entirely to drop, made an offer to marry his son to the Infanta Maria, the daughter of Philip III of Spain. It was not till 1616 that the confidential negotiations which followed promised a sufficiently satisfactory result to induce James finally to break with France, and in 1617 a formal proposal was made to the king of Spain by the English ambassador, Sir John Digby. In 1618 the negotiation was suspended, though articles concerning the household and personal position of the infanta were agreed to, as Philip made demands on behalf of the English catholics which James was unwilling to accept [see James I].

Charles himself was still too young to take much interest in the choice of a wife. His education had not been neglected, and he had acquired a large stock of information, especially of such as bore on the theological and ecclesiastical questions which made so great a part of the learning of his day. In 1618 there was a boyish quarrel between him and his father's favourite, Buckingham, which was promptly made up, and from that time a close friendship united the two young men.

When the troubles in Germany broke out, Charles did not hesitate to declare himself on the side of his sister, the Electress Palatine, whose husband had been elected to the Bohemian throne. In 1620 he rated himself at 5,000l. to the Benevolence which was being raised for the defence of the Palatinate, and on the news of the defeat of his brother-in-law at Prague shut himself up in his room for two days, refusing to speak to any one. In the House of Lords in the session of 1621 he took Bacon's part, and induced the peers to refrain from depriving the fallen chancellor of his titles of nobility.

After the dissolution of James's third parliament the Spanish marriage negotiations were again warmly taken up. Charles was now in his twenty-second year. He was dignified in manner and active in his habits. He rode well, and distinguished himself at tennis and in the tilting-yard. He had a good ear for music and a keen eye for the merits and the special peculiarities of a painter's work. His moral conduct was irreproachable, and he used to blush whenever an immodest word was uttered in his presence (Relazioni Venete, Ingh. p. 261).

Of his possession of powers befitting the future ruler of his country nothing was as yet known. His tendency to take refuge in silence when anything disagreeable to him occurred was indeed openly remarked on, and his increasing familiarity with Buckingham attracted notice; but it was hardly likely that any one would prognosticate so early the future development of a character of which these were the principal signs. Charles was in truth possessed of a mind singularly retentive of impressions once made upon it. Whatever might be the plan of life which he had once adopted as the right one, he would retain it to the end. Honestly anxious to take the right path, he would never for expediency's sake pursue that which he believed to be a wrong one; but there was in him no mental growth, no geniality of temperament, leading him to modify his own opinions through intercourse with his fellowmen. This want of receptivity in his mind was closely connected with a deficiency of imagination. He could learn nothing from others, because he was never able to understand or sympathise with their standpoint. If they differed from him, they were wholly in the wrong, and were probably actuated by the basest motives. The same want of imagination led to that untrustworthiness which is usually noted as the chief defect of his character. Sometimes, no doubt, he exercised, what earlier statesmen had claimed to exercise, the right of baffling by a direct falsehood the inquiries of those who asked questions about a policy which he wished to keep secret. The greater part of the falsehoods with which he is charged were of another description. He spoke of a thing as it appeared at the time to himself, without regard to the effect which his words might produce upon the hearer. He made promises which would be understood to mean one thing, and he neglected to fulfil them, without any sense of shame, because when the time for fulfilment came it was the most natural thing in the world for him to be convinced that they ought to be taken in a sense more convenient to himself.

The same want of imagination which made Charles untrustworthy made him shy and constrained. The words and acts of others came unexpectedly upon him, so that he was either at a loss for a fitting answer, or replied, after the manner of shy men, hastily and without consideration. In early life his diffidence led to an entire devotion to Buckingham, who was some years his senior, who impressed him by his unbounded self-possession and his magnificent animal spirits, and who had no definite religious or political principles to come into collision with his own.

The ascendency acquired by Buckingham over the prince was first manifested to the world in the journey taken by the two young men to Madrid. Charles swallowed eagerly Buckingham's crude notion that a personal visit to Spain would induce Philip IV who had succeeded his father in 1620, not merely to give his sister's hand on conditions considered at the English court to be reasonable, but actively to support the restitution of the Palatinate to Frederick, the son-in-law of the English king.

The first idea of the visit seems to have been suggested by Gondomar, who before he left England in May 1622 had drawn from Charles a promise to come to Madrid incognito, if the ambassador on his return to Spain thought fit to advise th« step. The arrangements for the journey were probably settled by Endymion Sorter when he arrived at Madrid in November on a special mission, and it was hastened by the rapid conquest by the imperialists of Frederick's remaining fortresses in the Palatinate, and the evident reluctance of the king of Spain to interfere in his behalf. In February 1623 the plan was disclosed to James, and the old king was half cajoled, half bullied into giving his permission.

On 17 Feb. Buckingham and the prince started. Arriving in Paris on the 2lst, they there saw Henrietta Maria, Charleses future wife, though at the time the young man had no eyes for the sprightly child, but gazed at the queen of France, from whose features he hoped to get some idea of the appearance of her sister, the infanta. On 7 March Charles reached Madrid. His arrival caused much consternation among the Spanish statesmen, as Philip had some time previously directed his chief minister, Olivares, to find some polite way of breaking off the marriage on account of his sister's reluctance to become the wife of a heretic. At first they entertained hopes that all difficulties might be removed by Charles's conversion, but when they discovered that this was not to be obtained they fell back upon the necessity of obtaining a dispensation from the pope, and instructed the Duke of Pastrana, wno was ostensibly sent to urge the pope to give his consent, to do his best to persuade him to refuse to permit the marriage.

While Pastrana was on ms way to Rome, Charles, though he was not allowed to speak to the infanta except once in public, had ^ worked himself up into a feeling of admiration, which was perhaps chiefly based on reluctance to be baffled in his quest.

At last an answer arrived from Rome. It had for some time been understood that some kind of religious liberty was to be granted to the English catholics as a condition of the marriage. That liberty, the Spaniards had always urged, must be complete ; but both they and the pope were afraid lest promises made by James and Charles should be broken as soon as the bride arrived in England. The pope now threw the onus of preventing the latter catastrophe upon the king of Spain. He sent the dispensation to his nuncio at Madrid, but it was not to be delivered over till Philip had sworn that unless the promises made by the king and prince were faithfully observed he would go to war with England to compel their maintenance.

Charles, knowing what the law of England was, offered that the penal laws against the catholics should be suspended, and that he and his father would do their best to have them repealed, and about the same time he replied civilly to a letter from the pope in terms which, when they came to be known, shocked English opinion. Upon this at once a junto of theologians was summoned to consider whether the king of Spain could honestly take the oath required by the pope. Charles was irritated by the delay, and still more by the knowled^ that it had been suggested that the marriage might take place, but that the infanta should be kept in Spain till the concessions offered by the English government had been actually carried out. On 20 July James swore to the marriage articles, which included an engagement that the infanta was to have a public church to which all Englishmen might have access. He also formally promised that no special legislation against the catholics should be put in force, and that he would try to obtain the consent of parliament to an alteration in the law. Charles not only confirmed his father's promise, but engaged that the existing law should be altered within three years, that the infanta's children should be left in their mother's hands till they were twelve years old, and that whenever the infanta wished it he would listen to divines employed by her 'in matters of the Roman catholic religion.' The first of these promises was one which he never could perform ; the last was one in which he roused hopes which he was not in the least likely to satisfy. Charles's expectation that his mere word would be sufficient to enable him to carry the infanta with him after the marriage was, however, disappointed, and in accordance with the decision of the junto of theologians he was told that, though the wedding might take place in Spain, the infanta could only be allowed to follow her husband to England after the lapse of a sufficient interval to put his promises to the test. As the death of the pope created a further delay, by necessitating a renewal of the dispensation by his successor, Charles, leaving a proxy with the ambassador, the Earl of Bristol, to enable him to conclude the marriage, returned to England, landing at Portsmouth on 5 Oct. As he passed through London he was received with every manifestation of popular joy, of which but little would have been heard if he had brought the infanta with him.

To his personal annoyance Charles added a feeling of vexation at the discovery which he had made at Madrid, that Philip had no intention of reinstating Frederick and Elizabeth in the Palatinate by force of arms. He had therefore, while on ` journey, sent instructions to Bristol not to use the proxy left with him without further orders, and his first object after rejoining his father was to urge him to a breach with Spain. ‘I am ready,' he said, ‘to cover Spain if you will allow me to do it.' He succeeded in persuading James to make the restitution of the Palatinate a condition of the marriage, a demand which practically put an end to the negotiation.

Under tha influence of Buckingham, Charles wanted not merely to break off the marriage treaty, but to embark England in a war with Bpstn. llis father was reluctant to follow him thus far, but James's own policy had so thoroughly broken down that he was compelled to follow his son's lead. Parliament was summoned, and met on 19 Feb. 1624, Both houses condemned tha treaty with Spain, and were eager for war. Yet already appeared a note of dissonance. The commons wanted a maritime war with Spain, while James wished for a military expedition to the Palatinate. Charles who had no policy of his own, joined Buckingham in supporting far-reaching schemes for a war by land and sea. The commons, sympathising with his warlike ardour, but wishing to keep this final conclusion in their own hands, voted a args sum of money for rations, and placed the disposal of it inthe hands of treasurers apppointed by parliament. It was understood that a diplomatic attempt to secure allies was to be made in the summer, and that in the autumn or winter parliament was again to meet to vote the money required for the actual prosecution of war, if war was decided on.

It was not improbable that the difference of opinion on the scope uf the war between the House of Commons ou the one side and Charles and Buckin ham on the other would lend to a rupture. The difference was further accentuated by a difference of opinion about Charles's marriage. Before the Spanish treaty was finally broken off overtures had been received from France, and Lord Kensington, created soon afterwards Earl of Holland, was sent tu Paris to sound the queen mother and Louis XIII on their willingness to bestow the hand of the king] sister, Henrietta Maria, on the Prince of Wales. Charles readily believed, as he had believed when he set out for Madrid, that political difficulties would give way if a friendly personal relation were once established. France, he hoped, would join England in a war against the house of Austria, and would not put forward any extravagant demands on behalf of the English catholics. Knowing the strong feeling of the commons on the latter point, he made a solemn declaration in their presence on 9 April that ‘whensoever it should please God to bestow on him any lady that were popish, she should have no further liberty at for her own family, and no advantage to the recusants at home.' Before parliament was prorogued he urged on the impeachment of Middlesex, who was accused of corruption, but whose real fault was his wish that the king was to remain at peace with Spain. During this affair, as dunng the earlier proceedings of parliament, Charles appears aa the mere tool of Buckingham, bearing down his father‘s aversion to war, and thoughtlessly weakening the authority of the crown by the want of consideration with which he treated its possessor. He and Buckingham, as James told them, were but preparing a rod for themselves in teaching the commons to impeach a minister [see Villiers, George, Duke of Buckingham].

On 29 May a parliament was prorogued. On the 17th the Earl of Carlisle had been sent to Paris to join Kensington in negotiating the marriage treaty. He soon found that the French would only treat, if the same solemn engagements on behalf of the English catholics which had been given to the king of Spain were now given to the kin of France. Charles as soon aa he received the news was for drawing back. He had, as the French ambassador in London reported, ‘little inclination to satisfy France in these essential points.' Buckingham, however, whose mind was inflamed with visions of war-like glory, was induced to advise concession, and Charles was like wax in Buckingham's hands. Louis and Richelieu, who was now the chief minister of Louis, professed themselves ready to assist England in sending the German adventurer Mansfeld to recover the Palatinate, if the engagement about the English catholics were given. In September Charles joined Buckingham in forcing upon his father the abandonment of his own engagement to the English parliament, that nothing should be said in the articles of marriage about protection for the English catholics. James gave way, and the marriage treaty was signed by the ambassadors 10 Nov. and ratified by James and his son at Cambridge 12 Dec. All that was conceded to the English government was that the engagement about the catholics might bs given in a secret article apart from the public treaty.

This déection of Charles from his promise voluntarily given was the point and origin of that alienation between himself and his panliament which ultimately brought him to the scaffold. Its immediate consequences were disastrous. Parliament could not be summoned in the autumn, for fear of its remonstrances against an engagement, the effects of which would be notorious, even if its terms were kept secret, and the war which Buckingham and Charles were urging James to enter on would be starved for want of the supplies which parliament alone could give. The French government, for which so much had been sacrificed, was not to be depended on. In October Louis had refused to give in writing an engagement, which he had indicated in word, that an English force under Mansfeld should be allowed to pass through France to the recovery of the Palatinate. When in December a body of twelve thousand raw levies assembled under Mansfeld at Dover, all the available money for their pay was exhausted, and for the 20,000l. needed for the current month the prince had to give his personal security. Charles and Buckingham were very angry at the persistent refusal of Louis to allow these men to land in France, and they had finally to consent to send them through the Dutch territory, where, being without pay and provisions, the army soon dwindled away to nothing.

This ill-managed expedition of Mansfeld was only one of Buckingham's brilliant but unreal schemes, and though when, on 27 March 1625, James died and Charles succeeded to the throne, it was not fully known how completely the new king was a mere cipher to give effect to Buckingham's views, suspicions could not but find their way abroad. ‘He is either an extraordinary man,’ said a shrewd Frenchman of the new sovereign, ‘or his talents are very mean. If his reticence is affected in order not to give jealousy to his father, it is a sign of consummate prudence. If it is natural and unassumed, the contrary inference may be drawn’ (Mémoires de Brienne, i. 399).

For a moment it seemed as if the weakness of Charles's position would be forgotten. Much that we know clearly was only suspected, and the young king gained credit by restoring order in his father's disorderly household. Charles, heedless of favourable or unfavourable opinions, pushed on his preparations for war, prepared to send a large fleet to sea against Spain, entered into an engagement to send 30,000l. a month to the king of Denmark, who now headed the league against the catholic powers in Germany, and borrowed money to place Mansfeld's army once more on a military footing. He also summoned a new parliament, and was known to be anxious to meet it as soon as possible.

On 1 May Charles was married by proxy to Henrietta Maria, and on 13 June he received his bride at Canterbury. On the 18th his first parliament met. In his speech at the opening of the session he expressed his confidence that the houses would support him in the war in which he had engaged at their instigation, but neither he nor any official speaking in his name explained what his projects were or how much money would be needed to carry them out. The commons, instead of attending to his wishes, sent up a petition on the state of religion, and voted two subsidies, or about 140,000l., a sum quite inadequate to carry on a serious war. Charles, taken aback, directed Sir John Coke to explain to the commons that a far larger sum was needed, and, when this had no effect, adjourned parliament to Oxford, as the plague was raging in London. In order to conciliate his subjects he announced his intention of putting the laws against recusants in execution, thus abandoning his promise to the king of France as he had previously abandoned his promise to his own parliament. He seems to have justified his conduct to himself on the ground that, Louis having broken his engagement to allow Mansfeld to land in France, he was himself no longer bound.

When parliament met again it appeared that the prevailing motive of the commons was distrust of Buckingham. The final breach came on a demand for counsellors in which parliament could confide, or, in other words, for counsellors other than Buckingham. Charles refused to sacrifice his favourite, believing that to allow ministerial responsibility to grow up would end by making the crown subservient to parliaments, and dissolved parliament on 12 Aug.

That the executive government of the crown was not subject to parliamentary control was a maxim which Charles and his father had received from their Tudor predecessors. Even if Charles had been willing to admit that this maxim might be set aside in case of his own misconduct, he would have argued that the misconduct was now all on the side of the commons. He did not see that his own change of front in the matter of the catholics exposed him to suspicion, or that the failure of Mansfeld's expedition was in any way the fault of himself or of his minister.

Two other circumstances concurred to make the commons suspicious. Charles had lent some ships to the French king, which were to be used against the protestants of Rochelle, and it was not known at the time that he had done his best, by means of an elaborate intrigue, to prevent them being used for that purpose [see Pennington, Sir John]. The other cause of the estramgement of the commons was of a more important character. A reaction against the prevalent Calvinism, which was in reality based upon a recurrence to the tone of thought of those of the reformers who had lived under the influence of the renaissance, had made itself felt at the universities, and consequently among the clergy. The laity were slower to feel the impulse, which in itself was in the direction of freer thought, and the House of Commons sent for Richard Montagu, who had written two books which had denied the Calvinistic dogmas to be those of the church of England. Charles, who shared in Montagu's belief, was unwise enough to bid the commons abstain from meddling with Montagu, not on the ground that liberty was good, but on the ground that Montagu was a royal chaplain, a position which was only conferred on him to give Charles an excuse for protecting him [see Montagu, Richard]. The question of ministerial responsibility was thus raised in the church as well as in the state.

In dissolving parliament Charles had no thought of doing without parliaments, but he hoped to be in a position when the next one met to be financially independent of them, and to prove by a great success that he and Buckingham were competent to carry on war. Scraping together a certain sum of money by means of privy seal loans, a means of obtaining temporary assistance which had been used by Elizabeth, he sent out an expedition to Cadiz under Sir Edward Cecil [see Cecil, Sir Edward, Viscount Wimbledon], and despatched Buckingham to Holland to raise money by pawning the crown jewels. The expedition proved a complete failure, and Buckingham returned without being able to obtain more than a very small sum.

Another scheme of Charles was equally unsuccessful. When his second parliament met on 6 Feb. 1626, it appeared that he had made all the chief speakers of the opposition sheriffs in order to make it impossible for them to appear at Westminster. Sir John Eliot [see Eliot, Sir John], however, took the lead of the commons, and after a strict inquiry into Buckingham's conduct, the commons proceeded to the impeachment of the favourite. In the course of the struggle other disputes cropped up. Charles sent the Earl of Arundel to the Tower [see Howard, Thomas, Earl of Arundel] for an offence connected with the marriage of his son, and was obliged to set him at liberty by the insistence of the peers, who claimed the attendance of each member of their own house on his parliamentary duties. In the same way he was compelled to allow the Earl of Bristol, whom he had attempted to exclude from parliament, to take his seat, and as Bristol brought charges against Buckingham, he sent his attorney-general to retaliate by accusing him before the lords of misconduct as ambassador during Charles's visit to Madrid [see Digby, John, Earl of Bristol]. He was also brought into collision with the commons. He was so indignant at language used by Eliot and Digges, as managers of Buckingham's impeachment, that he sent them both to the Tower, only to find himself necessitated to release them, as the commons refused to sit till their members were at liberty, and he was too anxious for subsidies to carry on the war to be content with a cessation of business.

On 9 June Charles told the commons that if they would not grant supply he must 'use other resolutions.' The commons replied by a remonstrance calling for the dismissal of Buckingham, and as the lords showed signs of sympathy with the attack on Buckingham, Charles dissolved his second parliament on 16 June. The quarrel was defined even more clearly than in the first parliament. The commons claimed to refuse supply if the executive government were conducted by ministers in whom they had no confidence, while Charles held that he was the sole judge of the fitness of his ministers for their work, and that to refuse supply when the exigencies of the state required it was factious conduct which could not be tolerated.

As soon as the commons had disappeared from the scene, the king ordered that Buckingham's case should be tried in the Star-chamber. The parliamentary managers refusing to prosecute, the affair ended in an acquittal, which convinced no one of its justice. In his straits for money Charles proposed to ask the freeholders to give him the five subsidies which the House of Commons had named in a resolution, though no bill had been passed to give effect to that resolution. Upon the refusal of the freeholders he ordered a levy of ship from the shires along the coast, and in this way got together a fleet which was sent out under Lord Willoughby, and which was so shattered by a storm in the Bay of Biscay that it was unable to accomplish anything [see Bertie, Robert, Earl of Lindsey].

Charles's need of money was the greater as he was drifting into a quarrel with France. His breach of the promise made to the king of France to protect the English catholics had led to quarrels between himself and his wife, and at last Charles lost patience when he heard, perhaps in an exaggerated form, a story that the queen had offered prayers in the neighbourhood of Tyburn to the catholics who had been there executed as traitors. He laid the blame upon the French attendants, whom he accused of perverting his wife from her duty to himself, and on 31 July, after a violent scene with the queen, had them all turned out of Whitehall. On 8 Aug. they were embarked for France [see Henrietta Marie, Queen of England]. Louis XIII complained of this proceeding as being, as indeed it was, an infraction of the marriage treaty. Another ground of quarrel was the seizure by English ships of war of French vessels charged with carrying contraband goods for the use of the Spanish possessions in the Netherlands, which was especially resented by the French, as Charles claimed to intervene in the dispute between Louis and his revolted protestant subjects [see Carleton, Dudley, Viscount Dorchester].

While hostilities with France were impending in addition to the existing war with Spain, fresh calls for money arose in Germany. Charles had engaged to pay 30,000l. a month to his uncle, Christian IV, king of Denmark; and as the payment was stopped soon after the promise was made, Christian, having been defeated at Lutter on 17 Aug., complained bitterly that his defeat was owing to his nephew's failure to carry out his engagement. In September, accordingly, Charles ordered the levy of a forced loan equal to the five subsidies which he had failed to secure as a gift. At first the loan came in slowly, and to fortify his position Charles applied to the judges for an opinion in favour of the legality of the demand. Failing to obtain it he dismissed Chief-justice Crewe. To make the judges dependent, Charles thus deprived them of that moral authority which he would sorely need whenever he wished to quote their judgments on his own side. A considerable part of the loan was ultimately brought in, but not till the leading statesmen of the popular party had been imprisoned for refusing to pay. In this way it became possible to send Sir Charles Morgan with some regiments of foot to assist the king of Denmark.

In the meanwhile the war with France had broken out. Buckingham went at the head of a great expedition to the Isle of Ré to relieve Rochelle, which was being besieged by the army of Louis XIII. A siege of fort St. Martin proved longer than was expected, and Buckingham cried out for reinforcements. Charles urged on his ministers to gather men and money; but Buckingham's unpopularity was so great that but little could be done. Before the reinforcements could reach Ré, Buckingham had been defeated, and had been obliged to abandon the island. On 11 Nov. he landed at Plymouth.

Charles was resolved to go on with the war. The king of France, he told the Venetian ambassador, 'is determined to destroy Rochelle, and I am to support, it; for I will never allow my word to be forfeited.' After all kinds of devices for getting money—including a levy of ship-money and the enforcement of an excise—had been discussed and abandoned, Charles's third parliament met on 17 March 1628. Charles had previously ordered the enlargement of those who had been prisoners on account of their refusal to pay the loan, after the court of king's bench had declined to liberate on bail five of the number who had applied to it for protection.

The commons found a leader in Sir Thomas Wentworth, and under Wentworth's guidance a bill was brought in to secure the liberties of the subject [see Wentworth, Thomas, Earl of Strafford]. It proposed to abolish Charles's claim to compel householders to receive soldiers billeted on them, to raise loans or taxes without consent of parliament, or to commit a man to prison by his own order without giving an opportunity to the judges to bail him. Into the events of the past year there was to be no inquiry. On the points of billeting and loans Charles was ready to give way; but he stood firm on the point of imprisonment, all the more because he had reason to think that the House of Lords was in his favour.

The question was one on which something at least might be said on Charles's side. From time to time dangers occur which the operation of the law is insufficient to meet. A widespread conspiracy or a foreign invasion threatens the nation at large, and it becomes of more importance to struggle against the enemy than to maintain the existing safeguards of individual liberty. In our own day parliament provides for such cases by refusing, to prisoners in certain cases the right of suing out a writ of habeas corpus, or by passing a bill of indemnity in favour of a minister who, when parliament was not sitting, had in some great emergency overstepped the law. The crown had in the Tudor times been tacitly allowed frequently to judge when the law was to be suspended by imprisoning without showing cause, a course which made a writ of habeas corpus inoperative, as no charge could be shown in the gaoler's return, and consequently the court of king's bench was powerless to act.

Wentworth's intervention was therefore thrust aside by Charles. The king was ready to confirm Magna Charta and other old statutes, and to promise to 'maintain all his subjects in the just freedom their persons an safety of their estates, according to the laws and estates of the realm,’ but he would not bind himself absolutely by a new law. The result was that Wentworth withdrew from the position which he had taken up, and that, the bill proposed by him having been dropped, the petition of right was brought in, including all the demands of Wentworth’s bill, with an additional one relating to the execution of martial law. Its form was far more offensive to Charles than the hill had been, as it declared plainly that that which had been done by his orders had been done in defiance of existing law, and required that the law should be kept, not altered.

Charles argued that cases might occur above the capacity of the judges, involving, in short, questions of policy rather than of law, and he offered never again to imprison any one for refusing to lend him money. His offence had been too recent to dispose the commons to listen to this overture, and all attempts to modify the petition having failed, it passed both houses on 28 May. Charles was the more anxious to find a way of escape, as an expedition sent to the relief of Rochelle had failed to effect anything; and he was bent on following it up by a larger expedition, which it was impossible to despatch without the subsidies which the commons would only pass on his giving assent, to the petition. The mode in which he attempted to escape was characteristic. He tried to maintain his prerogative, while leaving the commons under the impression that he had abandoned it. Having obtained from the judges an opinion that, even if he assented to the petition, he could still in some cases imprison without showing cause, he then gave an answer to parliament so studiously vague as to give no satisfaction, and then, finding the commons were violently exasperated, gave his consent on 7 June in the ordinary form, though doubtless with the mental reservation that in the terms of the opinion of the judges he was not precluded, in times of necessity, from doing what, according to the latest meaning of the petition, he had acknowledged to be illegal.

Charles got his subsidies; but the commons proceeded with a remonstrance against his government, and especially against the countenance given by him to Buckingham. A still more serious dispute arose out of his rejection of a proposal by the commons to grant him tonnage and poundage for one year only, probably in order to get them to discuss with him the whole question of his right to levy customs without a parliamentary grant. Upon this the commons asserted that if any such Charles right existed he had abandoned it in the petition of right. To this very questionable argument Charles replied that he could not do without tonnage and poundage, and that the abandonment of those duties was ‘never intended by’ the house ‘to ask, never meant, I am sure, by me to grant.' On 26 June he prorogued parliament. The assassination of Buckingham and the failure of the new expedition to Ré quickly followed. Charles never again gave his complete confidence to any one.

The king hoped in the next session to obtain a parliamentary settlement of the dispute about tonnage and poundage. Such a settlement was, however, rendered more difficult by the irritation caused by the seizure of goods for non-payment of those duties. When parliament met in 1629, the commons were also irritated by the line which Charles had taken on the church questions of the day. Not only had he favored the growth of a certain amount of ceremonialism in churches, but he had recently issued a declaration, which was prefixed to a new edition of the articles, in which he directed the clergy to keep silence on the disputes which had arisen with the supporters of Calvinistic or Arminian doctrines. The commons wished Arminian touching to be absolutely suppressed, and their exasperation with the king’s policy in this matter made it more difficult for him to come to terms with them on the subject of tonnage and poundage. Under Eliot’s Leadership they resolved to question Charles's agents, and, on a message from the king commanding them to adjourn, the speaker was violently held down in his chair, and resolutions were passed declaring that the preachers of Arminian doctrines and those who levied or paid tonnage and poundage were enemies of the country. Charles dissolved parliament, and for eleven years ruled without one.

The quarrel between Charles and the House of Commons was practically a question of sovereignty. There had been at first grave differences of opinion between them on the subject of Buckingham’s competence and the management of the war, and subsequently on Charles’s opposition to popular Calvinism in the church. The instrument by means of which each side hoped to get power into its own hands was tonnage and poundage. Without it Charles would soon be a bankrupt. With it he might hope to free himself from the necessity of submitting to the commons. The old idea of government resting upon harmony between the king and parliament had broken down, and the constitution must he modified either in the direction of absolutism or in the direction of popular control.

Many members of the house who had shared in the disturbance were imprisoned. Charles' indignation was against Eliot, who led the attack upon Buckingham as well as opposition to the king. Charles personally interfered to settle the mode of proceeding, and when Eliot with Rolles and Valentine were imprisoned in the kings bench, upon their refusal to pay the fine to which they were sentenced, Charles practically hastened Eliot's end by leaving him in an unhealthy cell in the Tower after he was attacked by consumption.

For a long time Charles's main difficulty was financial. In 1629 he made peace with France, and in 1630 with Spain. He enforced the payment of tonnage and poundage, and he considerable sum by demanding money from those who had omitted to apply for knighthood being in possession of 40l. a year, a proceeding which, if liable to many objections, was at least legal. In this way he nearly made both ends meet, his revenue in 1635 being in round numbers 618,000l., while his expenditure was 636,000l. A deficit of 18,000l. might easily be met from temporary sources, but the financial position thus created by Charles would not allow him to play an important part in foreign politics. Yet Charles with that fatuous belief in his own importance which attended him through life, imagined that he would gain the object which he aimed at, the restoration of the Palatinate first to his brother-in-law Frederick, and after Frederick's death to his nephew, Charles Louis, by offering his worthless alliance sometimes to the emperor and the king of Spain, sometimes to the king of France or to Gustavus Adolphus. From none of these potentates did he ever receive more than verbal assurances of friendship. No one would undergo a sacrifice to help a man who was unable to help himself.

The discredit into which Charles fell with foreign powers might ultimately be injurious to him; but France and Spain were too much occupied with their own quarrels to make it likely that he would be exposed to immediate danger in consequence of anything that they were likely to do. The offence which he was giving by his ecclesiastical policy at home was much more perilous. The church problem of his day was indeed much more complex than either he or his opponents were aware. As a result of the struggle against the papal power, backed by the king of Spain, a Calvinistic creed, combined with a dislike of any ceremonial which bore the slightest resemblance to the forms of worship prevailing in the Roman church, had obtained a strong hold upon religious Englishmen, Then had come a reaction in favour of a broader religious thought, combined with a certain amount of ceremonialism; a reaction which was in the main a return to the old lines of the culture of the renaissance, and which, so far from being really reactionary, was in the way of progress towards the intellectual and scientific achievements which marked the close of the century.

Mediation between the two schools of thought could only be successfully achieved by conciliating that part of the population which is sufficiently intelligent to take interest in matters of the mind, hut which is not inclined to admit the absolute predominance of thorough partisans on either side. To do this it would be necessary to sympathise with the better side of the new school, with its dislike of dogmatism and its intellectual reasonableness, While refusing at least to lend it help in establishing a ceremonial uniformity by compulsion. Unhappily Charles's sympathies were in the wrong direction. He was not a man of thought to be attracted by intellectual force. He was a man of cultivated æsthetic perceptions, loving music and painting and the drama, but as a connoisseur not as an artist. He could tell when he saw a picture who the painter was, he could suggest an incident to be the centre of a dramatic plot, but he could not paint a picture or write a play. In his own life he instinctively turned to that which was orderly and decorous. He had never been unfaithful to his wife, even in the days when there had been no love between the married pair, and after Buckingham's death his affection for Henrietta Maria was that of a warm and tender lover, Such a man was certain to share Laud’s view of the true way of dealing with church controversies—so different from that of Bacon—and, having thought to settle theological disputes by enjoining silence on both parties, to endeavour to reach unity by the enforcement of uniformity in obedience to church law without considering the shock which his action would cause in a generation habituated to its disuse.

For some time his efforts in this direction were crowned only by partial success. In 1633 Laud became archbishop of Canterbury, and by the close of 1637, when Laud's metropolitical visitation came to an end, the ceremonial of the church had been reduced to the ideal which Charles had accepted from Laud, with the result of driving the mass of moderate protestants into the arms of the puritans [see Laud, William].

At the same time that Charles was alienating so many religious men, he was giving offence to thousands who cared for the maintenance of the laws and customs which guarded property from irresponsible taxation. In 1634 he took alarm at the growing strength of the French navy, which, in combination with the Dutch, might easily overwhelm any fleet which he was himself able to send out, and, in pursuance of a suggestion of Attorney-general Noy, he commanded the issue of writs to the port towns, directing them to supply ships for service at sea. The ships, however, were required to be larger than any of the port towns, except London, had at their disposal, and Charles therefore expressed his willingness to commute the obligation for a money payment which was practically a tax. While he gave out that the vessels were wanted for the defence of the realm against pirates and enemies, he was negotiating a secret treaty with Spain, the object of which was the employment of the fleet in a combined war against the Dutch.

In 1635 the ship-money writs were extended to the inland counties. The negotiation with Spain had broken down, and Charles was now eager to use his new fleet to enforce his claim to the sovereignty of the seas, and to force even war vessels of other nations to dip their flags on passing a ship of his navy in the seas round Great Britain. He also attempted, with small success, to levy a tax from the Dutch herring boats for permission to fish in the sea between England and their own coasts.

Gradually resistance to the payment of ship-money spread, and in December 1635 Charles consulted the judges. Ten out of the twelve replied that ‘when the good and safety of the kingdom in general is concerned,' and the whole kingdom in danger — of which his majesty is the only judge — then the charge of the defence ought to be borne by all the kingdom in general.' Charles was always apt to rely on the letter rather than on the spirit of the law, and he forgot that after he had dismissed Chief-justice Crewe, &c. in 1626 for disagreeing with him about the forced loan, suspended Chief-baron Walter in 1627 for disagreeing with him about the mode of dealing with the accused members of parliament, and Chief-justice Heath in 1634 for disagreeing with him about the church, he could hardly expect his subjects to believe that the judges were altogether influenced by personal considerations when they decided in favour of the crown.

Ship-money writs continued to be issued every year, and in February 1637 Charles obtained a fresh and more deliberate answer of the judges in support of his claim. Finding that resistance continued, he gladly consented to have the question of his rights discussed before the exchequer chamber in Hampden's case, and when judgment was given in 1638 in his favour he treated the question as settled without regard to the impression made on public opinion by the speeches of Hampden's counsel [see Hampden, John].

In other ways Charles's government had given dissatisfaction. Many monopolies had been granted to companies, by which subterfuge the Monopoly Act of 1624 had been evaded. Inquiry had been made into the rights of persons possessing land which had once formed part of a royal forest, enormous fines inflicted, and though these fines, like the majority of the fines in the Star-chamber, were usually either forgiven or much reduced when payment was demanded, the whole proceeding created an amount of irritation which told heavily against the court.

By this time Laud's metropolitical visitation had increased its growing opposition, and even greater distrust of Charles had been engendered by the welcome accorded by Charles to Panzani, who arrived in 1634 as papal agent at the queen's court, and who was busy with a futile attempt to reconcile the church of England with the see of Rome. Panzani was present when Charles paid a formal visit to Oxford in 1636. Con, who succeeded him, dropped the scheme for the union of the churches, and devoted himself to the conversion of gentlemen, and more successfully of ladies of quality. In 1637 even Charles took alarm, though he loved to chat with Con over points of literature and theology, and proposed to issue a proclamation ordering the enforcement of the law against those who effected conversions. The queen, however, pleaded the cause of her fellow-catholics, and Charles, unable to withstand his wife's entreaties, gave way and issued his proclamation in so modified a form as no longer to cause alarm among the catholics themselves. With more wisdom he gave his patronage to Chillingworth's great work, 'The Religion of Protestants.'

Unluckily for Charles, the favour accorded to Panzani and Con only served to bring out into stronger light the hard measure which was dealt out to puritans, to which fresh attention had been drawn by the execution of a cruel Star-chamber sentence on 30 June 1637 upon Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton.

Great as was the offence which Charles was giving in England, he was giving greater offence in Scotland. In 1633, when he visited Edinburgh in order to be crowned, he had created distrust among the nobles by an arrangement for the commutation of the tithes which, though just in itself, alarmed them as being possibly a precursor of an attempt to resume the confiscated church property which was in their hands. It was all the more necessary for Charles to avoid irritating the religious sentiment of the Scottish people, which had abandoned any active opposition against the episcopacy introduced by James, but had retained an ineradicable aversion to anything like the ceremonial of the English church. Yet Charles chose to be crowned on 18 June by five bishops in ‘white rochets and sleeves, and copes of gold having blue silk to their feet,' and to deck the communion table 'after the manner of an altar, having behind it a rich tapestry, wherein the crucifix was curiously wrought.’

From that moment Charles lost the hearts of the Scottish people. The nobles, quick to seize their opportunity, opposed him in the parliament which followed the coronation, and it was only by his personal intervention that he secured a majority for the bills which he was anxious to see passed into law. His first act after returning to England was to order the general use of the surplice by Scottish ministers, and though the order could not be enforced its issue told heavily against Charles. To the nobles he gave fresh offence by making Archbishop Spotiswood chancellor of Scotland, and by giving seats in the privy council to other bishops.

For some time certain Scottish bishops, referring from time to time to Laud and Wren, had by Charles's orders been busily preparing a new prayer-book for Scotland. In 1636 its issue was frustrated by the issue of a ‘Book of Canons,' and in October 1636 Charles commanded the use of the prayer-book. It was not till May 1637 that it reached Scotland, and it was to be first used on 23 July at St. Giles's in Edinburgh. The Scots had had time to make up their minds that the book was probably popish and certainly English, and the nobles, for their own reasons, stirred most the flame of popular discontent. A riot in St. Giles's, followed by an almost complete unanimity of feeling in Scotland against the new book, rendered its adoption impossible.

Charles did not know, as Elizabeth had known, how to withdraw from an untenable position, and the position in which he had now arrived was one from which even Elizabeth could hardly have withdrawn with dignity. If Charles were to give way in Scotland, he could hardly avoid giving way in England. His government in both countries was supported by the prestige of ancient rights in defiance of popular feeling, and if popular feeling was to have its way in one country it would soon have its way in the other. On 10 Sept. he directed the enforcement of his order for the use of the prayer-book. Fresh riots broke out at Edinburgh. The opponents of the prayer-book formed four committees, usually known as the ‘tables,’ to represent their case, and the 'tables' practically became the informal government of Scotland.

Charles did his best to explain his intentions, but Scotland wanted the absolute withdrawal of the obnoxious book, and at the end of February 1638 the national covenant, binding all who adopted it to resist any attack on their religion to the death, was produced in Edinburgh and eagerly signed. For some months copies of the covenant were scattered over the country and accepted with enthusiasm.

Charles knew that the movement was directed against himself. In May he offered not to press the canons and the service book except in 'a fair and legal way;' but at the same time he asked for the absolute abandonment of the covenant. He sent the Marquis of Hamilton to Scotland to mediate, and by his advice he drew back step after step till he at last agreed to let the prayer-book drop, and to summon an assembly to meet to settle matters of religion.

The assembly met at Glasgow on 21 Nov. and proceeded to summon the bishops before it for judgment. On 28 Nov. Hamilton dissolved the assembly. In spite of the dissolution it continued to sit, deposed the bishops, and re-established presbyterianism. Charles maintained that he had a right to dissolve assemblies and parliaments, and to refuse his assent to their acts. The constitutional rights of the crown thus came into collision with the determinate will of the nation.

Only an army could enforce obedience in Scotland, and Charles had no money to pay an English army for any length of time. Yet he hoped by calling out trained bands, especially in the northern counties, which were hostile to the Scots, and by asking for a voluntary contribution to support them, to have force on his side long enough to beat down a resistance which he underestimated. On 27 Feb. 1639 he issued a proclamation declaring the religion of Scotland to be safe in his hands, and asserting that the Scots were aiming at the destruction of monarchical government.

On 30 March Charles arrived at York to appeal to arms, believing that he had to deal with the nobility alone, and that if he could reach the Scottish people he would find them loyally responsive. He issued a proclamation offering a reduction of 50 per cent. to all tenants who took his side against rebels. He could not even get his proclamation read in Scotland, except at Dunse, where he sent the Earl of Arundel with an armed force to read it. On 28 May he arrived at Berwick, and on 5 June the Scottish army occupied Dunse Law. His own troops were undisciplined, and money began to run short. On 18 June he signed the treaty of Berwick, knowing that if he persisted in war his army would break up for want of pay. A general assembly was to meet to settle ecclesiastical affairs, and a parliament to settle political affairs.

Before long the king and the Scots were as much estranged as ever; differences of opinion arose as to the intention of the treaty. The assembly abolished episcopacy, and when the parliament wished to confirm this resolution, as well as to revolutionise its own internal constitution, Charles fell back on his right to refuse consent to bills. He was now under the influence of Wentworth, whom he created Earl of Strafford, and he resolved to call an English parliament, and to ask for means to enable him to make war effectually upon Scotland. The discovery of an attempt made by the Scottish leaders to open negotiations with the king of France led him to hope that the national English feeling would be touched. In the meanwhile the English privy councillors offered him a loan which would enable him at least to gather an army without parliamentary aid.

On 13 April 1640 the Short parliament, as it has been called, was opened. Under Pym’s leadership it showed itself disposed to ask for redress of grievances as a condition of a grant of supply, and it subsequently refused to give money unless peace were made with the Scots [see Pym, John]. On 5 May Charles dissolved parliament, and, getting money by irregular means, proceeded to push on the war. That Strafford had obtained a grant from the Irish parliament, and had levied an Irish army, terrified and exasperated Englishmen, who believed that this army would be used in England to crush their liberties. The army gathered in England was mutinous and unwarlike. The Scots knew that the opinion in England was in their favour, and they had already entered into communication with the parliamentary leaders. On 20 Aug. they crossed the Tweed, defeated part of the royal army at Newburn on 28th, and soon afterwards occupied Newcastle and Durham. Charles’s money was by this time almost exhausted, and he was obliged to summon the English peers to meet him in a great council at York, as there was no time to get together a full parliament.

The great council met on 24 Sept. It at once insisted on opening negotiations with the Scots, and sent some of its members to London to obtain a loan to support the army during the progress of the treaty. Charles had now agreed to summon another parliament, and the negotiations opened at Ripon were adjourned to London.

On 3 Nov. the Long parliament met, full of a strong belief that both the ecclesiastical and the political system of Charles needed to be entirely changed. They began by inquiring into Strafford's conduct in Ireland, and Charles, listening to Strafford, thought of anticipating the blow by accusing the parliamentary leaders of treasonable relations with the Scots. The secret was betrayed, and Strafford impeached and thrown into the Tower. Laud quickly followed, and other officials only saved themselves by flight. Deprived of his ablest advisers, Charles was left to his own vacillating counsels, except so far as he was from time to time spurred on to action by the unwise impetuosity of his wife. She had already in November applied to Rome for money to bribe the parliamentary leaders. Later on a further application was made for money to enable Charles to recover his authority. Charles was probably informed of these schemes. He saw chaos before him in the impending dissolution of the only system which he understood, and he was at least willing to open his ears to any chance of escape, however hazardous. As he never understood that it was destructive to seek for the support of mutually irreconcilable forces, he began, while playing with the idea of accepting aid from the pope, to play with the idea of accepting aid from the Prince of Orange, to be bought by a marriage between his own eldest daughter Mary and the prince's eldest son.

On 23 Jan. 1641 Charles offered to the parliament his concurrence in removing innovations in the church, but he refused to deprive the bishops of their seats in the House of Lords, or to assent to a triennial bill making the meeting of parliament every three years compulsory. On 15 Feb. he gave his assent to the Triennial Bill, and on the 19th he admitted a number of the opposition lords to the council, hoping thereby to win votes in Strafford's trial. At that trial, which began on 22 March, Charles was present. His best policy was to seek the support of the peers, who were naturally disinclined to enlarge the doctrines of treason, and to win general favour by a scrupulous abandonment of the merest suggestion of an appeal to force. Charles weakly listened to all kinds of schemes, probably without absolutely adopting any, especially to a scheme for obtaining a petition from the army in the north in favour of his policy, and to another scheme for bringing that army to London. Of some of these projects Pym received intelligence, and Strafford's impeachment, ultimately carried on under the form of a bill of attainder, was pushed on more vigorously than ever. The most telling charge against Strafford was that he had intended to bring an Irish army to England, and that army, which was still on foot, Charles refused to disband. On 1 May he pleaded with the lords to spare Strafford's life, while rendering him incapable of holding office. On the following day, the day of his daughter's marriage to Prince William of Orange, he made an attempt to get military possession of the Tower. An appeal to constitutional propriety and an appeal to force at the same time were irreconcilable with one another. Wilder rumours were abroad, and Pym on the 5th revealed his knowledge of the army plot. All hesitation among the peers ceased, and the Attainder Bill was passed. On 10 May, under the stress of fear lest the mob which was raging round Whitehall should imperil the life of the queen, Charles signed a commission for giving his assent to the bill.

On the same day Charles agreed to a bill taking from him his right to dissolve the actual parliament without its own consent. Parliament at once proceeded to abolish those courts which had formed a special defence of the Tudor monarchy, and completed the Scottish treaty by which the two armies were to be disbanded. As another act made the payment of customs and duties illegal without consent of parliament, Charles was now reduced to rule in accordance with the decisions of the law courts and the will of parliament, unless he had recourse to force. Unhappily for him, he could not take up the position thus offered him, or contentedly become a cipher where he had once ruled authoritatively. On 10 Aug. he set out for Scotland, hoping by conceding everything on which the Scottish nation had set its heart to win its armed support in England.

Charles perhaps felt the more justified in the course which he was taking as new questions were rising above the parliamentary horizon. The House of Commons was more puritan than the nation, and as early as in February 1641 two parties had developed themselves, one of them striving for the abolition of episcopacy, and for a thorough change in the prayer-book, if not for its entire abandonment; the other for church reform which should render a renewal of the Laudian system impossible for the future. The latter was headed by Bishop Williams, and was strongly supported by the House of Lords. Charles's one chance of regaining authority was in placing himself in harmony with this reforming movement. Charles was an intriguer, but he was not a hypocrite, and as he had no sympathy with any plan such as Williams was likely to sketch out, he did not feign to have it. The want of the king's support was fatal to the project, and many who might have ranged themselves with Williams came to the conclusion that, unless the days of Laud were to return, the government of the church must be taken out of the hands of Charles. Hence a bill for the abolition of episcopacy was being pushed on in the House of Commons, the bishops having been, and being likely to be, the nominees of the crown.

Any one but Charles would have recognised the uselessness of attempting to save the English bishops by an appeal to the presbyterian Scots. Charles was indeed welcomed at Edinburgh, where he listened to presbyterian sermons, but he soon discovered that the Scots would neither abate a jot of their own pretensions nor lend him aid to recover his lost ground in England. His dissatisfaction encouraged persons about him, more unscrupulous than himself, to form a plot for seizing, and even, in case of resistance, for murdering, Argyll, Hamilton, and Lanark, the leaders of the opposition; and when this plot, usually known as ‘The Incident,’ was discovered, Charles found himself suspected of contriving a murder.

Shortly after the discovery of the Incident the Ulster massacre took place, and Charles, who appears to have intrigued with the Irish catholic lords for military assistance in return for concessions made to them, was suspected of connivance with the rebellion in the north.

Such suspicions, based as they were on a succession of intrigues, made it difficult for Charles to obtain acceptance for any definite policy. Yet, while he was still in Scotland, he adopted a line of action which gave him a considerable party in England, and which, if he could have inspired trust in his capacity to treat the question of the day in a conciliatory spirit, might have enabled him to rally the nation round him. He announced his resolution to maintain the discipline and doctrine of the church as established by Elizabeth and James, and if he could have added to this, as he soon afterwards added, an expression of a desire to find a mode of satisfying those who wished for some amount of latitude within its pale, he would be in a good position to command a large following. Unhappily for him, the Incident and the Irish rebellion made it unlikely that he would be trusted, and the answer of the parliamentary leaders was the ‘Grand Remonstrance,’ in which he was asked to concede the appointment of ministers acceptable to both houses of parliament, and the gathering of an assembly of divines to be named by parliament that it might recommend a measure of church reform. The former demand was rendered necessary by the fact that an army would soon have to he sent to Ireland, and that the parliamentary majority would not trust the king with its control, lest it should be used against themselves when the war was over. The second might easily lead to a system of ecclesiastical repression as severe as that of Laud, and when Charles, in a declaration published by him soon afterwards (Husband, Collection of Remonstrances, &c., p. 24), announced himself ready, if exception was taken to certain ceremonies, ‘to comply with the advice of’ his ‘parliament, that some law may be made for the exemption of tender consciences from punishment or prosecution for such ceremonies,' he might, if he had been other than he was, have anticipated the legislation of William and Mary. To the end of his life, however, though he constantly reiterated this offer, he never took the initiative in carrying the proposal into effect.

There can he little doubt that, emboldened by his reception in the city on 25 Nov., when he returned from Scotland, Charles, was already contemplating an appeal to law which was hardly distinguished from an appeal to force. When, at the end of December, a mob appeared at Westminster to terrorise the peers, he seems to have wavered between this plan and an attempt to rest upon the constitutional support of a minority or the commons and a majority of the lords. It was a step in the latter direction that on 2 Jan. 1642 he named to office Culpepper, and Falkland, leading members of the episcopalian-royalist party which had for some time been formed in the commons; but on the following day the attorney-general by his orders impeached five members of the lower house and one member of the upper. On the 4th he came in person with a rout of armed followers to the house of Commons to arrest the five who sat in that house. He did not succeed in securing them, but his attempt sharpened all the suspicions abroad and renders an agreement on the larger questions practically impossible. The city too up the cause of the members, and Charles, finding that force was against him, left Whitehall on 10 Jan. never to return till he came back to die.

The next seven months were occupied by manoeuvres between king and parliament to gain possession of the military forces of the kingdom and to place themselves legally in the right before the nation. On 22 Aug. Charles raised his standard at Nottingham, and the civil war began, After an attempt at negotiation the king removed to Shrewsbury, and on 12 Oct. marched upon London, and, after fighting on the 23rd the indecisive battle of Edgehill, occupied Oxford and pushed as far as Brentford. On 13 Nov. he drew back without combating a parlimentary force drawn up on Turnham Green. He thought that the work of suppressing the enemy should be left to the following summer.

In the campaign of 1643 an attempt was made by Charles, perhaps at the suggestion of his general, the Earl of Forth, to carry out a strategic conception which, if it had been successful, would have put an end to the war. He was himself with his main army to hold Oxford, and if possible Reading while the Earl of Newcastle was to advance from the north and Hopton from the west, to seize respectively the north and south banks of the Thames below London, so as to destroy the commerce of the great city which formed the main strength of his adversaries. In the summer of 1643, after the victories of Adwalton Moor (30 June) and Roundway Down (13 July), the plan seemed in a fair way to succeed, but the Yorkshiremen who followed Newcastle and the Cornishmen who followed Hopton were drawn back by their desire of checking the governors of Hull and Plymouth, and when Charles was left with an insufficient force to march unsupported upon London, he had perhaps no choice but to undertake the siege of Gloucester. After the relief of Gloucester by Essex, he fought the first battle of Newbury, in which he failed to hinder the return of Essex to London. A later attempt to push Hopton with a fresh army through Sussex and Kent to the south of the Thames was frustrated by the defeat of that army at Cheriton on 29 March 1644, while Newcastle was battled by the arrival of a Scottish army in the north as the allies of the English parliament, in consequence of the acceptance by the latter body of the solemn league and covenant.

During this campaign Charles had divided his attention between military affairs and political intrigue. On 1 Feb. propositions or peace were carried to the king at Oxford, and a negotiation was opened which came to nothing, because neither party would admit of anything but complete surrender on the part of the other. Charles followed up the failure of negotiation by an attempt to provoke an insurrection in London in his favour; but his most cherished scheme was one for procuring the assistance of the English army in Ireland by bringing about a cessation of the war there, and eventually of securing the aid of a body of ten thousand Irish Celts. The cessation was agreed to on 15 Sept. 1643, and several English regiments were shipped from Ireland for service in England. The native Irish were not to be had as yet.

The campaign of 1644 was conducted upon a different plan from that of 1643. This time, instead of converging upon London, the royalist armies were to make full use of their central position at Oxford. Sending Rupert to assist Newcastle to defeat the Scots and their English allies, Charles was to remain on the defensive, unless he was able to throw himself alternatively on the armies of Essex and Waller, which were for the moment combined against him, but which might at any time rate, as their commanders were known not to be on good terms with one another. If Rupert had been a good tactician, the plan might have succeeded, but he suffered himself to be overwhelmed—principally by the conduct of Cromwell—at Marston Moor, on 2 July; and though Charles inflicted a check on Waller at Cropredy Bridge on 29 June, and subsequently compelled the surrender of Essex’s infantry at Lostwithiel on 2 Sept., his wish to avoid unnecessary bloodshed prevented him from insisting, as he might easily have done, upon more than the delivery of the arms and stores of the force which he had overpowered. He had consequently to meet the arm of Essex again in combination with that of Waller and Manchester, at the second battle of Newbury, on 27 Oct. Night came on as he was getting the worst, but he slipped away under cover of the darkness, and suceeded in revictualling Donnington Castle and Basing House, so that when he entered Oxford on 23 Nov. he had baffled all the efforts of his adversaries, so far as his own part of the campaign was concerned.

The negotiations at Uxbridge, which were carried on in January and February 1645, failed from the same causes as those which had produced the failure of the negotiations at Oxford in 1643. Charles's real efforts were thrown into an attempt to check the advance of the Scots by procuring money and arms, and if possible an army from the Duke of Lorraine, and by inducing the Irish to lend him the ten thousand men of whom mention has already been made. The Irish would, however, only grant the soldiers on condition of the concession of the independence of the Irish parliament, and of the Roman catholic church in Ireland, and though Charles was prepared to go a very long way to meet them, he refused to comply with the whole of their demands. All the external aid which he was able to command was that of a small body of Irish and of Scottish highlanders under Montrose, which won astonishing victories in the north of Scotland. In the meanwhile the parliamentary army had been remodelled, and against the new model, filled with religious enthusiasm and submitting to the strictest discipline, Charles dashed himself at Naseby on 14 June, to meet only with a disastrous overthrow.

The defeat at Naseby was decisive. For some months parliamentary victories were won over royalist detachments, and royalist fortresses stormed or reduced by famine. Charles never was in a position to fight a pitched battle again. All sober men on his own side longed for peace. Charles fancied that to submit would be to betray God’s cause as well as his own. ‘I confess,' he wrote to Rupert on 3 Aug., ‘that, speaking either as to mere soldier or statesman, I must say there is no probability but of my ruin; but as a christian, I must tell you that God will not suffer rebels to prosper, or his cause to be overthrown, and whatsoever personal punishment it shall please them to inflict upon me must not make me repine, much less to give over this quarrel, which, by the grace of God, I am resolved against, whatsoever it cost me; for I know my obligations to be both in conscience and honour neither to abandon God's cause, injure my successors, nor forsake my friends.'

There would have been something approaching to the sublime in Charles's refusal to recognise a settlement which he honestly believed to be abhorrent to God, if only he had been content to possess his soul in patience. During that winter and the following summer he plunged from one intrigue into another. No help in whatever quarter came amiss to him, and while the queen was pleading for a foreign army to be levied, with the help of the queen regent of France he was himself negotiating through Ormonde for ten thousand Irish Celts. Whether he actually authorised the notorious Glamorgan treaty or not [see Herbert, Edward, of Worcester], the authenticated negotiation carried on by the lord-lieutenant of Ireland was quite sufficient to ruin Charles (Carte MSS. Bodleian Library). Letters, bringing to light his secret negotiations with foreign courts, had come into the possession of the parliamentary army at Naseby, and now a copy of the Glamorgan treaty fell into the hands of his enemies, with the result of shocking the public opinion of the day even more than it had been shocked before. Then, too, he proposed to treat with the parliament at Westminstsr, not because he expected them to grant his demands, but because he expected prresbyterians and independents to fall out, and so to help him to his own. While he was treating wit them he informed the queen that he would grant toleration to the catholics ‘if the pope and they will visibly and heartily engage themselves for the re-establishment of the church of England and my crown’ (Charles to the Queen, 12 March 1646, Charles I in 1646, Camd. Soc.), by which means he hoped ‘to suppress the presbyterian and independant factions.’ There was no coherence in those projects, and, like all incoherent aims, they were certain to clash one with the other.

Oxford, however, was soon too hard pressed for Charles to remain there, and though he had resolved never to grant more to the presbyterians than at the utmost a toleration, he at last, having on l3 April recorded and placed in the hands of Gilbert Sheldon a vow to restore to the church all lay impropriations held by the crown if he ever recovered his right (Clarendon MS. 2170), delivered himself on 5 May to the Scottish army at Newark. On 13 May, guarded by the Scottish army, he arrived at Newcastle.

Charles had hoped that his coming would lead to a national Scottish combination in his favour in which Montrose, who had been defeating one presbyterian arm after the other, might be inclu ed. He found the Scots wanted him to take the covenant. Charles had to do his best by such diplomatic skill as he had at command to spin out time by appearing to be desirous o peace, while resolute not to grant the terms offered to him. Some time was taken up by an epistolary discussion between himself and Alexander Henderson on the respective merits of episcopacy and presbyterianism. In vain the queen and the Scots who were politically loyal to Charles, such as Sir Robert Moray (Hamilton Papers, Camd. Soc.), urged him to ahandon episcopacy. He remained constant, though the defeat of Montrose at Philipbaugh on 3 Sept. deprived him of his last chance of armed assistance. On 4 Dec. he went so far as to suggest to his friends that he might accept presbyterianism with toleration for three years, but added that if the Scots would support his claims to temporal power, he would expunge the demand for toleration. His friends told him that the Scots wanted a permanent, not a temporary, establishment of presbyterianism, and on 20 Dec. he dropped the whole proposal, merely asking to come to London to carry on n personal negotiation.

Charles had imagined that he was playing with all parties, while in reality he had provoked all parties to come to nn understanding with one another behind his back. The Scottish parliament resolved that as he had not taken the covenant he was not wanted in Scotland, while the English parliamant appointed him a residence at Holmby House. On 30 Jan. 1647 the Scottish army marched homewards from Newcastle, receiving shortly afterwards the first installment due to them by England for their services. Charles was left behind with a party of English commissioners who had been appointed to conduct him to the residence assumed to him.

At Holmby House Charles waswell treated. He read much; his favourite books were Andrewes's ‘Sermons,' Hooker`s ‘Ecclesiastical Polity’ Shakesppeare, Spenser, Herbert, and translations of Tasso and Arioato. Before long he had the satisfaction of hearing that the independent army was falling out with the presbyterian parliament, and Just before this quarrel reached its crisis he lent in an answer to the parliamentary rorposal sent to him at Newcastle, in which lilo offered to resign the command of the militia for ten years, and to agree to the establishment of presbyterianiam for three years, permission being granted to himself and his giizusehold to use the Book of Common Prayer. He was to he allowed to name twenty divine: to sit in the Westminster Assembly to take part in the negotiations for a final settlement of church affairs. Nothing was said about tolerstion for tender consciences, an omission which shows that tha frequent offers of Charles during the civil war to make this concession merely proceeded from a sense that it was expedient to make them, and not from any conviction that they were good things in themselves.

On the morning of 3 June, before Charles could receive an answer to his proposal, a certain Cornet Joyce arrived at Holmby House with a ‘party of horse. In the evening he informed the king that he had authority from the army to carry him off. On the 4th, Charles, apparently fully satisfied, rode off with him. For some time he moved about from house to house, taking ug his abode at Hampton Court on 24 Aug. In the meanwhile the army had taken military possession of London, and had made itself master of the parliament.

Charles had already been requested to give his consent to a document drawn up by the chief officers of the army and known as ‘Heads of Proposals.' These proposals, if accepted, would have transformed the old monarchy into a constitutional monarchy, somewhat after the fashion of 1689, and would have put an end to the religious difficulty by abolishing ‘all coercive power, authority, and jurisdiction of bishops, and all other ecclesiastical officers whatsoever, extending to any civil penalties upon any.’ Neither the prayer-book nor the covenant was to be enforced.

It is intelligible that Charles should not have been prepared to accede to so wise a settlement; but at least he might have been expected not to make the overtures of the army counters in intrigue. He had at first rejected them, but on 9 Sept., having been asked by the parliament—which in spite of the domination of the army retained its presbyterian sentiments—to accept a presbyterian government, he answered that he preferred to that to adopt the proposals of the army. All that he got by this move was to weaken the hold of the army upon the parliament, and the result was that on 2 Nov. the houses came to an understanding that presbyterianism should be established, with toleration for tender consciences, but with no toleration for those who wished to use the Book of Common Prayer. Charles, if he had been wise, would have closed even now with Cromwell and the army. All he thought of was to try to win over the army leaders by offers of peerages and places. Whether Cromwell actually intercepted a letter from Charles to the queen informing her that he meant to hang him as soon as he had made use of him, may be doubted, but it is quite clear that Cromwell was not the man to be played with. The army and the parliament came to an understanding, and on 10 Nov. drew up new proposals in concert. On the 11th the king escaped from Hampton Court, making his way to the Isle of Wight, where he seems to have expected that Colonel Hammond, the governor of Carisbrooke Castle, would protect him, and perhaps contrive his escape to France if it should prove necessary. Hammond, however, was faithful to his trust, and Charles became a resident, and before long a prisoner in the castle.

Upon this the houses embodied their own proposals in four bills. To these bills, on 28 Dec., Charles refused his assent, and on 3 Jan. 1648 the commons resolved that they would not again address the king, a resolution which on the 15th was accepted by the lords.

At last it seemed likely that Charles would find supporters. The Scots had long been dissatisfied with the behaviour of the English parliament towards them, and on 26 Dec. their commissioners in England signed with Charles a secret treaty in which they engaged to send an army to replace him on the throne on condition that he would establish presbyterianism in England for three years and put down the sects. The result of this treaty, the engagement as it was called, was the second civil war. The invading army of the Scots was backed by the English cavaliers, and in part at least by the English presbyterians. Fairfax and Cromwell, however, disposed of all the enemies of the army, and by the beginning of September Charles was left unaided to face the angry soldiers.

At first, indeed, it seemed as if the second civil war would go for nothing. On 18 Sept. a fresh negotiation with Charles—the treaty of Newport—was opened by parliamentary commissioners. Charles would neither close with his adversaries nor break with them. His only object was to spin out time. By the end of October the houses, anxious as they were for a settlement, discovered, what they might have known before, that Charles was resolved not to abandon episcopacy. He had fresh hopes of aid from Ireland and the continent. ‘Though you will hear,’ he had written to Ormonde, ‘that this treaty is near, or at least most likely to be concluded, yet believe it not, but pursue the way you are in with all possible vigour; deliver also that my command to all your friends, but not in public way.’

The army at least was weary of constant talk which led to nothing but uncertainty. In a remonstrance adopted by a council of the officers on 16 Nov. it demanded ‘that the capital and grand author of our troubles, the person of the king, by whose commissions, commands, or procurement, and in whose behalf and for whose interest only, of will and power, all our wars and troubles have been, with all the miseries attending them, may be speedily brought to justice for the treason, blood, and mischief he is therein guilty of.’

The complaint against Charles was true, but it was not the whole truth. Charles, ill-judged and irritating as his mode of action was, did nevertheless in making his stand upon episcopacy represent the religious convictions of a large portion of his subjects. Moreover, the demand of the army shocked all who reverenced law, or, in other words, who wished to see general rules laid down, and any attempt to infringe them punished after they had been openly promulgated, and not before. To depose Charles was one thing; to execute him was another. In hurrying on to the latter action the army only exposed the radical injustice of its proceeding by the self-deception with which it clothed an act of violence with informal forms of law. Charles was removed from Carisbrooke, and on 1 Dec. lodged in Hurst Castle. On the 6th members of the House of Commons too favourable to the king were excluded from parliament by Pride's purge. On 17 Dec. Charles was removed from Hurst Castle and brought to Windsor, where he arrived on 23 Dec. On 1 Jan. the commons who were left behind after Pride's purge resolved that he had committed treason by levying war 'against the parliament and kingdom of England,' and on 4 Jan. they resolved that it was unnecessary for the being of a law to have the consent of the king or of the House of Lords. On the 6th they passed a law by their own sole authority for the establishment of a high court of justice for the king's trial. On 19 Jan. Charles was brought to St. James's Palace, and on the 20th he was led to Westminster Hall to be tried. He refused to plead or to acknowledge the legality of the court [see Bradshaw, John, 1602–1659], and on the 27th was condemned to death (on questions arising out of the death-warrant, see two communications of Sir. Thoms to Notes and Queries of 6 and 13 July 1872, and the letters of Mr. R. Palgrave in the Athenæum of 22 Jan., 5 and 26 Feb. 1881). Not only was the sentence technically illegal, but on the grounds alleged it was substantially unjust. The civil war was neither a levy of arms by the king against the parliament, nor by the parliament against the king. It had been a conflict between one section of the kingdom and the other, Yet those who put Charles to death believed that they were in reality executing justice on a traitor. On 30 Jan. he was executed in front of Whitehall, His own conception of government was expressed in the speech which he delivered on the scaffold: 'For the people,' he said; 'and truly I desire their liberty and freedom as much as anybody whosoever; but I must tell you that their liberty and freedom consists in buying of government those laws by which their life and their goods that be most their own. It is not having share in government, sirs; that is nothing pertaining to them,'

S. R. G.

CHARLES I. (1600–1649), king of Great Britain and Ireland, second son of James I. and Anne of Denmark, was born at Dunfermline on the 19th of November 1600. At his baptism he was created duke of Albany, and on the 16th of January 1605 duke of York. In 1612, by the death of his elder brother Henry, he became heir-apparent, and was created prince of Wales on the 3rd of November 1616. In 1620 he took up warmly the cause of his sister the queen of Bohemia, and in 1621 he defended Bacon, using his influence to prevent the chancellor’s degradation from the peerage. The prince’s marriage with the infanta Maria, daughter of Philip III. of Spain, had been for some time the subject of negotiation, James desiring to obtain through Spanish support the restitution of his son-in-law, Frederick, to the Palatinate; and in 1623 Charles was persuaded by Buckingham, who now obtained a complete ascendancy over him in opposition to wiser advisers and the king’s own wishes, to make a secret expedition himself to Spain, put an end to all formalities, and bring home his mistress himself: “a gallant and brave thing for his Highness.” “Steenie” and “Baby Charles,” as James called them, started on the 17th of February, arriving at Paris on the 21st and at Madrid on the 7th of March, where they assumed the unromantic names of Mr Smith, and Mr Brown. They found the Spanish court by no means enthusiastic for the marriage^[1] and the princess herself averse. The prince’s immediate conversion was expected, and a complete religious tolerance for the Roman Catholics in England demanded. James engaged to allow the infanta the right of public worship and to use his influence to modify the law, but Charles himself went much further. He promised the alteration of the penal laws within three years, conceded the education of the children to the mother till the age of twelve, and undertook to listen to the infanta’s priests in matters of religion, signing the marriage contract on the 25th of July 1623. The Spanish, however, did not trust to words, and Charles was informed that his wife could only follow him to England when these promises were executed. Moreover, they had no intention whatever of aiding the Protestant Frederick. Meanwhile Buckingham, incensed at the failure of the expedition, had quarrelled with the grandees, and Charles left Madrid, landing at Portsmouth on the 5th of October, to the joy of the people, to whom the proposed alliance was odious. He now with Buckingham urged James to make war on Spain, and in December 1624 signed a marriage treaty with Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henry IV. of France. In April Charles had declared solemnly to the parliament that in case of his marriage to a Roman Catholic princess no concessions should be granted to recusants, but these were in September 1624 deliberately promised by James and Charles in a secret article, the first instance of the duplicity and deception practised by Charles in dealing with the parliament and the nation. The French on their side promised to assist in Mansfeld’s expedition for the recovery of the Palatinate, but Louis in October refused to allow the men to pass through France; and the army, without pay or provisions, dwindled away in Holland to nothing.

On the 27th of March 1625 Charles I. succeeded to the throne by the death of his father, and on the 1st of May he was married by proxy to Henrietta Maria. He received her at Canterbury on the 13th of June, and on the 18th his first parliament assembled. On the day of his marriage Charles had given directions that the prosecutions of the Roman Catholics should cease, but he now declared his intention of enforcing the laws against them, and demanded subsidies for carrying on the war against Spain. The Commons, however, responded coldly. Charles had lent ships to Louis XIII. to be used against the Protestants at La Rochelle, and the Commons were not aware of the subterfuges and fictitious delays intended to prevent their employment. The Protestant feelings of the Commons were also aroused by the king’s support of the royal chaplain, Richard Montagu, who had repudiated Calvinistic doctrine. They only voted small sums, and sent up a petition on the state of religion and reflecting upon Buckingham, whom they deemed responsible for the failure of Mansfeld’s expedition, at the same time demanding counsellors in whom they could trust. Parliament was accordingly dissolved by Charles on the 12th of August. He hoped that greater success abroad would persuade the Commons to be more generous. On the 8th of September 1625 he made the treaty of Southampton with the Dutch against Spain, and sent an expedition to Cadiz under Sir Edward Cecil, which, however, was a failure. In order to make himself independent of parliament he attempted to raise money on the crown jewels in Holland, and to diminish the opposition in the Commons he excluded the chief leaders by appointing them sheriffs. When the second parliament met, however, on the 6th of February 1626, the opposition, led by Sir John Eliot, was more determined than before, and their attack was concentrated upon Buckingham. On the 29th of March, Charles, calling the Commons into his presence, accused them of leading him into the war and of taking advantage of his difficulties to “make their own game.” “I pray you not to be deceived,” he said, “it is not a parliamentary way, nor ’tis not a way to deal with a king. Remember that parliaments are altogether in my power for their calling, sitting, and dissolution; therefore as I find the fruits of them good or evil, they are to continue or not to be.” Charles, however, was worsted in several collisions with the two houses, with a consequent loss of influence. He was obliged by the peers to set at liberty Thomas Howard, earl of Arundel, whom he had put into the Tower, and to send a summons to the earl of Bristol, whom he had attempted to exclude from parliament, while the Commons compelled him, with a threat of doing no business, to liberate Eliot and Digges, the managers of Buckingham’s impeachment, whom he had imprisoned. Finally in June the Commons answered Charles’s demand for money by a remonstrance asking for Buckingham’s dismissal, which they decided must precede the grant of supply. They claimed responsible ministers, while Charles considered himself the executive and the sole and unfettered judge of the necessities of the state. Accordingly on the 15th Charles dissolved the parliament.

The king was now in great need of money. He was at war with Spain and had promised to pay £30,000 a month to Christian IV. of Denmark in support of the Protestant campaign in Germany. To these necessities was now added a war with France. Charles had never kept his promise concerning the recusants; disputes arose in consequence with his wife, and on the 31st of July 1626 he ordered all her French attendants to be expelled from Whitehall and sent back to France. At the same time several French ships carrying contraband goods to the Spanish Netherlands were seized by English warships. On the 27th of June 1627 Buckingham with a large expedition sailed to the Isle of Ré to relieve La Rochelle, then besieged by the forces of Louis XIII. Though the success of the French Protestants was an object much desired in England, Buckingham’s unpopularity prevented support being given to the expedition, and the duke returned to Plymouth on the 11th of November completely defeated. Meanwhile Charles had endeavoured to get the money refused to him by parliament by means of a forced loan, dismissing Chief Justice Crewe for declining to support its legality, and imprisoning several of the leaders of the opposition for refusing to subscribe to it. These summary measures, however, only brought a small sum into the treasury. On the 2nd of January 1628 Charles ordered the release of all the persons imprisoned, and on the 17th of March summoned his third parliament.

Instead of relieving the king’s necessities the Commons immediately proceeded to discuss the constitutional position and to formulate the Petition of Right, forbidding taxation without consent of parliament, arbitrary and illegal imprisonment, compulsory billeting in private houses, and martial law. Charles, on the 1st of May, first demanded that they should “rest on his royal word and promise.” He obtained an opinion from the judges that the acceptance of the petition would not absolutely preclude in certain cases imprisonments without showing cause, and after a futile endeavour to avoid an acceptance by returning an ambiguous answer which only exasperated the Commons, he gave his consent on the 7th of June in the full and usual form. Charles now obtained his subsidies, but no real settlement was reached, and his relations with the parliament remained as unfriendly as before. They proceeded to remonstrate against his government and against his support of Buckingham, and denied his right to tonnage and poundage. Accordingly, on the 26th of June they were prorogued. New disasters befell Charles, in the assassination of Buckingham and in the failure of the fresh expedition sent to Ré. In January 1629 the parliament reassembled, irritated by the exaction of the duties and seizure of goods during the interval, and suspicious of “innovations in religion,” the king having forbidden the clergy to continue the controversy concerning Calvinistic and Arminian doctrines, the latter of which the parliament desired to suppress. While they were discussing these matters, on the 2nd of March 1629, the king ordered them to adjourn, but amidst a scene of great excitement the speaker, Sir John Finch, was held down in his chair and the doors were locked, whilst resolutions against innovations in religion and declaring those who levied or paid tonnage and poundage enemies to their country were passed. Parliament was immediately dissolved, and Charles imprisoned nine members, leaders of the opposition, Eliot, Holles, Strode, Selden, Valentine, Coryton, Heyman, Hobart and Long, his vengeance being especially shown in the case of Eliot, the most formidable of his opponents, who died in the Tower of consumption after long years of close and unhealthy confinement, and whose corpse even Charles refused to give up to his family.

For eleven years Charles ruled without parliaments and with some success. There seemed no reason to think that “that noise,” to use Laud’s expression concerning parliaments, would ever be heard again by those then living. A revenue of about £618,000 was obtained by enforcing the payment of tonnage and poundage, and while avoiding the taxes, loans, and benevolences forbidden by the petition of right, by monopolies, fines for knighthood, and for pretended encroachments on the royal domains and forests, which enabled the king to meet expenditure at home. In Ireland, Charles, in order to get money, had granted the Graces in 1628, conceding security of titles of more than sixty years’ standing, and a more moderate oath of allegiance for the Roman Catholics, together with the renunciation of the shilling fine for non-attendance at church. He continued, however, to make various attempts to get estates into his possession on the pretext of invalid title, and on the 12th of May 1635 the city of London estates were sequestered. Charles here destroyed one of the most valuable settlements in Ireland founded by James I. in the interests of national defence, and at the same time extinguished the historic loyalty of the city of London, which henceforth steadily favoured the parliamentary cause. In 1633 Wentworth had been sent to Ireland to establish a medieval monarchy and get money, and his success in organization seemed great enough to justify the attempt to extend the system to England. Charles at the same time restricted his foreign policy to scarcely more than a wish for the recovery of the Palatinate, to further which he engaged in a series of numerous and mutually destructive negotiations with Gustavus Adolphus and with Spain, finally making peace with Spain on the 5th of November 1630, an agreement which was followed on the 2nd of January 1631 by a further secret treaty, the two kings binding themselves to make war on the Dutch and partition their territories. A notable feature of this agreement was that while in Charles’s portion Roman Catholicism was to be tolerated, there was no guarantee for the security of Protestantism in the territory to be ceded to Spain.

In 1634 Charles levied ship-money from the seaport towns for the increase of the navy, and in 1635 the tax was extended to the inland counties, which aroused considerable opposition. In February 1637 Charles obtained an opinion in favour of his claims from the judges, and in 1638 the great Hampden case was decided in his favour. The apparent success, however, of Charles was imperilled by the general and growing resentment aroused by his exactions and whole policy, and this again was small compared with the fears excited by the king’s attitude towards religion and Protestantism. He supported zealously Laud’s rigid Anglican orthodoxy, his compulsory introduction of unwelcome ritual, and his narrow, intolerant and despotic policy, which was marked by several savage prosecutions and sentences in the Star Chamber, drove numbers of moderate Protestants out of the Church into Presbyterianism, and created an intense feeling of hostility to the government throughout the country. Charles further increased the popular fears on the subject of religion by his welcome given to Panzani, the pope’s agent, in 1634, who endeavoured unsuccessfully to reconcile the two churches, and afterwards to George Conn, papal agent at the court of Henrietta Maria, while the favour shown by the king to these was contrasted with the severe sentences passed upon the Puritans.

The same imprudent neglect of the national sentiment was pursued in Scotland. Charles had already made powerful enemies there by a declaration announcing the arbitrary revocation of former church estates to the crown. On the 18th of June 1633 he was crowned at Edinburgh with full Anglican ceremonial, which lost him the hearts of numbers of his Scottish subjects and aroused hostility to his government in parliament. After his return to England he gave further offence by ordering the use of the surplice, by his appointment of Archbishop Spotiswood as chancellor of Scotland, and by introducing other bishops into the privy council. In 1636 the new Book of Canons was issued by the king’s authority, ordering the communion table to be placed at the east end, enjoining confession, and declaring excommunicate any who should presume to attack the new prayer-book. The latter was ordered to be used on the 18th of October 1636, but it did not arrive in Scotland till May 1637. It was intensely disliked both as “popish” and as English. A riot followed its first use in St Giles’ cathedral on the 23rd of July, and Charles’s order to enforce it on the 10th of September was met by fresh disturbances and by the establishment of the “Tables,” national committees which now became the real though informal government of Scotland. In 1638 the national covenant was drawn up, binding those that signed it to defend their religion to the death, and was taken by large numbers with enthusiasm all over the country. Charles now drew back, promised to enforce the canons and prayer-book only in a “fair and legal way,” and sent the marquis of Hamilton as a mediator. The latter, however, a weak and incapable man, desirous of popularity with all parties, and unfaithful to the king’s interests, yielded everything, without obtaining the return of Charles’s subjects to their allegiance. The assembly met at Glasgow on the 21st of November, and in spite of Hamilton’s opposition immediately proceeded to judge the bishops. On the 28th Hamilton dissolved it, but it continued to sit, deposed the bishops and re-established Presbyterianism. The rebellion had now begun, and an appeal to arms alone could decide the quarrel between Charles and his subjects. On the 28th of May 1639 he arrived at Berwick with a small and ill-trained force, thus beginning what is known as the first Bishops’ War; but being confronted by the Scottish army at Duns Law, he was compelled to sign the treaty of Berwick on the 18th of June, which provided for the disbandment of both armies and the restitution to the king of the royal castles, referring all questions to a general assembly and a parliament. When the assembly met it abolished episcopacy, but Charles, who on the 3rd of August had returned to Whitehall, refused his consent to this and to other measures proposed by the Scottish parliament. His extreme financial necessities, and the prospect of renewed hostilities with the Scots, now moved Charles, at the instigation of Strafford, who in September had left Ireland to become the king’s chief adviser, to turn again to parliament for assistance as the last resource, and on the 13th of April 1640 the Short Parliament assembled. But on its discussing grievances before granting supplies and finally refusing subsidies till peace was made with the Scots, it was dissolved on the 5th of May. Charles returned once more to measures of repression, and on the 10th imprisoned some of the London aldermen who refused to lend money. He prepared for war, scraping together what money he could and obtaining a grant through Strafford from Ireland. His position, however, was hopeless; his forces were totally undisciplined, and the Scots were supported by the parliamentary opposition in England. On the 20th of August the Scots crossed the Tweed, beginning the so-called second Bishops’ War, defeated the king’s army at Newburn on the 28th, and subsequently occupied Newcastle and Durham. Charles at this juncture, on the 24th of September, summoned a great council of the peers; and on the 21st of October a cessation of arms was agreed to by the treaty of Ripon, the Scots receiving £850 a day for the maintenance of the army, and further negotiations being transferred to London. On the 3rd of November the king summoned the Long Parliament.

Such was the final issue of Charles’s attempt to govern without parliaments—Scotland in triumphant rebellion, Ireland only waiting for a signal to rise, and in England the parliament revived with almost irresistible strength, in spite of the king, by the force of circumstances alone. At this great crisis, which would indeed have taxed the resolution and resource of the most cool-headed and sagacious statesman, Charles failed signally. Two alternative courses were open to him, either of which still offered good chances of success. He might have taken his stand on the ancient and undoubted prerogative of the crown, resisted all encroachments on the executive by the parliament by legal and constitutional means, which were probably ample, and in case of necessity have appealed to the loyalty of the nation to support him in arms; or he might have waived his rights, and, acknowledging the mistakes of his past administration, have united with the parliament and created once more that union of interests and sentiment of the monarchy with the nation which had made England so powerful. Charles, however, pretended to do both simultaneously or by turns, and therefore accomplished neither. The illegally imprisoned members of the last parliament, now smarting with the sense of their wrongs, were set free to stimulate the violence of the opposition to the king in the new assembly. Of Charles’s double statecraft, however, the series of incidents which terminated the career of the great Strafford form the most terrible example. Strafford had come to London in November, having been assured by Charles that he “should not suffer in his person, honour or fortune,” but was impeached and thrown into the Tower almost immediately. Charles took no steps to hinder the progress of the proceedings against him, but entered into schemes for saving him by bringing up an army to London, and this step exasperated Strafford’s enemies and added new zeal to the prosecution. On the 23rd of April, after the passing of the attainder by the Commons, he repeated to Strafford his former assurances of protection. On the 1st of May he appealed to the Lords to spare his life and be satisfied with rendering him incapable of holding office. On the 2nd he made an attempt to seize the Tower by force. On the 10th, yielding to the queen’s fears and to the mob surging round his palace, he signed his death-warrant. “If my own person only were in danger,” he declared to the council, “I would gladly venture it to save my Lord Strafford’s life; but seeing my wife, children, all my kingdom are concerned in it, I am forced to give way unto it.” On the 11th he sent to the peers a petition for Strafford’s life, the force of which was completely annulled by the strange postscript: “If he must die, it were a charity to reprieve him until Saturday.” This tragic surrender of his great and devoted servant left an indelible stain upon the king’s character, and he lived to repent it bitterly. One of his last admonitions to the prince of Wales was “never to give way to the punishment of any for their faithful service to the crown.” It was regarded by Charles as the cause of his own subsequent misfortunes, and on the scaffold the remembrance of it disturbed his own last moments. The surrender of Strafford was followed by another stupendous concession by Charles, the surrender of his right to dissolve the parliament without its own consent, and the parliament immediately proceeded, with Charles’s consent, to sweep away the star-chamber, high commission and other extra-legal courts, and all extra-parliamentary taxation. Charles, however, did not remain long or consistently in the yielding mood. In June 1641 he engaged in a second army plot for bringing up the forces to London, and on the 10th of August he set out for Scotland in order to obtain the Scottish army against the parliament in England; this plan was obviously doomed to failure and was interrupted by another appeal to force, the so-called Incident, at which Charles was suspected (in all probability unjustly) of having connived, consisting in an attempt to kidnap and murder Argyll, Hamilton and Lanark, with whom he was negotiating. Charles had also apparently been intriguing with Irish Roman Catholic lords for military help in return for concessions, and he was suspected of complicity in the Irish rebellion which now broke out. He left Scotland more discredited than ever, having by his concessions made, to use Hyde’s words, “a perfect deed of gift of that kingdom,” and without gaining any advantage.

Charles returned to London on the 25th of November 1641 and was immediately confronted by the Grand Remonstrance (passed on the 22nd), in which, after reciting the chief points of the king’s misgovernment, the parliament demanded the appointment of acceptable ministers and the constitution of an assembly of divines to settle the religious question. On the 2nd of January 1642 Charles gave office to the opposition members Colepeper and Falkland, and at the same time Hyde left the opposition party to serve the king. Charles promised to take no serious step without their advice. Nevertheless, entirely without their knowledge, through the influence of the queen whose impeachment was intended, Charles on the 4th made the rash and fatal attempt to seize with an armed force the five members of the Commons, Pym, Hampden, Holies, Hesilrige and Strode, whom, together with Mandeville (afterwards earl of Manchester) in the Lords, he had impeached of high treason. No English sovereign ever had (or has since that time) penetrated into the House of Commons. So complete and flagrant a violation of parliamentary liberties, and an appeal so crude and glaring to brute force, could only be justified by complete success; but the court plans had been betrayed, and were known to the offending members, who, by order of the House, had taken refuge in the city before the king’s arrival with the soldiers. Charles, on entering the House, found “the birds flown,” and returned baffled, having thrown away the last chance of a peaceful settlement (see Lenthall, William). The next day Charles was equally unsuccessful in obtaining their surrender in the city. “The king had the worst day in London yesterday,” wrote a spectator of the scene, “that ever he had, the people crying ‘privilege of parliament’ by thousands and prayed God to turn the heart of the king, shutting up their shops and standing at their doors with swords and halberds.”^[2] On the 10th, amidst general manifestations of hostility, Charles left Whitehall to prepare for war, destined never to return till he was brought back by his victorious enemies to die.

Several months followed spent in manoeuvres to obtain the control of the forces and in a paper war of controversy. On the 23rd of April Charles was refused entry into Hull, and on the 2nd of June the parliament sent to him the “Nineteen Propositions,” claiming the whole sovereignty and government for the parliament, including the choice of the ministers, the judges, and the control of the army, and the execution of the laws against the Roman Catholics. The military events of the war are described in the article Great Rebellion. On the 22nd of August the king set up his standard at Nottingham, and on the 23rd of October he fought the indecisive battle of Edgehill, occupying Oxford and advancing as far as Brentford. It seemed possible that the war might immediately be ended by Charles penetrating to the heart of the enemy’s position and occupying London, but he drew back on the 13th of November before the parliamentary force at Turnham Green, and avoided a decisive contest.

Next year (1643) another campaign, for surrounding instead of penetrating into London, was projected. Newcastle and Hopton were to advance from the north and west, seize the north and south banks of the river below the city, destroy its commerce, and combine with Charles at Oxford. The royalist force, however, in spite of victories at Adwalton Moor (June 30th) and Roundway Down (July 13th), did not succeed in combining with Charles, Newcastle in the north being kept back by the Eastern Association and the presence of the enemy at Hull, and Hopton in the west being detained by their successful holding out at Plymouth. Being too weak to attempt anything alone against London, Charles marched to besiege Gloucester, Essex following him and relieving the place. Subsequently the rival forces fought the indecisive first battle of Newbury, and Charles failed in preventing the return of Essex to London. Meanwhile on the 1st of February the parliament had submitted proposals to Charles at Oxford, but the negotiations came to nothing, and Charles’s unwise attempt at the same time to stir up a rising in his favour in the city, known as Waller’s Plot, injured his cause considerably. He once more turned for help to Ireland, where the cessation of the campaign against the rebels was agreed upon on the 15th of September 1643, and several English regiments became thereby available for employment by the king in England. Charles also accepted the proposal for bringing over 2000 Irish. On the 22nd of January 1644 the king opened the rival parliament at Oxford.

The campaign of 1644 began far less favourably for Charles than the two last, principally owing to the alliance now made between the Scots and the parliament, the parliament taking the Solemn League and Covenant on the 25th of September 1643, and the Scottish army crossing the border on the 19th of January 1644. No attempt was this year made against London, and Rupert was sent to Newcastle’s succour in the north, where the great disaster of Marston Moor on the 2nd of July ruined Charles’s last chances in that quarter. Meanwhile Charles himself had defeated Waller at Cropredy Bridge on the 29th of June, and he subsequently followed Essex to the west, compelling the surrender of Essex’s infantry at Lostwithiel on the 2nd of September. With an ill-timed leniency he allowed the men to go free after giving up their stores and arms, and on his return towards Oxford he was confronted again by Essex’s army at Newbury, combined now with that of Waller and of Manchester. Charles owed his escape here from complete annihilation only to Manchester’s unwillingness to inflict a total defeat, and he was allowed to get away with his artillery to Oxford and to revictual Donnington Castle and Basing House.

The negotiations carried on at Uxbridge during January and February 1645 failed to secure a settlement, and on the 14th of June the crushing defeat of the king’s forces by the new model army at Naseby practically ended the civil war. Charles, however, refused to make peace on Rupert’s advice, and considered it a point of honour “neither to abandon God’s cause, injure my successors, nor forsake my friends.” His chief hope was to join Montrose in Scotland, but his march north was prevented by the parliamentary forces, and on the 24th of September he witnessed from the walls of Chester the rout of his followers at Rowton Heath. He now entered into a series of intrigues, mutually destructive, which, becoming known to the different parties, exasperated all and diminished still further the king’s credit. One proposal was the levy of a foreign force to reduce the kingdom; another, the supply through the marquis of Ormonde of 10,000 Irish. Correspondence relating to these schemes, fatally compromising as they were if Charles hoped ever to rule England again, was discovered by his enemies, including the Glamorgan treaty, which went much further than the instructions to Ormonde, but of which the full responsibility has never been really traced to Charles, who on the 29th of January 1646 disavowed his agent’s proceedings. He simultaneously treated with the parliament, and promised toleration to the Roman Catholics if they and the pope would aid in the restoration of the monarchy and the church. Nor was this all. The parliamentary forces had been closing round Oxford. On the 27th of April the king left the city, and on the 5th of May gave himself up to the Scottish army at Newark, arriving on the 13th with them at Newcastle. On the 13th of July the parliament sent to Charles the “Newcastle Propositions,” which included the extreme demands of Charles’s acceptance of the Covenants, the abolition of episcopacy and establishment of Presbyterianism, severer laws against the Roman Catholics and parliamentary control of the forces, with the withdrawal of the Irish Cessation, and a long list of royalists to be exempted from pardon. Charles returned no definite answer for several months. He imagined that he might now find support in Scottish royalism, encouraged by Montrose’s series of brilliant victories, but these hopes were destroyed by the latter’s defeat at Philiphaugh on the 3rd of September. The Scots insisted on the Covenant and on the permanent establishment of Presbyterianism, while Charles would only consent to a temporary maintenance for three years. Accordingly the Scots, in return for the payment of part of their army arrears by the parliament, marched home on the 30th of January 1647, leaving Charles behind, who under the care of the parliamentary commissioners was conducted to Holmby House. Thence on the 12th of May he sent his answer to the Newcastle Propositions, offering the militia to the parliament for ten years and the establishment of Presbyterianism for three, while a final settlement on religion was to be reached through an assembly of twenty divines at Westminster. But in the midst of the negotiation with the parliament Charles’s person was seized, on the 3rd of June 1647, by Cornet Joyce under instructions of the army, which soon afterwards occupied London and overpowered the parliament, placing Charles at Hampton Court.

If Charles could have remained firm to either one or the other faction, and have made concessions either to Presbyterianism or on the subject of the militia, he might even now have prevailed. But he had learned nothing by experience, and continued at this juncture his characteristic policy of intrigue and double-dealing, “playing his game,” to use his own words, negotiating with both parties at once, not with the object or wish to arrive at a settlement with either, but to augment their disputes, gain time and profit ultimately by their divisions. The “Heads of the Proposals,” submitted to Charles by the army on the 28th of July 1647, were terms conceived on a basis far broader and more statesmanlike than the Newcastle Propositions, and such as Charles might well have accepted. The proposals on religion anticipated the Toleration Act of 1689. There was no mention of episcopacy, and its existence was thereby indirectly admitted, but complete religious freedom for all Protestant denominations was provided, and the power of the church to inflict civil penalties abolished, while it was also suggested that dangers from Roman Catholics and Jesuits might be avoided by means other than enforcing attendance at church. The parliament was to dissolve itself and be succeeded by biennial assemblies elected on a reformed franchise, not to be dissolved without their own consent before 120 days, and not to sit more than 240 days in the two years. A council of state was to conduct the foreign policy of the state and conclude peace and war subject to the approval of parliament, and to control the militia for ten years, the commanders being appointed by parliament, as also the officers of state for ten years. No peer created since May the 21st, 1642, was to sit in parliament without consent of both Houses, and the judicial decisions of the House of Lords were to be ratified by the Commons. Only five persons were excepted from amnesty, but royalists were not to hold office for five years and not to sit in the Commons till the end of the second biennial parliament. Proposals for a series of reforms were also added. Charles, however, was at the same time negotiating with Lauderdale for an invasion of England by the Scots, and imagined he could win over Cromwell and Fairfax by “proffers of advantage to themselves.” The precious opportunity was therefore allowed to slip by. On the 9th of September he rejected the proposals of the parliament for the establishment of Presbyterianism. His hopes of gaining advantages by playing upon the differences of his opponents proved a complete failure. Fresh terms were drawn up by the army and parliament together on the 10th of November, but before these could be presented, Charles, on the 11th, had escaped to Carisbrooke Castle in the Isle of Wight. Thence on the 16th he sent a message offering Presbyterianism for three years and the militia for his lifetime to the parliament, but insisting on the maintenance of episcopacy. On the 28th of December he refused his assent to the Four Bills, which demanded the militia for parliament for twenty years and practically for ever, annulled the honours recently granted by the king and his declarations against the Houses, and gave to parliament the right to adjourn to any place it wished. On the 3rd of January 1648 the Commons agreed to a resolution to address the king no further, in which they were joined by the Lords on the 15th.

Charles had meanwhile taken a further fatal step which brought about his total destruction. On the 26th of December 1647 he had signed at Carisbrooke with the Scottish commissioners the secret treaty called the “Engagement,” whereby the Scots undertook to invade England on his behalf and restore him to the throne on condition of the establishment of Presbyterianism for three years and the suppression of the sectarians. In consequence the second civil war broke out and the Scots invaded England under Hamilton. The royalist risings in England were soon suppressed, and Cromwell gained an easy and decisive victory over the Scots at Preston. Charles was now left alone to face his enemies, with the whole tale of his intrigues and deceptions unmasked and exposed. The last intrigue with the Scots was the most unpardonable in the eyes of his contemporaries, no less wicked and monstrous than his design to conquer England by the Irish soldiers; “a more prodigious treason,” said Cromwell, “than any that had been perfected before; because the former quarrel was that Englishmen might rule over one another; this to vassalize us to a foreign nation.” Cromwell, who up to this point had shown himself foremost in supporting the negotiations with the king, now spoke of the treaty of Newport, which he found the parliament in the act of negotiating on his return from Scotland, as “this ruining hypocritical agreement.” Charles had engaged in these negotiations only to gain time and find opportunity to escape. “The great concession I made this day,” he wrote on the 7th of October, “was made merely in order to my escape.” At the beginning he had stipulated that no concession from him should be valid unless an agreement were reached upon every point. He had now consented to most of the demands of the parliament, including the repudiation of the Irish Cessation, the surrender of the delinquents and the cession of the militia for twenty years, and of the offices of state to parliament, but remained firm in his refusal to abolish episcopacy, consenting only to Presbyterianism for three years. Charles’s devotion to the church is undoubted. In April 1646, before his flight from Oxford, inspired perhaps by superstitious fears as to the origin of his misfortunes, he had delivered to Sheldon, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, a written vow (now in the library of St Paul’s cathedral) to restore all church lands held by the crown on his restoration to the throne; and almost his last injunction to the prince of Wales was that of fidelity to the national church. His present firmness, however, in its support was caused probably less by his devotion to it than by his desire to secure the failure of the whole treaty, and his attempts to escape naturally weakened the chances of success. Cromwell now supported the petitions of the army against the treaty. On the 16th of November the council of officers demanded the trial of the king, “the capital and grand author of our troubles,” and on the 27th of November the parliamentary commissioners returned from Newport without having secured Charles’s consent. Charles was removed to Hurst Castle on the 1st of December, where he remained till the 19th, thence being taken to Windsor, where he arrived on the 23rd. On the 6th “Pride’s Purge” had removed from the Commons all those who might show any favour to the king. On the 25th a last attempt by the council of officers to come to terms with him was repulsed. On the 1st of January the remnant of the Commons resolved that Charles was guilty of treason by “levying war against the parliament and kingdom of England”; on the 4th they declared their own power to make laws without the lords or the sovereign, and on the 6th established a “high court of justice” to try the king. On the 19th Charles was brought to St James’s Palace, and on the next day his trial began in Westminster Hall, without the assistance of any of the judges, who all refused to take part in the proceedings. He laughed aloud at hearing himself called a traitor, and immediately demanded by what authority he was tried. He had been in treaty with the parliament in the Isle of Wight and taken thence by force; he saw no lords present. He was told by Bradshaw, the president of the court, that he was tried by the authority of the people of England, who had elected him king; Charles making the obvious reply that he was king by inheritance and not by election, that England had been for more than 1000 years an hereditary kingdom, and Bradshaw cutting short the discussion by adjourning the court. On the 22nd Charles repeated his reasoning, adding, “It is not my case alone; it is the freedom and liberty of the people of England, and do you pretend what you will, I stand more for their liberties, for if power without law may make laws ... I do not know what subject he is in England that can be sure of his life or anything that he calls his own.” On the 23rd he again refused to plead. The court was adjourned, and there were several signs that the army in their prosecution of the king had not the nation at their back. While the soldiers had shouted “Justice! justice!” as the king passed through their ranks, the civilian spectators from the end of the hall had cried “God save the king!” There was considerable opposition and reluctance to proceed among the members of the court. On the 26th, however, the court decided unanimously upon his execution, and on the 27th Charles was brought into court for the last time to hear his sentence. His request to be heard before the Lords and Commons was rejected, and his attempts to answer the charges of the president were silenced. Sentence was pronounced, and the king was removed by the soldiers, uttering his last broken protest: “I am not suffered to speak. Expect what justice other people will have.”

In these last hours Charles, who was probably weary of life, showed a remarkable dignity and self-possession, and a firm resignation supported by religious faith and by the absolute conviction of his own innocence, which, says Burnet, “amazed all people and that so much the more because it was not natural to him. It was imputed to a very extraordinary measure of supernatural assistance . . . ; it was owing to something within himself that he went through so many indignities with so much true greatness without disorder or any sort of affectation.” Nothing in his life became Charles like the leaving it. “He nothing common did or mean Upon that memorable scene.” On the morning of the 29th of January he said his last sad farewell to his younger children, Elizabeth and Henry, duke of Gloucester. On the 30th at ten o’clock he walked across from St James’s to Whitehall, calling on his guard “in a pleasant manner” to walk apace, and at two he stepped upon the scaffold from a window, probably the middle one, of the Banqueting House (see Architecture, Plate VI., fig. 75). He was separated from the people by large ranks of soldiers, and his last speech only reached Juxon and those with him on the scaffold. He declared that he had desired the liberty and freedom of the people as much as any; “but I must tell you that their liberty and freedom consists in having government. . . . It is not their having a share in the government; that is nothing appertaining unto them. A subject and a sovereign are clean different things.” These, together with his declaration that he died a member of the Church of England, and the mysterious “Remember,” spoken to Juxon, were Charles’s last words. “It much discontents the citizens,” wrote a spectator; “ye manner of his deportment was very resolutely with some smiling countenances, intimating his willingness to be out of his troubles.”^[3] “The blow I saw given,” wrote another, Philip Henry, “and can truly say with a sad heart, at the instant whereof, I remember well, there was such a grone by the Thousands then present as I never heard before and desire I may never hear again. There was according to order one Troop immediately marching fromwards Charing-Cross to Westminster and another fromwards Westminster to Charing-Cross, purposely to masker” (i.e. to overpower) “the people and to disperse and scatter them, so that I had much adoe amongst the rest to escape home without hurt.”^[4]

Amidst such scenes of violence was at last effected the destruction of Charles. “It is lawful,” wrote Milton, “and hath been held so through all ages for any one who have the power to call to account a Tyrant or wicked King and after due conviction to depose and put him to death.”^[5] But here (it might well be contended) there had been no “due conviction.” The execution had been the act of the king’s personal enemies, of “only some fifty or sixty governing Englishmen with Oliver Cromwell in the midst of them” an act technically illegal, morally unjustifiable because the supposed crimes of Charles had been condoned by the later negotiations with him, and indefensible on the ground of public expediency, for the king’s death proved a far greater obstacle to the re-establishment of settled government than his life could have been. The result was an extraordinary revulsion of feeling in favour of Charles and the monarchy, in which the incidents of his misgovernment were completely forgotten. He soon became in the popular veneration a martyr and a saint. His fate was compared with the Crucifixion, and his trials and sufferings to those of the Saviour. Handkerchiefs dipped in his blood wrought “miracles,” and the Eikon Basilike, published on the day of his funeral, presented to the public a touching if not a genuine portrait of the unfortunate sovereign. At the Restoration the anniversary of his death was ordered to be kept as a day of fasting and humiliation, and the service appointed for use on the occasion was only removed from the prayer-book in 1859. The same conception of Charles as a martyr for religion appeals still to many, and has been stimulated by modern writers. “Had Charles been willing to abandon the church and give up episcopacy,” says Bishop Creighton, “he might have saved his throne and his life. But on this point Charles stood firm, for this he died and by dying saved it for the future.”^[6] Gladstone, Keble, Newman write in the same strain. “It was for the Church,” says Gladstone, “that Charles shed his blood upon the scaffold.”^[7] “I rest,” says Newman, “on the scenes of past years, from the Upper Room in Acts to the Court of Carisbrooke and Uxbridge.” The injustice and violence of the king’s death, however, the pathetic dignity of his last days, and the many noble traits in his character, cannot blind us to the real causes of his downfall and destruction, and a sober judgment cannot allow that Charles was really a martyr either for the church or for the popular liberties.

The constitutional struggle between the crown and parliament had not been initiated by Charles I. It was in full existence in the reign of James I., and distinct traces appear towards the latter part of that of Elizabeth. Charles, therefore, in some degree inherited a situation for which he was not responsible, nor can he be justly blamed, according to the ideas of kingship which then prevailed, for defending the prerogatives of the crown as precious and sacred personal possessions which it was his duty to hand down intact to his successors. Neither will his persistence in refusing to yield up the control of the executive to the parliament or the army, or his zeal in defending the national church, be altogether censured. In the event the parliament proved quite incapable of governing, an army uncontrolled by the sovereign was shown to constitute a more grievous tyranny than Charles’s most arbitrary rule, and the downfall of the church seen to make room only for a sectarian despotism as intolerable as the Laudian. The natural inference might be that both conceptions of government had much to support them, that they were bound sooner or later to come into collision, and that the actual individuals in the drama, including the king himself, were rather the victims of the greatness of events than real actors in the scene, still less the controllers of their own and the national destiny. A closer insight, however, shows that biographical more than abstract historical elements determined the actual course and issue of the Rebellion. The great constitutional and religious points of dispute between the king and parliament, though doubtless involving principles vital to the national interests, would not alone have sufficed to destroy Charles. Monarchy was too much venerated, was too deeply rooted in the national life, to be hastily and easily extirpated; the perils of removing the foundation of all government, law and order were too obvious not to be shunned at almost all costs. Still less can the crowning tragedy of the king’s death find its real explanation or justification in these disputes and antagonisms. The real cause was the complete discredit into which Charles had brought himself and the monarchy. The ordinary routine of daily life and of business cannot continue without some degree of mutual confidence between the individuals brought into contact, far less could relations be maintained by subjects with a king endowed with the enormous powers then attached to the kingship, and with whom agreements, promises, negotiations were merely subterfuges and prevarications. We have seen the series of unhappy falsehoods and deceptions which constituted Charles’s statecraft, beginning with the fraud concerning the concessions to the Roman Catholics at his marriage, the evasions with which he met the Petition of Right, the abandonment of Strafford, the simultaneous negotiation with, and betrayal of, all parties. Strafford’s reported words on hearing of his desertion by Charles, “Put not your trust in princes,” re-echo through the whole of Charles’s reign. It was the degradation and dishonour of the kingship, and the personal loss of credit which Charles suffered through these transactions—which never appear to have caused him a moment’s regret or uneasiness, but the fatal consequences of which were seen only too clearly by men like Hyde and Falkland—that were the real causes of the rebellion and of the king’s execution. The constitutional and religious grievances were the outward and visible sign of the corroding suspicions which slowly consumed the national loyalty. In themselves there was nothing incapable of settlement either through the spirit of union which existed between Elizabeth and her subjects, or by the principle of compromise which formed the basis of the constitutional settlement in 1688. The bond of union between his people and himself Charles had, however, early broken, and compromise is only possible between parties both of whom can acknowledge to some extent the force of the other’s position, which can trust one another, and which are sincere in their endeavour to reach agreement. Thus on Charles himself chiefly falls the responsibility for the catastrophe.

His character and motives fill a large place in English history, but they have never been fully understood and possibly were largely due to physical causes. His weakness as a child was so extreme that his life was despaired of. He outgrew physical defects, and as a young man excelled in horsemanship and in the sports of the times, but always retained an impediment of speech. At the time of his accession his reserve and reticence were especially noticed. Buckingham was the only person who ever enjoyed his friendship, and after his death Charles placed entire confidence in no man. This isolation was the cause of an ignorance of men and of the world, and of an incapacity to appreciate the ideas, principles and motives of others, while it prepared at the same time a fertile soil for receiving those exalted conceptions of kingship, of divine right and prerogative, which came into vogue at this period, together with those exaggerated ideas of his own personal supremacy and importance to which minds not quite normal are always especially inclined. His character was marked by a weakness which shirked and postponed the settlement of difficulties, by a meanness and ingratitude even when dealing with his most devoted followers, by an obstinacy which only feigned compliance and by an untruthfulness which differed widely from his son’s unblushing deceit, which found always some reservation or excuse, but which while more scrupulous was also more dangerous and insidious because employed continually as a principle of conduct. Yet Charles, in spite of his failings, had many fine qualities. Clarendon, who was fully conscious of them, who does not venture to call him a good king, and allows that “his kingly virtues had some mixture and alloy that hindered them from shining in full lustre,” declares that “he was if ever any, the most worthy of the title of an Honest Man, so great a lover of justice that no temptation could dispose him to a wrongful action except that it was disguised to him that he believed it just,” “the worthiest of gentlemen, the best master, the best friend, the best husband, the best father and the best Christian that the age in which he lived produced.” With all its deplorable mistakes and failings Charles I.’s reign belongs to a sphere infinitely superior to that of his unscrupulous, corrupt, selfish but more successful son. His private life was without a blemish. Immediately on his accession he had suppressed the disorder which had existed in the household of James I., and let it be known that whoever had business with him “must never approach him by backstairs or private doors.”^[8] He maintained a strict sobriety in food and dress. He had a fine artistic sense, and Milton reprehends him for having made Shakespeare “the closest companion of his solitudes.” “Monsieur le Prince de Galles,” wrote Rubens in 1625, “est le prince le plus amateur de la peinture qui soit au monde.” He succeeded in bringing together during twenty years an unrivalled collection, of which a great part was dispersed at his death. He showed a noble insensibility to flattery. He was deeply and sincerely religious. He wished to do right, and was conscious of the purity of his motives. Those who came into contact with him, even the most bitter of his opponents, were impressed with his goodness. The great tragedy of his life, to be read in his well-known, dignified, but weak and unhappy features, and to be followed in his inexplicable and mysterious choice of baneful instruments, such as Rupert, Laud, Hamilton, Glamorgan, Henrietta Maria—all in their several ways working out his destruction—seems to have been inspired by a fateful insanity or infirmity of mind or will, recalling the great Greek dramas in which the poets depicted frenzied mortals rushing into their own destruction, impelled by the unseen and superior powers.

The king’s body, after being embalmed, was buried by the few followers who remained with him to the last, hastily and without any funeral service, which was forbidden by the authorities, in the tomb of Henry VIII., in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, where his coffin was identified and opened in 1813. An “account of what appeared” was published by Sir Henry Halford, and a bone abstracted on the occasion was replaced in the vault by the prince of Wales (afterwards Edward VII.) in 1888. Charles I. left, besides three children who died in infancy, Charles (afterwards Charles II.); James (afterwards James II.); Henry, duke of Gloucester (1639–1660); Mary (1631–1660), who married William of Orange; Elizabeth (1635–1650); and Henrietta, duchess of Orleans (1644–1670).