Royal Profile: Charles I of England, Scotland, and Ireland

     King Charles I of England, Scotland, and Ireland was born on November 19, 1600 at Dunfermline Palace, Dunfermline, Scotland.

     He was the second son of James VI of Scotland and Anne of Denmark. His father ascended to the thrones of England and Ireland as James I following the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, becoming the first Stuart king in England and Ireland, as well as the first person to reign over all of Britain. A sickly child, Charles was left behind in Scotland when the rest of his family moved down to London, and was not expected to become king, for that was a destiny reserved for his older brother, Henry Frederick Stuart.

     However, Henry’s death as a result of typhoid fever in 1612 placed Charles in direct line to succeed his father, and he was made Prince of Wales in 1616. Charles eventually overcame his physical shortcomings, and became an avid sportsman, though he was not much taller than 5 feet, 4 inches (which incidentally is the same height of present Queen). He was also religiously devoted, artistically sophisticated, and serious in his academics.

     On March 27, 1625, Charles Stuart succeeded his father as king at the age of 24. Like James VI & I, Charles had a well-defined view of kings as being appointed directly by God, and therefore accountable only to God. James however, recognized how far he could go in imposing his will on Parliament and was a pragmatist in his political and religious dealings. Charles had not the political experience of his father, and he took the belief in divine right and in near-absolute authority much farther than his father had been willing to do.

     In England, the Parliamentarians challenged the king’s foreign policy in having the country involved in the religious struggles of continental Europe, which was being directed by George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. When the King’s first two English Parliament’s attempted to remove Buckingham, he dissolved them and tried to rule alone, but soon had to call a new Parliament into session so he could obtain funds for his government.

Charles believed in his absolute right to rule in affairs of state and especially church.

     The issue of Buckingham was defused when he was assassinated in 1628, but then the more hotly-Protestant Parliamentarians attempted to force changes to religious policies which they viewed as too Catholic. Charles saw this as a direct challenge to his God-given authority as Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and dissolved his third Parliament. 

     He ruled alone through the 1630’s and relied on other means to raise funds without Parliament, including ship money (a tax placed on people living within 15 miles of the sea). This eleven year period did witness growth in trade and commerce, an expansion of the Royal Navy, peace with Catholic France and Spain, and Charles’s commissioning of great works of art by Anthony Van Dyck and Peter Rubens. But this relatively harmonious period ended with the issue that had started it: the religious policies of the King.

     Charles I was a High Anglican, meaning that he revered the elaborate rituals and symbolism that accompanied the worship service. These were rituals that were more or less carried over from the Catholic liturgy, but with a slight bent with respect toward the Protestant Reformation that had taken place in the previous century throughout Britain. But for some more radical Protestants (i.e., Puritans, Presbyterians, Separatists, etc.), these ceremonies were either too Catholic for their liking or offended them because of it being the state religion. Charles’s marriage to the French Catholic princess, Henrietta Maria, along with his acquiescence to allow her to worship openly and freely only caused more consternation.

     In Scotland, where the effects of the Reformation were more radical, Charles’s attempts to create uniformity of worship throughout Britain proved to be last straw. Here, he was not the supreme governor of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland (or Kirk). In fact, the Kirk was governed by assemblies of clergy, called presbyteries, and the King of Scots was hardly an exalted figure there, unlike in England. (James VI was referred to as “God’s silly vassal” by a Scottish clergyman named Andrew Melville). So when in 1637, Charles, in conjunction with the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud attempted to impose Anglican liturgy on the Kirk, it resulted in a religious revolt against the King. It led to the creation of the Covenanters who opposed royal interference in religion, and also started the Bishops’ Wars.

Statue of Charles I on his horse at Trafalgar Square, London.

     The King needed money to put down the rebellion in Scotland, so in 1640 he called his first English Parliament in eleven years, but the opposition led by John Pym in the House of Commons only matters worse. Pym used the parliamentary session to attack the king for his religious and financial policies of the previous decade, and succeeded in having some of Charles’s principal ministers, such as Archbishop Laud removed from office. Charles eventually gave into some concessions in England, such as giving up ship money, and decided to diffuse his Scottish issues by traveling up to Edinburgh to recognize the establishment of Presbyterianism.

     Meanwhile, John Pym’s support became shaky as some MP’s felt that his attacks on the King were going too far. Feeling (mistakenly) emboldened, in January 1642, Charles strode into the Commons to have Pym and four other members arrested on charges of treason (for he believed that some of them colluded with the Scots during the Bishops’ Wars). The five members escaped, but by entering the Commons, Charles broke constitutional precedence and confirmed the worldview of his opponents by appearing to be violent tyrant.

     This event resulted in the English Civil Wars and other conflicts, which along with the Bishops’ Wars, have become collectively known as the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (or the British Civil Wars), and they came to define the latter part of Charles’s reign.

     Twice, Charles and the Royalists were defeated by the Parliamentarian New Model Army, who merely wanted the King to come to the bargaining table with regard to issues of religion and control of the military. Charles, hard-lined as ever in his belief in the divine right of kings, refused the multiple offers made by the army for a new political and religious settlement, which among other things called for an end to enforced state religion.

     Instead, in 1647, he allied himself with the Scottish Covenanters, and it was agreed that a Scots army would invade England, crush the Parliamentarians, and restore Charles to his throne on the condition that he allow Presbyterianism to be established in England as in Scotland.

     King Charles and his Scottish army were defeated at the Battle of Preston in August 1648, and following it, the more radical Parliamentarians (a.k.a. Independents) led by Oliver Cromwell were no longer interested in making deals. They purged the House of Commons of the Presbyterians who wanted to make a deal with the King, leaving the “Rump Parliament” of 50 Independents which declared itself the supreme power of the land, with the power to make laws without the consent of the King or the House of Lords.

     As for Charles, he was put on trial for treason because of his use of arbitrary power for personal gain rather than for the national interest. At the trial in Westminster Hall, Charles refused to state his plea, believing that the tribunal was illegal because no court had jurisdiction over a monarch, but the court countered that his power to govern was limited “by and according to the laws of the land and not otherwise”, and that as such, he could be held on trial.

     That trial eventually convicted Charles and sentenced him to death by beheading, which took place on January 29, 1649 atop a scaffold outside of the Banqueting House of the Palace of Whitehall in the view of the public. Among his last words were: "I shall go from a corruptible to an incorruptible Crown, where no disturbance can be."

Depiction of the execution of Charles I.

     Following the execution, the head was sewn back onto the body, which was placed into a lead coffin and buried in the Henry VIII vault at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor.

     Charles’s legacy has been to show what happens when a monarch overplays his hand, and with the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, most of his successors have careful to rule within the laws and conventions established over the ages.

     Another legacy of King Charles was his patronage of the arts, and he amassed an enormous art collection. His purchased and commissioned works were sold off by Parliament during the Interregnum of the 1650's, though a substantial number of them were recovered for the Royal Collection.

     In the United States, there are several places named in honor of Charles I: the states of North and South Carolina, as well as Cape Charles, Charles River Shire, Charles City County, and the Charles River (which he personally named) in Virginia.


Photo Credit: Σπάρτακος via Wikimedia Commons cc, Elliot Brown via Flickr cc