CHARLES II (ENGLAND) (1630–1685; ruled 1660–1685)

CHARLES II (ENGLAND) (1630–1685; ruled 1660–1685), king of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Charles II was the dominant royal figure in England, Scotland, and Ireland for most of the late seventeenth century. Born on 29 May 1630, Charles succeeded to the throne on 30 January 1649. He could hardly have become king in worse circumstances, for his father, Charles I, had been beheaded by English revolutionaries who then abolished the monarchy. Young Charles had fled to the Continent three years before, and heard the news in exile in Holland. Although his reign legally dates from the moment that his father died, he was left to wander in poverty around western Europe for the first eleven years of it, as the guest successively of the Dutch, the French, the Germans, and the Spanish. In England the republicans who had killed his father continued to provide the real government of the country, most powerfully in the person of Oliver Cromwell, who ruled as Lord Protector between 1654 and 1658. Charles plotted incessantly to regain his thrones by invasion or rebellion, and came closest in 1650–1651, when the Scots crowned him as their king and he invaded England with an army of them. That army, however, was destroyed at Worcester, leaving the English republicans to conquer Scotland and Charles to escape back to continental Europe by hiding in an oak tree and in various country houses owned by royal supporters. When he was invited back to his three thrones in 1660, it was because the republican government had collapsed as a result of internal fighting among its members following the death of Cromwell (3 September 1658). Charles formally acceeded to power in his three kingdoms on his thirtieth birthday, 29 May 1660, when he entered London to the cheers of huge crowds. He remarked dryly that he could not understand, in view of all this rejoicing, why none of the people applauding had done anything to help him until that point. The cynicism and suspicion of the remark is significant: always after his return, Charles never fully trusted the British nor felt secure among them.

On returning to his realms, he found many problems left in all three by two decades of war and revolution, but also great enthusiasm for the restoration of the monarchy. He must, therefore, take some blame for the fact that within three years he had become unpopular in England and was quarreling with its Parliament. This was partly due to his financial extravagance and adulterous habits; he married a Portuguese princess, Catherine of Braganza, in 1662 and then paraded his current mistress before her and the court. It was also because he tried to increase his own power over national religion by playing off against each other the newly restored national church and the Protestant dissenters who worshipped outside it. He only succeeded in disappointing both. Charles's response to this situation was to try to regain popularity with a reckless foreign adventure, an unprovoked attack on the Dutch that he thought would win riches and military glory. The resulting war ended in defeat in 1667, however, leaving him humiliated and heavily in debt. He tried to find his way out of these problems by a still more risky adventure, a secret agreement with France to launch another attack on the Dutch state that he believed would avenge his earlier defeat and leave him rich and powerful enough to disregard his critics in Parliament. The result, by 1674, was another defeat and the complete discrediting of his government.

He then hired a brilliant politician, the earl of Danby, to repair his finances and restore his reputation, and for four years this seemed to work. Danby managed Parliament carefully and projected an image of the king as a responsible and patriotic ruler and defender of the Church of England. Charles, however, could not resist another secret deal to take money from the Catholic French as an insurance policy. When this was revealed to the public in 1678, Danby's government fell and for three years Charles repeatedly called and dissolved new Parliaments, finding himself unable to manage a working relationship with any. He steered his way out of the crisis very shrewdly, offering measured concessions to his critics, hiring new and talented ministers, and behaving responsibly. By the time of his sudden death on 6 February 1685, his government was stable and strong again at home, although he was still unable to work with a Parliament and thus could not wage war.

Two very different views of Charles appear in modern literature. One, found mostly in scholarly histories, emphasizes his weaknesses as a monarch: his dislike of paperwork and administration, his duplicity, his vindictive cruelty, his determination to keep his ministers feeling insecure and to set them against each other, and his taste for reckless gambling, in both foreign and domestic affairs. Popular biographies and works of creative literature (and cinema) emphasize his charm, accessibility, affability, wit, and love of novelty, which undoubtedly encouraged the growth of science, architecture, and theater in England. He introduced the ruling classes to yachting, croquet, and champagne, and fathered at least twelve illegitimate children by seven different mistresses. Both portraits are just, but in the last analysis a king is expected to rule, and his shortcomings as a political leader contributed significantly to the instability of the British Isles during his reign. He has enjoyed a popularity in the twentieth century that he never knew in the seventeenth.

CHARLES II (ENGLAND) (1630–1685; ruled 1660–1685)

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