Charles II of England

Early life, civil war and exile

Charles was born on 29 May 1630 at St James's Palace. He was the eldest surviving son of Charles I, king of England, Scotland and Ireland, and his wife Henrietta Maria of France, sister of King Louis XIII. Charles was their second child (the first being a son born about a year before, who had died within a day). He was baptised on 27 June in the Chapel Royal by William Laud, a future archbishop of Canterbury, and during his infancy was supervised by the Protestant Countess of Dorset. His godparents included his maternal uncle Louis XIII and maternal grandmother, Marie de' Medici, the Dowager Queen of France, both of whom were Catholics. At birth, Charles automatically became Duke of Cornwall and Duke of Rothesay, and the possessor of several other associated titles. At or around his eighth birthday, he was designated Prince of Wales, though he was never formally invested.

In August 1642, the long-running dispute between Charles I and Parliament culminated in the outbreak of the First English Civil War. In October, Prince Charles and his younger brother James were present at the Battle of Edgehill and spent the next two years based in the Royalist capital of Oxford. In January 1645, Charles was given his own Council and made titular head of Royalist forces in the West Country. By spring 1646, most of the region had been occupied by Parliamentarian forces and Charles went into exile to avoid capture. From Falmouth, he went first to the Isles of Scilly, then to Jersey, and finally to France, where his mother was already living under the protection of his first cousin, the eight-year-old Louis XIV. Charles I surrendered into captivity in May 1646.

During the Second English Civil War in 1648, Charles moved to The Hague, where his sister Mary and his brother-in-law William II, Prince of Orange, seemed more likely to provide substantial aid to the Royalist cause than his mother's French relations. Although part of the Parliamentarian fleet defected, it did not reach Scotland in time to join up with the Royalist Engager army led by the Duke of Hamilton before it was defeated at Preston by the New Model Army.

At The Hague, Charles had a brief affair with Lucy Walter, who later falsely claimed that they had secretly married. Her son, James Crofts (afterwards Duke of Monmouth and Duke of Buccleuch), was one of Charles's many illegitimate children who became prominent in British society. Despite his son's diplomatic efforts to save him, Charles I was executed in January 1649, and England became a republic. On 5 February, the Covenanter Parliament of Scotland proclaimed Charles II as "King of Great Britain, France and Ireland" at the Mercat Cross, Edinburgh, but refused to allow him to enter Scotland unless he agreed to establish Presbyterianism as the state religion in all three of his kingdoms.

Restoration

After Oliver Cromwell's death in 1658, Charles's initial chances of regaining the Crown seemed slim; Cromwell was succeeded as Lord Protector by his son Richard but the new Lord Protector had little experience of either military or civil administration. In 1659, the Rump Parliament was recalled and Richard Cromwell resigned. During the civil and military unrest that followed, George Monck, the Governor of Scotland, was concerned that the nation would descend into anarchy. Monck and his army marched into the City of London, and forced the Rump Parliament to readmit members of the Long Parliament who had been excluded in December 1648, during Pride's Purge. Parliament dissolved itself, and there was a general election for the first time in almost 20 years. The outgoing Parliament defined the electoral qualifications intending to bring about the return of a Presbyterian majority.

The restrictions against royalist candidates and voters were widely ignored, and the elections resulted in a House of Commons that was fairly evenly divided on political grounds between Royalists and Parliamentarians and on religious grounds between Anglicans and Presbyterians. The so-called Convention Parliament assembled on 25 April 1660, and soon afterwards welcomed the Declaration of Breda, in which Charles promised lenience and tolerance. There would be liberty of conscience, and Anglican church policy would not be harsh. He would not exile past enemies nor confiscate their wealth. There would be pardons for nearly all his opponents except the regicides. Above all, Charles promised to rule in cooperation with Parliament. The English Parliament resolved to proclaim Charles king and invite him to return, a message that reached Charles at Breda on 8 May 1660. In Ireland, a convention had been called earlier in the year and had already declared for Charles. On 14 May, he was proclaimed king in Dublin.

Charles set out for England from Scheveningen, arrived in Dover on 25 May 1660 and reached London on 29 May, his 30th birthday. Although Charles and Parliament granted amnesty to nearly all of Cromwell's supporters in the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion, 50 people were specifically excluded. In the end nine of the regicides were executed: they were hanged, drawn and quartered, whereas others were given life imprisonment or excluded from office for life. The bodies of Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton and John Bradshaw were subjected to posthumous decapitations.

The English Parliament granted Charles an annual income to run the government of £1.2 million, generated largely from customs and excise duties. The grant, however, proved to be insufficient for most of Charles's reign. For the most part, the actual revenue was much lower, which led to attempts to economise at court by reducing the size and expenses of the royal household and raising money through unpopular innovations such as the hearth tax.

Clarendon Code

The Convention Parliament was dissolved in December 1660, and, shortly after Charles's English coronation, the second English Parliament of the reign assembled. Dubbed the Cavalier Parliament, it was overwhelmingly Royalist and Anglican. It sought to discourage non-conformity to the Church of England and passed several acts to secure Anglican dominance. The Corporation Act 1661 required municipal officeholders to swear allegiance; the Act of Uniformity 1662 made the use of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer compulsory; the Conventicle Act 1664 prohibited religious assemblies of more than five people, except under the auspices of the Church of England; and the Five Mile Act 1665 prohibited expelled non-conforming clergymen from coming within five miles (8 km) of a parish from which they had been banished. The Conventicle and Five Mile Acts remained in effect for the remainder of Charles's reign. The Acts became known as the Clarendon Code, after Lord Clarendon, even though he was not directly responsible for them and even spoke against the Five Mile Act.

The Restoration was accompanied by social change. Puritanism lost its momentum. Theatres reopened after having been closed during the protectorship of Oliver Cromwell, and bawdy "Restoration comedy" became a recognisable genre. Theatre licences granted by Charles required that female parts be played by "their natural performers", rather than by boys as was often the practice before; and Restoration literature celebrated or reacted to the restored court, which included libertines such as Lord Rochester. Of Charles II, Rochester supposedly said:

To which Charles is reputed to have replied "that the matter was easily accounted for: For that his discourse was his own, his actions were the ministry's".

Great Plague and Great Fire

In 1665, the Great Plague of London began, peaking in September with up to 7,000 deaths per week. Charles, his family, and the court fled London in July to Salisbury; Parliament met in Oxford. Plague cases ebbed over the winter, and Charles returned to London in February 1666.

After a long spell of hot and dry weather through mid-1666, the Great Fire of London started on 2 September 1666 in Pudding Lane. Fanned by strong winds and fed by wood and fuel stockpiled for winter, the fire destroyed about 13,200 houses and 87 churches, including St Paul's Cathedral. Charles and his brother James joined and directed the firefighting effort. The public blamed Catholic conspirators for the fire.

Foreign policy and marriage

Since 1640, Portugal had been fighting a war against Spain to restore its independence after a dynastic union of 60 years between the crowns of Spain and Portugal. Portugal had been helped by France, but in the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659 Portugal was abandoned by its French ally. Negotiations with Portugal for Charles's marriage to Catherine of Braganza began during his father's reign. Upon the restoration, Queen Luísa of Portugal, acting as regent, reopened negotiations with England that resulted in an alliance. On 23 June 1661, a marriage treaty was signed; England acquired Catherine's dowry of the port of Tangier in North Africa, the Seven Islands of Bombay in India (which had a major influence on the development of the British Empire), valuable trading privileges in Brazil and the East Indies, religious and commercial freedom in Portugal, and two million Portuguese crowns (equivalent to £300,000 then). Portugal obtained military and naval support against Spain and liberty of worship for Catherine.

Since Philip IV of Spain was an enemy of the Braganzas and was against a marriage between Catherine and any powerful European monarch, the Spanish government proposed other European princesses as possible brides for Charles, instead of Catherine, making clear that there were no available Spanish princesses and offering to provide a dowry. Their suggestions included: Princess Anna Sophie of Denmark, the eldest daughter of the Danish monarch; Princess Maria of Orange-Nassau, the youngest of the Dutch princesses of the House of Orange; and, as a Catholic alternative, the youngest sister of the Duke of Parma, Caterina Farnese, who was said to be very beautiful. In February 1661 the earl of Bristol travelled to Parma to inspect Farnese, but she refused to marry the English monarch, because she wanted to become a nun. Another Catholic alternative that was suggested was Eleonore Gonzaga, Empress Dowager of the Holy Roman Empire, although this was an unlikely match. Hedwig Eleonora of Holstein-Gottorp, Queen Dowager of Sweden, was also suggested as a bride for Charles. At the same time, the first minister of France, Cardinal Mazarin, offered a dowry of millions if Charles II married his niece, Hortense Mancini. Nevertheless, Charles dismissed the princesses offered by the Spanish and French governments, and chose to marry Catherine of Braganza because of her huge dowry. Catherine journeyed from Portugal to Portsmouth on 13–14 May 1662, but was not visited by Charles there until 20 May. The next day the couple were married at Portsmouth in two ceremonies—a Catholic one conducted in secret, followed by a public Anglican service.

Conflict with Parliament

Although previously favourable to the Crown, the Cavalier Parliament was alienated by the king's wars and religious policies during the 1670s. In 1672, Charles issued the Royal Declaration of Indulgence, in which he purported to suspend all penal laws against Catholics and other religious dissenters. In the same year, he openly supported Catholic France and started the Third Anglo-Dutch War.

The Cavalier Parliament opposed the Declaration of Indulgence on constitutional grounds by claiming that the king had no right to arbitrarily suspend laws passed by Parliament. Charles withdrew the Declaration, and also agreed to the Test Act, which not only required public officials to receive the sacrament under the forms prescribed by the Church of England, but also later forced them to denounce transubstantiation and the Catholic Mass as "superstitious and idolatrous". Clifford, who had converted to Catholicism, resigned rather than take the oath, and died shortly after, possibly from suicide. By 1674, England had gained nothing from the Anglo-Dutch War, and the Cavalier Parliament refused to provide further funds, forcing Charles to make peace. The power of the Cabal waned, and that of Clifford's replacement Lord Danby grew.

Queen Catherine was unable to produce an heir; her four pregnancies had ended in miscarriages and stillbirths in 1662, February 1666, May 1668, and June 1669. Charles's heir presumptive was therefore his unpopular Catholic brother, James, Duke of York. Partly to assuage public fears that the royal family was too Catholic, Charles agreed that James's daughter Mary should marry the Protestant William of Orange. In 1678, Titus Oates, who had been alternately an Anglican and Jesuit priest, falsely warned of a "Popish Plot" to assassinate the king, even accusing the queen of complicity. Charles did not believe the allegations, but ordered his chief minister Lord Danby to investigate. While Danby seems to have been rightly sceptical of Oates's claims, the Cavalier Parliament took them seriously. The people were seized with an anti-Catholic hysteria; judges and juries across the land condemned the supposed conspirators; numerous innocent individuals were executed.

Later in 1678, the House of Commons impeached Danby for high treason. Although much of the nation had sought war with Catholic France, Charles had secretly negotiated with Louis XIV, trying to reach an agreement under which England would remain neutral in return for money. Danby had publicly professed that he was hostile to France, but had reservedly agreed to abide by Charles's wishes. The House of Commons did not view him as a reluctant participant in the scandal, instead believing that he was the author of the policy. To save Danby from the impeachment trial, Charles dissolved the Cavalier Parliament in January 1679.

Science

In Charles's early childhood, William Cavendish, Earl of Newcastle, was governor of the royal household and Brian Duppa, the Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, was his tutor. Neither man thought that the study of science subjects was appropriate for a future king, and Newcastle even advised against studying any subject too seriously. However, as Charles grew older, the surgeon William Harvey was appointed his tutor. Harvey was famous for his work on human blood circulation, and had already held the position of physician to Charles I. His studies were to influence Charles II's attitude towards science. As the king's chief physician, Harvey accompanied Charles I to the Battle of Edgehill and, although some details are uncertain, he had charge of Prince Charles and the Duke of York in the morning. But the two boys were back with the king for the start of battle. Later in the afternoon, as their father grew concerned for their safety, the princes left the battlefield with Sir W. Howard and his pensioners.

During his exile, in France, Charles continued his education, including physics, chemistry and mathematics. His tutors included the cleric John Earle, well known for his satirical book Microcosmographie, with whom he studied Latin and Greek, and Thomas Hobbes, the philosopher and author of Leviathan, with whom he studied mathematics. In France, Charles assisted his childhood friend, George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, with his experiments in chemistry and alchemy, with the Earl convinced he was close to producing the philosopher's stone. Although some of Charles's studies abroad may have helped to pass the time, upon returning to England, he was already knowledgeable in the mathematics of navigation, and was a competent chemist. Such was his knowledge of naval architecture that he was able to participate in technical discussions on the subject with Samuel Pepys, William Petty and John Evelyn.

New discoveries and concepts fascinated Charles, not only in science and medicine, but also in botany and gardening. Sorbier, a French traveller visiting the English court, was astonished by the extent of the king's knowledge. The king freely indulged in his many interests, including astronomy. In October 1660, he visited Gresham College to see new telescopes developed by astronomer Sir Paul Neile. Charles was so impressed by what he saw that he ordered his own 36' telescope, which he had installed in the Privy Garden at Whitehall. He would invite friends and acquaintances to view the heavens through his new telescope. Evelyn describes his May 1661 visit to the Garden, with several other scientists, to view Saturn's rings. Charles also had a laboratory installed in Whitehall, within easy access to his bedroom.

Navy

Charles had a great interest in naval affairs. He regularly attended meetings of the Admiralty Board and was the most frequent participant between January 1674 and April 1679. Samuel Pepys described the management of the navy, between 1673 and 1679, as being "wholly performed by the immediate direction of" the king, with the advice of the Duke of York (the future James II). Decisions made by the king alone and those made by the Admiralty Board can be differentiated in Pepys's minutes by his terminology. This makes clear that decisions on deployment of warships and on appointment of their commissioned officers were almost exclusively made by Charles. Surviving Royal records on the navy contain sailing orders and instructions not recorded in the Admiralty minutes, confirming this conclusion.

Charles voluntarily took on more mundane management tasks, and signed all captains' and lieutenants' commissions. His signature was, for example, on the warrant for Thomas Shish as master shipwright at Sheerness, with Charles having the final choice, 6 months later, of appointing Shish to the same position in the Woolwich Dockyard. He was present at most important ship launches and many minor ones. Charles alone chose all new ships' names, so the name usually travelled to each launching ceremony in the king's head.

Following the political crisis of 1678, the Admiralty Board demanded, in January 1679, they regain control of some functions carried out by the King. Before Charles ultimately conceded, he appointed 88 warrant officers on 10 May for new ships built under the thirty ship programme, before the Board took over such appointments. Thereafter, he used the royal prerogative to get his way on any decisions with which he disagreed. An example of Charles's continuing control of operational naval matters is his support for Arthur Herbert as commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean from 1679 to 1683. Herbert was widely disliked, and the Admiralty Board and Pepys (who were not normally allies) asked for his dismissal. The King consistently resisted, with the benefit that Herbert's tactic of relying on convoys to protect British ships was shown to have the best result.

Further political problems had, by 1682, left the Admiralty Board split along political lines, reducing its ability to function. (Pepys was no longer in post.) Charles took advantage of this, creating the "Irish Squadron", a naval force under his direct administration, with orders going through the Secretary of State, rather than the Admiralty. The squadron was immediately used to supply the English colony in Tangier. Charles gave detailed orders for these ships, with the Secretary of State merely passing them on.

Later years

Charles faced a political storm over his brother James, a Catholic, being next in line to the throne. The prospect of a Catholic monarch was vehemently opposed by the 1st Earl of Shaftesbury (a former member of the Cabal, which had fallen apart in 1673). Lord Shaftesbury's power base was strengthened when the House of Commons of 1679 introduced the Exclusion Bill, which sought to exclude the Duke of York from the line of succession. Some even sought to confer the Crown on the Protestant Duke of Monmouth, the eldest of Charles's illegitimate children. The Abhorrers—those who thought the Exclusion Bill was abhorrent—were named Tories (after a term for dispossessed Irish Catholic bandits), while the Petitioners—those who supported a petitioning campaign in favour of the Exclusion Bill—were called Whigs (after a term for rebellious Scottish Presbyterians).

Absolute monarch

Fearing that the Exclusion Bill would be passed, and bolstered by some acquittals in the continuing Plot trials, which seemed to him to indicate a more favourable public mood towards Catholicism, Charles dissolved the English Parliament, for a second time that year, in mid-1679. Charles's hopes for a more moderate Parliament were not fulfilled; within a few months he had dissolved Parliament yet again, after it sought to pass the Exclusion Bill. When a new Parliament assembled at Oxford in March 1681, Charles dissolved it for a fourth time after just a few days. During the 1680s, however, popular support for the Exclusion Bill ebbed, and Charles experienced a nationwide surge of loyalty. Lord Shaftesbury was prosecuted (albeit unsuccessfully) for treason in 1681 and later fled to Holland, where he died. For the remainder of his reign, Charles ruled without Parliament.

Charles's opposition to the Exclusion Bill angered some Protestants. Protestant conspirators formulated the Rye House Plot, a plan to murder him and the Duke of York as they returned to London after horse races in Newmarket. A great fire, however, destroyed Charles's lodgings at Newmarket, which forced him to leave the races early, thus inadvertently avoiding the planned attack. News of the failed plot was leaked. Protestant politicians such as the Earl of Essex, Algernon Sydney, Lord Russell and the Duke of Monmouth were implicated in the plot. Essex slit his own throat while imprisoned in the Tower of London; Sydney and Russell were executed for high treason on very flimsy evidence; and the Duke of Monmouth went into exile at the court of William of Orange. Lord Danby and the surviving Catholic lords held in the Tower were released and the king's Catholic brother, James, acquired greater influence at court. Titus Oates was convicted and imprisoned for defamation.

Thus through the last years of Charles's reign, his approach towards his opponents changed, and he was compared by Whigs to the contemporary Louis XIV of France, with his form of government in those years termed "slavery". Many of them were prosecuted and their estates seized, with Charles replacing judges and sheriffs at will and packing juries to achieve conviction. To destroy opposition in London, Charles first disenfranchised many Whigs in the 1682 municipal elections, and in 1683 the London charter was forfeited. In retrospect, the use of the judicial system by Charles (and later his brother and heir James) as a tool against opposition helped establish the idea of separation of powers between the judiciary and the Crown in Whig thought.

Death

Charles suffered a sudden apoplectic fit on the morning of 2 February 1685, and died four days later at the Palace of Whitehall, at 11:45 am, aged 54. The suddenness of his illness and death led to suspicion of poison in the minds of many, including one of the royal doctors, but a more modern medical analysis has held that the symptoms of his final illness are similar to those of uraemia, a clinical syndrome due to kidney dysfunction. Charles had a laboratory among his many interests where, prior to his illness, he had been experimenting with mercury. Mercuric poisoning can produce irreversible kidney damage, but the case for that being a cause of his death is unproven. In the days between his collapse and his death, Charles endured a variety of torturous treatments, including bloodletting, purging and cupping, in the hope of effecting a recovery, which may have exacerbated his uraemia through dehydration, rather than helping to alleviate it.

On his deathbed, Charles asked his brother, James, to look after his mistresses: "be well to Portsmouth, and let not poor Nelly starve". He told his courtiers, "I am sorry, gentlemen, for being such a time a-dying", and expressed regret at his treatment of his wife. On the last evening of his life he was received into the Catholic Church, in the presence of Father John Huddleston, though the extent to which he was fully conscious or committed, and with whom the idea originated, is unclear. He was buried in Westminster Abbey "without any manner of pomp" on 14 February.

Charles was succeeded by his brother James II and VII.

Legacy

His encouragement of theatre, horse racing, and traditional celebrations included the revival of public Christmas festivities after the Puritan rule of Oliver Cromwell during the English Interregnum. His reputation for hedonism led later commentators to nickname him the "Merry Monarch" and for his reign to be described as a "Golden Age". However, his biographer Antonia Fraser has written that "Merry Monarch" was not appropriate, as Charles was, at heart, marked by melancholy.

Charles delighted and bored listeners with tales of his escape after his defeat at the Battle of Worcester for many years. Numerous accounts of his adventures were published, particularly in the immediate aftermath of the Restoration. Though not averse to his escape being ascribed to divine providence, Charles himself seems to have delighted most in his ability to sustain his disguise as a man of ordinary origins, and to move unrecognised through his realm. Ironic and cynical, Charles took pleasure in stories that demonstrated the undetectable nature of any inherent majesty he possessed.

Charles had no legitimate children, but acknowledged at least twelve by seven mistresses, including five by Barbara Villiers, Lady Castlemaine, for whom the Dukedom of Cleveland was created. His other mistresses included Moll Davis, Nell Gwyn, Elizabeth Killigrew, Catherine Pegge, Lucy Walter and Louise de Kérouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth. As a result, in his lifetime he was often nicknamed "Old Rowley", the name of his favourite racehorse, notable as a stallion.

Charles's subjects resented paying taxes that were spent on his mistresses and their children, many of whom received dukedoms or earldoms. The present Dukes of Buccleuch, Richmond, Grafton and St Albans descend from Charles in unbroken male line. Charles II is an ancestor of both King Charles III's wives, Diana Spencer and Camilla Shand. Charles and Diana's son, William, Prince of Wales, is likely to be the first British monarch descended from Charles II.

Charles's eldest son, the Duke of Monmouth, led a rebellion against James II, but was defeated at the Battle of Sedgemoor on 6 July 1685, captured and executed. James was eventually dethroned in 1688, in the course of the Glorious Revolution.

In the words of his contemporary John Evelyn, "a prince of many virtues and many great imperfections, debonair, easy of access, not bloody or cruel". John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, wrote of Charles:

Titles, styles, honours and arms

Titles and styles

The official style of Charles II as king (after 1649) was "Charles the Second, by the Grace of God, King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc." The claim to France was only nominal, and had been asserted by every English monarch since Edward III, regardless of the amount of French territory actually controlled.

Honours

KG: Knight of the Garter, 21 May 1638

Arms

Charles's coat of arms as Prince of Wales was the royal arms (which he later inherited), differenced by a label of three points Argent. His arms as monarch were: Quarterly, I and IV Grandquarterly, Azure three fleurs-de-lis Or (for France) and Gules three lions passant guardant in pale Or (for England); II Or a lion rampant within a double tressure flory-counter-flory Gules (for Scotland); III Azure a harp Or stringed Argent (for Ireland).

Issue

By Lucy Walter (c. 1630 – 1658):

James Crofts, later Scott (1649–1685), created Duke of Monmouth (1663) in England and Duke of Buccleuch (1663) in Scotland. Monmouth was born nine months after Walter and Charles II first met, and was acknowledged as his son by Charles II, but James II suggested that he was the son of another of her lovers, Colonel Robert Sidney, rather than Charles. Lucy Walter had a daughter, Mary Crofts, born after James in 1651, but Charles II was not the father, since he and Walter parted in September 1649.

By Elizabeth Killigrew (1622–1680), daughter of Sir Robert Killigrew and wife of Francis Boyle, 1st Viscount Shannon:

Charlotte Jemima Henrietta Maria FitzRoy (1650–1684), married firstly James Howard and secondly William Paston, 2nd Earl of Yarmouth

By Catherine Pegge:

Charles FitzCharles (1657–1680), known as "Don Carlo", created Earl of Plymouth (1675)

Catherine FitzCharles (born 1658; she either died young or became a nun at Dunkirk)

By Barbara Villiers (1641–1709), wife of Roger Palmer, 1st Earl of Castlemaine, and created Duchess of Cleveland in her own right:

Lady Anne Palmer (Fitzroy) (1661–1722), married Thomas Lennard, 1st Earl of Sussex. She may have been the daughter of Roger Palmer, but Charles accepted her.

Charles Fitzroy (1662–1730), created Duke of Southampton (1675), became 2nd Duke of Cleveland (1709)

Henry Fitzroy (1663–1690), created Earl of Euston (1672), Duke of Grafton (1675)