harles I (1600-49), king of Great Britain and Ireland, in 1623 proceeded in company with Buckingham to the Spanish court, Madrid, to win the hand of the Spanish Infata. The English people, however, hailed with joy the rupture with Spain which ensued upon Charles’s pique at his failure. But he immediately dashed his people’s Protestant hopes by marrying the French (Roman Catholic) princess Henrietta Maria by proxy. Succeeding his father in 1625, he was soon involved in controversy with Parliament, particularly regarding the revenues rendered necessary by the extravagant policy of Buckingham; after Buckingham’s assassination (1628) he yielded his will to Queen Henrietta, whose influence over him was unbounded, and in the end fatal. In 1626, by the aid of loans and pawning the crown jewels, he fitted out two expeditions against Cadiz, which ended in failure. Charles was not by nature a tyrant, perhaps not even a bigot; but the force of his two chief advisors - Laud (made archbishop of Canterbury, 1633) and Strafford drove him not only into violating the liberties which Englishmen held dear, but into irritating the conscience of England by carrying out Laud’s High Church ideas. He levied and raised money by granting monopolies and demanding ship money from the seaports (1634). In 1639 Laud drove the Scots to rebellion by his attempts to force a liturgy on them. These two events induced Charles to summon Parliament, of which two - the ‘Short Parliament’ (of three weeks’ duration) and the ‘Long Parliament’ - met in 1640. The Long Parliament impeached Strafford and forced Charles to assent to a bill enacting that Parliament could not be dissolved save with its own consent. Thus began the long struggle between Charles and Parliament; and the Long Parliament outlasted him. Charles hoped to win the Scots to his side. His return to London was marked by the Grand Remonstrance. The royal standard was raised at Nottingham, and civil war broke out. It ended with the disastrous battle of Naseby (1645). He surrendered himself to the Scots at Newark in 1646, who gave him up to the English; the story of his execution at Whitehall has a dignity which in part redeems his character. He was a pattern of the domestic virtues, but he was both too obstinate and too weak to cope with the tremendous issues he raised. [World Wide Illustrated Encyclopedia, 1935]

Notes on Charles I, King of England
Charles, born at Dunfermline, was a sickly child, unable to speak till his fifth year, and so weak in the ankles that till his seventh he had to crawl upon his hands and knees. Except for a stammer, he outgrew both defects, and became a skilled tilter and marksman, as well as an accomplished scholar and a diligent student of theology. He was created Duke of Albany at his baptism, Duke of York in 1605, and Prince of Wales in 1616, four years after the death of Prince Henry had left him heir to the crown. The Spanish match had been mooted as early as 1614; but it was not till 17 Feb 1623, that, with Buckingham, Charles started on the romantic incognito journey to Madrid. Nothing short of his conversion would have satisfied the Spanish and papal courts; and on 5 Oct, he landed again in England, eager for rupture with Spain. The nation’s joy was speedily dashed by his betrothal to the French princess, Henrietta Maria (1609-1669); for the marriage articles pledged him to permit her the free exercise of the Catholic religion, and to give her the upbringing of their children till the age of thirteen. On 27 Mar 1625, Charles succeeded his father, James I; on June 13 he welcomed his little bright-eyed queen at Dover, having married her by proxy six weeks earlier. Barely a twelve-month was over when he packed off her troublesome retinue to France - a bishop and 29 priests, with 410 more male and female attendants. Thenceforth their domestic life was a happy one; and during the twelve years following the murder of Buckingham (1592-1628), in whose hands he had been a mere tool, Charles gradually came to yield himself up to her unwise influence, not wholly indeed, but more than to that of Strafford even, or Laud. Three parliaments were summoned and dissolved in the first four years of the reign; then for eleven years Charles ruled without one, in its stead with subservient judges and the courts of Star Chamber and High Commission. In 1627 he had blundered into an inglorious French war; but with France he concluded peace in 1629, with Spain in 1630. Peace, economy and arbitrary taxation were to solve the great problem of his policy - how to get money, yet not account for it. The extension of the ship-tax to the inland counties was met by Hampden’s passive resistance (1637); Laud’s attempt to Anglicise the Scottish Church, by the active resistance of the whole northern nation (1639). Once more Charles had to call a parliament: two met in 1640, the Short Parliament, which lasted but three weeks, and the Long, which outlasted Charles. {Burke’s Peerage and Chamber’s Biographical Dictionary} It met to pronounce Strafford’s doom; and, his plot with the army detected, Charles basely sacrificed his loyal servitor to fears for the queen’s safety, at the same time assenting to a second bill by which the existing parliament might not be dissolved without its own consent. That pledge, as extorted by force, Charles purposed to disregard; and during his visit to Edinburgh, in the autumn of 1641, he trusted by lavish concessions to bring over the Scots to his side. Instead, he got entangled in dark suspicions of plotting the murder of the Covenanting lords, of connivance even in the Ulster massacre. Still, his return to London was welcomed with some enthusiasm, and a party was forming in the Commons itself of men who revolted from the sweeping changes that menaced both church and state. Pym’s "Grand Remonstrance" justified their fears, and Charles seemed to justify the "Grand Remonstrance" by his attempt to arrest the five members (4 Jan 1642); but that ill-stricken blow was dictated by the knowledge of an impending impeachment of the queen herself. On August 22 he raised the royal standard at Nottingham; and the four years’ Civil War commenced, in which, as at Naseby, he showed no lack of physical courage, and which resulted at Naseby in the utter annihilation of his cause (June 14, 1645). Quitting his last refuge, Oxford, he surrendered himself on 5 May 1646, to the Scots at Newark, and by them in the following January was handed over to the parliament. His four months’ captivity at Holmby House, near Northampton; his seizure, on 3 Jun, by Cornet Joyce; the three months at Hampton Court; the flight on 11 Nov; the fresh captivity at Carisbrooke Castle in the Isle of Wight, these lead up to the ‘trial’ at Westminster of the "tyrant, traitor, and murderer, Charles Stuart". He had drawn the sword, and by the sword he perished, for it was the army not parliament, that stood at the back of his judges. Charles faced them bravely, and with dignity. Thrice he refused to plead, denying the competence of such a court; and his refusal being treated as a confession, on 30 Jan 1649, he died on the scaffold in front of Whitehall, with a courage worthy of a martyr. On the snowy 7th of February they bore the "white king" to his grave at Windsor in Henry VIII’s vault; in 1813 the Prince Regent had his leaden coffin opened. Six children survived him - Charles and James, his successors; Mary, Princess of Orange (1631-60); Elizabeth (1635-50); Henry, Duke of Gloucester (1639-60); and Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans (1644-70), the last born ten weeks after Charles’s final parting from his queen. [GADD.GED]

Charles I (of England) (1600-1649), king of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1625-1649), who was deposed and executed during the English Revolution.

Charles was born in Dunfermline, Scotland. The second son of James I, Charles became heir apparent when his elder brother, Henry, died, and was made Prince of Wales in 1616. In 1623, during the Thirty Years' War, Charles visited Spain to negotiate his proposed marriage with the daughter of the Spanish king. The proposal had been made in order to effect an alliance between Spain and England. When it became apparent, however, that the Spanish had no intention of concluding such an alliance, negotiations were begun for his marriage to the French princess Henrietta Maria, and England formed an alliance with France against Spain. In 1625 Charles succeeded to the throne and married Henrietta Maria, but his marriage aroused the ill will of his Protestant subjects because she was Roman Catholic.

Charles believed in the divine right of kings and in the authority of the Church of England. These beliefs soon brought him into conflict with Parliament and ultimately led to civil war. He came under the influence of his close friend George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham, whom he appointed his chief minister in defiance of public opinion and whose war schemes in Spain and France ended ignominiously. Charles convoked and dissolved three Parliaments in four years because they refused to comply with his arbitrary measures including the demand that his subjects pay for military expenditures and imprisoning those who did not pay. When the third Parliament met in 1628, it presented the Petition of Right, a statement demanding that Charles make certain reforms in exchange for war funds. Charles was forced to accept the petition. However, in 1629, Charles dismissed Parliament and had several parliamentary leaders imprisoned. Charles governed without a Parliament for the next 11 years. During this time forced loans, poundage, tonnage, ship money, and other extraordinary financial measures were sanctioned to meet governmental expenses.

In 1637 Charles's attempt to impose the Anglican liturgy in Scotland led to rioting by Presbyterian Scots. Charles was unable to quell the revolt, and in 1640 he convoked the so-called Short Parliament to raise an army and necessary funds. This body, which sat for one month (April-May), refused his demands, drew up a statement of public grievances, and insisted on peace with Scotland. Obtaining money by irregular means, Charles advanced against the Scots, who crossed the border, routed his army at Newburn, and soon afterward occupied Newcastle and Durham.

His money exhausted, the king was compelled to call his fifth Parliament, the Long Parliament, in 1640. Led by John Pym, it proceeded against the two chief royal advisers, the archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, and Sir Thomas Wentworth, 1st earl of Strafford. Parliament secured the imprisonment and subsequent executions of both men. In 1641 Charles agreed to bills abolishing the prerogative courts, prohibiting arbitrary taxation, and ensuring that this Parliament would not be dissolved without its own permission. The king also agreed to more religious liberties for the Scots. Soon after, Charles was implicated in a plot to murder the leaders of the Covenanters, a Scottish group devoted to maintaining Presbyterianism. When Charles visited Scotland in August 1641, he promised Archibald Campbell, 8th earl of Argyll, a Covenanter leader, that he would submit to the demands of the Scottish Parliament.

While still in Scotland, the king received word of a rebellion in Ireland in which thousands of English colonists were massacred. When he returned to London in November, he tried to have Parliament raise an army, under his control, to put down the Irish revolt. Parliament, fearing that the army would be used against itself, refused, and issued the Grand Remonstrance, a list of reform demands, including the right of Parliament to approve the king's ministers. Charles appeared in the House of Commons with an armed force and tried to arrest Pym and four members. The country was aroused, and the king fled with his family from London.

Both sides then raised armies. The supporters of Parliament were called Roundheads, and those of the king, Cavaliers. The first civil war of the English Revolution, now inevitable, began at Edgehill on October 23, 1642. The Cavaliers were initially successful, but after a series of reverses Charles gave himself up to the Scottish army on May 5, 1646. Having refused to accept Presbyterianism, he was delivered in June 1647 to the English Parliament. Later he escaped to the Isle of Wight but was imprisoned there. By this time a serious division had occurred between Parliament and its army. The army's leader, Oliver Cromwell and his supporters, the Independents, compelled Parliament to pass an act of treason against further negotiation with the king.

Eventually, the moderate Parliamentarians were forcibly ejected by the Independents, and the remaining legislators, who formed the so-called Rump Parliament, appointed a court to try the king. On January 20, 1649, the trial began in Westminster Hall. Charles denied the legality of the court and refused to plead. On January 27 he was sentenced to death as a tyrant, murderer, and enemy of the nation. Scotland protested, the royal family entreated, and France and the Netherlands interceded, in vain. Charles was beheaded at Whitehall, London. Subsequently Oliver Cromwell became chairman of the council of state, a parliamentary agency that governed England as a republic until the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. [Microsoft Encarta 98 Encyclopedia]

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