Charles I

(1600–49)

   Monarch.

   Charles I was the second son of James i, King of England and Scotland. His elder brother died young and Charles inherited the throne in 1625. He had his own theological views; he consistently promoted High Church Arminian clergy in preference to followers of John calvin and, in 1633, William laud became Archbishop of Canterbury. Laud’s policies were extremely unpopular. Charles himself was a firm believer in the divine right of kings and was very much influenced by his Roman Catholic wife, the French princess Henrietta Maria. Many of the King’s subjects were infuriated by the tolerance shown to Catholics, coupled with the harsh measures meted out to the extreme disciples of the continental Reformers. The Scots were appalled by his insistence that they follow the English Prayer Book and that their Church be controlled by English Bishops. The result in 1638 was that the Scots declared their Presbyterianism in the National Covenant. Ultimately, opposition to Charles’s policies, political as well as religious, led to civil war, in which the rebels were victorious and the Church of England disestablished. Charles himself was executed by rebel army leaders in 1649, the only English King to meet this fate. For all his indecision and lack of political astuteness, Charles was a virtuous man who led an exemplary family life. Many considered his death to have been a martyrdom and he has remained a focus for extreme royalism and high Anglicanism ever since.

   C. Petrie (ed.), The Letters, Speeches and Proclamations of Charles I (1935);

   C. Carlton, Charles I, the Personal Monarch (1984);

   A. Hughes, The Causes of the English Civil War (1991);

   C. Russell, The Causes of the English Civil War (1990).