Charles I by Van Dyke
2nd February 2013 is the 387th anniversary of the coronation
of England’s arguably most rubbish king.
He has some stiff competition - Henry VI was pretty useless,
and Edward II was deposed by his own wife - but Charles I, I think, wins out
for managing to be the only British monarch to annoy his own people so much
that they, state-sanctioned, murdered him.
And it wasn’t even as if it started well. Charles had been
ruling since his father James I died in March 1625, but plague had postponed
the coronation. In case that wasn’t sufficiently ominous, his wife refused to
be crowned alongside him, and the Archbishop of Canterbury spoke too quietly
for the congregation to hear when they were supposed to start applauding.
* * *
Charles, born a second son of James VI of Scotland in
November 1600, was never meant to be king. He was, by all accounts, an
unattractive child, weak and with a pronounced stammer that he retained
throughout his life - his father kept him in Scotland until a year after his
own accession to the English throne, in 1603. Charles’s older brother Henry
was, in contrast, glorious, and Henry’s death from tuberculosis in 1612 was as
tragic as it was unexpected.
Charles I in his Garter robes by Van Dyke
His early reign was also characterised by his disastrous
marriage, to a French Catholic princess, Henrietta Maria. Henrietta Maria was
only 15 when she arrived in England, already married by proxy to a nervous
25-year-old virgin who was a strict Anglican in a country that outlawed
Catholicism. Charles had agreed with her brother, Louis XIII, that she should
be allowed to practise her faith openly, which didn’t go down well with her new
Protestant subjects. She and Buckingham hated each other, and because Charles
loved his friend far more than he loved his wife, Henrietta Maria’s first months
in England were unhappy ones.
Charles I and Henrietta Maria by Mytens
* * *
God didn’t. Eventually, on 30th January 1649, after an
eleven year rule without a single session of Parliament, followed by two
bitter, bloody civil wars, England sent its king to the scaffold.
Further Reading
David Starkey & Christopher Hibbert: Charles I: A Life of
Religion, War and Treason
(http://www.amazon.co.uk/Charles-Life-Religion-War-Treason/dp/140398378X/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1359453943&sr=1-3)
Just reading the Katie Whitaker book - lots of interesting stuff in there about HM's political involvement. Her work behind the scenes in Strafford's trial particularly interesting!
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