Kinlight · The British Royal Line

King Charles I

1600 – 1649 · Generation XXVI · King of England, Scotland and Ireland (r. 1625–1649) · House of Stuart

Portrait of King Charles I

Charles I ruled England, Scotland and Ireland from 1625 until 30 January 1649, when he was beheaded outside his own Banqueting House in Whitehall after losing a civil war to his Parliament. He was born at Dunfermline Palace in Fife on 19 November 1600, the second son of James VI of Scotland and Anne of Denmark, and left Scotland as a small child after his father inherited the English throne. A sickly, shy child with a stammer that never quite left him, he grew up in the shadow of his admired elder brother Henry, whose death in 1612 made him heir.

In 1623 he travelled incognito to Spain with his father’s favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, to win a Spanish bride, and came home without one. He succeeded his father in March 1625 and on 1 May was married by proxy to the fifteen-year-old Henrietta Maria of France, a Catholic. The match alarmed Protestant opinion, all the more because concessions to English Catholics had been secretly written into the marriage treaty. Charles had nine children with her, five of whom reached adulthood, among them the future Charles II and James II.

His first years as king were spent quarrelling with Parliament over money and over Buckingham, who led a failed expedition to France and was murdered in 1628. That year Parliament presented the Petition of Right, which asked the king to accept that he could not tax without its consent or imprison subjects without due process. In March 1629 Charles dismissed his fourth Parliament and resolved to govern without one. For eleven years he raised revenue by prerogative devices, above all ship money, a levy once confined to ports in wartime and extended in 1635 to the whole country. Ruling without Parliament lay within his prerogative, but the taxes were deeply resented. His chief advisers, Archbishop William Laud and the Earl of Strafford, were able and widely disliked.

Charles believed in the divine right of kings and in a ceremonious, high Anglican church. He was also a discerning collector who brought Van Dyck and Rubens to England and bought paintings by Raphael and Titian. It was religion that undid him. His attempt to impose a new prayer book on Scotland provoked a riot in Edinburgh in 1637, the signing of the National Covenant and then war. To pay for it he had to recall Parliament. He dissolved the Short Parliament of April 1640 within weeks, but after a Scottish army occupied Newcastle he was forced to summon another that November. The Long Parliament sent Strafford to the block, declared ship money illegal and secured a law that it could not be dissolved without its own consent. In January 1642 Charles entered the Commons with an armed guard to arrest five of its members and found them gone.

He raised his standard at Nottingham on 22 August 1642 and made Oxford his capital. The fighting was evenly balanced at first, as the battle of Edgehill showed that October. Parliament held London and the navy, however, and its alliance with the Scots in 1643 and the creation of the New Model Army tipped the scales. Royalist defeats at Marston Moor in 1644 and Naseby in 1645 were decisive, and the letters captured at Naseby revealed how much help Charles had sought from Ireland and the Continent. In May 1646 he gave himself up to the Scottish army at Newark, which handed him over to Parliament some nine months later.

Even as a prisoner he went on bargaining with every party, convinced that none could settle the kingdom without him. From Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight he made a secret Engagement with the Scots, whose invasion on his behalf was crushed at Preston in August 1648. The army’s leaders concluded that there could be no peace while he lived. Parliament was purged in December, and the remaining Rump set up a High Court of Justice. Charged with high treason on 20 January 1649, Charles refused to plead, denying that the court had any lawful authority. He was sentenced on 27 January, and fifty-nine commissioners signed the death warrant.

On the morning of his execution he asked for two shirts, so that no one would mistake a shiver for fear, and on the scaffold he called himself the martyr of the people. He was buried on 9 February in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, beside Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, two days after the office of king had been formally abolished. Eleven years later the monarchy was restored under his son, and in 1660 the Church of England added King Charles the Martyr to its calendar.

Place in the family

  • King Charles I was a great-great-great-nephew of King Henry VIII.
  • King Charles I was the youngest of 3 children of King James I and Anne of Denmark recorded in this archive.
  • The archive records 7 of his descendants, across 2 generations.

Images

One of 17 people of House of Stuart (from 1371) in this archive. Scotland’s royal house for three centuries before James VI inherited England and wore both crowns.

Line of descent: Owen Tudor → Edmund Tudor → King Henry VII → Margaret Tudor → King James V of Scotland → Mary Queen of Scots → King James I → King Charles I.

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Life

  • 1600 — Born
  • 1625 — Married Henrietta Maria of France
  • 1625 — Charles I succeeds his father, James I.
  • 1626 — Parliament attempts to impeach the Duke of Buckingham and is dissolved by Charles.
  • 1628 — The Petition of Right a declaration of the “rights and liberties of the subject\" is presented to the King, who agrees to it under protest.
  • 1629 — Charles dissolves Parliament and rules by himself until 1640.
  • 1637 — Charles tries to force new prayer book on Scots, who resist by signing the National Covenant.
  • 1640 — Charles summons the Short Parliament, which he dissolves three weeks later when it refuses to grant him money.
  • 1642 — Charles fails in his attempt to arrest five MPs.
  • 1642 — Outbreak of Civil War. Charles raises his standard at Nottingham. The Royalists win a tactical victory the Parliamentary army at the Battle of Edgehill but the outcome is inconclusive.
  • 1646 — Charles surrenders to the Scots, who hand him over to Parliament.
  • 1647 — Charles escapes to the Isle of Wight but is captured. He is tried by Parliament and found guilty of high treason.
  • 1648 — A Scots army supporting Charles is defeated at Preston.
  • 1649 — Died
  • 1649 — Charles I is executed. There follows 11 years of rule by Parliament as the Commonwealth under Cromwell.

Sources

  1. Charles I of England · Wikipedia
  2. Charles I (r. 1625–1649) · The Royal Family (royal.uk)
  3. Charles I of England · World History Encyclopedia

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