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Charles II (1660-1685)

Charles II, King of England, Ireland, and Scotland; son of Charles I and Henrietta Maria of France, was born in London, May 29, 1630. After the execution of Charles I, in 1648, the Scots proclaimed his son king, under the title of Charles II. He was a refugee at The Hague on the death of his father, on which he immediately assumed the royal title. He first intended to proceed to Ireland, but was prevented by the progress of Cromwell. He therefore listened to an invitation from the Scots, who had proclaimed him their king on Feb. 5, 1649, and arrived in the Cromarty Firth, June 16, 1650. Being obliged to throw himself into the hands of the rigid Presbyterians, they subjected him to many severities and mortifications, which caused him to regard that sect ever after with extreme aversion.

Cromwell passed the Tweed on the 22d of July 1650. He defeated the Scots at Dunbar, owing more to the madness of the clergy, than to any want of skill in the generals, or bravery in the men. In 1651 Charles II was crowned at Scone; but the approach of Cromwell with his conquering army soon rendered his abode in Scotland unsafe. Hoping to be joined by the English royalists, he took the spirited resolution of passing Cromwell and entering England, Carlisle readily throwing open its gates to receive him. He was immediately pursued by that active commander, who, with a superior army, gained the battle of Worcester on the third of September, 1651, and Charles, after a variety of imminent hazards, being on one occasion sheltered for 24 hours in the branches of the famous Boscobel oak, reached Shoreham, in Sussex, and effected a passage to France. In April, 1652, by an ordinance of the English parliament, Scotland was incorporated into one commonwealth with England, in whose fortunes it now partook.

He passed some years in Paris, little regarded by the court, which was awed by the power of the English Commonwealth; and this indignity induced him to retire to Cologne. It is the province of history to state the circumstances that produced the Restoration, which General Monk so conducted that Charles, without a struggle, succeeded at once to all those dangerous prerogatives which it had cost the nation so much blood and treasure, first to abridge and then to abolish. This unrestrictive return was not more injurious to the nation than fatal to the family of the Stuarts, which, had a more rational policy prevailed, might have occupied the throne at this moment.

On May 29, 1660, Charles entered London amid universal and almost frantic acclamations; and the different civil and religious parties vied with each other in loyalty and submission. His first measures were prudent and conciliatory. Hyde, Lord Clarendon, was made chancellor and prime minister; and an act of indemnity was passed, from which those alone were excepted who were immediately concerned in the late king's death. A settled revenue was accepted in lieu of wardship and purveyance, and the army was reduced. In respect to religion, there was less indulgence; for not only were prelacy and the parliamentary rights of bishops restored, which was to be expected, but an act of uniformity was passed, by the conditions of which nearly all the Presbyterian clergy were driven to a resignation of their livings. In 1662 he married the Infanta of Portugal, a prudent and virtuous princess, but in no way calculated to acquire the affection of a man like Charles. The indolence of his temper and the expenses of his licentious way of life soon involved him in pecuniary disticulties; and the unpopular sale of Dunkirk to the French was one of his most early expedients to relieve himself.

The restoration of Charles II to the throne of his ancestors, in England, was followed by his restoration in Scotland. The Scottish parliament assembled, under the earl of Middleton, the king's commissioner, on the 1st of January, 1661. Much of what had been done, during the three and twenty years of trouble and bondage, was now rescinded. The king, through his commissioner, declared in parliament his resolution to maintain the true reformed Protestant religion, as it had been established during the reign of his father and grandfather; intimating, however, that he would restore the episcopal government, though he allowed, meanwhile, the administration of sessions, presbyteries, and synods.

The charge of plots and conspiracies was now brought against the Presbyterians. The endeavour to establish episcopacy was violently opposed, and led to the most cruel persecution of the presbyterians, which lasted, with more or less severity, during the whole of the profligate reign of Charles. Hundreds were executed on the scaffold, others were fined, imprisoned, and tortured; and whole tracts of the country were placed under a military despotism of the worst description. Driven to desperation, the presbyterian party had several times recourse to arms, and, although in some cases successful, they were finally defeated and scattered at Bothwell Bridge.

In 1663 a rupture took place with Holland, which, as it proceeded from commercial rivalry, was willingly supported by Parliament. It was attended, in the first instance, by various naval successes; but France and Denmark entering into the war, as allies of the Dutch, the English were overmatched, and a Dutch fleet entered the Thames, and, proceeding up the Medway, burned and destroyed ships as high as Chatham. Such was the naval disgrace of a reign which, on many other accounts, is probably the most discreditable and disastrous in the English annals. The domestic calamities of a dreadful plague in 1665, and of the great fire of London in 1666, added to the disasters of the period.

The Nonconformists, generally, were also treated with much rigor. It is said that a large assembly of Quakers, in the reign of Charles II having protracted their sitting to a very long and tedious period, could not be prevailed with to break up, till a merry wag thought of this stratagem, proclaiming "in the King's name, that no one should depart without his leave." On hearing this, they all immediately rose and went away, that it should not be said they paid obedience to any one.

The year 1678 was distinguished by the pretended discovery of the popish plot for the assassination of the king, and the introduction of the Catholic religion. Notwithstanding the infamous characters of Oates and Bedloe, and the improbable nature of their disclosures, their tale, supported by the general suspicion of the secret influence of a Catholic faction, met with universal be: lief; the Parliament exhibiting nearly as much credulity and heat as the vulgar. Many Catholic lords were committed; Coleman, the Duke of York’s secretary, and several priests were hanged; and a venerable nobleman, the Earl of Stafford, was beheaded. The Duke of York thought fit to retire to Brussels, and a bill for his exclusion from the throne passed the House of Commons.

Such was the state of the country that Charles was obliged to give way to some popular measures, and the great palladium of civil liberty, the Habeas Corpus Bill, passed during this session. The temper of the Parliament was so much excited that the king first prorogued and then dissolved it. The court now sought to establish a balance of parties; to distinguish which, the terms Whig and Tory were about this time brought into use.

These rapid strides toward the destruction of liberty at length produced the celebrated Rye House plot, the parties to which certainly intended resistance; but that the assassination of the king was ever formally projected seems very doubtful. It certainly formed no part of the intention of Lord William Russell, whose execution, with that of Algernon Sidney, on account of the plot, forms one of the striking events of this disgraceful reign. Charles was at this time as absolute as any sovereign in Europe; and had he been an active prince, the fetters of tyranny might have been completely riveted. Scotland, which at different periods of his reign had been driven into insurrection by the arbitrary attempts to restore Episcopacy, was very nearly dragooned into submission; and the relics of the Covenanters were suppressed with circumstances of great barbarity.

Charles II expired, from the consequences of an apoplectic fit, in February, 1685, in the 55th year of his age, and the 25th of his reign. At his death he received the sacrament according to the rites of the Romish Church, and thus proved himself to have been, during the whole of his life, as hypocritical as profligate. The death of Charles II, on the 6th of February, 1685, transferred his feverish administration to his brother, James II.

The character of Charles II requires little analysis. He was a confirmed sensualist and voluptuary; and, owing to the example of him and his court, his reign was the era of the most dissolute manners that ever prevailed in England. The stage was an open school of licentiousness, and polite literature was altogether infected by it. Charles was a man of wit, and a good judge of certain kinds of writing, but was too deficient in sensibility to feel either the sublime or the beautiful in composition; neither was he generous even to the writers whom he applauded. He possessed an easy good nature, but united with it a total indifference to anything but his own pleasure; and no man could be more destitute of honor or generosity. His ideas of the relation between king and subject were evinced by his observation on Lauderdale's cruelties in Scotland: “I perceive,” said he, “that Lauderdale has been guilty of many bad things against the people of Scotland; but I cannot find that he has acted in anything contrary to my interest.”

Yet, with all his selfishness and demerits as a king, Charles always preserved a share of popularity with the multitude, from the easiness of his manners. Pepy’s “Memoirs” and other private documents, however, clearly show the opinion of the more reflecting portion of his subjects; and it is now pretty generally admitted that, as he was himself a most dishonorable and heartless monarch and man, so his reign exhibited the English character in a more disgraceful light than any other in British history. It need not be added that he left many illegitimate children, the descendants of some of whom are still among the leading nobility of the country. The fate of his most distinguished son, the ill-fated Duke of Monmouth, is an affair of history.