Charles I, King of England, Scotland and Ireland

Person

Charles I, King of England, Scotland and Ireland

1600-1649

King of Britain and Ireland whose authoritarian rule and quarrels with Parliament provoked a civil war that led to his execution.
Charles I was born in Dunfermline Castle, Scotland, on 19 November 1600. He was the third child of James VI of Scotland (subsequently James I of England; 1566–1625) and his Danish wife, Anne (1574–1619), having been preceded by Henry (1594–1612) and Elizabeth (1596–1662). He was created duke of Albany at his baptism and duke of York in 1605. In Scotland he was placed in the care of Lord and Lady Fyvie, who brought him up until the age of four; he then moved to England and the household of Sir Robert and Lady Carey. Thomas Murray, a Scottish presbyterian who later became provost of Eton, oversaw his education. After his brother Henry's death in 1612 he became the sole male heir to the kingdoms of Britain and Ireland.
From the age of twelve Charles was brought up to be a king and he was gradually instructed in every aspect of rule by his father. On 3 November 1616 he was created prince of Wales. He was made a member of the privy council and sat on the naval commission.
In 1623, before succeeding to the throne, Charles made an incognito visit to Spain in order to conclude a marriage treaty with the daughter of King Philip III. When the mission failed, he pressed his father for war against Spain. In the meantime a marriage treaty was arranged with Henrietta Maria, sister of the French king, Louis XIII.
In March 1625, Charles I became king and married Henrietta Maria soon afterward. The Spanish war was proving a failure and Charles offered Parliament no explanations of his foreign policy or its costs. Problems soon arose between the new king and the Commons, and Parliament refused to vote him the right to levy tonnage and poundage (customs duties) though this right had been granted to previous monarchs for life.
The country then became involved in a war with France as well as with Spain and, in desperate need of funds, the king imposed a forced loan, which his judges declared illegal. He then dismissed the chief justice and ordered the arrest of more than 70 knights and gentlemen who refused to contribute.
By the time Charles’s third Parliament met (March 1628), the king’s government was thoroughly discredited. The House of Commons set out its complaints in the Petition of Right. By the time the fourth Parliament met in January 1629, the king’s chief advisor Lord Buckingham had been assassinated. During that parliament the speaker was held down in his chair and three resolutions were passed condemning the king’s conduct. Charles realized that such behaviour was revolutionary. For the next 11 years he ruled his kingdom without calling a Parliament.
In order that he might no longer be dependent upon parliamentary grants, he now made peace with both France and Spain. But in 1639 Charles became involved in a war against the Scots.
Charles summoned a Parliament that met in April 1640—later known as the Short Parliament—in order to raise money for the war against Scotland. The House insisted first on discussing grievances against the government and showed itself opposed to a renewal of the war; so, on May 5, the king dissolved Parliament again. A Scottish army crossed the border in August and the king’s troops panicked before a cannonade at Newburn. Charles summoned another Parliament, the Long Parliament, which met at Westminster in November 1640.
Charles was then forced to agree to a measure whereby the existing Parliament could not be dissolved without its own consent. On November 22, 1641, the Commons passed by 159 to 148 votes the Grand Remonstrance to the king, setting out all that had gone wrong since his accession.
In April the king settled in York, where he ordered the courts of justice to assemble and where royalist members of both houses gradually joined him. In June the majority of the members remaining in London sent the king the Nineteen Propositions, which included demands that no ministers should be appointed without parliamentary approval, that the army should be put under parliamentary control, and that Parliament should decide about the future of the church.
But in July both sides were urgently making ready for war. The king formally raised the royal standard at Nottingham on August 22 and sporadic fighting soon broke out all over the kingdom. Charles moved his court and military headquarters to Christ Church College, Oxford. On June 14 1645 the highly disciplined New Model Army organised and commanded by Sir Thomas Fairfax with Oliver Cromwell as his second in command, defeated the king at the Battle of Naseby. By the spring of 1646 Oxford was surrounded. Charles left the city in disguise. In June, however, he was seized and taken to the army headquarters at Newmarket and then to Hampton Court. He escaped on November 11, but his friends’ plans to take him to Jersey and thence to France went astray and instead Charles found himself in the Isle of Wight, where the governor was loyal to Parliament and kept him under surveillance at Carisbrooke Castle.
In August 1648 the last of Charles’s Scottish supporters were defeated at the Battle of Preston and the second Civil War ended. The army now began to demand that the king should be put on trial for treason. On January 20, 1649, he was brought before a specially constituted high court of justice in Westminster Hall.
Charles I was charged with high treason and “other high crimes against the realm of England.” He at once refused to recognise the legality of the court because “a king cannot be tried by any superior jurisdiction on earth.” He therefore refused to plead but maintained that he stood for “the liberty of the people of England.” The sentence of death was read on January 27; his execution was ordered as a tyrant, traitor, murderer, and public enemy. The sentence was carried out in Whitehall on the morning of January 30, 1649. A week later he was buried at Windsor. Charles had nine children, two of whom eventually succeeded as king (Charles II and James II), and two of whom died at or shortly after birth.

Maurice Ashley, Encyclopaedia Britannica (2002)
Mark A. Kishlansky and John Morrill, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004)