Eleven years after they executed a king and became a republic, Britain invited the monarchy back again. Charles II reclaimed a throne that he probably thought he would never get to inherit. And he made the most of it - becoming renowned for his indulgent and lavish lifestyle. But is there more to Charles II than merely being a party king? Read on to find out more.
Republic
A state in which power is held by the elected representatives of the people. There is an elected president/protector rather than a monarch.
Fig 1 - Painting of King Charles II by John Michael Wright
King Charles II Facts
Before we take a closer look at this colourful royal personality, let us take a moment to get a brief overview of who King Charles II was.
- Charles II was the eldest surviving son of King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria. He was born in 1630 at St James' Palace in London.
- The Convention Parliament invited Charles II back to be King of England, Scotland, and Ireland in 1660 after Oliver Cromwell died in 1658.
- Charles II was invited back to be King of England, Scotland, and Ireland in 1660 by the Convention Parliament after Oliver Cromwell died in 1658.
- King Charles II disliked Puritanism and supported the Anglican Church in England.
- In 1662, King Charles II married Catherine of Braganza, a Portuguese Roman Catholic. She was a very unpopular queen in England because of her Catholic background.
King Charles II came into conflict with Parliament due to his wars with the Dutch and his tolerance for Catholics.
King Charles II had no surviving heirs, meaning the heir to the throne was his younger brother, James, Duke of York. However, since James was extremely unpopular owing to his Catholic religion, Charles II agreed that James' daughter Mary should marry the Protestant William of Orange.
King Charles II was known for having many affairs with various mistresses before and during his reign. He fathered twelve illegitimate children, but none were included in the line of succession because they were conceived outside of marriage.
King Charles II died very suddenly of an apoplectic fit in 1685. Some contemporaries even suspected he had been poisoned because of his abrupt death.
King Charles II became known as the Merry Monarch because of his charm and fondness for self-indulgence.
King Charles II
The timeline below outlines the key events of King Charles II's life before and after he became king.
| Date | Event |
| 29 May 1630 | Charles II was born at St James Palace, London. |
| August 1642 | The First English Civil War broke out. |
| January 1645 | Charles II led Royalist forces in the West Country during the Civil War. |
| Spring 1646 | Charles II fled to the Isles of Scilly, and from there to France. |
| 1648 | Second English Civil War; Charles II spent time in the Netherlands with his sister Mary. |
| January 1649 | King Charles I was executed at the end of the Civil War, making England a Republic. |
| 1649 | Charles II was proclaimed King of Great Britain, Ireland, and France by the Scottish Parliament. |
| 1650 | Scotland's support of Charles II led to the Anglo-Scottish War. |
| 1 January 1651 | Charles II was crowned at Scone Abbey. |
| 3 September 1651 | Charles II's forces were defeated by Cromwell's army at the Battle of Worcester; he fled to France. |
| 1654 | France and the Dutch Republic allied with Cromwell's England; Charles II fled to Spain. |
| 1656 | Charles II made a treaty with Spain, promising support for a restoration in exchange for Charles' contribution to Spain's military campaign against France. |
| 1658 | Oliver Cromwell died and his son, Richard, succeeded him as Lord Protector. |
| 1659 | The Rump Parliament convened, and Richard Cromwell decided to resign as Lord Protector. |
| 25 April 1660 | The reassembled Convention Parliament invited Charles II to become King of England, Scotland, and Ireland. |
| 29 May 1660 | Charles II arrived in England to take his throne. |
| 1661 | The Corporation Act restricted all public offices in England to members of the Anglican Church. |
| 1662 | The Act of Uniformity made the use of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer compulsory. |
| May 1662 | Charles II married Catherine of Braganza, a Catholic princess from Portugal. |
| 1664 | The Conventicle Act made religious meetings of more than five people outside of the Church of England illegal. |
| 1665 | The Great Plague swept through London. |
| 1665-1667 | The Second Anglo-Dutch War. |
| September 1666 | The Great Fire of London. |
| July 1667 | The Treaty of Breda was signed to end the Anglo-Dutch War. |
| 1670 | Charles II signed the Treaty of Dover with Louis XIV of France. |
| 1672 | Charles II tried to remove all laws against Catholics and religious dissenters. The Third Anglo-Dutch War began. |
| 1674 | Charles was forced to make peace with the Dutch after Parliament refused to fund more wars. |
| 1678 | Charles II's chief minister, Lord Danby, was impeached by the Cavalier Parliament. |
| 1679 | The Earl of Shaftesbury introduced the Exclusion Bill to Parliament, which attempted to exclude Charles II's younger Catholic brother, James Duke of York, from succession to the crown. |
| 1679-1681 | Charles II tried to protect his brother's claim to the throne by successively dissolving various Parliaments. From 1681 onwards, Charles ruled without a Parliament. |
| 1683 | The Rye House Plot occurred. |
| 2 February 1685 | Charles suffered an apoplectic fit at the Palace of Whitehall and died 4 days later. |
Impeachment
The charge of treason or another severe crime against the state or monarch.
Charles II and the English Civil War
As you've probably guessed by now, Charles II's early life was anything but peaceful. The First English Civil War broke out when he was just 12 years old, and by 15, he was leading Royalist forces in the West Country. One year later, in 1646, he was forced to flee Britain and go into exile to avoid capture by the Parliamentarians. From Falmouth, he went to the Isles of Scilly and then to France to be under the protection of his cousin, Louis XIV, along with his mother.
Immediately, he started appealing for military help to defeat the Parliamentarians and aid his father, Charles I. In 1648, he chose to go to the Netherlands, where his younger sister Mary was married to William, Prince of Orange, as they were more likely to help him.
A significant blow came to Charles in 1649 when his father, Charles I, was executed. For Charles II, the stakes could not get any higher, and the desire to defeat the Parliamentarians and take his rightful place as king dominated his mind, having already been proclaimed King by the Scottish parliament. The 1650s were spent fighting battles and making alliances. The Anglo-Scottish War (1650-52) and the Anglo-Dutch War (1652-54) occupied the first half of the decade, and Charles forged a profitable alliance with Spain to aid him in these conflicts.
The turning point came in 1658 when Oliver Cromwell died. Initially, Charles was not hopeful of a restoration, as Cromwell's son Richard succeeded him; yet, it soon became apparent that Richard had little political or military experience, and he eventually resigned in 1659. It wasn't long before Parliament, out of alternatives and facing severe civil and military unrest, begrudgingly asked Charles II to return to Britain and take his place as King.
Restoration of Charles II
What are we to make of the fact that, having become a republic in 1649, the British invited the monarchy back just over a decade later? Many insights can be drawn from the restoration of the monarchy, but two observations are particularly significant.
Restoration of 1660
The name given to the event of 1660 when Charles II became king since this was when the monarchy was restored to the three kingdoms of Britain.
Fig. 2 - The coat of arms of King Charles II
Three Kingdoms
Historian Tim Harris argues that the restoration of Charles II was,
...a quintessentially three kingdoms event.1
When Charles II returned to Britain in 1660, he returned as King of Ireland, Scotland, and England. Moreover, each kingdom played a 'crucial role' in helping return Charles II to his throne. The Irish Convention declared itself for Charles II in 1659; the Scottish army under General George Monck led to the downfall of the Rump Parliament, thus paving the way for Charles II to return. Lastly, England was the seat of the English Convention, which ultimately invited Charles II to become King of all three kingdoms.
The Restoration had no guarantee of being a success
With hindsight, it is easy to look back on 1660 as a year that marked the turning point between one era and another.
However, it is important to remember that for people at the time, including Charles II, the future of the restored monarchy was by no means certain. There was no guarantee that the new regime would last longer than Cromwell's republic or that England would not descend again into civil war - split as it was still between different political and religious factions.
Historian N.H. Keeble thus argues that,
The Restoration is better understood as a process rather than an event...not a tidy affair.2
Charles II Reign
King Charles II was not known for being a politically shrewd ruler. Although he often compromised - learning, perhaps, from his father's fate - Charles II was no skilled politician. He led England into wars against the Dutch, which proved both ineffectual and costly. His personal tolerance for Catholicism, which led him to marry a Catholic queen and fight for his Catholic brother's right to succession, also made him extremely unpopular in Protestant circles.
Fig. 3 - Painting of King Charles II and his Catholic Queen, Catherine of Braganza. Charles II's sympathetic approach to Catholics did not endear him to the English public.
Strangely enough, a reversal of fortunes in King Charles II's popularity arose due to a failed assassination attempt on his life in 1683. When a group of Protestant nobles attempted to kill Charles II after a horse race, the country rallied around their attacked king. Subsequently, Charles II enjoyed somewhat of a resurgence in his popularity.
Did you know? The trials of the plotters were highly publicised and sensationalised in pamphlets, which endeared the public towards the plight of Charles II, leading to a much-needed increase in his popularity. Equally, it got rid of his major political opponents and reduced the power of the Republican faction of the Whig party.
Charles II Death
King Charles II suffered a fit in early 1685. He died four days later, surrounded by doctors and physicians at Whitehall.
Charles was buried in Westminster Abbey on 14 February 1685. The fact that he had no surviving heir born within marriage meant that succession passed to his younger Catholic brother, James, Duke of York. Thus with his death, Charles ushered the way forward for the Glorious Revolution on 1688.
The Glorious Revolution of 1688
After the chaos of the Restoration, Charles II had surely hoped that this would mark the start of a new Stuart dynasty. However, he would not be so lucky. Just three years after his death, his younger brother and heir, James II, was deposed and replaced by Mary II and her husband, William, Prince of Orange. But how did this happen?
Initially, James II's transition to power was relatively uncontested. Even though he was a Catholic, he was 52 and his heir apparent was his oldest daughter, Mary, who was a Protestant, so his Catholicism was not such an issue.
However, things changed in June 1688 when James II's wife, Mary of Modena, gave birth to a son. Immediately, the safety of a Protestant succession was gone. Equally, earlier in the year, James II had prosecuted seven Bishops for seditious libel after they rejected the reintroduction of the Declaration of Indulgence. The accusation lost James popularity and sparked anti-Catholic riots, which lead to a group of Protestant nobles inviting William of Orange to invade and take the throne.
On 5 November 1688, William of Orange landed in Britain, and soon had the support of much of the ex-royalist army and much of the nobility, including James' own daughter, Anne. From this point, the coup was quick and, surprisingly, fairly bloodless. James refused to attack the invading army, and was eventually allowed to flee to France, leaving the throne to William and Mary, who ruled as joint monarchs.
Charles II of England
Charles II has gone down in the public imagination as a fun monarch, a popular and beloved figure of British history. However, most academic historians disagree with this assessment. Charles II in academic historiography tends to be perceived as a lazy and incompetent ruler, whose greatest success was not putting his foot in it enough to spark yet another civil war.3 One of the indicators of Charles II's weakness as a monarch is the fact that a mere two years after he returned to the throne, he was experiencing a wave of severe unpopularity across the country.
However, historian Joyce Lee Malcolm challenges the view that Charles was totally inept. She focuses on the policies that Charles II used to reconstruct royal authority - policies that proved successful in keeping him on the throne for a quarter of a century despite a host of unfavourable conditions. Malcolm concludes by observing,
By Christmas of 1662, Charles II had substantially diminished the capability of his subjects to rebel. His program to police and disarm all likely dissenters ...demonstrated skill, timing and resourcefulness.4
Charles II - Key takeaways
- Charles II was the eldest son of King Charles I and Henrietta Maria.
- Charles II fled to France, and spent some time in the Netherlands and Spain during the civil wars and the period when England was a republic.
- Charles II was invited back to Britain to become king of Ireland, Scotland, and England in 1662.
- The Restoration was not a tidy, easy affair but a long and messy process with no guarantees of success.
- Although Charles II tends to be popular in the public imagination, most academic historians view him as a lazy and incompetent ruler.
References
- Tim Harris, Restoration: Charles II and His Kingdoms, 1660-1685, (2006), Introduction.
- N.H.Keeble, The Restoration: England in the 1660s, (2008), pp.2-3.
- Gary Howells, 'Interpretations and history teaching: why Ronald Hutton's "Debates in Stuart History" matters', Teaching History 121, pp.29-35.
- Joyce Lee Malcolm, Charles II and the Reconstruction of Royal Power, The Historical Journal 35, (1992), p.328.
- Fig. 1 - John Michael Wright (1617-94) - Charles II (1630-1685) - RCIN 404951 - Royal Collection - 1 (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Michael_Wright_(1617-94)_-_Charles_II_(1630-1685)_-_RCIN_404951_-_Royal_Collection_-_1.jpg) Public Domain (https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/)
- Fig. 2 - Coat of arms of King Charles II (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Coat_of_Arms_of_King_Charles_II.jpg) Public Domain (https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/)
- Fig. 3 - English School - King Charles II and Catherine of Braganza (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:English_School_-_King_Charles_II_and_Catherine_of_Braganza.png) Public Domain (https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/)
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