Charles I: A Case of Mistaken Identity

For my part I do believe he was not the worst,
but the most unfortunate of kings.¹

I

There is no event in the history of the British monarchy more studied than the downfall of Charles I. It riveted the attention of contemporaries and has fascinated historians ever since. It is one of those defining historical moments that serve as a prism through which the present sees itself. Sometimes the collapse of the Stuart monarchy has been told as the tale of an ineffectual king, a lesson in the consequences of gripping the reins too loosely.² At other times, it has been seen as a conspiracy of ambitious men who overwhelmed their sovereign.³ In the nineteenth century Charles's ouster was viewed as a consequence of the growth of parliamentary democracy and religious liberty.⁴ Subsequently, it was likened to a stage of historical inevitability, when a decaying feudal monarchy was replaced by a thrusting commercial bourgeoisie.⁵ Lately, the king's overthrow has been interpreted as a moment in the history of freedom: it was a stand against tyranny by defenders of the liberties of a freeborn people.⁶ If seventeenth-century authors used models based on the history of Rome to interpret their own lives, generations of historians after 1649 have taught their lessons through the fall of the monarchy of Charles I.

Naturally enough, all these interpretations focus their attention upon the king's failures. There has been surprisingly little disagreement about his essential characteristics as a man or a monarch. As a recent biographer observed, 'King Charles I's faults are so well known that we should for the sake of fairness take stock of his merits as well'.⁷ He was weak of limb and slow of speech. His refined sensibilities were not those ordinarily associated with kings and neither was his uxorious and faithful marriage. 'Those things upon which Charles placed the greatest value — order, peace, domesticity, spirituality and aesthetics — are things to which the political world is naturally hostile or indifferent'.⁸ This was the dreamy Charles, an introverted recluse playing with his coins and curios while Britain burned. Other critics questioned his competence to rule: 'his intellect was all eddy and no tide', wrote G. M. Young, and more than one historian has either characterized him as stupid — 'an awe inspiring degree of crass stupidity' — or tepidly exonerated him from the charge.⁹ This should make the companion complaint that the king was lazy less damning, in that indolence in an intellectually deficient monarch has its advantages. 'Charles was a lazy aesthete short of self-confidence', according to one historian, and another who has extensively surveyed his personality concluded that, 'although he sought to be diligent, he lacked interest in the everyday tasks of government'.¹⁰ In sum, 'for Charles, character was destiny . . . [he] failed because of his own personal defects'.¹¹

There are many ways in which these faults determined his fate. Almost unanimously historians have attributed Charles's political failures to two fundamental deficiencies in his character: 'his rigid inability to compromise . . . and his transparent dishonesty'.¹² The source of his inflexibility is thought to be a weak mind and a near-total lack of empathy, especially with his subjects. S. R. Gardiner identified this characteristic succinctly: 'that want of imaginative power which lay at the root of his faults'.¹³ At bottom this derived from a lack of self-esteem and was manifested in an authoritarian style of rule.¹⁴ 'Charles consistently exhibited insecurity, lack of confidence and weakness'.¹⁵ Rather than appear vulnerable, the king overcompensated with an inflexible political style. 'He would believe that his word was final, and disobedience he would take as an insult to his person'.¹⁶ Thus the king regarded all those who opposed him as personal enemies and he refused to compromise either policies or principles. 'His insistence on principle in the face of the realities of politics became at times dangerously like the obstinacy of the stupid'.¹⁷

Added to his uncompromising, authoritarian attitudes was a deep streak of mendacity...