Charles II

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.

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.

Fig. 2 - The coat of arms of King Charles II

Three Kingdoms

Historian Tim Harris argues that the restoration of Charles II was,

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,

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.

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.

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,