Episode 456: Charles I

age of twenty four. He was proclaimed on the same day as his father's death, and a contemporary at Cambridge wrote that, quote, we had thunder the same day presently on the proclamation, and twas a cold season, but all fears and sorrows are swallowed up in joy, hopeful of a successor end quote. What do we know about Charles's personality? Well, we're going to come to know a lot. You know. He was more severe and much more reserved than his father. He had a strong sense of formality and order. The

change of tone at court was evident almost immediately. Charles announced that during the reign of his quote, most dear and royal father, idle and unnecessary people have thronged the court, bringing much dishonor to our house end quote. There were to be no more bawdery shows or displays. The new king had been impressed by his time in Spain by the decorum of the Spanish court. He appreciated the privacy by which the royal family was protected and the gravitas

with which courtly affairs had been conducted. This moral tone appealed to the young man who had become dismayed by the laxness of his father's court. He began to dress all in black again, in a Spanish preference and a prefest to his orders for the royal household. He remarked that his purpose was to quote establish government and order in our court, which from thence may spread with more order throughout all parts of our kingdom. And quote this idea of control is going to be one that's going

to dominate the turbulent reign of Charles the First. The Venetian ambassador noted that within days of Charles's ascension, quote, the king observes a rule of great decorum. The nobles do not enter his apartments in confusion, as heretofore, but

each rank has its own appointed place end quote. The ambassador for the report that the king had drawn up a significant list of rules and regulations that divided up his day from first rising when he had time to pray, a time for exercising a time for business, and a time for audience and says, plus a time for eating and a time for sleeping. He didn't want to deviate from this schedule, nor did he want his subjects to ever be introduced to him without warning. They would only

be sent for. Servants would offer him meals, now on their bended knees, again a Spanish custom. And such was the protocol around the royal dining that Charles hardly ever, if he ever ate a hot meal, his food took too long to serve, did it solitarily. Whenever he washed his hands, those part of the towel which he touched were raised above the head of the gentleman usher, who removed it from his royal presence. All was now decorum

and grandeur. Gone were the easy days of James. The first people would be wishing for them before too long. Charles got to work really in earnest in the beginning of April, when he asked his favorite, the Duke of Buckingham, and other grandees to review all aspects of foreign policy. You wanted to examine the relationship with Spain, which was

fraid to say the least. You wanted to know about a possible alliance with France, and these were to be considered in light of Charles's desire to recover the Palatinate for his brother in law Frederick. Remember, of course, the Thirty Years War is raging. A committee was established a few days later in order to supervise the nation's defenses

in case of war. The new king then set up two further commissions to investigate financial fraud by the collectors of Customs and to examine the trade of the East India Company with Russia. It was a business like start, but as is generally the case with the work of committees and commissions, it accomplished very very little. Buckingham, of course,

was still the principal counselor to the King. That's going to be our key flashpoint in these first few episodes, as King in Parliament begin their protracted struggle and then civil war or you. Buckingham, of course, had been the principal counselor at the end of the reign of James. He stayed in the company of the King all day and slept in a room next to the royal bedchamber. He possessed the golden key that allowed him entrance to all the apartments of the palace. Frankly, it seemed like

Charles couldn't do anything without his favorite. He had an almost vice president like status and was in part able to compensate for the King's unskillfulness in persuasion and management. Charles, we do know, when it came to public speaking, had a stutter, which, together because he just wasn't very good at normal conversation, led him to convince once that quote, I know I am not good to speak much end quote.

When he was a child, his doctors had tried to cure this problem by putting small stones in his mouth, but this obviously provided no benefit. He tried to complete sentences in his mind before uttering them, but the impediment remained. He was always shy, therefore and hesitant in speech, so he communicated with his household servants by means of gestures

as much as he ever did by words. Charles's first public appearance was in April at the port of Blackwall, on the north of the Thames River, where he visited the royal fleet. He was a small man, just over five feet in height. It might be described as rather delicate. He had it disciplined himself in training and healthy exercise, so that his slight exterior was deceptive. His complexion was very pale, set off in his youth by curly chestnut hair, had a long face, gray eyes, and full lips. He

was temperament in his habits. He preferred plain beer to spice wines, and was of apparently a cool and dispassionate nature, and he always always blushed if he heard any body jokes. The potentially dangerous matter of his marriage to the French Catholic Princess Henrietta Maria soon became the principal topic of London gossip, but Charles was not inclined to heed any warnings,

and he went forward anyway. The marriage was celebrated first by proxy on May the first, sixteen twenty five, in front of the west door of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. In the middle of that month, Buckingham himself traveled to Paris in order to accompany Henrietta Maria across the Channel and to expedite the proposed alliance between England and France. He hoped to persuade the French king to treat his Protestant subjects, the Huguenots, with the same tact that Charles

was now displaying to the Catholics. He also wished to draw the French into open warfare against the Spanish. In both of these endeavors, Buckingham failed. The French King Louis the thirteenth had no interest in a war with Spain and did want to destroy the Huguenots. Henriette and Maria eventually arrived at Dover on the twelfth of June sixteen twenty five. Once Henria, to where Maria arrived in the friends aligne seemed secure, the attention was now turned to

the king's finances. His plea for wartime expenditure was not taken very seriously on the grounds that he hadn't put forth any military plans or policies. Quite frankly, at all, the incompetence of Buckingham came up for the first, not the last time in his reign. You can recall he made it rather ill executed march toward Breda at the end of James's reign, and frankly, Parliament wondered why give

money to an inept commander. One parliament member, Sir Robert felt Helps said, quote we know not yet of any war nor of any enemy end quote. I agree Parliament proposed to give the king only a tenth of the sum which we had anticipated, and to compound this offense from Charles's perspective, the customs duties of tonnage and poundage

would be granted for only one year. All of Charles's predecessors, since the time of Henry the sixth back in the Wars of the Roses, had been awarded tonnage and poundage for the duration of their reign. It is likely that the duties of one year were in fact only a temporary measure until Parliament had the opportunity to debate a permanent settlement. Yet this initial session of Parliament had set

a precedent. The resistance to increase taxation, the opposition to the king's marriage, and their for religious policy would be the prime movers of later discontent. Charles was absolutely indignant at this lack of early success, but he didn't have a strategy to deal with any parliamentary opposition. He had simply expected that his orders would be followed. Now, he didn't have an opportunity in early sixteen twenty five to

push the matter, and that's because the plague intervened. The plague continued and I'm talking about the bubonic plague continued to come back all about every ten years or so in cyclical fashion, and every time it did, Parliament would close, the theaters would close, the taverns kind of would close,

and those who could would leave the capitol. And that's what happened on this occasion in July of sixteen twenty five, and so Charles traveled instead to Woodstock and summoned the members of his court to meet him at the Hall of Christ Church. He wanted to talk about financial matters rather than religious matters, and that was going to be problematic because, as the members of his court kept telling him,

that was the direction that Parliament wanted to go. Initially, we're going to be talking about a lot of these fault lines as they developed throughout the early reign of Charles, and all of them are going to be exacerbated by his personality. We keep in mind there are really two and they're just a set of priorities that both sides can't ever seem to get across. The one I'm going to sort of group into a big category called liberties. Of this the matter of religion is one, but also

just personal liberties. This is what matters to Parliament. They want liberties and rights guaranteed to them in certain ways, and we'll see why that matters in future episodes. Charles's concern is always pretty clear. It's with his power and prerogative, and above all the money. Charles wants money and is willing to do some things to get it, but not bend over backwards. Now, at this point it's still not clear how much money was required and quite frankly, what

it was supposed to be used for. Was there a naval war with Spain being contemplated that nobody knew about, or were they going to transport an army to the continent to aid Frederick to try to get back the Palatin eate. No one in the administration could speak up with a consistent or certain voice. Why then should members of the Commons, they would wonder, support a policy that they didn't understand and upon which they hadn't been consulted.

One member of Parliament declared it would be better if they concentrated on domestic and financial affairs rather than getting involved with more foreign affairs. And it was now that Buckingham came under clear attack. It could be inferred from the early each against him, that he was incapable of controlling the government or organizing any credible war effort whatsoever. So now Buckingham started to bend with the wind. The information was conveyed that he and his master Charles had

never really believed in religious toleration for its own sake. Frankly, they let it slip that it was merely a device to woo the Spanish and then ultimately the French. Buckingham was supposed to believe that the religious treaty drawn up with Louis the thirteenth was merely for the sake of form a piece of paper to appease the Pope. The King was ready, quite frankly, to turn on the Catholics,

and by doing so, to appease Commons. As a consequence, the official war against Spain was declared through the administration in early autumn sixteen twenty five, even though again they didn't have the money to fight it. In the same period, a treaty was established between England and the Dutch Republic, but of course the perennial problem of finances hadn't been solved, and as a desperate remedy, it was proposed that the Crown jewels should simply be sold to finance this expedition.

That Charles and Buckingham wanted to fight, but that they didn't have the money to fight. Frankly, to be honest with you, they didn't have the soldiers or the ships either. But let's not put the cart before the horse here. The soldiers would be impressed into service, but they remained unpaid, and so they roamed about Plymouth, where the people of

South Devon would not supply them with food. These hungry men ultimately killed the available sheep and oxen they could find and ate them, letting an already volatile situation boil over. The English fleet, which was at Plymouth, was under the command of Sir Edward Cecil, who had first seen service all the way back in their reign of Elizabeth. Finally he left the harbor at about the eighth of October, but unfortunately he left the harbor with the fleet and

the men still without a war aim. The principal purpose of the fleet remained undecided even as it sailed out of Plymouth. In some way there was this vague idea that it should strike a blow against the Spanish coast. But where and how no one had given them any indication maybe they should assault Cadiz right, and so the Fort of Puntal, guarding the entrance to Cadiz Harbor, was taken.

When the blockade of Cadiz was attempted, however, news reached Cecil and his commanders that a large Spanish force was on its way to save the town. As a consequence, the English soldiers were disembarked and hurried out to meet the threat. But it turned out all this information was false. No enemy was in sight, and their force march under a hot Spanish sun had left them without provisions. Casks of wine were taken from neighboring villages and dwellings, and

the men gorged themselves until they were totally intoxicated. The Spanish de of Keddy's noticed this, fell upon them and engaged in a general slaughter. The siege of Kedys and the brief occupation of the Fort de Puntal were therefore abandoned, and yet another embarrassing failure. Now the English vessels had also been charged to intercept the Spanish silver fleet sailing from Mexico, but at this point they were in no

condition to confront anything. Their hulks were rotten the tackle frail, whether through corruption or neglect, their supplies had been insufficient from the beginning. All the whole thing was yet another complete and humiliating fiasco. Now, if you're thinking to yourself, well, why would Parliament continue to pay for something that was obviously so inept, you'd be thinking the same thing I am. If Charles was going to attempt to do something here,

he probably should have taken his time and do something. Well. Now, an attempt was made to avoid the wrath of the country. The basic story was going to continue to be well, let's deflect the attention from this disaster back towards Catholic Europe. We'll just claim that it's going to be okay, Buckingham is going to lead a Protestant league against the Spanish and imperial pretensions. The problem with all of this was that, remember,

the Queen of England is now Catholic. Now, while we do have some evidence that Charles was doing his best to reign in the Catholic tendencies of Henrietta Maria, the bottom line is, even though Charles might be able to be master of his own house, he was far from master of his own kingdom. As we'll continue to see. Right after this. Charles's formal coronation came on the second of February fifteen twenty six, a little under a year

since his actual ascension to the throne. Henrietta Maria refused to accompany her husband to what she considered to a heretical service to its lack of Catholic elements, so he proceeded alone. Frankly, there was little rejoicing at the service itself. When the newly crowned king was presented to the people, the crowds remained largely silent. Charles wore a cloak of white rather than a robe of regal scarlet, which was considered by many to be an unfortunate innovation in what

was otherwise an ancient ceremony. The coronation oath was also carefully changed by William Laud, the Bishop of Saint David's, with a prayer that the king might have quote Peter's Key of Discipline and Paul's Doctrine end quote. This was not at the time considered any big deal, but at a later date Lud was accused of conferring absolute power upon the king to the injury of all the people. Any will or resentment was at this time, however, largely

redirected against Buckingham rather than the sovereign himself. Parliament met four days later in a state of absolute seething discontent. Buckingham's mismanagement of the expedition to Cadiz was all that anyone could talk about. The King opened the proceedings with a customary short and blunt speech quote I mean to show you what I should speak in actions end quote. He offered no apologies or explanations for what it transpired.

He simply asked for more money. When PM Elliot rose to speak, he demanded that no further supply should be granted until an account had been given of all the previous sums that Parliament had previously granted to the King. He called for an inspection of the Admiralty ledgers, which as Vice Admiral of Devon he was uniquely well placed

to examine. But he then he made a wider plea to the King, not a demand, a plea, saying quote, Sir, I beseech you cast your eyes about view the state we are in, consider the loss we have received way the wrecked and ruined honor of our nation end quote. Now, member of parliament. Elliott might be described as one of the first great parliamentarians in English history, ready to curb

the abuses of the royal prerogative. He went on to say that their honor was ruined, their ships sunk, their men perished, quite frankly, not because of the enemy, not by chance, but because, from the m Eliot's perspective, God had preordained it. God was angry, was now punishing the English people. The Catholic forces of the Holy Roman Empire were advancing through Bohemia and Germany. The Protestants of France

were being threatened, even destroyed, by the French king. And here were the English, supposed to be the greatest Protestant nation in all of Europe, unable or perhaps unwilling to do anything now. At this point nothing came of Elliot's speeches, but they were definitely a precursor of future conflicts and events. On March tenth, Charles let it be known that he wished for an immediate supply of what he called the necessities of state, without any further questions of his past

conduct or otherwise. Keep in mind we're barely a year into Charles's reign. Here an accounting of his past would be an accounting of the last three hundred and sixty some days at most. It was now generally believed that the cause of all the grievances was the Duke of Buckingham. He had appointed incompetent officers and was responsible for the calamity at Cadiz. He had taken crowned land for his

friends and family. He had sold many of the offices of state and acquired others just for his own enrichment. His mother and father in laws were both Catholic recusants and might be considered enemies of the state. He not Charles, for the moment, was the sole source of enmity for Parliament, and the King replied to all this at Whitehall five days later, in a speech in which he declared that quote I would not have the house to question my servants,

much less one that is so near me. I would you hasten for my supply, or else it will be worse for yourselves. For if any ill happen, I think it shall be the last that feel it end quote. But the Commons was now in no mood to retreat, and simply pursued the Duke ever more forcefully. The nobility, in fact, had also had too much of this favorite. The Earl of Bristol charged Buckingham with attempt to change

the Prince's religion. He accused him of kneeling to the sacrament to quote give the Spaniards a hope of the Prince's conversion end quote. This was under English law, in effect accusing Buckingham of treason. On May tenth, a deputation was drawn up to prepare articles of impeachment against the Duke. When members of the deputation then presented themselves to Buckingham, however, it was reported that he only laughed in their faces.

The Duke knew the law, loyalty and rigidity of the King, and was aware that Charles would never abandon him, know what anyone else said. On May the eleventh, now the King visited the House of Lords, where he tried to exonerate bucking Him from all the charges attached to him by the Commons. He said, I can bear witness to

clear him in every one of them end quote. Unfortunately, this was the very day that the House was informed that the member of Parliament I mentioned before, Sir John Elliot, and another Sir Dudley Diggs, had been arrested and taken to the tower without any due process. It seems Charles and Buckingham had decided that they were the problem and to remove them would resolve all of their issues. How

wrong they were. However, the Commons erupted into turmoil when they got the news of the two arrested MP's and the entire house broke up in utter turmoil. When the Speaker rose on the twelfth of May to commence business, he was told to sit down. There was no business to be had, so the members of marvelament until they

were righted in their liberties. The French ambassador warned the King personally at this time that if his power did not prevail, he would become as impotent as the Doge of Venice, who could do nothing without the approval of his Senate. All the horror, Parliament stood firm and eventually it was able to prevail. Within a week, both Diggs and Elliott were set free. It was not a good precedent for the King, who appeared resolute, but in truth

he had prevaricated behind the scenes. He then compounded this offense by immediately appointing Buckingham to be the Chancellor of the University at Cambridge, a post for which he was by no means qualified. Such was the displeasure of the Commons at hearing this latest offense that they drew up a general remonstrance for Buckingham's dismissal from public life entirely. The war of words now began to intensify. Charles responded with the demand that Parliament should immediately proceed to pass

him a subsidy bill. Now was one of the biggest conflicts of early Charles's reign, and it was again going to be this question between who was going to come out on top, Parliament or the King. For centuries, English kings had consulted Parliament on matters but never been driven by it. Now the question was would that state of

affairs continue. If Parliament were forced to yield and to grant Charles' supply without the redress of grievances, it would set an unfortunate president from their perspective, in which the King might continue to be the permanent victor in this tug of war. The Members did not, in the current phase wish to give any reason for a civil war, but that was what was barreling towards them. Court and Parliament, at now cross purposes with one another had reached a

deadly impass. A conversation between the King and Buckingham was overheard and later widely reported that when as follows quote, I have lost in a manner the love of my subjects, Charles is supposed to have told the Duke, what would thou hast me do? Now? On June the fourteenth, we've learned the answer to that question. The King was determined to dissolve Parliament. The lords begged for two more days to try to resolve the impass between the two great powers.

The King replied almost immediately quote not a minute end quote. Charles had decided that die was cast. The day before the disillusion of what would be called quote this great to warm ruffling Parliament. A storm, a tremendous storm of thunder, lightning, and even hail fell upon the Thames at Westminster and created a phenomenon that's called a whirlwater or water pillar. The water was dissolved into a mist and formed a great revolving funnel about thirty yards across and ten feet high.

The interior was hollow and the white with froth. This was a crazy, sort of insane thing that happens from occasion, but it's interesting that it happened at this time, because it crossed the Thames and then began to beat upon the walls of the York House, the Residency of You guessed it the Duke of Buckingham. As it struck against the bricks, it broke into a thick smoke, as if it came from a chimney, and then rose high into

the air. It then vanished out of sight from whence it came with two or three loud claps of thunder. Of course, for everyone at the time, it is incredibly bizarre weather phenomenon was considered to be an omen and not a good one. At that Handbills were seeing printed throughout clandestine presses and distributed throughout the streets of London. They read as follows who rules the kingdom? The King, who rules the King, the Duke, who rules the Duke

the devil. Three days after the disillusion, the King ordered that all copies of the parliamentary remonstrance against Buckingham should be destroyed. By continuing to favor the Duke of Buckingham, Charles had provoked a determined and vocal opposition in Parliament. Had he simply backed down, had he given them some space, had he stopped rewarding Buckingham with posts that Buckingham didn't deserve, there might have been an off ramp here. Charles didn't

take it. The antagonism did not yet directly address the King at all, but there were those who were looking ahead to a change in this in the future. A great constitutional historian, Leopard von Rink, once suggested that the coming conflict between the King and Parliament was the product of quote unquote historical necessity. I'm not sure that I

agree with that. At this point. It seems like the conflict between King and Parliament could have more than easily been resolved if Charles had only been willing to compromise a teen C tiny bit. But the bottom line was he wasn't, And so next week will continue to watch as Charles, the First in Parliament, hurdle towards the inevitability of civil war.