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Childhood

Charles's personality as a politician was shaped by a difficult childhood. He was born on 19 November 1600, the third child of James VI of Scotland and his wife Anne of Denmark. During his early years he suffered from a combination of poor health and lack of parental affection. When he moved to England after James's accession in 1603 it was difficult to find a noble family to look after him because of fears that he might die on their hands; and he grew up very much in the shadow of his glamorous elder brother Prince Henry and his sister Elizabeth. It was not until Henry's death in 1612 that people began to take notice of him. What they found was a shy and extremely gauche adolescent, with a pronounced stammer which he never got rid of and a tendency to fits of rage and jealousy, directed particularly towards the young men who dominated his father's affections. An incident in 1616 when, in the presence of the court he turned a water fountain full in the face of George Villiers and soaked him to the skin was indicative of his early frustrations.

Charles as a young man was certainly not the stuff of which seventeenth century rulers were supposed to be made. Yet within a few years of his accession to the throne in 1625 he had transformed himself into a dignified, kingly figure every bit as impressive as his counterparts on the continent. This transformation came about partly through an effort of will power and self-control. Although lacking in confidence, Charles was acutely aware of the responsibilities of his office and made himself play to the full what he regarded as the proper role of a king. In spite of his stammer he regularly delivered public speeches on occasions such as the opening of parliament and earned considerable respect for doing so. He also exercised close control over the processes of royal government. The extent of this has been underestimated by some historians because they have tended to be taken in by claims that he was dominated by favourites such as the duke of Buckingham, or by his wife, Queen Henrietta Maria.

In fact, a close examination of administration and decision making suggests that Charles was very much in charge. He diligently attended to the paperwork of government, to the extent that one historian has described him as 'a royal swot'. He kept close control of senior appointments and was personally responsible for such crucial decisions as the appointment of Bishop Juxon as lord treasurer in 1636, seen by some as heralding a take over of government by the clergy He was also in charge of decisions about going to war, making peace and summoning parliament which were the most important a contemporary monarch had to make. The one area where his control was less than complete was in the church, where he relied on Laud to translate his high-church, anti-puritan vision into a reality; but even here his influence remained paramount because Laud was always conscious of the need to fulfil his master's wishes in order to retain favour.

Shortcomings

Charles dominated the business of government in the way an early modern monarch was supposed to, and, thanks to Anthony Van Dyck, he came to look the part. Van Dyck came to England in 1632, at Charles's invitation, and in the years which followed completely transformed the king's image. He made up for his lack of stature and immature appearance by various artistic devices which included painting him on horseback, ageing him by about five years and giving his face a distant, melancholy expression which was seen as a sign of wisdom. He also incorporated into his portraits a whole series of references which reflected Charles's own views on kingship. In Charles I with Henrietta Maria and Prince Charles and Princess Mary, 1632, the king is presented as the supreme patriarch, a father figure who commands and protects his people as he does his own family. The great equestrian portrait, Charles I on horseback, 1638, depicts him as conquering hero and emperor of Great Britain at a time when he was preparing to go to war with his rebellious Scots subjects. A third aspect of kingship was captured in Charles a la Chasse, 1635, which shows him as the ultimate courtier, elegant, poised and relaxed, commanding his surroundings with an air of serene self-possession and inner confidence which was regarded as the essence of true nobility.

In spite of appearances, however, Charles lacked many of the personal qualities needed by an early modern ruler. He had little skill in the art of man-management which was crucial when so much depended on the king's relations with leading politicians and noblemen. Perhaps because of his difficult early upbringing, he was never a confident judge of human character and tended either to go overboard in his affection for those he felt were serving him loyally, like Buckingham, or to form strong dislikes which made it very hard for him to work with certain politicians. He also lacked confidence in the loyalty of his people and from the start of his reign turned grants of taxation into tests of whether they loved him and trusted him. This pushed opponents of policies such as the forced loan into having to confront the crown much more directly than was appropriate, with damaging consequences for political stability.

Another shortcoming which can again be traced back to his lack of self-assurance, was his unwillingness to bargain and negotiate. He tended to try to bludgeon his way through difficulties by invoking his personal authority, assuming that once his wishes were known his subjects would stop squabbling and obey him. This ignored the contemporary expectation that there should be a good deal of give and take in the execution of royal policy and that where policies were unpopular these should be blamed on royal counsellors. Charles's refusal to acknowledge this created considerable difficulties, for example in Scotland in 1637-8 when his unwillingness to make concessions over the use of an English-style prayer book, or to allow the bishops to bear the blame for its introduction, turned a limited protest into full scale rebellion.

The royal masquerade

The clashes between Charles and his subjects were not just a consequence of his political style; they also owed much to his political beliefs. Historians have found these hard to fathom because Charles was a man of few words and rarely wrote down what he thought; however, some interesting insights can be gleaned from the masques performed at court during the 1630s. Charles invested a good deal of time and energy in these productions and he and the queen generally appeared on stage as the principal characters.

The masques also illustrate some of Charles's more divisive beliefs. He was deeply suspicious of Calvinism and Puritanism which he saw as encouraging a dangerous spontaneity and egalitarianism in both church and state. He was also fundamentally hostile to parliaments, resenting their insistence on bargaining for redress of grievances in return for taxation and suspecting them of pandering to the destructive impulses of a 'popular multitude'. However, in each case his efforts to change things met with bitter opposition. Calvinism was the basis for the religious beliefs of most English protestants in this period and any attempt to replace it with high-church Arminianism was regarded as tantamount to a restoration of popery. Similarly his efforts to govern without parliaments during 'the Personal Rule' (1629-40) were deeply unpopular because the assembly was seen as 'the representative of the people' and the best guarantee of the public welfare.

The purpose of the masque, in political terms, was to proclaim the authority of the king and celebrate his achievements through representing his role in a constant struggle between virtue and vice. Charles took on roles that displayed his wisdom and justice, whilst the queen was presented as the embodiment of pure love and beauty. Between them they would create order and harmony by subduing the disruptive forces of the anti-masque, such as puritanism and popular rebellion. The final masque, the Salmacida Spolia of 1640, was typical, with a closing scene which showed king and queen dancing with their attendants before a backdrop of ideally proportioned classical buildings linked together by a bridge, whilst the chorus sang of their unifying influence.

Some historians have regarded these masques as a form of escapism by which Charles sought to avoid the unpalatable realities of contemporary politics. But this is to misunderstand their purpose. If they are interpreted within a context of contemporary beliefs about the civilising power of images they can be seen not as substitutes for reality, but guides to statesmanship. They represented the world of politics in terms which Charles himself appears to have recognised, as a drama of conflicting forces in which an enlightened, virtuous, noble elite, with the king at its head, sought to subdue the disordered impulses of a plebeian and puritan multitude.

Political beliefs

The masques offer valuable evidence of how Charles thought political power operated. Steeped as he was in the ideology of divine right kingship, he often seems to have believed that order could be achieved by the king acting out a role and laying down patterns for his people to observe and copy. This points to one of the most interesting contrasts with his father. Whereas James, influenced by his upbringing in the small, intimate court of Scotland, treated politics as a matter of face-to-face debate and negotiation, Charles saw it more as about getting people to conform to clear-cut ideals and images. This much is apparent from his reform of the royal court which introduced a style of ritual similar to Louis XIV's Versailles in an attempt to create an ideal society for his subjects to emulate. It is also evident in the Arminian practices which he favoured in the church where liturgy and visual imagery were used to encourage reverence to a divinely-ordained hierarchy. The problem was that this approach was fundamentally at odds with an English political tradition based on bargain and compromise.

Charles's preference for a world in which power was confined to the king, a virtuous elite of court nobles and the bishops in the church was not shared by his subjects; however, this was not something which overly concerned him. As the masques confirm, he had a very limited understanding of the fears and aspirations of most of his people, and even less in the way of sympathy for them. This was particularly apparent during the mid-1630s when he became involved in discussions with the papal envoy about the possibility of reuniting the English church with Rome. How seriously Charles pursued these negotiations is unclear and in the event nothing came of them. But the fact that he could even contemplate an action which would have horrified his people more than almost anything else he could have done suggests a king who was profoundly out of touch.

The final masque

The problems created by Charles's political style, his beliefs and his lack of understanding as a ruler were revealed very clearly in the lead up to the English Civil War (1642-6). After defeat by the Scots in The Bishops Wars(1639-40) it was important that the king give a lead in reuniting his people and settling their differences. But this proved beyond Charles. The bitterness he felt over his defeat and lack of support from his subjects was compounded by the guilt he experienced when he was forced to agree to the execution of his chief minister, the earl of Strafford, in May 1641. Increasingly he blamed his difficulties on a deliberate campaign by puritans and parliamentarians to subvert royal authority; and his personal dislike of opposition politicians, such as John Pym, made it very hard to build bridges.

After a promising start at the beginning of 1641, efforts at settlement fell apart and increasingly Charles slipped into the role of a party leader, determined to destroy his enemies by whatever means came to hand. From the spring onwards he sponsored a series of army plots and abortive coups, culminating in the attempted arrest of the five members in January 1642. Once this had failed civil war became virtually unavoidable. More than any other individual, it was Charles who was responsible for this disaster.

Find out more

Books

The Causes of the English Civil War by CSR Russell (chapter 8, 'the man Charles Stuart', 1990)

Charles I 1625-40 by B Quintrell (Longmans, 1993)

For more detailed discussions of his political role, see , The Forced Loan and English Politics 1626-1628 by RP Cust (Oxford, 1987)

The Personal Rule of Charles I by K Sharpe (Yale, 1992)

The Fall of the British Monarchies 1637-1642 by CSR Russell (Oxford, 1991)

The ecclesiastical policies of James I and Charles I by K Fincham and P Lake

The early Stuart Church 1603-1642 by K Fincham (MacMillan, 1993)

Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition in early Stuart England by RM Smuts (University of Pennsylvania, 1987)

About the author

Dr Richard Cust lectures at the University of Birmingham. His publications include The Forced Loan and English Politics 1626-1628 (Oxford, 1987) and, with Ann Hughes, Conflict in early Stuart England (Longmans, 1989) and The English Civil War (Arnold, 1997). He is currently writing a political biography of Charles I.