Coronation! British Monarchs Who Ended Badly, Part 9: Charles II to William and Mary

In 1660, the Convention Parliament invited the eldest son of Charles I to return to England as King Charles II. Having spent nine years in exile, he promised to rule in cooperation with Parliament. 

The event marked the beginning of the period known as the Restoration. The Restoration might as well be called the Counter Revolution. The Revolution of 1649 had abolished the monarchy, the House of Lords, and the bishops. In 1651, Cromwell had effectively abolished the House of Commons. The Restoration of 1660 brought them all back. 

One might shrug and say, "I guess the civil wars, execution of Charles I, and revolution that followed accomplished nothing." But that was far from the case. Charles II never forgot his father's fate. On his return, he is alleged to have said, "God has given us the throne, and we intend to enjoy it." Have fun and party was the order of the day. The theaters reopened after being banned under Puritan rule, and bawdy comedies were performed. Christmas, which the Puritans also banned in 1646, could once again be celebrated with feasting and jollity. 

It wasn't all cakes and ale. In 1665, London was hit by the Great Plague, the worst (and last) plague epidemic in the city's history. It killed around 100,000 people. The following year, the Great Fire of London destroyed most of the city, including old St. Paul's and many other churches. Many people believed God was punishing England for its sins. But that soon blew over and the party continued.

Despite making many poor decisions, especially in foreign policy, Charles was and remains one of the most popular monarchs in British history. For many people he was and is the Merry Monarch, famous for his good humor, wit, and mistresses as much as anything else. 

The poet John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, wrote of Charles:

"Restless he rolls from whore to whore, 

A merry monarch, scandalous and poor."

Wilmot is also supposed to have written: 

"We have a pretty, witty king, 

Whose word no man relies on,

He never said a foolish thing, 

And never did a wise one."

It would be a mistake to write Charles off as a hedonistic playboy. He could be serious about his job, and he wanted to be a player on the world stage. He admired and envied the power and wealth of his fellow monarch in France. 

In 1660, Louis XIV was well on his way to becoming an absolute monarch. He was able to rule without serious interference from a troublesome representative assembly or overmighty nobles.  

Like his father, Charles II believed he was king by divine right. But he knew that in practical terms it was not God but Parliament that had given him the throne. To keep it, he needed to avoid the kind of direct conflicts with that body that had cost his father his head. 

Charles II always needed more money for wars and palaces but was reluctant to adopt the arbitrary measures his father had used. Instead, he tried to increase his wealth and power by subterfuge and duplicity. An example is the Treaty of Dover (1670). It was treaty of alliance with Louis XIV of France against the Dutch. That much was public. 

The treaty contained a secret section that Charles did not reveal even to some of his closest advisors. Louis agreed to pay Charles a large sum of money. In return, Charles pledged to restore Catholicism in England. Whether Charles was sincere about that pledge may well be doubted. He did make an effort to relax the penal laws against Catholics and Protestant Dissenters in 1672 but backed down when faced with strong parliamentary opposition. His pro-French and anti-Dutch foreign policy also angered many in Parliament, who preferred an alliance with the Protestant Netherlands.

Around that time, suspicions grew that Catholics were plotting to destroy Protestantism in Britain. A shady Anglican minister, Titus Oates, claimed to have uncovered a Catholic conspiracy to kill the king, the so-called Popish Plot. It was pure invention, but the murder of a staunchly Protestant MP, Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, convinced many people that the plot was real.   

Oates claimed that Charles' Portuguese and Catholic wife, Catherine of Braganza, was involved in the plot. The hysteria that followed in England and Scotland led to the executions of more than 20 innocent people. [Image: Queen Catherine of Braganza by Peter Lely, 1663-65]

Charles did not believe the plot was real. He interrogated Oates himself and caught him out in several lies and inaccuracies. He had Oates arrested, but Parliament ordered him freed. His accusations became even more bizarre. The revelation of the plot led to what was called the Exclusion Crisis. This was an attempt by some members of Parliament to exclude Charles' brother, James, Duke of York, from the throne. 

During the panic over the plot the public had learned that James had secretly converted to Catholicism. Charles had a dozen illegitimate children but fathered no legitimate heir. Queen Catherine had several pregnancies, but each ended in miscarriage. James was therefore next in line. The politicians who supported the Exclusion Bill became known as the Whigs. They supported a limited monarchy and toleration for all Protestant sects. Most Tories and Charles opposed the Exclusion Bill. 

At fist, most of the country accepted the new king. The Duke of Monmouth, an illegitimate son of Charles II, led a rising against James in the West Country but Monmouth's Rebellion was easily and brutally crushed. 

Monmouth and hundreds of others were executed. Hundreds more were transported to the West Indies to work on the sugar plantations. The trials of the rebels became known as the Bloody Assizes. The film Captain Blood starring Errol Flynn deals with these events.

James lacked his older brother's caution. Perhaps the easy defeat of Monmouth's rebellion made him overconfident. He suspended the penal laws against Catholics and non-Anglican Protestants, known as Dissenters. A good thing we might think, but not in the political and religious context of the 1680s.

Charles II had tried to do the same thing and failed. James might have got away with it. But he went on to place Catholics and Dissenters in important positions in the military, government, universities, and judiciary. He packed juries. All in violation of the current law.

Suspicions grew that James was intent on a Catholic coup. Across the Channel in France, Louis XIV had just revoked the Edict of Nantes, which since 1598 had guaranteed toleration of Protestant Huguenots. Refugees were streaming into England with tales of horrific persecution.  

Public fears increased when James' second wife, Mary of Modena, gave birth to a son in 1685. Many people were so upset at the news that they eagerly accepted a fake story that the infant was not hers but had been smuggled into the birthing room in a warming pan. 

James had two grown children from his first marriage, daughters Mary and Anne. Both had remained firmly Protestant. As long as they were his heirs, many people were willing to tolerate the elderly James. The newly arrived male child took precedence over the princesses in the line of succession, opening the prospect of a Catholic dynasty. 

The Tories faced a dilemma. They were staunch royalists who supported a powerful monarchy. But they were also fervent defenders of the Protestant Anglican Church. Would they support their king or their church? 

The Whigs had fewer qualms. They opposed absolute monarchy and supported parliamentary sovereignty. As James became more arbitrary in his actions, many Tories became seriously alarmed. In the autumn of 1688, several leading Tories and Whigs met in secret and came up with a plan. 

They invited Prince William of Orange, the Stadtholder (kind of a president) of the Netherlands to bring an army to England and stop James from his reckless course. You may ask why a Dutch prince? [Image: William III, of Orange, 1689]

William was married to James' eldest daughter, Mary. He was also a grandson of Charles I. William accepted the invitation despite the obvious risks. The Netherlands was at war with Louis XIV of France again, and he calculated that if he could turn England into an ally, his country might prevail. 

God, or luck, was on William's side. In November 1688, a favorable "Protestant Wind" blew his fleet quickly across the channel to Torbay in Devon. Auspiciously, they landed unmolested on the 5th of November, anniversary of the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot.

William's army marched towards London, picking up English supporters on the way. James initially decided to fight, but in the end, he fled to France. He was actually captured at one point, but William shrewdly ordered the captors to let him go. 

William entered London to great acclaim. He was viewed as the savior of Protestantism. He decided to cash in on his sudden popularity. He called a Convention Parliament to settle the issue uppermost in his mind: who should be the ruler of the British kingdoms. 

Members of Parliament had other concerns. They wanted to ensure that future monarchs would not be able to act arbitrarily. The result was the Declaration of Rights, which later passed into legislation as the Bill of Rights. 

The Declaration placed clear limits on royal power and guaranteed regular and free elections to Parliament. It outlawed "cruel and unusual punishments." It protected freedom of speech and the right not to pay taxes that were not approved by Parliament.

On the future of the monarchy, Parliament debated long and hard. The majority favored declaring that James had abdicated, and Mary, his eldest daughter, should become queen. That solution bypassed his son, violating strict hereditary succession, but few in Parliament were now willing tolerate the idea of a Catholic monarch. 

William refused to accept the job of "gentleman usher" to the Queen. He demanded that he be declared king in his own right. If not, he threatened, he would take his army and navy home, leaving the British kingdoms to the mercy of James and the French. 

To avoid that, Parliament agreed to make William and Mary joint monarchs, the first and only time that has been done. If nothing else, it gave a certain college in Virginia its name. [Image: William and Mary]

More important is the reality that once again, Parliament had decided who the monarch should be. It would not be the last time. 

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British Monarchs Who Ended Badly, Part 8: Oliver Cromwell and the Republic

Following the execution of Charles I in 1649, the British Isles had no monarch for 11 years. In the history of the monarchy this period is known as the Interregnum ("between reigns"). Officially, the government was a republic, "The Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland."

The revolutionaries who won the Civil War not only killed the king. They abolished the monarchy itself, along with the House of Lords and the bishops. Nominally, power lay initially in the hands of the "Rump" of the Long Parliament, a minority of those elected in 1640. 

It soon became clear, however, that real power had gravitated to the New Model Army. The top army commander, Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658), became de facto head of the Commonwealth. [Image: Cromwell by Samuel Cooper]

Cromwell was not a monarch, yet he ruled the British Isles as firmly as any king for several years. Prior to the Civil War, he had been a Cambridgeshire country gentleman living a generally unremarkable life. He became an MP in the late 1620s and served in the parliaments elected in 1640. During the war, he rose to high rank and eventually to overall commander. 

After the execution of Charles I, which he had at first opposed and then supported, he served on the Council of State of the new republic and in the "Rump," the remnants of the Long Parliament. 

By 1651, Cromwell had become thoroughly disillusioned with the behavior of the Rump MPs. He used his power as army commander to dissolve it, accusing its members of having become a corrupt and self-perpetuating oligarchy. 

That left him with the problem of what should replace it. He wanted to establish a workable representative government for the Commonwealth. Despite several experiments, he never succeeded. 

In effect, he ruled as a military dictator, dividing the British Isles into districts, each governed by a major general. Some of his supporters wanted him to take the title of king. He refused. Instead, he accepted the title of Lord Protector of the Commonwealth in 1653. 

To many people in England during the following centuries, Cromwell was a hero who defended the liberty of the people. A statue of him was erected in 1899 outside the Parliament buildings in Westminster. [Image: Cromwell statue]

The statue was controversial. Sincere royalists detested it. Though hardly royalists, Irish Nationalist MPs protested vehemently against it. Most of the Irish reviled Cromwell. In 1649 he had suppressed a royalist revolt in Ireland with brutal ferocity. Rightly or wrongly, he was blamed for atrocities committed by his soldiers. 

Cromwell's Irish campaign and the penal laws against Catholics that followed did more to poison Anglo-Irish relations than anything besides the Famine of the 1840s. Cromwell's name remains a byword among the Irish for English cruelty and tyranny. Winston Churchill called it "the curse of Cromwell."

Cromwell also suppressed a royalist rebellion in Scotland in 1650-51. That produced its own atrocities, but he treated the Scots more leniently than the Irish. Religion explains the difference. 

The Scots were largely Protestant and had been allies against Charles I. Cromwell viewed them as a people "godly but deceived." The Catholic majority in Ireland was simply ungodly, enslaved to the mass and the Pope. 

Cromwell's exact religious views and policies remain something of an enigma. He was a strong believer in Providence, the idea that God was actively engaged in world affairs. Not surprisingly, he considered himself a servant that God had "provided" to make Britain a more moral and godlier place.

As for the organization of religion, Cromwell was an "Independent." He opposed any central church hierarchy, whether bishops in England or presbyters in Scotland. Each congregation, he believed, should be left independent to run its own affairs. 

Cromwell tolerated various interpretations of Protestantism. He also welcomed Jews back to England for the first time since Edward I had banished them in the 13th century. He continued to make life difficult for Catholics, and persecuted some radical Protestant fringe sects, especially the Quakers and Fifth Monarchists. 

The breakdown of traditional authorities and institutions encouraged the spread of surprisingly radical ideas. Historian Christopher Hill entitled a book on the 1650s The World Turned Upside Down. A movement within the army, the Levellers, pushed for a democratic political system. Small groups of people known as Diggers even attempted to establish a communistic society. 

In contrast to the film named after him, starring Richard Harris, Cromwell was not a democrat. He believed in a representative government, but one controlled by men of property. He presented his views at a series of meetings that took place at St. Mary's Church in Putney in 1647, pictured below.

The meetings became known as the Putney Debates. The Levellers demanded a political system of one man, one vote, and freedom of conscience. One of the most memorable statements came from the Leveller leader Colonel Thomas Rainsborough:

"For really I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he; and therefore truly, Sir, I think it clear, that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that government that he hath not had a voice to put himself under."

Cromwell and his allies rejected the Levellers' demands. When the Levellers continued to agitate for democratic reforms, he crushed them. Democracy would have to wait two more centuries.

Religious innovations also flourished during the Civil War and Republic. Some sects advanced positions embraced by the hippies of the 1960s, including nudity and free love. The "Ranters" argued that the best cure for temptation was to give in to it. For example, an urge to swear should be cured by swearing.  

Several religious sects that "came out" in the 1650s did not last long, but a few are with us today, notably Congregationalists, "Quakers" (Society of Friends), and Baptists. 

Cromwell died in 1658, probably of kidney disease complicated by malaria. He had nominated his son Richard to succeed him as Lord Protector, but Richard lacked his father's political and military skill. The major generals pushed him aside after a few months. he became known as "Tumble Down Dick."

Without a clear leader, Britain seemed destined to descend into chaos and Civil War once again. George Monck, one of Cromwell's major generals, marched his army from Scotland to London and recalled the remnants of the Long Parliament. They voted to restore the monarchy. In 1660, the eldest son of Charles I took the throne, inaugurating the period known as the Restoration. 

PS. After Charles II became king, he moved to avenge his father's execution. The MPs who had signed Charles I's death warrant and remained alive were arrested and executed.  

Cromwell's body was dug up and hanged in chains. It was then tossed into a pit, except for his head. It was displayed on a pole outside Westminster Hall until 1685. It passed through various hands until 1960, when it was buried beneath the floor of a chapel at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. 

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British Monarchs Who Ended Badly, Part 7: James I, Charles I, and the Civil War.

The 17th century began with a new dynasty in England, the Stuarts. It was new in England but old in Scotland. Stuart monarchs had occupied the Scottish throne since the late 14th century. Most of them had been called James, five in all. 

In 1603, James VI of Scotland became James I of England. He had been king of Scotland since 1567. His 57-year reign was the longest in Scottish history. [Image: James VI and I.]

James inherited the Scottish throne as an infant after the forced abdication of his mother, Mary Queen of Scots. During his minority, the government was controlled by a regency. His personal rule in Scotland began in the early 1580s and he ruled effectively there. 

In 1603, James made history as the first monarch to rule the entire British Isles, including Ireland. He styled himself "King of Great Britain and Ireland," although officially no such kingdom existed. 

James promoted a union between England and Scotland, but the idea was unpopular in both countries. He designed a flag for "Great Britain" similar to the one that came into use after the Act of Union in 1707. It incorporated the crosses of St. Andrew and St. George

A more immediate issue for James was religious division in England. Not only division between Catholics and Protestants, but also among different kinds of Protestants. 

Because James was raised a Calvinist in Scotland, English "Puritans" hoped he would "purify" the Church of England of remaining Catholic doctrines, ritual, and structure.

James disappointed them. He insisted on keeping the Church of England as established under Elizabeth I, with its bishops, vestments, and Book of Common Prayer. 

He is perhaps most famous for promoting a new English translation of the Bible, immortalizing himself through the resulting "King James Bible." Few publications in history have ever attained such success.

In the long run, Puritans would prove a more serious threat to the monarchy than Catholics. In the short run, a Catholic conspiracy nearly ended James's reign soon after he became king of England.

The Gunpowder Plot, as it is known to history, was designed to blow up Parliament during its opening session on November 5, 1605, when the king and all the members were present. Fortunately for them, the barrels of gunpowder and one of the plotters were discovered in the cellars the evening before. 

Guy Fawkes was the plotter arrested red-handed. He was an explosives expert who had been fighting for Spain and his faith against England and Protestantism. He was executed for treason, along with several others involved in the plot. The rest were killed in a shootout. 

The foiling of the Gunpowder Plot became a cause for national celebration. Guy Fawkes Night, November 5, was henceforth marked by the burning of "The Guy" in effigy. It still is, although it has been stripped of its sectarian religious trappings and renamed "Bonfire Night."

King and Parliament were united in the response to the Gunpowder Plot, but they soon came into regular conflict, a pattern that would be repeated under his son and grandsons. Religion, taxation, war, and arbitrary actions all played a part in the conflict. James' proclivity to lavish honors, gifts, and power on his close male friends (lovers?) increased resentment. 

A contemporary critic once called James the "the wisest fool in Christendom." Historians used to place the emphasis on fool. More recently, they have been inclined to view him more seriously, particularly his foreign policy. 

He was strongly in favor of peace in Europe. He resisted demands of parliamentary hawks to renew war with Spain or enter the devastating Thirty Years' War in Central Europe (1618-1648). In the first, he failed, but in the second, he succeeded. 

He was moderate for his time in religious matters. Like Elizabeth, he preferred to turn a blind eye to people's private religious practices as long as they conformed outwardly. Yet in hindsight he laid the seeds of the current division of Ireland by encouraging Scots and English Protestants to settle in Ulster (Northern Ireland). 

James suffered from various ailments in his last years, especially arthritis and gout. He died in 1625, probably of dysentery. He was sincerely mourned by many of his subjects. Despite some conflicts, they had enjoyed peace and low taxation for much of his reign, and in 17th century Europe that was rare.

His son and successor Charles I was not so fortunate. During his reign, simmering conflicts between the Crown and the English Parliament came to a head. Charles initially pursued an anti-Spanish policy, which grew out of personal humiliation when he tried unsuccessfully to woo a Spanish princess. He also went to war briefly with France. [Image: Charles I by Van Dyck]

Charles' anti-Spanish foreign policy was broadly popular in England, but he became angry when he could not get Parliament to vote the taxes to support it. His attempts to raise revenue without parliamentary consent and arrest non-payers aroused powerful opposition. In 1628, Parliament presented the king with The Petition of Right, which condemned his arbitrary actions. 

The following year, 1629, Charles dissolved Parliament and vowed to rule without it. He managed to do it for eleven years, the "Personal "Rule" or "Eleven Years Tyranny." During that time, opposition to Charles' rule festered without an outlet. 

The anger was not limited to Charles' arbitrary methods and taxes. Various strands of Radical Protestantism rooted in Calvinist and Anabaptist traditions gained strength during these years. 

The "Puritans" represented an existential threat to the Church of England established by Elizabeth I and supported by James I. They opposed his efforts to enforce conformity to Anglicanism. His marriage to a French Catholic princess, Henrietta Maria, increased suspicions that he was a crypto Catholic.

That was not true, but Charles was a staunch defender of the Anglican Church and promoted "popish" ritualism the Puritans opposed. During the 1630s, he tried to weaken Puritanism through prosecutions, sometimes in arbitrary courts. 

His biggest mistake was his attempt to force the Church of Scotland to adopt the Anglican model. In 1637, without consulting the Scottish parliament or kirk (church), he authorized the use of a version of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer in Scottish churches. 

By this time, most Scots had embraced a strict Calvinist form of worship. They rejected Anglican religious ritual as "popish," and wanted to eliminate bishops. Their views united them to some extent with English Puritans.

When the Book of Common Prayer was introduced in Scotland, it provoked riots. Legend has it that an Edinburgh woman, Jenny Geddes, started it all by denouncing the new book and throwing her stool at a preacher in St. Giles Cathedral. 

The reality was more complex, but the riots expanded into a full-blown rebellion, the "Bishops Wars." Charles raised an army to enforce his will, but he was unable to pay for it. 

Reluctantly, he called Parliament in the spring of 1640. The members refused to fund his army unless he recognized their power to approve all new taxes. Furious, he dissolved the body after a few weeks.  It became known as the "Short Parliament." 

Meanwhile, the Scots' army had invaded northern England and occupied Newcastle and Durham. Faced with opposition within and without, Charles made concessions to the Scots and agreed to elections to a new English parliament. 

The elections went badly for Charles. A huge majority of the new MPs opposed his policies. The "Long Parliament," as it later became known, convened in November 1640. 

Its members immediately began the impeachment of the king's leading councillors for high treason. During the next year, they passed a series of acts restricting royal power and increasing that of Parliament. 

A rebellion in Ireland in 1641 sparked anti-Catholic hysteria in England. Pamphlets were published charging that Queen Henrietta Maria was behind the rising and demanding her impeachment.  

The extreme measures of the most radical MPs gradually increased support for the king in Parliament. Charles alienated much of this sympathy when he tried to arrest five leading members of the opposition as they sat in Parliament. He faced humiliation when he burst into the chamber with soldiers to find that the five had been alerted and fled. No king had ever entered Parliament uninvited.

Soon after, Charles fled London. He began to assemble an army often referred to as the "Cavaliers" for their fancy clothes and long-flowing hair. Parliament also began to raise an army, eventually dubbed "Roundheads" for their closely cropped hair and plain clothes. (These distinctions were not as clear cut as the terms imply.) 

Civil War in England began in the middle of 1642. Historians today see the English Civil War as part of a wider conflict they call the "Wars of the Three Kingdoms." Scotland and Ireland were also involved. It was the bloodiest war ever fought on British soil. 

The war started badly for the parliamentary side at first. It seemed the king would prevail. But by 1644 men like Lord Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell rose to command and reorganized the army. A key reform was selecting officers based on ability rather than birth. The "New Model Army" defeated and captured the king in 1646. 

For more than two years the victors tried to negotiate a settlement with Charles, without success. In 1648, royalists began a second civil war designed to free the king. They were quickly defeated, but Cromwell and his allies decided the monarchy must be abolished. 

In January 1649, a parliamentary tribunal tried Charles for treason against his people. This was an astonishing reversal of the meaning of the act. In law, treason meant an act against the king. 

Charles mounted a vigorous defense, but the outcome was inevitable. On January 30, 1649, he was led out to scaffold in front of Inigo Jones' Banqueting Hall on Whitehall and beheaded. The assembled crowd let forth a loud moan. Many of them dipped handkerchiefs in Charles' blood as a memento. Charles was soon celebrated as a martyr. 

[Image: Execution of Charles I]

For the next eleven years, the British Isles was governed as a republic. For much of that time Oliver Cromwell ruled the three kingdoms , essentially as a military dictator. 

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British Monarchs Who Ended Badly, Part 6: Edward VI, Bloody Mary, and the Virgin Queen

As we learned in Part 5, Henry VIII broke with the Church of Rome and disposed of his first two wives (divorced, beheaded) in his quest to father a male heir to the English throne. His third wife, Jane Seymour, delivered the goods, and promptly died, leaving a vacancy for wife number four. 

The "goods" was the future Edward VI, who became king in 1547, on Henry's death. He did not prove to be the strong monarch Henry had hoped for. He was only nine years old, and sickly. This left him under the influence of the powerful men around him. 

[Image: Edward VI, aged 13]

They favored moving the new Church of England in a more Protestant direction and penalising Catholics. Under their influence, Edward became a little bigot. His brief reign was marked by riot, rebellion, and war with Scotland. 

Edward VI died at age 15, probably of tuberculosis. According to Henry's will, his eldest daughter Mary was next in line. Unlike Edward, Mary was raised a devout Catholic. 

The Protestant nobles who had dominated the country under Edward knew that Mary would remove them, or worse. They ignored Henry VIII's final will and proclaimed Lady Jane Grey as Queen. She was a teenager they believed they could manipulate. [Image: Lady Jane Grey, Streatham Portrait]

Lady Jane was descended from Henry VII, and thus of royal lineage, but many influential people believed Mary was the rightful heir. Within little over a week, Lady Jane's support evaporated, and Mary's forces prevailed. 

Lady Jane was never crowned, so one can debate whether she was ever monarch. But neither was Edward V, who is counted as a king. A tough call. It was a tough end for Jane as well. The "Nine Days Queen" was beheaded at the Tower of London, along with her husband and father-in-law.

Mary Tudor has gone down in history as "Bloody Mary." That's awful, but how many monarchs have a popular cocktail named after them? Even "Ivan the Terrible" has only got a vodka. 

[Image: Mary I]

Mary earned her nasty epithet because of her violent campaign to restore Catholicism in England. During her brief reign (1553-1558) her government executed hundreds of Protestants, mostly by burning at the stake. [Image: Protestants being burned at Smithfield Market in London, from an 18th century edition of Foxe's Book of Martyrs]

The persecutions did not achieve their result, perhaps because Mary died too soon. Their main result was to make her and her Church infamous in England for centuries. 

Something else hurt her popularity. She married a foreign monarch, the most powerful in Europe at the time, Philip II of Spain. We all know the English love to hate foreigners. He came to England, married Mary, gamely tried to impregnate her, and left for home soon after. I think he knew the game was up. He later sent the Spanish Armada in revenge.

Mary believed she had gotten pregnant. It turned out to be a false pregnancy. She died in 1558 with her two great tasks unfinished. Catholicism was not firmly restored, and there was no Catholic heir. 

With Mary gone, one child of Henry VIII remained: Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth I lasted 45 years and brought some needed stability. [Image: Elizabeth I, the Armada Portrait]

The "Virgin Queen" was the last of her line. Whether she really died a virgin or not, the fact that Elizabeth never married meant the end of the Tudor dynasty. 

Her options for marriage were certainly unappealing: an English nobleman or a foreign prince, most likely a Catholic. Neither was likely to be a popular choice, and any man she chose, she knew, would try to rule her and the country. 

Elizabeth was an effective monarch for her time but it wasn't an especially pleasant time. Many historians have proclaimed the "Elizabethan Age" as a Golden Age for England. That may have been true for some people, but it was a tough world for most of them. Savage laws against beggars and vagrants were the main means of dealing with the rising numbers of poor.  

England famously defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588. It was a critical victory, but the Spanish plan had serious flaws from the start. It is hard to see how it could have succeeded. 

Under Elizabeth, England became safe for Protestantism of a sort. Her religious settlement, her Church of England, compromised between Catholic and Protestant doctrine. But crucially, it remained independent of Rome with the monarch as its titular head. 

Radical Protestants disliked the Elizabeth's Anglican Church as too "Romish" and pushed to "purify" it. Devout Catholics tried to destroy it. Yet enough people supported it to ensure its survival to this day. 

Elizabeth is usually compared favorably to her sister Mary and portrayed as more tolerant and moderate. Up to a point, the distinction is valid, but only up to a point. Elizabeth did not send hundreds to the stake, but she did have many a Catholic priest hanged.

Historians have praised Elizabeth for creating a church that sought compromise between Catholic and Protestant doctrines and her distaste for religious persecution. "I would not make windows into men's souls," she is alleged to have said when becoming Queen. 

By this, she meant that as long as people conformed to her version of the church outwardly, she did not care what they thought. The truth is, she had to care. Thought, when sincere, can lead to action. 

Violence and rebellion connected to religious causes was never far below the surface in Elizabethan England. The pope declared Elizabeth a heretic who could be deposed or killed and Catholic plots against her were common. 

One of those famously involved was her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots. In 1567, Protestant nobles deposed Catholic Mary from the Scottish throne. She fled to England and put herself under Elizabeth's protection. [Image: Mary, Queen of Scots]

Mary was the granddaughter of a sister of Henry VIII. As such, she was Elizabeth's closest heir. She became a focus of Catholic plots to replace Elizabeth with her after the pope declared Elizabeth a heretic. 

Elizabeth kept Mary in comfortable captivity for 19 years before bowing to the demands of her male advisors and ordering her cousin's execution. (Contrary to certain "historical" films, the pair never met face to face). 

Catholic priests in England, especially Jesuits, sometimes met a similar fate. They were declared agents of foreign powers aiming at Elizabeth's assassination, and therefore guilty of treason. Catholics in Ireland also suffered for their faith and opposition to English rule. The subjugation of the Emerald Isle was completed toward the end of her reign. 

Elizabeth died soon after, in 1603. She never publicly named her successor. Her chief minister, Robert Cecil, arranged the business. The son of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, James VI of Scotland, became King James I of England, Wales, and Ireland, the first monarch to rule all of the British Isles. 

England was wealthier and more populous than Scotland and the weather was a little better. James viewed England as the Land of Milk and Honey. He and his dynasty, the Stuart monarchs, would discover another reality.

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British Monarchs who Ended Badly: Part 5, The Early Tudors

The Tudor Dynasty, which ruled England and Wales from 1485 to 1603, is the most written about of any royal house in British history.  The Tudors might well be one of the most important job creators of the past few centuries. Tudor and Co. have inspired innumerable biographies, novels, plays, and films, not all of them bad. 

I cannot possibly provide enough detail here to satisfy all the curious. Therefore, I will keep it fairly brief and barebones. I regret that means leaving out many of the salacious bits.

The Tudor Period was ushered in by Henry Tudor, who defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. The half-Welsh Henry VII ruled until his death in 1509, probably of tuberculosis. 

He was a rather boring king, but that was probably not a bad thing after decades of disorder. He was a shrewd and apparently an amiable fellow. His great achievement was to bring relative stability and increase the power of the monarchy after the chaos of the Wars of the Roses. [Image: Henry VII, 1505]

Henry VII was a notorious tightwad. After the Italian navigator John Cabot returned from a voyage of discovery to North America in 1497, the king presented him a reward of £10. 

To be sure, £10 was worth a lot more than now, especially since Liz Truss became Prime Minister. Henry could be generous with his family, but no one would accuse him of being extravagant. He was, however, adept at extracting money from his subjects. In his portrait above, you can see he has his eyes on your moneybags. 

Perhaps Henry VII can be forgiven for his miserliness. The government had become cash poor during the previous period of anarchy. Henry VII managed to restore its finances. Just in time. His son Henry VIII was a lavish spender. One of his first acts was to execute his father's hated chief tax collectors, Empson and Dudley.

 [Image: Henry VIII in the 1530s]

Henry VIII became king by accident. His older brother Arthur was heir. As part of a treaty with Spain, his father had married Arthur at 14 off to a Spanish princess, Catharine of Aragon, in 1501. But Arthur died the next year, probably of the mysterious "sweating sickness" that was epidemic at the time. [Image: Catherine of Aragon]

Hoping to keep the marriage alliance going, Henry VII proposed marrying Catherine to his second son, the future Henry VIII. Because the Bible contained conflicting passages on whether a man could marry his brother's widow, Henry VII applied for and got a papal dispensation allowing the match. 

Other complications delayed the match, one of which was young Henry's opposition. But after he became king in 1509, he married Catherine. He seems to have been happy enough with her at first. But he grew less happy as the years passed, and she did not produce a male heir. They had only one child, Mary. 

Henry believed that only a male would be able to preserve his new dynasty. In the late 1520s, he decided God was punishing him for marrying Catherine -- that the marriage was not valid according to the Bible. Implied in this was the idea that the pope had made a mistake in granting a dispensation and the marriage should be annulled. 

This was not a popular idea in Rome, nor with Catherine's powerful nephew, the Hapsburg Emperor Charles V, who pushed the pope to deny Henry's appeal. The presence of his armies in Italy gave his views considerable force.

Henry was not a Protestant nor was he anti-Catholic in doctrine. A few years before, he had written a pamphlet denouncing Martin Luther's attacks on the Roman Church. For this work, the pope of the time awarded Henry the title of "Defender of the Faith," which British monarchs still flaunt. 

But Henry was desperate to rid himself of Catherine. She was now in her 40s and he believed she could never give him the male heir he so desired. He had also begun a relationship with the woman he thought could do the job: Anne Boleyn. Her ambitious family threw her at him. Lust and political need did the rest. The pair met and wooed at Carew Manor in Beddington, Surrey, just a short walk from my current residence. 

[Image: Anne Boleyn]

Things got messy. Anne got pregnant. The pope refused to grant the annulment. Henry responded by declaring that the pope had no authority in England. 

In effect, the Church in England became the Church of England, the Anglican Church. The King replaced the pope as its Supreme Head. All of this was done through legal means, by Acts of Parliament. 

Desperate for cash by now, Henry followed the break from Rome by seizing a money pit. He dissolved the monasteries and confiscated their land and wealth, much of which he sold to eager buyers. The idea probably came from Thomas Cromwell, who had become Henry's right-hand man. Cromwell superintended the dissolution. [Image: Thomas Cromwell]

Some of the clergy, and some among the laity opposed Henry VIII's break with Rome. Many of them paid with their lives, notably Sir Thomas More, who had been Lord Chancellor for a season. 

As everybody knows, Henry had his new church grant his annulment. He married Anne. She gave him a child, but alas it was a girl, Elizabeth. She had several miscarriages. The royal couple's relationship soured. 

Henry, looking ahead to wife number three, accused Anne of treason, incest, and adultery. The court meekly complied and she was beheaded a few days later. The ever magnanimous king paid for an expert French executioner to perform the job with a sword. No ordinary axeman for an English queen. 

Henry had already selected wife number three, Jane Seymour. Jane gave Henry his desired male heir, Prince Edward. He took precedence over Mary and Elizabeth. Jane's tenure as Mrs. Henry Tudor was tragically short. She died shortly after the birth of an infection. But at least she wasn't beheaded. [Image: Jane Seymour]

To celebrate the birth of his long-desired son, Henry began to build a new magnificent palace, Nonsuch, near Cheam in Surrey. It was completed in 1538. [Image: A model of Nonsuch. The palace was demolished in the 1680s]

Henry was now in the market for wife number four. Thomas Cromwell, who had become the king's chief minister had an idea. He arranged a marriage alliance with the daughter of a German prince, Anne of Cleves. 

Henry liked her portrait, but not the real Anne. The pair did not hit it off, and he quickly arranged to have the marriage annulled. Probably because she (wisely) did not oppose him, Henry treated Anne generously and she lived in England until her death in 1557, arguably the happiest of Henry's six wives. [Image: Anne of Cleves]

Thomas Cromwell did not fare so well. Henry had him beheaded for treason and corruption. The real reasons for his fall are unclear, but may have been related to the Cleves match and alliance. Being close to an increasingly paranoid Henry was a lot like being close to Joseph Stalin. A whiff of suspicion could be enough to prove one's undoing. 

With his exquisite sense of timing, Henry married his next wife, Catherine Howard the day Cromwell was beheaded. Wife number five did not last long either. She ended up like Anne Boleyn, with her head on the block, after Henry accused her of adultery. Two of her accused lovers enjoyed the same fate. [Image: Portrait of a Young Lady believed to be Catherine Howard]

Wife number six, Catherine Parr, was more fortunate, if you believe that being married to a volatile, fat old man with ulcerous, boil covered legs is a pleasant fate. She was somehow able to keep the aging Henry content. She avoided an annulment and kept her head, which is quite a feat considering the fate of his other wives. 

Henry VIII died in 1547, aged 55. In his final years his waistline ballooned to 54 inches (140 cm). He had "mobility issues" and had to be moved about with the use of mechanical contraptions. Most historians reject the old theory that he died of syphilis. The cause of his demise is still debated. 

Paradoxically, the reign of Henry VIII was probably a fairly good one for many of his ordinary subjects. He generally kept the country out of war and maintained internal peace. He was intelligent, talented, handsome, and well educated. From the 1530s on, however, he was sometimes mad, bad, and dangerous to know.

On his death, the throne passed to his ten-year-old son, Edward VI, beginning another period of turmoil.  

If you have trouble remembering the fate of Henry's wives, this little mnemonic device helps: 

"Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived."

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British Monarchs who Ended Badly, Part 4: The Wars of the Roses

Poor Henry VI. He was not cut out for his job. As you will recall from Part 3, he became King of England in 1422 as an infant, the third Lancastrian king and the youngest person ever to inherit the Crown. [Image: Henry VI]

He was also proclaimed King of France and crowned in 1431, but never ruled that country. One could argue he never really ruled England either. Henry VI had the dubious distinction of being King of England twice, sandwiched around Edward IV, who also held the job twice. It is not even certain he knew he was king.

While Henry was growing up in age, a regency council ruled in his name. In 1437, he assumed control of the government. He had become older. He had not grown up. He may have made a good monk, but not a good monarch for a country overrun by noble thugs. 

During the wars with France, the great lords had become recruiters for the army. They hired "retainers" to fight for pay. The retainers became private armies of the powerful nobles. Historians labeled the system "bastard feudalism."

By 1453, the Hundred Years War ended in English defeat. War abroad soon gave way to war at home, as two families descended from Edward III competed for the throne, the House of Lancaster and the House of York. The struggle would last more than thirty years. 

Historians labeled the conflict The Wars of the Roses. We can thank Shakespeare for that. In Henry VI, Part I, Shakespeare created a fictional scene in which supporters of the rival factions pick either red or white roses as their symbol: the red rose of Lancaster, and the white rose of York. 

[Image: Plucking the Red and White Roses in the Old Temple Gardens, print of fresco in the Palace of Westminster, by Henry Payne, 1910]

Nobody at the time thought they were fighting about roses. The white rose was indeed the symbol of the House of York. The red rose only became associated with the House of Lancaster after the wars.   

"Wars" is also something of a misnomer. Actual fighting was sporadic and punctuated by years of uneasy peace. Most of the battles were small scale affairs, though bloody. They were fought mainly by private armies of retainers in the pay of wealthy nobles, a bit like Mafia gangs.

Teaching the Wars of the Roses was always a struggle for me. To try and explain the complex relationships among the participants and the coming and going of kings is daunting. Everyone seems to be named Henry, Edward, or Richard. They are all descended from Edward III, who had too many children. 

You may recall that in 1399 Henry IV had deposed his cousin Richard II and claimed the throne. His claim was never fully accepted by some nobles. They thought Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March, was the rightful heir. 

Henry IV crushed uprisings in Mortimer's favor. Mortimer, a child at the time, never pursued his claim himself, and Henry treated him well. In fact, Mortimer became a trusted counsellor to the Lancastrian kings before his death in 1425. 

Things changed when the French war ended in defeat and domestic chaos. In the 1450s Richard Duke of York revived the Mortimer claim. Mortimer had no children, but York was his nephew and heir. 

Richard was emboldened by Henry VI's lack of kingly skills. In contrast to his father Henry V, he was not a bold warrior. He was timid, shy, and pious. He disliked war and violence. He was also prone to periodic mental breakdown. 

By the early 1450s, England was descending into anarchy. Bands of armed retainers, returned from plundering France, began to terrorize England. Richard of York presented himself as the man who could restore order. He sought to gain control over the government, which meant Henry VI. Henry's French queen, Margaret of Anjou, who wore the trousers, opposed Richard's plan. In 1455, civil war broke out. 

A victorious Richard captured Henry. He got Parliament to name him Lord Protector and Henry's successor. Margaret refused to accept the deal, which disinherited her son. She raised a Lancastrian army, which defeated and killed Richard in battle. 

The victory did not eliminate the Yorkist threat. Richard's eldest son Edward took up his claim. In 1461 he won a decisive victory over Lancastrian forces at the Battle of Towton. It was a truly big battle. More than 50,000 soldiers were engaged, and it was fought in a blinding snowstorm. Henry VI fled the field and the country. [Image; Edward IV]

Edward seized the vacant throne. As Edward IV, he ruled mostly in peace for nine years. But in 1469 his most powerful ally, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, turned against Edward. Warwick had provided key support to Edward and before that, to Edward's father. 

"The Kingmaker," as Warwick became known, allied with Margaret of Anjou, wife of Henry VI. They assembled an army in France and invaded England in 1471. Edward, caught by surprise, fled to France. Warwick made the feeble Henry VI king once again. But not for long. 

Edward raised an army in France and returned. Two Yorkist victories left Warwick and Henry VI's only son dead. Edward imprisoned Henry, who died soon after, possibly murdered. 

In 1478, Edward accused his brother George, Duke of Clarence, of treason, with good reason. He banished Clarence to the Tower of London, where he was privately executed. A rumor spread that he was drowned at his own choice in a butt of malmsey wine, a rich and sweet madeira. True or not, at least it helped me learn what malmsey is.

Edward ruled England for another twelve years in relative peace, which the country sorely needed. When he died in 1483, it seemed that the wars were finally over, and a peaceful succession would follow. 

His thirteen-year-old son was named king as Edward V. At first, the transference of power seemed likely to go smoothly. That changed when Edward's other brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, raised an objection. 

Richard had been staunchly loyal to his older brother, and Edward named him as Lord Protector of his children in the event of his death. Richard swiftly seized control of the young king and his younger brother from their mother's family. He had them both placed in the Tower of London. 

Richard followed with astonishing news. He claimed that the sons of Edward IV were bastards; that his brother's marriage to their mother, Elizabeth Woodville, was invalid. I'll skip the technicalities. Parliament, perhaps overawed by Richard's power, declared the young princes illegitimate and Richard rightful king. [Image: Richard III, earliest surviving portrait, 1520]

In the months following Richard III's seizure of power, the princes were seen less and less, and finally not at all. Did Richard have them murdered? Or did someone else arrange the deed to smear Richard? 

Some defenders of Richard argue that one of Richard's allies, the Duke of Buckingham, turned against him and arranged the murders to blacken his character. Others claim that the man who replaced Richard as king, Henry Tudor, was the true culprit.  

The evidence is inconclusive. In some people's eyes Richard III is the wickedest king in English history. To others, he is an innocent victim framed by Tudor historians, who influenced Shakespeare's portrayal of Richard in Richard III. The contrast in views could hardly be greater. 

Shakespeare's Richard is a monster, a hunchback who thrives on killing those blocking his path to power. The playwright even accuses two-year-old Richard of murder, and of ruthlessly killing someone at a battle at which he wasn't even present. 

Shakespeare can't be entirely faulted. He was relying on chroniclers favorable to the Tudors. They created the monster, as part of a propaganda campaign designed to strengthen the claim of the Tudors to the throne. "Look what we saved you from" was the message.

Richard's defenders have rejected the Tudor portrait, and in doing so, have unduly whitewashed him. He could be as ruthless as his enemies and rivals. Whether or not he had the princes killed, he certainly was responsible for eliminating members of the Woodville family and some of their supporters. Mafioso would understand.     

In 1485, Henry Tudor, half Welsh and a supporter of the Lancastrians, raised an army and challenged Richard. They met on Bosworth Field, near Leicester. One of Richard's allies changed sides in the middle of the battle, throwing victory to Henry. 

According to Shakespeare, Richard was killed after being unhorsed, crying, "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!" Well, by now you should have learned to take Shakespeare's history with a grain of salt. 

After the battle, Richard was hastily buried in a monastic church in nearby Leicester. For centuries, he remained there, while debate raged over whether or not Shakespeare was correct to describe him as a hunchbacked monster. 

The church and its cloisters were demolished during Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s. In the 20th century, the former monastic site became a car park. ("Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got till it's gone." Not to say it was paradise.

In 2012, archeologists who had pinpointed the location of the demolished monastery, found the remains of a body in the car park. They announced that they believed it was that of Richard III. 

The skeleton displayed numerous wounds. It also showed signs of scoliosis, a spinal deformity which may have given rise to stories that Richard was hunchbacked. Perhaps Shakespeare had been sort of right about that, after all. DNA analysis confirmed that the remains were Richard's.

The victor of Bosworth Field, Henry Tudor, wasted no time after the battle. He went straight to London and claimed the throne. He was descended from John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, through his mother. Others had a better hereditary claim than Henry. But that didn't stop him. He would take care of that problem later. 

[Image; Henry VII, first Tudor monarch] 

To strengthen his position, Henry arranged a hasty marriage to Edward IV's eldest daughter, symbolically uniting the houses of Lancaster and York. He also had a new rose commissioned, the red and white Tudor Rose, a symbolic uniting. In the portrait above, he is holding the rose in his right hand.

Henry VII had to fight one more battle, in 1487, against the army of an imposter claiming to be Edward V. After eliminating that threat, Henry secured his dynasty. His children and grandchildren would rule England until 1603. To judge by the number of books and films about the Tudors, one might be pardoned for thinking they were the only monarchs in English history, before Elizabeth II or this new guy.       

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