Charles I., born at Dunfermline on 19th November 1600, was a sickly child, unable to speak till his fifth year, and so weak in the ankles that till his seventh he had to crawl upon his hands and knees. Except for a stammer, he outgrew both defects, and became a skilled tilter and marksman, as well as an accomplished scholar and a diligent student of theology. He was created Duke of Albany at his baptism, Duke of York in 1605, and Prince of Wales in 1616, four years after the death of his dear brother, Prince Henry, had left him heir to the crown of three kingdoms. The Spanish match had been mooted as early as 1614; but it was not till 17th February 1623 that, with Buckingham, his inseparable friend, Charles started on the romantic incognito journey to Madrid, its objects to win the hand of the Infanta, and to procure the restitution of the Palatine to his brother-in-law, Frederick. Both he and his father swore to all possible and many impossible concessions to the Catholics, but nothing short of his own conversion would have satisfied the Spanish and papal courts; and on 5th October he landed again in England, eager for rupture with Spain. The nation's joy was speedily dashed by his betrothal to the French princess, Henrietta Maria (1609-69); for the marriage articles pledged him, in violation of solemn engagements to parliament, to permit her and all her domestics the free exercise of the Catholic religion, and to give her the upbringing of their children till the age of thirteen.
On 27th March 1625 Charles succeeded his father, James I.; on 13th June he welcomed his little bright-eyed queen at Dover, having married her by proxy six weeks earlier. Barely a twelvemonth was over when he packed off her troublesome retinue to France—a bishop and 29 priests, with 410 more male and female attendants. Thenceforth their domestic life was a happy one; and during the twelve years following the murder of Buckingham (1592-1628), in whose hands he had been a mere tool, Charles gradually came to yield himself up to her unwise influence, not wholly indeed, but more than to that of Strafford even, or Laud. Little, meddlesome Laud, made archbishop in 1633, proceeded to war against the dominant Puritanism, to preach passive obedience, and uphold the divine right of kings; whilst great Strafford, from championing the Petition of Right (1628), passed over to the king's service, and entered on that policy of 'Thorough' whose aim was to make his master absolute. Three parliaments were summoned and dissolved in the first four years of the reign; then for eleven years Charles ruled without one, in its stead with subservient judges and the courts of Star Chamber and High Commission. In 1627 he had blundered into an inglorious French war; but with France he concluded peace in 1629, with Spain in 1630. Peace, economy, and arbitrary taxation were to solve the great problem of his policy—how to get money, yet not account for it. Not that Charles cared for money in itself, or had far-reaching projects of tyranny (he failed to enter into Strafford's scheme). But he had inherited a boundless egoism, and, content with his own petty self, had little sympathy with the dead heroism of the Tudor age, none at all with the nascent ardour of democracy. The extension of the ship-tax to the inland counties was met by Hampden's passive resistance (1637); Laud's attempt to Anglicise the Scottish Church, by the active resistance of the whole northern nation (1639). Once more Charles had to call a parliament: two met in 1640—the Short Parliament, which lasted but three weeks, and the Long, which outlasted Charles.
It met to pronounce Strafford's doom; and, his plot with the army detected, Charles basely sacrificed his loyal servitor, his own kingly word, to fears for the queen's safety: no act weighed heavier on him afterwards. The same signature that sent Strafford to the block gave assent to a second bill by which the existing parliament might not be dissolved without its own consent. That pledge, as extorted by force, Charles purposed to disregard; and during his visit to Edinburgh, in the autumn of 1641, he trusted by lavish concessions to bring over the Scots to his side. Instead, he got entangled in dark suspicions of plotting the murder of the Covenanting lords, of connivance even in the Ulster massacre. Still, his return to London was welcomed with some enthusiasm, and a party was forming in the Commons itself of men who revolted from the sweeping changes that menaced both church and state. Pym's 'Grand Remonstrance' justified their fears, and Charles seemed to justify the 'Grand Remonstrance' by his attempt to arrest the five members (4th January 1642); but that ill-stricken blow was dictated by the knowledge of an impending impeachment of the queen herself. On 22d August he raised the royal standard at Nottingham; and the four years' Civil War commenced, in which, as at Naseby, he showed no lack of physical courage, and which resulted at Naseby in the utter annihilation of his cause (14th June 1645).
No need here to track him through plot and counterplot, with Catholics, Presbyterians, and Sectaries, with the Scots and the Irish, with the parliament and the army; enough, that, quitting his last refuge, Oxford, he surrendered himself on 5th May 1646 to the Scots at Newark, and by them in the following January was handed over to the parliament. His four months' captivity at Holmby House, near Northampton; his seizure, on 3d June, by Cornet Joyce; the three months at Hampton Court; the flight on 11th November; the fresh captivity at Carisbrooke Castle, in the Isle of Wight—these lead up to the 'trial' at Westminster of the 'tyrant, traitor, and murderer, Charles Stuart.' He had drawn the sword, and by the sword he perished, for it was the army, not parliament, that stood at the back of his judges. Charles faced them bravely, and with dignity. Thrice he refused to plead, denying the competence of such a court; and his refusal being treated as a confession, on the third day fifty-five out of seventy-one judges—sixty-four more never were present—affixed their names and seals to his death-warrant; four days later, sentence was pronounced.
No need here to tell the well-known story of his meekness towards his persecutors, of the pathetic parting from two of his younger children, of his preparation for a holy death; or how, on the morning of the 30th January 1649, he passed to that death on the scaffold in front of Whitehall, with a courage worthy of a very martyr. On the snowy 7th of February they bore the 'white king' to his grave at Windsor in Henry VIII.'s vault; in 1813 the Prince Regent had his leaden coffin opened. Six children survived him—Charles and James, his successors; Mary, Princess of Orange (1631-60); Elizabeth (1635-50); Henry, Duke of Gloucester (1639-60); and Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans (1644-70), the last born ten weeks after Charles's final parting from his queen. At the Restoration Charles II. appointed, on his sole authority, a 'form of prayer, with fasting, for the day of the martyrdom of the Blessed King Charles I.,' to be annexed to the Common Prayer-book; with the other 'state-services,' it kept its place there till 1859.
A far stronger man than Charles might scarcely have extricated himself from the difficulties that beset him; true, those difficulties were largely of his own creating. But was he right in abandoning Strafford? should he also have sacrificed wife, faith, and crown? If yes, then was he wholly in the wrong; if no, he was partly—for once at least—in the right. Vices, other than duplicity, he had none, as we use the word. He was vague, vacillating, obstinate; unable to lead or be led; superstitious, heedful of omens; unsympathetic and reserved where he did not love; intolerant of opposition to his will. But he was a good husband, a good father, a good churchman—no man so good was ever so bad a king; no man so fallible believed so honestly in his infallibility. For Charles was honest to his own convictions. His very duplicity was due sometimes to schooling in 'kingcraft,' but oftener to inability to see two sides of a question. Now he saw one, and now the other, but never both sides at once; and, just as he saw, so he spoke. He was not a liar because he loved a lie. Milton's charges against him of 'all manner of lewdness' rank with Milton's charge that he poisoned his father; and Bishop Heber's rash statement that Jeremy Taylor's second wife was 'generally believed to be a natural daughter of Charles, when Prince of Wales,' is backed by no tittle of evidence. Indeed, as a pattern of culture and piety, one prince alone is worthy to be named beside him—the late Prince Consort; and had Charles's lot fallen, like his, on peaceful days of settled monarchy, admiration, not pity, might now be our feeling towards him. But Charles was predestined to sorrow. 'A tragic face!' said the sculptor Bernini, as he looked on the triple portrait by Vandyke; already, the shadow of a violent death overclouded those fine, weak features.
See the articles EIKON BASILIKE, HENRIETTA MARIA, ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, IRELAND, LAUD, STRAFFORD, ELIOT, HAMPDEN, PRYNNE, PYM, CROMWELL, BRADSHAW, &c.; the Histories of Clarendon, Hallam, Green, Guizot, and Ranke; I. D'Israeli's Commentaries on the Life and Reign of Charles I. (5 vols. 1828-30); Letters of Charles I. to Henrietta Maria (Camden Soc. 1856); Chancellor's Charles I., 1600-25 (1886); Calendar of State Papers, 1625-45 (20 vols. 1858-90); three long articles on the trial in the Athenaeum for Jan. and Feb. 1881; the sumptuous Life by Sir J. Skelton (1898); and, specially, S. R. Gardiner's Puritan Revolution (1876), History of England, 1603-42 (10 vols. 1863-82; new ed. 1883-84), and History of the Great Civil War, 1642-49 (3 vols. 1886-91).