Tea at Trianon: Has History Been Unfair to Charles I?

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, October 6, 2023

Has History Been Unfair to Charles I?

Well, I think so, but then I am prejudiced in favor of the Stuarts. From History Extra:

Why did things go so disastrously wrong for Charles? Few would now accept the older characterisation of him as a tyrant whose personal rule was a high road to civil war and revolution. Some even regard the personal rule as a period of constructive and welcome reform in England, arguing that his regime was toppled only as a result of the prior revolts in Scotland and Ireland.

Must revolutions have great, long-term causes? Was Charles’s fall an inevitable consequence of his political inheritance? Or was it the result of bad luck, political miscalculation, even accident? Do we blame Charles or the situation in which he found himself?

Charles’s father, James VI of Scotland, had united the crowns in 1603 when he succeeded Elizabeth I to the thrones of England and Ireland as James I. England had its problems – a seriously under-financed crown and deep-seated religious tensions dividing various types of Protestants among themselves (Calvinists and anti-Calvinists, Puritans and anti-Puritans).

James now also found himself ruling three kingdoms with different religious complexions: Anglican England, Presbyterian Scotland and Catholic Ireland (albeit that the church establishment in Ireland was Protestant and the Catholic majority were divided ethnically between the native Gaelic and the Old English). Ireland posed further security problems as a Catholic island off the coast of Protestant England that had the tendency to rebel against English rule. During Tyrone’s rebellion of the 1590s, which was only finally put down in 1603, the Gaels of Ulster had even offered the crown of Ireland to the king of Catholic Spain.

James VI and I is normally seen as a skillful politician who managed this problematic multiple-kingdom inheritance reasonably well. He calmed religious tensions in England, and under his rule Scotland and Ireland were quieter than they had been for a long time.

Yet James stored up a hornets’ nest of problems for his son. He had enraged many Scots by reviving episcopacy (a hierarchical structure in which the chief authority over a local church is a bishop) north of the border. It was also James who had first moved to introduce a more Anglican style of worship into the Scottish Kirk, thereby upsetting the Presbyterians. It is true that he took care to work through the general assembly of the Kirk and the Scottish parliament. But he used a considerable amount of bullying and intimidation to force his reforms through and Scottish Presbyterians never accepted the assemblies that had backed James’s initiatives as legitimate. (Read more.)

Some unpublished letters of Queen Henrietta Maria, HERE.

Is Charles a martyr? More on that HERE. Charles' letters to the Pope are like his letters to Louis XIII and Marie De Medici in which he promised to grant Catholics their liberty, which he would totally not be able to do. He did what he could, and released many from prison, etc. But after Henriette made her pilgrimage to Tyborne, Charles was furious because the Gunpowder Plot traitors had been executed there and he sent away most of the Queen's French entourage, except for a Huguenot lady, whom he placed in charge of her household. He sent away all her Oratorian priests, except for two. Henriette herself was placed under 24 hour "supervision" by the Villiers family. I do not blame Charles necessarily; it is clear why he had to do it. Later, Charles permitted the Capuchins to minister at Henriette's chapel at Somerset House, as part of the new marriage contract he worked out with Louis XIII, his brother-in-law, after Louis defeated him near La Rochelle. And he fulfilled his promise to permit Catholic chapels in all the Queen's residences which was a huge help for Catholics. But from the beginning anything he did for Catholics earned for him the ire of the Puritans. They were constantly calling him a papist. Plus they hated his liturgical reforms. But I just wish Charles on the way to his death had not told little Henry and Elizabeth to obey their mother in all things but religion since it caused Henry a lot of torment afterwards.

I do believe that Charles I was a true martyr, since he refused to become a Calvinist under pain of death. He believed there could not be a church without a hierarchy and sacraments. He was in an impossible position because of the Puritans in parliament. His ten years of personal rule were some of the best England had ever known. The people were hardly taxed and just about everyone thrived. He was a fabulous monarch, very just and yes he healed people with his royal touch. Whether he will ever be considered a Roman Catholic martyr, I do not think so. He was adamant about Baby Henriette, and all his children, not being baptized by Catholic priests. But like the Romanovs, he is a Christian martyr. No one can take it away from him. Henriette knew him to be a man of principle which is one reason she loved him so much.