Erik Visits a (Non) American Grave, Part 2,075

This is the grave of King Charles II.

Born in 1630 in London, the son of King Charles I must have thought that he would have an easy time ascending to the throne. He did not. See, the Puritan uprising that killed his father in 1649 forced him into exile. The Scottish named him king, but the young royal did not have the military support that Oliver Cromwell did. They battled in 1651 at the Battle of Worcester. Cromwell had a lot more troops and won. This forced Charles into exile into France and the Netherlands, where he hoped to raise forces to take back his crown.

That didn’t happen, but the English got sick of Puritan rule pretty fast, especially after Cromwell died in 1658. No one wanted his son leading them. So support grew to bring Charles back, end the Puritan Revolution, and reestablish normalcy in England. Charles was of course glad of this. Moreover, his return to London happened on his 30th birthday in 1660, so it had extra import. Generally, the English were happy to have him back. Most people had come to loathe Cromwell and the Puritans and wanted to do things like celebrate Christmas again and the like. So as a whole, Charles II’s reign was one of positivity, though with some pretty significant exceptions. This was the era of the Restoration comedy in the theater and the bawdiness and general sense of relief at not having asshole Puritans ruling you was palpable.

There was plenty to deal with as king. There was the return of the Bubonic Plague in 1665 that wiped out about 7,000 people a week for awhile that year. This was mostly the poor, as the rich got out early. The king and family decamped to Salisbury, while Parliament moved to Oxford. Evidently they didn’t bring the rats with them, somehow. The biggest thing to handle though was the Great London Fire in 1666. That was very bad. Charles also spent a ton of resources in building up the Navy, for which he had a personal interest. This of course would pay off big time for the nation down the road.

Then of course there was the endless dynastic issues with the monarchies on the continent. Charles would throw his lot in with the Portuguese, marrying Catherine of Braganza in 1662. That she was a Catholic did not help with the anti-Catholic British population. She also never produced a heir, having three miscarriages. On the other hand, she is supposedly who made drinking tea a popular thing in England, which seems to me a bigger contribution than anything Charles did. I have no way to evaluate the tea claim though.

Charles also finally gave up on the British fantasy of expanding into France and sold Dunkirk, the last possession across the Channel, to the French. The reason was that it cost the crown too much to keep it up. Makes sense to me. He also rebuilt alliances with the Dutch that had come under significant strain with Cromwell (leave it that guy to alienate even other Protestants). But then relations fell apart again and the Second Dutch War between 1665 and 1667 happened after the English took New Amsterdam and renaming it New York. But that war didn’t go well despite that, with the Dutch sneaking up the Thames and burning a ton of British ships that forced the nation to compromise and end the war. Charles also expanded English colonialism in India, giving the East India Company autonomy over running anything it could grab over there, printing its own money, stuff like that.

Charles actually was very into religious tolerance, much more so than Parliament, which tried to crack down on non-conformity with the Church of England after the Cromwell years. He wasn’t real comfortable with the reestablishment of the Church of England, but he wasn’t going to fight this. Later, in 1672, he issued the Royal Declaration of Indulgence, which expanded religious and thus civil liberties to Protestant dissenters and Catholics, but Parliament forced him to withdraw it, a sign that he might be king but he wasn’t going to be any absolute ruler. Charles II wasn’t himself Catholic per se, but he was very, very high church and was pretty comfortable with Catholicism. Of course, his brother and heir James II was a Catholic, which led to the Glorious Revolution. It would take a long, long time for the Protestant civil wars in England to come to an end.

Charles was also unusual among kings in that evidently, he was not an incurious violent moron. He was quite conversant in modern science, had a lot of interest in natural history, and did some experimentation of his own. Observers of the Court wrote privately of his intelligence and knowledge of the world, which much have surprised people given how stupid most royals are.

Now, Charles had plenty of children but none of them were legitimate. They tended to be with other noble women, so they did just fine. But what this also made English Protestants realize is that he was not going to have a legitimate heir. That meant his brother James was the likely heir. But, again, James was a Catholic. This led to the Exclusion Crisis. The Earl of Shaftesbury, a former insider with the court, led the charge to ensure that no Catholic could take the crown. From 1679-81, this was the major issue in English politics. Charles beat the bill back. It also helped create the Whigs vs. Tories parties in Parliament, with the Whigs in support of the law and the Tories opposed. Framing this was the supposed Popish Plot, which was a 1678 conspiracy theory that claimed there was a Catholic conspiracy to assassinate Charles II. It was another way to continue the English civil wars. Twenty two men were executed before it quieted down. But the fears of what would happen when Charles died did not go away.

Charles died, seemingly out of nowhere, in 1685. He was 54 years old. He was taken with a fit of some sort. Some people thought maybe he was murdered by poison. Charles the amateur scientist was experimenting with mercury and so the rumor of accidental self-poisoning has been out there forever. Probably the most likely is that he had some kind of seizure and the doctors bled him too much. It’s hard to know. People died all the time of all sorts of unknown things back then. Of course, James took over and then three years later was overthrown in the Glorious Revolution.

King Charles II is buried in Westminister Abbey, London, England. There’s a lot more to say about that important king and his time ruling in a rapidly changing country but we can save this for the comments.

If you would like this series to visit some American kings, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Don King is still alive for some reason. That’ll be a grave visit. B.B. King is in Indianola, Mississippi and Rodney King is in Hollywood Hills, California. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.