VOLUME V SLICE VIII Chariot to Chatelaine (continued 5)

The difficulty of Charles himself is also that of the historian and reader of his reign. It is probably more instructive to treat it according to the emperor’s several problems than in strict chronological order. Yet an attempt to distinguish the several periods of his career may serve as a useful introduction. The two best dividing lines are, perhaps, the coronation as emperor at Bologna in 1530, and the peace of Crépy in 1544. Until his visit to Italy (1529) Charles remained in the background of the European stage, except for his momentous meeting with Luther at the diet of Worms (1521). This meeting in itself forms a subdivision. Previously to this, during his nominal rule in the Netherlands, his visit to Spain, and his candidature for the Empire, he seemed, as it was said, spell-bound under the ferule of his minister Chièvres. Almost every report represented him as colourless, reserved and weak. His dependence on his Flemish counsellors provoked the rising in Castile, the feebleness of his government the social war in Aragon. The religious question first gave him a living interest, and at this moment Chièvres died. Aleander, the papal nuncio at Worms, now recognized that public opinion had been wrong in its estimate of Charles. Never again was he under tutelage. The necessity, however, of residence in Spain prevented his taking a personal part in the great fight with Francis I. for Italy. He could claim no credit for the capture of his rival at Pavia. When his army sacked Rome and held Pope Clement VII. prisoner, he could not have known where this army was. And when later the French overran Naples, and all but deprived him of his hold on Italy, he had to instruct his generals that they must shift for themselves. The world had become afraid of him, but knew little of his character. In the second main division of his career Charles changed all this. No monarch until Napoleon was so widely seen in Europe and in Africa. Complexity of problems is the characteristic of this period. At the head of his army Charles forced the Turks backwards down the Danube (1532). He personally conquered Tunis (1535), and was only prevented by “act of God” from winning Algiers (1541). The invasion of Provence in 1536 was headed by the emperor. In person he crushed the rebellion of Ghent (1540). In his last war with Francis (1542-44) he journeyed from Spain to the Netherlands, brought the rebellious duke of Cleves to his knees, and was within easy reach of Paris when he made the peace of Crépy (1544). In Germany, meanwhile, from the diet of Augsburg (1530) onwards, he had presided at the diets or conferences, which, as he hoped, would effect the reunion of the church.

Peace with France and the Turk and a short spell of friendliness with Pope Paul III. enabled Charles at last to devote his whole energies to the healing of religious schism. Conciliation proving impossible, he led the army which received the submission of the Lutheran states, and then captured the elector of Saxony at Mühlberg, after which the other leader, Philip of Hesse, capitulated. The Armed Diet of 1548 was the high-water mark of Charles’s power. Here, in defiance of the pope, he published the Interim which was meant to reconcile the Lutherans with the church, and the so-called Reform which was to amend its abuses. During the next four years, owing to ill-health and loss of insight, his power was ebbing. In 1552 he was flying over the Brenner from Maurice of Saxony, a princeling whose fortunes he had made. Once again the old complications had arisen. His old enemy’s son, Henry II., had attacked him indirectly in Piedmont and Parma, and then directly in Germany in alliance with Maurice. Once more the Turk was moving in the Danube and in the western Mediterranean. The humiliation of his flight gave Charles new spirit, and he once more led an army through Germany against the French, only to be checked by the duke of Guise’s defence of Metz. Henceforth the waves of his fortune plashed to and fro until his abdication without much ostensible loss or gain.

Charles had abundance of good sense, but little creative genius, and he was by nature conservative. Consequently he never sought to impose any new or common principles of administration on his several states. He took them as he found them, and at most, as in the Netherlands, improved upon what he found. So also in dealing with rival powers his policy may be called opportunist. He was indeed accused by his enemies of emulating Charlemagne, of aiming at universal empire. Historians have frequently repeated this charge. Charles himself in later life laughingly denied the imputation, and facts are in favour of his denial. When Francis I. was in his power he made no attempt to dismember France, in spite of his pledges to his allies Henry VIII. and the duke of Bourbon. He did, indeed, demand the duchy of Burgundy, because he believed this to have been unrighteously stolen by Louis XI. from his grandmother when a helpless girl. The claim was not pressed, and at the height of his fortunes in 1548 he advised his son never to surrender it, but also never to make it a cause of war. When Clement VII. was his prisoner, he was vehemently urged to overthrow the temporal power, to restore imperial dominion in Italy, at least to make the papacy harmless for the future. In reply he restored his enemy to the whole of his dominions, even reimposing him by force on the Florentine republic. To the end of his life his conscience was sensitive as to Ferdinand’s expulsion of the house of Albret from Spanish Navarre, though this was essential to the safety of Spain. Though always at war he was essentially a lover of peace, and all his wars were virtually defensive. “Not greedy of territory,” wrote Marcantonio Contarini in 1536, “but most greedy of peace and quiet.” For peace he made sacrifices which angered his hot-headed brother Ferdinand. He would not aid in expelling the sultan’s puppet Zapolya from Ferdinand’s kingdom of Hungary, and he suffered the restoration of the ruffianly duke of Württemberg, to the grave prejudice of German Catholicism. In spite of his protests, Henry VIII. with impunity ill-treated his aunt Catherine, and the feeble government of Edward VI. bullied his cousin Mary, who had been his fiancée. No serious efforts were made to restore his brother-in-law, Christian II., to the throne of Denmark, and he advised his son Philip to make friends with the usurper. After the defeat of the Lutheran powers in 1547 he did not gain a palm’s breadth of territory for himself. He resisted Ferdinand’s claim for Wurttemberg, which the duke had deserved to forfeit; he disliked his acceptance of the voluntary surrender of the city of Constance; he would not have it said that he had gone to war for the benefit of the house of Habsburg.

On the other hand, Charles V.’s policy was not merely negative. He enlarged upon the old Habsburg practice of marriage as a means of alliance of influence. Previously to his election as emperor, his sister Isabella was married to Christian II. of Denmark, and the marriages of Mary and Ferdinand with the king of Hungary and his sister had been arranged. Before he was twenty Charles himself had been engaged some ten times with a view to political combinations. Naturally, therefore, he regarded his near relations as diplomatic assets. The federative system was equally familiar; Germany, the Netherlands, and even Spain, were in a measure federations. Combining these two principles, he would within his more immediate spheres of influence strengthen existing federations by intermarriage, while he hoped that the same means would convert the jarring powers of Europe into a happy family. He made it a condition of the treaty of Madrid (1526) that Francis I. should marry his sister Eleanor, Manuel of Portugal’s widow, in the hope, not that she would be an ally or a spy within the enemy’s camp, but an instrument of peace. His son’s marriage with Mary Tudor would not only salve the rubs with England, but give such absolute security to the Netherlands that France would shrink from war. The personal union of all the Iberian kingdoms under a single ruler had long been an aim of Spanish statecraft. So Charles had married his sister Eleanor, much against her will, to the old king Manuel, and then his sister Catherine to his successor. The empress was a Portuguese infanta, and Philip’s first wife was another. It is thus small wonder that, within a quarter of a century of Charles’s death, Philip became king of Portugal.

In the wars with Francis I. Italy was the stake. In spite of his success Charles for long made no direct conquests. He would convert the peninsula into a federation mainly matrimonial. Savoy, the important buffer state, was detached from France by the marriage of the somewhat feeble duke to Charles’s capable and devoted sister-in-law, Beatrice of Portugal. Milan, conquered from France, was granted to Francesco Sforza, heir of the old dynasty, and even after his treason was restored to him. In the vain hope of offspring Charles sacrificed his niece, Christina of Denmark, to the valetudinarian duke. In the long negotiations for a Habsburg-Valois dynasty which followed Francesco’s death, Charles was probably sincere. He insisted that his daughter or niece should marry the third rather than the second son of Francis I., in order, apart from other reasons, to run less risk of the duchy falling under French dominion. The final investiture of Philip was forced upon him, and does not represent his saner policy. The Medici of Florence, the Gonzaga of Mantua, the papal house of Farnese, were all attached by Habsburg marriages. The republics of Genoa and Siena were drawn into the circle through the agency of their chief noble families, the Doria and Piccolomini; while Charles behaved with scrupulous moderation towards Venice in spite of her active hostility before and after the League of Cognac. Occasional acts of violence there were, such as the participation in the murder of Pierluigi Farnese, and the measures which provoked the rebellion of Siena. These were due to the difficulty of controlling the imperial agents from a distance, and in part to the faults of the victim prince and republic. On the whole, the loose federation of viceroyalties and principalities harmonized with Italian interests and traditions. The alternative was not Italian independence, but French domination. At any rate, Charles’s structure was so durable that the French met with no real success in Italy until the 18th century.

Germany offered a fine field for a creative intellect, since the evils of her disintegration stood confessed. On the other hand, princes and towns were so jealous of an increase of central authority that Charles, at least until his victory over the League of Schmalkalden, had little effective power. Owing to his wars with French and Turks he was rarely in Germany, and his visits were very short. His problem was infinitely complicated by the union of Lutheranism and princely independence. He fell back on the old policy of Maximilian, and strove to create a party by personal alliances and intermarriage. In this he met with some success. The friendship of the electors of Brandenburg, whether Catholic or Protestant, was unbroken. In the war of Schmalkalden half the Protestant princes were on Charles’s side or friendly neutrals. At the critical moment which preceded this, the lately rebellious duke of Cleves and the heir of Bavaria were secured through the agency of two of Ferdinand’s invaluable daughters. The relations, indeed, between the two old enemies, Austria and Bavaria, were permanently improved. The elector palatine, whose love affairs with his sister Eleanor Charles as a boy had roughly broken, received in compensation a Danish niece. Her sister, widow of Francesco Sforza, was utilized to gain a hold upon the French dynasty which ruled Lorraine. More than once there were proposals for winning the hostile house of Saxony by matrimonial means. After his victory over the League of Schmalkalden, Charles perhaps had really a chance of making the imperial power a reality. But he lacked either courage or imagination, contenting himself with proposals for voluntary association on the lines of the defunct Swabian League, and dropping even these when public opinion was against them. Now, too, he made his great mistake in attempting to foist Philip upon the Empire as Ferdinand’s successor. Gossip reported that Ferdinand himself was to be set aside, and careless historians have given currency to this. Such an idea was impossible. Charles wished Philip to succeed Ferdinand, while he ultimately conceded that Ferdinand’s son Maximilian should follow Philip, and even in his lifetime exercise the practical power in Germany. This scheme irritated Ferdinand and his popular and ambitious son at the critical moment when it was essential that the Habsburgs should hold together against princely malcontents. Philip was imprudently introduced to Germany, which had also just received a foretaste of the unpleasant characteristics of Spanish troops. Yet the person rather than the policy was, perhaps, at fault. It was natural that the quasi-hereditary succession should revert to the elder line. France proved her recuperative power by the occupation of Savoy and of Metz, Toul and Verdun, the military keys of Lorraine. The separation of the Empire and Spain left two weakened powers not always at accord, and neither of them permanently able to cope on equal terms with France. Nevertheless, this scheme did contribute in no small measure to the failure of Charles in Germany. The main cause was, of course, the religious schism, but his treatment of this requires separate consideration.

The characteristics of Charles’s government, its mingled conservatism and adaptability, are best seen in Spain and the Netherlands, with which he was in closer personal contact than with Italy and Germany. In Spain, when once he knew the country, he never repeated the mistakes which on his first visit caused the rising of the communes. The cortes of Castile were regularly summoned, and though he would allow no encroachment on the crown’s prerogatives, he was equally scrupulous in respecting their constitutional rights. They became, perhaps, during the reign slightly more dependent on the crown. This has been ascribed to the system of gratuities which in later reigns became a scandal, but was not introduced by Charles, and as yet amounted to little more than the payment of members’ expenses. Indirectly, crown influence increased owing to the greater control which had gradually been exercised over the composition of the municipal councils, which often returned the deputies for the cortes. Charles was throughout nervous as to the power and wealth of the greater nobles. They rather than the crown had conquered the communes, and in the past they rather than the towns had been the enemies of monarchy. He earnestly warned his son against giving them administrative power, especially the duke of Alva, who in spite of his sanctimonious and humble bearing cherished the highest ambitions: in foreign affairs and war he might be freely used, for he was Spain’s best soldier. In the cortes of 1538 Charles came into collision with the nobles as a class. They usually attended only on ceremonial occasions, since they were exempted from direct taxation, which was the main function of the cortes. Now, however, they were summoned, because Charles was bent upon a scheme of indirect taxation which would have affected all classes. They offered an uncompromising opposition, and Charles somewhat angrily dismissed them, nor did he ever summon them again. The peculiar Spanish system of departmental councils was further developed, so that it may be said that the bureaucratic element was slightly increasing just as the parliamentary element was on the wane. The evils of this tendency were as yet scarcely apparent owing to Charles’s personal intervention in all departments. The councils presented their reports through the minister chiefly concerned; Charles heard their advice, and formed his own conclusions. He impressed upon Philip that he should never become the servant of his ministers: let him hear them all but decide himself. Naturally enough, he was well served by his ministers, whom he very rarely changed. After the death of the Piedmontese Gattinara he relied mainly on Nicolas Perrenot de Granvella for Netherland and German affairs, and on Francisco de los Cobos for Spanish, while the younger Granvella was being trained. From 1520 to 1555 these were the only ministers of high importance. Above all, Charles never had a court favourite, and the only women who exercised any influence were his natural advisers, his wife, his aunt Margaret and his sister Mary. In all these ladies he was peculiarly fortunate. Charles was never quite popular in Spain, but the empress whom he married at his people’s request was much beloved. Complaints were made of his absenteeism, but until 1543 he spent the greater portion of his reign in Spain, or on expeditions such as those against Tunis and Algiers which were distinctively in Spanish interests. Spaniards disliked his Netherland and German connexions, but without the vigorous blows which these enabled him to strike at France, it is improbable that Spain could have retained her hold on Italy, or her monopoly of commerce with the Indies. The wars with Francis I. were, in spite of the rival candidature for the Empire, Spanish wars entailed by Ferdinand’s retention of Roussillon, his annexation of Navarre, his summary eviction of the French from Naples. The Netherlands had become convinced on commercial grounds of the wisdom of peace with France, and the German interest in Milan was not sufficiently active to be a standing cause of war. Charles and Francis had inherited the hostility of Ferdinand and Louis XII.

The reign of Charles was in America the age of conquest and organization. Upon his accession the settlements upon the mainland were insignificant; by 1556 conquest was practically complete, and civil and ecclesiastical government firmly established. Actual expansion was the work of great adventurers starting on their own impulse from the older colonies. To Charles fell the task of encouraging such ventures, of controlling the conquerors, of settling the relations between colonists and natives, which involved those between the colonists and the missionary colonial church. He must arrest depopulation, provide for the labour market, regulate oceanic trade, and check military preponderance by civil and ecclesiastical organization. In America Charles took an unceasing interest; he had a boundless belief in its possibilities, and a determination to safeguard the interests of the crown. Cortes, Alvarado and the brothers Pizarro were brought into close personal communication with the emperor. If he bestowed on Cortes the confidence which the loyal conqueror deserved, he showed the sternest determination in crushing the rebellious and autonomous instincts of Almagro and the Pizarros. But for this, Peru and Chile must have become independent almost as soon as they were conquered. Throughout he strove to protect the natives, to prevent actual slavery, and the consequent raids upon the natives. Legislation was not, indeed, always consistent, because the claims of the colonists could not always be resisted, but on the whole he gave earnest support to the missionaries, who upheld the cause of the natives against the military, and sometimes the civil and ecclesiastical elements. His humane care for his native subjects may well be studied in the instructions sent to Philip from Germany in 1548, when Charles was at the summit of his power. If Charles had had his will, he would have opened the colonial trade to the whole of his wide possessions. The Castilians, however, jealously confined it to the city of Seville, artificially fostering the indolence of the colonists to maintain the agricultural and manufacturing monopoly of Castile, and by extreme protective measures forcing them to live on smuggled goods from other countries. Charles did actually attempt to cure the exclusive interest of the colonists in mineral wealth by the establishment of peasant and artisan colonies. If in many respects he failed, yet the organization of Spanish America and the survival of the native races were perhaps the most permanent results of his reign. It is a proof of the complexity of his interests that the march of the Turk upon Vienna and of the French on Naples delayed until the following reign the foundation of Spain’s eastern empire. Charles carefully organized the expedition of Magellan, which sailed for the Moluccas and discovered the Philippines. Unfortunately, his straits for money in 1529 compelled him to mortgage to Portugal his disputed claim to the Moluccas, and the Philippines consequently dropped out of sight.

If in the administration of Spain Charles did little more than mark time, in the Netherlands advance was rapid. Of the seven northern provinces he added five, containing more than half the area of the later United Provinces. In the south he freed Flanders and Artois from French suzerainty, annexed Tournai and Cambrai, and closed the natural line of French advance through the great bishopric of Liége by a line of fortresses across its western frontier. Much was done to convert the aggregate of jarring provinces into a harmonious unity by means of common principles of law and finance, and by the creation of a national army. While every province had its own assembly, there were at Charles’s accession only the rudiments of estates general for the Netherlands at large. At the close of the reign the common parliamentary system was in full swing, and was fast converting the loosely knit provinces into a state. By these means the ruler had wished to facilitate the process of supply, but supply soon entailed redress, and the provinces could recognize their common interests and grievances. Under Philip II. all patriotic spirits passionately turned to this creation of his father as the palladium of Netherland liberty. This process of consolidation was infinitely difficult, and conflicts between local and central authorities were frequent. That they were safely tided over was due to Charles’s moderation and his legal mind, which prompted him to draw back when his case was bad. The harshest act of his life was the punishment of the rebellion of Ghent. Yet the city met with little or no sympathy in other quarters, because she had refused to act in concert with the other members of Flanders and the other provinces. It was no mere local quarrel, but a breach of the growing national unity.

In the Netherlands Charles showed none of the jealousy with which he regarded the Spanish nobles. He encouraged the growth of large estates through primogeniture; he gave the nobles the provincial governorships, the great court offices, the command of the professional cavalry. In the Order of the Golden Fleece and the long established presence of the court at Brussels, he possessed advantages which he lacked in Spain. The nobility were utilized as a link between the court and the provinces. Very different was it with the church. By far the greater part of the Netherlands fell under foreign sees, which were peculiarly liable to papal exactions and to the intrigues of rival powers. Thus the usual conflict between civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction was peculiarly acute. To remedy this dualism of authority and the consequent moral and religious abuses, Charles early designed the creation of a national diocesan system, and this was a darling project throughout his life. He was doing what every German territorial prince, Catholic or Lutheran, attempted, making bishoprics and abbeys dependent on the crown, with nomination and institution in his hands, and with reasonable control over taxation and jurisdiction. The papacy unfortunately thwarted him, and the scheme, which under Charles would have been carried with national assent, and created a national church, took the appearance under Philip of alien domination.

If in Germany Charles was emperor, he was in the Netherlands territorial prince, and thus his interests might easily be at disaccord with those of the Empire. Consequently, just as he had shaken off French suzerainty from Flanders and Artois, so he loosened the tie of the other provinces to Germany. In 1548 they were declared free and sovereign principalities not subject to imperial laws, and all the territories were incorporated in the Burgundian circle. It was, indeed, agreed that they should contribute to imperial taxation, and in return receive imperial protection. But this soon became a dead letter, and the Netherlands were really severed from the Empire, save for the nominal feudal tie in the case of some provinces. Thus some writers have dated their independence from Charles’s convention of 1548 rather than from the peace of Westphalia, a century later. Having converted his heterogeneous territories into a self-sufficient state, Charles often contemplated the formation of a middle kingdom between France and Germany. At the last moment he spoiled his own work by granting the Netherlands to Philip. It was indeed hard to set aside the order of inheritance, and the commercial interests of the provinces were closely bound with Spain, and with England, whose queen Philip had married. Under any other ruler than Philip the breach might not have come so early. Yet it must be regretted that Charles had not the courage of his convictions, and that he lost the opportunity of completing the new nation which he had faithfully laboured to create.

Charles V. is in the eyes of many the very picture of a Catholic zealot. Popular opinion is probably mainly based upon the letters written from Yuste in 1558, when two hot-beds of heresy had been discovered in Spain herself, and on the contemporary codicil to his will. These were, perhaps, really in part responsible for the later persecution. Yet the circumstances were far from being typical of the emperor’s career. Death was very near him; devotional exercises were his main occupation. The letters, moreover, were cries of warning, and not edicts. Charles was not then the responsible authority. There is a long step between a violent letter and a violent act. Few men would care to have their lives judged by letters written in the last extremities of gout. Less pardonable was the earlier persecution of the Valencian Moriscoes in 1525-1526. They had fought for their landlords in the cause of order, had been forcibly converted by the revolutionaries, and on the suppression of revolution had naturally relapsed. But for this momentary conversion the Inquisition would have had no hold upon them. The edict of persecution was cruel and unnecessary, and all expert opinion in Valencia was against it. It was not, however, actually enforced until after the victory of Pavia. It seems likely that Charles in a fit of religious exaltation regarded the persecution as a sacrificial thank-offering for his miraculous preservation. It is characteristic that, when in the following year he was brought into personal contact with the Moors of Granada, he allowed them to buy themselves off from the more obnoxious measures of the Inquisition. Henceforth the reign was marked by extreme leniency. Spain enjoyed a long lull in the activity of her Inquisition. At Naples in 1547 a rumour that the Spanish Inquisition was to be introduced to check the growth of heresy in influential quarters produced a dangerous revolt. The briefs were, however, issued by Paul III., no friend of Charles, and when a Neapolitan deputation visited the emperor he disclaimed any intention of making innovations. Of a different type to all the above was the persecution in the Netherlands. Here it was deliberate, chronic, and on an ascending scale. It is not a sufficient explanation that heresy also was persistent, ubiquitous and increasing, for this was also the case in Germany where Charles’s methods were neither uniform nor drastic. But in the Netherlands the heretics were his immediate subjects, and as in every other state, Catholic or Lutheran, they must conform to their prince’s religion. But there was more than this. After the suppression of the German peasant revolt in 1525 many of the refugees found shelter in the teeming Netherland cities, and heresy took the form, not of Lutheranism, but of Anabaptism, which was believed to be perilous to society and the state. The government put down Anabaptism, as a modern government might stamp out Anarchism. The edicts were, indeed, directed against heresy in general, and were as harsh as they could be—at least on paper. Yet when Charles was assured that they were embarrassing foreign trade he let it be understood that they should not affect the foreign mercantile communities. Prudential considerations proved frequently a drag upon religious zeal.

The relations of Charles to heresy must be judged in the main by his treatment of German Lutheranism. Here he had to deal, not with drawing-room imprudences nor hole-and-corner conventicles, not with oriental survivals nor millenary aspirations, but with organized churches protected by their princes, supported by revenues filched from his own church and stiffened by formulae as rigid as those of Catholicism. The length and stubbornness of the conflict will serve to show that Charles’s religious conservatism had a measure of elasticity, that he was not a bigot and nothing more. It should be remembered that all his principal ministers were inclined to be Erasmian or indifferent, that one of his favourite confessors, Loaysa, advised compromise, and that several intimate members of his court and chapel were, after his death, victims of the Inquisition. The two more obvious courses towards the restoration of Catholic unity were force and reconciliation, in other words, a religious war or a general council. Neither of these was a simple remedy. The latter was impossible without papal concurrence, inoperative without the assistance of the European powers, and merely irritant without the adhesion of the Lutherans. It was most improbable that the papacy, the powers and the Lutherans would combine in a measure so palpably advantageous to the emperor. Force was hopeless save in the absence of war with France and the Turk, and of papal hostility in Italian territorial politics. Charles must obtain subsidies from ecclesiastical sources, and the support of all German Catholics, especially of the traditional rival, Bavaria. Even so the Protestants would probably be the stronger, and therefore they must be divided by utilizing any religious split, any class distinction, any personal or traditional dislikes, or else by bribery. Force and reconciliation seeming equally difficult, could an alternative be found in toleration? The experiment might take the form either of individual toleration, or of toleration for the Lutheran states. The former would be equally objectionable to Lutheran and Catholic princes as loosening their grip upon their subjects. Territorial toleration might seem equally obnoxious to the emperor, for its recognition would strengthen the anti-imperial particularism so closely associated with Lutheranism. If Charles could find no permanent specific, he must apply a provisional palliative. It was absolutely necessary to patch, if not to cure, because Germany must be pulled together to resist French and Turks. Such palliatives were two—suspension and comprehension. Suspension deferred the execution of penalties incurred by heresy, either for a term of years, or until a council should decide. Thus it recognized the divorce of the two religions, but limited it by time. Comprehension instead of recognizing the divorce would strive to conceal the breach. It was a domestic remedy, German and national, not European and papal. To become permanent it must receive the sanction of pope and council, for the Roman emperor could not set up a church of Germany. Yet the formula adopted might conceivably be found to fall within the four corners of the faith, and so obviate the necessity alike of force or council. Such were the conditions of the emperor’s task, and such the methods which he actually pursued. He would advance now on one line, now on another, now on two or three concurrently, but he never definitely abandoned any. This fusion of obstinacy and versatility was a marked feature of his character.

Suspension was of course often accidental and involuntary. The two chief stages of Lutheran growth naturally corresponded with the periods, each of nine years, when Charles was absent. Deliberate suspension was usually a consequence of the failure of comprehension. Thus at Augsburg in 1530 the wide gulf between the Lutheran confession and the Catholic confutation led to the definite suspensive treaty granted to the Lutherans at Nuremberg (1532). Charles dared not employ the alternative of force, because he needed their aid for the Turkish war. In 1541, after a series of religious conferences, he personally presented a compromise in the so-called Book of Regensburg, which was rejected by both parties. He then proposed that the articles agreed upon should be compulsory, while on others toleration should be exercised until a national council should decide. Never before nor after did he go so far upon the path of toleration, or so nearly accept a national settlement. He was then burning to set sail for Algiers. His last formal suspensive measure was that of Spires (Speyer) in 1544, when he was marching against Francis. He promised a free and general council to be held in Germany, and, as a preparation, a national religious congress. The Lutherans were privately assured that a measure of comprehension should be concluded with or without papal approval. Meanwhile all edicts against heresy were suspended. No wonder that Charles afterwards confessed that he could scarcely reconcile these concessions with his conscience, but he won Lutheran aid for his campaign. The peace of Crépy gave all the conditions required for the employment of force. He had peace with French and Turk, he won the active support of the pope, he had deeply divided the Lutherans and reconciled Bavaria. Finding that the Lutherans would not accept the council summoned by the pope to Trent, he resorted to force, and force succeeded. At the Armed Diet of 1548 reunion seemed within reach. But Paul III. in direct opposition to Charles’s wish had withdrawn the council from Trent to Bologna. Charles could not force Lutherans to submit to a council which he did not himself recognize, and he could not bring himself to national schism. Thus, falling back upon his old palliatives, he issued the Interim and the accompanying Reform of the Clergy, pending a final settlement by a satisfactory general council. These measures pleased neither party, and Charles at the very height of his power had failed. He was conscious of failure, and made few attempts even to enforce the Interim. Henceforward political complications gathered round him anew. The only remedy was toleration in some form, independent of the papacy and limitless in time. To this Charles could never assent. His ideal was shattered, but it was a great ideal, and the patience, the moderation, even at times the adroitness with which he had striven towards it, proved him to be no bigot.

The idea of abdication had long been present with Charles. After his failure to eject the French from Metz he had not shrunk from a wearisome campaign against Henry II., and he was now tired out. His mother’s death removed an obstacle, for there could now be no question as to his son’s succession to the Spanish kingdoms. Religious settlement in Germany could no longer be postponed, and he shrank from the responsibility; the hand that should rend the seamless raiment of God’s church must not be his. To Ferdinand he gave his full authority as emperor, although at his brother’s earnest request formal abdication was delayed until 1558. In the Hall of the Golden Fleece at Brussels on the 25th of October 1555 he formally resigned to Philip the sovereignty of his beloved Netherlands. Turning from his son to the representatives of the estates he said, “Gentlemen, you must not be astonished if, old and feeble as I am in all my members, and also from the love I bear you, I shed some tears.” In the Netherlands at least the love was reciprocal, and tears were infectious among the thousand deputies who listened to their sovereign’s last speech. On the 16th of January 1556, Charles resigned his Spanish kingdoms and that of Sicily, and shortly afterwards his county of Burgundy. On the 17th of September he sailed from Flushing on the last of his many voyages, an English fleet from Portland bearing him company down the Channel. In February 1557 he was installed in the home which he had chosen at Yuste in Estremadura.

The excellent books which have been written upon the emperor’s retirement have inspired an interest out of all proportion to its real significance. His little house was attached to the monastery, but was not within it. He was neither an ascetic nor a recluse. Gastronomic indiscretions still entailed their inevitable penalties. Society was not confined to interchange of civilities with the brethren. His relations, his chief friends, his official historians, all found their way to Yuste. Couriers brought news of Philip’s war and peace with Pope Paul IV., of the victories of Saint Quentin and Gravelines, of the French capture of Calais, of the danger of Oran. As head of the family he intervened in the delicate relations with the closely allied house of Portugal: he even negotiated with the house of Navarre for reparation for the wrong done by his grandfather Ferdinand, which appeared to weigh upon his conscience. Above all he was shocked by the discovery that Spain, his own court, and his very chapel were infected with heresy. His violent letters to his son and daughter recommending immediate persecution, his profession of regret at having kept his word when Luther was in his power, have weighed too heavily on his reputation. The feverish phrases of religious exaltation due to broken health and unnatural retirement cannot balance the deliberate humanity and honour of wholesome manhood. Apart from such occasional moments of excitement, the emperor’s last years passed tranquilly enough. At first he would shoot pigeons in the monastery woods, and till his last illness tended his garden and his animal pets, or watched the operations of Torriani, maker of clocks and mechanical toys. After an illness of three weeks the call came in the early hours of the feast of St Matthew, who, as his chaplain said, had for Christ’s sake forsaken wealth even as Charles had forsaken empire. The dying man clasped his wife’s crucifix to his breast till his fingers lost their hold. The archbishop held it before his eyes, and with the cry of “Ay Jesus!” died, in the words of his faithul squire D. Luis de Quijada, “the chief of men that had ever been or would ever be.” Posterity need not agree, but no great man can boast a more honest panegyric.

In character Charles stands high among contemporary princes. It consists of pairs of contrasts, but the better side is usually stronger than the worse. Steadfast honesty of purpose was occasionally warped by self-interest, or rather he was apt to think that his own course must needs be that of righteousness. Self-control would give way, but very rarely, to squalls of passion. Obstinacy and irresolution were fairly balanced, the former generally bearing upon ends, the latter upon means. His own ideals were constant, but he could gradually assimilate the views of others, and could bend to argument and circumstance; yet even here he had a habit of harking back to earlier schemes which he had seemed to have definitely abandoned. Intercourse with different nationalities taught him a certain versatility; he was dignified with Spaniards, familiar with Flemings, while the material Italians were pleased with his good sense. His sympathies were neither wide nor quick, but he was a most faithful friend, and the most considerate of masters. For all who sought him his courtesy and patience were unfailing. At his abdication he dwelt with reasonable pride upon his labours and his journeyings. Few monarchs have lived a more strenuous life. Yet his industry was broken by fits of indolence, which were probably due to health. In his prime his confessor warned him against this defect, and it caused, indeed, the last great disaster of his life. Fortunately he was conscious of his obstinacy, his irresolution and his indolence. He would accept admonition from the chapter of the Golden Fleece, would comment on his failings as a warning to his son. When Cardinal Contarini politely assured him that to hold fast to good opinions is not obstinacy but firmness, the emperor replied, “Ah! but I sometimes stick to bad ones.” Charles was not cruel, indeed the character of his reign was peculiarly merciful. But he was somewhat unforgiving. He especially resented any slight upon his honour, and his unwise severity to Philip of Hesse was probably due to the unfounded accusation that he had imprisoned him in violation of his pledge. The excesses of his troops in Italy, in Guelders and on the Austrian frontiers caused him acute pain, although he called himself “hard to weep.” No great nobleman, statesman or financier was executed at Charles’s order. He was proud of his generalship, classing himself with Alva and Montmorenci as the best of his day. Yet his failures nearly balanced his successes. It is true that in his most important campaign, that against the League of Schmalkalden, the main credit must be ascribed to his well-judged audacity at the opening, and his dogged persistency at the close. As a soldier he must rank very high. It was said that his being emperor lost to Spain the best light horseman of her army. At every crisis he was admirably cool, setting a truly royal example to his men. His mettle was displayed when he was attacked on the burning sands of Tunis, when his troops were driven in panic from Algiers, when in spite of physical suffering he forded the Elbe at Mühlberg, and when he was bombarded by the vastly superior Lutheran artillery under the walls of Ingolstadt. When blamed for exposing himself on this last occasion, “I could not help it,” he apologized; “we were short of hands, 1 could not set a bad example.” Nevertheless he was by nature timid. Just before this very action he had a fit of trembling, and he was afraid of mice and spiders. The force of his example was not confined to the field. Melanchthon wrote from Augsburg in 1530 that he was a model of continence, temperance and moderation, that the old domestic discipline was now only preserved in the imperial household. He tenderly loved his wife, whom he had married for pecuniary and diplomatic reasons. Of his two well-known illegitimate children, Margaret was born before he married, and Don John long after his wife’s death, but he felt this latter to be a child of shame. His sobriety was frequently contrasted with the universal drunkenness of the German and Flemish nobles, which he earnestly condemned. But on his appetite he could place no control, in spite of the ruinous effects of his gluttony upon his health. In dress, in his household, and in his stable he was simple and economical. He loved children, flowers, animals and birds. Professional jesters amused him, and he was not above a joke himself. Maps and mechanical inventions greatly interested him, and in later life he became fond of reading. He takes his place indeed among authors, for he dictated the commentaries on his own career. Of music he possessed a really fine knowledge, and his high appreciation of Titian proves the purity of his feeling for art. The little collection of books and pictures which he carried to Yuste is an index of his tastes. Charles was undeniably plain. He confessed that he was by nature ugly, but that as artists usually painted him uglier than he was, strangers on seeing him were agreeably disappointed. The protruding lower jaw and the thin pale face were redeemed by the fine open brow and the bright speaking eyes. He was, moreover, well made, and in youth had an incomparable leg. Above all no man could doubt his dignity; Charles was every inch an emperor.

Bibliography.—Commentaries de Charles-quint, ed. by Baron Kervyn de Lettenhove (Brussels, 1862); Memoirs written by Charles in 1550, and treating somewhat fully of the years 1543-1548; W. Robertson, History of the Emperor Charles V. (latest ed., London, 1887), an English classic, which needs supplementing by later authorities; F.A. Mignet, Rivalité de François I et de Charles-quint (2 vols., Paris, 1875); E. Armstrong, The Emperor Charles V. (2 vols., London, 1902), to which reference may be made for monographs and collections of documents bearing on the reign; H. Baumgarten, Geschichte Karls V. (3 vols., Stuttgart, 1885-1893), very full but extending only to 1539; G. de Leva, Storia documentata di Carlo V. in correlazione all’ Italia (5 vols., Venice, 1862-1894), a general history of the reign, though with special reference to its Italian aspects, and extending to 1552; article by L.P. Gachard in Biographie nationale, vol. iii., 1872, an excellent compressed account. The life of Charles V. at Yuste may be studied in L.P. Gachard’s Retraite et mort de Charles-quint au monastère de Yuste (Brussels, 1854-1855), and in Sir W. Stirling-Maxwell’s The Cloister Life of the Emperor Charles V. (London, 4 editions from 1852); also in W.H. Prescott’s edition of Robertson’s History (1857).

(E. Ar.)

CHARLES VI. (1685-1740), Roman emperor, was born on the 1st of October 1685 at Vienna. He was the second son of the emperor Leopold I. by his third marriage with Eleanore, daughter of Philip William of Neuburg, elector palatine of the Rhine. When the Spanish branch of the house of Habsburg became extinct in 1700, he was put forward as the lawful heir in opposition to Philip V., the Bourbon to whom the Spanish dominions had been left by the will of Charles II. of Spain. He was proclaimed at Vienna on the 19th of September 1703, and made his way to Spain by the Low Countries, England and Lisbon, remaining in Spain till 1711, mostly in Catalonia, where the Habsburg party was strong. Although he had a certain tenacity of purpose, which he showed in later life, he displayed none of the qualities required in a prince who had to gain his throne by the sword (see Spanish Succession, War of). He was so afraid of appearing to be ruled by a favourite that he would not take good advice, but was easily earwigged by flatterers who played on his weakness for appearing independent. In 1708 he was married at Barcelona to Elizabeth Christina of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1691-1750), a Lutheran princess who was persuaded to accept Roman Catholicism by the assurances of Protestant divines and of the philosopher Leibnitz, that she could always give an Evangelical meaning to Catholic ceremonies. On the death of his elder brother Joseph I. on the 17th of April 1711, Charles inherited the hereditary possessions of the house of Habsburg, and their claims on the Empire. The death of Joseph without male issue had been foreseen, and Charles had at one time been prepared to give up Spain and the Indies on condition that he was allowed to retain Naples, Sicily and the Milanese. But when the case arose, his natural obstinacy led him to declare that he would not think of surrendering any of the rights of his family. It was with great difficulty that he was persuaded to leave Spain, months after the death of his brother (on the 27th of September 1711). Only the emphatic refusal of the European powers to tolerate the reconstruction of the empire of Charles V. forced him to give a sullen submission to necessity. He abandoned Spain and was crowned emperor in December 1711, but for a long time he would not recognize Philip V. It is to his honour that he was very reluctant to desert the Catalans who had fought for his cause. Some of their chiefs followed him to Vienna, and their advice had an unfortunate influence on his mind. They almost succeeded in arousing his suspicions of the loyalty of Prince Eugene at the very moment when the prince’s splendid victories over the Turks had led to the peace of Passarowitz on the 28th of July 1718, and a great extension of the Austrian dominions eastward. Charles showed an enlightened, though not always successful, interest in the commercial prosperity of his subjects, but from the date of his return to Germany till his death his ruling passion was to secure his inheritance against dismemberment. As early as 1713 he had begun to prepare the “Pragmatic Sanction” which was to regulate the succession. An only son, born on the 13th of April 1716, died in infancy, and it became the object of his policy to obtain the recognition of his daughter Maria Theresa as his heiress. He made great concessions to obtain his aim, and embarked on complicated diplomatic negotiations. His last days were embittered by a disastrous war with Turkey, in which he lost almost all he had gained by the peace of Passarowitz. He died at Vienna on the 20th of October 1740, and with him expired the male line of his house. Charles VI. was an admirable representative of the tenacious ambition of the Habsburgs, and of their belief in their own “august greatness” and boundless rights.

For the personal character of Charles VI. see A. von Arneth, Geschichte Maria Theresias (Vienna, 1863-1879). Dr Franz Krones, R. v. Marchland, Grundriss der dsterreichischen Geschichte (Vienna, 1882), gives a very copious bibliography.

CHARLES VII. (1697-1745), Roman emperor, known also as Charles Albert, elector of Bavaria, was the son of the elector Maximilian Emanuel and his second wife, Theresa Cunigunda, daughter of John Sobieski, king of Poland. He was born on the 6th of August 1697. His father having taken the side of Louis XIV. of France in the War of the Spanish Succession (q.v.), Bavaria was occupied by the allies. Charles and his brother Clement, afterwards archbishop of Cologne, were carried prisoners to Vienna, and were educated by the Jesuits under the name of the counts of Wittelsbach. When his father was restored to his electorate, Charles was released, and in 1717 he led the Bavarian contingent of the imperial army which served under Prince Eugene against the Turks, and is said to have distinguished himself at Belgrade. On the 25th of September 1722 he was betrothed to Maria Amelia, the younger of the two orphan daughters of the emperor Joseph I. Her uncle Charles VI. insisted that the Bavarian house should recognize the Pragmatic Sanction which established his daughter Maria Theresa as heiress of the Habsburg dominions. They did so, but with secret protests and mental reservations of their rights, which were designed to render the recognition valueless. The electors of Bavaria had claims on the possessions of the Habsburgs under the will of the emperor Ferdinand I., who died in 1564.

Charles succeeded his father on the 26th of February 1726. As a ruler of Bavaria, he showed a vague disposition to improve the condition of his subjects, but his profuse habits and his efforts to rival the splendour of the French court crippled his finances. His policy was one of much duplicity, for he was constantly endeavouring to keep on good terms with the emperor while slipping out of his obligation to accept the Pragmatic Sanction and intriguing to secure French support for his claims whenever Charles VI. should die. On hearing of the emperor’s last illness, he ordered his agent at Vienna to renew his claim to the Austrian inheritance. The claim was advanced immediately after the death of Charles VI. on the 20th of October 1740. Charles Albert now entered into the league against Maria Theresa, to the great misfortune of himself and his subjects. By the help of her enemies he was elected emperor in opposition to her husband Francis, grand duke of Tuscany, on the 24th of January 1742, under the title of Charles VII., and was crowned at Frankfort-on-Main on the 12th of February. But as his army had been neglected, he was utterly unable to resist the Austrian troops. While he was being crowned his hereditary dominions in Bavaria were being overrun. He described himself as attacked by stone and gout, ill, without money or land, and in distress comparable to the sorrows of Job. During the War of the Austrian Succession (q.v.) he was a mere puppet in the hands of the anti-Austrian coalition, and was often in want of mere necessaries. In the changes of the war he was able to re-enter his capital, Munich, in 1743, but had immediately afterwards to take flight again. He was restored by Frederick the Great in October 1744, but died worn out at Munich on the 20th of January 1745.

See A. von Arneth, Geschichte Maria Theresias (Vienna, 1863-1879); and P.T. Heigel. Der österreichische Erbfolgestreit und die Kaiserwahl Karls VII. (Munich, 1877).

CHARLES I. (1600-1649), king of Great Britain and Ireland, second son of James I. and Anne of Denmark, was born at Dunfermline on the 19th of November 1600. At his baptism he was created duke of Albany, and on the 16th of January 1605 duke of York. In 1612, by the death of his elder brother Henry, he became heir-apparent, and was created prince of Wales on the 3rd of November 1616. In 1620 he took up warmly the cause of his sister the queen of Bohemia, and in 1621 he defended Bacon, using his influence to prevent the chancellor’s degradation from the peerage. The prince’s marriage with the infanta Maria, daughter of Philip III. of Spain, had been for some time the subject of negotiation, James desiring to obtain through Spanish support the restitution of his son-in-law, Frederick, to the Palatinate; and in 1623 Charles was persuaded by Buckingham, who now obtained a complete ascendancy over him in opposition to wiser advisers and the king’s own wishes, to make a secret expedition himself to Spain, put an end to all formalities, and bring home his mistress himself: “a gallant and brave thing for his Highness.” “Steenie” and “Baby Charles,” as James called them, started on the 17th of February, arriving at Paris on the 21st and at Madrid on the 7th of March, where they assumed the unromantic names of Mr Smith, and Mr Brown. They found the Spanish court by no means enthusiastic for the marriage1 and the princess herself averse. The prince’s immediate conversion was expected, and a complete religious tolerance for the Roman Catholics in England demanded. James engaged to allow the infanta the right of public worship and to use his influence to modify the law, but Charles himself went much further. He promised the alteration of the penal laws within three years, conceded the education of the children to the mother till the age of twelve, and undertook to listen to the infanta’s priests in matters of religion, signing the marriage contract on the 25th of July 1623. The Spanish, however, did not trust to words, and Charles was informed that his wife could only follow him to England when these promises were executed. Moreover, they had no intention whatever of aiding the Protestant Frederick. Meanwhile Buckingham, incensed at the failure of the expedition, had quarrelled with the grandees, and Charles left Madrid, landing at Portsmouth on the 5th of October, to the joy of the people, to whom the proposed alliance was odious. He now with Buckingham urged James to make war on Spain, and in December 1624 signed a marriage treaty with Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henry IV. of France. In April Charles had declared solemnly to the parliament that in case of his marriage to a Roman Catholic princess no concessions should be granted to recusants, but these were in September 1624 deliberately promised by James and Charles in a secret article, the first instance of the duplicity and deception practised by Charles in dealing with the parliament and the nation. The French on their side promised to assist in Mansfeld’s expedition for the recovery of the Palatinate, but Louis in October refused to allow the men to pass through France; and the army, without pay or provisions, dwindled away in Holland to nothing.

On the 27th of March 1625 Charles I. succeeded to the throne by the death of his father, and on the 1st of May he was married by proxy to Henrietta Maria. He received her at Canterbury on the 13th of June, and on the 18th his first parliament assembled. On the day of his marriage Charles had given directions that the prosecutions of the Roman Catholics should cease, but he now declared his intention of enforcing the laws against them, and demanded subsidies for carrying on the war against Spain. The Commons, however, responded coldly. Charles had lent ships to Louis XIII. to be used against the Protestants at La Rochelle, and the Commons were not aware of the subterfuges and fictitious delays intended to prevent their employment. The Protestant feelings of the Commons were also aroused by the king’s support of the royal chaplain, Richard Montagu, who had repudiated Calvinistic doctrine. They only voted small sums, and sent up a petition on the state of religion and reflecting upon Buckingham, whom they deemed responsible for the failure of Mansfeld’s expedition, at the same time demanding counsellors in whom they could trust. Parliament was accordingly dissolved by Charles on the 12th of August. He hoped that greater success abroad would persuade the Commons to be more generous. On the 8th of September 1625 he made the treaty of Southampton with the Dutch against Spain, and sent an expedition to Cadiz under Sir Edward Cecil, which, however, was a failure. In order to make himself independent of parliament he attempted to raise money on the crown jewels in Holland, and to diminish the opposition in the Commons he excluded the chief leaders by appointing them sheriffs. When the second parliament met, however, on the 6th of February 1626, the opposition, led by Sir John Eliot, was more determined than before, and their attack was concentrated upon Buckingham. On the 29th of March, Charles, calling the Commons into his presence, accused them of leading him into the war and of taking advantage of his difficulties to “make their own game.” “I pray you not to be deceived,” he said, “it is not a parliamentary way, nor ’tis not a way to deal with a king. Remember that parliaments are altogether in my power for their calling, sitting, and dissolution; therefore as I find the fruits of them good or evil, they are to continue or not to be.” Charles, however, was worsted in several collisions with the two houses, with a consequent loss of influence. He was obliged by the peers to set at liberty Thomas Howard, earl of Arundel, whom he had put into the Tower, and to send a summons to the earl of Bristol, whom he had attempted to exclude from parliament, while the Commons compelled him, with a threat of doing no business, to liberate Eliot and Digges, the managers of Buckingham’s impeachment, whom he had imprisoned. Finally in June the Commons answered Charles’s demand for money by a remonstrance asking for Buckingham’s dismissal, which they decided must precede the grant of supply. They claimed responsible ministers, while Charles considered himself the executive and the sole and unfettered judge of the necessities of the state. Accordingly on the 15th Charles dissolved the parliament.

The king was now in great need of money. He was at war with Spain and had promised to pay £30,000 a month to Christian IV. of Denmark in support of the Protestant campaign in Germany. To these necessities was now added a war with France. Charles had never kept his promise concerning the recusants; disputes arose in consequence with his wife, and on the 31st of July 1626 he ordered all her French attendants to be expelled from Whitehall and sent back to France. At the same time several French ships carrying contraband goods to the Spanish Netherlands were seized by English warships. On the 27th of June 1627 Buckingham with a large expedition sailed to the Isle of Ré to relieve La Rochelle, then besieged by the forces of Louis XIII. Though the success of the French Protestants was an object much desired in England, Buckingham’s unpopularity prevented support being given to the expedition, and the duke returned to Plymouth on the 11th of November completely defeated. Meanwhile Charles had endeavoured to get the money refused to him by parliament by means of a forced loan, dismissing Chief Justice Crewe for declining to support its legality, and imprisoning several of the leaders of the opposition for refusing to subscribe to it. These summary measures, however, only brought a small sum into the treasury. On the 2nd of January 1628 Charles ordered the release of all the persons imprisoned, and on the 17th of March summoned his third parliament.

Instead of relieving the king’s necessities the Commons immediately proceeded to discuss the constitutional position and to formulate the Petition of Right, forbidding taxation without consent of parliament, arbitrary and illegal imprisonment, compulsory billeting in private houses, and martial law. Charles, on the 1st of May, first demanded that they should “rest on his royal word and promise.” He obtained an opinion from the judges that the acceptance of the petition would not absolutely preclude in certain cases imprisonments without showing cause, and after a futile endeavour to avoid an acceptance by returning an ambiguous answer which only exasperated the Commons, he gave his consent on the 7th of June in the full and usual form. Charles now obtained his subsidies, but no real settlement was reached, and his relations with the parliament remained as unfriendly as before. They proceeded to remonstrate against his government and against his support of Buckingham, and denied his right to tonnage and poundage. Accordingly, on the 26th of June they were prorogued. New disasters befell Charles, in the assassination of Buckingham and in the failure of the fresh expedition sent to Ré. In January 1629 the parliament reassembled, irritated by the exaction of the duties and seizure of goods during the interval, and suspicious of “innovations in religion,” the king having forbidden the clergy to continue the controversy concerning Calvinistic and Arminian doctrines, the latter of which the parliament desired to suppress. While they were discussing these matters, on the 2nd of March 1629, the king ordered them to adjourn, but amidst a scene of great excitement the speaker, Sir John Finch, was held down in his chair and the doors were locked, whilst resolutions against innovations in religion and declaring those who levied or paid tonnage and poundage enemies to their country were passed. Parliament was immediately dissolved, and Charles imprisoned nine members, leaders of the opposition, Eliot, Holles, Strode, Selden, Valentine, Coryton, Heyman, Hobart and Long, his vengeance being especially shown in the case of Eliot, the most formidable of his opponents, who died in the Tower of consumption after long years of close and unhealthy confinement, and whose corpse even Charles refused to give up to his family.

For eleven years Charles ruled without parliaments and with some success. There seemed no reason to think that “that noise,” to use Laud’s expression concerning parliaments, would ever be heard again by those then living. A revenue of about £618,000 was obtained by enforcing the payment of tonnage and poundage, and while avoiding the taxes, loans, and benevolences forbidden by the petition of right, by monopolies, fines for knighthood, and for pretended encroachments on the royal domains and forests, which enabled the king to meet expenditure at home. In Ireland, Charles, in order to get money, had granted the Graces in 1628, conceding security of titles of more than sixty years’ standing, and a more moderate oath of allegiance for the Roman Catholics, together with the renunciation of the shilling fine for non-attendance at church. He continued, however, to make various attempts to get estates into his possession on the pretext of invalid title, and on the 12th of May 1635 the city of London estates were sequestered. Charles here destroyed one of the most valuable settlements in Ireland founded by James I. in the interests of national defence, and at the same time extinguished the historic loyalty of the city of London, which henceforth steadily favoured the parliamentary cause. In 1633 Wentworth had been sent to Ireland to establish a medieval monarchy and get money, and his success in organization seemed great enough to justify the attempt to extend the system to England. Charles at the same time restricted his foreign policy to scarcely more than a wish for the recovery of the Palatinate, to further which he engaged in a series of numerous and mutually destructive negotiations with Gustavus Adolphus and with Spain, finally making peace with Spain on the 5th of November 1630, an agreement which was followed on the 2nd of January 1631 by a further secret treaty, the two kings binding themselves to make war on the Dutch and partition their territories. A notable feature of this agreement was that while in Charles’s portion Roman Catholicism was to be tolerated, there was no guarantee for the security of Protestantism in the territory to be ceded to Spain.

In 1634 Charles levied ship-money from the seaport towns for the increase of the navy, and in 1635 the tax was extended to the inland counties, which aroused considerable opposition. In February 1637 Charles obtained an opinion in favour of his claims from the judges, and in 1638 the great Hampden case was decided in his favour. The apparent success, however, of Charles was imperilled by the general and growing resentment aroused by his exactions and whole policy, and this again was small compared with the fears excited by the king’s attitude towards religion and Protestantism. He supported zealously Laud’s rigid Anglican orthodoxy, his compulsory introduction of unwelcome ritual, and his narrow, intolerant and despotic policy, which was marked by several savage prosecutions and sentences in the Star Chamber, drove numbers of moderate Protestants out of the Church into Presbyterianism, and created an intense feeling of hostility to the government throughout the country. Charles further increased the popular fears on the subject of religion by his welcome given to Panzani, the pope’s agent, in 1634, who endeavoured unsuccessfully to reconcile the two churches, and afterwards to George Conn, papal agent at the court of Henrietta Maria, while the favour shown by the king to these was contrasted with the severe sentences passed upon the Puritans.

The same imprudent neglect of the national sentiment was pursued in Scotland. Charles had already made powerful enemies there by a declaration announcing the arbitrary revocation of former church estates to the crown. On the 18th of June 1633 he was crowned at Edinburgh with full Anglican ceremonial, which lost him the hearts of numbers of his Scottish subjects and aroused hostility to his government in parliament. After his return to England he gave further offence by ordering the use of the surplice, by his appointment of Archbishop Spotiswood as chancellor of Scotland, and by introducing other bishops into the privy council. In 1636 the new Book of Canons was issued by the king’s authority, ordering the communion table to be placed at the east end, enjoining confession, and declaring excommunicate any who should presume to attack the new prayer-book. The latter was ordered to be used on the 18th of October 1636, but it did not arrive in Scotland till May 1637. It was intensely disliked both as “popish” and as English. A riot followed its first use in St Giles’ cathedral on the 23rd of July, and Charles’s order to enforce it on the 10th of September was met by fresh disturbances and by the establishment of the “Tables,” national committees which now became the real though informal government of Scotland. In 1638 the national covenant was drawn up, binding those that signed it to defend their religion to the death, and was taken by large numbers with enthusiasm all over the country. Charles now drew back, promised to enforce the canons and prayer-book only in a “fair and legal way,” and sent the marquis of Hamilton as a mediator. The latter, however, a weak and incapable man, desirous of popularity with all parties, and unfaithful to the king’s interests, yielded everything, without obtaining the return of Charles’s subjects to their allegiance. The assembly met at Glasgow on the 21st of November, and in spite of Hamilton’s opposition immediately proceeded to judge the bishops. On the 28th Hamilton dissolved it, but it continued to sit, deposed the bishops and re-established Presbyterianism. The rebellion had now begun, and an appeal to arms alone could decide the quarrel between Charles and his subjects. On the 28th of May 1639 he arrived at Berwick with a small and ill-trained force, thus beginning what is known as the first Bishops’ War; but being confronted by the Scottish army at Duns Law, he was compelled to sign the treaty of Berwick on the 18th of June, which provided for the disbandment of both armies and the restitution to the king of the royal castles, referring all questions to a general assembly and a parliament. When the assembly met it abolished episcopacy, but Charles, who on the 3rd of August had returned to Whitehall, refused his consent to this and to other measures proposed by the Scottish parliament. His extreme financial necessities, and the prospect of renewed hostilities with the Scots, now moved Charles, at the instigation of Strafford, who in September had left Ireland to become the king’s chief adviser, to turn again to parliament for assistance as the last resource, and on the 13th of April 1640 the Short Parliament assembled. But on its discussing grievances before granting supplies and finally refusing subsidies till peace was made with the Scots, it was dissolved on the 5th of May. Charles returned once more to measures of repression, and on the 10th imprisoned some of the London aldermen who refused to lend money. He prepared for war, scraping together what money he could and obtaining a grant through Strafford from Ireland. His position, however, was hopeless; his forces were totally undisciplined, and the Scots were supported by the parliamentary opposition in England. On the 20th of August the Scots crossed the Tweed, beginning the so-called second Bishops’ War, defeated the king’s army at Newburn on the 28th, and subsequently occupied Newcastle and Durham. Charles at this juncture, on the 24th of September, summoned a great council of the peers; and on the 21st of October a cessation of arms was agreed to by the treaty of Ripon, the Scots receiving £850 a day for the maintenance of the army, and further negotiations being transferred to London. On the 3rd of November the king summoned the Long Parliament.

Such was the final issue of Charles’s attempt to govern without parliaments—Scotland in triumphant rebellion, Ireland only waiting for a signal to rise, and in England the parliament revived with almost irresistible strength, in spite of the king, by the force of circumstances alone. At this great crisis, which would indeed have taxed the resolution and resource of the most cool-headed and sagacious statesman, Charles failed signally. Two alternative courses were open to him, either of which still offered good chances of success. He might have taken his stand on the ancient and undoubted prerogative of the crown, resisted all encroachments on the executive by the parliament by legal and constitutional means, which were probably ample, and in case of necessity have appealed to the loyalty of the nation to support him in arms; or he might have waived his rights, and, acknowledging the mistakes of his past administration, have united with the parliament and created once more that union of interests and sentiment of the monarchy with the nation which had made England so powerful. Charles, however, pretended to do both simultaneously or by turns, and therefore accomplished neither. The illegally imprisoned members of the last parliament, now smarting with the sense of their wrongs, were set free to stimulate the violence of the opposition to the king in the new assembly. Of Charles’s double statecraft, however, the series of incidents which terminated the career of the great Strafford form the most terrible example. Strafford had come to London in November, having been assured by Charles that he “should not suffer in his person, honour or fortune,” but was impeached and thrown into the Tower almost immediately. Charles took no steps to hinder the progress of the proceedings against him, but entered into schemes for saving him by bringing up an army to London, and this step exasperated Strafford’s enemies and added new zeal to the prosecution. On the 23rd of April, after the passing of the attainder by the Commons, he repeated to Strafford his former assurances of protection. On the 1st of May he appealed to the Lords to spare his life and be satisfied with rendering him incapable of holding office. On the 2nd he made an attempt to seize the Tower by force. On the 10th, yielding to the queen’s fears and to the mob surging round his palace, he signed his death-warrant. “If my own person only were in danger,” he declared to the council, “I would gladly venture it to save my Lord Strafford’s life; but seeing my wife, children, all my kingdom are concerned in it, I am forced to give way unto it.” On the 11th he sent to the peers a petition for Strafford’s life, the force of which was completely annulled by the strange postscript: “If he must die, it were a charity to reprieve him until Saturday.” This tragic surrender of his great and devoted servant left an indelible stain upon the king’s character, and he lived to repent it bitterly. One of his last admonitions to the prince of Wales was “never to give way to the punishment of any for their faithful service to the crown.” It was regarded by Charles as the cause of his own subsequent misfortunes, and on the scaffold the remembrance of it disturbed his own last moments. The surrender of Strafford was followed by another stupendous concession by Charles, the surrender of his right to dissolve the parliament without its own consent, and the parliament immediately proceeded, with Charles’s consent, to sweep away the star-chamber, high commission and other extra-legal courts, and all extra-parliamentary taxation. Charles, however, did not remain long or consistently in the yielding mood. In June 1641 he engaged in a second army plot for bringing up the forces to London, and on the 10th of August he set out for Scotland in order to obtain the Scottish army against the parliament in England; this plan was obviously doomed to failure and was interrupted by another appeal to force, the so-called Incident, at which Charles was suspected (in all probability unjustly) of having connived, consisting in an attempt to kidnap and murder Argyll, Hamilton and Lanark, with whom he was negotiating. Charles had also apparently been intriguing with Irish Roman Catholic lords for military help in return for concessions, and he was suspected of complicity in the Irish rebellion which now broke out. He left Scotland more discredited than ever, having by his concessions made, to use Hyde’s words, “a perfect deed of gift of that kingdom,” and without gaining any advantage.

Charles returned to London on the 25th of November 1641 and was immediately confronted by the Grand Remonstrance (passed on the 22nd), in which, after reciting the chief points of the king’s misgovernment, the parliament demanded the appointment of acceptable ministers and the constitution of an assembly of divines to settle the religious question. On the 2nd of January 1642 Charles gave office to the opposition members Colepeper and Falkland, and at the same time Hyde left the opposition party to serve the king. Charles promised to take no serious step without their advice. Nevertheless, entirely without their knowledge, through the influence of the queen whose impeachment was intended, Charles on the 4th made the rash and fatal attempt to seize with an armed force the five members of the Commons, Pym, Hampden, Holies, Hesilrige and Strode, whom, together with Mandeville (afterwards earl of Manchester) in the Lords, he had impeached of high treason. No English sovereign ever had (or has since that time) penetrated into the House of Commons. So complete and flagrant a violation of parliamentary liberties, and an appeal so crude and glaring to brute force, could only be justified by complete success; but the court plans had been betrayed, and were known to the offending members, who, by order of the House, had taken refuge in the city before the king’s arrival with the soldiers. Charles, on entering the House, found “the birds flown,” and returned baffled, having thrown away the last chance of a peaceful settlement (see Lenthall, William). The next day Charles was equally unsuccessful in obtaining their surrender in the city. “The king had the worst day in London yesterday,” wrote a spectator of the scene, “that ever he had, the people crying ‘privilege of parliament’ by thousands and prayed God to turn the heart of the king, shutting up their shops and standing at their doors with swords and halberds.”2 On the 10th, amidst general manifestations of hostility, Charles left Whitehall to prepare for war, destined never to return till he was brought back by his victorious enemies to die.

Several months followed spent in manoeuvres to obtain the control of the forces and in a paper war of controversy. On the 23rd of April Charles was refused entry into Hull, and on the 2nd of June the parliament sent to him the “Nineteen Propositions,” claiming the whole sovereignty and government for the parliament, including the choice of the ministers, the judges, and the control of the army, and the execution of the laws against the Roman Catholics. The military events of the war are described in the article Great Rebellion. On the 22nd of August the king set up his standard at Nottingham, and on the 23rd of October he fought the indecisive battle of Edgehill, occupying Oxford and advancing as far as Brentford. It seemed possible that the war might immediately be ended by Charles penetrating to the heart of the enemy’s position and occupying London, but he drew back on the 13th of November before the parliamentary force at Turnham Green, and avoided a decisive contest.

Next year (1643) another campaign, for surrounding instead of penetrating into London, was projected. Newcastle and Hopton were to advance from the north and west, seize the north and south banks of the river below the city, destroy its commerce, and combine with Charles at Oxford. The royalist force, however, in spite of victories at Adwalton Moor (June 30th) and Roundway Down (July 13th), did not succeed in combining with Charles, Newcastle in the north being kept back by the Eastern Association and the presence of the enemy at Hull, and Hopton in the west being detained by their successful holding out at Plymouth. Being too weak to attempt anything alone against London, Charles marched to besiege Gloucester, Essex following him and relieving the place. Subsequently the rival forces fought the indecisive first battle of Newbury, and Charles failed in preventing the return of Essex to London. Meanwhile on the 1st of February the parliament had submitted proposals to Charles at Oxford, but the negotiations came to nothing, and Charles’s unwise attempt at the same time to stir up a rising in his favour in the city, known as Waller’s Plot, injured his cause considerably. He once more turned for help to Ireland, where the cessation of the campaign against the rebels was agreed upon on the 15th of September 1643, and several English regiments became thereby available for employment by the king in England. Charles also accepted the proposal for bringing over 2000 Irish. On the 22nd of January 1644 the king opened the rival parliament at Oxford.

The campaign of 1644 began far less favourably for Charles than the two last, principally owing to the alliance now made between the Scots and the parliament, the parliament taking the Solemn League and Covenant on the 25th of September 1643, and the Scottish army crossing the border on the 19th of January 1644. No attempt was this year made against London, and Rupert was sent to Newcastle’s succour in the north, where the great disaster of Marston Moor on the 2nd of July ruined Charles’s last chances in that quarter. Meanwhile Charles himself had defeated Waller at Cropredy Bridge on the 29th of June, and he subsequently followed Essex to the west, compelling the surrender of Essex’s infantry at Lostwithiel on the 2nd of September. With an ill-timed leniency he allowed the men to go free after giving up their stores and arms, and on his return towards Oxford he was confronted again by Essex’s army at Newbury, combined now with that of Waller and of Manchester. Charles owed his escape here from complete annihilation only to Manchester’s unwillingness to inflict a total defeat, and he was allowed to get away with his artillery to Oxford and to revictual Donnington Castle and Basing House.

The negotiations carried on at Uxbridge during January and February 1645 failed to secure a settlement, and on the 14th of June the crushing defeat of the king’s forces by the new model army at Naseby practically ended the civil war. Charles, however, refused to make peace on Rupert’s advice, and considered it a point of honour “neither to abandon God’s cause, injure my successors, nor forsake my friends.” His chief hope was to join Montrose in Scotland, but his march north was prevented by the parliamentary forces, and on the 24th of September he witnessed from the walls of Chester the rout of his followers at Rowton Heath. He now entered into a series of intrigues, mutually destructive, which, becoming known to the different parties, exasperated all and diminished still further the king’s credit. One proposal was the levy of a foreign force to reduce the kingdom; another, the supply through the marquis of Ormonde of 10,000 Irish. Correspondence relating to these schemes, fatally compromising as they were if Charles hoped ever to rule England again, was discovered by his enemies, including the Glamorgan treaty, which went much further than the instructions to Ormonde, but of which the full responsibility has never been really traced to Charles, who on the 29th of January 1646 disavowed his agent’s proceedings. He simultaneously treated with the parliament, and promised toleration to the Roman Catholics if they and the pope would aid in the restoration of the monarchy and the church. Nor was this all. The parliamentary forces had been closing round Oxford. On the 27th of April the king left the city, and on the 5th of May gave himself up to the Scottish army at Newark, arriving on the 13th with them at Newcastle. On the 13th of July the parliament sent to Charles the “Newcastle Propositions,” which included the extreme demands of Charles’s acceptance of the Covenants, the abolition of episcopacy and establishment of Presbyterianism, severer laws against the Roman Catholics and parliamentary control of the forces, with the withdrawal of the Irish Cessation, and a long list of royalists to be exempted from pardon. Charles returned no definite answer for several months. He imagined that he might now find support in Scottish royalism, encouraged by Montrose’s series of brilliant victories, but these hopes were destroyed by the latter’s defeat at Philiphaugh on the 3rd of September. The Scots insisted on the Covenant and on the permanent establishment of Presbyterianism, while Charles would only consent to a temporary maintenance for three years. Accordingly the Scots, in return for the payment of part of their army arrears by the parliament, marched home on the 30th of January 1647, leaving Charles behind, who under the care of the parliamentary commissioners was conducted to Holmby House. Thence on the 12th of May he sent his answer to the Newcastle Propositions, offering the militia to the parliament for ten years and the establishment of Presbyterianism for three, while a final settlement on religion was to be reached through an assembly of twenty divines at Westminster. But in the midst of the negotiation with the parliament Charles’s person was seized, on the 3rd of June 1647, by Cornet Joyce under instructions of the army, which soon afterwards occupied London and overpowered the parliament, placing Charles at Hampton Court.

If Charles could have remained firm to either one or the other faction, and have made concessions either to Presbyterianism or on the subject of the militia, he might even now have prevailed. But he had learned nothing by experience, and continued at this juncture his characteristic policy of intrigue and double-dealing, “playing his game,” to use his own words, negotiating with both parties at once, not with the object or wish to arrive at a settlement with either, but to augment their disputes, gain time and profit ultimately by their divisions. The “Heads of the Proposals,” submitted to Charles by the army on the 28th of July 1647, were terms conceived on a basis far broader and more statesmanlike than the Newcastle Propositions, and such as Charles might well have accepted. The proposals on religion anticipated the Toleration Act of 1689. There was no mention of episcopacy, and its existence was thereby indirectly admitted, but complete religious freedom for all Protestant denominations was provided, and the power of the church to inflict civil penalties abolished, while it was also suggested that dangers from Roman Catholics and Jesuits might be avoided by means other than enforcing attendance at church. The parliament was to dissolve itself and be succeeded by biennial assemblies elected on a reformed franchise, not to be dissolved without their own consent before 120 days, and not to sit more than 240 days in the two years. A council of state was to conduct the foreign policy of the state and conclude peace and war subject to the approval of parliament, and to control the militia for ten years, the commanders being appointed by parliament, as also the officers of state for ten years. No peer created since May the 21st, 1642, was to sit in parliament without consent of both Houses, and the judicial decisions of the House of Lords were to be ratified by the Commons. Only five persons were excepted from amnesty, but royalists were not to hold office for five years and not to sit in the Commons till the end of the second biennial parliament. Proposals for a series of reforms were also added. Charles, however, was at the same time negotiating with Lauderdale for an invasion of England by the Scots, and imagined he could win over Cromwell and Fairfax by “proffers of advantage to themselves.” The precious opportunity was therefore allowed to slip by. On the 9th of September he rejected the proposals of the parliament for the establishment of Presbyterianism. His hopes of gaining advantages by playing upon the differences of his opponents proved a complete failure. Fresh terms were drawn up by the army and parliament together on the 10th of November, but before these could be presented, Charles, on the 11th, had escaped to Carisbrooke Castle in the Isle of Wight. Thence on the 16th he sent a message offering Presbyterianism for three years and the militia for his lifetime to the parliament, but insisting on the maintenance of episcopacy. On the 28th of December he refused his assent to the Four Bills, which demanded the militia for parliament for twenty years and practically for ever, annulled the honours recently granted by the king and his declarations against the Houses, and gave to parliament the right to adjourn to any place it wished. On the 3rd of January 1648 the Commons agreed to a resolution to address the king no further, in which they were joined by the Lords on the 15th.

Charles had meanwhile taken a further fatal step which brought about his total destruction. On the 26th of December 1647 he had signed at Carisbrooke with the Scottish commissioners the secret treaty called the “Engagement,” whereby the Scots undertook to invade England on his behalf and restore him to the throne on condition of the establishment of Presbyterianism for three years and the suppression of the sectarians. In consequence the second civil war broke out and the Scots invaded England under Hamilton. The royalist risings in England were soon suppressed, and Cromwell gained an easy and decisive victory over the Scots at Preston. Charles was now left alone to face his enemies, with the whole tale of his intrigues and deceptions unmasked and exposed. The last intrigue with the Scots was the most unpardonable in the eyes of his contemporaries, no less wicked and monstrous than his design to conquer England by the Irish soldiers; “a more prodigious treason,” said Cromwell, “than any that had been perfected before; because the former quarrel was that Englishmen might rule over one another; this to vassalize us to a foreign nation.” Cromwell, who up to this point had shown himself foremost in supporting the negotiations with the king, now spoke of the treaty of Newport, which he found the parliament in the act of negotiating on his return from Scotland, as “this ruining hypocritical agreement.” Charles had engaged in these negotiations only to gain time and find opportunity to escape. “The great concession I made this day,” he wrote on the 7th of October, “was made merely in order to my escape.” At the beginning he had stipulated that no concession from him should be valid unless an agreement were reached upon every point. He had now consented to most of the demands of the parliament, including the repudiation of the Irish Cessation, the surrender of the delinquents and the cession of the militia for twenty years, and of the offices of state to parliament, but remained firm in his refusal to abolish episcopacy, consenting only to Presbyterianism for three years. Charles’s devotion to the church is undoubted. In April 1646, before his flight from Oxford, inspired perhaps by superstitious fears as to the origin of his misfortunes, he had delivered to Sheldon, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, a written vow (now in the library of St Paul’s cathedral) to restore all church lands held by the crown on his restoration to the throne; and almost his last injunction to the prince of Wales was that of fidelity to the national church. His present firmness, however, in its support was caused probably less by his devotion to it than by his desire to secure the failure of the whole treaty, and his attempts to escape naturally weakened the chances of success. Cromwell now supported the petitions of the army against the treaty. On the 16th of November the council of officers demanded the trial of the king, “the capital and grand author of our troubles,” and on the 27th of November the parliamentary commissioners returned from Newport without having secured Charles’s consent. Charles was removed to Hurst Castle on the 1st of December, where he remained till the 19th, thence being taken to Windsor, where he arrived on the 23rd. On the 6th “Pride’s Purge” had removed from the Commons all those who might show any favour to the king. On the 25th a last attempt by the council of officers to come to terms with him was repulsed. On the 1st of January the remnant of the Commons resolved that Charles was guilty of treason by “levying war against the parliament and kingdom of England”; on the 4th they declared their own power to make laws without the lords or the sovereign, and on the 6th established a “high court of justice” to try the king. On the 19th Charles was brought to St James’s Palace, and on the next day his trial began in Westminster Hall, without the assistance of any of the judges, who all refused to take part in the proceedings. He laughed aloud at hearing himself called a traitor, and immediately demanded by what authority he was tried. He had been in treaty with the parliament in the Isle of Wight and taken thence by force; he saw no lords present. He was told by Bradshaw, the president of the court, that he was tried by the authority of the people of England, who had elected him king; Charles making the obvious reply that he was king by inheritance and not by election, that England had been for more than 1000 years an hereditary kingdom, and Bradshaw cutting short the discussion by adjourning the court. On the 22nd Charles repeated his reasoning, adding, “It is not my case alone; it is the freedom and liberty of the people of England, and do you pretend what you will, I stand more for their liberties, for if power without law may make laws ... I do not know what subject he is in England that can be sure of his life or anything that he calls his own.” On the 23rd he again refused to plead. The court was adjourned, and there were several signs that the army in their prosecution of the king had not the nation at their back. While the soldiers had shouted “Justice! justice!” as the king passed through their ranks, the civilian spectators from the end of the hall had cried “God save the king!” There was considerable opposition and reluctance to proceed among the members of the court. On the 26th, however, the court decided unanimously upon his execution, and on the 27th Charles was brought into court for the last time to hear his sentence. His request to be heard before the Lords and Commons was rejected, and his attempts to answer the charges of the president were silenced. Sentence was pronounced, and the king was removed by the soldiers, uttering his last broken protest: “I am not suffered to speak. Expect what justice other people will have.”

In these last hours Charles, who was probably weary of life, showed a remarkable dignity and self-possession, and a firm resignation supported by religious faith and by the absolute conviction of his own innocence, which, says Burnet, “amazed all people and that so much the more because it was not natural to him. It was imputed to a very extraordinary measure of supernatural assistance....; it was owing to something within himself that he went through so many indignities with so much true greatness without disorder or any sort of affectation.” Nothing in his life became Charles like the leaving it. “He nothing common did or mean Upon that memorable scene.” On the morning of the 29th of January he said his last sad farewell to his younger children, Elizabeth and Henry, duke of Gloucester. On the 30th at ten o’clock he walked across from St James’s to Whitehall, calling on his guard “in a pleasant manner” to walk apace, and at two he stepped upon the scaffold from a window, probably the middle one, of the Banqueting House (see Architecture, Plate VI., fig. 75). He was separated from the people by large ranks of soldiers, and his last speech only reached Juxon and those with him on the scaffold. He declared that he had desired the liberty and freedom of the people as much as any; “but I must tell you that their liberty and freedom consists in having government. ... It is not their having a share in the government; that is nothing appertaining unto them. A subject and a sovereign are clean different things.” These, together with his declaration that he died a member of the Church of England, and the mysterious “Remember,” spoken to Juxon, were Charles’s last words. “It much discontents the citizens,” wrote a spectator; “ye manner of his deportment was very resolutely with some smiling countenances, intimating his willingness to be out of his troubles.”3 “The blow I saw given,” wrote another, Philip Henry, “and can truly say with a sad heart, at the instant whereof, I remember well, there was such a grone by the Thousands then present as I never heard before and desire I may never hear again. There was according to order one Troop immediately marching fromwards Charing-Cross to Westminster and another fromwards Westminster to Charing-Cross, purposely to masker” (i.e. to overpower) “the people and to disperse and scatter them, so that I had much adoe amongst the rest to escape home without hurt.”4