Charles II: The Masquerading Monarch

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• 1. Introduction
• 2. A crazy idea
• 3. The Restoration
• 4. Crisis
• 5. Appointments and foreign policy
• 6. The master of disguise
• 7. Find out more
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Introduction

Biographies of King Charles II show a curious discrepancy. Popular books, plays and films overwhelmingly portray a man of extraordinary charm, wit, courtesy and affability, loyal to old friends, perceptive and intelligent, and marvellously cultured; the monarch who introduced the British to champagne and yachting. This picture is true. Academic historians, by contrast, almost all see Charles as a king of no vision and no fixed ideals, irresponsible, unbusinesslike and with a disastrous taste for taking risks, who turned his three nations into states riven by chronic instability and distrust. This is also an accurate assessment. The difference is largely a matter of preoccupation.

The former image is largely that of the king in his leisure pursuits, while the latter is that of him as a ruler. What must be especially significant is that virtually all those contemporaries who have left opinions paid tribute to Charles's social charms, and none ranked him as a great monarch.

He certainly had one of the most traumatic, and potentially one of the most valuable, political educations that any sovereign has ever received.

'...virtually all those contemporaries who have left opinions, paid tribute to Charles's social charms, yet none ranked him as a great monarch.'

In 1642, when he was twelve years old, the three kingdoms of his father Charles I, England, Scotland, and Ireland, dissolved into civil war. His father was eventually imprisoned, and then executed in 1649. For eleven years young Charles was left to wander between a succession of refuges in the British Isles and on the Continent. Britain was ruled as a republic, and only the fact that its leaders quarrelled amongst themselves allowed a counter-revolution to occur in 1660, after which he was invited back to his thrones. These experiences have been credited with turning him into the cynical and opportunist politician that he became; but from his first actions as a king his enduring strengths and weaknesses are already apparent.

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Published: 2003-04-01