Charles of the Three Kingdoms

[drakensis]

I've been playing around with a few ideas about a timeline such that Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland turned out to be a pretty good King. Despite my initial concerns, this does not appear to require the intervention of ASB's. It should also diverge a fair bit from the excellent Henry IX thread.



The POD is in 1601 when Charles' older brother, Prince Henry Frederick, Duke of Rothsey and heir to the throne of Scotland suffered a tragic accident. Thrown from his horse, Henry landed badly and died almost immediately. This elevated the infant Charles to the position of heir, just as his father, James VI of Scotland was positioning himself to succeed his southern neighbour, Elizabeth of England.

Two years later, Elizabeth died and James rode south to claim his throne. As IOTL, Charles' health was not considered sufficient to the journey and he remained in Scotland, but ATL was left in the care of Sir George Lauder, Laird of the Bass and one of James' Privy Counsellors (and IOTL Henry Frederick's tutor). Although initially expected to join his father in 1604 this was put off more than a year after James quarrelled with Parliament, and then again after the unsuccessful Gunpowder Plot. Charles did not actually travel to London until 1610.

Having been essentially raised by a Member of the Scottish Parliament, Charles was considerably more sympathetic to them than his father, and transferred this to an extent to the English Parliament (such as he saw of it, the body having been dissolved in 1610 by James and only briefly reconvened in 1614). The long seperation between father and son had also left Charles outside the King's circle of favorites and the departure of his sister Elizabeth, a long time correspondent of Charles, for her marriage to Frederick V, Elector of the Palatinate removed one of their common bridges.

The following year, James began extended negotiations towards marrying Charles to Maria Anna, Infanta of Spain. The match was doomed: Maria Anna did not favour it; Philip IV would not support it unless Charles converted to Catholicism; and, of course, it was desperately unpopular in England and Scotland. However, the possible financial advantages to James, and the fact that as long as the negotiations went on Spain could be sure James would not meddle in the developing Thirty Years War, kept them going. Charles, not wanting to further break from his father went along with the negotiations, although he recorded his reservations: 'no marriage, no matter how lucrative, could be worth losing the throne of England' he wrote to his sister in Bohemia.

In 1623, with his father's health failing, Charles travelled to Spain himself, determined either to complete arrangements or lay them forever to rest, perhaps in concious imitation of his father's dramatic rescue of Anne of Denmark, thirty-four years previous. He was accompanied by his father's favorite George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, who was probably more concerned about cementing a relationship with the prince to secure his position when James eventually died. Arriving in Spain, Charles established that the entire marriage arrangement was hopeless and that he was facing what could very easily become the grip of a hostile King. Keeping his head, Charles managed to talk his way out of Spain, agreeing to a secret treaty to stay out of the wars in Germany, which was in any case his preference.

En route to Spain, Charles had met Henrietta Maria, the younger half-sister of Louis XIII. He had also gathered the impression (correctly) that France was not planning to involve themselves directly in the wars. This, to Charles, made a French marriage more palatable than one with Spain. He also blamed Buckingham, not for the Spanish marriage's failure, but that so much time and effort had been wasted on it. The English Parliament accepted the marriage somewhat reluctantly, although the Scots were more favourable, due to past ties with France. Before negotiations could be finished, James passed away in March 1625.

Charles married Henrietta Maria by proxy in May 1625, before calling his first English Parliament. His speech opening the Parliament sets out the principal policies he wishes to pursue: maintaining the peace that his three kingdoms have known through his father's reign; setting the finances of his respective governments in better order; and establishing clearly defined relationships between the three kingdoms. The implication of this was that Charles did not intend to follow the contentious policy of trying to unite England and Scotland into one Kingdom, but instead would maintain the status of a personal union. The reception to his speech was positive, but concerns were raised about his marriage to a Catholic: would Charles be relaxing restrictions on recusants (those not accepting communion with the Anglican Church)?

Somewhat theatrically, Charles produced a document, declaring it to be a bill he wished to place before Parliament to establish a single clear law on the succession to the throne of England and Wales. 'If it is pleasing to Parliament,' he offered, 'I shall add to this document that every monarch hereafter shall pledge to forswear on their part and for their heirs, the Roman Catholic Church.' The Bill being thus amended and read, it was passed by acclamation and Charles avoided answering the actual question that had been posed.

The following month Henrietta Maria arrived in England with a large and Roman Catholic retinue. Although married in Saint Augustine's Church, Canterbury, her religion made it impossible for her to be crowned alongside her husband, a ceremony scheduled for early the next year. In the meantime, Charles proposed to visit Scotland and if possible Ireland and for her to accompany him. Having persuaded her to take only a modest company with her, he left quiet orders that most of the rest be sent back to France once he and Henrietta Maria were out of Westminster. Unsurprisingly this led to a furious quarrel between the newly-weds when Henrietta Maria discovered the orders, but by this point her household had been expanded with Englishwomen and Scots, and as Charles made no further efforts to reduce her French companions, the matter was eventually dropped.

In Scotland, Charles left Henrietta Maria in Edinburgh while he convened the Scottish Estates at Scone and in a relatively modest ceremony was crowned King of Scotland. Presenting the Scots with the same Bill he had offered to the English Parliament, he asked them to endorse the same laws of succession. These were accepted, as was a proposal to establish a treaty with the Kingdoms of England and Ireland, abolishing taxes upon trade between the three Kingdoms. A request was made of Charles that he abolish the episcopial polity of the Church of Scotland in favour of a presbyterian arrangement, excluding bishops in favour of a general assembly. Charles expressed reservations but did not reject the proposal outright.

Charles and Henrietta Maria crossed the Irish Sea early in September 1625. Henrietta Maria almost immediately began to make inroads into the catholic populace and the simple fact that Charles had actually taken the time to visit Ireland raised his own reputation there considerably. Although no formal coronation took place here, Charles did summon the Irish Parliament who agreed readily to abolish barriers to trade with England and Scotland. They also approved the laws of succession (without the potentially inflamatory Roman Catholic clause) ensuring that the succession to the crowns of all three Kingdoms would now pass to the same individual. Concerned about the onset of winter, the royal couple left Dublin for Bristol after only three weeks and made a slow, almost triumphant procession to London over the next month. Their tour of Charles' kingdoms had proven most successful.

In February Charles was crowned King of England and Ireland in Westminster Abbey. Henrietta Maria, still offended over the removal of her French retainers, did not attend at all. Breaking two and a half centuries of tradition, he did not claim the title King of France. Although rumour had it that this was a concession made to Louis XIII during the marriage negotiations for Henrietta Maria, it is more likely to have been a peace offering to her, or simple refusal to claim an empty title. Either would have been characteristic of Charles I.

tbc.

 

[Artemetis]

I am quite interested in seeing where this will go, being a fan of your superb works on both spacebattles.com and TFF.

 

[Jammy]

That font is really annoying though and i struggled to read it

 

[drakensis]

I can't change the font for the first post, hope this is easier for you.




After his coronation, Charles met extensively with his father's senior ministers, the Privy Council and the assembled Bishops and Archbishops of England and Wales to dicuss the state of the government and church of England. He claimed to be appalled at the poor state of the former's finances although it is unlikely that he was not aware of this, the open corruption of the government having been the rule rather than the exception for most of a century. He was successful however in establishing what costs he could expect to face maintaining the King's Ships and the Court, as well as what debts he had inherited. Charles, having witnessed many of James' struggles to finance his rule, had no illusions that even if the Kingdoms had been at peace for his whole life, war had nonetheless been waged between Parliament and Crown.

On the religious front, Charles had already had a taste of the problems facing him with the petition he had received in Scotland the previous year. The division between the two Archbishops over the Puritans, only underlined the fact that he would have similar challenges south of the border. In fact, the growth of the Independent movements outside the umbrella of the Anglican Church (itself divided between Arminian and Calvinist factions), was something that bothered him even more than the remaining Roman Catholics in England, since the latter were at least a known quantity.

Summoning the English Parliament, Charles was perhaps understandably focused on his own plans, Having opened proceedings without any indication of what he hoped to accomplish (he had in fact shared essentially nothing with his own advisors, leading to some nervousness), he was therefore caught largely offguard when several Members, including John Pym, the prominent Puritan, called for the impeachment of the Duke of Buckingham on charges of selling offices and of incompetence in office as Lord High Admiral. While this would rid Charles of Buckingham, who he fully intended to dismiss, letting radicals such as Pym force an impeachment through Parliament against one of the Great Officers of State might open the door to further action.

One may imagine that Charles had only one ear on the lengthy accusations against Buckingham as he composed a response. In the end he had very little choice: trying to protect the Duke would be completely counterproductive. From his throne he calmly advised Parliament (including Buckingham himself) that while it was well within their rights to police their own body by impeaching Buckingham as a Duke and therefore a member of the House of Lords, it would not be possible to impeach him as Master of Horse or as Lord High Admiral, since these posts were held at the Crown's pleasure... and that while he had hoped to advise the Duke in a more dignified fashion, Buckingham did not please the Crown in his discharge of these offices and was therefore dismissed from both.

Buckingham, disgraced, was required to leave the Palace of Westminster underguard, not to return until he faced trial in front of the House of Lords. Charles, on the other hand, did not leave. Firmly of the opinion that he could not leave the momentum in the hands of radicals within Parliament, he gave a speech on the topic of the state of the Crown's finances within England especially as they related to the King's Ships. In particular he stated that among the reasons he had not supported Buckingham in proposing war against Spain after the disappointment of their visit there three years was his serious doubts about the fitness of the ships - the spiritual successors to the fleet that had fought the Spanish Armada only two generations previously - for such a conflict.

By tradition, the King's Ships were funded by the pounds and tunnage (customs duties) that were collected independently of subsidies from Parliament. Usually voted to the monarch for the duration of his reign, Charles had only been voted them for a year in 1625 and had not, at the time, offered protest of this. If they were not granted fully, or at least extended, then he would have no choice but to sell off most of the ships, leaving the coasts largely defenseless.

With that ultimatum on the table, Charles also laid out his other projected expenses - maintenance of the royal court, despite the economies of his father's Lord High Treasurer Lionel Cranfield, the Earl of Middlesex, was a costly affair and at Charles' urging, Middlesex laid out what had been spent in previous years and his best estimation of how much had been lost to corruption. Charles finished this with a summary of the proposed treaty that would remove all tariffs on trade with Ireland and Scotland - beneficial to the economy as a whole, but something that would further reduce the income from pounds and tunnage.

Charles then summed up his position: he could not effectively rule without an income from Parliament but if he did not then England, and by extension Parliament, would be left largely defenseless. He accepted that there were problems with the government's spending, but there was no point in addressing that unless there was something to spend. Charles therefore proposed that Parliament grant him annual funds sufficent to cover the actual costs that Middlesex had explained, in addition to the pounds and tunnage, for five years. If corruption inflated the costs that he faced, then Charles would have to pay the costs from his pounds and tunnage, but if he could effectively reduce it, then he would have those funds to spend at his own discretion.

To sweeten the offer, Charles would appoint five Members of Parliament to a committee that would oversee the Crown's finances and advise the Lord High Chancellor. The names he mentioned for this committee spanned the divides within Parliament - from the moderate Thomas Wentworth to the radical John Pym.

The proposal was debated in Parliament for almost a week, although the treaty removing the tariffs on trade with Scotland and Ireland were approved early on - cynically, Charles's supporters were supported on accepting it by radicals wanting to reduce the King's income from the poundage and tunnage. Charles, for his part, ignored Parliament entirely while they debated the matter, splitting his time between Henrietta Maria and reorganising his household guards, whose effectiveness he had significant doubts about.

Finally the Commons voted in favour of Charles' 'Five Year Plan', which was also quickly approved by the House of Lords, who wanted to get back to the ongoing trial of the Duke of Buckingham - the outcome was hardly in doubt but virtually everyone who Buckingham had angered wanted to have their say.

When Charles was congratulated, somewhat bitterly, by John Pym over his triumph, the King sharply advised him that when King and Parliament battle, only England's enemies count it a triumph.

tbc.

 

[Jammy]

Aye thats a better font ta

Interesting - i really can't releate this charles to the one i know

Keep it up though.

 

[drakensis]

In OTL Charles idolised his brother Henry and spent his entire life living up to this image of a perfect monarch, refusing to compromise it in any way. In fairness, he was reasonably competent in the actual matter of governing, but the inability to bargain or compromise was what provoked the quarrels with Parliament.

IITL, with Henry dead and Charles spending several years raised by a member of the Scottish Estates before going to London and seeing the fallout of his father's struggle with Parliament.

Probably the best way to sum the difference between the two is that OTL Charles was trying to be Charles the Great. ITTL he wants to be Charles the Good.

 

[drakensis]

Peace between Charles and Henrietta Maria was finally declared after several months bitterness by the Queen. Charles had structured the entire court's entertainments around her preferences and even when they could not meet without quarrelling, he had persisted in seeing her daily. However, the unspoken truce was at a price: Charles had agreed to take Henrietta Maria back to Ireland for a few months of 1627.

Given that he had visited Ireland already the previous year this did not seem an unreasonable concession, but Charles had learned that he had been quite fortunate to have made both voyages without incident. Piracy had always been endemic in the waters around England, most notoriously those of Dunkirk ranging up and down the Narrow Seas, but in the mid-1620s there had been a resurgence in piracy from North Africa, raiding up the Atlantic coast and into the Irish Sea. Plymouth had been raided the previous year and several attacks had occurred within sight of English warships that had been unable to intervene due to their characteristic poor handling.

The dilemma facing Charles' Navy Royal was that the two demands placed on it required two quite different navies: dealing with the piracy required small, fast and agile ships to patrol the waters, give chase to pirates and escort merchantmen; but much of the prestige of a naval power was tied up in large, powerful ships that simply could not handle in the same fashion. These were not only needed for battles, but also as a deterrent and many of the King's Ships were lumbering powerhouses that carried great prestige and firepower but were hugely expensive and slow. Needless to say, building two different navies was out of the question financially and the agreement with Henrietta Maria forced Charles' hand as to which he had to choose.

In the summer of 1626, Charles closeted himself with William Rainsborough, his new Lord High Admiral, the new finance committee and as many of the Navy Royal's shipwrights and ship masters as he could assemble in Whitehall. It was surprisingly easy to agree on the sort of ships that would need to be built for the purposes of protecting trade: pinnaces of between 230 and 300 tuns and carrying perhaps thirty iron guns {based of the OTL Providence and Expedition, built in 1637}. Although considerably smaller than most of the ships built for King James, they could carry almost as many guns due to advances by English gunsmiths that had reduced the weight of guns by more than a third since the days of Elizabeth.

However, with the affairs of the Navy Royal on the table, John Pym raised the issue of the administration of the navy, which was divided between several bodies - principally the Navy Board and the Ordnance Board. He also protested that wages were significantly in arrears and that this was seen as justification for the corruption in some of the shipyards. Charles agreed that the arrears were a problem and agreed to dispense money from his discretionary funds (the pounds and tunnage) to eliminate them. In order to improve oversight, he also proposed forming a single Admiralty Board, headed by Rainsborough as Lord High Admiral, to be housed in a permanent building to be built once the funds were available. To ensure that the money was handled correctly, Charles offered John Pym the post of Treasurer on the new Admiralty Board, neatly trapping the man: the responsibility of this, along with his position on the finance committee (the latter unpaid) would absorb enough of his time that Pym would be forced to reduce his activities in Parliament and would be responsible for rooting out the corruption that he complained about.

The principal cost of the decisions made - besides the money that would need to be spent - was that the Navy Royal would now not even be able to operate the heavier warships it hand, much less maintain and replace them. To resolve this, Charles finally saw no choice but to sell off all the galleys still in the fleet and several of the older ships to raise the money to support the rest (and he wound up spending even more of his discretionary funds to make up shortfalls over the next few years) - clearly the actual Admiralty building would not be possible for a few years unless he asked Parliament for more money, which he felt would be unwise under the circumstances.

What Charles could do was start planning for the future. The royal parks west and northwest of Whitehall were of course property of the Crown and a significant number of the buildings around them were on land rented from the Crown. Now he intended to take control of the land around the royal parks and use them as the centrepoints of his English capital. To begin this, Charles organised a survey of the land and a determined examination of the property records to work out exactly what he had. It was hardly a surprise to find that in several cases rents were in arrears or that the boundaries had shifted considerably over the years. Late in the year, Charles organised all the property as part of the Duchy of Lancaster (one of his secondary titles) and began a relentless effort to obtain his dues. While he was rarely able to obtain full redress, his agents could generally obtain a clear acceptance of land title and often some financial compensation (although this was largely eaten up by the legal costs of the process). Future rents, however, would be forthcoming and steadily increased which was to his long term benefit. This private income would be fed back into purchasing more land and in improving the drainage of the rather swampy St James and Green Parks.

The reorganisation of his Household Guards was also proceeding well, something that aroused some concerns in Parliament, who had gone into recess over the summer (after sentencing the Duke of Buckingham to confinement) and reconvened in October. For the King to have almost two thousand soldiers in the capital (a third of them cavalry), suggested the possibility that he might try to coerce them. In response to this, Charles detached the six troops of cavalry he considered best organised (around five hundred in number) and sent them out to patrol the roads between London and Chester, that being the route he intended to take the next year on the way to Ireland. He also addressed Parliament advising them that he would be accompanied to Ireland by most of the infantry, who would be stationed in Dublin from then on. These two units were of course, the precursors to the first regiments of foot and horse in the Brigade of Household Guards.

Parliament in the winter of 1626 was surprisingly quiet, even the factions most opposed to Charles content to wait and watch his activities and otherwise tend to their usual business. Charles sent another troop of cavalry north to Scotland to act as a nucleus for a force of Scottish cavalry who to deal with banditry and also as a fallback in case he had to coerce the typically well armed highland clans - Charles privately hoped to avoid this, but didn't feel that the hope was realistic as the clans had fought outright battles between each other within his lifetime. The first of the new pinnaces were completed, although fitting them out would prevent actual use of them until spring. Charles was sufficiently impressed to order one of them to be sent to Scotland as soon as possible so that the Scottish shipwrights could duplicate it for the Scottish Navy. The other three were to be sent down the Channel and then up through the Irish Sea to Chester, where they could escort Charles, Henrietta and the soldiers to Dublin.

While the ships were able to leave in March, Charles lingered in London until April before riding north with Henrietta Maria and around two hundred cavalry, the thousand or so infantry of the future Irish Regiment of Foot Guards a day behind him. The day before he left he'd authorised the Colonel commanding those infantry still in London to recruit from the city's Trained Bands to bring them up to a similar strength. In Chester, they had to wait several days for the arrival of the little squadron, which had been delayed by two encounters with Moorish pirates and the time taken to take the two captive vessels into Bristol. Charles' naval policy had had its first small triumph.

 

[Wolfhound]

Five year plan - loving it. I've always had a soft spot for Charles I and I'm liking this TL - good work.

 

[Jammy]

Very clever the way he's trapped Pym, most impressed - however he could still cause problems me thinks.

What about religion?

Also didn't Henrietta Maria have a very strong personality, will this have repurcussions down the line?

Keep it up.

 

[drakensis]

What about religion?

Thus far Charles is dodging the question as much as he can. He can't get away with it forever and he knows that he can't but the longer he can put off a confrontation the better. He keeps his personal views (mildly pro-Arminian) very quiet since he knows perfectly well that whatever he claimed, he'd be offending one extreme or the other, and possibly the mainstream Presbyterians as well.

Also didn't Henrietta Maria have a very strong personality, will this have repurcussions down the line?

When I likened their relationship to a war I did so intentionally. This is very much as it was IOTL with only the details different - although Charles and Henrietta Maria had a happy marriage overall, the start was rocky and they have less in common this time.

 

[drakensis]

Charles was almost as welcome in Dublin as he had been previously. His arriving at the head of a small army did cause some concern, but the arrival of Henrietta Maria more than allayed it. The fact that his wife was more popular than he was, with the Catholic majority at least, was a concern for Charles. The outnumbered protestants were almost seething when Charles was crowned again as King of Ireland (the ceremony in Westminister being tactfully ignored), this time with Henrietta Maria at his side. The Queen of Ireland was ecstatic at the welcome and surrounded herself with Irish ladies, predominantly Catholic, while her husband focused on Parliament and visiting the nobility in almost every corner of the Pale.

What Charles saw was enough to convince him that the root of the problems he was going to have in Ireland was the Roman Catholics. If Ireland was going to be viable as a seperate Kingdom, rather than as a colony of England - and dividing England from Ireland was one of his primary goals, since it would weaken the strongest of his three Kingdoms and prevent it from simply absorbing Scotland - then he would have to reform its Parliament. But this would be impossible unless a majority of the Irish were actually represented and allowing an Irish Parliament to be dominated by Roman Catholics would elicit a disasterous reaction in England.

Unfortunately, the protestant Church of Ireland, although significantly less Calvinist than it English and Scottish counterparts, had not made significant progress in winning over the population, who had adopted Catholicism as a symbol of defiance against their foreign Tudor monarchs and now against him. It was a matter of pride, and unless he could manage to co-opt that pride, the way that he had John Pym, he would fail in his plans for Ireland. To be King of Ireland in truth as well as name, he had to reinvent himself as an Irish King.

The first stage of this was to ignore all other titles. On Charles' instructions, everyone at his Irish Court was to refer to him solely as King of Ireland and Henrietta as the Queen of Ireland (the latter also flattered Charles' wife which was a benefit he was pleased to enjoy). His English soldiers were abruptly recast as a cadre to train up Irish guards for him when he was on this side of the Irish Sea: a regiment of foot and a squadron of horse, all to be Irish and all to be paid for by Irish taxes.

The predominantly protestant Parliament was practically in shock: Ireland had generally been an ongoing expense for England and the notion that they would not be subsidised was a traumatic one. If Charles hadn't had a clear local advantage in force, with a thousand English soldiers in Dublin and at least half as many Irish volunteers being trained, there would have been riots. Charles's speech to them when he was remonstrated with by a deputation from the Parliament was public and emotional. He spoke at length of the pride of Ireland and of the shame that he would bear if his kingdom were to be a pensioner to a foreign nation, no matter how friendly.

Obstinately, the Irish Parliament agreed to pay for his new garrison and laid out plans for taxes to fall most heavily upon Ireland's catholics. This was the opening Charles had been waiting for. He dissolved Parliament, vetoing the tax and left Dublin under the control of Henrietta Maria and his infantry while he rode out with his new Irish Cavalry and visited almost every diocese in Ireland in a great circuit of the island. Although his own Irish Gaelic was poor, Charles had picked it up quickly, being familiar with it's close cousin Scots Gaelic and was able to make rehearsed speeches in the language without any major mistakes.

Charles' position was a simple one, to allow for the limits of his fluency. The Irish Parliament no longer represented the common landowners of Ireland, as proven by their attempt to impose civil taxes on only catholics and by Poynings' Law, that had subordinated Ireland's Parliament to England's for more than a century. He wanted a new Parliament, with the commons elected by every ten shilling freeholder voting for a single representative from each Parish. Because this lowered the threshold to vote and also eliminated the influence of the corporations that controlled many boroughs, this would at a stroke make the Irish Parliament radically more representative. Charles also stated that he would not limit the franchise by religion so long as every elector swore allegiance to the Crown of Ireland and that he would absolutely forbid any further Plantations by Scotland and England.

Most of the membership of the dissolved parliament were seething - the Commons because the widening of the franchise would drastically reduce their own influence and the Anglo-Irish Lords because they feared that the bulk of the new voters would follow the lead of their clan leaders, creating an impenetrable power bloc in both Houses. Several armed their retainers and there was an attempt in Ulster to capture Charles and force him to retract his proposals - which would have completely undermined him in Ireland, leaving the Anglo-Irish in effective control. The attempt was fumbled: having missed him in County Derry the warband followed the unaware Charles into County Antrim where they divided into two parties to increase their chances of catching him.

The larger of the two groups, roughly four hundred men under the leadership of George FitzGerald, 16th Earl of Kildare, encountered Charles and his escort (of a similar number) encountered him almost by accident and in public as he left Lisburn. FitzGerald immediately sent a rider to Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork, who led the other group calling for reinforcements. Charles, on the other hand, sent word back to Lisburn suggesting that any Scots close their gates for security but any Irish should rally to their King. Close to five hundred Ulster-Scots sallied from Lisburn to his aid, allowing Charles to trounce FitzGerald and then turn to deal with Boyle.

Much was made of Charles' call on Irish patriotism from a Plantation town. It was a gamble, certainly, but the relatively disciplined Irish Horse Guards (as they later became) were already breaking up FitzGerald's force before the reinforcements arrived and at worst, with fresher horses, could have eluded Boyle's group, so even if there had been no response from Lisburn, it was fairly unlikely that Charles would have been captured. As it was, his gamble paid off and he was able to return to Dublin with a small military victory to his credit and two of his primary critics in chains.

In elections after the harvest, Charles got the Parliament that he wanted. A delegation from the English Parliament arrived in Dublin to protest the leniency to vote. Charles invited them to walk with him to Dublin Cathedral (since voting was by parish, it was taking place in the churches), and asked them to point out which of the men, each of them swearing allegience to a Calvinist King in an Anglican Catherdral, were catholics.

In contrast to the excitement of the summer, the meetings of the Parliament were relatively orderly. As Charles had expected, absent overriding pressure from outside, the Gaelic and Norman-Gaelic Lords were unable to provide a united position, calming the Anglo-Irish party. For his part, Charles was able to point to his own recent experiences as evidence that allowing the nobility to maintain private armies, however small, was not desirable. He proposed a bill that barred the raising and maintenance of any body troops except with the permission of Parliament (with an exclusion for the King's Household Guard, although that was limited in size by the same Bill). The Commons were quick to approve and with some extended debate and some backroom persuasion, the Lords grudgingly mustered a slim majority in support of the Bill - predominantly by Irish and Old English Lords concerned that the newer Anglo-Irish might turn on them.

To fund his Household Guards - and the beginnings of the King of Ireland's Royal Navy - Charles managed to also arrange a modest but guarenteed annual subsidy and approval for his reign of customs duties on trade outside the Three Kingdoms. In what was essentially a payoff for this, he appointed Hugh Óg mac Aedh Ó Conchobhair Donn, second son of the most prominent of the Gaelic Royal Houses, as his Viceroy in Ireland, replacing Henry Cary, 1st Viscount Falkland, who had been Lord Deputy of Ireland since 1620. Hugh ostensibly converted from Roman Catholicism before accepting office although this was not openly stated to be a requirement.

Shortly afterwards, with regret that was probably at least partly feigned by Charles but almost certainly sincere by Henrietta Maria, the royal couple set out for London again - once again accompanied by Charles' English infantry, who he now intended to leave stationed in Chester, a central location should he need them elsewhere in the Three Kingdoms.

 

[Jammy]

Again i'm impressed with this Charles

A seperate King of Ireland - very clever.

 

[Falastur]

An interesting situation, to be sure. I'm not sure whether Charles could be a better King by being all things to all people though. If he acts Protestant in England and Scotland and Catholic in Ireland then he's likely to antagonise both parties whenever he isn't pleasing them, and upset both halves of his potential supporters, rather than creating loyal servants on both sides of the Irish Sea. Still, it seems you've planned ahead of where you're up to, so I'll follow it and see where we go.

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

Interesting, too, that he's set a precedent for the King UNILATERALLY changing the rules for Parliament!

 

[drakensis]

Charles could hardly have been unaware that returning to London would put him squarely in the centre of a firestorm. Parliament had reassembled a few days before he landed in London and by all accounts the mood was ugly. It would have been bad enough that Charles had sided with catholics against protestants in Ireland (or so it was largely presented by the delegation that had visited him during the election). That he had apparently overthrown every gain made since the days of Henry VIII in the subordination of Ireland to England simply added to the problem. Bringing the troops he had claimed were destined to be posted in Ireland back across the sea was an yet another point on which they protested.

The breaking point that had been reached however was his apparently arbitary dissolution of the Irish Parliament and reforming it upon terms that were quite different from its previous form, a form that had been based almost entirely upon the English Parliament. There was a genuine fear that Charles would do precisely what he had done in Ireland in an attempt to break opposition from the House of Commons and then use the new Commons against the Lords. That he had presented Bills himself to Parliament had appeared merely unusual earlier - the King was not considered a Member of Parliament or free to do so. Now that seemed to be a worrying omen for the future.

The royal couple had barely set foot in Chester Castle when Thomas Wentworth, representing both Parliament and the King's Ministers, cornered Charles and spelled out the situation in bleak terms. Charles did not appear to be surprised - although just as he rarely confided his strategies to others, it was not his custom to allow others to see him discomforted. The extent of his apparent concern was a mild suggestion to Henrietta Maria that perhaps she should winter in Chester while he met with his English Parliament. This was evidently as profound a mis-step as any that he had made with Parliament however, as his Queen exploded with fury, declaring that she would in no sense be set aside for his convenience in dealing with his Parliament, who she described in uncomplimentary terms before storming into her apartments.

Wentworth, having married the daughter of the Earl of Clare, whose title stemmed from the Plantations, was not warning Charles out of any warm feelings. The abrupt reversal of policies dismayed him and as a long term Member of Parliament who had opposed King James denial of the rights and privileges of Parliament he was well connected with the 'loyal opposition'. Unlike the relative handful of radicals, this faction did not propose to reduce the King's authority as such, but they wanted to pressure him to replace his ministers with those more likely to favour their own views on how the Kingdom should be run (the diversity of those views being the principal weakness of their position). The popularly accepted fiction was that Charles (and James before him) was merely being misled by poor advice, rather than an actual adversary himself, a fiction that justified opposition to the King's policies without strictly constituting an attack upon him. The removal of Buckingham had been almost exactly this sort of move.

With this in mind, Wentworth was entirely sincere in wanting Charles to delay return to London. The capital was not always inclined to follow Parliament's lead but Charles' heavyhandness in organising the Duchy of Lancaster had led to a trickle-down of resentment (most of the land involved was rented by the aristocracy and gentry not by merchants or tradesment) and putting the King - whose closest heir, James Hamilton, was no friend of Wentworth - in physical danger was the last thing that Wentworth wanted. Quite calculatedly, he wanted Charles to negotiate with Parliament with himself as the go-between, a move that would naturally lead to Wentworth gathering prestige within Parliament and quite possibly to a position as one of Charles' ministers.

He had misjudged Charles. After only a single night in Chester, the King summoned his carriage, his horse guards and his queen, giving instructions that the majority of their household servants and goods should follow as soon as they were able, and then made for London with all haste. An impressive three days later, they reached London and Charles left Henrietta Maria in the carriage to be taken to Hampton Court by the cavalry (thereafter, the Queen-Consort's Life Guards) while he and Wentworth rode to Westminister with barely any escort. Appalled at the hazards of the situation, Wentworth persuaded Charles not to announce his identity but could not convince him to cover his face.

Rather than taking a direct route to Westminster, Charles entered London from the north, intending to avoid any attempt at interception (an understandable concern given events in Ireland, if completely unnecessary in this case) and entered the City of London through Bishopsgate, where he was identified by one of the guards. From there, his ride down Cheapside and past St Paul's Cathedral before leaving the City through Ludgate was marked by crowds forming to see the small, travel-stained (if only slightly) man who was their King. Most had seen him in passing before but never travelling almost alone through their streets. For his part, Charles was apparently enjoying the excursion although he later recorded in his diary that he was appalled at the crowding inside the city walls.

The small band of horsemen crossed the Fleet, passed through the Temple Bar and down the Strand to Charing Cross where they were met by hastily alerted guards from Whitehall. Charles waved them off and continued through the Palace to Westminister where he was met outside the Palace by both Houses of Parliament, who had poured out of their respective debates in response to his unexpected arrival, the crowd of gentlemen unintentionally blocking him from entering in a confrontation immortalised subsequently in several famous paintings of the scene (most such paintings omit the soldiers behind Charles, very few omit Wentworth, whose credibility in Parliament never recovered from the impression that he was hiding behind Charles' coattails).

Charles chided the gathered lords and gentry for equating England and Ireland. The two Kingdoms were fundamentally and irreconcilably different in his eyes and it was only by ending the long and hopeless attempt to convert one into the other than he could prevent Ireland being forever a dagger at England's back. England, he equated with Jesus' disciple Peter, the rock upon which Charles' rule was built. Better, he stated, to have Ireland in the role of Thomas, desiring to test the truth of Charles' integrity, than as a Judas that would hand him over to his enemies. The Irish, he declared, did not love the Pope or his Roman Church, so much as they had hated the English rule over them and had adopted catholicism out of that anger. By healing that wound, and removing the basis for their spite, the hold of the Pope upon Ireland would, he hoped, fade.

The English Parliament, he characterised as strong because it was built upon English foundations and traditions. The Irish Parliament must have Irish foundations and create its own traditions and it was for this reason that he had conciously established it with differences from its brother parliament, just as the Scottish Estates had its own customs and traditions, that were not those of England and just as the Churchs of England and Scotland each served their parishoners in the manner best to those nations, the Church of Ireland would need to find its own path. Finally, he proposed to Parliament that if they still feared that he would seek to oppress them and impose tyranny upon England, that they consider what guarentees they should ask of him to convince them of his good will... and what he should ask of them that Parliament should never itself become a source of tyranny.

Having said his piece, Charles turned back towards Whitehall, pausing only to advise Wentworth to advise the Parliament of England that he would meet with them again in December to hear their proposals, giving them time to debate the matter and quarrel over what guarentees they should ask of him.

 

[iopgod]

Good stuff... (though the size of the font becomes irritateing quickly.)

 

[drakensis]

Given I've changed the font every single post, and that the size used in the last post is no larger than that you used iopgod, would anyone like to recommend a font that would be satisfactory?

 

[Nicomacheus]

Given I've changed the font every single post, and that the size used in the last post is no larger than that you used iopgod, would anyone like to recommend a font that would be satisfactory?

At least on my screen, the font on the last post is quite small -- the same size as the first post. Of course, a reader can pretty simply zoom in on the browser, so it's not the end of the world. Sometimes things can get screwy if you're pasting into the text box...odd things have happened when I've posted for BIA. Thank god for the new editing rules.

 

[DuQuense]

Don't change the Font- Change the Size

 

[drakensis]

With the English Parliament if not appeased then at least redirected, Charles was able to turn his attention to matters that he had left untended while he was Ireland. One of these was ongoing seige of La Rochelle, currently underway across the English Channel from Charles. The Huguenot stronghold, established by the Edict of Nantes, was seeking aid from all the protestant powers against armies of Louis XIII. England, as their nearest neighbour, and one of the few not already absorbed by the wars in Germany, was an obvious source for aid. Charles, however, was not inclined to fight a war against France, particularly with navy's heavier warships in a parlous state and the still fragile state of his finances.

What Charles would do, was offer a refuge to the Huguenots, both those in La Rochelle and those in the rest of France who could see the way that the wind was turning. While the Edict of Nantes still guarenteed the French Protestants right to worship, the steady elimination of their military power would make that right a tenuous one in the future. As King of Scotland, which had been a French ally for generations, Charles sent an offer to the Huguenot leaders of sanctuary within his northern kingdom and an offer to his Queen's brother Louis XIII to mediate the surrender of La Rochelle if Louis would subsidise the Huguenot exodus.

Late in the year, Charles sent Thomas Wentworth and George Abbot, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to La Rochelle, where they met with Cardinal Richelieu, representing Louis XIII, Jean Guiton, the Mayor of La Rochelle and Benjamin de Rohan, the Huguenot commander in the west of France. While this meeting did not end the Huguenot rising, which continued until the surrender of de Rohan's older brother Henri de Rohan, the next year, La Rochelle was surrendered and around a third of the city's population chose to leave for Scotland (between nine and ten thousand individuals) with Richelieu agreeing to pay a sum vastly less than he expected an extended siege would have cost but not enough to seriously affect the Huguenot cause if it was spent to that cause (which by the treaty Charles was to prevent and he largely did).

Jean Guiton, who had received part of the French subsidy to use his own merchant ships to carry the Huegenots to Scotland, remained in La Rochelle and was reputed to have given the money to Benjamin de Rohan, who continued to fight alongside his brother until the end of the conflict. Benjamin then fled to Scotland, which would continue to receive a slow flow of Huguenot immigrants for more than half a century, and entered Charles' service as an officer in the Scottish Household Guards.

Charles himself also went to Scotland early in 1628, along with Henrietta Maria, in response to a renewed request from members of the Church of Scotland that he abolish the diocesan episcopacy. He had been able to avoid the request four years previously, but evidently it was not going to go away. In Edinburgh, Charles met with the two Scottish Archbishops, John Spottiswoode of St Andrews and James Law of Glasgow. Ostensibly this was about the settlement of the Huguenots, which mostly took place on land purchased near Glasgow (and which was absorbed into the city over the rest of the century) but Charles was considerably more interested in their opinions of church administration. Spottiswoode, who had been a presbyterian but become disillusioned by the invconveniences of 'parity in the Church' was also a member of the Scottish Privy Council and provided valuable insight into the support for changes within the Scottish Estates.

In April Charles convened a General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and advised them that having considered their arguements, he had decided not to abolish the episcopacy but that he did agree that some reorganisation was called for and that he was willing to reduce the number of dioceses (and bishops) so long as no incumbents were disenfranchised. Although this satisfied some of the assembly, others saw this as not far enough or as an opening to demand more concessions and Charles was unable to secure an agreement to his proposed settlement. Reluctantly, Charles agreed to abolish the unpopular Five Articles of Perth which had been ratified only eight years previously and that synods and the general assembly would gather on a regular schedule rather than at the whim of the Crown, initially every two years with the next occasion falling in 1630.

Riding south again, Charles halted a few miles south of the village of Coldsteam, at Flodden Hill and spent most of a day examining the site and enquiring at the nearby village of Branxton about what local history had to say about the Battle of Flodden Field. This battle, fought more than a century before, had been the largest recorded clash between Scotland and England and had ended in disaster for Scotland, with James IV (Charles' great-great-grandfather) dying on the field of battle alongside many of Scotland's highest lords. One of the key elements of this defeat had been the ineffectiveness of European-style pikes on rough ground (and in relatively inexperienced hands) compared to the bills (halberds) of English infantry.

The significance of this visit became clear on Charles's return to London where he added another innovation to his Household Guards. The foot regiment was already trained to use both muskets and pikes (although they would usually field a mix, any soldier was required to be proficient in both) and now he added the use of the bill to this list, and changed the battlefield arrangement from one-third musket and two-thirds pike, to a third armed with each weapon: 'pike against the horse, bill against the men and musket to fear them both' as one of his officers put it. The bill was certainly more useful a weapon in the day to day guarding of the King's person than a pike or musket, but it's battlefield effectiveness against an unbroken pike wall was in doubt.

Charles was able to remain in London, tending to the affairs of his kingdoms, for more than a year after this visit to Scotland. While mostly involved in the day to day administration, one innovation he did make was to tear down the old Guard House of Whitehall Palace and erect two new buildings on the land between the Whitehall street and St James Park, seperate from the Palace. Towards the end of 1629 these would be formally opened as the embassies of Scotland and Ireland, staffed with officers of the respective kingdoms and in steady if still slow communication with Dublin and Edinburgh. Although it would take several more years to fully organise the process, this centralised all his affairs for those Kingdoms for ease of management when he was not visiting them (there was no question of any permanent residence away from the centre of what was still the richest and most powerful of the Three Kingdoms).

In the background of this were the ongoing debates and factionalism with the English Parliament, still convulsed by the question of how to handle Charles' challenging proposal the year before. It is fair to point out that Charles, through his supporters, was doing everything in his power to prolong and confuse these debates which had come to the point that they were consuming more of Parliament's time that their regular business. In March 1629, news arrived that Denmark had been defeated in Germany and was being brought to terms by the Holy Roman Empire. The fact that an unsuccessful Bill to raise an army to intervene on Denmark's behalf took several days even to be discussed seriously alerted Charles to the fact that the deadlock was becoming a problem (he did not support the Bill himself, although the King of Denmark was his uncle).

Charles finally concluded that the current English Parliament was probably no longer a working affair and that he should dissolve them, although - to keep the bargain implicit in his Five Year Plan of 1626 - he would have to either recall one or elect one by 1631. In May, shortly after the Treaty of Lubeck formally ended Denmark's involvement in the German Wars, Charles asked Parliament's clerks to summarise all proposals made on the topic of preventing him from becoming a tyrant, and then dissolved Parliament.

He ruled without Parliament for only six months however, calling a new election long before even his opponents were seriously concerned that he might try to dispense with the body. When they finally assembled early in December of 1629, Charles opening statement was the pleasent news that it was the consensus of the Royal Physicians that his Queen was with child.