Charles I And II

The present king is Charles III. Let's have a look at the first two King Charles. The two were father and son, during the Stuart Dynasty at a time of great turmoil. Charles I was overthrown and executed by the forces of Oliver Cromwell. The future Charles II famously escaped by hiding in an oak tree. Charles I was the son of James I, who we saw in the posting "Hampton Court Palace And The King James Bible", July 2016.

We saw "Along London's Royal Route", September 2022. The last time that this was used for a coronation procession was for Charles II. That was long before Buckingham Palace and the route ended at the former Whitehall Palace.

These two kings are important because the events of their time set the pace for how countries would be governed.

What is referred to as the English Civil War was actually several separate conflicts. The war resulted in the execution of King Charles I, and the exile of his son who would eventually reign as Charles II. The monarchy was replaced with first the Commonwealth of England and then the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell.

This interruption in the monarchy is sometimes referred to as the Interregnum and lasted from 1649-1660. What is known as the Restoration brought the monarchy back, and ended the Interregnum, in 1660. One parliament, known as the Rump Parliament, opposed the execution of Charles I. It was replaced by the Protectorate Parliament, but the rump parliament was brought back prior to the Restoration of the monarchy.

Oliver Cromwell, who ruled as Lord Protector during the interruption in the monarchy, turned down being king himself, which would have begun a new dynasty, because he thought it was his divine mission to abolish the monarchy. But after Cromwell's death, his son did not inspire the same confidence. This is what led to the end of the interregnum and the Restoration of the monarchy.

The English Civil War was fought between the Royalists, supporters of the monarchy, and the Parliamentarians, supporters of the parliament. The Royalists are sometimes referred to as Cavaliers, and the Parliamentarians as Roundheads. The Royalists won the early battles but the turning point seems to have been, in military terms, the Seige of Gloucester. The Royalists failed to capture Gloucester from the Parliamentarians, and after that it was they who won most of the battles.

The war ended with a Parliamentarian victory. The future King Charles II famously escaped, following defeat at Worcester, by hiding in an oak tree. His father, Charles I, was beheaded at the Banqueting House on January 30, 1649.

This war is usually portrayed in religious terms. The religious side of the war was that it was between the Puritan Parliamentarians and the Anglican Royalists.

This was 130 years after the Reformation had begun, but it was not a Protestant-Catholic conflict. It was between two factions of Protestants. The Puritans were extremely conservative Protestants who wanted nothing to do with any kind of compromise with Catholicism. The Anglicans, in contrast, thought it best to establish a national church that was a compromise between such extreme Protestants and the remaining Catholics.

But what I want to point out today is the very long-lasting political influence of this war. It literally changed the way that the world is governed.

The French Revolution, which came 140 years later, is generally considered as the launching of the modern political era. But this much lesser-known and less-widespread war is what set the precedence for it.

The French revolutionaries had a lot in common with the Puritans, even if they did want to abolish conventional religion. The military leader that Napoleon was, having his power base neither in royalty nor religion, had it's prototype in Oliver Cromwell and the Protectorate which was direct military rule that was not subservient to either king or church.

The executions in France of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, their rule replaced by a series of committees, first the Committee of General Defense, then the Committee of Public Safety, then the Directory, followed by the military rule of Napoleon parallels the execution of Charles I, his rule replaced by the Committee of Safety to set the precedence of the country being governed as a republic, but being supervised by the military rule of Oliver Cromwell.

There was a lot of similarity between the organizations set up to administer the country after the execution of Charles I in England, the Committee of Safety which was set up by parliament, and the series of French revolutionary organizations which governed the country during the revolution. The French Royalty was executed and the National Assembly was ultimately formed to replace them, making the country a republic. In England in a similar way but over a century earlier, Charles I was executed by the forces of parliament, whose rule replaced his.

U.S. independence also followed exactly the same precedence except that it was called a congress, rather than a parliament or National Assembly, and a president was inaugurated as, in effect, a "temporary" king.

The Meiji Restoration in Japan, replacing the military rule of the Tokugawa Shogunate with the full power of the emperor, also greatly resembles the pattern of the monarchy being restored in England after military rule, two hundred years before. But with the emperor ultimately having less real power than before.

The monarchy in England was ultimately restored, Charles II being crowned as king. The Protectorate that had displaced and executed his father was dismantled. But when it was all over, the monarchy had less power than before and the parliament had more power than before. The king now needed the support of parliament, which represented the people. That is what set the pace for the modern world.

England had experienced being run as a republic, with power based on the will of the people and not on royalty or the church. The prototype of the modern leader from the military had been set. There was religious freedom that there hadn't been before.

After the Restoration of the monarchy, Parliament had more power than ever before. But there were differences of opinion between it's members. That is what led to the founding of modern political parties. The modern terms of political "right" and "left" began when members of Parliament used to sit on opposite sides of the aisle, according to their political views.

There was the definite influence of the Reformation on these changes. It was the removal of the monarch's "divine right to rule", just as the Reformation removed the divine right of anyone to rule over the church.

Some say that it was the Magna Carta that began modern democracy. But the peak of England's monarchy was Henry VIII (the eighth), which came three centuries after the Magna Carta. It was this English Civil War that really shifted the balance of power from the king to the Parliament, which was elected by and represented the people. The world has been governed differently ever since.

Religion would no longer be absolutely dictated by the monarch. Protestant churches mostly did away with the hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church. Only Anglicans and Lutherans, the two Reformation movements that retained the most Catholic liturgy, still had bishops and archbishops. New denominations, such as the Baptists and Presbyterians and later the Methodists, were far more egalitarian and reflected the new movement towards democracy.

The divisions of the English Civil War can still be seen in the differences today between the cities and the countryside. It is said that America's great political division is between the Democrat coasts and the Republican "heartland". But England's is between urban and rural areas. This is the legacy of the power base of the Royalists being in the countryside, while that of the Parliamentarians was in the cities.