Jenny Uglow is an award-winning biographer.
She is the author of A Gambling Man: Charles II
and the Restoration (Faber, 2009)“Charles set out to show the people that he
was bringing Britain into the modern age,
creating a culture to rival the continent”
THE REIGN OF AN
ARCH-PRAGMATIST
May 1660
Charles’s arrival in London wins
over potential opponents through
a combination of grandeur
and humilitySeptember 1666
With genuine courage, the king
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the Fire of London, capitalising on
public praise to offset bad press for
leaving London during the PlagueNovember 1667
After a Dutch raid on the Medway,
carrying off the royal flagship, Charles
caves in to pressure by driving
Clarendon, his advisor for 20
years, into exileMay 1670
Through his sister Minette, Charles
arranges a secret agreement with
Louis XIV to support France against
the Dutch (then Britain’s allies)March 1672
With the threat of bankruptcy, Charles
suspends exchequer repayments, and
issues a Declaration of Indulgence,
chiefly to win dissenting London
merchants. When parliament refuses
funds for the third Dutch War, Charles
withdraws the declaration
and agrees to the Test Act,
requiring Catholic office-holders
to renounce their postsAugust 1678
Charles discounts Titus Oates’s
claims of a Catholic plot to kill him
but fails to intervene to stop the
ensuing ‘Popish Plot’ hysteria. He
increasingly dissolves parliaments
keen to pass an Exclusion Bill to
exclude Catholics from the throne,
namely his brother, James1680
Charles combats the Earl of
Shaftesbury’s campaign to make his
illegitimate Protestant son, James, Duke
of Monmouth, his heir, by temporarily
banishing James. In March 1681 he
dramatically dissolves parliament at
Oxford. Shaftesbury is sent to the Tower
and his movement is crushed. From now
until his death in February 1685, Charles
rules without parliament“To the gracefulness of his deportment
may be joined his easiness of access, his
patience in attention and the gentleness
both in the tune and style of his speech;
so that those whom either the veneration
for his dignity or the majesty of his
presence have put into an awful respect
are reassured as soon as he enters into
a conversation”.
With his alert sense of theatre, Charles
played up to this role. Initially he sought
to deflate opposition by giving people
access, in place of his father’s cold, formal
distance. His subjects could indeed watch
him swimming, playing tennis and sailing
his Dutch yachts on the Thames. But he
also set out to show the people that he
was bringing Britain into the modern age,
creating a culture to rival the continent.
In November 1660, he granted an exclusive
patent to Thomas Killigrew and Sir
William Davenant to build two playhouses
and create new theatrical companies,
the King’s Company and the Duke’s
Company – and, for the first time, women
appeared on the professional stage, as in
continental theatres.
Charles also fostered a new spirit by
his patronage of the Royal Society. This
chimed with his personal interests,
since in exile he had followed the new
developments in mathematics, chemistry,
telescopes and clock-making. The king
cherished his connection with the Society’s
ethos, established by Robert Boyle, of
putting a common interest above partisan
loyalties (though he hoped for more
practical outcomes, to boost trade and
industry, too).
Ultimately Charles’s attempt to work
with parliament failed. He and his
ministers in the privy cabinet were roundly
taken to account, for example, after the
Dutch War of 1665–7, when blame was
placed firmly on ministerial incompetence
and on the extravagance and licentiousness
of the court.
But at the Restoration his ‘spin’ had been
so cleverly orchestrated, appealing to so
many different groups, that Charles could,
in moments of crisis, always appeal beyond
parliament to the nation. His charismatic
personality, as well as his policies, ensured
his survival on the throne.^