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Charles took his rights and duties as a King with religious seriousness, but Parliament’s sense of both right and duty was just as strong.
King Charles I of England and Scotland (1600-1649) was charming, clever and convinced that he had inherited a divine right and duty to govern the country his own way. Parliament disagreed, demanding a constitutional role in law-making and criticising his policies. It did not seem likely to end well.
Robert Pierrepont called heaven to witness that he would never pick a side in the Civil War.
Robert Pierrepont (1584-1623), 1st Earl of Kingston-upon-Hull, sided with Charles I in the Civil War after much debate. Soon afterwards, on July 16th, 1643, he was captured by the Parliamentarians at Gainsborough, and died in a botched rescue attempt. When the war was over, and Charles II had been restored to his throne, Lucy Hutchinson added a strange detail to the Earl’s sad story.
In April 1653, Oliver Cromwell learnt that Parliament was planning to prevent him from packing the Commons with yes-men.
In the Spring of 1653, General Oliver Cromwell, England’s commander-in-chief and de facto ruler, was heaping pressure on Parliament to dissolve itself for fresh elections, and so give him an opportunity to pack the Commons with his own men. The Commons, however, guessed his mind, and on April 20th were ready to vote on a Bill of dissolution carefully designed to maintain their independence.
In 1657, Sir John Evelyn celebrated Christmas in a church for the first time in years. Unfortunately, someone told the authorities what he was doing.
In 1649, the execution of King Charles I left England in the hands of a Parliament of hardline Protestants determined to purge the Church of superstitious mumbo-jumbo. On Christmas Day 1657, Sir John Evelyn avoided the now dirty, unloved churches, clumsily improvised prayers and muddle-headed preachers, and found an old-fashioned Prayer Book service; but he did not enjoy it in peace.
King Charles I ended two years of uneasy peace with his Parliament by bursting into the Commons with a heavily-armed tactical unit.
For eleven years, King Charles I did not consult his Parliament at all, turning a deaf ear to their ever louder complaints about the country’s finances and about religious and civil liberties. In 1640 he relented, acceding to most of their demands; then on January 4th, 1642, Charles burst into the Commons to arrest in person five MPs on a charge of treason. It was to prove the opening shot of the Civil War.
In 1680, Samuel Pepys sat down with Charles II to record how, many years before, a bold double-bluff saved the King from Cromwell’s men.
Following defeat at Worcester on September 3rd, 1651, King Charles II (who was just twenty-one at the time) reluctantly fled to France, stumbling in disguise towards the south coast, never more than a step ahead of Cromwell’s men. In 1680, the King looked back in the company of Samuel Pepys on those anxious days, and what happened one famous night at Boscobel House in Shropshire.
Almost nine years after Oliver Cromwell’s army drove him from England, King Charles II returned at their invitation, and John Evelyn was there to see it.
On May 29th, 1660, King Charles II rode into London, nine years after his defeat at the Battle of Worcester and exile to the Continent. The King’s return was witnessed by diarist John Evelyn, who had fought for the Royalist cause. He too had endured exile, in France and in Italy, and since his return to London had chafed under Cromwell’s self-righteous nanny state.