King Charles II
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘King Charles II’
When Parliament overthrew the capricious tyranny of Charles I, it discovered an uncomfortable truth about power.
For eleven years, between 1649 and 1660, Britain was a republic. Great claims are sometimes made for this ‘interregnum’, as if it were the birth of democracy, but really it proved only one thing: be it under monarchy or republic, be it at court or in parliament, power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
James calls Fr Huddleston to his brother’s deathbed, ready for a most delicate task.
As King, Charles II was officially the Head of the Church of England, an ever-so-modern, Protestant church. But like his father before him, and his brother James, his sympathies lay with the older Roman ways, and in 1685, lying in his bed at Whitehall Palace and facing his last hours on earth, he had an agonising decision to make.