Introduction
This unsigned reflection on King Charles the First appeared in The Holy Cross Magazine (January 1926), pp. 14-16. Devotion to the Royal Martyr in the Order of the Holy Cross was strong in the person of OHC founder James Otis Sargent Huntington (1854-1935), who was present at the 1897 unveiling of a Caroline portrait at the former Church of the Evangelists in Philadelphia. By the 1920s, the Order’s ownership and veneration of a relic of Charles exposed them to Low Church mockery in the popular press—an account of which I will prepare for a future issue of SKCM News.
“For God, for the Cause, for the Church, for the laws, for Charles, the King of England.”
Such was the watchword of the Cavalier of 1642, a watchword which represented an ideal for which life itself was but a small price to pay. For Church and King, the Royalists unhesitatingly sacrificed wealth, honors, lands, and faced death on the battlefield or on a scaffold with smiling lips and with undaunted courage.
King Charles, beaten and a prisoner, ruled in the hearts of his followers, and his death at the hands of his foes brought inspiration to the hunted Cavaliers and added a new name to the bede roll of England’s saints and martyrs.
It is the fashion now to decry King Charles, to speak with pitying tolerance of the hero worship of the Royalists, to laud Cromwell the statesman, and to admire the sterling qualities of the stern old liberty-loving Puritans. Yet a most cursory study of the times shows clearly that the conflict of the Civil War was not for the liberties of England, nor was the issue tyranny or limited monarch,—these points were quite aside from the vital question.
The Stuarts, Scotch by race and French by upbringing, were quite unable to grasp the constitution of England and never could understand why a King should not levy his own taxes. Their idea of the “right divine of kings to govern wrong,” though in no sense a doctrine put forth to ensure absolute power, was a dogma that they thoroughly believed, as showing the sanctity of their persons, and as adding to their responsibility.
When in addition to this they faced the problem of a divided Parliament, it was natural that the trouble over ship money should result. In the year 1641, the House of Lord was Royalist almost to a man, and the House of Commons solidly Puritan. A deadlock ensued. A proposal from the Lords was promptly voted down by the Commons and a measure had only to be passed by the Lower House to ensure its being vetoed at once by the Lords. Money bills could be originated only in the Commons, and as a result, the King found himself in the position of having to keep up a navy and an army without funds. The only outlet seemed to be illegal taxation, and the quartering of the army upon inhabitants of villages and towns.
Again, the cause of the war is often stated to be the attempted arrest of the five members, certainly an unconstitutional act and one quite indefensible. Yet Cromwell was equally unconstitutional when in order to get a decision against the King, he refused admission to members of Parliament who would vote in his favor, and likewise abolished the House of Lords by a minority vote. When this packed Parliament and its successor finally failed him, he turned the members out by force, and from thenceforth ruled without a Parliament and levied taxes as he pleased.
The cause of the war was not the constitution of the English government, but the real issue lay clear cut and well defined in the mind of Cavalier and Roundhead alike,—religion.
“Down with the Bishops,” shouted the Puritan. “Stand by the Church,” was the cry of the Royalist. Should England become Puritan, or should she hold by her ancient heritage, and remain a part of the Holy Catholic Church? That was the question. And the result of the Civil War answered it.
Beaten, hunted from place to place, her churches desecrated, her altars torn down, her services proscribed, her priests shot, exiled and even sold into slavery, England kept the faith. Through all the dark years of the Commonwealth, in woods and in waste places, in tiny obscure chapels and hidden rooms of the great houses, the Holy Sacrifice was offered. Bishop, priest, and layman alike risked life itself for the sake of Mother Church, and, standing staunchly side by side, grew stronger while the Puritan body, split by innumerable quarrels, lost its hold.
It was on this issue that King Charles won his right to be termed a hero of the Church. It was a hard fight, for conflict was foreign to his nature. It was natural for him to compromise and to take the easier path. In his home life, his character was unimpeached. His love of his queen was a marvellous thing in a day when Kings wedded for political reasons, and frequently held themselves above responsibility for the lonely princesses who shared their splendour.
Henrietta Maria was the love of King Charles’ life and the first outburst which he faced from his rebellious people, was caused by the fact that he permitted her the free exercise of her religion, and her own chaplain. The blot on his life was Strafford,—a blot which he owned himself, never forgiving that moment of weakness when he signed the warrant which sent his friend to a scaffold. Even on the day of his death he spoke of this. Undoubtedly he had other grave faults. The temptation to compromise was a Stuart trait as was a certain insincerity and tendency to untruthfulness. King Charles shared these, and in the troublous times in which he lived, the difficulties led to a shifty policy, and the playing of one party against another.
But where the Church was concerned, he never for a moment flinched. Parliament, or rather the House of Commons, would have voted him whatever money he asked if he had discredited Laud, and refused his assent to the Ecclesiastical Commission. He would not. Even before the question of the Episcopate came up, he steadily refused to have the Church molested. Her services, her altars, her Sacraments, were inviolate, and he risked a civil war rather than danger to her.
When after Marston Moor, he took refuge with his Scotch subjects, his liberty depended on his signature to the Covenant, and he chose a prison. Sold to the Puritans of England, he went to Carisbrook a captive, knowing that on his pledge to abolish the episcopate, his throne would be his again.
He repeatedly refused and as a result, Cromwell brought him to trial for treason. The King faced it. Never had he shown more quiet dignity, more steadfast courage than when he stood before the packed Parliament, and made his protest against their Right to try their King. Where were his peers? he asked.
His plea denied, oblivious of insults, slanders and slurs, he defended himself resolutely, and when the foregone conclusion was reached, and the mock trial ended in his condemnation, he received his sentence of death unmoved.
Doubtless, Cromwell thought that face to face with mortal danger, he would yield, but the offer of life was received like all the rest. The King would not renounce the Church, nor abet the Puritans in their persecution of her. It remained for the Prince of Wales to offer a blank paper with his signature for his father’s life, but the Puritans knew only too well that the King would receive it at no such cost. Dear as his son was to King Charles, dearer than the life they threatened, dearest of all was the love of Christ, so far above all earthly issues as to be immeasurable.
The end came. He arrayed himself as for a bridal, walked with firm step across his own banqueting hall, stood on the grim scaffold above his people, guarded by his foes. With a parting charge for forgiveness to those who had hounded him, and a prayer “as short as a grace,” the King bowed his head beneath the executioner’s axe, and passed to the “crown incorruptible.”
“A tragedy,” said the world. “A kingly ending,” his unrelenting foes agreed. Yet it was no tragedy. King Charles won the victory of his life that day when he laid it down. Nor was it a “King’s courage” that carried him firm to the end. The faith that he kept in the shadow of death was the faith of the saints of old, and the courage was the same as that which sent little maidens and young lads to face the lions under Nero, and which nerved the early Christians to die smiling under their tortures.
Hero and martyr, he was rightly termed, not by the blind partisanship of his own devoted followers, but by the Church for whom he fought and died. The Puritans counted their victory complete on the thirtieth of January 1649, but it was the hour of their downfall. With the death of the King, a great revulsion swept over the people; once again, the blood of a martyr was the seed of the Church, thousands wavering in the balance, turned back to the faith of old, and those, who had stood steadfast through the dark years of civil strife, took fresh courage as they thanked God for Charles, King of England.
Richard Mammana 