Did King Charles 2 Die: Charles II (29 May 1630 – 6 February 1685)[c] reigned as King of Scotland from 1649 to 1651 and as King of England, Scotland, and Ireland from the monarchy’s restoration in 1660 until his death in 1685.
Charles II of England, Scotland, and Ireland was the eldest surviving child of Charles I of England, Scotland, and Ireland and Henrietta Maria of France. The Parliament of Scotland proclaimed Charles II king on 5 February 1649, following Charles I’s execution at Whitehall on 30 January 1649, at the culmination of the English Civil War.
However, England entered the English Interregnum or English Commonwealth, and the country was a de facto republic commanded by Oliver Cromwell. On September 3, 1651, Cromwell defeated Charles II in the Battle of Worcester, and Charles fled to mainland Europe. Cromwell essentially became the dictator of England, Scotland, and Ireland.
Childhood, Civil War, and Exile
Charles II was born on May 29, 1630, at St James’s Palace, the eldest surviving son of Charles I, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and his wife Henrietta Maria, sister of Louis XIII of France. Charles was their second child, the first being a son who died within a day of being born around a year previously.
On June 27, he was baptized in the Chapel Royal by William Laud, the future Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Protestant Countess of Dorset oversaw his upbringing. His godparents included his Catholic maternal uncle, Louis XIII, and maternal grandmother, Marie de Medici, Dowager Queen of France.
Charles was born with the titles Duke of Cornwall and Duke of Rothesay, as well as various titles. He was named Prince of Wales at about the age of eight, however, he was never adequately invested.
The long-running feud between his father and Parliament culminated in the commencement of the First English Civil War in August 1642. Charles and his younger brother James were there during the Battle of Edgehill in October and spent the next two years in Oxford, the Royalist capital.
In January 1645, he was given his own Council and appointed as the nominal commander of Royalist forces in the West Country. By the spring of 1646, Parliamentarian forces had captured most of the province, and Charles fled into exile to avoid capture.
He traveled from Falmouth to the Isles of Scilly, then to Jersey, and eventually to France, where his mother was already under the protection of his first cousin, the eight-year-old Louis XIV. In May 1646, Charles I surrendered and was taken into captivity.
Restoration
Following Cromwell’s death in 1658, Charles’ initial hopes of recovering the Crown appeared bleak; Cromwell was succeeded as Lord Protector by his son, Richard. The new Lord Protector, on the other hand, had little expertise in either military or civil administration. The Rump Parliament was recalled in 1659, and Richard resigned.
During the civil and military disturbances that followed, Scotland’s Governor, George Monck, was terrified that the country might plunge into chaos. Monck and his troops marched into London and compelled the Rump Parliament to accept members of the Long Parliament who had been expelled during Pride’s Purge in December 1648.
Parliament was dissolved, and a general election was held for the first time in nearly 20 years. The outgoing Parliament established the electoral requirements to restore a Presbyterian majority.
The limitations on royalist candidates and voters were extensively violated, and the elections produced a House of Commons that was pretty evenly divided on political grounds between Royalists and Parliamentarians, as well as religiously between Anglicans and Presbyterians.
The new Convention Parliament met on April 25, 1660, and quickly approved the Declaration of Breda, in which Charles promised leniency and tolerance. There would be religious freedom, and Anglican church policies would not be harsh. He would not expel or confiscate the wealth of former opponents. Except for the regicides, almost all of his opponents would be pardoned.
Above all, Charles committed to governing in partnership with Parliament. The English Parliament declared Charles King and invited him to return, a message that arrived at Breda on May 8, 1660. A convention had been convened earlier in the year in Ireland and had already expressed support for Charles. On May 14, he was proclaimed King of Ireland.
The Clarendon Code
The Convention Parliament was dissolved in December 1660, and the second English Parliament of the reign convened immediately after the crowning. Royalists and Anglicans dominated the Cavalier Parliament. It attempted to discourage non-conformity to the Church of England by enacting many acts to ensure Anglican domination.
The Corporation Act 1661 required municipal officeholders to swear allegiance; the Act of Uniformity 1662 made the use of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer mandatory; the Conventicle Act 1664 prohibited religious assemblies of more than five people, except under the auspices of the Church of England; and the Five Mile Act 1665 prohibited expelled non-conforming clergymen from returning to a parish from which they had been expelled.
The Conventicle and Five Mile Acts remained in force throughout Charles’ reign. Even though Lord Clarendon was not directly responsible for the Acts and even spoke out against the Five Mile Act, they became known as the Clarendon Code.
Marriage and Foreign Policy
Since 1640, Portugal has been fighting a war against Spain to reclaim its independence following a sixty-year dynastic union between the crowns of Spain and Portugal. France had assisted Portugal, but at the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659, France abandoned Portugal. During his father’s reign, negotiations with Portugal for Charles’ marriage to Catherine of Braganza began.
After the restoration, Queen Lusa of Portugal, serving as regent, initiated talks with England, which resulted in an alliance. On June 23, 1661, a marriage treaty was signed in which England obtained Catherine’s dowry of Tangier (in North Africa) and the Seven Islands of Bombay (the latter having a significant influence on the development of the British Empire in India).
As well as trading privileges in Brazil and the East Indies, religious and commercial freedom in Portugal, and two million Portuguese crowns (approximately £300,000); while Portugal obtained military and naval support against Spain and liberty of woe.
Catherine traveled from Portugal to Portsmouth on May 13-14, 1662, but Charles did not visit her until May 20. The following day, the couple married in two ceremonies in Portsmouth: a private Catholic ceremony followed by a public Anglican one.
Later Years
Later in life, Charles faced a political maelstrom since his Catholic brother James was next in line to the throne. Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, was adamantly opposed to the idea of a Catholic monarch (previously Baron Ashley and a member of the Cabal, which had fallen apart in 1673).
Shaftesbury’s power base was strengthened when the Exclusion Bill was proposed in the House of Commons in 1679, which intended to remove the Duke of York from the line of succession.
Absolute monarch
Fearing that the Exclusion Bill might be passed and encouraged by several acquittals in the ongoing Plot trials, Charles dissolved the English Parliament for the second time that year, in mid-1679. Charles’ aspirations for a more moderate Parliament were dashed, and he disbanded Parliament once more after it attempted to enact the Exclusion Bill.
When a new Parliament met in Oxford in March 1681, Charles dissolved it for the fourth time in a matter of days. However, popular support for the Exclusion Bill waned in the 1680s, and Charles saw a statewide surge of allegiance. Lord Shaftesbury was tried for treason (albeit unsuccessfully) in 1681 and eventually fled to Holland, where he died. Charles reigned without Parliament for the rest of his reign.
Death
Charles died four days later, at 11:45 a.m., at the Palace of Whitehall, after suffering a sudden apoplectic fit on February 2, 1685. Many people, including one of the royal doctors, suspected poison because of the sudden illness and death; however, a more recent medical analysis concluded that the signs of his final illness were similar to those of uremia (a clinical syndrome due to kidney dysfunction).
Among his various interests was a laboratory, where he had been experimenting with mercury before his illness. Mercuric poisoning can induce irreversible kidney damage, although there is no evidence that this was the cause of his death.
In the days leading up to his death, Charles underwent a series of excruciating procedures such as bloodletting, purging, and cupping in the hopes of reviving his health, which may have exacerbated his uremia through dehydration rather than alleviating it.
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