Royal Charles: Charles II and the Restoration

by Antonia Fraser

  Where pomp was concerned, Charles II was outwardly traditional rather than innovatory. It was in keeping with this that the first year of his reign was always referred to as the twelfth – as though the eleven years’ Interregnum since his father’s death was of no account. And of course his display had a political purpose. He had after all been brought back to incarnate not a republican head of state, but the beloved old monarchy for which the people yearned.

  Thus the immediate needs of a restored sovereign were felt to include tradespeople of all sorts, tinker and tailor, as well as soldier and sailor: an Arras worker, a bookbinder, a brewer, a coffee-maker, a fishmonger, mat-layer, milliner, fruiterer, saddler, milkman, woollen draper, clock-maker, comb-maker, corn-cutter (awarded a special scarlet livery, as was the royal rat-killer).33 This list of positions was as endless as were the petitions to fill them: the equivalent to the royal warrants today, the coveted right to state ‘By Appointment to…’.

  On a grander level, the King needed, naturally, a Master of Tents, a Surveyor of Stables, Falconers, Cormorant Keepers. On the most important level of all, he needed to reorganize the entire paraphernalia of the royal existence, which had fallen into desuetude during the previous twenty years. Here the King’s return was to take a palpable form, in terms of building and artistic commission, summed up by the great allegorical ceiling of the Restoration itself commissioned from Michael Wright and placed in the Banqueting Hall at Whitehall. His father’s great art collection had been tragically sold after his death by the Commonwealth officials, and it was with a view to replacing it to some small degree that Charles had already acquired some paintings of his own while in the Netherlands.34 The new collection was further augmented by twenty-seven old masters (including a famous Titian) hastily presented by the Dutch government, who hoped by this propitiatory gesture to atone for their previous slights to the English King.

  The tastes of the new age dictated many of the earliest pieces of renovation: within the Whitehall complex the Cockpit Theatre was soon made ready. By June, over £1,200 had already been spent in furnishing the royal apartments. It would be two years before the King’s bedroom, with its black and white marble paving and chimney-piece, its ‘flying boys’ holding the curtains of the bed alcove and its ‘great eagles’ over the bed itself, would be complete. Even then there was much mention of ‘night work’– the seventeenth-century equivalent of overtime – needed to complete it.35

  A sun-dial in the Privy Garden was however given priority, as was the ‘King’s Tube’, or astronomical telescope. That was another indication of the way the new reign would go. The King’s own natural bent for scientific discussion and discovery could now be given a free rein. Like the jackdaws who were his favourite birds, he was not only a great collector of curiosities, but inquisitive to boot. It was the kind of mind peculiarly suited to a monarch, who could engage his subjects in conversation as and when he pleased, on what topics had currently seized his fancy, without fear of seeming to bore them. It is true that Charles II felt fascination for practical results rather than investigation for its own sake. His was not the intellect of a Newton, as described by Wordsworth, ‘Voyaging through strange seas of thought alone’ (although Charles II patronized Newton). But then a practical turn of mind was a very useful thing for a sovereign in charge of the welfare of his people to possess.

  Thus we find Charles happily discoursing with John Evelyn on the elimination of the ‘wearisome’ smoke from London (a problem which remained unsolved for three hundred years), as well as his more conspicuous interests, such as shipping and the improvement of gardens and buildings. Evelyn was privileged to hold the candle while the King was having his face crayonned by the great miniaturist Samuel Cooper, for the benefit of the new coinage: naturally, the King seized the opportunity to chat away about painting and engraving.36

  He adored all clocks and watches. In the end there were no fewer than seven clocks in his bedroom (their ill-synchronized chiming drove his attendants mad), while another clock in the antechamber told not only the hour but also the direction of the wind. Hooke’s balance-spring action was demonstrated in front of the King, while the royal accounts contain many items for the purchase of further clocks. The sun-dial referred to above had a particular function – for the King used to set his watch by it.

  When the Royal Society came to be formed in November 1660 it was not mere flattery which caused the King to become its Fundator (or founder); he granted the Royal Charter on 15 July 1662. The man who was obsessed by the need to possess a lunar globe, with the hills, eminences and cavities of the moon’s surfaces as well as the degree of whiteness solidly moulded, was well fitted to occupy the position. At the Society’s inception it was reported that the King ‘did well approve’ of the new body and would be ‘ready to give encouragement’ to it.37 Later he responded in style, presenting a mace to the Society and granting its arms.

  The charm and catholicity of the early proceedings of the Society recall the King’s own conversations.38 Topics raised included oysters (at Colchester), ships in North America, the weather in Greenland and beer. The King’s unsettling friend inspired a typically elusive entry in the Society’s proceedings: ‘The Duke of Buckingham promised to bring to the society a piece of an unicorn’s horn.’ It was a two-way process. The King made science fashionable by his own burning interest in the subject. At the same time, he was naturally drawn to those who shared it. While many of the founding members of the Society were, or had been, part of the Puritan establishment, others were former Royalists, the King’s personal friends. Two of his doctors, his chaplain and his brother’s secretary were amongst the founder members. Sir Robert Moray, who first told the King of the establishment of the Society, was a staunch Royalist, who had been Colonel of the Scots Guards in France and one of Charles II’s intimates.

  Now Moray, together with Sir Paul Neile, a Gentleman Usher to the King, was used as a conduit for the King’s messages and enquiries to the Society.39 It was Moray who reported Charles’ earnest questions as to why sensitive plants contracted to the touch, why ants’ eggs were sometimes larger than the insect itself. Moray produced a discourse on coffee written by Dr Goddard at the King’s command; he also reported an experiment of the King’s own, keeping a sturgeon in fresh water in St James’ Park.

  At first the King’s interest in the Society was so zealous that, as reported by Moray, he wanted it to examine every philosophical or mechanical invention before the patent was passed. The King recommended to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland that the officers and new settlers of that country (the Adventurers) should contribute to the Society. He made the Society gifts of curiosities. In later years the King’s acute interest in the Society faded (although he continued to send venison for its anniversary dinners). But his interest in mathematics, navigation and his own laboratory experiments – his own and others’ – did not. He was responsible for the foundation of the Mathematical School at Christ’s Hospital in 1673 to instruct boys in navigation as well as mathematics; subsequently the King took an interest in the boys’ apprenticeships. He was also responsible for the foundation of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich two years later. This was designed by Wren, as he himself confessed, ‘for the Observator’s habitation and a little for Pompe’.40 Where science was concerned, Charles II made an excellent natural leader of post-Restoration society.

  Only the chronic want of money hung over the new reign, a bad fairy at its christening, promising hardships ahead. In August 1660, a few months after his return, the King observed ruefully of his position: ‘I must tell you, I am not richer, that is, I have not so much money in my purse as when I came to you.’ A year later Pepys was describing how ‘the want of money puts all things … out of order’.41 As a result the search for a bride for the King was much influenced by the question of her dowry; and once the lot had fallen upon the well-endowed Portuguese Infanta, it was a further sign of the King’s financial straits that the dowry was already being pledged as a se
curity for loans in September 1661, eight months before the bride herself actually landed in England. When she did arrive, the unhappy member of her entourage deputed to administer the dowry was Eduarte Da Silva, a New Christian (that is, a Jew converted to meet the requirements of the Inquisition). Da Silva had a spell in the Tower of London when the payments did not come quickly enough for the embarrassed King.42

  How much was this situation of the King’s own making? It was suggested by his enemies and critics at the time, and has been suggested by many critics ever since, that such qualities in the King as extravagance and mismanagement brought about the perpetual financial straits in which the Crown soon found itself. This view leaves out of account two important aspects of the Restoration. First, since Charles II had been brought back to personify royalty, that in itself necessitated all the traditional trappings of a king. Such things always had and always would cost a great deal of money, but to do otherwise would be to confound both popular and courtly expectations. Lord Halifax believed that the very reason that the English character was biased in favour of a monarchy was because of its childish taste for ‘the bells and the tinsel, the outward pomp and gilding’. Secondly, the sum of money Charles II was originally voted by Parliament, although seemingly adequate, proved difficult to collect and in any case the yield had been over-estimated.

  Immediately on his return, then, Charles II was torn between the fantasy of kingship and the reality of England’s economic situation. Of course the very use of the latter term is anachronistic. To the contemporaries of Charles II, it was the kingship which represented reality, so that the conflict between the two was very imperfectly understood, if at all. In this way, from the very beginning, the Crown was immersed in a mire of debt from which it had little hope of escaping – by natural means. As we shall see, the King eventually resorted to unnatural means. But it was hardly his own fault that he found himself floundering in the first place.

  The King’s annual peacetime expenses were estimated by Parliament at £1,200,000; war was to be considered an extra, as had been customary in previous reigns. The sum itself was comparatively generous by the standards of the time – if not lavish – but the income which the King actually received was appreciably smaller. It has been estimated however that, on average over the entire course of his reign, the King received of those monies about £945,000 a year, increased to something under £980,000 by his private income.43 Assuming he kept within his theoretical income, that in itself produced a gap between this annual income and his annual expenditure which Mr Micawber would have aptly summed up as ‘result misery’. In fact, a paper on the state of the revenue shows that between Michaelmas 1661 and Michaelmas 1662 the King’s expenditure was roughly £1,500,000, compared to the aforesaid official figure of £1,200,000. This was a state of affairs which would certainly have upset Mr Micawber still further.

  But there were graver problems. With the Exchequer in control of agents for collection, rather than of the actual collection of revenues, administration of the Crown’s finances was inefficient, corrupt and above all laggardly. Actual receipts were particularly low at the start of his reign, so that early on the King had to resort to the traditional monarchical expedient of high-interest loans in order to keep going at all. Prudent men like Sir George Downing were found advocating the punctual payment of the interest on the Treasury loans at least – in order to uphold the King’s credit abroad.

  Yet Charles II had little choice. Not only was austerity in a sovereign impossible to conceive in a body politic where rank was very much demonstrated by outward display – a fact amply borne out by the household accounts of the great magnates of the day, some of which vied with and even surpassed those of the King in generosity. But the very prestige of the nation seemed bound up with the appearance of the monarchy.

  It was in keeping with his subjects’ aspirations, therefore, as well as his own that the King now embarked on preparations for two ceremonies with their origins rooted deep in English history. He would hold a ceremony for the installation of the new Knights of the Garter – the first for twenty years. And after that, with even more magnificence, would follow the coronation, the joyous celebration of all that had happened over the last twelve months since that suppliant message had come from the House of Commons: that the King should come into his own again.

  1 The King’s language remained moderate. ‘Oddsfish’ – his favourite expletive – was in fairly common use in the seventeenth century; it occurs in the work of Otway, Congreve and Vanbrugh. It was a corruption of God’s Flesh, as the nineteenth-century ‘Golly’ stood for God.

  2 But Le Sueur’s equestrian statue of Charles I was re-erected on the site of the regicides’ executions, with a pedestal designed by Wren, executed by Grinling Gibbons. It can still be seen at Charing Cross, and is regularly adorned with wreaths on 30 January, the anniversary of the death of Charles I.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Best of Queens

  The best of Queens, the most obedient wife …

  His life the theme of her eternal prayer –

  John Dryden on Catharine of Braganza

  The Garter ceremony of April 1661 was a moving time for those who remembered the old order. The coronation of King Charles II, which took place immediately afterwards, on 23 April, was however more of a public demonstration of the strength of the new, as modern leaders parade their troops and armaments before the eyes of foreign ambassadors.

  The Garter procession took place by ancient custom at Windsor on 15 April, but there was such a plethora of Knights to be installed that the ceremonies had to be staggered over three days.1 Princes like James Duke of York and Rupert of the Rhine, for instance, had received the Garter from Charles I at Oxford in 1645, but sixteen years later had never been installed. The ceremony itself had not been held since Charles I left London on the eve of the war.

  The new Knights’ hatchments, and those of the Elector of Brandenburg and the late William of Orange, were now hung up for the first time. That loyal servant, the Duke of Ormonde, whose Garter was a fitting reward for all his efforts in exile, was there to swear his oath in person. It was however significant that the Knights’ costumes had been redesigned along more elaborate lines. Possibly they were influenced by the French King’s Knights of the Saint Esprit:2 if so, it was part of the general new admiration of the English for French Court ceremonial.

  The coronation began as a piece of panoply in which much attention was paid to the presumed wishes of the populace.3 On the eve of his coronation, for example, the King took part in the traditional procession from the Tower of London to Whitehall, which was officially described as ‘a spectacle so grateful [pleasing] to the people’. He trod the same route as the mediaeval kings such as Richard II.fn1

  Like modern coronations, this procession demanded an early start; everyone had to be mustered on Tower Hill by eight o’clock in the morning. What was more, they had to take care that their mounts were not ‘unruly or stinking’. As a result, John Evelyn felt able to comment favourably on the elegance of the prancing horses. Pepys, on the other hand, showed his particular interests by noting that the houses along the route had wealthy carpets and ladies (an interesting example of zeugma) hung out of their windows.4

  Once again the conduits in the streets ran with wine, as on Restoration Day. But this time the streets were railed, and gravelled. As the foot guards of the King passed, their plumes of red and white feathers contrasting with the black and white of the Duke of York’s guard, they represented the established order – and monarchical strength. The coronation medal bore the royal oak bursting into leaf and the appropriate motto Iam Florescit – now it flourishes. This was the Crown triumphant, come out of its hiding-place.

  The symbolic references of the triumphal arches under which the King passed made the same point.5 One arch supported a woman dressed as Rebellion, in a crimson robe crawling with snakes, a bloody sword in her hand. Her attendant, Confusion, was represented by a deformed s
hape, with the ruins of a castle on her head, a torn crown, and broken sceptres in each hand. At every turn it was heavily emphasized that the King himself stood, in contrast, for stability – for the whole social order. The dialogue between the figures of Rebellion and Monarchy, for example, went along simple lines, Rebellion beginning with ‘I am Hell’s daughter, Satan’s eldest child’, and Monarchy replying in valiant style, ‘To Hell foul Fiend, shrink from this glorious light….’ And so on and so on, for what to the King under his canopy must have surely seemed a very long time indeed, for all the impeccable nature of the sentiments.

  The pleasantest arch to encounter was probably that supporting the woman Plenty, who addressed the King in the following glowing terms:

  Great Sir, the Star which at your happy Birth

  Joy’d with his Beams (at Noon) the wandering earth;

  Did with auspicious lustre then presage

  The glittering plenty of this Golden age….

  Glittering plenty was exactly what the King needed.

  A certain amount of it had already been expended on replacing the regalia essential to any decent coronation, most of which had disappeared or been melted down during the Interregnum. A committee had sat regularly to produce the requirements, retaining the ‘old names, and fashion’, and the total cost was over £30,000.6 The figure however was not really surprising, considering the determination to crown the King in style and the elaborate paraphernalia needed, including two crowns (one of which was known as St Edward’s crown, as before) and a quantity of ceremonial apparel for the King himself. The coronation ceremonial demanded, it seemed, an unceasing change of clothing for the monarch.7 Most of it was made of cloth of gold or some equally costly substance, from the King’s golden sandals with high heels (which must have made him tower over the assorted bishops and nobles around him) to his series of mantles of crimson velvet furred with ermine; even his under trousers, breeches and stockings were made of crimson satin. Rich golden tissue was also needed for the chairs of state. Then there was the horse of state, whose saddle was richly embroidered with pearls and gold, and although a large oriental ruby was donated by a jeweller named William Gomeldon, the further twelve thousand stones needed for the stirrups and bosses were only lent.