Charles I

The myths that surround the ultimately tragic rule of Charles I mask the realities of a courageous and uxorious king who fell foul of a bitter struggle between two sides of English Protestantism.

Nearly 400 years after his execution, Charles I’s actions and legacy continue to divide scholarly opinion.

Why do modern Britons still find it so hard to acknowledge their revolutionary past?

Clarendon’s great ‘History’ was composed largely in exile and published after his death. Hugh Trevor-Roper discusses how the historian had originally intended this great work to be private political advice to the King.

C.V. Wedgwood analyses the life, death, and influence of Thomas Wentworth, first earl of Strafford.

C. Northcote Parkinson describes the life and times of Jeffery Hudson of Oakham, Rutlandshire, a remarkable member of Charles I's court who nonetheless measured under three feet tall.

William M. Lamont profiles the Kentish Squire who introduced the “Root and Branch” Bill in 1641, only to later change his mind and fight for King Charles and the Established Church.

David Mitchell introduces a seventeenth-century politician who hoped to see the art of government reduced to an exact science, free from “the noise and dirt of party strife.”

C.V. Wedgwood recounts the circumstances the Earl of Arundel’s Embassy to Germany in 1636 as recounted in William Crowne’s Diary, the Earl’s letters and other contemporary sources.

Oliver Cromwell was at heart no republican; but he believed that God manifested His will through the triumphs or misfortunes that He awarded to those engaged in “great businesses”. Charles Ogilvie writes how Charles's continued misjudgments revealed that, if the world were to be made safe for the “Godly,” the King must be executed.