Divorced, Beheaded, Died: The History of Britain's Kings and Queens in Bite-Sized Chunks (10 page)

Cromwell was married to Elizabeth Bouchier and had nine children.

C
HARLES
II

Reigned 1660–1685

Whatever the deficiencies of Charles II as a king, he kept his crown while his father and brother both lost theirs. This speaks much for his likeable personality and his ability to judge public opinion.

He was born in 1630 at St James’s Palace in London, the son of Charles I and Henrietta Maria. As a teenager he served with his father’s armies in the Civil War for a while, but was sent to his mother in France when the Royalists began to fear defeat. Shortly after his father was executed in 1649, he was crowned King of Scotland, but his attempt to restore the English monarchy with the support of a Scottish army was ended by Cromwell at the Battle of Worcester. Charles spent six dangerous weeks hiding from Cromwell’s Roundheads (a name used in reference to the typical Puritan close-cropped hairstyle) before finding a ship to take him back to France.

In 1659 the Protectorate collapsed and negotiations began to restore Charles to the throne, which led to the Declaration of Breda, in which the conditions for Charles’ acceptance of the crown were laid out. A pardon was given to all participants in the Civil War except those who had signed Charles I’s death warrant, and a new Royalist Parliament was elected. On 29 May 1660, a triumphant Charles arrived in London, to be greeted by enthusiastic crowds who were thrilled to see the end of the grim Puritan regime. According to contemporary observer John Evelyn: ‘This day came in his Majestie Charles the 2d to London after a sad and long exile...the ways strawed with flowers, the bells ringing, the streets hung with tapistry, fountains running with wine...All this without one drop of blood...it was the Lord’s doing...’ Cromwell’s body was dug up and hanged at Tyburn and the regicides hanged, drawn and quartered.

The scenes of celebration that greeted Charles’s arrival in London set the tone for the rest of his reign. Charles had an easy charm, a lazy disposition and a roving eye, and he loved frivolity, extravagance and pretty women. He had many mistresses – including the high-spirited actress Nell Gwyn who called herself the ‘Protestant Whore’ to differentiate herself from the French Catholic Louise de Kéroualle, whom she nicknamed ‘Squintabella’. He fathered sixteen illegitimate children, but his wife, Catherine of Braganza, failed to provide him with an heir. He was interested in science and patronized the Royal Society which, with Robert Hooke, Isaac Newton and Christopher Wren as its members, set in place the foundations for Britain’s leading role in the development of the sciences.

But Charles’s reign had many difficulties. He had to deal with the devastation wreaked by the plague in 1665 and the Great Fire of London in 1666. There were serious divisions between Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans that threatened to destabilize the country. Anti-Catholic feelings ran high and Charles’s decision to ally with Louis XIV against the Dutch was unpopular. With no heir and a Catholic brother, James, set to inherit, Charles had to show his metal against the Protestants in Parliament, the Whigs, who tried to exclude James from the throne. That Charles succeeded in preserving James’s inheritance without starting another civil war is one of his main achievements. Charles died in Whitehall Palace in 1685 from a stroke.

J
AMES
II

Reigned 1685–1688

Unlike his brother, Charles II, James learned all the wrong lessons from the execution of his father. He was aloof, arrogant and believed compromise was a fatal sign of weakness. He therefore lost his kingdom, to his own daughter, Mary, and son-in-law, William.

James was born in 1633 at St James’s Palace in London. He was captured by the Roundheads in 1646, but managed to escape in 1648, disguised as a girl. He spent the next few years in exile, but he returned to England when his brother was restored to the throne in 1660. He had considerable experience of command, having served in the English, French and Spanish armies, and was made Lord High Admiral. Like his brother, he had widespread affairs and in 1660 was forced to marry Anne Hyde, daughter of the Earl of Clarendon, as she was pregnant. She went on to bear him eight children, but only two daughters, Mary and Anne, survived. James converted to Catholicism in the 1660s, which caused his brother tremendous difficulties. In 1673, James was forced to resign from office and went into exile briefly. When Anne died, he married the devoutly Catholic Mary of Modena, which further antagonized his Protestant opponents.

When Charles died in 1685, the country initially rallied to James, and Parliament supported him in the face of a dangerous Protestant rebellion led by Charles’s bastard son, the Duke of Monmouth. The revolt was brutally suppressed and James had his nephew Monmouth beheaded.

James sought to remove anti-Catholic laws by a policy of religious toleration. He expanded the army and forced the appointment of Catholics to prominent positions. The problem was that he pushed his reforms through too quickly. This alarmed the Protestants, who feared a king with a standing army bent on the restoration of Catholicism, which was linked in British minds with totalitarian rule. The situation deteriorated alarmingly when Mary of Modena, succeeding with her eleventh pregnancy, bore him a son, James. Protestants claimed the pregnancy was false and that another baby had been smuggled into the birthing room in a warming pan. Those who had been happy to accept a Catholic king in his late middle age felt that a Catholic dynasty threatened the end of the Church of England. English bishops refused to support James’s policy of tolerance and were imprisoned in the Tower, and anti-Catholic rioting took place in London and elsewhere.

To force a solution, leading Protestant lords invited James’s Protestant daughter, Mary, to take the throne. In November 1688 her husband and first cousin, William of Orange, landed in Torbay with an invasion force and marched slowly towards London. As they marched, James’s support gradually melted away. Eventually, he lost confidence and fled, although he was soon captured and returned to London. William encouraged him to go into exile and he was allowed to leave for France, effectively abdicating the throne. In 1690, James made an attempt to reclaim the crown with the support of the Catholic Irish, but his forces were crushed by William at the Battle of the Boyne and he returned to exile in France, where he died in 1701.

M
ARY
II

Reigned 1689–1694

AND
W
ILLIAM
III

Reigned 1689– 1702

William and Mary are the only couple in British history who reigned as joint monarchs. When Mary was asked to take the throne on the abdication of her father James II in 1688, she insisted that her husband and cousin William should rule with her. As William was James II’s nephew and was third in line to the throne after Mary and her sister Anne, this was considered acceptable.

As Stadtholder of Holland, William was one of the leading Protestants in Europe. His marriage to Mary in 1677 sealed an alliance between two Protestant powers which had only recently been at war. The accession of Mary’s Catholic father, James II, to the throne of England in 1685 created some difficulties, but William sent troops to help James crush the Duke of Monmouth’s Protestant rebellion. However, by 1688 further concessions to Catholicism had alarmed the English and leading Protestant aristocrats invited William and Mary to take the throne.

William’s decision to invade in November of that year with some 20,000 troops was a brave one. The chances of a disastrous storm were high at that time of year and the welcome he would receive in England was entirely uncertain. But there was no storm and the invasion was unopposed – in fact the Glorious Revolution was a resounding success. In London, Mary and William accepted the Bill of Rights, which provided that the monarchy should be Protestant, that Parliament should be called regularly, that there should be no standing army without parliamentary permission, and that no monarch should dispense or suspend English laws. This in effect established England as a constitutional monarchy, although the monarch remained the leading power in the land, still with the power to veto new laws suggested by Parliament.

William’s chief foreign policy was the war against France. He met opposition from Tory MPs, who resented the high taxation needed to pursue a war that some felt benefited Holland more than England. William spent long periods of his reign in Ireland, leaving Mary to rule in his absence.

The formation of the Bank of England in 1694 and the creation of the National Debt solved the financial crisis that had handicapped English monarchs from the fifteenth century to the end of the seventeenth century. It has been suggested that the National Debt was a necessary precondition of the formation of the British Empire, which required the defeat of France in Canada, the West Indies and India.

Mary died of smallpox in 1694, leaving no surviving children. After her death her sister Anne allowed William to continue to reign, and he did so until his death in 1702.

A
NNE

Reigned 1702–1714

Anne was born in 1665 at St James’s Palace to James II and his first wife, Anne Hyde. She was brought up as a Protestant, and in 1683 she married Prince George of Denmark, another northern European Protestant power. Her mother died when she was very young and her father married the Catholic Mary of Modena, whom Anne disliked. She played an important part in the fall of her father by giving credence to rumours that her stepmother had secretly switched her stillborn baby with someone else’s live one in order to secure a Catholic dynasty. She fed information to her older sister Mary and her husband William of Orange about James II’s deteriorating position, and she knew that William was preparing to invade in 1688, but did not warn her father. When the invasion proved successful, she gave her permission for William to become joint monarch with her sister, and when Mary died she set aside her claim to the throne until William died.

After William’s death in 1702 she finally became queen, with Prince George as her consort. George remained very much in the background. William III once said of him, ‘I’ve tried him drunk and I’ve tried him sober but there’s nothing in him,’ but by all accounts Anne and George had a happy, loving marriage. Plain and increasingly plump, Anne did not cut a regal figure, but she was good-natured and generous, and she was much loved by her subjects. She conceived at least nineteen children, but sadly only one, William, survived for any length of time, and he too died at the age of eleven.

Anne was involved in one of the most famous royal friendships. Sarah Jennings, later the wife of the Duke of Marlborough, became Anne’s favourite and they used to address each other as Mrs Morley and Mrs Freeman in correspondance, to avoid the tedious formality normally required between sovereign and subject.

Perhaps the most important legacy of Anne’s rule was England’s political union with Scotland, which was masterminded by her Whig government. The Acts of Union were passed by both Scottish and English Parliaments in 1707, which merged both kingdoms and their Parliaments. Robert Burns wrote about the widespread bribery necessary to persuade the Scots to the Union: ‘We were bought and sold for English gold.’ England and Scotland had had the same monarchs since the accession of James I in 1603, but now the two countries were united as the Kingdom of Great Britain.

Anne’s reign was also dominated by the War of Spanish Succession, with England supporting Archduke Charles in his efforts to claim the Spanish throne. She placed the brilliant Duke of Marlborough in charge of English forces, and he had success after success. The Battle of Blenheim in 1704 is considered to be one of the turning points in European history, one that prevented France from dominating Europe. As the war became more unpopular at home, Anne fell out with her Whig supporters and turned to the Tories instead, forcing Marlborough out of power. However, the war ended in 1713, with the Treaty of Utrecht, with Britain gaining some considerable territory in North America and the right to ship slaves to the Spanish colonies. Anne died a year later in 1714 due to complications from gout.

The House of Hanover

George the First was always reckon’d

Vile – but viler George the Second;

And what mortal ever heard

Any good of George the Third?

When from earth the Fourth descended,

God be praised, the Georges ended.

W. S. Landor

This poem may be a little cruel but the Georges were not popular. Germans from Hanover, they only got the job because they were Protestant.  William IV was perhaps the most pleasant of them, but it was Queen Victoria who undoubtedly saved the dynasty’s reputation and restored respect for the royals.  However, as a woman she could not rule Hanover itself, which became once more independent of England.  Victoria married Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, another small independent state in Germany, thus renaming the dynasty.  This name stayed in use until the First World War, through the reign of Edward VII and part of the reign of George V.

G
EORGE
I

Reigned 1714–1727

George was born in Hanover in 1660 to the Duke of Brunswick and Sophia Stuart. He was fifty-eighth in line to the throne when Queen Anne died, but the first fifty-seven were Catholic, so the throne was passed to him as the senior member of the Protestant branch of the family, which was descended from James I’s daughter, Elizabeth.

George would rather have stayed in Hanover, and the British were less than delighted with a fifty-four-year-old king who could speak virtually no English. He had proved his leadership qualities in battle and government back in Hanover, but he was perceived as dull, lacking in appropriate manners and used to unlimited power. He kept his beautiful but unfaithful wife, Sophia Dorothea, with whom he had two children, incarcerated until her death, and he was accused of murdering her lover. He brought his German mistress, Melusine von der Schulenburg (nicknamed ‘Maypole’ because she was very tall and thin), to England and fathered three royal bastards by her. His half-sister, Baroness Sophia von Kielmansegg, was also alleged to be his lover. She was nicknamed ‘the Elephant’ as she was short and fat.

Despite the criticisms against him, however, George evidently had a cool head, because he steered the country through a series of difficult crises. He stood firm during the Jacobite uprising of 1715, when the Scots rose in support of the Catholic James Stuart, the Old Pretender, son of James II. Riots broke out in major cities and an invasion force marched as far south as Preston in Lancashire, failed to raise sufficient recruits and was easily defeated in the last battle ever to take place on English soil.

The rebellion had been supported by many Tories, leaving the King dependent upon the Whigs. His lack of familiarity with the British system, poor grasp of English and frequent trips to Hanover increased the independence of his ministers, although George still insisted on controlling foreign affairs and exercised his powers of patronage to influence Parliament. He was further weakened by the creation of an opposition of dissident Whigs that formed around the King’s son, Prince George, who hated his father for locking up his mother.

In the face of widespread disgust at corruption and amid continuing Jacobite plots, a Whig politician, Robert Walpole, presided over a reconciliation between the King and his son. After skilfully handling the South Sea Bubble crisis of 1720 – when the South Sea Company collapsed, ruining many investors – Walpole helped re-establish confidence in the economy, government and monarchy. His position became almost unassailable, and a fundamental shift in the balance of power in government took place. The King had been actively in charge of government; now Walpole was the ‘prime minister’ (originally a title of abuse), working with a cabinet and taking advice but not orders from the monarch. Nonetheless, to stay in power he needed to retain the King’s confidence, as well as Parliament’s.

In 1727, the King returned to Hanover to arrange his wife’s burial – seven months after her death – but he died en route after a stroke. Nobody bothered to bring his body back for a state funeral.

G
EORGE
II

Reigned 1727–1760

George was born in 1683 in Hanover, the son of George I and Sophia Dorothea. He was brought up as a German prince. He was naturalized as a British citizen in 1705 and, unlike his father, he spoke English, albeit with a strong German accent. He was not particularly bright or hard-working but he left most of the decision-making to his government, which laid the foundations for the world’s greatest empire.

He married Caroline of Ansbach in 1705, a wise choice as she was bright, beautiful, put up with his mistresses without complaint and was popular with her English subjects. She had ten pregnancies but only seven surviving children. It was said that she was the real power behind the throne:

You may strut, dapper George, but ’twill all be in vain,

We all know ’tis Queen Caroline, not you, that reign.

However, she could not help George get on with his father. They had a terrible relationship and eventually, after a public row at the christening of a short-lived son, George set up a rival court at Leicester House and gathered together opposition to his father’s government.

When George became king on the death of his father in 1727, Robert Walpole continued as prime minister of a Whig government, with the support of the influential Caroline. Walpole followed a policy of peace and secured majorities in Parliament by judicious use of patronage and bribery. But in 1740 Britain, against Walpole’s better instincts, became embroiled in the War of Austrian Succession, allying with Austria against France, Prussia and Spain, largely in order to reduce France’s power. Eventually the war became unpopular – it was felt that Britain’s involvement was because of the King’s Hanoverian connection, as Hanover was threatened by a French invasion – and Walpole was forced out in 1742. George was the last king to personally lead his army to war at the Battle of Dettingen in 1743.

In 1745 the French retaliated by supporting the Young Pretender’s bid for the throne. Charles Edward Stuart, aka Bonnie Prince Charlie, James II’s grandson, landed in Scotland to restore the Stuart’s position that had been lost following James II’s abdication. With the support of the Highland forces, he defeated the British troops at the Battle of Prestonpans. They pressed on into England, but turned back at Derby. Back in Scotland, at Culloden, the Duke of Cumberland (George’s younger son) led a largely professional army which destroyed the ill-disciplined and ill-equipped Scottish army. Those who fled were hunted down and executed or imprisoned, though Charlie escaped.

George’s relationship with his eldest son Frederick, the Prince of Wales, was uncannily similar to the one he had with his own father – they hated each other. Frederick set up his own rival court at Leicester House, where he opposed everything his father did. George was said to have been glad when Frederick died from a burst lung abscess after being hit by a cricket or tennis ball.

George took even more of a back seat during his later years, allowing the Whig government, dominated by William Pitt the Elder, to run the country and develop Britain into the world’s leading colonial power, with the defeat of France in Canada, the West Indies and India. He died in 1760 at Kensington Palace of a stroke, while on the lavatory.

G
EORGE
III

Reigned 1760–1820

George III was Britain’s longest-reigning male monarch and the first of the Georges to be born and raised in England. Nicknamed ‘Farmer George’, he was generally a good, hard-working man who was devoted to his German wife Charlotte and his fifteen children, and genuinely enjoyed spending time with his subjects. But he was responsible for the worst foreign relations disaster in British history and spent a good portion of his reign mentally incapable of governing the country.

George was the son of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and he succeeded his grandfather George II. Unlike his German predecessors, his understanding of the English system led him to want to govern the country in the traditional manner of English kings. Unfortunately, this was in conflict with recent trends and Whig ideas, and a period of weak government and some calamitous decisions ensued, such as those which resulted in the loss of Britain’s thirteen colonies in North America. The King felt that the colonists should help pay for the costs of the Seven Years War, which had forced the French out of North America. A stamp duty tax and then a tax on tea led from small token resistance to a full-scale and well-organized secession movement.

In late 1783 matters were improved when William Pitt the Younger became prime minister at the age of twenty-four. There followed nearly fifty years of general political continuity, with Pitt and Lord Liverpool acting as prime minister for a total of thirty-four years between them. This stability reinforced the idea that the government of the country was the responsibility of the prime minister and his cabinet, who reported to Parliament.

In foreign policy, George’s reign was dominated by the issue of American independence and the Napoleonic Wars, which saw Britain fighting for survival. The famous victories against the French at Trafalgar and Waterloo emphasized a changing role for Britain as the world’s leading power.

On the domestic front, the excesses of the French Revolution and fears of a British follow-up led to a curtailment of Britain’s famous liberties – the suspension of
habeas corpus
(protection against unlawful detainment) and the banning of trade unions. An Irish independence movement was savagely put down and Ireland was incorporated into the renamed United Kingdom. King George personally prevented William Pitt from allowing Catholics the vote, so the new Irish contingent in Parliament was exclusively Protestant, and Catholics were excluded, with disastrous long-term consequences. On the bright side, however, the beginnings of the agricultural and industrial revolutions led to Britain dominating the production of goods in a way that had never been seen before.

George suffered from his first bout of madness in 1788, when he was reportedly seen talking to a tree, thinking that it was the King of Prussia. He recovered, but his mental faculties were never the same again, and in 1811 he slipped into terminal madness, whereupon his son George became regent. It has been suggested he was suffering from porphyria, a mental illness sometimes triggered by arsenic (which was present in a popular remedy that George took). He lingered on until 1820, when he died of pneumonia.

G
EORGE
IV

Reigned 1820–1830

George IV was a man of great taste and was one of the greatest royal connoisseurs of art and culture. He was often warm and generous, but he was also selfish, lazy, gluttonous, licentious and extravagant. He was very unpopular and became a figure of fun, often being referred to as the ‘Prince of Whales’ due to his size. George III was appalled by his son’s profligate lifestyle and his early support for the liberal policies of Charles James Fox and the Whigs.