Charles II of England

Biography

Charles II was eleven years old when his father raised his standard at Nottingham, and twenty-one when he watched his last army destroyed at Worcester and began six weeks of desperate fugitive adventure across England — hiding in an oak tree, sleeping in haystacks, carried by fishing boat to France — before beginning nine years of impoverished exile at various European courts. He was tall, dark, intelligent, and had learned from watching his father's inflexible dignity destroy everything they had: he would be flexible, charming, and patient. When he returned to England in 1660 it was on Parliament's terms. His reign was one of pragmatic and sometimes cynical negotiation — he declared himself Catholic on his deathbed, the secret he had kept his whole reign. The Merry Monarch, his subjects called him; he had twenty known illegitimate children and no legitimate heir, a combination that would produce the constitutional crisis of the Exclusion Crisis and ultimately the Glorious Revolution after his death.

Key Battles