"King Charles II" by Antonia Fraser

They say that biographers fall in love with their subjects. Antonia Fraser seems to be one of many ladies to have fallen for the charms of King Charles II.

I can understand how the similarities have promoted the affection:

• Antonia Fraser is pro-royalty; she herself believes she is entitled to be called 'Lady' Antonia Fraser because she is the daughter of a hereditary earl. 
• Antonia Fraser is a Roman Catholic and Charles allegedly became a Catholic on his deathbed

But the biographer's bias shows. She appears to believe that Charles was an astute political operator whose reign brought blessings on his realm. I think Charles was lucky to become King after eighteen years of civil war and republicanism, when the republican government was in chaos after the death of Cromwell so that consequently people were frightened of a return to civil war. He had a long honeymoon period as a result of this but as his reign went on things started going wrong. For example, five years after he was restored there was the Great Plague, the year after brought both the Great Fire of London and the disastrous Anglo-Dutch naval war. And then the mask of the Merry Monarch started to slip:

• He called Parliament regularly in order to squeeze taxes from them to fund his extravagant court and his wars; when they sought legislation he regularly prorogued parliament to prevent this happening.
• Printers and publishers were pilloried and penalized for producing dissenting opinions. (C 25)
• He tried to ensure that the judiciary were Tory and insisted that they held their posts not, as before, until they did something to forfeit them, but at the royal pleasure. “By the end of 1683 eleven judges had been removed - at the King's wish.” (C 25)
• Members of Parliament who disagreed with him were, sometimes, locked up in the Tower. There was a debate about whether the King’s prorogation of Parliament had exceeded the limits so that Parliament was automatically dissolved (which would require a General Election before a new Parliament could be called. “The King was furious.” The leaders of the opposition were imprisoned in the Tower. (C 21) 
• He tried to gerrymander Parliament. At the time MPs were selected by chartered cities and boroughs. He found pretexts to withdraw a number of charters of places that returned MPs he didn't like and amended the charters so that the appointment of corporation officials was subject to a veto from the King; since these were the people who selected the MPs he was effectively trying to 'stack' parliament. “The excuse for giving for calling in the charter of York had at least a nice period touch to it. The Lord Mayor was said to have refused a mountebank permission to erect a stage, although the fellow had been recommended by the King himself.” (C 25) “The varied popular reaction was less important than the fact that the warrants on the new charters all contained the vital clause which gave the King a veto over the election of the officers. Suitable Tory figures locally would see to it that equally suitable Tory figures were returned to Westminster.” (C 25)
• He ruled for long periods without Parliament. Since he was therefore unable to raise extra taxes he made a secret treaty with the King of France (Louis XIV) who paid him secret subsidies. He therefore became an English King in the pay of a French one (and this secretly so that the public, Parliament and indeed most of his ministers, never found out). One would have thought this would have been an impeachable offence in any other person but Antonia Fraser never censures Charles. 

AF chronicles all these things but seems content with them. It seems that an autocratic ruler is OK with her provided that he is charming (and, of course, with the true royal blood running in his veins).

For example, in 1673, Charles indulges in that typical gesture of autocrats, a display of military might. 

“When he drew up the army at Blackheath in the autumn of 1673, it was a gesture widely interpreted as menacing towards the capital. But no evidence has ever been found that Charles II intended to parody in such a way the actions (and mistakes) of his predecessor Cromwell.” (C 20) Although AF acknowledges that it was "widely interpreted as menacing" she acquits Charles of any such intent and at the same time manages to smear Cromwell who, if he was an autocrat, had at least achieved his position through merit rather than by virtue of his parents.

As with so many histories and biographies I was enchanted by some of the details:

• Charles was so dark he was nicknamed The Black Boy, a name still commemorated in English pub signs. (C 1)
• At the Battle of Edgehill the young princes Charles and James “were left in the charge of Dr William Harvey, the famous physician” (C 2)
• When Charles was in exile in France, it was the time of the Fronde “from the stone bearing sling” rebellion (C 4)
• In France the Peace of Westphalia which ended the Thirty Years War was swiftly followed by the Fronde rebellion: “The granary of this particular peace contained within it the seeds of popular dissidence” (C 5)
• Attempting to escape England, Charles missed one boat because the captain was locked in his bedroom by his wife who suspected he was having an affair. (C 8)
• The word yacht comes from the Dutch jaght schip (hunt ship). (C 11) 
• When Charles's new bride, Portuguese Catherine of Braganza, arrived in England “one of her first actions was to ask for a cup of tea ... tea drinking had been known in England before this date but it was extremely rare.” (C 13)
• The ‘CABAL’ of Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley and Lauderdale gained power after the downfall of Hyde. (C 16)
• “In November 1670 the Dublin Gazette actually ceased to appear on the wonderful - for Ireland - grounds that ‘there was no news’.” (C 19)
• When the king had a fever he was cured by “by ‘the Jesuit’s powder’, actually an early form of quinine imported from the South American bark cinchona.” (C 23)

Other memorable moments:

• “Less admirable attributes may take root in the wintry soil of adversity. These include the ability to mislead or trick” (C 6)
• “Having lit a candle to the devil, King Charles II could not expect other lights to shine as well.” (C 6)
• “The Scots were probably not a people it was immediately possible to love, if you had been nurtured in the courts of England and France.” (C 6)
• The Duke of Buckingham “sulked in the most childish and public manner ... refusing to change his linen in protest.” (C 7)
• “Frances Stewart could claim to have possessed the heart, as opposed to that more frequently bestowed gift, the body of King Charles II.” (C 15)
• The General Election of 1679 was “marked by such heavy drinking on all sides that ‘Sober Societies’ were later formed in towns - an interesting example of locking the stable door after the horse has fully refreshed itself.” (C 22)
• The Duke of Monmouth: “He could not ... conceive of a course of action or an opinion without wishing to give it immediate expression. ... he was one of nature's roosters and could not emulate a mole to save his life.” (C 22)
• “As Buckingham rightly observed, a King is supposed to be the Father of his People, and Charles II was certainly the father of a good many of them.” (C 24)
• In 1682 the Duke of York was “shipwrecked off Yarmouth with much loss of life, although as James himself rather callously remarked, no one ‘of quality’ was drowned. ... It was his entourage who beat off the desperate ‘lesser’ passengers with their swords.” (C 25)

An interesting biography of a monarch but rather spoiled by the biographer's obvious bias. Charles II was a charming man who, probably because the English were still scarred from the Civil War, managed to preserve his throne despite his absolutist policies. His brother lasted only three years following the same direction before being overthrown and replaced with the first monarch who ruled with Parliament, rather than despite them. 

December 2019, 469 pages

Also written by Antonia Fraser:

• The Gunpowder Plot

"Leviathan" by David Scott

This is a history of England from the Battle of Bosworth which ended the Wars of the Roses and inaugurated the Tudor dynasty in 1485 to the Peace of Paris which ended the American War of Independence in 1783. It therefore charts the rise of Britain from a state riven with internal dissension to the pre-eminent world power. Scott's case seems to be that this was largely the product of luck. England happened to go Protestant because Henry VIII wanted a male heir. The delicate bloom of Protestantism managed to survive because Mary Tudor died young and Elizabeth survived and the Armada failed. Nevertheless, England tore itself apart again in the Stuart Civil Wars and still somehow managed to survive.

And this is where I found Scott's arguments rather weak. It seems to me that Britain had a significant underlying strength, a resilience, which enabled it repeatedly to bounce back. Fundamentally, despite the fact that the monarch was always strapped for cash (except for Henry VIII who extravagantly wasted not only the secure finances bequeathed to him by his father but also the windfall from the Dissolution of the Monasteries), the country seems to have kept wealthy.

The Dutch Republic was the model: it too was wealthy because of trade and because of innovative financial systems such as Banks and joint-stock companies and its wealth enabled it to survive the seventy year rebellion against the much more powerful Spanish and Hapsburgs combined.

Whilst England and Holland were prospering, Spain with all the wealth it looted from the Americas was lurching from bankruptcy to bankruptcy and the dominant militarism of Louis XIV's France bequeathed an equally debt-ridden crown to his successors. But England, although never being a land power, bankrolled troops across the continent, paid for a Navy and (crucially) the on-shore infrastructure to support it, and still made increasing profits from trade.

In summary, despite Scott's apparent attempt to debunk the Whig view of history, he left me thinking that it cannot have been solely luck that saw Britain's rise. Instead, I would suggest, the clearing out of old orders inherent in both the Monastic reforms of Henry VIII and the Cromwellian Republic, and the growth of Protestantism hand-in-hand with literacy led to a social structure in England that was able to innovate, progress and prosper.

This book never really surmounted its essential problem which was that as a history of nearly three hundred years it was spread too thinly. At the same time it was often slow. I found it mostly heavy going.

June 2014; 465 pages

"Samuel Pepys: The unequalled self" by Claire Tomalin

This is a massively readable biography about a key player in the dramas of restoration politics.

I knew Pepys wrote a diary and recorded the Great Fire of London; I knew he was involved as a civil servant with the navy. I had not realised how much he played a part in so many of the key historical events of his time.

He was the son of a London tailor. Fortunately his uncle lived in a farmhouse in Brampton near Edward Montagu, a prominent Huntingdon landowner from Hinchingbrooke House, who knew and fought with Oliver Cromwell. Through this connection Pepys was sponsored to go to St Pauls School (he truanted for the day to watch the execution of Charles I) and thence to Magdalen Cambridge. He then started working for Montagu who became an important naval admiral under the Commonwealth. After Cromwell (referred to regally as Oliver) died and the Commonwealth under his son Richard began to dissolve into factions, Montague changed sides with brilliant timing and Pepys travelled to Holland with him to pick up Charles II and James, Duke of York, to take them back to England. Montagu became the Earl of Sandwich and Pepys received a significant boost to his career and an important role in naval administration.

He worked hard with the navy for many years. Not only did he get a decent salary but he also received presents from the many people who sought naval contracts (though goodness knows why they wanted to do work for the navy because the typical Stuart court never paid its bills). His career did not suffer when the Dutch sailed down the Thames to the Medway and burnt the dockyards in 1667, exposing a scandalous inadequacy in Britain's preparedness during war. His first setback was when he became a member of parliament and was attacked for being a Catholic by Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury (who was effectively Britain's first Prime Minister and inventor of the party system lisitng all MPs as either 'w' for worthy or 'v' for vile; Shaftesbury started the anti-Catholic, anti-Stuart Whig party and Pepys was a Tory). Though Pepys was not a Catholic he was tolerant and employed Catholics and his (now dead) wife was French and in the feverish atmosphere of Titus Oates and the Papist plot these were enough to have him thrown into the Tower (though acquitted at trial) and for him to lose his job. He spent five years in the wilderness (during which time he attended Charles II at Newmarket in an attempt to win a job back but only succeeded in taking down Charles's account of his escape after the Battle of Worcester including oak tree) before the Duke of York (who had been Britain's Lord High Admiral and as such respected Pepys's abilities) succeeded his brother as James II. Pepys then became, in effect, the Minister for the Navy. Of course James was forced into exile in three short years and Pepys once again lost his job (and briefly earned another spell in the Tower as a suspected Jacobite). He then retired.

As well as all this, he was a member of the Royal Society and mates with Hooke, Wren, Evelyn, Halley and Newton. He was President in 1684 when he commissioned the History of Fish that took all the Society's spare cash and meant that Principia had to be privately printed.

So Pepys had a fascinating life and Tomalin tells the story well.

As well as Montagu/ Sandwich Pepys's other early patron was George Carteret. Carteret had been de Carteret but changed his name on joining the Navy because it sounded too French. As governor of Jersey he had held it for Charles I during the Civil War; he later worked for the Commonwealth Navy and changed with perfect timing during the Restoration. He retired to 'Hawnes' which later became Haynes Park in Bedfordshire near Ampthill.

After his first wife died Pepys took a common law wife who lived in Woodhall near Hatfield.

"High Life Low Morals; the duel that shook Stuart society" by Victor Stater

This is a history book written like an adventure by a brilliant author. It really made me want to read on...

Baron Mohun (pronounced Moon) and the Duke of Hamilton are engaged in a long running court case over an inheritance that was in the Hamilton family but bequeathed to the Mohuns. Since both families were desperately hard up, the estate was needed for solvency. Since Mohun was a leading Whig politician ( member of the Kit Kat Club) while Hamilton was a Tory on the Jacobite wing there was scope for fantastic dislike. Neither man was a stranger to violence, indeed Mohun had been tried for two murders before their shocking duel.

Set against a colourful background of the Tory Whig politics of the post James II era (including the Ac of Union with Scotland in which Hamilton was the leader of the opposition until he sold out), and the dissolute life of the Stuart nobility this is a brilliantly told history.

A page turner.

August 2010; 289 pages