If you have just clicked on this link, then I suppose that you want to know more about King Charles I and King Charles II. My web page is about King Charles I and King Charles II so I suggest that you read on. I chose them for my report because they both influenced early colonial religions. Initially, they were noble, respected men of England. At other times though, I suspect, they were both not-so-respected imbeciles. First, I'll start with King Charles I, and then I'll go back and give information about King Charles II.

King Charles I was an ordinary king, but I can assure you that you really would not have liked him. He was not a very nice king and he was really selfish. Here is an example of how very selfish he was (prepare to cringe.)
King Charles I had been invited to Scotland. With him he had brought all the royal jewels. Before the ceremony took place, King Charles got so annoyed with the bagpipe music which he had always hated, that he ordered all of his procession back onto the ship and all the jewels to be quickly loaded on the ship to return to England immediately. In the crew's rush to please the impatient king, they loaded the ship very carelessly. As soon as they got out into deep water the ship sank. All the people were rescued by another ship, but the jewels sank to the bottom. Everyone in England was furious at the king for what he had done.
King Charles I was born at Dunfermline, Fife on 19 November 1600, Charles I was the second son of James VI and Anne of Denmark. Brought up in the south after his father inherited the throne of England in 1603, Charles was highly educated and deeply serious, with a sensitive appreciation of fine paintings, but he lacked James' first-hand knowledge of Scottish affairs. Charles left Scotland at the age of three, and his only visit to Scotland after his accession was in 1633, when he was crowned King of Scots. In the meantime, the Scottish Privy Council administered Scotland; the Scottish Parliament was overshadowed by the General Assembly of the Kirk.

James had introduced bishops into the Church of Scotland without too much opposition, but Charles' attempts to strengthen their position met with much resentment. Suspicious of his marriage to the French Roman Catholic, Henrietta Maria, and his insistence on an Anglican form of worship during his short coronation visit, the Scottish Presbyterians viewed Charles' efforts to impose a new Prayer Book as an attempt to revive what they saw as 'popery' in Scotland. The introduction of the Prayer Book provoked a riot in St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh. In February, 1638 his opponents drew up a National Covenant, professing loyalty to the crown but refusing to have anything to do with his ecclesiastical changes, until they had been approved by a free General Assembly and by Parliament.
Charles remained mule-like and determined to press ahead with his plans, and so when the General Assembly (the governing body of the Church of Scotland) met in Glasgow in November 1638, the delegates abolished the Episcopal government. The bishops fled, and Charles decided to use some force. The Bishops' Wars then broke out. However, the 'Short' Parliament in England, which was sympathetic to Scottish religious demands and shared the Scots' suspicions of Charles' aims, declined to pay for the campaign in Scotland. Charles capitulated in the end and peace was concluded with the Treaty of Ripon, 1640.
However, when Civil War erupted in England the following year, both the king and the English Parliament realized that the Scots could tip the balance. Although Charles had formally accepted the establishment of a Presbyterian form of government and a severely limited monarchy in 1641, Parliament reached agreement with the predominant Presbyterian group in the Scottish Parliament. The Solemn League and Covenant provided for an armed alliance, leaving Charles little choice but to back Montrose and his force of Highlanders (traditional opponents of the Presbyterians). Despite initial successes at Perth, Aberdeen and Inverlochy, Montrose's forces were crushed at Philiphaugh in 1645.

After his defeat at Naseby, Charles surrendered to the Scots in 1646 and entered into negotiation with them. However, he refused to give an undertaking that he would establish Presbyterianism in England, as it would mean (and I quote) 'the absolute destruction of the Monarchy'. The Scots handed him over to his English enemies in return for arrears of payment. After further abortive negotiations with the English Parliament, Charles returned to his talks with the Scots in December 1647. Under the 'Engagement', the Covenant was to be imposed on England with the establishment of a Presbyterian system and the army disbanded. The Scots' agreement to provide an army to restore Charles led to the second Civil War in the spring of 1648, which ended in Cromwell's victory at Preston.
There had been a document signed by many men that basically said that King Charles I was not a very good king (which he wasn't) and so stated that he could be executed if it was seen fit. Among these men were three men who came to be called The Three Judges. These men became so famous that they ended up having streets in Connecticut named after them. These men had lived for a while in a cave on top of West Rock in New Haven. These men's last names were Whalley, Dixwell and Goffe. They were among the only men that signed the document that were not executed for signing. This was because for a while they lived in a basement of a man named John Leetes. After a while, they realized that if they were discovered then not only would they be executed but so would Mr. Leetes. They were very considerate men and they didn't want Mr. Leetes to pay for being so nice to them. Because of that, they trekked for three days; all the way to New Haven, Connecticut. They need just about a three hundred and sixty degree view around New Haven to see whether the soldier that were searching for them were coming by land or by sea. They found the cave that they ended up living in. King Charles I was tried, and executed at Whitehall on 30 January 1649 for trying to rule England without Parliament.

After King Charles I was executed, Oliver Cromwell ruled England in place of a king until King Charles II was crowned king in 1660. That means that Oliver Cromwell ruled for ten years in place of a king. He was obviously not crowned because not only was there a legitimate heir, but also that Oliver was not announced to be successor in place of King Charles II.
Oliver Cromwell then marched north, defeated the Scots at the Battle of Dunbar on September 3, 1650, captured part of southern Scotland and seized and removed the nation's public records, although he did not manage to take the Honours of Scotland (the Scottish Regalia).
Now I will move on to King Charles the second, King Charles the first's son.

King Charles II was King Charles I's eldest surviving son. He was a big influence on the colonies of America. He was open to the suggestions and needs of all people and organized groups. Of course, the demands made by these people had to be reasonable. Nonetheless, King Charles II was a strong supporter of the Anglican Church of England. King Charles II had been eight years old when the Civil War of England broke out. He was with his father, King Charles I at the Battle of Edgehill and also in Oxford, until he was ordered by his father to seek the safety of France.

On January 1, 1651, the Scots crowned Charles II at Scone (pretty funny name for a place that had been used many time to have a coronation as such, isn't it?) In July, the English army marched into Fife and then captured Perth, while the Scottish forces headed south into England, where they were defeated at the Battle of Worcester on September 3, 1651. Charles II escaped, and fled to France once more. The English, meanwhile, moved on to take Stirling and Dundee.
The Scots were horrified when Charles I was executed in 1649, and while England became a Republic, they proclaimed his son, Charles II, king. Then they invited him to come to Scotland. This developing friendship with King Charles II and Scotland was important later on when the King agreed to the Presbyterian demands to sign the National Covenant.
By October 1, Scottish resistance was effectively at an end, and the English government had announced that England and Scotland were henceforth to be one commonwealth. This particular union took effect from 1652, although the acts of this union did not become actual law on an official document until 1657. Scotland was inadequately represented in Parliament and a council of state that was set up in 1655 ended up including only two Scots. The resulting administrative and legal system was efficient, but financial ruin was widespread, legislation was designed to suit the English but not the Scottish economy, and the long-standing Christian divisions continued.
Charles II spent the next nine years in exile, until in 1660, when he was invited back to London and took his father's place on the throne. He always recalled with distaste his time in Scotland, when the Presbyterians had lectured him constantly about morality and told him that kings were merely the vassals of God, like everyone else, and so he had no desire to go north again. Instead, he left his Secretary of State, John, Duke of Lauderdale, to enforce his policies of royal absolutism in both church and state.
Objecting to the reintroduction of bishops into the Church of Scotland, the Covenanters rebelled in the Pentland Rising of 1666, but were defeated at the Battle of Rullion Green, not far from Edinburgh. Lauderdale attempted a policy of conciliation, but a further Covenanting rising was put down by the king's illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth, at the Battle of Bothwell Bridge in Lanarkshire on June 22, 1679. Increasing opposition to Lauderdale's corrupt government led to his fall from power the following year.

The final phase of Charles II's reign was taken up mainly with attempts to settle religious dissension. The king had no legitimate children, and he was well aware that the Scots viewed with alarm the prospect of his Roman Catholic brother James succeeding him. King Charles II died after a stroke in 1685 with the problem still unresolved. Now that you know more about King Charles II and King Charles I, you will walk away with you head spinning. This is probably not because you have been spinning around and around, but because the lives of King Charles the First and King Charles the second were very complicated. I hope that this report helped you learn more about King Charles the First and King Charles the Second whether you read this report deliberately to learn or you just read it for pleasure. I bet that if anybody ever asks you about either of them that you will surprise them by giving a detailed answer to them and blow them away with your knowledge.

~Maddie Kern