King Charles III

(With a Brief Review of the Royal Succession of the English Monarchy from the Stuarts Down to the Present Day)

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First of all we all know it was not King Charles III of England who hid in an oak tree. It was King Charles II.

King Charles II had become king in 1660 after an eleven year hiatus when England had no king or queen. Instead the country was run by a sort-of republican government called the Commonwealth of England.

The Commonwealth of England was established in 1649 after the English Civil War. We won't go into details of that protracted and paradoxically both simple and complex conflict except to say that it was a war between King Charles I, the second of the Stuart Kings (his dad, James I, was the first) and the English Parliament. It was a real war, too, complete with armies and pitched battles.

Historians point out that there was no single cause to the War. But certainly one of the causes was that the Parliament had gotten a bellyful of King Charles I and what they considered his high handed and duplicitous rule. The King in turn had gotten a bellyful of Parliament who wouldn't give him money when he wanted it.

Featuring prominently in the war was religion and the tensions between the Catholics and the Protestants. In particular the Puritans, a fairly new group, thought that Charles, although a Protestant, wasn't Protestant enough. They were even worried that he might be trying to sneak back into the Religion of Rome to please his wife, Henrietta Maria, who was the daughter of King Henry IV of France and so was Catholic.

The Civil War lasted from 1642 to 1648 with the two sides being dubbed somewhat discourteously as the Roundheads and the Cavaliers. The Roundheads were the Parliamentarians and named because of the close cropped haircuts that many of them favored. The Cavaliers were fighting for the King and sported long hair and fancy clothes.

The Commonwealth was set up after Parliament "handled" King Charles I (like Queen Elizabeth had handled her cousin Queen Mary of Scots). Then the Puritan soldier Oliver Cromwell, who had been a cavalry officer of the Roundheads, became the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth.

Ironically the Parliament of Scotland had no problem with having a king and so they proclaimed Charles's son as King Charles II of Scotland. But Charles, who was then 19, knew that Oliver was after him and had fled to Paris. It was on the trip out of England that he hid in the oak tree near Boscobel House which is a country lodge about 15 miles northwest of Birmingham.

The idea was that with Oliver now in charge and England a republic, all would be light and joy, happiness and jubilation. But with the Puritans running the country things were far from cheery. In 1642 Parliament closed the theaters, inns, and taverns. Sporting events were prohibited and fancy clothes were banned. If you went anywhere other than church on Sunday you could get fined.

Then in 1644 Parliament even banned Christmas, for crying out loud! The next year they mandated Easter wasn't to be celebrated either. If that wasn't enough, in 1647 a law was passed that you couldn't even celebrate the festivities in the privacy of your own home, for Pete's sake! The ban was reinforced in 1652 with a law stating that fines would be imposed for celebrating the holidays and that shops and businesses had to stay open.

Whether Oliver was the one who actually instigated the ban on Christmas - or whether there really was a ban on Christmas at all - is a matter of scholarly debate. He never mentioned the prohibition in his letters, but for better or worse he was the man in charge. So it fell to him to catch the heat from the new laws of Parliament - called the "Rump" Parliament because of its scaled down size - which was becoming increasingly unpopular with the people.

In fact Oliver had himself become irritated with Parliament because they wouldn't always do what he wanted. Finally in 1653 and fed up, he stormed into Westminster. Calling the MP's "a factious crew", "enemies to all good government", "a pack of mercenary wretches" who would "like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money", he summoned his soldiers into the building and they tossed everyone out on their round heads.

Parliament? He didn't need no stinkin' Parliament!

It wasn't long before the people began to murmur that maybe a king wasn't so bad after all. Besides Oliver was not a well man, and before he died in 1658 he named his son, Richard, to take his place. But Richard was no Oliver, and Parliament was able to force his resignation within a year.

So in 1660 Parliament sent a message to young Charles. He was still living in France with his mom whose nephew had become the "Sun King" Louis XIV. If Charles would accept a "strong" Parliament they said he could come back to England and be King. Sure, Charles said, and the English monarchy was restored in what was called (what else?) the Restoration.

After Charles II died in 1685, his younger brother became King James II of England and King James VII of Scotland. James, though, was in the same mold as his grandfather and quickly disbanded the Parliament and ruled on his own. Even worse to the Protestants was that James had converted to Catholicism around 1668. So his reign would bring back a Catholic line of monarchs.

The only way to handle the problem was to find another King. So a bunch of English political leaders got together and decided to offer the kingship to someone whose Protestantism was not in doubt.

So they selected - get this - William of Orange of Holland. That some bigwigs from England would offer the throne of England to a Dutch prince certainly seems strange. But it did make some sense because William's wife, Mary, was none other than the daughter of Charles I and so was the sister of the James II and Charles II.

William said, fine, I'll be King of England. So in November 1688, he landed with an army at Brixham on England's southwest coast and by this rather circuitous route headed to London with the intention of booting James out. This "Glorious Revolution" as it's called ended with King James going into exile and William becoming William III of England.

The Glorious Revolution is sometimes hailed as a bloodless revolution although that's being a bit selective with the facts. There remained a good number of people who wanted to keep James as King and they kicked off a series of conflicts collectively called the Jacobite Rebellions. These revolts broke out from 1689 and continued through 1746 resulting in tens of thousands of deaths.

But for now William was the King and because Mary was the one who was in the direct line of succession, she became the full fledged Queen as well. So England was ruled by the co-equal monarchy of William and Mary until Mary died in 1694. But as she and William had no children, when William died in 1702 he was "without issue" as they say. It then fell to the daughter of James II, Anne, who was a Protestant and living with her husband, Prince George of Denmark, to become Queen.

George, though, was not offered the kingship. Instead he had to be satisfied with being the royal "consort". So Queen Anne became the first married Queen of England to rule alone.

George and Queen Anne had one son also named William, who was made Prince of Gloucester (pronounced "GLOSS-ter"). But he died in 1700 long before he could become king.

With with no clear cut successor lined up, the following year Parliament passed a law called the Act of Settlement that designated how to pick the next monarch. By this time there was still one surviving child of James I, his daughter Elizabeth.

Elizabeth had married Frederick the King of Bohemia and they had a daughter, Sophia. Sophia in turn had married Ernest the Elector (sort of a Prince) of Hanover.

As Sophia was the only remaining direct descendant of the Stuarts, the Act of Settlement stated that the throne would go to her or her heirs. But she died in 1714 literally a few weeks before Anne.

So it fell to her son who could speak virtually no English to become George I King of England. Although George was a direct descendant of the Stuarts through his mom, the family name of the kings and queens of England - called the "House" - was traditionally taken from their father's titles. Since George was born in Hanover, the English monarchs became the Hanovers.

Because George could speak no English, he had most of his business handled by one of the MP's. That was Robert Wapole who is usually considered as the first English Prime Minister. Even when the Kings began speaking English again, the Prime Minister's job was kept on. Eventually it became an official office elected by the MP's and was independent of the monarch. But when Parliament wanted to deal with the king or queen, they did so through the PM.

At this point the line of English Kings and Queens becomes a bit more straightforward. George I was followed by three more Georges - II, III, and IV. Yes, George III was the famous King George during the "troubles" with the American colonists.

Then in 1830, George IV's son assumed the throne as King William IV. But he had no kids and no surviving siblings. So when he died seven years later, his niece, Victoria, became Queen.

Victoria was Queen of England from 1837 until 1901 and her reign was a bit rockier than some fans of the elegant Victorian Era realize. There were times she was definitely not popular with her subjects, and she was rumored to have dallied about after her husband, Albert, died fairly young.

It was the Victorian Era that brought in the rise of the Industrial Revolution and the decline of the small businesses and craftsmen. It was also during Victoria's years on the throne that England became the world's #1 international power and the Empire on Which the Sun Never Set.

Victoria was going to be a hard act to follow a fact that her bon vivant son, now King Edward VII, soon found out. Nevertheless, the Edwardian Era from 1901 to 1910 was also a time of immense technological change. You not only had the first wireless message sent across the Atlantic, but also the first radio broadcast of the entire opera Tosca starring Enrico Caruso from the stage of New York's Metropolitan Opera House.

It was also during Edward's reign that automobiles became viable means of transportation. And there was the first powered flight of an airplane that had been built by a couple of bicycle repairmen from Ohio.

We mentioned that the "house" of the monarchs was determined by the titles of the father. Victoria's husband Albert was not the King, of course, but he was the Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha which were two German principalities that were located in the modern German states of Thuringia and Bavaria. So when Edward became King, he was the first English monarch of the House Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

Edward's son, George V, ruled through the tough times of World War I and well into the Great Depression. Since in his early years there was a war on and with Germany, Edward thought it was best if the English monarchs had a good English family name. So in 1917 he became King George V of the House of Windsor.

After George came the brief reign of Edward VIII, who became King in January 1936 and abdicated after less than a year because he wanted to marry an American divorcée, Wallis Simpson. In those more delicate times that was something that was just not proper for a King of England to consider. So his brother became King George VI and ruled during World War II and for seven years afterwards.

This, of course, brings us down to Elizabeth II who was Queen of England from 1952 to 2022 - the longest reign of any English monarch and one of the longest reigns in any country.¹ And Elizabeth, who was certainly one of the most admired monarchs ever, was, as everyone knows, succeeded by her eldest son, King Charles III.