Belloc's "Charles II" (or "The Last Rally: A Story of Charles II")

This is the fifth historical character study by Hilaire Belloc I've read. Mysterium Press has sent me this handsome hardcover editions for my opinions on each: Wolsey, Cranmer, Charles I, and Cromwell, and now Charles II. (I also have James II in queue.) The cover of each book features a striking portrait of the subject, with a tag line that offers a great summing up of Belloc's theme for each man:

Wolsey: "The cardinal who unwittingly steered England to its ruin" [and specifically, regrettably steered the Catholic Church in England to its ruin]

Cranmer: "The archbishop who helped destroy England's founding faith"

Charles I: "The king who stood for liberty and lost his head for it"

Cromwell: "The killer of the king and the butcher of the Irish"

Charles II: "The king who pitted monarchy against money"

and 

James II: "The last king of England's ancient monarchy"

You can see the covers of the entire "Hilaire Belloc English Histories Collection" here. In the USA, these books are available from Os Justi Press. It's kind of surprising that Belloc did not write a study of the other Cromwell, Thomas. You can find his analysis of "The true creator of the English Reformation" (my idea of a tag line) in Characters of the Reformation!

In each of these books I've been impressed by Belloc's political and strategic acumen; his sympathy for the challenges and struggles each man faced; his effort to be honest and straight-forward in his analysis of how their backgrounds and education prepared them for their most crucial decisions and actions; his careful judgment of their strengths and weaknesses--and all those strengths are present this book, which was first published with the title The Last Rally: A Story of Charles II in 1939. 

Belloc adds the ground of a beautiful metaphor to the structure of this book: the young, exiled Prince of Wales's love of being on the sea, captaining a ship, struggling with the elements, winning the battle, and returning to port. That metaphor is expressed in many chapter titles (and remember that Belloc loved sailing too!):

1. The Last Rally
2. The Task
3. The Formation
4. The Annealing
5. First Grasp of the Helm
6. The Fair Run
7. The Fleet and Empire
8. The Sunken Reef
9. The Triangle
10. Gathering Storm
11. Whiggery
12. The Women
13. Full Gale: The Popish Plot
14. Hurricane and Harbor
15. Drop Anchor

An elegant feature in this book.

Throughout this series, the great theme is power: how to get it, how to hold it, and how to lose it. Each man achieves power either by inheriting it (Charles I--with the honorable mention of his father James I and VI--and his heirs Charles II and James II) or by talent, opportunity, and influence (Wolsey, Cranmer, and Cromwell). The variable of this theme is how Charles II tried to restore the power of the monarchy in England after the English Civil War, the Interregnum and Protectorate. As Belloc explains:

As I dealt in my former book with the leading case of Louis XIV of France as a monarch standing up to the Money Power (and, upon the whole, successfully), so in this book I deal with the parallel and complementary case of his contemporary and first cousin, Charles II, Stuart King of England.

He also found himself faced by that unescapable conflict between the Money Power and Monarchy; but, unlike his cousin Louis, Charles failed. The Money Power was too much for him. So long as he lived he managed to fend it off though not to tame it; but immediately after his death, in the less competent hands of his brother James (the last real and active King of England, as also the last by hereditary right), Monarchy went down. (p. 1)

One of the important early chapters is "The Annealing". Annealing is a term of art in metallurgy. This website provides a good, not-too-technical definition: "the process of heating a metal to a high temperature and then cooling it slowly. The slow cooling allows the crystalline structure to settle into a lower-energy, more stable configuration. Fast cooling (quenching) locks in stress and brittleness; slow cooling produces resilience." Applied to human experience, it is "the analogous process by which competing patterns of action gradually resolve into a stable configuration." 

Belloc proposes that from age 17 to 30, Charles, the exiled Prince of Wales, went through this annealing process as he struggled to make his claim to the throne of England after his father's execution and during the Commonwealth and Protectorate. He developed his characteristic responses to danger, decision, and success.

During this struggle, Charles attempted to gain the throne in Scotland, at least, by making a covenant with the Kirk. It included renouncing the Church of England, the Anglican doctrine and structure his late father had held so firmly. He was crowned the King of Scotland and then faced the English military response. In the midst of that struggle, and the subsequent military defeat he and the Scots suffered at Worcester, he met Father John Huddleston, a Catholic priest, and read a book of Catholic apologetics and was convinced it taught the Truth. Of course, we know that he did not follow up on that conviction until on his deathbed, because the restoration of the monarchy in England was his main goal.

Belloc is careful about weighing this dichotomy in Charles's behavior, just as he is in examining Charles's pattern of unfaithfulness to his wife, Catherine of Braganza. He describes how Charles never succumbed to any influence of his mistresses and made sure that his wife was respected, at least outwardly, at Court. It seems the two women who had the most influence on his Court and Reign were Anne Hyde, the Earl of Clarendon's daughter and his brother James, the Duke of York's wife, and his sister Minette (Henrietta Anne, Duchess of Orléans), King Louis XIV's sister-in-law--both through their Catholicism. Minette influenced him in signing the Treaty of Dover, in which he promised to convert to Catholicism at some point.

Another great issue was the conflict with Parliament over funding the government, especially the British Navy to protect trade. This problem led Charles to negotiate for funds with King Louis of France and to triangulate three foes: Louis, Holland, and Parliament against one to another as needed. To Belloc, here Charles succeeded, however briefly, to attain true Royal power and authority. Belloc also notes throughout his discussions of the conflict between King and Parliament that the House of Commons was not at all representative of the population of England and not even of the men who had the privilege to vote in Parliamentary election in proportion to city and county size and commercial etc. influence.

Belloc expresses the greatest condemnation of Charles's behavior in the course of the Popish Plot, especially when he allowed William Howard, 1st Viscount Stafford (a Blessed martyr and grandson of Saint Philip Howard) and Oliver Plunkett (a Sainted martyr) to be executed when the Popish Plot had been exposed as a lie. It is Belloc's opinion that the Popish Plot "gave the deathblow to Catholicism in England." (p. 225). Belloc avers that even as he acknowledges the change in the Catholic legal position in England, the English converts from Newman in 1845 until his own day, and the influx of Irish Catholics. If he is paying attention to matters now, I wonder what he thinks about Catholic revival in England, especially vis-a-vis the Church of England.

In some ways it seems that Belloc expresses greater concern for the triumph of the Monarchy in English government than he does for Charles's dedication to his conscience and the truth of Catholicism. It's one way, of course, that Belloc avoids the accusation of letting his own Catholic faith influence his historical analysis of Charles II's character and reign. I don't think he is betraying his Faith but he is upholding his general thesis in each of these books that a strong executive is essential in governance of a nation. Writing as he was in the age of Roosevelt, Mussolini/Victor Emmanuel, and Hitler (not that I'm suggesting any similarity between Roosevelt and the others--although I do recall that Alistair Cooke stated in his America that FDR basically ignored the Constitution of the United States in his implementation of The New Deal), one can see his concern for the balance of power.

His narration of Charles's deathbed conversion is moving, of course, but the reader knows that the hereditary monarchy would soon fail during James II's reign, especially once the Catholic convert King and his Catholic wife would have a Catholic son and heir. (Belloc had published his study of James II in 1928--this book was published in 1939.)

As usual, Mysterium Press presents a excellent edition of Belloc's work and I appreciate the publisher sending me these copies in exchange for my opinion of them. 

I'll be reading and reviewing James II next.