Charles’s religious beliefs have traditionally been more associated with the political theory of the ‘divine right of kings’, the concept elucidated by his father but embraced with less compromise by the son. But to assume that Charles’s ‘divine right’ was a kind of backward-looking, superstitiously unrealistic view of kingly power is to prejudge the issue. In other European monarchies at this time, it was precisely this kind of thinking that was reducing the part played by the ‘Estates’ in government and exalting the monarch’s. Charles’s problem was that he attempted to expound this theory in a political atmosphere that was widely unreceptive to it, and that he seemed to possess the diplomatic skills of a spoilt child.
Dönem: Stuart
Charles I Dönemi Sivil Savaş
The gentleman’s war between king and Parliament had turned truly vicious. While rash soldiers had once whispered of the deposition of the king, Charles was now openly referred to as ‘that man of blood’ in army councils. This second civil war erased the mounting sympathy for a royal restoration. In the army there was talk of a trial; in Parliament, discussions focused on a final round of peace proposals, but no one now trusted the king.
Charles I Devrinde İrlanda
Ireland became a Catholic majority ruled by a Protestant minority. The Irish population was divided into three: the native Gaelic Catholics who comprised the largest number; the Catholic old English, descended from the families who had administered Ireland before the Protestant Reformation; and the Protestant new English, many of them actually Scots who were planted on lands more recently seized.
Act of Union ile Britanya Deniz Gücü Oluyor
Navy ships now flew a new flag – the Union Jack, which combined the English cross of St George and the Scottish saltire. That meant that one major part of the Navy’s role – guarding England’s back door from Scottish attack – had come to an end. Up until the coming of the Stuarts the English could never truly think of themselves as an island people because they shared their landmass with an inveterate enemy. But now England was without question the dominant power in its archipelago. This hardened the island mentality and freed its ambitions to become a global, rather than a regional power.
Ulster Plantasyonu
His ‘plantation policy’ in Ulster, involving the dispossession of native Irish Catholic landowners and their replacement by thousands of families from England (many of them in and around Londonderry settled by a consortium of Londoners) and (even more) from south-west Scotland, can also be counted a rather heartless short-term success, though its consequences are – all too grimly – still with us.