Stuart England

3 Charles I, 1625–9 (p.46)

The accession of Charles I

The accession of Charles I marked a clear departure from his father’s reign in several ways, the most obvious of which initially w as his character . Short of statur e and ph ysically unimposing, Charles avoided public speaking whenever possible. This was in part due to shyness, and also to the fact that he was troubled with a serious stammer. In 1626, he excused his lack of oration to Parliament on the grounds that ‘I mean to show what I should speak in actions’, but such an approach meant that communication between the King and his subjects was often lacking. During times of stress and difficulty his critics were to find it all too easy to attribute sinister motives to the King or to his advisers. Charles lacked the approachability and flexibility of his father, qualities that had helped James to assure his subjects of his good intentions, even when they had questioned the wisdom of his policies. Charles’s aloofness and inflexibility were to prove serious handicaps for the new King.

Buckingham’s dominance at Court and his monopoly of the distribution of patronage during the early part of Charles’s reign was not new, but his emergence as the main target of the Government’s critics was. Disliked by the traditional nobility as a newcomer, resented by those whose access to patronage or advancement in royal service was blocked, Buckingham was also associated with the introduction of unpopular and unsuccessful policies. The responsibility for a series of expensive foreign failures, and innovation in the religious sphere, with the introduction of Arminianism, was laid squarely at Buckingham’s feet. The possibility that the King and his minister might share responsibility for the Government’s policies was one that the majority of his subjects either could not or would not contemplate.

Foreign policy, 1625–9

In the early years of Charles’s reign, foreign policy shifted from the pacific approach of his fathers reign to a far more aggressive one. Charles and Buckingham had already been instrumental in pressuring James into war with Spain in the final year of his reign, and it was this approach that continued to dominate foreign affairs.

Following the failure of Mansfeld to recover the Palatinate, Buckingham began to work towards strengthening England’s position by forming an anti-Habsburg league. An alliance was negotiated with the Dutch in the Treaty of Southampton in September 1625, and with Denmark in the Treaty of the Hague in December. The latter included a promise to provide the Danes with £30,000 a month, to support their involvement in the Thirty Years War.