Memorable Scene

...Hibbert is better at presenting the ambiguities of his main character...

...Good brother, love me and I shall ever love and serve you...

...This was one of the periods of great flowering in Anglicanism, and Laud himself was a considerable scholar and reformer...

...Charles must have felt a mixed sorrow at the deaths of his brother and his friend, both of whom had all the qualities he envied...

...Many others, though, are written in the language of a woman's magazine: "He had loved Steenie with all his heart...

...It has always struck me, too, how many women have written on Charles...

...Even his strongest detractors, however, are willing to admit that "nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it," and thus his execution, whether regarded as martyrdom or willful stupidity, becomes the focal point of his life...

...or of the English Court, in exile at the Louvre, trying to comfort Queen Henriette-Marie on her husband's death...

...He first edited the sermons of Lancelot Andrews, and he encouraged the careers of many major churchmen, such as Jeremy Taylor, as well as some minor ones, such as George Herbert...

...A man of high personal integrity and rectitude few Puritans could equal, he was a treacherous political opponent, ultimately convincing his enemies that it was impossible to deal fairly with him...

...Hibbert changes the moving symbolism of Herbert's description into pointless detail by his flat paraphrase...

...earlier serene and clear, now darkened as the coffin approached the west end of the chapel...

...in later years, Henriette-Marie dominated his decisions, often to his disadvantage...

...James I. once characterized as "The Wisest Fool in Christendom...

...There never had been any other man who had meant so much to him...

...His father had convinced him that the king was God's Lieutenant on Earth, but the son's more transcendental nature had understood his role as that of a Sacrifice...

...A better book would discuss the pattern of Charles' relationships and his role as martyr...

...The Great Rebellion (to my mind the most admirable and thorough portrait of the king), and E. Wingfield-Stratford's several books (King Charles the Martyr in particular), which attempt a kind of psychological portrait, although overwritten and leaning too heavily on conjecture...

...Reviewed by PHOEBE PETTINGELL "He nothing common did or mean/upon that memorable scene" wrote republican Andrew Marvell of the execution of King Charles I. There has never been an entirely satisfactory biography of this enigmatic prince, and to this day there are still Cavaliers and Roundheads ready to revive old issues and do battle with each other...

...Two of the best studies are C. V. Wedgewood's multivolume history...

...He ends the book with a description of Charles' funeral procession: "The sky...

...To what does his last "Remember" refer...

...These men, and those who opposed them Accept the constitution of silence And are folded into a single parly...

...He was a loving husband, and a loyal friend, yet he betrayed his loyal ally and adviser Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford...

...Very little of the dramatic conflict of the trial is quoted, and Hibbert neglects Charles' puzzling last word, "Remember...

...When Charles came to his own scaffold, he said: ". . . that I should be so ill a Christian as not to say God's Judgments are just upon me...

...Charles was always concerned with his own innocence...

...His wife and mother seem to have been the only women in his life...

...Soon after this, another brilliant young man, his father's favorite, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, dominated Charles...

...I will give anything I have to you: both my horse and my books and my pieces and my cross-bows or anything that you would have...

...In short, the virtues of Hibbert's effort hardly outweigh its defects, and it is too superficial a text to support either the magnificence of the pictures or the exorbitant price of the book...

...Hibbert occasionally comes up with lovely vignettes: the moving description of Cromwell, his two sons dead of smallpox, watching his prisoner playing with the royal children at Maidenhead...

...we are given too much of the fool, and too little of the fine quality of his mind...

...Yet Laud and his Church played an important role in the Caroline reign, and not only as an unpopular political force...

...Who was his executioner...

...Christopher Hibbert's Charles 1 is a beautifully illustrated, popular introduction to the king's life, beginning with the death of Queen Elizabeth, and ending with the burial of Charles at Windsor...

...nor was there ever to be...

...And with what must have been an unconscious joke on Buckingham's nickname, he prayed for the forgiveness of his enemies, that his blood not be upon their heads: "I pray God, with Saint Stephen, that this be not laid to their charge...

...Charles was never close to a man again, and his failing marriage became, almost overnight, both fruitful and successful...

...In the early years of his marriage, he proclaimed his loyalty to his mother by upbraiding his wife for not running her palaces as the late queen had...

...The study of King Charles I is full of questions: Did he himself write Eikon Basilike (a kind of 17th-century Imitatio Christi), published the day after his death, and subtitled The Portraicture of His Sacred Majesty in His Solitude and Sufferings...

...Some day a biography will be written which will examine Charles I not as an unfortunate king born at the wrong time in history, but as a man whose sacrifice of himself was truly neither common nor mean...

...Charles had been the sickly younger son of a flamboyant homosexual father and an unhappy mother who alleviated her boredom with masques and High Church services...

...When he died suddenly, Charles dutifully began his own education as Prince of Wales, but there is no sign that he wanted to be king or that it was not always a duty for him...

...The historical characterizations in the book are as glossy as the pictures, and often rather superficial, running to "The Princess was very small and dark, and walked around with the quick movements of a sparrow," or "the fascinating and passionate Mary Queen of Scots...

...Much has been made of James' unfortunate influence on his son's political training in regard to Divine Right, but the son's love of ceremony must have been influenced by Queen Anne...

...and then heavy snow began to fall, turning the dark pall white...

...Henry was as popular and handsome as his brother was shy and awkward...

...To these men one can only cite the example of T. S. Eliot, who after many years made his peace with Milton and the other party in "Little Gidding": We cannot revive old factions We cannot restore old policies Or follow an antique drum...

...in the meantime Hibbert's Charles I will serve to refresh the memory...

...In 1627, two years after Charles' ascension to the throne, the Buckingham influence ended with the duke's assassination...

...As a child, Charles stammered so badly that he could hardly talk...

...The infatuated James nicknamed him "Steenie" (a Scottish diminutive of Stephen) because of Saint Stephen's reputed good looks...

...In his sufferings he found that if he lacked the ability to win people by an open nature and direct manner, he could at least command the loyalty and service of his followers, and even win pity from his enemies...

...As a young man he seems to have been a self-righteous prig...

...Many times he does pay justice by an unjust sentence...

...Besides his parents, Charles' early life was overshadowed by his older brother, Henry, to whom he wrote his first letter: "Sweet sweet brother...

...Such a book will contribute something new to this field...

...So went the white king to his grave...

...but if he did, there was no sign of it...

...George's Hall the sky was serene and clear, but presently it began to snow, and fell so fast, as by that time they came out of the west end of the Royall Chappel, the black velvet pall was all white (the color of innocency) being thick covered over with snow...

...There is no historical contribution here that cannot be found in more thorough biographies, nor is the outlook singular in any respect...

...Archbishop William Laud comes off as "overworked, fussy, unimaginative and outspoken, sometimes irritable and often rude...

...Of Charles' father...

...Likewise, many of the omissions in this book make it a less effective biography than it might have been...

...The basic problem with writings on King Charles I is that the people attracted to this unhappy man are too often Tories romanticizing the past, religious esthetes, or poets of Cavalier sympathies waging their war on John Milton...

...I will only say this, that an unjust sentence that I suffered to take affect is punished now by an unjust sentence on me...

...The defect made him a slow and uncertain speaker all his life, but in moments of crisis he could be quite eloquent...

...These questions are, for the most part, unanswerable, but they have occupied a great deal of space in most previous biographies...

...Candidates run from Richard Brandon, the regular headsman, to Oliver Cromwell...

...That memorable execution scene has impressed itself upon the imagination of many, long after its causes have disappeared...

...The king did feel direct responsibility, however, for the beheading of his friend Thomas Wentworth, whose death warrant he signed under pressure from Parliament and a mob storming the gates of Whitehall...

...Many loved him, but few were close to him...

...Hibbert often paraphrases original accounts (without giving credit) to their detriment...

...Long before Parliament had seen the necessity, the king was already considering his death...

...He died cheerfully because in dying he could fulfill his life by giving his cause a foundation of popular sympathy, absolving his own guilt with his blood, and becoming a martyr to his beloved Church...

...Here is the account of Sir Thomas Herbert, groom of the bedchamber to King Charles in his captivity: "This is memorable, that at such a time as the king's body was brought out of St...

...During most of his reign, as one of his courtiers said, "England enjoyed the greatest measure of felicity it had ever known," but the last years were more terrible than any since the Norman Conquest...