Charles I Stuart of England

Charles I was born into the House of Stuart as the second son of King James VI of
Scotland on 19 November 1600. After his father inherited the English throne in
1603, he moved to England, where he spent much of the rest of his life. He became
heir to the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland in 1612 upon the death of
his older brother. In 1625 he married the Bourbon princess Henrietta Maria of
France.
After his 1626 succession, Charles quarreled with the English Parliament, which
sought to curb his royal prerogative. He believed in the divine right of kings, and
was determined to govern according to his own conscience. Many of his subjects
opposed his policies, in particular the levying of taxes without parliamentary
consent, and perceived his actions as those of a tyrannical absolute monarch. His
religious policies created antipathy and mistrust from religious groups such as the
English Puritans. He supported high church Anglican ecclesiastics and failed to
help continental Protestant forces during the Thirty Years War.
From 1642, Charles fought the armies of the English and Scottish parliaments in
the Civil War and after his defeat in 1645 at the hands of the Parliamentarian New
Model Army, he fled north from his base at Oxford. Charles surrendered to a
Scottish force and was handed over to the Long Parliament in London. Charles
refused the captors demands for a constitutional monarchy, and temporarily
escaped captivity in November 1647. Reimprisoned on the Isle of Wight, he forged
an alliance with Scotland, but by the end of 1648, the New Model Army had
consolidated its control over England. Charles was tried, convicted, and executed
for high treason in January 1649. The monarchy was abolished and the
Commonwealth of England was established as a republic. The monarchy was
restored to Charles’s son Charles II in 1660.
 Charles II Stuart of England

Charles II (29 May 1630 – 6 February 1685) was King of Scotland from 1649 until
1651, and King of England, Scotland and Ireland from the 1660 Restoration of the
monarchy until his death in 1685.
Charles II was the eldest surviving child of Charles I of England, Scotland and
Ireland and Henrietta Maria of France. After Charles I's execution at Whitehall on
30 January 1649, at the climax of the English Civil War, the Parliament of
Scotland proclaimed Charles II king on 5 February 1649. But England entered the
period known as the English Interregnum or the English Commonwealth, and the
country was a de facto republic led by Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell defeated
Charles II at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651, and Charles fled to
mainland Europe. Cromwell became virtual dictator of England, Scotland and
Ireland. Charles spent the next nine years in exile in France, the Dutch Republic
and the Spanish Netherlands. The political crisis that followed Cromwell's death in
1658 resulted in the restoration of the monarchy, and Charles was invited to return
to Britain. On 29 May 1660, his 30th birthday, he was received in London to
public acclaim. After 1660, all legal documents stating a regnal year did so as if he
had succeeded his father as king in 1649.