Charles Stuart, King and Martyr (Midweek Message)

 Icon of Charles, King and Martyr, from St. Andrewes Press

Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message

Charles Stuart, King and Martyr

January 31, 2018

“King of Kings and Lord of lords, whose faithful servant Charles prayed for those who persecuted him and died living in the hope of your eternal kingdom:  grant us by your grace so to follow his example that we may love and bless our enemies, through the intercession of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.”  (Collect for the Feast of Charles Stuart, King and Martyr)

Yesterday, January 30, in the calendars of the Church of England and the Scottish Episcopal Church, is the commemoration of King Charles I, executed in 1649 by the Puritan-controlled Parliament and its Army.    Charles, considered a “man of blood” and traitor against the English people by those who tried him, was immediately hailed as a “royal martyr to the faith” by his supporters, and declared a saint when the Prayer Book, bishops, and the monarchy itself were restored after 10 years of rule by the Puritan Commonwealth and Protectorate (military junta).     The Episcopal Church has never added him to its calendar because the “cult of the royal martyr” was seen as monarchist propaganda undermining proper American patriotic republicanism.   Tories and Anglicans have always loved Charles; Whigs and radical protestants, hated him. 

Charles’ trial has provided the legal precedents for most trials since of sovereigns accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, whether at Nuremburg against the Nazi leadership, or at the Hague against Serbian war-lords behind “ethnic cleansing” in the former Yugoslavia.    Charles for his part never recognized the authority of the court, and defended his actions as the unfortunate but legitimate and necessary acts of a sovereign faced with mutiny and treason by the political elites of his people.    War broke out after he tried to bring religious uniformity to his two realms (Scotland and England) by trying to impose Prayer Book worship and bishops on Scotland.  This forced him to call a Parliament to raise funds, which promptly sided with the Calvinists in Scotland, voted to make itself independent of the King’s pleasure by refusing to disband on royal orders alone, and began raising a non-royal army to pressure the King to abandon his devotion to Arminian, or anti-Calvinist, religion.  The Commons was motivated in part by opposition to Charles’ even-handed approach to Roman Catholic-Protestant warfare on the continent as well as his marriage to a French Roman Catholic (Marie-Henriette, after whom Maryland is named).  When finally Charles was captured and radical Puritans in the Army overcame opposition to trying him by staging a palace coup and arresting or excluding dissenting majority members of Parliament, he was offered a choice:  undergoing capital trial for his part in the war or granting the “Rump” Parliament everything it asked for, including a constitutional monarchy and limitations on royal prerogatives, banning the Prayer Book, abolishing Bishops, and enforcing conformity to Calvinism.  Though Charles had previously shown (with the Scots) a willingness to negotiate some of these things on a temporary basis, he was unwilling, as he said, to accept Cromwell’s final offer and turn his back on the “True Religion” in order to save his earthly crown and his head.    So he was tried, found guilty, and was beheaded at Whitehall on January 30, 1649.   

Though I live in a Republic that gained its birth through violent revolt against the British crown, and firmly support the legal principle of trying rulers for crimes against their people, I commemorate and honor Charles the Martyr each year as a form of familial penance:  one of my ancestors, Col. John Hutchinson, governor of Nottingham Castle, was one of the “commissioners” (judges) in the trial who signed Charles’ death warrant, one of the “regicides.”  After the restoration of the monarchy, Hutchinson publicly confessed his error and sin in the execution of the King, and expressed his deepest remorse for the action.    Though exempted from Charles II’s Act of Indemnity and Oblivion pardoning Civil War actions, Hutchinson did not suffer execution as a traitor:  his early break with Cromwell, his refusal to order reprisal killings of Cavalier prisoners, and his wife Lucy’s family ties to the men who brought the monarchy back meant he was allowed to die in prison rather than being drawn, hanged, and quartered.  

In our Church calendars, we honor both Protestant martyrs under Queen Mary and Roman Catholic martyrs under Elizabeth I.  If we are to honor in our calendars the sacrifices and faithful Christian witness of Calvinists, we need to honor the sacrifices and witness of Anglicans like Charles as well.

 

Before his death, Charles wrote a letter to his son, crowned as Charles II after the monarchy, greatly reduced in its powers, was restored following ten years of rule by the Puritans, who proved to most Englishmen that they could be every bit as tyrannical and incompetent as a bad king.    In part, he said: 

“Above all, I would have you, as I hope you are already, well grounded and settled in your religion, the best profession of which I have ever esteemed that of the Church of England….  I may, without vanity, turn the reproach of my sufferings, as to the world’s censure, into the honor of a kind of martyrdom, as to the testimony of my conscience—the troublers of my kingdoms have nothing else to object against me but this, that I prefer religion and laws established before those alterations they propounded.  And so indeed I do, and ever shall, till I am convinced by better arguments that what hitherto have been chiefly used against me—tumults, armies, and prisons.  …I cannot despair, either of [God’s] mercy, or of my people’s love and pity.  At worst, I trust I shall go before you to a better kingdom, which God hath prepared for me, and me for it, through my Savior Jesus Christ, to whose mercy I commend you, and all mine.  Farewell, till we meet, if not on earth, yet in heaven.” 

Grace and Peace. 

Fr. Tony+