The

The Hello, this is a History of Europe Key Battles podcast.

The English Civil War, Part 2.

Thank you. podcast. The English Civil War, part two. Charles I of England became king at the age of 24, proclaimed on the same day as the death of his father, King James I, on the 27th of March, 1625.

He was more reserved than his father, with a strong sense of formality and order.

Influenced by the Spanish court where he had spent many months, he gave a more formal tone

to his court and dressed in black. He had a stutter which made him shy and hesitant in speech.

Raised in England since he was an infant, Charles dearly loved the Anglican faith and saw it as a happy medium,

a common-sense route between the twin extremes of Catholicism on the one hand

and the various versions of Protestantism across Britain.

For a king of a Protestant nation, his choice of Queen aroused much suspicion among his subjects.

On the 1st of May he married the 15-year-old daughter of King Henry

the 4th of France, Henrietta Maria. Parliament was unsettled by the marriage for Henrietta was Catholic.

Charles assured Parliament that anti-Catholic legislation would remain in force,

but it also informed the French that concessions would be made to the Catholics.

This was not the last time when Charles made contradictory promises to different parties.

In his book, the English Civil Wars, 1640 to 1660, Blair Warden describes one of Charles's

most disastrous qualities, as that no one could trust him.

And on top of his duplicity, there lay failings of political imagination and of personal presence and authority.

Quote, his goals required arts of management and persuasion to which he was unequal,

largely because of an inability to enter the minds of people with views different from his own, or to take sensitive or tactful

account of their concerns. An inner insecurity made him wary of public display and denied him

...