EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT THE CIVIL WARS
Q: How popular was Charles I as monarch before the Civil Wars?
A: He certainly had his critics and I wouldn’t say that he was a particularly popular king before the Civil Wars.
Charles came to the throne in 1625 and was almost immediately beset with problems – there were the issues with Parliament and MPs’ refusals to grant him money; a whole series of foreign policy disasters, including a new, costly war with France; there was the intense hatred that was felt towards his favourite, the Duke of Buckingham; and there was the suspicion directed against Charles’s Catholic wife, Henrietta Maria. So I think in those early years, he certainly wasn’t a popular monarch and he faced quite a lot of hostility. During Charles’s Personal Rule – from 1629-40 – I think you could argue that things got a little better and that the level of hostility towards him receded to a certain extent. But then, of course, everything went wrong again, starting with his waging war with the Scots in 1639 and 1640.
Q: How did Charles’s style of kingship compare to that of his father, James VI and I?
They were very different on the surface, but not so different underneath. James VI and I was very familiar in courtly life and he delighted in drinking, jokes, horseplay and bawdiness – his court was a bit
