ABSTRACT
When Charles rode over Magdalen Bridge and up Headington Hill before dawn on 27 April, he began a journey that ended thirty-three months later outside the Banqueting Hall at Whitehall. The path he took was not, however, a high road running, with detours, or exits, inevitably to its destination. For most of the time the crown sat on Charles’s head, and his head rested on his shoulders as securely as ever, the decision to depose and execute him being taken but a couple of months before his death. During this period there were several options open to the king, who knew what he wanted but became increasngly confused as how to get it. Thus he slithered and slid with the inconsistency of a man with flexible means and constant goals. Recognizing that as the monarch he was the most potent force for stability in an unstable land, he overplayed this ace, and so lost his stake, to produce a dozen years of instability so intractable that the restoration of monarchy became the only solution. With a foresight that owed more to the king’s emotional needs than his political sagacity, Charles foresaw this outcome as ‘through a glass darkly’. The last two years of his life were ones of temendous personal development. Like the hero of a classic tragedy, whose fatal flaw produced his denouement, from suffering he learnt much wisdom until by the end ripeness was all. His letters revealed a more likeable man, the prisoner who treated laundresses or cooks’ wives with a kindness and concern that as king he rarely showed to lords or their ladies.
