ABSTRACT
King Charles I looms large in the British historical imagination. His equestrian statue stands proudly, albeit on a traffic island, just in front of Trafalgar Square, while his bust stares out from the porch of St Margaret’s Church opposite the Houses of Parliament. Charles is one of the few English monarchs to have a society dedicated to him in the shape of the Society of St Charles King & Martyr, as well as an attendant feast day in the Church of England calendar. Victorian historians, among whom the great Samuel Rawson Gardiner had the most lasting impact, tended to see Charles as an aspiring but ineffective tyrant, not entirely devoid of good qualities but failing to grasp the fundamental principles of a constitutional system upheld and defended by Parliament. The best biography of the king is that by Richard Cust, Charles I: A Political Life, which is balanced and and reflects many years of study of the period.
