ABSTRACT
Wordsworth’s line ‘the Child is father of the Man’ has become a commonplace. King Charles I had been born a weakling; he was hastily baptized because he was scarcely expected to live. Charles was to remain in Dunfermline castle near Edinburgh, where he had been bom, under the care of a guardian and a governess; although he was slow to walk and talk, he owed his survival to their devoted care. A year after his arrival in England James despatched an English doctor to examine his second son in the summer of 1604. The winter of 1612-13 was crucial in Charles’s life. In November 1612 his brother Henry died of typhoid fever. The Parliament of 1621, in which Charles had been active, was deeply exercised over the destiny of the Elector Palatine, for it feared that a Counter-Reformation headed by the Emperor and the King of Spain, both members of the Habsburg family, might overthrow Protestantism throughout Europe.
