ABSTRACT
James's reign ended uneasily; Charles I’s closed in tragedy, the country torn with civil war and bloodshed, the King himself lying prone on the scaffold to meet his end. Charles was as old as the century, having been born on 19 November 1600, three years before his father became King of England. He was very unlike his elder brother Henry, who had joyfully, so boisterously, attended the Merchant Taylors’ great banquet in 1607 and who had so willingly joined the Company, insisting on his entire entourage doing the same. We might dismiss, or at least gloss over, the Civil Wars with a few carefully chosen sentences as if they were no direct concern of the Merchant Taylors, as they were something of such huge importance that they should only be considered on a national scale, outside the scope of the history of a single City company. During the Interregnum, the Company’s chief concern was with the schools under its care.
