Day: January 31, 2014

In some quarters, yesterday was considered the feast of King Charles the Martyr, better known to most people as Charles I of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

Charles probably had one of the unhappiest reigns of any English monarch. A strong believer in the Divine Right of Kings, he was almost constantly at loggerheads with Parliament, and he sought to rule as an absolute monarch. The final straw was when he tried to force Anglicanism on Scotland, resulting in the Bishops’ Wars, which served as a prelude to the English Civil Wars of 1642 to 1651.

As many of you know, Charles was ultimately defeated, put on trial, and executed. But of course the monarchy was eventually restored, and in 1660, the Convocations of Canterbury and York decided that the day of Charles’ execution should be commemorated with a special service in the Book of Common Prayer. The service was subsequently annexed to the Prayer Book by a royal warrant of Charles II along with the services commemorating the Gunpowder Plot and the restoration of the monarchy.[note]Legally speaking, they were an addendum to the Prayer Book since they were not included in the text that was attached to the Act of Uniformity 1662.[/note]

The service itself was a piece of ecclesiastical masochism filled to the brim with handwringing over the evils of executing a divinely anointed sovereign. By the mid-nineteenth century, this attitude seemed increasingly out-of-date, and Queen Victoria removed it from the Prayer Book in 1859 at the request of both Houses of Parliament along with the Gunpowder Plot and Restoration services.[note]Some Anglo-Catholics question the validity of Victoria’s warrant discontinuing these services, but since the services were enjoined by royal fiat rather than statute, they could be removed by an executive act of the sovereign alone.[/note]

Nowadays, the cult of King Charles the Martyr has largely faded from public view, though he still appears in the Calendar of Common Worship, the book of ‘alternative’ services that has replaced the Book of Common Prayer in many Church of England parishes. Although some Anglo-Catholics bewail the downgrading, the cult of King Charles the Martyr is an aberration best left in the seventeenth century.

One of the justifications for his continued commemoration is that he was a martyr for Anglicanism. Anglo-Catholics often paint him as a stalwart defender of episcopacy and Catholic tradition in the face of militant Presbyterianism.[note]In reality, Charles was a pragmatist who was willing to throw the episcopate under the bus if he thought it would help his cause. For example, after he was captured by Parliamentary forces in 1647, Charles signed a secret treaty with the Scots (known as ‘The Engagement’) wherein he promised to impose Presbyterianism on England for three years in exchange for military support.[/note] Now I have no problem with episcopacy (I am, after all, an Episcopalian!) or Catholic tradition, but I’m not sure they’re more important than the liberties of Charles’ subjects. This was a man who had no problem imprisoning people without trial and imposing illegal taxes, and his behavior was seen as problematic even by seventeenth-century standards.

I’ve heard defenders of Charles try to get around his failings by pointing out that nobody’s perfect, and just because a person has flaws doesn’t mean they aren’t worthy of veneration by the faithful. But by the same token, just because someone displays certain virtues doesn’t mean they should be venerated either. It’s ultimately a question of balance, and in the final analysis, Charles seems rather wanting.