CHARLES I. 427 CHARLES ITE. inely dissolved that body, and was com- pelled to come to a truce with the Scots, who had entered the N. of England in force. The houses met again in the same year, brought in a bill of attainder against Strafford and had him executed; imprisoned Laud, abolished the Star Chamber and High Court of Commission, and curbed the royal prerogative in other important matters. Things now went on from bad to worse, and both parties had become so thoroughly embittered and disgusted that no other course was left but a final arbitrament by the sword. The king raised the royal standard at Nottingham in August, 1642, and to it flocked the majority of the nobility, gentry, and yeomanry of the land; the Parliament troops, on the other hand, being composed of the citizens of towns and the artisans of London. The battle of Marston Moor was the first signal blow inflicted on the royal cause. The hotly disputed battle fought at Naseby, in Northamptonshire, June 14, 1645, was that which decided the fate of Charles. Six months after this decisive defeat, Charles, tempted by his evil genius, withdrew to Scotland, a country in which his name was held in odium, owing to the persecutions of Laud; where, throw- ing himself upon the more than doubtful fidelity of Lord Leven, the Scottish gen- eral, and his army, he was delivered up by the Scots to the English Parliament upon payment of £400,000. The fallen monarch was first confined by the par- liamentary commissioners in Holmby House, Northamptonshire. Here he was seized by the anny (which had now dis- severed itself from the Parliament), or, in other words, by Cromwell, and re- moved to Hampton Court, whence, after a futile attempt to escape, he was taken to Carisbrooke Castle, in the Isle of Wight. Here he carried on negotiations with the Parliament, who were willing to restore him under certain conditions, in order thus to overrule and break down the ascendant military power. But Cromwell, anticipating them, again seized the king's person, had him con- veyed to Hurst Castle, near Lymington, Hampshire; and then, clearing out and crushing Parliament by "Pride's purge," prepared for the closing act of the great drama by having the captive sovereign brought to London, and put upon his trial before a High Court of Justice ap- pointed for the occasion, on the charge that it was treason in a king to levy war against his Parliament. This trial began on Jan. 20, 1649, and lasted during four sittings. Sentence of death was pronounced upon him. Charles was exe- cuted Jan. 30, 1649, in the 49th year of his age, and the 24th of his reign. CHARLES II., born in 1630. was called to the throne by a people sickened of civil broils and entered London May 29, 1660, his birthday, amid universal rejoic- ing. He is known as the Merry Mon- arch. The trial, condemnation, and exe- cution of the "regicides," as they were called, or of so many then living as had been most active in the death of his father, was one of the first of the many mournful features of his reign. Next, the Act of Conformity ejected about 2,000 conscientious clergymen from their cures. The Dutch war followed, which began gloriously, but ended by their fleet, under De Ruyter, appearing in the Thames, sailing up the Medway, taking Sheerness, burning several ships, and insulting Harwich. A ministry known as the Cabal, which urged the king to repeat the errors of his father by exalt- ing his prerogative above the privileges of parliament and the laws of the land, brought the country into thorough con- tempt in the eyes of Europe. His reign was one of the most corrupt and licen- tious of modern times, and can only com- pare in history with that of Louis XV. of France. Charles died in 1685, in the 55th year of his age, and the 25th of his reign. He left no legitimate issue. CHARLES EDWARD (pRINCE). See Stuart Family, The. CHARLES I., surnamed le Clvauve, or the Bald, King of France, son of Louis le Debonnaire, born in 823. After his father's death in 840 he fought with his half-brother Lothaire for the empire of the Franks, and finally acquired by the Treaty of Verdun (843) all those terri- tories between the ocean on the one part, and the Meuse, the Scheldt, the Saone, the Rhone, and the Mediterranean, on the other. But he lost southern Aqui- taine to his nephew Pepin, and had to divide Lorraine with his brother Louis the German. In 875 he was crowned emperor by Pope John VIII. He died in 877. CHARLES II., surnamed le Gros, or the Fat, King of France, also known as Charles III., Emperor of Germany, born about 832. He was the son of Louis the German, and ascended the French throne in 885 to the prejudice of his cousin, Charles the Simple, but was deposed in 887 and died the following year. CHARLES III., King of France, sur- named the Simple, son of Louis the Stammerer, born in 879. His reign is noted for his long struggle with the piratical Northmen or Normans, to whose chief, Rollo, he eventually ceded the territory of Normandy. He died in 929.
