was presumably the H. Slater, jun., in question.
[A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Charlotte Charke, written by herself, London, 1776; the same, London, printed for Hunt & Clarke, 1827; Genest's Account of the Stage; works mentioned.]
CHARKE, WILLIAM (fl. 1580), puritan divine, was distinguished as the opponent of Edmund Campion, the Jesuit priest [q. v.], and as a leader of the puritan party. He was a fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, from which society he was expelled in 1572 for declaring, in a sermon preached at St. Mary's, that the episcopal system was introduced by Satan. From the judgment of the vice-chancellor and heads of houses he appealed to the chancellor, Burghley, who interceded for him, but without success. On his expulsion from the university he was appointed domestic chaplain first to Lord Cheney, and afterwards to the Duchess of Somerset. In 1580 he published 'An Answere to a Seditious Pamphlet lately cast abroade by a Jesuite [Edmund Campion], with a discoverie of that blasphemous sect,' 8vo. When Campion was a prisoner in the Tower, Charke was employed with others to hold a discussion with him. 'A true report of the disputation ... set down by the reverend learned men themselves that dealt therein,' was published in 1583. Father Parsons, in his 'Defence of the Censure gyven vpon two Bookes of William Charke and Meredith Hanmer,' has a very able attack on Charke. If we may believe Parsons's testimony, Charke, not content with having worried Campion (faint from torture and confinement) in the Tower, 'folowed hym in person to the place of hys martyrdome with bygge lookes, steme countenace, prowde woordes, and merciles behavyour' In 1581 Charke was elected constant preacher to the society of Lincoln's Inn. After holding this post for some years, he was suspended in 1593 by Archbishop Whitgift for puritanism. The date of his death is unknown.
Wood (Athenæ, ed. Bliss, i. 695) accuses Charke of having destroyed the manuscript (as prepared, in its final shape, for publication) of the last three books of the 'Ecclesiastical Polity,' which he obtained from Hooker's widow. Wood's statement is clearly drawn from the appendix to Izaak Walton's 'Life of Hooker, 1665, where the fanatics who committed this act of wanton destruction are said to have been 'one Mr. Charke, and another minister that dwelt near Canterbury.' This 'Mr. Charke' may have been William Charke, but from the same appendix we learn that Hooker's youngest daughter married a certain 'Ezekiel Charke, Bachelor in Divinity and rector of St. Nicholas in Harbledown, near Canterbury.' The suspicion naturally suggests itself, though Walton is silent, that Ezekiel Charke was the culprit.
[Strype's Whitgift, ed. 1822, i. 88-92, 198, iii. 24-7; Strype's Aylmer, ed. 1821, p. 36; Parsons's Defence of the Censure, 1682; Fuller's Church History, ed. Brewer, iv 385, v. 164; Brook's Lives of the Puritans, i. 111-17.]
CHARLEMONT, Barons, Viscounts, and Earl of. [See Caulfeild.]
CHARLES I (1600–1649), king of Great Britain and Ireland, the second son of James VI of Scotland and Anne of Denmark, was born at Dunfermline on 19 Nov. 1600), and at his baptism on 23 Dec. was created Duke of Albany. He was entrusted to the care of Lord and Lady Fyvie. His father having in 1603 succeeded to the English throne, he was brought to England in the following year and given into the charge of Lady Cary, many ladies having refused the responsibility of bringing him up on account, of his physical weakness. 'He was so weak in his joints, and especially his ankles, insomuch as many feared they were out of joint.' It was long, too, before he was able to speak, and Lady Gary had hard work in insisting that the cure of thtese defects should be left to nature, the king being anxious to place his son's legs in iron boots, and to have the string under his tongue cut. Gradually the child outgrew these defects, though he continued to retain a slight impediment in his speech (Memoirs of P. Cary, Earl of Monmouth, ed. 1759, p 203).
On 16 Jan. 1605 the boy was created Duke of York. On 6 Nov. 1612 the death of his brother, Prince Henry, made him heir-apparent to his father's crowns, though he was not created Prince of Wales till 3 Nov. 1616. Long before this last date negotiations had been opened in France for marrying him to a sister of Louis XIII, the Princess Christina, and in November 1513 the scheme was in a fair way to a conclusion. In June 1614 James was thrown, by his quarrel with his second parliament, into the arms of Spain, and, without allowing the French proposals entirely to drop, made an offer to marry his son to the Infanta Maria, the daughter of Philip III of Spain. It was not till 1616 that the confidential negotiations which followed promised a sufficiently satisfactory result to induce James finally to break with France, and in 1617 a formal proposal was made to the king of Spain by the English ambassador, Sir John Digby. In 1618 the
