Charlie Fenton’s Reviews > Charles II: The Star King > Status Update
Charlie Fenton
is on page 21 of 130
‘Charles left Scheveningen in the Netherlands and arrived at Dover two days later, before astutely delaying his entry into London until his thirtieth birthday on 29 May. Widely acclaimed as an event of providential deliverance, Charles’s return as king generated a mood of optimistic euphoria... the monarchy’s return had been achieved ‘without one drop of blood and by that very army which rebelled against him’.’
— Aug 30, 2018 06:36PM
Like flag
Charlie’s Previous Updates
Charlie Fenton
is on page 106 of 130
‘Charles II was certainly a conflicted character and a compulsive dissimulator: he was a monarch of multiple masks. Yet Charles’s complexity was not only a product of the endemic instability of the political world that he inherited and on which he operated, but also appeals to modern interests in the psychological make-up of prominent individuals’
— Aug 31, 2018 09:33AM
Charlie Fenton
is on page 74 of 130
‘In his posthumously published character sketch of Charles, the Marquis of Halifax observed that Charles had ‘lived with his ministers as he did with his mistresses; he used them, but he was not in love with them’.‘
— Aug 31, 2018 09:14AM
Charlie Fenton
is on page 60 of 130
‘despite promoting a majestic image, reinforced by regular ritual, combining the natural informality of his grandfather James I and VI with an innate gregariousness and personal magnetism... Having also experienced at first hand the hardships of civil warfare and years of impecunious foreign exile, Charles had acquired rare royal insight into the lives of many of his subjects’
— Aug 31, 2018 08:42AM
Charlie Fenton
is on page 55 of 130
‘For in September 1666, the Great Fire had provided unexpected opportunity to consider rebuilding London to a degree that would reflect monarchical munificence on a grandiose scale. Seeking to impose an elegant new coherence upon the English capital, Charles could thereby assume the role of the nation’s architect, restoring London‘
— Aug 31, 2018 08:30AM
Charlie Fenton
is on page 28 of 130
‘Charles himself also became the target of mounting personal criticism for, despite having not yet produced an heir by his wife, by 1667 he had fathered at least nine illegitimate children by four different women, the majority of whom were publicly acknowledged in a way that brought inevitable humiliation for his wife, Catherine.’
— Aug 30, 2018 06:57PM
Charlie Fenton
is on page 13 of 130
‘At home, Charles was the first prince born as heir to all three crowns of England, Scotland and Ireland, while it was nearly a century since the English had last welcomed a male heir to the throne in the person of Henry VIII’s son, Edward VI. In due course, Charles I and Henrietta Maria also produced an extensive number of spare Stuart heirs’
— Aug 30, 2018 12:32PM
