[2] The Caroline era was dominated by growing religious, political, and social discord between the King and his supporters, termed the Royalist party, and the Parliamentarian opposition that evolved in response to particular aspects of Charles's rule.

While the Thirty Years' War was raging in continental Europe, Britain had an uneasy peace, growing more restless as the civil conflict between the King and the supporters of Parliament worsened.

They were rich in reference to the ancients, and most poems "celebrate beauty, love, nature, sensuality, drinking, good fellowship, honor, and social life".

The conventional theatre in London also continued the Jacobean trend of moving to smaller, more intimate, but also more expensive venues, performing in front of a much narrower social range.

His collection reflected his aesthetic tastes, which contrasted with the systematic acquisition of a wide range of objects that was typical of contemporary German and Habsburg princes.

[17][18] Charles commissioned the ceiling of the Banqueting House, Whitehall from Rubens and paintings by artists from the Low Countries such as Gerard van Honthorst and Daniel Mytens.

[25] Van Dyck's subjects appear relaxed and elegant but with an overarching air of authority, a tone that dominated English portrait painting until the end of the 18th century.

[26] Although he established the classic "Cavalier" style and dress, a majority of his most important patrons took the Parliamentarian side in the English Civil War that broke out soon after his death.

[30] Jones's St Paul's, Covent Garden (1631) was the first completely new English church since the Reformation, and an imposing transcription of the Tuscan order as described by Vitruvius – in effect Early Roman or Etruscan architecture.

[33] Raynham Hall in Norfolk (1630s), where the origins of the design have been much discussed, also features large and proud gable ends, but in a far more restrained fashion, that reflects Italian influence, by whatever route it came.

[34] Following the execution of Charles I, the Palladian designs advocated by Inigo Jones were too closely associated with the court of the late king to survive the turmoil of the Civil War.

Medicine saw a major step forward with the 1628 publication by William Harvey of his study of the circulatory system, Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus ("An Anatomical Exercise on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Living Beings").

Countering medical progress, the occultist Robert Fludd continued his series of enormous and convoluted volumes of esoteric lore, begun during the previous reign.

The men who would begin the Royal Society were for the most part still schoolboys and students in this period—though John Wilkins was already publishing early works of Copernican astronomy and science advocacy, The Discovery of a World in the Moon (1638) and A Discourse Concerning a New Planet (1640).

Lacking formal scientific institutions and organisations, Caroline scientists, proto-scientists, and "natural philosophers" had to cluster in informal groups, often under the social and financial patronage of a sympathetic aristocrat.

Second, in a period dominated by the Thirty Years' War, it reflected concerns Charles was failing to support Protestant Europe, when it was under threat from Catholic powers.

Historians Kevin Sharpe and Julian Davies suggest Charles was the prime instigator of religious change, with Laud ensuring the appointment of key supporters, such as Roger Maynwaring and Robert Sibthorpe.

Following the 1643 Solemn League and Covenant, the English and Scots set up the Westminster Assembly, intending to create a unified, Presbyterian church of England and Scotland.

[47] Europe was deeply polarised, and on the verge of the massive Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), with the smaller established Protestant states facing the aggression of the larger Catholic empires.

[48] Charles inherited a weak navy and the early years of the era saw numerous ships lost to Barbary pirates, in the pay of the Ottoman empire, whose prisoners became slaves.

[53] Lack of funds for war, and internal conflict between the king and Parliament led to a redirection of English involvement in European affairs – much to the dismay of Protestant forces on the continent.

[55][56] Between 1620 and 1643, religious dissatisfaction, mostly from Puritans and those opposed to the King's purported Catholic leanings, led to large scale voluntary emigration, which later came to be known as The Great Migration.

The colony of New Netherland begun by England's great imperial rival, the Dutch United Provinces, which claimed the Delaware River valley and was deliberately vague about its border with Virginia.

[64] The Roman Catholics, already a minority, led by a Jesuit Father Andrew White worked together with Protestants, under the patronage of Leonard Calvert, the 2nd Lord Baltimore's brother to create a new settlement, St. Mary's City.

[65] Today, the city is considered the birthplace of religious freedom in the United States,[66][67] with the earliest North American colonial settlement ever established with the specific mandate of being a haven for both Catholic and Protestant Christian faiths.

Another dissenter that was originally part of Williams's party, Samuel Gorton, later split from that group and founded his own settlement of Shawomet Purchase in 1642, today this is the community of Warwick.

[82][83] At Carisbrooke, Charles still intriguing and plotting futile escapes managed to forge an alliance with Scotland, by promising to establish Presbyterianism, and a Scottish invasion of England was planned.

[84] However, by the end of 1648 Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army had consolidated its control over England and the invading Scots were defeated at the Battle of Preston where 2,000 of Charles' troops were killed and a further 9,000 captured.

[88] In his lifetime Charles accumulated enemies who mocked his artistic interests as an extravagant expenditures of state funds, and whispered that he fell under the influence of Cardinal Francesco Barberini, the pope's nephew who was also a distinguished collector.

[88] Following the King's execution, under The Protectorate, with the exception of sacred music and, in its latter years, opera, the arts did not flourish again until The Restoration and beginning of the Carolean era in 1660 under Charles II.