Charles was born into the House of Stuart as the second son of King James VI of Scotland, but after his father inherited the English throne in 1603, he moved to England, where he spent much of the rest of his life.

His attempts to force the Church of Scotland to adopt high Anglican practices led to the Bishops' Wars, strengthened the position of the English and Scottish parliaments, and helped precipitate his own downfall.

[10] Even so, his public profile remained low in contrast to that of his physically stronger and taller[b] elder brother, Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, whom Charles adored and attempted to emulate.

The conflict, originally confined to Bohemia, spiralled into a wider European war, which the English Parliament and public quickly grew to see as a polarised continental struggle between Catholics and Protestants.

[17] James, however, had been seeking marriage between Prince Charles and Ferdinand's niece, Infanta Maria Anna of Spain, and began to see the Spanish match as a possible diplomatic means of achieving peace in Europe.

The incident set an important precedent as the process of impeachment would later be used against Charles and his supporters George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, Archbishop William Laud, and Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford.

[24] Charles and Buckingham, James's favourite and a man who had great influence over the prince,[25] travelled incognito to Spain in February 1623 to try to reach agreement on the long-pending Spanish match.

Charles and Buckingham supported the impeachment of the Lord Treasurer, Lionel Cranfield, 1st Earl of Middlesex, who opposed war on grounds of cost and quickly fell in much the same manner Bacon had.

[48] Moreover, the House of Commons limited its authorisation for royal collection of tonnage and poundage (two varieties of customs duties) to a year, although previous sovereigns since Henry VI had been granted the right for life.

When Charles ordered a parliamentary adjournment on 2 March,[79] members held the Speaker, Sir John Finch, down in his chair so that the session could be prolonged long enough for resolutions against Catholicism, Arminianism, and tonnage and poundage to be read out and acclaimed by the chamber.

[80] This was too much for Charles, who dissolved Parliament and had nine parliamentary leaders, including Sir John Eliot, imprisoned over the matter,[81] thereby turning the men into martyrs[82] and giving popular cause to their protest.

[91] To raise revenue without reconvening Parliament, Charles resurrected an all-but-forgotten law called the "Distraint of Knighthood", in abeyance for over a century, which required any man who earned £40 or more from land each year to present himself at the king's coronation to be knighted.

[111] They initiated a series of reforms to promote religious uniformity by restricting non-conformist preachers, insisting the liturgy be celebrated as prescribed by the Book of Common Prayer, organising the internal architecture of English churches to emphasise the sacrament of the altar, and reissuing King James's Declaration of Sports, which permitted secular activities on the sabbath.

[127] The military failure in the First Bishops' War caused a financial and diplomatic crisis for Charles that deepened when his efforts to raise funds from Spain while simultaneously continuing his support for his Palatine relatives led to the public humiliation of the Battle of the Downs, where the Dutch destroyed a Spanish bullion fleet off the coast of Kent in sight of the impotent English navy.

[136] By this stage the Earl of Strafford, Lord Deputy of Ireland since 1632,[138] had emerged as Charles's right-hand man and, together with Archbishop Laud, pursued a policy that he termed "Thorough", which aimed to make central royal authority more efficient and effective at the expense of local or anti-government interests.

[139] Although originally a critic of the King, Strafford defected to royal service in 1628, in part due to the Duke of Buckingham's persuasion,[140] and had since emerged, alongside Laud, as the most influential of Charles's ministers.

They met virtually no resistance until reaching Newcastle upon Tyne, where they defeated the English forces at the Battle of Newburn and occupied the city, as well as the neighbouring County Palatine of Durham.

[148] This stated that the Scots would continue to occupy Northumberland and Durham and be paid £850 per day indefinitely until a final settlement was negotiated and the English Parliament recalled, which would be required to raise sufficient funds to pay the Scottish forces.

[167] In the following months, ship money, fines in distraint of knighthood and excise without parliamentary consent were declared unlawful, and the Courts of Star Chamber and High Commission were abolished.

[200] On 3 January 1642, Charles directed Parliament to give up five specific members of the Commons—Pym, John Hampden, Denzil Holles, William Strode and Sir Arthur Haselrig—and one peer, Lord Mandeville, on the grounds of high treason.

His plan to undermine the city walls failed due to heavy rain, and on the approach of a parliamentary relief force, Charles lifted the siege and withdrew to Sudeley Castle.

[230] At the Battle of Naseby on 14 June 1645, Rupert's horsemen again mounted a successful charge against the flank of Parliament's New Model Army, but elsewhere on the field, opposing forces pushed Charles's troops back.

Attempting to rally his men, Charles rode forward, but as he did so, Robert Dalzell, 1st Earl of Carnwath seized his bridle and pulled him back, fearing for the King's safety.

[243] He fled Hampton Court on 11 November, and from the shores of Southampton Water made contact with Colonel Robert Hammond, Parliamentary Governor of the Isle of Wight, whom he apparently believed to be sympathetic.

Uprisings in Kent, Essex, and Cumberland, and a rebellion in South Wales, were put down by the New Model Army, and with the defeat of the Scots at the Battle of Preston in August 1648, the royalists lost any chance of winning the war.

[249] On 5 December 1648, Parliament voted 129 to 83 to continue negotiating with the King,[250] but Oliver Cromwell and the army opposed any further talks with someone they viewed as a bloody tyrant and were already taking action to consolidate their power.

"[266] Presaging the modern concept of command responsibility,[267] the indictment held him "guilty of all the treasons, murders, rapines, burnings, spoils, desolations, damages and mischiefs to this nation, acted and committed in the said wars, or occasioned thereby.

[272] The court, by contrast, challenged the doctrine of sovereign immunity and proposed that "the King of England was not a person, but an office whose every occupant was entrusted with a limited power to govern 'by and according to the laws of the land and not otherwise'.

[275] The judgement read, "For all which treasons and crimes this court doth adjudge that he, the said Charles Stuart, as a tyrant, traitor, murderer, and public enemy to the good people of this nation, shall be put to death by the severing of his head from his body.

[315] His collection grew further to encompass Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Leonardo da Vinci, Hans Holbein the Younger, Wenceslaus Hollar, Tintoretto and Veronese, and self-portraits by both Albrecht Dürer and Rembrandt.