David Gelber is gripped by this sympathetic, thought-provoking account of Charles I’s life
WHEN the executioner’s axe fell upon the neck of Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1587, it was an event without example in British history. Some 60 years later, Mary’s grandson Charles I suffered the same terrible end. This sympathetic new biography of Charles begins by pointing to this sorry parallel. Mary’s execution breached a taboo—thereafter, the sovereign’s person would never again be sacrosanct.
Leanda de Lisle presents Charles I’s life as a grand tragedy. The heavy responsibilities of kingship fell upon him unexpectedly. The death in 1612 of his elder brother, Henry, propelled him into a position for which he was not prepared. Their father, James I, spared nothing in giving Henry an education worthy of the heir to the English throne, but at the cost of neglecting the spare.
Charles’s notions of kingship were not, the author makes clear, formed in the schoolroom, but came instead from more dangerous sources. One was the teaching of High Anglicans, who emphasised the divine nature of kingship. She points to a stained-glass window at Lincoln College, Oxford, depicting Christ with the face of Charles, as a typical product of this thinking. This kind of idolatry was bound to enrage Puritans.
この記事は Country Life UK の January 24, 2018 版に掲載されています。
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この記事は Country Life UK の January 24, 2018 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
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