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Charles I

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Peerless historian Hilaire Belloc here describes with his wonderful and virile prose the saga of Charles I of England. In a way, the regicide of Charles at the hands of Protestant revolutionaries prefigured the later acts of the Jacobins in murdering Louis XVI and the Bolsheviks in murdering Czar Saint Nicholas II. The three revolutionary activities had in common their culminating scene, that being the killing of the King. Of course, there are differences. The Bolsheviks killed not just the saintly Romanov, but his entire family, and left behind their occult sigil on the blood stained walls of the cellar in which their ghastly deed was performed. In any case, Belloc begins the saga here with the life and death of Charles Stuart, his regicide being one of the culminating acts of the Protestant Revolution and one of the initiating acts of the international conspiracy against authority that is still, sadly, ongoing. For the serious student of history, this is a must read.

In 2003, IHS Press--under their Gates of Vienna Books line--released the legendary Hilaire Belloc's book on Charles I which was originally released in 1933. This is not a biography by any means. While Belloc offers some of the details of the doomed Stuart monarch's life, he is more concerned with presenting his case that the shattering of Christendom--a unified Catholic Europe--with the rise of the Protestant faiths and the dawning of monied interests led to social chaos and the English Civil War. Belloc is a vivid writer who offers a powerful and flowing narrative.

Readers who are not familiar with Belloc should note that he is a not a conventional historian. He is more concerned with writing an entertaining and informative book that he is with getting tenure. Belloc is a writer, not a bureaucrat. While this can sometimes be frustrating--he does not offer footnotes for example--Belloc's writing is often refreshing and he makes no secret of what his biases are.

The IHS version has a brief forward from Clyde Wilson touching on Belloc. While Wilson is a scholar of the Old South and not 17th Century England (full disclosure--I studied under Wilson in grad school), his focus is more on Belloc than Charles I. Michael Hennessy offers a much more in-depth look at Belloc and Charles I in his fine introduction.

While this book is not for everyone, and Belloc is not always fully persuasive in making his case, it is still readable almost eight decades after it was first published.

This book is a wonderful historical (perhaps meta-historical would be more accurate) account of the overthrow of England's Charles I, and the larger English Civil War. It is not like any modern history. It makes you ask larger questions.

Reading this I became quite conflicted - coming to see the regicide of Charles Stuart
(St. Charles The Martyr) as the culmination of the Protestant Reformation. Yet always previously thinking that had been a triumph for the Saxon peasantry over Norman monarchy. I'm still conflicted - about the history - but not about this book.

Belloc also paints a portrait of how money overtook heredity as power over people's lives. And how money worked against the nation. This is highly relevant today.

Belloc is a captivating writer perfect for someone with a philosphical approach to history. This is a subject that was of little interest to me when I started but now is fascinating and relevant.

Hilaire Belloc's 1933 biography of Charles I is one in a series of historical biographies written by the controversial author. Belloc's historical works have often been discounted as careless or blatantly inaccurate. Indeed, there are no footnotes, no endnotes, nor even an index to his biography of Charles I. The forward and the introduction do an admirable job trying to convince the reader that Belloc's work is indeed serious historical study, and I have to admit that after reading the forward and the introduction I was looking forward to a more literary, if not wholly accurate, narrative of the life of Charles I.

Sadly, the narrative is not compelling. Belloc takes a fascinating subject and makes him, in many places, quite boring by focusing on his overriding political theme: that the landed aristocracy was essentially greedy, and that the monarch stood in the way of the aristocracy's attempt to gain more wealth. In furthering this theme, the biography is filled with an open disdain for Parliament, and a desperate attempt to discount any other causes of the civil war. For example, Belloc attempts to significantly downplay the impact of Puritanism (and religion in general) as a cause of the civil war.

Belloc's focus on politics also ignores other highly interesting personal aspects of the life of Charles Stuart. Take, for example, the episode of Charles' youth where Charles and Buckingham travel, incognito, to the continent to court the Spanish infanta. Belloc dwells on the political failure of this endeavor, and misses completely the highly compelling personal drama. Likewise, Belloc does not explore the King's personal relationships with his sister or wife. This book is solely an exploration of the political climate of the reign of Charles I; it is not a full exploration of the life (especially personal life) of Charles. While the causes of the civil war and the political climate of the time are obviously important and interesting, Belloc fails to shed any light on Charles Stuart as a flesh and blood person. This failure, in my opinion, produces an incomplete picture as to how and why the monarchy was overthrown.

Belloc's other prejudices, in addition to his disdain for Parliament, creep into the book. Throughout the last third of the book Belloc makes disparaging comments about Puritans (Belloc was a staunch Catholic). As another example, Belloc is openly hostile in his few comments on the reign of Elizabeth I. If you were to believe Belloc, Elizabeth was an old fool who, rightly says Belloc, left the important business of governing the country to men (the Cecils). This is not surprising, as Belloc once said "I am opposed to women's voting . . . I call it immoral, because I think the bringing of one's women, one's mothers and sisters into the political arena, disturbs the relations between the sexes."

If you are truly interested in Charles I, do not waste your time with this highly biased biography. Instead, read Pauline Gregg's fascinating work on the life of Charles Stuart.