The Stuarts in England : II Trivia Quiz

Answer: Nottingham, August 1642

Parliament, meanwhile, had raised its own army, which it placed under the command of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. This parliamentary faction was supported by the navy, and most big cities. The King, on the other hand, could call on considerable support from rural communities.

Answer: 22

Rupert was the son of Charles's sister, the widowed Queen of Bohemia, and he had almost been left behind when his parents fled Prague soon after his birth. He had already fought with the Dutch in the Eighy Years' War, and had plenty of military experience. Together with his brother Maurice, he gave his uncle Charles his allegiance when the Civil War broke out.
Thanks to Rupert, the royalist cavalry enjoyed early successes. His dashing manner and military prowess earned him the nickname of 'the Robber Prince' or 'the Devil' among the parliamentarians. He brought a large poodle, 'Boy' into battle with him, and some parliamentarians claimed the dog had supernatural powers!
The Battle of Edgehill was inconclusive, but it did clear the road to London for Charles. However, he failed to take this opportunity, and by the time he was at Reading, London was once again firmly under Parliament's control.

Answer: Oxford

At this time (late 1642), Charles's family were scattered far and wide. His eldest son, the Prince of Wales, had been present at the Battle of Edgehill, as was the King's second son, the Duke of York. Their mother, Queen Henrietta Maria, was in Europe, where she had fled to escape impeachment, under the pretext of bringing her daughter Mary, Princess Royal and Princess of Orange, to Holland and her husband's court. Life for the Queen and her eldest daughter had been very hectic ever since the 'birds had flown'.

They had spent an uncomfortable night at Hampton Court with the rest of the royal family before the King had issued an official statement on 7 February to the effect that it was time his daughter joined her husband in Holland. Their crossing was a stormy one (the weather was inevitably terrible whenever Henrietta Maria took to the sea.

Her children called it 'Mam's ill-fortune at sea'). In Holland, they were met by, among others, Henrietta's sister-in-law the Winter Queen and the latter's youngest daughter Sophie. Sophie, who had expected Henrietta Maria to be a beauty, was disappointed: 'I was surprised to find the Queen a little woman with long, lean arms, crooked shoulders and teeth protruding from her mouth like guns from a fort.' Henrietta Maria, however, soon gained Sophie's favour by comparing her to the Princess Royal, considered the best looking member of the royal family.

This prompted Sophie to concede that the Queen was 'quite handsome' and had 'beautiful eyes, a well shaped nose and an admirable complexion.' The Princess Royal was given a very polite welcome by her new father-in-law, who apparently treated her with great reverence. Her new mother-in-law, the former Amalia van Solms, was less thrilled with her, and thus things got off to a bad start between them almost from the beginning.

Answer: England

She had spent virtually all her time on the continent haggling, cajoling and pawning her jewels to raise money for Charles's cause. 'You may judge now, when they know we need money, how they keep their foot on our throat,' she observed bitterly in a letter to her husband.

The Prince of Orange, Henrietta Maria's daughter's father-in-law, provided some funds, but mostly, the cupboard seemed very bare indeed. When Henrietta Maria finally left in 1643, it was probable that her sister-in-law the Queen of Bohemia was the only one sorry to see her go, apart from, of course, Princess Mary.

Answer: York

Henrietta Maria, styling herself 'Her Majesty Generalissima', had quite a harrowing time, with Bridlington being fired on when she landed. She insisted, however, on returning to rescue her dog before leaving the town. She established her headquarters in York with a royalist army. On 23 May 1643, parliament impeached the Queen. Unconcerned, she travelled to Oxford to be reunited with the King in July. Late 1643 saw the pendulum swing in Parliament's favour, with victories at the battles of Newbury and Winceby, the latter giving them control of Lincoln. Charles, now feeling desparate, ordered his lord lieutenant in Ireland to call a truce with the rebels there with the object of freeing up more English troops to aid his cause.

This served, however, to alienate many of his subjects, particularly the Scots.

Answer: the West Country

The Prince was assisted by a council headed by Sir Edward Hyde. He had wanted for a long time to play an active part in the war, envious of his glamorous cousin, Rupert. Rupert was at the time raiding various parliamentary posts near Lincoln.
Things swiftly went from bad to worse for the royalist cause. The Scots, thoroughly fed up with Charles, invaded England in support of Parliament in January 1644. Queen Henrietta Maria gave birth to her last child, a daughter named Henrietta (or Henriette) in Exeter on 16 June. Barely two weeks after the baby's birth, Henrietta Maria sailed for France from Falmouth.
Aided by the Scots, Parliament won the Battle of Marston Moor on 2 July, giving them control of the north and making the King's position increasingly untenable. Further defeats followed at Naseby on 14 June 1645 and Langport on 10 July effectively crippling Charles's cause.

Answer: the Isles of Scilly

After a brief stay, Charles moved on to Jersey on 17 April and finally to Paris in June. Meanwhile, in May, the King had surrendered himself to the Scots in an attempt to nogotiate some sort of settlement. Charles was held at Southwell while the Scots bickered about what to do with him.
Around the same time, Princess Henrietta's governess managed to smuggle her charge to safety, disguising the princess as a boy and calling her 'Pierre' (though Henrietta nearly ruined all by loudly proclaiming that her name was princess, not Pierre). The two arrived in France in August, much to the Queen's releif.
The other children left in England - James, Duke of York, Henry, Duke of Gloucester and Princess Elizabeth - were confined in St James's Palace, but not treated unkindly.

Answer: That he did his utmost to establish Presbyterianism in England

Charles seemed initially in favour of this, and even signed a secret treaty with the Scots, but when they realised he had no intention of keeping his word, they ransomed him to Parliament on 30 January 1647. He was held first in Oatlands, then Hampton Court. An attempt at escape was halted at the Isle of Wight, and Charles was held in Carisbrooke Castle.

In December 1647, he promised the Scots that he would impose Presbyterianism in England for three years in exchange for their support. They invaded, but were defeated at the Battle of Preston in August 1648.

Answer: the Duke of York

Using a purported game of 'hide and seek' as a cover, James escaped to France dressed as a woman. Elizabeth and Henry were left behind in St James's, the former never to see James again. The Queen, the Prince of Wales, the Princess of Orange and the Winter Queen were all sick with worry at this stage, since in June 1647 the King had fallen into the control of the army.

In January 1648 parliament renounced all allegiance to Charles, having discovered his secret deal with the Scots. In December, parliament was purged to a small 'rump' which depended on the army for power and who were committed to bringing Charles to trial to account for himself.

Answer: 2 January 1649

Charles, characteristically, refused to plead, even though he was asked three times, saying that no court could have jurisidiction over him. Predictably, he was found guilty, and 49 parliamentarians signed his death warrant on 29 January 1649.
He was then lead from St James's Palace to Whitehall, where a scaffold had been erected in front of the Banqueting House. He was allowed a last meeting with his children Elizabeth and Henry the day before. He said, 'sweetheart, you'll forget this,' to Elizabeth, but she said she would never forget as long as she lived. He also told her he had forgiven all his enemies, and hoped God would forgive them too. He told Henry that the parliamentarians might try to make him a puppet king, but he must never consent to that while his brothers lived. The eight-year-old Henry said he would be 'torn to pieces' before he let it happen. Charles then said that both of them were to obey their mother in all things except religion. He told them to tell Henrietta Maria that his thoughts had 'never strayed from her'.
On the day of his execution, he wore two shirts, because it was a cold day and he didn't want to shiver in case people took it as a sign of fear. Charles was buried on 7 February 1649 at Windsor.

Answer: She stood motionless and silent

It took the news almost two weeks to reach Henrietta Maria. It was broken to her by Henry Jermyn. Her first reaction was to stand motionless, not even crying, until later that night when her sister-in-law (wife of her half-brother) the Duchess of Vendome came to kiss her hand that she broke down and wept.

In a message she later ordered to be sent to the regent of France, her sister-in-law Anne of Austria, she said the King's death had 'made her the most afflicted woman on the wide earth'. She told a French friend, Madame de Motteville, 'I have lost a king, a husband and a friend, whose loss I can never sufficiently mourn, and this separation must render the rest of my life an endless suffering.' She wore mourning for the rest of her life. So Britain had a new king, Charles II, but he was in a bad position - marooned on the Continent, his realms in the hands of Cromwell and the parliamentarians, and very little he could do about it, though he would certainly try.

Answer: James

The baby's mother was Charles's mistress, Lucy Walter. James Crofts (as he was called) was Charles's eldest illegitimate child, and for many years held a special place in his father's heart. In Britain, important political events were taking place. Parliament abolished the House of Lords and the monarchy and declared Britain a commonwealth.

The new king, however, had some support - on 5 February 1649 he was proclaimed King of Scotland, though it was specified that he would not be confirmed in his title until he agreed to allow Scotland to remain Presbyterian and agreed to reform the churches of England and Ireland along Presbyterian lines.

Answer: 1650

After much negotiation at Breda, Charles agreed to all the Scottish demands and set out for Scotland. He detested his Scottish 'allies', whom he called 'gaolers' for their dour attitude. Parliament, of course, was moving fast to combat this new threat. Oliver Cromwell (having recently subdued the Irish) crossed the River Tweed on 22 July with an army. On 3 September 1650, Cromwell defeated the Scots at the Battle of Dunbar.
Five days after the Battle of Dunbar, Princess Elizabeth, the King's fourteen-year-old sister, died on the Isle of Wight. Since her father's execution, many rumours had surrounded the possible fate of her and her brother Henry. It was claimed that Elizabeth was to be married to one of Cromwell's sons and Henry was to be apprenticed to a blacksmith. Their tutors and attendants were instructed to cease referring to them as royalty, and though Henry was now called 'Mr Harry', they still called Elizabeth 'princess'. She died with her cheek on the open page of a religious book. Henrietta Maria told her sister Christine that Elizabeth had died of grief at finding herself incarcerated in a castle - Carisbrooke - that Charles I had been held in for the last days of his life.
The death of William II of Orange, husband of the Princess Royal, didn't help the Stuart cause either. Mary gave birth to her only child, also called William, on 4 November 1650. In Scotland, Charles was crowned king at Scone on 1 January 1651, but the royalist cause was going from bad to worse. After Cromwell defeated them crushingly at Worcester (exactly a year after Dunbar), things looked bleak indeed.
Charles II then spent six harrowing weeks travelling around England, barely avoiding Cromwell's soldiers, who were searching on him - he had a £1000 bounty on his head, and was a difficult man to hide, being six foot two and with a very dark complexion. Aided by the Catholic Penderel brothers, Charles even spent some time hiding in an oak tree and various priest holes to avoid his enemies. He was also assisted by a Catholic priest, Father John Huddlestone, who even, at one point, bathed the King's bruised and bleeding feet. He posed as 'William Jackson', the servant of Jane Lane, sister of a royalist friend. Like any servant, he took Jane's horse to a blacksmith when it needed its shoe replaced. As he later told Samuel Pepys: "As I was holding my horse's foot, I asked the smith what news. He told me that there was no news that he knew of, since the good news of the beating the rogues of the Scots. I asked him whether there was none of the English taken that joined with the Scots, He answered he did not hear if that rogue, Charles Stuart, were taken; but some of the others, he said, were taken. I told him that if that rogue were taken, he deserved to be hanged more than all the rest, for bringing in the Scots. Upon which he said I spoke like an honest man; and so we parted."
He finally reached France on 16 October and was reunited with his mother soon after. He had lived to fight another day.

Answer: 450 pounds

The French King, Louis XIV, was Charles's first cousin. This didn't stop the pension being paid very infrequently and irregularly, however. These were very rough times for the Stuarts. Charles I's sister, the Queen of Bohemia, had been celebrating the fact that her eldest son, Charles Louis, had been restored to his hereditary lands in the Palatinate when she heard of her brother's execution. Though the Winter Queen hadn't seen her brother since her marriage in 1613, she was greatly distressed. She refused to acknowlege the existence of the Commonwealth and said that anyone who was connected with them would not be welcome in her house. Charles Louis had been living in England for the past four years, seemingly on good terms with the new regime, and faced a very frosty reception from his mother.

Many people had strong suspicions that Charles Louis had hoped to be offered his uncle's crown, which made him unpopular in royalist circles. Charles II nonetheless welcomed his cousin with his usual good humour, and Charles Louis, highly embarrassed, hurried off to the Palatinate. Rupert and Maurice, Elizabeth's sons, had fought for their uncle in the Civil War, but been expelled from England after parliament's victory, and now made their living as pirates. Maurice, sadly, disappeared in 1652 when his ship was caught in a hurricane off the Virgin Islands.

The Winter Queen was at first furious when another son, Edward, married a French heiress, Anna Gonzaga, and converted to Catholicism, but was later reconciled, Edward being the most easy going and amiable of her sons. Philip, her youngest surviving son, killed a supposedly insolent Frenchman in a brawl and was forced to flee to Germany. He died in 1650. The Winter Queen's daughters were still at home. The eldest, Elizabeth, was a beauty with dark hair, brown eyes and a wonderful complexion. She knew 'every language and science under the sun' according to her sister Sophie. Louise, the next sister, was a devoted and talented artist, while Henrietta was another beauty with blond hair and a complexion of 'lilies and roses'. The Princess of Orange was not happy, either. Quite similar to Charles I in appearence, she had also inherited much of his obstinacy, and a lot of her time in Holland was made unhappy by her consistently bad relations with her mother-in-law and her disdain of the Dutch people. Her son William had been born on her 19th birthday and Mary was obliged to share his guardianship with her detested mother-in-law, Amalia. The Queen of Bohemia was fond of May, her 'best neece', and became even more so after the death of her own daughter Henrietta ('Nennie') soon after her marriage to Prince Sigismund Rakoczy. Mary had wanted to call her son Charles, but had been forced to consent to William, and her resentment simmered for years. She was furious when a representative of Cromwell was received by the Dutch States General, and boycotted all events at which the man was present.

Answer: Anne

It was in honour of Anne of Austria, the Queen Regent of France. Charles II nicknamed her Minette. She hero-worshipped her glamorous eldest brother. Minette and her mother lived in the Palais Royale in Paris, in none-too-comfortable circumstances. Henrietta Maria was determined that Minette, her 'enfant de benediction' would be brought up a Catholic. Charles II tried to convince her this was a bad idea through his chancellor, Edward Hyde, but it was no good. Henrietta Maria (who hated Hyde) claimed that her late husband had given her permission to bring up their youngest any way she liked. Hyde reluctantly agreed, merely asking that the Queen not place her daughter in a nunnery. Henrietta Maria, who had more ambitious plans for Minette, agreed readily.
In early 1653, Henry, Duke of Gloucester, was allowed join his family on the Continent. He went first to Holland, where he was met by his doting sister Mary. She couldn't ignore her mother's pleas to see him though, and packed Henry off to France. Henrietta Maria's subsequent attempt to force him to become a Catholic was a total disaster. Henry, remembering his father's order to stay true to Protestantism, would not be moved by her arguments, and she furiously disowned him. Minette, too young to understand why her brother and mother were fighting, cried whenever she saw Henry. The whole affair caused Charles II, usually an easy going man, to fly into a rage. He told his mother that she must not want him to ever be restored to his crown, since there was no chance of that happening if one of his brothers converted! He sent the Duke of Ormonde to take Henry away from Henrietta Maria. She refused to even give him her blessing when he left, much to his distress.
Charles had by this time been forced to leave France due to a treaty signed between France and the Commonwealth. He went to Spa in 1654 to meet Mary, whom he hadn't seen for four years. The two were devoted to each other, and holidayed in Aachen with the Landgrave of Hesse. They were also entertained in Dusseldorf by the Duke and Duchess of Neuburg until the beginning of October, when a reluctant Mary had to return home. Charles was in Cologne when he was informed of his mother's attempts to convert his brother. After the fiasco, Henry joined Charles in Germany and, like his brother James, became a professional soldier. Charles returned to Cologne, and since Mary had been forbidden by the States General to receive him (they had also signed a treaty with Cromwell) she holidayed with him as often as she could. In spite of limitations on her power, Mary did her best to aid royalists in the Netherlands, giving shelter to Jane Lane, the women who had helped Charles escape from England after the Battle of Worcester.
The Princess of Orange visited Paris in 1656. She had not seen her mother since she was a child and wished to be reunited with her. The visit was a glittering social success, Mary's beauty and jewels being constantly praised, even by her haughty cousin, La Grande Mademoiselle, the immensely rich daughter of Henrietta Maria's brother, Gaston. Henrietta Maria had tried to interest La Grande Mademoiselle in marriage with Charles, without success, and also wanted Louis XIV to marry Minette, another unlikely prospect. There were rumours, however, that remarriage was on the cards for Mary, who was only 24. Some even said she wanted to marry Louis herself. She scotched these rumours, however, telling La Grande Mademoiselle that once Charles was settled in one place, she intended to go and live with him.
Around this time Mary fell out with Charles (who had just signed a treaty with Spain). James, their younger brother, was also annoyed with the King, since the Spanish treaty meant he had to give up his career in the French army. Mary resented Charles's disapproval of her friends Lord and Lady Balcarres, but it wasn't a grudge that lasted. Another member of the family was also having personal problems - the Queen of Bohemia was greatly distressed to discover that her daughter, Louise, had become a Catholic and entered a convent. The only comfort she had was the marriage of her daughter Sophie to Ernest Augustus of Brunswick-Luneburg in 1658.
Times were, indeed, very bad for the exiled in Stuarts. Oliver Cromwell died on 3 September 1658, causing a brief flare of hope, but when he was succeeded by his son Richard, restoration seemed as far off as ever.