Saint Charles King and Martyr

13

Comments

  • I am not quite so old as that.

    I know through the work of the late Dame Veronica Wedgwood: The Trial of Charles I (1964).
  • Like Bishop's Finger I can't remember seeing any trace of the Royal Martyr among all the er, assorted iconography in the Shrine at Walsingham - but I think there's a small bust of him above the front door of a cottage in Bridewell Street, only just outside the Shrine grounds.
  • Something I came across looking sources up for this thread suggests there might be one near the Orthodox chapel there.
  • Could that perhaps be the image/bust mentioned by Margaret?
  • Laudable wrote: »
    To cgichard:

    Thank you for the mention of the beautiful church of Our Lady Saint Mary at South Creake.

    I am sorry that I could not open your link, but I was delighted to find this among its treasures: an image which would - I have little doubt - go far towards inducing an apoplexy in any puritan heart.

    Yes .. well anyone's heart?
  • “Let the galled jade wince, our withers are unwrung.”
  • Laudable wrote: »
    “Let the galled jade wince, our withers are unwrung.”

    I take that your withers are fistulous and your legs farcy?
  • No, no: not at all - no ailments (although I did have to look up the interesting word farcy).

    With reference to withers, may I suppose that you would find equally rebarbative an image such as this?
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    I'm going to repeat this. Charles I was a bad king. The manner of his death has been used to obscure this. His opponents condemned him as the 'man of blood', and even if one doesn't support them, that accusation is a fair one.

    There was a cult among Royalists from the publication of Eikon Basilike less than a fortnight after his execution to portray his fate as Christ-like. Apparently, it was even set to music. The Royalists had the upper hand at the Restoration. That's how the anniversary of his death got into the prayer book. The whole thing was political. That was abolished in 1859. These days, the cult of Charles King and Martyr is an affectation.

    It goes with young men who wear sports jackets and bow ties and have girl friends with big hats and names like Letitia.

  • Enoch wrote: »
    It goes with young men who wear sports jackets and bow ties . . . .
    :grey_question:

    That’s an affectation? That’s unremarkably common where I live.

    Or does “sports jacket/sports coat” mean something different on the other side of The Pond?

  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    @Nick Tamen sports jackets and bow ties are not normal wear among the young here.

    Are there many people round where you live who have a special devotion to the late Charles I?
  • Enoch wrote: »
    @Nick Tamen sports jackets and bow ties are not normal wear among the young here.

    Are there many people round where you live who have a special devotion to the late Charles I?
    Ha! Such devotion is all but non-existent in my experience, unless you count that I live in a place named for him (a fact of which many are probably unaware).

    But sports coats/blazers and bow ties are quite common, both among the young and the not-so-young. I probably wear bow ties more often than I wear neckties.

  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    @Nick Tamen I would say that over here, bow ties worn as anything other than what you wear with a dinner jacket/tuxedo are almost extinct.
  • But the bow tie will stay in position, and will not dangle untidily in your blood, should you have the misfortune to be beheaded.

    @Enoch - yes, Charles I was a Bad King, and it does seem odd that he is (in a minor way) still in the C of E calendar. Henry VI was also a Bad King, but possibly a Devout Man, yet he is not AFAIK included
  • As a careful student of black-letter day observance, I have yet to experience a real-life commemoration of Charles K&M aside, I think, from a mention about 30 years ago at a weekday celebration (by a cleric whose retirement has been marked by a withdrawal of his licence for having knocked up a 19-year-old sacristan). So I do not think I can make any case on the sartorial quirks of his devotees.

    Here in Persepolis, sports coats are favoured among older bureaucrats who do not wish to go to the expense of wearing suits to meetings (although I have often spotted them at choral evensong). There was a trend for bow ties among younger Conservative assistants for a while, but I have not seen it for some time. I retain a small collection of bow ties which I inherited from a saintly obstetrician who has since passed on and in his memory wore them on dress-down Fridays during my latter years in Her Majesty's service.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Enoch wrote: »
    I'm going to repeat this. Charles I was a bad king. The manner of his death has been used to obscure this. His opponents condemned him as the 'man of blood', and even if one doesn't support them, that accusation is a fair one.

    Exactly. And Laud was a bad Abp. Neither was executed for religious belief, but rather for various political actions. You may disagree with the death penalty either in general or for those actions, but neither was a Martyr.
  • Gee D wrote: »
    Enoch wrote: »
    I'm going to repeat this. Charles I was a bad king. The manner of his death has been used to obscure this. His opponents condemned him as the 'man of blood', and even if one doesn't support them, that accusation is a fair one.

    Exactly. And Laud was a bad Abp. Neither was executed for religious belief, but rather for various political actions. You may disagree with the death penalty either in general or for those actions, but neither was a Martyr.

    The difficulty is that the separation between political and religious views in the 17th century was pretty hard to divine (if you'll pardon the pun). King and Archbishop believed they were defending a divinely ordained state of affairs, both royalty and episcopacy, and their political actions flowed from those. Cranmer is considered a martyr, even though his conviction was for treason following attempts to put Lady Jane Grey on the throne.
  • Any one here up for the divine right of kings to rule without parliament or the consent of the people as sound religious doctrine?
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Jengie Jon wrote: »
    Any one here up for the divine right of kings to rule without parliament or the consent of the people as sound religious doctrine?

    Indeed.

    Cranmer may have been involved in the plot to enthrone Lady Jane Grey, but his real offence was his Calvinism.
  • Jengie Jon wrote: »
    Any one here up for the divine right of kings to rule without parliament or the consent of the people as sound religious doctrine?

    The concept of rule without parliament, and with the consent of only some of the people, seems strangely familiar... :flushed:

  • Jengie Jon wrote: »
    Any one here up for the divine right of kings to rule without parliament or the consent of the people as sound religious doctrine?

    The concept of rule without parliament, and with the consent of only some of the people, seems strangely familiar... :flushed:

    Aah don't forget that true power consists of giving just enough, to just enough.
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    The concept of rule without parliament, and with the consent of only some of the people, seems strangely familiar... :flushed:
    Well said.

  • Jengie Jon wrote: »
    Any one here up for the divine right of kings to rule without parliament or the consent of the people as sound religious doctrine?

    Nope. But then I don't have to agree with someone to recognise them as a martyr.
  • PDRPDR Shipmate
    Gee D wrote: »
    Jengie Jon wrote: »
    Any one here up for the divine right of kings to rule without parliament or the consent of the people as sound religious doctrine?

    Indeed.

    Cranmer may have been involved in the plot to enthrone Lady Jane Grey, but his real offence was his Calvinism.

    <pedantry alert>
    Bucerianism (if there is such a word) would be more accurate. Both Calvin and Cranmer were close to Martin Bucer 1491-1551, the tremendously influential, but under appreciated Alsatian Reformer. Cranmer's relationship with MB went back to 1531/2 when Cranmer had been Henry's ambassador in the Holy Roman Empire, and they remained in regular contact until the Bucer's death in Cambridge in 1551.

    Bucer was the main ghost writer for Hermann von Weid's 'Simple Consideration' which was a major influence on the 1549 BCP, and what was later called the 'Censura' was a major influence on the 1552 BCP. The other hand at work in the Simple Consideration was Philip Melanchthon's. De Regno Christi, Bucer's work on the government of the Christian Commonwealth was dedicated to Edward VI, and completed after Bucer became Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge.

    Calvin basically interned with Bucer 1537/8-41 when in exile from Geneva. If you ever read the original version of the Institutes, and then the 1539 Revision you can see Bucer's influence in the much richer understanding of the sacraments displayed in the latter, and well as Bucer's understanding of Predestination, which is also enshrined in Article 17 of the 39. By the way, both Bucer and Calvin had attached much less stress on the doctrine of Predestination than modern folks assume, the doctrine being more explanatory than anything else. The same cannot be said of Beza and Perkins who seem to have found something peculiarly satisfying in the idea and championed supralapsarianism.
    <end pedantry>
  • Bishops FingerBishops Finger Shipmate
    edited February 2020
    Hmm.

    ISTM that @PDR is telling us that the 1662 Prayer Book (and its antecedents of 1549 and 1552) are actually NOT ENGLISH!

    Well, not entirely, anyway - an interesting thought, and there was indeed a good deal of traffic between Us and The Continent in those turbulent times, with politics and religion very much mixed up into a rather horrible sort of Soup.

    This, of course, Is Utter Outrage, and the BCP must be banned forthwith. In these enlightened times, we simply cannot have anything influenced by Johnny Foreigner in Our Pure And Holy English Religion.
  • Hmm.

    ISTM that @PDR is telling us that the 1662 Prayer Book (and its antecedents of 1549 and 1552) are actually NOT ENGLISH!

    Well, not entirely, anyway - an interesting thought, and there was indeed a good deal of traffic between Us and The Continent in those turbulent times, with politics and religion very much mixed up into a rather horrible sort of Soup.

    This, of course, Is Utter Outrage, and the BCP must be banned forthwith. In these enlightened times, we simply cannot have anything influenced by Johnny Foreigner in Our Pure And Holy English Religion.

    Back to Druidism we go then, except hang on, wasn't that also a European religion? There are very few countries that can proclaim their religion as entirely native.
  • PDRPDR Shipmate
    When academics actually used Latin it was easy for ideas to travel. London, Oxford, and Cambridge were kind of a clearing house for Reformed thought in the reign of Edward VI, so not surprisingly a little of it rubbed off.

    The little Englander approach to Anglicanism is a product of the 19th century when Britain turned its back on Europe after a century and a quarter of almost continuous war with France. Anglo-Catholicism kind of compounded this because it needed to unprotestantize the Church of England in order to justify its own existence.
  • Pendragon wrote: »
    Hmm.

    ISTM that @PDR is telling us that the 1662 Prayer Book (and its antecedents of 1549 and 1552) are actually NOT ENGLISH!

    Well, not entirely, anyway - an interesting thought, and there was indeed a good deal of traffic between Us and The Continent in those turbulent times, with politics and religion very much mixed up into a rather horrible sort of Soup.

    This, of course, Is Utter Outrage, and the BCP must be banned forthwith. In these enlightened times, we simply cannot have anything influenced by Johnny Foreigner in Our Pure And Holy English Religion.

    Back to Druidism we go then, except hang on, wasn't that also a European religion? There are very few countries that can proclaim their religion as entirely native.

    Well, quite - and I'm pleased to see that your Irony-O-Meter does not need recalibrating!
    :wink:
    PDR wrote: »

    The little Englander approach to Anglicanism is a product of the 19th century when Britain turned its back on Europe after a century and a quarter of almost continuous war with France. Anglo-Catholicism kind of compounded this because it needed to unprotestantize the Church of England in order to justify its own existence.

    Yes, and, with further irony, the Anglo-Catholics looked to the Italian Mission for that justification...

  • PDRPDR Shipmate
    More correctly, "the Italian Mission to the Irish" which had just moved in down the street if you did not fancy travelling. ;) Another source of inspiration were those little trips to Belgium or Northern France which became more easily possible once the steam ship and the railway revolutionized travel.
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    edited February 2020
    PDR wrote: »
    Gee D wrote: »
    Jengie Jon wrote: »
    Any one here up for the divine right of kings to rule without parliament or the consent of the people as sound religious doctrine?

    Indeed.

    Cranmer may have been involved in the plot to enthrone Lady Jane Grey, but his real offence was his Calvinism.
    <pedantry alert>
    Bucerianism (if there is such a word) would be more accurate. Both Calvin and Cranmer were close to Martin Bucer 1491-1551, the tremendously influential, but under appreciated Alsatian Reformer. Cranmer's relationship with MB went back to 1531/2 when Cranmer had been Henry's ambassador in the Holy Roman Empire, and they remained in regular contact until the Bucer's death in Cambridge in 1551.

    Bucer was the main ghost writer for Hermann von Weid's 'Simple Consideration' which was a major influence on the 1549 BCP, and what was later called the 'Censura' was a major influence on the 1552 BCP. The other hand at work in the Simple Consideration was Philip Melanchthon's. De Regno Christi, Bucer's work on the government of the Christian Commonwealth was dedicated to Edward VI, and completed after Bucer became Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge.

    Calvin basically interned with Bucer 1537/8-41 when in exile from Geneva. If you ever read the original version of the Institutes, and then the 1539 Revision you can see Bucer's influence in the much richer understanding of the sacraments displayed in the latter, and well as Bucer's understanding of Predestination, which is also enshrined in Article 17 of the 39. By the way, both Bucer and Calvin had attached much less stress on the doctrine of Predestination than modern folks assume, the doctrine being more explanatory than anything else. The same cannot be said of Beza and Perkins who seem to have found something peculiarly satisfying in the idea and championed supralapsarianism.
    <end pedantry>
    Yebbut, @PDR I don't think he got burnt for holding any particular version of Protestantism, rather than for:-
    a. Being any sort of Protestant at all,
    b. Having been the previous regime's Archbishop,
    c. Backing the wrong candidate for queen,
    d. Being a high profile and symbolic way she could demonstrate what happened to those who resisted the successful candidate for queen, and
    e. Her grabbing the opportunity to get her own back on someone whom she saw as having been nasty to her mum.


    I also don't think Little-Englandism was a C19 innovation in the CofE. It was fully present in the C18 and probably traces back to the years after the Restoration.
  • I think it did get quite bad after 1688 when the political response to the change of monarch did include excluding a lot of people from public life based on their not being CofE.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    edited February 2020
    PDR - partly accepted. What Cranmer held to was informed by many sources, including both Bucer and Calvin. But the doctrines are generally called Calvinism rather than Bucerism and it is that that led to his execution. Laud and Charles were not killed for any religious beliefs but rather for Thorough
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    Gee D wrote: »
    PDR ... But the doctrines are generally called Calvinism rather than Bucerism and it is that that led to his execution. ...
    For the reasons I've already given, I don't agree. I'm not even convinced Mary could tell the difference, yet alone care either way.
    Laud and Charles were not killed for any religious beliefs but rather for Thorough
    On that, I do agree.

    In addition, his opponents could not trust Charles to keep any agreement he made with them because he had demonstrated that he believed that his right to be king trumped any obligation to stand by his word.

  • Pendragon wrote: »
    Hmm.

    ISTM that @PDR is telling us that the 1662 Prayer Book (and its antecedents of 1549 and 1552) are actually NOT ENGLISH!

    Well, not entirely, anyway - an interesting thought, and there was indeed a good deal of traffic between Us and The Continent in those turbulent times, with politics and religion very much mixed up into a rather horrible sort of Soup.

    This, of course, Is Utter Outrage, and the BCP must be banned forthwith. In these enlightened times, we simply cannot have anything influenced by Johnny Foreigner in Our Pure And Holy English Religion.

    Back to Druidism we go then, except hang on, wasn't that also a European religion? There are very few countries that can proclaim their religion as entirely native.
    Gee D wrote: »
    PDR - partly accepted. What Cranmer held to was informed by many sources, including both Bucer and Calvin. But the doctrines are generally called Calvinism rather than Bucerism and it is that that led to his execution. Laud and Charles were not killed for any religious beliefs but rather for Thorough

    The denunciations of Laud certainly included accusations of Roman Catholic sympathies.
  • I would agree that Laud's execution was more religiously motivated than Charles I's. I don't think the two can be entirely split when you're chopping the head off the Archbishop of Canterbury. As well as being seen as introducing dangerous Catholic (not Protestant English) influences to the church, he also made himself unpopular through his acts in the Star Chamber, attacking the leading literary proponents of the Puritan cause.
  • "Good morning. My name is Edmund Blackadder, and I'm the new Minister in charge of Religious Genocide..."
  • Bishops FingerBishops Finger Shipmate
    edited February 2020
    'Don't worry, Your Archbishopness - I have a Cunning Plan....'
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Certainly, much of Laud's unpopularity derived from his wishes to restore throughout the CoE the sorts of practices which Lancelot Andrewes and some other prelates, notably +John Cosin, advocated. But his execution was for his support of Charles.
  • Gee D wrote: »
    Certainly, much of Laud's unpopularity derived from his wishes to restore throughout the CoE the sorts of practices which Lancelot Andrewes and some other prelates, notably +John Cosin, advocated. But his execution was for his support of Charles.

    Just as Cranmer's was for Jane.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    In theory, Cranmer was executed for his support of Jane Grey; in fact he was executed as much for his heresy as were Latimer and Ridley.
  • Gee D wrote: »
    In theory, Cranmer was executed for his support of Jane Grey; in fact he was executed as much for his heresy as were Latimer and Ridley.

    Except that he recanted. And one can reasonably argue that it was anti-catholic paranoia that was at the root of both Charles' and Laud's downfalls.
  • Cranmer's worst offence in the eyes of Mary I was his part in legitimising the opinion that her mother's marriage was unlawful and his enthusiastic support for Anne Boleyn, plus his authorship of the prayer book of 1549.
  • PDRPDR Shipmate
    Laud was an old and tactless man in a hurry, who was out of sympathy with the times. That said, I don't like the Puritans very much either. My sympathies tend to lie with the ordinary conformist Reformed Churchmen who just wanted to do church the way his father and maybe grandfather had done.
  • Bishops FingerBishops Finger Shipmate
    edited February 2020
    IIRC, we once had a Shipmate (can't remember his user name) whose signature was something like 'Why can't we just do what it says in the book?', referring, I think, to Lutheran pastors who Messed About™.

    I don't doubt that there were many people in England at the time of Laud, and Charles I, who thought the same. After all, the Prayer Book had had the best part of a century (by 1649) to become 'Common Prayer'.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Gee D wrote: »
    In theory, Cranmer was executed for his support of Jane Grey; in fact he was executed as much for his heresy as were Latimer and Ridley.

    Except that he recanted. And one can reasonably argue that it was anti-catholic paranoia that was at the root of both Charles' and Laud's downfalls.

    And he recanted several times. A few brief minutes before his execution, he had withdrawn and renounced his last recantation and was dragged from the pulpit to the stake.

    I agree that you can make that argument about Charles and Laud, but IIRC both Veronica Wedgwood and Hugh Trevor-Roper conclude that it had nothing to do with the convictions and executions. It was simply a bit extra to throw in.
  • Eclesiastical FipfopEclesiastical Fipfop Shipmate Posts: 44
    I did not get to the Banqueting House for the annual commemoration on 30 January this year, because it clashed with something else I was doing. But in other years, I turn up if I can. I am not sure if the service is described as a Mass, or Solemn Eucharist, off the top of my head. The celebrant is assisted by (liturgical) deacon and subdeacon. The service is traditional with ceremonial and everything you could wish for except incense, with singing to plainchant and some of it in Latin. It is liturgically (whether or not geographically) 'eastward-facing' i.e. sacred ministers have their backs to the people.
  • LaudableLaudable Shipmate
    Unfortunately I have rarely been in London for 30 January: the last time was many years ago, when the commemoration was held at the church of St Mary le Strand.

    I think that the Banqueting House is one of the most beautiful rooms in London. Although T S Eliot's "inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold" refers to the church of St Magnus the Martyr, it could well apply to the Banqueting House. When I first saw it in 1960 it was a cluttered museum for the Royal United Services Institute, but it now floats above Whitehall full of light and air. It is a great pity that Inigo Jones's plan for the rest of the palace was never realized.
  • Eclesiastical FipfopEclesiastical Fipfop Shipmate Posts: 44
    Laudable wrote: »
    Unfortunately I have rarely been in London for 30 January: the last time was many years ago, when the commemoration was held at the church of St Mary le Strand.

    I think that the Banqueting House is one of the most beautiful rooms in London. Although T S Eliot's "inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold" refers to the church of St Magnus the Martyr, it could well apply to the Banqueting House. When I first saw it in 1960 it was a cluttered museum for the Royal United Services Institute, but it now floats above Whitehall full of light and air. It is a great pity that Inigo Jones's plan for the rest of the palace was never realized.

    Many years ago now, I remember going to St. Mary-le-Strand for this observance, but I don't think it takes place there now. I have forgotten how it fitted in with being at the Banqueting Hall and whether or not there was a service there as well.

  • yohan300yohan300 Shipmate
    Particular fans can also celebrate his nativity and restoration day, as do The Society of King Charles the Martyr

    Like Henry VIII, Charles was a second son never destined for the throne. His elder brother Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales received all the education in statecraft. Henry was intelligent and showed great interest in national affairs. He enjoyed widespread popularity, with courtiers even preferring him over his own father King James. Had he not died there likely wouldn't have been a civil war. But no one ever got a day on a calendar for dying of Typhoid did they.
  • TheOrganistTheOrganist Shipmate
    edited May 2020
    The UK monarchy has a long history of second sons getting the crown. In recent history George V and George VI both ended up on the throne, one through the death of his older brother and the other through abdication.

    Going farther back, William IV and James II were third sons (both acceding because of an older brother failing to produce an heir). Charles II a second son (firstborn died in infancy).
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