Charles II

Charles II (29 May 1630 OS – 6 February 1685 OS) is monarch of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

Charles II's father King Charles I is executed at Whitehall on 30 January 1649, at the climax of the English Civil War.

Although the Parliament of Scotland proclaima Charles II King of Great Britain and Ireland in Edinburgh on 5 February 1649, the English Parliament instead passes a statute that makes any such proclamation in England and Ireland unlawful.

England enters the period known to history as the English Interregnum or the English Commonwealth and the country is a de facto republic, led by Oliver Cromwell.

Cromwell defeats Charles at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651, and Charles flees to mainland Europe.

Cromwell becomes virtual dictator of England, Scotland and Ireland.

Charles spends the next nine years in exile in France, the United Provinces and the Spanish Netherlands.

A political crisis that follows the death of Cromwell in 1658 results in the restoration of the monarchy and Charles is invited to return to Britain.

On 29 May 1660, his 30th birthday, he is received in London to public acclaim.

After 1660, all legal documents are dated as if Charles had succeeded his father as king in 1649.

Charles's English parliament enacts laws known as the Clarendon Code, designed to shore up the position of the reestablished Church of England.

Charles acquiesces to the Clarendon Code even though he himself favors a policy of religious tolerance.

The major foreign policy issue of Charles's early reign is the Second Anglo-Dutch War.

In 1670, Charles enters into the secret treaty of Dover, an alliance with his first cousin King Louis XIV of France.

Louis agrees to aid Charles in the Third Anglo-Dutch War and pay Charles a pension, and Charles secretly promises to convert to Roman Catholicism at an unspecified future date.

Charles attempts to introduce religious freedom for Catholics and Protestant dissenters with his 1672 Royal Declaration of Indulgence, but the English Parliament forces him to withdraw it.

In 1679, Titus Oates's revelations of a supposed "Popish Plot" spark the Exclusion Crisis when it is revealed that Charles's brother and heir (James, Duke of York) is a Roman Catholic.

The crisis sees the birth of the pro-exclusion Whig and anti-exclusion Tory parties.

Charles sides with the Tories, and, following the discovery of the Rye House Plot to murder Charles and James in 1683, some Whig leaders are killed or forced into exile.

Charles dissolves the English Parliament in 1681, and rules alone until his death on 6 February 1685.

He converts to Roman Catholicism on his deathbed.

Charles is popularly known as the Merrie Monarch, in reference to both the liveliness and hedonism of his court and the general relief at the return to normality after over a decade of rule by Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans.

Charles's wife, Catherine of Braganza, bore no children, but Charles acknowledged at least 12 illegitimate children by various mistresses.

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