How sadness, scandal and slaughter haunted previous monarchs called Charles – and why our new King still kept the name
FOUR hundred years since the last King Charles was crowned, we have a new monarch bearing the same name.
The previous Charles was a ladies’ man who had 13 illegitimate children and whose favourite meal was scrambled eggs seasoned with whale vomit.
Before him there was Charles I, executed in 1649 for high treason, to make way for a short-lived republic under Oliver Cromwell.
And there was even an attempt to install a Charles III, until pretender to the throne Bonnie Prince Charlie was defeated at the Battle of Culloden in 1746.
Based on the sadness and scandal that clung to his royal namesakes, it was by no means certain that the Queen’s son would style himself King Charles when he took the throne.
While his mother chose her Christian name as her regnant title, royals throughout history have given themselves new names for ruling.
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Four of the past six monarchs changed their name, including the Queen’s father, who was known as Prince Albert before he took the regnant name of King George VI, and Queen Victoria, who shed her Christian name of Alexandrina.
It has previously been reported that the Prince of Wales planned to reject the Charles III title, due to its association with some of history’s bloodiest periods.
Two trusted friends told The Times in 2005 that he favoured becoming George VII, as a tribute to his much-loved grandfather. One said: “The name Charles is tinged with so much sadness.”
But on Thursday it was revealed that Charles would adopt his own name as his regnant title — just like his mother did.
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On coming to the throne aged 24, a young Elizabeth was quizzed by her private secretary Martin Charteris which name she would use as monarch.
She responded: “My own, of course.”
She knew she would be compared to Elizabeth I but she was undaunted by the prospect of ushering in another Elizabethan age.
It was quite by accident that she did so, as when her parents named her they had no idea she would be thrust into the line of succession by her uncle’s abdication.
Charles doing the same was a risky choice, considering Charles I was beheaded after tyrannical rule. It is not clear why the Queen and Prince Philip chose to give their firstborn the name of a King whose disastrous reign nearly brought the monarchy to an end.
At the time of Charles’s birth in 1948, it was said the couple just liked the name.
The first King Charles only became sovereign by a twist of fate, when his elder brother Prince Henry died of typhoid aged 18.
Charles was 11 years old, sickly and shy with a stammer.
But he doggedly tried to turn himself into someone worthy of following his father James I, who as James VI of Scotland had inherited the English crown from his cousin, Elizabeth I.
The prince tried to cure his stammer by speaking with pebbles in his mouth, and went for a jog every morning in St James’s Park to get fitter.
But after becoming King in 1625, aged 24, he infuriated Parliament and the people by demanding huge amounts of money, which he splurged on the most expensive artworks he could find.
Sick of fighting with MPs, Charles dissolved Parliament in 1629 and ruled alone, making himself even more unpopular by introducing heavy taxes.
He grudgingly allowed MPs to sit again in 1642, but it did not go well and this time the King declared war on Parliament.
Charles was captured during the ensuing Civil War, tried for treason and beheaded in January 1649.
His eldest son Charles was 18 years old and had fled England, but now returned at the head of an army to try to win back his crown.
But he was defeated by Oliver Cromwell’s Parliamentary forces in Worcester in 1651.
Charles then spent six weeks on the run, disguised as a servant — at one point only evading capture by hiding up a tree. He ended up escaping to Europe, but in a surprise twist years later was invited back to take the crown when the English republic crumbled in the wake of Cromwell’s death. All he had to do was promise to cooperate with Parliament.
Charles II returned to England in May 1660, and bonfires were lit in every town to welcome him home.
The public was sick of war and the Puritans, who were so against fun they had banned Christmas festivities. It was time to party.
Charles, the “Merry Monarch”, was the right man for the times. He was the sort of king who pulled over in the middle of his coronation procession to go into a pub and to kiss a baby.
He was our first monarch to love chocolate — believing it to be an aphrodisiac that would give “sap to the testicles”.
And when a thief stole his brand new Crown Jewels — flattening the crown with a mallet for easier transport, trying to saw the sceptre in half and stashing the orb into his breeches — Charles found the escapade so funny he let him off scot free and gave him a pension.
Endearingly, one of his favourite hobbies was feeding the ducks at St James’s Park.
Charles II also led his country through the Plague, then turned into an action hero when the Great Fire of London broke out in 1666.
He was on the scene for days without sleeping, urging people to pull down houses to create firebreaks, passing buckets of water and organising food for those left homeless.
He was enormously popular, and most of his subjects even seemed to enjoy his womanising.
His mistresses became famous in their own right, especially former orange seller “pretty, witty” Nell Gwyn.
Charles, who had 13 offspring by many women, handed out titles to the children and loved them all.
But he never had children with his queen, Catherine of Braganza.
And he refused to divorce her to marry another woman who might have secured the succession, even after the agonies he had gone through to get the Crown.
He died in 1685 after tucking into his favourite meal of eggs topped with grated ambergris — a “delicacy” which is the hardened vomit of whales.
Before our new King, there was another prince who had his eyes on being Charles III.
Scotland’s Bonnie Prince Charlie was a poetic hero, known as the Young Pretender, who grew up in exile in France after the house of Stuart was ousted from rule.
His father James Stuart was grandson of catholic James II, who lost the throne to William and Mary of Orange. Bonnie Prince Charlie believed one day the Crown would be his and fronted the Jacobite uprisings to reinstate his claim.
But the uprisings ended in defeat at the Battle of Culloden in 1746.
The legend goes Charles was disguised as a maid to escape British forces and fled by boat to the Isle of Skye.
The tale lives on through the Skye boat song, which includes lyrics: “Carry the lad who was born to be king, over the sea to Skye.”
Some experts speculated that Charles would be unwilling to “pretend” to the Young Pretender’s title given that Bonnie Prince Charlie is still a beloved romantic figure in Scotland — but his love for his mother won out.
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At his coronation, Charles III will be presented with the crown, orb and sceptre of Charles II.
And he will bear the name given to him by his mother, when she was just 22, in tribute to her.