MY HERO

I have often asked myself which of ‘my’ historical characters I would choose to meet - if it could only be one. Mary Queen of Scots? But there is always the fear that she would reveal that she really did write the Casket Letters since I have always stoutly maintained her innocence on the evidence we have. Besides, I might find her plain, which would be disappointing, given that I have equally stoutly maintained the opposite. Oliver Cromwell is more of a possibility. In the early nineteenth century William Hazlitt voted for Cromwell in a discussion on the same subject with a group of friends: ‘Old Noll with his fine, frank, rough, pimply face and wily policy.’ 

But I would in fact go for meeting King Charles II. First of all I admire him not so much because he made love to innumerable women but because he actually liked them, and enjoyed their company outside the royal bedroom, something which was extraordinarily rare in the seventeenth century (and since?). He believed indeed that God would never damn a man ‘for allowing himself a little pleasure’. At the same time he never imposed his royal will upon women as did Henry VIII. When Charles II was twitted on the fact that his mistress Barbara Duchess of Cleveland was a Catholic, he replied that he never interfered with ladies’ souls - only with their affections, in so far as they were gracious enough to allow him to do so.

I begin with his enlightened attitude towards the opposite sex, but it is in fact the key to a supremely tolerant nature. This general tolerance on the part of Charles II is particularly striking, given that his early experiences might equally well have made of him a vengeful bigot. His father, whom he adored, was executed when Charles II was eighteen, although the ‘young gentleman’ as Cromwell used to term him, offered to substitute himself if Charles I was spared. The bitter years of exile might well have warped the thirty year old who was finally restored to the English throne. Yet Charles II believed notably in ‘the liberty of tender consciences’. As the Declaration of Breda stated at the start of the reign, he thought every man had a right to his own religion and was at first as good as his word, allowing the Jews officially to reenter Britain for the first time and attempting at toleration for the Catholics although in that he finally failed.

This instinct for tolerance extended towards the land settlement after the Restoration, a very tricky subject in that the claims of dispossessed Royalists who had remained loyal had to be balanced against the preservation of the status quo. Charles II showed remarkable forbearance by the standards of the time; the digging up of Cromwell’s corpse and its ritual exhibition at Tyburn, if a grisly show, was not one that caused the late Protector any physical suffering... I would argue that Charles II’s conciliatory temperament and actions were largely responsible for the smoothness with which the monarchy was restored - and remained restored for twenty five years until the far less conciliatory James II almost immediately lost the throne for the Stuarts forever.

Lastly, there is Charles II’s sense of humour which I salute, even more than his love of the theatre, his propensity for swimming in the Thames at 5.00am at all seasons, playing (real) tennis and allowing his spaniels the run of his palace until a courtier who had been bitten cried out in anguish: ‘God bless your majesty but God damn your dogs.’ Here is a man who was satirised by his friend Lord Rochester in a court competition as follows:

We have a pretty,
witty King Whose word no man relies on.
He never said a foolish thing
Nor ever did a wise one.

On being shown the verse, Charles II observed urbanely that he was perfectly happy with the verdict since his words were his own, but his deeds were those of his ministers. It was an answer to be expected from a King who on Restoration Day itself, 29 May 1660, listened quizzically to the bells ringing, the frenzied cries of acclamation by crowd and nobles alike. Then he remarked that is was obviously all his own fault that he had been away from England for so long, for since he had arrived, he had met no one who did not passionately wish for his return. One of Charles’ critics, Lord Halifax, described him sourly as having wit rather more than became a prince; over three hundred years later, I believe his wit makes him a hero.