Charles I [the First]; A Biography

Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1996. First American Edition [stated], Presumed First printing. Hardcover. Very good/Good. B. J. Harris (Author photograph). xiv, [2], 362, [2] pages. Review slip laid in. Name in ink on fep. Illustrations. Maps. Author's Note and Abbreviations. Notes. Index. John Edward Bowle (19 December 1905 - 17 September 1985) was an English historian and writer. He was educated at Marlborough College. There his contemporaries included John Betjeman, who became a friend, and Anthony Blunt, about whom he was consistently negative. He was an undergraduate at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was counted as an Aesthete. Bowle left Oxford with a Third in Modern History, 1927. After his education, Bowle became a teacher, at Westminster School and Eton College. He had worked briefly for Horace Plunkett, a position he had pushed Betjeman out of (1929). During World War II, he worked for the Air Ministry and the Foreign Office, and later took to writing books about British history. He became a lecturer at Wadham College, Oxford, 1947-49. He then took up an appointment in 1949 as Director of the Preparatory Session of the College of Europe at Bruges, where from 1950 to 1967, he became Professor of Political Theory. He has also been visiting Professor at important American universities. He was a Leverhulme Research Fellow from 1949 to 1950 and won an Arts Council Prize in 1966. He has written many history books, including Charles the First, Western Political Thought, Politics and Opinion in the 19th Century, Henry VIII, The English Experience and The Imperial Achievement. He was also editor of A Concise Encyclopaedia of World History, of which the revised edition was published in 1971. There has never been a more turbulent reign in British history than that of Charles I. The rule of this slight, stammering king still provokes intense debate to this day. Was he a royal martyr wrongfully beheaded or was he a tyrant who refused to abide by the laws of the land?
John Bowle's nuanced account provides an enlightening reassessment of King Charles I's life. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Bowle uncovers the life of this man who always stayed true to his beliefs even to the point of obstinacy. Charles I: A Biography provides vivid insight into the whole sweep of Jacobean and Caroline Britain, demonstrating how the constitutional, religious and social conflicts that were developing during the reign of James I boiled over into violent civil strife during Charles' reign. Few other books have given such a fair assessment of this Stuart monarch whose reign undoubtedly deserves re-examination. Charles I (19 November 1600 - 30 January 1649) was King of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles was born into the House of Stuart as the second son of King James VI of Scotland, but after his father inherited the English throne in 1603, he moved to England, where he spent much of the rest of his life. He became heir apparent to the kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland in 1612 upon the death of his elder brother, Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales. An unsuccessful and unpopular attempt to marry him to Infanta Maria Anna of Spain culminated in an eight-month visit to Spain in 1623 that demonstrated the futility of the marriage negotiation. Two years later, shortly after his accession, he married Henrietta Maria of France. After his succession in 1625, Charles quarreled with the English Parliament, which sought to curb his royal prerogative.