On the 25th of May, 1660, Charles II
landed at Dover to claim his throne.
This was no ordinary succession.
Charles had spent nine years in exile,
and his kingdom had been a Republic for over a decade.
His father, Charles I, defeated by Parliament in the Civil War,
had been put on trial and found guilty of attempting to subvert
the liberties of his subjects.
In a shocking rebuke to the idea of the divine right of kings,
Charles had been publicly executed
on the 30th of January 1649.
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While the Convention Parliament had voted unanimously
to restore the monarchy and its constitutional powers,
declaring Charles II to have been
King since the date of his father's execution,
unpredictability hung in the air of restoration Britain.
As Dr. Clare Jackson explains, "no other monarch
was so acutely aware of the extent
to which his survival depended on his subject's goodwill."
This would have been a challenge in the best of times
but the 1660s had seen the return of the plague,
the Great Fire of London, and war with the Dutch.
For some, this was proof of God's displeasure
with the King's serial adultery.
Others simply feared the King's private life
was a distraction from the pressing
business of government.
Meanwhile, Parliament's goodwill was tested by ongoing disputes
over the royal finances and lingering
uncertainty about Charles's intentions
with regards to Catholicism, and his backroom
dealings with the French King, Louis XIV.
If the monarchy was going to survive,
Charles would need to rebuild royal authority
and restore the majesty of monarchy.
This began with the King's Coronation
at Westminster Abbey, on the 23rd of April,
St. George's day, 1661.
Charles insisted that this be carried in accordance
with every known ancient practice,
so important was the ceremony in reinforcing his legitimacy
and God given right to rule.
This is famously captured in John Michael Wright's portrait
of Charles, depicting the King looking directly
at his subjects, wearing his coronation robes,
and newly fashioned St. Edward's crown.
As a statement piece of portraiture,
it is strikingly effective - the monarchy is back!
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Spectacle was not just for high state occasions
like the coronation though, it was also
a part of court life, which returned to Windsor in 1674.
Entertainments that summer included plays
in St. George's Hall and a re-enactment
of the military exploits of Charles's illegitimate son,
the Duke of Monmouth, at the 1673 siege of Maestricht.
The re-enactment was staged nearby
on land between the castle and the Thames
and involved the construction of a fort, moat, and counterscarp.
Around 500 actors and volunteers played the defenders,
with another 700 the attackers, jointly led
by the Dukes of York and Monmouth.
The theatre of Court life was echoed in the country at large
as the playhouses, race courses, and gambling dens all re-opened
after the 11 years of Puritan dictated cultural austerity.
Like the coronation, another spectacle
that sought to assert the divinity of kingship
was the healing of the King's evil.
This was a practice, stretching back
to Edward the Confessor, in which it was believed
the King's touch could cure sufferers
of a painful and disfiguring disease now known as scrofula.
In the 25 years between the restoration and his death,
Charles was believed to have touched
around 100,000 individuals, many here in the Chapel at Windsor.
From the divine to interior design,
Windsor Castle also shows us how the King could remind you
who was in charge through the formality of life at court
and by controlling who could access his presence.
While any gentlemen of quality and good fortune or the wives
and daughters of the nobility could attend the court,
only a select few were admitted to the more
private and intimate chambers in which they
could hope to catch the King's eye or, better still,
be granted an audience.
Refurbished at great expense, access to the Royal Apartments
here at Windsor started with the King's Guard Chamber,
in which you would find the King's personal bodyguard,
the Yeomen of the Guard.
From here, you might hope to be admitted to the Presence
Chamber where the King made occasional ceremonial
appearances, such as when greeting ambassadors
or receiving civic delegations.
Traditionally, a palace's main audience room
was the Privy Chamber, but Charles rarely
used this as such at Windsor.
So instead, as a privileged guest,
we shall pass through to the King's Drawing Room.
An abbreviation of 'withdrawing room', this is where the court
assembled in the hope of speaking to the King.
The sequence of rooms then culminated
in the King's Bedchamber, to which only the most important
guests were admitted.
Let's take a look.
The King didn't actually sleep here.
The bed you can see is purely symbolic
of the intimate levels of access you had to the monarch.
Here, in the morning and evening,
you might be present while the King was dressed or undressed,
the ideal opportunity to have an intimate conversation.
Perhaps surprisingly though, for a monarch
who made such effective use of ritual and formality at court,
Charles could also be one of the most accessible monarchs
in British history.
He was frequently seen at the theatre and at civic
engagements, and could also be disarmingly informal,
such as when talking to people he met while strolling
the gardens of St. James's Park.
All the Royal Apartments at Windsor
were lavishly decorated at great expense,
with oak paneling, colorful tapestries, and gilded plaster
ceilings painted by the celebrated Italian-born artist
Verrio.
Although only three of the 19 ceilings painted by Verrio
survive, his work at Windsor is considered
to be the most impressive series of Baroque decorative paintings
in the British Isles.
Art was used to bolster the authority
and legitimacy of the King and to magnify the ceremonial.
First, though, Charles had to re-establish the Royal
Collection of Art, which had been broken up
and sold off after the Civil War to fund the navy
and settle government debts.
Plates, hangings, paintings and other items
were returned to the crown daily.
17 cart loads of goods were retrieved from Cromwell's widow
alone.
Many owners returned paintings voluntarily,
some claiming that they had simply
been looking after them on behalf of the King.
Other items were forcibly repatriated in compliance
with a series of proclamations and other legal measures.
Some items, though, especially those
snapped up by princely collectors, were lost forever,
and can now be found gracing the walls of some
of the most famous museums and galleries across Europe.
By re-forming his father's collection of art,
Charles was creating a physical sense of continuity
with the court of his father.
Patronage of the arts was also a means, of course,
of demonstrating cultural refinement and artistic taste.
Equally important, though, was the flood of popular artworks
and commemorative goods bearing the King's image.
From dishes and wine bottles to jewelry and prints,
the King's image was everywhere to be found.
Charles also had St. George's Hall refashioned
as a colossal throne room, complete with a dias
and a throne that resembled a coronation chair.
Rather than being used as a banqueting hall,
Charles envisaged this as a symbolic space
that would be used only at the greatest state
occasions designed to assert the majesty of kingship.
The hall also honored the re-founded Most Noble Order
of the Garter.
While Charles had always taken the Order very seriously,
he also used it to encourage loyalty
or to demonstrate political favor among courtiers
and foreign dignitaries.
The symbolic power of the Order can also
be seen in the Star Building, now so altered
as to be hardly recognizable.
Originally, this had a 12 foot high gilt Order of the Garter
Star on its exterior, designed to create
a shimmering golden reflection in the Thames.
Windsor was not alone in being remodeled and refurbished.
Shortly after the Restoration, the King's Office of Works
was re-established and plans drawn up
to restore and redesign a host of royal palaces,
including the reconstruction of Whitehall
and the development of Greenwich Palace.
In 1669, Christopher Wren was appointed as Surveyor
of the King's Works.
Wren was, of course, provided with a unique opportunity
by the Fire of London to ensure Charles
left a profound architectural legacy.
There were even plans to build a new palace
to rival Versailles overlooking Winchester, home
to the court of Alfred the Great.
While Charles initiated a number of building projects
during his reign, Windsor was the only one
that he saw completed.
Costing more than 200,000 pounds and largely finished by 1684,
the work is considered his greatest
architectural achievement.
Charles did not rule by image making, spectacle, and ceremony
alone, he was also a shrewd politician.
During the Exclusion Crisis, when the Whigs
sought to exclude Charles's brother, the Catholic James,
Duke of York, from the line of succession,
the King was able to skillfully play
on the public's fears of a return
to the chaos of the Civil War.
Together with his Tory supporters,
he painted the Whigs as dangerous would-be Republican
rebels.
After dismissing the English Parliament for the last time
at Oxford in March 1681, Charles then
successfully had the Scottish Parliament denounce
the actions of its English counterpart,
declaring that the succession was to be determined solely
by the proximity of blood, not parliamentary statute.
Victory in the Exclusion Crisis and the foiling
of the Rye House Plot to assassinate
the King and his brother unleashed a torrent
of popular Toryism that lasted for the remainder of Charles's
reign.
Combined with buoyant royal finances,
Charles was now in a position to be bolder and firmer.
We don't know how long the King might
have been able to rule without Parliament
or where his Catholic sympathies or backroom dealings with Louis
XIV might have ultimately led, as Charles fell critically ill
and died, on the 8th of February 1685, at Whitehall.
While the popular image of Charles II
tends to focus on his scandalous affairs,
we should not overlook the great achievement of his reign.
Unlike his father, who lost his head,
or his brother, who succeeded him but then lost his crown,
Charles held onto his throne and prospered.
Viewed from the anxious and crisis ridden early years
of his reign, this was no small achievement.
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