Who was Charles II in the New World?

Question

Who was Charles II in relevance to the New World of America? what did he do?

Answer 1

Charles II was an easy-going man, and is known in history as the "Merry Monarch", with religious toleration dominating the political scene during his reign.

The king had numerous mistresses and illegitimate children, and loved racing and gambling which this led to him having a considerable influence on Restoration art and literature.

He spent part of the English Civil War as Prince of Wales fighting on his father's behalf (King Charles I) in the West of England.

Charles's foreign policy was a wavering balance of alliances with France and the Dutch and his reign also saw the rise of colonisation and trade in India, the East Indies and America, and the passage of Navigation Acts that secured Britain's future as a sea-power.

His desire to become an absolute monarch caused him to favour Catholicism for his subjects as most consistent with absolute monarchy, converting from a Protestant to a Catholic on his deathbed.

His reign was also distinguished by occurrence of the plague, the great fire of London and the passing of the Habeas Corpus Act, one of the great bulwarks of English liberty next to the Magna Charta.

Answer 2

Charles !! was a king of England, and was thus sovereign of the English colonies in the New World.  

Answer 3

Charles II (Charles Stuart; 29 May 1630 – 6 February 1685) was the King of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

According to royalists (and retrospective English law), Charles II became king when his father Charles I was executed at Whitehall on 30 January 1649, the climax of the English Civil War. The English Parliament did not proclaim Charles II king at this time, passing a statute making it unlawful, and England entered the period known to history as the English Interregnum. The Parliament of Scotland, on the other hand, proclaimed Charles II King of Scots on 5 February 1649 in Edinburgh. He was crowned King of Scots at Scone on 1 January 1651. Following his defeat at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651, Charles fled to the continent and spent the next nine years in exile in France, the United Provinces and the Spanish Netherlands.

After the Protectorate collapsed under Richard Cromwell in 1659, General George Monck invited Charles to return and assume the thrones in what became known as the Restoration. Charles II arrived on English soil on 25 May 1660 and entered London on his thirtieth birthday, 29 May 1660. Charles was crowned King of England and Ireland at Westminster Abbey on 23 April 1661.

Charles's English parliament enacted anti-Puritan laws known as the Clarendon Code, designed to shore up the position of the re-established Church of England. Charles acquiesced to the Clarendon Code even though he himself favoured a policy of religious toleration. The major foreign policy issue of Charles's early reign was the Second Anglo-Dutch War. In 1670, Charles entered into the secret treaty of Dover, an alliance with Louis XIV under the terms of which Louis agreed to aid Charles in the Third Anglo-Dutch War and pay Charles a pension, and Charles promised to convert to Roman Catholicism at an unspecified future date. Charles attempted to introduce religious freedom for Catholics and Protestant dissenters with his 1672 Royal Declaration of Indulgence, but the English Parliament forced him to withdraw it. In 1679, Titus Oates's revelations of a supposed "Popish Plot" sparked the Exclusion Crisis when it was revealed that Charles's brother and heir (the future James II) was a Roman Catholic. This crisis saw the birth of the pro-exclusion Whig and anti-exclusion Tory parties. Charles sided with the Tories, and, following the discovery of the Rye House Plot to murder Charles and James in 1683, some Whig leaders were killed or forced into exile. Charles dissolved the English Parliament in 1679, and ruled alone until his death on 6 February 1685. Charles converted to Roman Catholicism on his deathbed.

He was 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, was barren, but Charles acknowledged at least 12 illegitimate children by various mistresses.