Volume 33, Number 16 · October 23, 1986
The Man Who Should Be King
By Christopher Hill
Henry Prince of Wales, and England's Lost Renaissance
by Roy Strong
Thames and Hudson, 264 pp., $24.95
Prince Henry is the great might-havebeen of English history. Eldest son of James VI of Scotland, who in 1603 became king of England, Henry died at the age of eighteen in 1612. He was succeeded as James's heir by his stuttering obstinate younger brother, who as Charles I provoked and lost the civil war of 1642–1646, and then became the first English king to be publicly tried and executed as a traitor to his people. As king, Charles was an unmitigated disaster, whose execution became what Oliver Cromwell called a 'cruel necessity.' No one could negotiate any further with a man who thought it his religious duty to double-cross anyone who did not accept his divine right to rule as he chose. In retrospect many—on both sides in the civil war—looked back nostalgically to the young prince who had died in 1612.
Review, 2593 words
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