Volume 26, Number 20 · December 20, 1979
Un-Kinglike King
By J.H. Plumb
Royal Charles: Charles II and the Restoration
by Antonia Fraser
Knopf, 524 pp., $16.95
Even by comparison with the rest of an unstable world, England was a wild, radical country in the seventeenth century. Usually kings or regents or ministers were despatched by assassins or thrown out of windows but never brought to trial. England, however, tried a captive queen in privacy and then one of its own kings publicly, and both were beheaded with judicial solemnity. Such actions shocked Europe. By 1655 most discerning men would have bet that England would have a new semi-royal Statholder-like dynasty, the Cromwells, and never witness the return of the Stuarts. And certainly that was the view of most of Europe's monarchs and their advisers for they were extremely reluctant to invest a penny in Charles II in exile. Even in 1658 his position to them looked hopeless.
Review, 1583 words
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