A Phantom King

Charles I. A Study. By F. M. G. Higham. (Hamish Hamilton. 10s. 6d..) IT is " some time " according to Messrs. Hamish Hamilton's advertisement, since any life of Charles I has been written. Miss Higham has now interrupted the pause very pleasingly. She does not aspire to write a detailed•account of the political events of the reign. The achieved aim of the book is to portray a person, not a period, and whatever may be the verdict of historical experts in the matter of likeness, there can be no doubt that the picture lives.

Charles I had at both ends of his life something of the Stuart charm. During the middle years he was certainly one of the most exasperating men who ever lived! He infuriated his very French wife who really loved him, he failed his friends who loyally served him, and he irritated the English people, for whom he had a strong paternal sentiment, till, losing patience altogether they cut his head off and had done with him. It is true that they were soon sorry. Charles' marvel- lously becoming death made Cromwell's seat always a little rickety. " Stone dead hath no fellow " is not one of the truths of history—and the contrition of nations is a psychic pheno- menon which must be counted with. • " The boy Charles Stuart " was '6 in behaviour" sober, grave, sweet in speech, very advised. He had moreover .a great capacity for enjoyment. His gravity was subject to interruption. He disliked Buckingham with a childish fervour, before he fell under the favourite's sinister influence. One day he hid behind a bush amid soused him with a garden squirt. Buckingham told. -James _was furious,. -aud-boxed his---soR ears. " Poor Charles ! he never could learn that in this world there is " nothing for nothing "—not even a crown. Later ou he went incognito to Spain disguised with a false beard, hoping to make love to the Infanta. The whole adventure failed tidi.

culously, but it must have been great fun! Apparently agaia he much enjoyed his seventeenth birthday party, for which Ben Jonson wrote a masque, though it was observed when thn dancing began that the Prince did not caper so high as semi of the courtiers ! What a brilliant scene is suggested by thedn few facts ! Yet there are always some people everywhere whb won't be pleased. The Venetian diplomats have left it oil record that they sat it through " writhing with tediousness."

Below the average height, very slim and neat featured, the maturing Charles liked best to be seen on horseback, affecting

huge chargers in order that his powers of control might show. As a young child he had stuttered and always retained certain hesitancy of diction along with his Scottish accent He was a self-conscious person, and there was always some• thing overweening about his dignity, yet it lasted his life, and stood the last test. His reserve as Miss Higham points out very insistently, was not the reserve of strength. It seemed rather to belong to an instinct to hide. In sorrow or dismay he usually shut himself up. He had little power to show, and none to ask, sympathy. The stutter which he had cast forth from his mouth seemed to have entered his soul. As he grew older no shock was great enough to knock the royalty out of him and show " the man Charles Stuart." When Buckingham was murdered the King was at church. He waved away the messenger who brought

the news -and continued his devotions seemingly undisturbed. " Never man saw him passionately angry or extraordinarily moved either with prosperity or adversity, never man heard him curse, never man heard him complain." He wanted tb be " every inch a King," not what he called " a Phantom King." He saw very clearly that the English people had no

liking for the every inch " ideal of Royalty. They wanted a King the last inch of whose prerogative had never been measured. They hated Laud and Strafford for teaching him the policy of " Thorough." He knew the English tradition but he was determined to pluck it to pieces.

This latest student of his character makes much of the conscientious element in his. policy, on the other hand she admits the force of conscience upon the other side. " It was not material hardship but spiritual revolt that stirred the squires of East Anglia as well as the citizens of London to an unrest of mind which needed but the chance of expression." The country was enjoying prosperity before Charles destroyed their peace by trying to force on them his religious, political and economic will, in his obstinate determination to become what Sir Jacob Astley called him, " your King, your cause, your quarrel and your captain."

Miss Higham quotes Clarendon in support of her contention that material distress had little to do with the Puritan Revolt :

" from the dissolution of the Parliament in the fourth year to the beginning of this (Long) Parliament which was above twelve years, this kingdom . . . enjoyed the greatest calm and the fullest measure of felicity that any people in any age for so long together have been blessed with ; to the wonder and envy of all the parts of Christendom."

But he concludes :

" all these blessings could but enable—not compel us to be happy. There was in truth a strange absence of understanding in most, and a strange perverseness of understanding in the rest : the court full of excess, idleness and luxury and the country full of pride, mutiny and discontmt."

It is not easy to say what passed in the mind of a man so un• candid as Charles. Much must remain a matter of imagination. He said, however, that in handing over Strafford to his enemies he had sinned against light and also he openly declared his

determination to. be " a King or a martyr." Had destiny

allowed him to remain a King he might be now remembered as a small man who succeeded in riding the high horse with obstinacy and success ; not as " King Charles the Martyr." Neither Van Dyck, nor former editions of the Anglican Prayer Book, are likely to persuade any thinking person that either description is at all adequate. Miss Higham leads. us by historic paths to a conclUsion midway between these extremes and

.'offers us excellent entertainment-by the way. - , '