Charles II

The eldest surviving son of Charles I and Henrietta Maria of France, Charles II spent his formative years in war and exile. Born in May 1630, he was sixteen when he fled to the Continent during the Civil War. After his father's execution in 1649 the Scots proclaimed him king, and he was crowned at Scone in 1651, but the defeat of his army at Worcester later that year drove him back into an impoverished exile in France and the Spanish Netherlands.

The collapse of the republican regime after Oliver Cromwell's death opened the way for his return. Invited back by the Convention Parliament, Charles entered London in May 1660 amid general celebration, and the Restoration settlement re-established monarchy, the House of Lords, and the Church of England. In 1662 he married Catherine of Braganza, daughter of John IV of Portugal, whose dowry included Tangier and Bombay. The marriage produced no surviving children, though Charles acknowledged numerous illegitimate offspring by his mistresses.

His reign weathered the Great Plague of 1665, the Great Fire of London in 1666, and two costly wars against the Dutch Republic. In foreign policy he drew close to his first cousin Louis XIV of France, concluding the secret Treaty of Dover in 1670, by which he received French subsidies and undertook eventually to declare himself Catholic. At home, the revelation that his brother and heir James, Duke of York, had converted to Catholicism produced the Exclusion Crisis of 1679-81, during which Charles outmanoeuvred the parliamentary opposition and ultimately governed without Parliament.

Dynastic diplomacy under Charles had lasting consequences: in 1677 he sanctioned the marriage of his niece Mary, James's elder daughter, to William of Orange, a union that later brought the Dutch stadtholder to the English throne. Charles suffered a sudden illness in February 1685 and was received into the Catholic Church on his deathbed. He died on 6 February and was succeeded by his brother as James II.