![]() George Villiers enjoyed a meteoric rise through court society after attracting the eye of Charles’s father, James I, in 1614. Photo © Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Henrietta Maria lived to become Queen Mother to her eldest son, Charles II, when the monarchy was restored in 1660, before dying in her native France in 1669.Īnthony van Dyck, Henrietta Maria with Sir Jeffrey Hudson, 1633, 219.1 x 134.8 cm. When she was finally forced to flee to Paris in 1644, she took several paintings with her – possibly including Van Dyck’s Charles in the Hunting Field, above, which was notably absent from the sale of the King’s goods that followed his execution. With the Civil War looming, Henrietta Maria travelled to the Netherlands in 1642 to raise funds for the Royalist cause, selling her jewellery to buy weapons and hire soldiers before returning to England. Having grown up at the French court, Henrietta Maria was accustomed to being surrounded by visual splendour and she was to play an active role in the selection and commission of new works for the Royal Collection in England. Her religion, at odds with Protestant England, made her immediately disliked in her new home.įollowing the assassination of Charles’s close companion and advisor, George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, in 1628, Henrietta Maria and her husband grew considerably closer. The wedding had been hastily arranged to secure Britain a French alliance against Spain a consideration that temporarily trumped Henrietta Maria’s inconveniently devout Catholicism. The French princess Henrietta Maria was just 15 when she married 24-year-old Charles I. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (musée du Louvre). Paris, Louvre Museum, Department of Paintings. His beloved art collection was dispersed at the “Sale of the Late King’s Goods”, organised by the new leader Oliver Cromwell to raise funds and pay off Charles’s debts.Īnthony van Dyck, Charles I in the Hunting Field, c.1635, 266 x 207 cm. He was beheaded outside the Banqueting House at Whitehall Palace on 30 January 1649. After his attempt to arrest the ringleaders failed, Charles declared war on Parliament.Īfter more than seven years of fighting, Charles’s last allies were defeated and he was charged with, and found guilty of, high treason. Needing money to fight uprisings in Ireland and Scotland, he reconvened Parliament, only to be presented with the “Grand Remonstrance”, a lengthy list of grievances from his ministers. ![]() ![]() The collection has now been reunited for the first time in our exhibition Charles I: King and Collector.Ĭharles made it through 17 years of increasingly unpopular and authoritarian rule before the official outbreak of Civil War. During his reign, he put together one of the most extraordinary art collections of his age, unprecedented in England. This left him with limited ways to raise funds for his treasury – an awkward position to be in, for a warmongering King with a taste for expensive clothing, furniture and of course, art. Convinced of his divine right to rule over his subjects, he enraged his ministers by refusing to listen to their counsel and dissolved Parliament four years into his reign. Henry’s sudden death, aged 18, made the quiet and unassuming Charles the unexpected new heir.Ĭharles was crowned King in 1625. ![]() Although his father was King James I of Great Britain, he had a popular older brother, Henry, who was the heir apparent.
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