childhood friend Buckingham was once more at his side. The two boys were allotted Thomas Hobbes to teach them mathematics. The worthy and agreeable Dr John Earle read with them for an hour a day. Dr Brian Duppa was also resurrected to brush up the Prince’s education. Halifax, in his Character of a Trimmer , complained that one bad effect of the Civil War was that it forced Charles II to have a foreign education: 3 but he did not of course receive a foreign education as we should now understand the term. He simply continued his English education after a considerable interruption.
With due regard for his father’s oft-repeated remarks concerning the Church of England, Charles paid ostentatious visits to Charenton, the headquarters of French Protestantism. As a matter of fact, Protestantism here took such a severe form that Hyde, still in Jersey, added Charles’ apparent adherence to such an extreme sect to his list of other worries.
It was not until 14 August that Charles was received by his cousin Louis, then on the eve of his eighth birthday. All the French royal niceties were observed. Something in the French air was encouraging to such ceremonies. Besides, the elaborateformality of the reception was in itself an excuse and justification for the delay. The Prince of Wales rode on the same side of the coach as the young King, and on his right hand, ‘no point of honour being forgotten and nothing omitted that could testify the close ties of consanguinity’. 4
Customarily, such ceremonies lasted three days – no more, no less. So after three days Charles found himself back at Saint-Germain again, his cause no further forward. Those about him periodically began to mutter that they wished they were back in Jersey again.
It was hardly surprising under the circumstances that the two young men, Charles and Buckingham, got a reputation for idleness. At the time, their books must have appeared to them as a bundle of rather unattractive strangers. But it is also worth recording that somehow or other Charles acquired ‘a great compass of knowledge’: we know this not only from John Evelyn but from the normally critical Burnet. 5 Charles understood the ‘mechanics of physic’ and made himself an excellent chemist; he both loved and understood the art of navigation. This kind of expertise, including the mathematics involved, was not obtained by idleness. Like most young people, Charles did not want to be driven to study: but he was obviously capable of great application when his interest was aroused.
This was also the period blamed by the sober – and the priggish – in later years for inculcating Charles’ taste for ‘gallantry’. One would hardly have blamed the penniless and in effect jobless Charles if he had decided to taste the pleasures of the flesh in compensation for the general frustration of his existence. But there is in fact no particular evidence that he did so.
All the stories of Charles’ ‘debauchery’ in exile must be treated with extreme caution. At the time it suited the Parliamentary book to spread such propaganda. Later the truth was embroidered, in the light of his subsequent career as a gallant monarch. The facts show him to have been really quite moderate in his tastes for a bachelor prince, by the standards of the time. He was certainly no byword for debauchery.
Certainly, as a boy of sixteen, the frolics which he enjoyedwith Buckingham were comparatively mild. The one person who genuinely charmed him at this point, the delightful, tender Isabelle-Angélique, Duchesse de Châtillon, widow of the Admiral Coligny, was exactly the kind of woman to appeal to an inexperienced young man. Everyone adored Bablon, as she was nicknamed; her wit and softness captivated the entire French Court. Her numerous admirers included the Prince de Condé as well as the Duc de Nemours and England’s own Lord Digby. It was in a sense a safe choice for a young man to make because Bablon’s alluring qualities
With due regard for his father’s oft-repeated remarks concerning the Church of England, Charles paid ostentatious visits to Charenton, the headquarters of French Protestantism. As a matter of fact, Protestantism here took such a severe form that Hyde, still in Jersey, added Charles’ apparent adherence to such an extreme sect to his list of other worries.
It was not until 14 August that Charles was received by his cousin Louis, then on the eve of his eighth birthday. All the French royal niceties were observed. Something in the French air was encouraging to such ceremonies. Besides, the elaborateformality of the reception was in itself an excuse and justification for the delay. The Prince of Wales rode on the same side of the coach as the young King, and on his right hand, ‘no point of honour being forgotten and nothing omitted that could testify the close ties of consanguinity’. 4
Customarily, such ceremonies lasted three days – no more, no less. So after three days Charles found himself back at Saint-Germain again, his cause no further forward. Those about him periodically began to mutter that they wished they were back in Jersey again.
It was hardly surprising under the circumstances that the two young men, Charles and Buckingham, got a reputation for idleness. At the time, their books must have appeared to them as a bundle of rather unattractive strangers. But it is also worth recording that somehow or other Charles acquired ‘a great compass of knowledge’: we know this not only from John Evelyn but from the normally critical Burnet. 5 Charles understood the ‘mechanics of physic’ and made himself an excellent chemist; he both loved and understood the art of navigation. This kind of expertise, including the mathematics involved, was not obtained by idleness. Like most young people, Charles did not want to be driven to study: but he was obviously capable of great application when his interest was aroused.
This was also the period blamed by the sober – and the priggish – in later years for inculcating Charles’ taste for ‘gallantry’. One would hardly have blamed the penniless and in effect jobless Charles if he had decided to taste the pleasures of the flesh in compensation for the general frustration of his existence. But there is in fact no particular evidence that he did so.
All the stories of Charles’ ‘debauchery’ in exile must be treated with extreme caution. At the time it suited the Parliamentary book to spread such propaganda. Later the truth was embroidered, in the light of his subsequent career as a gallant monarch. The facts show him to have been really quite moderate in his tastes for a bachelor prince, by the standards of the time. He was certainly no byword for debauchery.
Certainly, as a boy of sixteen, the frolics which he enjoyedwith Buckingham were comparatively mild. The one person who genuinely charmed him at this point, the delightful, tender Isabelle-Angélique, Duchesse de Châtillon, widow of the Admiral Coligny, was exactly the kind of woman to appeal to an inexperienced young man. Everyone adored Bablon, as she was nicknamed; her wit and softness captivated the entire French Court. Her numerous admirers included the Prince de Condé as well as the Duc de Nemours and England’s own Lord Digby. It was in a sense a safe choice for a young man to make because Bablon’s alluring qualities
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