I’m now two and a half weeks into the life of Charles II. The info keeps coming, like a firehose. There are so many complexities to his character, and ChatGPT tells me that while he is not the main emphasis of the story, he is a “hinge point” that must be addressed. Google tells me, “a hinge point in a story is a pivotal moment or event that causes a significant, often irreversible, change in the direction of the plot or a character’s journey.” So Charlie gets all the attention for now, until I can get past him.
What a card this guy was, and what a departure from the austerity of Oliver Cromwell. I find myself wondering just how much I need to go into his rather sordid life; especially as I see this book becoming an important read for teenagers who are trying to understand what they believe, as I learned this week from a Kirk Cameron video. (Seriously, he learned on-camera that his kid became an agnostic for awhile.) So now I want to provide
All of these questions about the personal faith of teenagers leads us carefully away from the man who *ahem* fathered many children but not one in wedlock who could be an heir. However, he had a soft side. He refused to divorce his barren wife (kind of the whole reason the Church of England was created, amIright?). He also remembered generously those who helped him escape to exile–even those who were Quakers.
The reason it was under Charles’ rule that the Quakers suffered most is in fact because he was so lackadaisical he allowed his closest advisor to run things on the Quaker front. Was this guy just evil in his hatred of the Friends? Evidently no. Google tells me the First Earl of Clarendon wanted to be more lenient in what would be called the “Clarendon Code” but the new Parliament, called the Cavalier Parliament, went a more ruthless route. So now I have to decide how to cover all that in a way that is both informative and compelling.
GPT-5 tells me that what George Whitehead takes from all this is that government is mercurial. What I know is that God is faithful. Kind of what young David learned when his pal King Saul went on the occasional murderous rampage.
So while I go back to my writing struggles, here’s a highly entertaining Charles II video from the Horrible History crew. This is why I’m portraying him like a modern celebrity with his posse on the sidelines!
Friends of Freedom 