The metropolitan monarch: King Charles II of England and his representation in colonial contexts, 1660-85

Thesis

This thesis argues for King Charles II of England to be reconceived as ‘the metropolitan monarch’. Once known as ‘the merry monarch’, the Restoration king’s reputation for debauchery has been replaced within historiography by the notion of him astutely deploying royal representational media to re-establish and maintain the English monarchy after the Interregnum, and the king re-branded as ‘the magnificent monarch’. This re-assessment does not account for Charles’s sovereignty and representation extending beyond England, however and examining his representation in colonial contexts fundamentally questions its conclusions. Such examination reveals that the Restoration Crown’s use of royal representation was less glorious than historiographical headlines have typically advertised. It draws critical notice to the fact that general types and specific instances of royal representational media were not only elaborate items through which political agendas were deftly and successfully pursued. They were essential, practical, and sometimes ineptly-deployed mechanisms through which royal government was exercised from the English metropole and experienced in its localities.

Analysing Charles as ‘the metropolitan monarch’ through media-based, territory-based, and hybrid case-studies on the one hand uncovers an unsurprising conclusion stifled by existing scholarship: his subjects’ engagement with royal representation was coloured by individual priorities and proclivities rather than simply by conceptions of Crown-colony-oriented politics and associated vested interests. On the other hand, it seriously challenges a core tenet of prevailing historiography on early modern English colonialism. It suggests that the Crown’s colonial ambitions were considerably more circumscribed than consensus allows.

Accompanied by dynamic dataset tables designed to facilitate taking its findings forwards, the thesis thus revises core understandings of the Restoration Crown, Charles’s representation, and early English colonialism. Ultimately, it exposes the limitations and priorities of ‘the metropolitan monarch’.

Authors: Smith, J

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-ngvvrk4e4
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: colonial; King Charles II of England; monarchy; representation; Restoration
• Subjects: Colonies; History; Seventeenth century; Material culture