Historical Reputations

The conclusions of historians change over the years, not only as a result of the discovery of new evidence, but as a result of the changing times in which historians themselves live and work. We have become familiar with the notion that each generation of historians may have its own questions to ask, its own standards and conscious or unconscious preconceptions by which to judge. The historical reputation of Charles II is a fascinating example of this. Broadly speaking, opinions about him may be divided into two sharply contrasting groups.

On the one hand there is what might fairly be termed the traditional Whig view- that of Macaulay [1] and his grand-nephew Trevelyan. Chapters XI and XII of Trevelyan's famous text-book, England under the Stuarts, first published in 1904, set out this highly critical view of the King and his reign in a way which must have influenced countless students; and Airy's biography of Charles, published in 1901, belongs basically to the same tradition. On the other hand there is the view which gained ground steadily in the next thirty years, and particularly between the two world wars, depicting Charles as a great and much-maligned monarch. This latter view owed a great deal, as will be seen, to Dr. W.A. Shaw's introductions to the Calendars of Treasury Books, which began to appear in 1904. Two popular biographies which were relatively favourable to Charles were those of Imbert-Terry (1917) and John Drinkwater (1926); but by far the best-known expression of this view is that to be found in Sir Arthur Bryant's very skilfully written biography (first published in 1931) [2], and the same author's volumes on Samuel Pepys (1933-8) go still further in praise of the King and condemnation of his opponents. The old picture was never superseded: the three greatest authorities who wrote in the same period, David Ogg in his England in the reign of Charles II (1934), Sir Keith Feiling in British Foreign Policy, 1660-72 (1930), and Sir George Clark in The Later Stuarts (1934) all continued to give unflattering portraits, and post-1945 works such as those of Andrew Browning and J.P. Kenyon have been no more favourable. [1] Yet anyone who lectures to extra-mural audiences knows how popular the Bryant view is...