Sir
Robert Vyner (1631–1688) supplied the regalia for the restoration of Charles II, and was appointed as the King's goldsmith in 1661. He was as much a banker as a goldsmith, and was knighted for his services in 1661 and was Lord Mayor of London in 1674. To show his devotion to the king, Vyner purchased a statue made in Italy for the Polish ambassador in London. It depicted the general, later
King John Sobieski on a horse trampling a Turk.
The ambassador could not afford to pay for it and Vyner bought it and had it altered to show
Charles II trampling Cromwell. How much was altered is uncertain. Cromwell's image, barely altered from the original Turk, appears to be wearing a turban. The statue reflects the Restoration perception of Cromwell. It was unveiled on 29 October 1672 at
Stocks Market, Cornhill, and was removed in 1736 to make way for the construction of the
Mansion House. It now stands in the grounds of
Newby Hall, North Yorkshire.[1]
The statue was the subject of two satires, attributed[2] to
Andrew Marvell: A poem of the statue in Stocks-Market and A dialogue between two horses.
Other statues include those in London's
Soho Square,[3] St Mary's Square in
Gloucester,[4] Edinburgh's Parliament Square, at the Central Criminal Court in London, at Newmarket Racecourse and near the south portal of
Lichfield Cathedral.
Literature
Charles appears as Arethusius in Sir
Percy Herbert's lengthy novel The Princess Cloria (1653–1661), which fictionalizes his early life up to the coronation in 1660.
Mary, Princess Royal and Princess of Orange, a sister of Charles II, was depicted as "Cloria".
Charles is the title character in
John Howard Payne and
Washington Irving's play
Charles II (1824), a comedy which depicts the king assuming a civilian identity for fun and the consequences which ensue.
Patricia at the Inn (1906) by
J. C. Snaith is an adventure novel revolving around the exploits of the titular heroine as she and her husband help Charles II to escape.[5]
The novel His Majesty, The King (1926) by
Cosmo Hamilton focuses on Charles during his exile in the Netherlands. [7]
Charles appears in The Black Pearl (1982), Volume 5 of The Morland Dynasty, a series of historical novels by author
Cynthia Harrod-Eagles. This volume covers the Restoration period and Charles has family links to the fictional Morland family.
The young Charles is a character in Traitor's Field by
Robert Wilton (2013), following him from the aftermath of the Battle of Worcester in 1651 to his flight into exile on the continent.
Charles II is the protagonist of
Georgette Heyer's historical account, published in 1938, denoted The Royal Escape, which covers the period from the defeat at Worcester to his sailing to France, from 3 September to 15 October 1651; all of it spent in hiding and journeyings. The book, with a wealth of detail and taken from actual accounts by people who helped Charles along the way, and one by the King as dictated to Pepys (who would later write on the Great Plague) is meticulously cited.
1Overlord of
Britain. 2Also ruler of
Ireland. 3Also ruler of
Scotland and Ireland. 4Lord Protector. 5Also ruler of
England and Ireland. Debatable or disputed rulers are in italics.
^
abcd Ernest A. Baker, A Guide to Historical Fiction. London: G. Routledge and Sons, 1914. (p.73-4)
^Tibbetts, John C. The Furies of Marjorie Bowen. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2019,
ISBN9781476677163 (pp. 196–198).
^Daniel D. McGarry, Sarah Harriman White, Historical Fiction Guide: Annotated Chronological, Geographical, and Topical List of Five Thousand Selected Historical Novels. Scarecrow Press, 1963 (p. 166)