“The Man of Blood” to his opponents, a man who had killed the Lord’s People, and was tried and executed accordingly, emerges unusually sympathetically in The White King, Leanda de Lisle’s engaging and well-written biography of Charles I of England, king from 1625 until 1649. This biography is one that puts personality first, and, in doing so, devotes due and excellent attention to the role of women, particularly Charles’s dynamic French wife, Henrietta Maria. Indeed, Charles repeatedly appears in this account as the blinkered prey to the ambitions of others, notably the Duke of Buckingham; Henry, Earl of Holland; and Lucy, Countess of Carlisle. The king emerges as honorable and uxorious, but a withdrawn and rigid individual who lacked the flexibility and intelligence necessary to avoid the problems that stemmed from the partisan and divisive policies he supported.

To be a successful monarch required both character and talents, and Charles was insufficient in both. His inheritance was a promising one, and if the reign of James I (r. 1603–1625) had been troubled in England and, as James VI(r. 1567–1625), even more so in Scotland, there had at least been no collapse into civil war. Charles, however, lacked common sense and pragmatism, and could prove both devious and untrustworthy. Moreover, Charles’s belief in order and in the dignity of kingship led him to take an unsympathetic attitude to disagreement. After encountering severe problems with Parliament over his financial expedients, especially the forced loan of 1626, Charles dispensed