Children of the King

In 1642, when King Charles I went to war against his subjects, his children entered a world of uncertainty and anxiety which brought childhood to an abrupt end and split up the family. Eleven-year-old Mary was married to the Prince of Orange and sent to Holland, to unfamiliar surroundings and a young man she did not know; Charles and James followed their father in his ceaseless peregrinations round the country and were treated to the horrid spectacle of Englishmen fighting Englishmen to the death; Elizabeth and Henry, the two younger children, were held as hostages by the King's enemies and harshly disciplined by their Puritan gaolers, who took delight in dominating their helpless victims; even little Henriette Anne, born after the war commenced, was spirited out of England to live a life of wretched poverty in France. Childhood should be a time for fun and laughter. For the children of the King it became an obstacle course fraught with danger.


Genre: Historical