Remember! 

              Sermon by the Rev'd F. Washington Jarvis  
         Preached at the American Region's XXVI Annual Mass 
          Saint Stephen's Church, Providence, Rhode Island
                          31 January 2009 

"For this is the will of God: that with well-doing ye may put to
silence the ignorance of foolish men."  --I Peter ii: 13

Charles was born in Scotland in 1600, the third child of
Scotland's King James VI and Queen Anne.  James VI of Scotland
became also James I of England in 1603.  When James journeyed from
Edinburgh to his new palace in London, he took his wife and his
two older children with him.  Three-year-old Charles, however, was
too frail for the journey.  Charles suffered from rickets: at the
age of 3, he could neither walk nor talk.

Being left behind was the first of many deprivations Charles was
to suffer.  It would be nearly two years before the
all-but-orphaned little prince would join his parents in London.
And when he was finally reunited with his father, he was still, at
age 5, not able to walk without support, and he could barely
stammer a word when addressed by the king.  The rumor quickly
spread that Charles was retarded.

King James and Queen Anne decided to banish their little boy to
the countryside.  They said they were doing this in order to
protect him from London's foul air.  But the real reason he was
banished is that he was an embarrassment.  He was sent off to the
only noblewoman in the Kingdom who was willing to take him:
Elizabeth Lady Carey.  She became his great protector.  When King
James, enraged by Charles's stuttering, wanted to slit the boy's
tongue, Lady Carey stood up to the king and prevented it.  When
the king wanted to make him wear iron shoes to strengthen his
skinny legs, she again stood in the way.  She kept the little boy
in seclusion at Greenwich.  There he lived largely in a fantasy
world, playing soldier alone in the garden, inventing theatrical
productions, organizing his coin and medal collections in lonely
solitude.

Charles saw little of his older brother Henry, the heir to the
throne, or of his sister Elizabeth.  Both Henry and Elizabeth were
talented, charming, and good looking.  Whenever he saw his older
siblings, Charles was awestruck by them.  They were to him
paragons of brilliance and perfection, while in his own eyes he
was the ugly duckling: a tiny, frail, homely, awkward, sickly
stutterer.

Charles' parents had long since gone their separate ways in a
loveless marriage.  James surrounded himself with the attractive
young men that were his preference and ignored Charles.  Anne, his
mother, was incapable of piercing Charles's heavy armor to embrace
the withdrawn, isolated, and desperately lonely little boy that
was her son.

Then when Charles was twelve, his handsome, athletic, charismatic
18-year-old brother Henry suddenly died, and Charles became heir
to the throne.

Charles hoped that at last he could gain his father's notice and
affection.  But he was quickly disappointed.  The king was madly
infatuated with a young man a few years older than Charles: the
tall, stunningly handsome, and charismatic George Villiers.
Villiers was the son of an impecunious country squire, but the
king promoted him quickly through the ranks of the nobility to
become Duke of Buckingham.  James devastated Charles by constantly
comparing him unfavorably to Buckingham.

Deprived of his father's love, Charles became motherless at 19
when Queen Anne died.  Almost immediately after he lost his
mother, his older sister Elizabeth, whom he worshipped, left
England to marry a German prince; he would never see his sister
again.

Six years later James died, and Charles became king at 25.
Charles lacked a kingly presence -- he was not much over 5 feet
tall, very slight of build.  Within a year he was married by proxy
in Paris to the French princess, Henrietta Maria, whom he had
never met.  Though she was 15 when she arrived in England,
Henrietta Maria was still a child; she stood less than 4 1/2 feet
tall, and had not yet reached puberty.  She brought with her from
France an entourage of a mere 440 attendants, including a Roman
Catholic bishop and 29 priests who made incessant trouble from Day
One.  She was a petulant spoilt brat.  She refused to learn
English or to reach out to anyone in her new country.  Charles had
had no experience with women and, as we have seen, had little
self-confidence or capacity for intimacy.

It was not until the third year of their marriage that Charles
finally screwed up his courage and banished most of her French
attendants, though he kept all the French chefs and bakers!  The
Duke of Buckingham was assassinated at about the same time, and
Charles and Henrietta Maria turned to each other and -- mirabile
dictu -- fell in love.  The marriage was finally consummated, and
from that time on, she became his principal confidante and
supporter.  They went on to create an enduringly joyful marriage
and an idyllic family life with their six children.

King Charles's court as was a model of decorum, moral rectitude,
and elegance.  Lady Lucy Hutchinson wrote, "King Charles was
temperate, chaste, and serious; so that the fools and bawds,
mimics and catamites of [his father, King James's] court, grew out
of fashion....  [Under the new king] men of learning and ingenuity
[in music, art, and architecture] were in esteem and received
encouragement from the king, who was a most excellent judge and a
great lover of paintings, carvings, gravings, and other
ingenuities...."  Charles gathered round him an astonishing array
of artists: Rubens, Van Dyke, Mytens, and Inigo Jones are just the
tip of the iceberg.  Rubens called Charles "the greatest art lover
among the princes of the world," and Charles is without doubt the
greatest patron of the arts ever to sit upon the throne of
England.

How lovely it would be if the story ended here.  It would be a
touching love story, a triumphant personal tale about the
courageous overcoming of mammoth obstacles, and an instructive
saga about the establishment of a virtuous court of cultural
luminaries.  But alas, Charles became king in turbulent times.
Powerful enemies -- the Puritans -- were determined to destroy the
faith that Charles had pledged, at his coronation, to defend.  In
the whole history of Christianity there can be very few
perversions of the faith as ugly as XVII Century Puritanism.  The
Puritans of Charles's time hated everything Catholic, and they
were fanatic haters!  The Puritans denied the real presence of
Christ in the mass, they abolished the Book of Common Prayer
(making its use a criminal offense), they pushed altars out of the
way in churches and placed pulpits in the center, they abolished
the seasons of the church year, they confined church to Sunday and
disallowed the celebration of all holy days -- including
Christmas.  They went on to desecrate the ancient cathedral
shrines, to smash glass and sculpture in churches, and to abolish
the ancient government of the church by bishops in the apostolic
succession, and they executed the Archbishop of Canterbury William
Laud when he dared to stand against them.

The same aesthetic impulse that made Charles such a great
connoisseur of the arts made him treasure orderly and reverent
worship in the beauty of holiness, with candles and vestments,
acknowledging the real presence of Christ in the mass.  He was
also a passionate defender of the apostolic succession.

Charles took his title "Defender of the Faith" seriously; he stood
implacably for the ancient Catholic Faith of the English Church.
But he was not -- like the Puritans were -- intolerant: It is a
truly remarkable fact, considering the time, that in the fifteen
years of Charles' personal rule leading up to the Civil War, not a
single person was executed for his religious beliefs.

The usual rap against Charles is that he was a good man, but a
poor king -- a stubborn, rigid, and inflexible king.  But Charles
was caught in the same bind that all those in power find
themselves in: Do you compromise for the sake of peace or do you
do what you believe is right and risk controversy?  When someone
comes out on the losing end in history, that person is often
labeled stubborn and uncompromising.  When someone with the same
characteristics comes out on the winning side in history, that
person is called bold, courageous, and principled.  Charles lost
-- so he is often labeled stubborn and uncompromising.

As late as 1641 -- in the 16th year of his reign -- Charles did
try to compromise with the Puritan leadership.  He tried to buy
peace in the kingdom by signing a Bill of Attainder against his
loyal advisor Strafford, whom the Puritans then executed.  Charles
later repented of this "compromise": he regretted "preferring the
outward peace of my kingdoms ...[to] that inward exactness of
conscience before God."

In his younger days, he wrote Archbishop Laud, "[I would have made
a bad lawyer]; I cannot defend a bad [cause] nor yield in a good
cause."  Now, seeing that further compromise was futile, Charles
resolved never again to betray his conscience, and he drew the
line against the Puritans.

When Charles was eventually captured by the Puritans at the
conclusion of the Great Rebellion, they gave him several
opportunities to compromise: give in to us by abolishing bishops,
ending the apostolic succession, and we will let you keep your
throne and spare your life.  But Charles could not be tempted.

Charles's faith was central to everything.  More than most men
with power, he understood profoundly that all things earthly are
ephemeral -- that this earthly life is a preparation for another,
realer life, that the cause of truth and righteousness does not
always triumph on earth.  He understood the cost of discipleship:
that we may be called to suffer and even to die for the faith.

At his illegal show trial before a kangaroo court, he behaved with
exemplary dignity, bearing insults with equanimity, never
returning evil for evil.  He suffered terribly in prison, but
never stopped praying for his captors.

January 30, 1649, was a cold, gray, bleak day.  Attired in white,
attended only by Bishop Juxon, Charles stepped out of the window
at the Palace of Whitehall in London onto the scaffold, spoke
briefly, knelt to pray, placed his head on the chopping block, and
died as the executioner's ax crashed down upon his neck.

A great crowd of Puritans had gathered to jeer.  But it is said
that, when they witnessed the dignity with which the king died,
the only audible sound was a low groan, and then they melted away
in silence.

Charles's death was as noble as his personal life.  As the poet
Andrew Marvell put it: He nothing common did or mean / Upon that
memorable scene.

After forgiving those who were about to execute him, he said, "I
die a Christian of the Church of England as it was left to me by
my father.  I have a good cause and I have a gracious God.  I go
from a corruptible crown to an incorruptible, where no disturbance
can be, no disturbance in the world.  Remember!"

We gather here today in response to the Martyr King's last word:
Remember!  On the day he was beheaded, Charles appeared to be the
loser; his death appeared to sound the death knoll of the Catholic
faith of the Church of England and the triumph of Puritanism.
But, as we know, martyrs down the ages -- I think of Dietrich
Bonhoeffer in Nazi Germany -- often appear to be the losers.

But appearances deceive.  In the end, Charles prevailed: virtually
everything he asserted about the church in 1649 is today the
official belief and practice of our church.  We have long
forgotten the names of the apparently triumphant Puritans, but we
remember him.  By his death, he prevailed.  In the Great Mystery
of Things, "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church."

When the body of Charles was taken to Windsor for burial, the
Governor of Windsor Castle refused to allow Bishop Juxon to read
the burial service, since the Puritan Parliament had forbidden the
use of the Book of Common Prayer.  "[T]he coffin, covered by a
black velvet cloth, was brought down from Saint George's Hall....
It was as cold as [it has ever been]; the Thames [River] below the
castle ... was frozen over from bank to bank.  The sky, earlier
serene and clear, now darkened as the coffin approached the west
end of the chapel; and then heavy snow began to fall, turning the
black pall white." [Christopher Hibbert]  White, the color of
innocence.

One final footnote: When I was in junior high in the 1950's, one
of the people on my evening paper route was an old lady.  She was
a devout Catholic, and when I collected money from her each week
she would often give me a prayer card and urge me to pray for the
conversion of Russia.  Even at 13, I felt a certain smugness in
thinking she was a bit of a nutcase.  Russia would never be
converted.  When I was a student at Harvard and Cambridge
universities, it was the received dogma of all the experts that
Communism was there to stay in the Soviet Union forever.  But the
experts were wrong.  Russia was converted in the 1990's.  And now
the Russian government is building and restoring churches, and
people are flocking to them.  In the divine economy, this
astonishing change may well have happened because of the prayers
of all those little old ladies who went on praying -- hopelessly
praying, we were assured, absurdly praying, we smugly thought --
for the conversion of Russia.

Some think that what we do here today is absurd.  We know better.
As we meet here today to Remember, let us pray -- in the face of
what appear to be awesome odds, against powerful enemies -- for
the church we love.  And let us -- in the Communion of Saints --
solicit the prayers of the holy martyr we come here to remember:
he whose personal life so touchingly reflected the Gospel, he who
with courageous faith gave up his earthly life, he whose death was
a principal factor in preserving for us the Faith Once Delivered
to the Saints.  Holy Charles, pray for us, pray that we, like you,
may be faithful unto death to that faith and to that church.
Amen.

[Father Jarvis was educated at Saint Mark's School, Harvard
College, Cambridge University (M.A.), and E.T.S. (S.T.B.).
Starting his career in Cleveland, he became headmaster of The
Roxbury Latin School in 1974, serving until his retirement in
2004.  Since 1976 he has been Priest Associate at All Saints,
Ashmont, Boston.  He was awarded honorary degrees from Bowdoin
and Middlebury Colleges (L.H.D. 1998, D.Litt. 2004).  He has
preached, lectured, and been in residence in the U.K. and
Australia, is an internationally recognized leader in the
education and formation of young citizens, and past president of
the Headmasters Association of the U.S. and of the Country Day
School Headmasters Assn.  In retirement he was twice chaplain and
master at Eton College.  He presently teaches at Yale.]