By HILARY GAVIN
STROLLING along Whitehall from Trafalgar Square to the Houses of Parliament in London and – I, for one – am always conscious of the centuries’ old stand-off between Britain’s Royalists and Westminster’s die-hard Parliamentarians.
At one end of our capital’s thoroughfare – and seat of the UK Civil Service – stands its oldest bronze sculpture beneath Nelson’s Column depicting King Charles I sat riding a horse majestically, it would seem, toward the City of Westminster.
At the other end of Whitehall, in the sunken garden at the Houses of Parliament, is the Victorian memorial to Interregnum dictator Oliver Cromwell; his head slightly bowed facing St Margaret’s Church opposite and Westminster Abbey.
Of course, given Cromwell’s controversial historical legacy, especially in Catholic Ireland, his statue, which was designed by sculptor Hamo Thornycroft and was unveiled in 1899, is heavily protected by iron railings at Westminster.
At the close of the Nineteenth Century, the-then Whig Prime Minister Lord Rosebery championed the idea of of a memorial to the Puritan leader in 1885, and subsequently funded its construction anonymously amidst Tory protests.
Two hundred and fifty years earlier, King Charles I had already dissolved England’s parliament when the-then Lord High Treasurer Richard Weston commissioned the French sculptor Hubert Le Sueur to cast the bronze statue of his sovereign in 1630.
The statue, which stood in Lord Weston’s country garden in Roehampton, south west of London, was bought and hidden away following the Parliamentary victory in the English Civil Wars and was re-erected post-Restoration in 1675.
By then the cult of St Charles the Martyr had taken root among some High Anglicans, Royalists and devotees of the Eikon Basilike, a spiritual autobiography attributed to the late king during his imprisonment and suffering in the 1640s.
I suppose – given the Victorian hoo-ha over Oliver Cromwell and King Charles I – it wasn’t surprising to discover that the Society of King Charles the Martyr was established in 1894.
Of course, most tourists don’t give the bust of King Charles I, which is mounted on the wall of St Margaret’s Church at Westminster, a second thought on their visits to London.
And few of them notice a second bust of the Stuart king, sitting above the entrance to the Banqueting Hall at Whitehall, where Charles I was beheaded on scaffolding outside on 3oth January 1649.
The Society of King Charles the Martyr donated both busts to St Margaret’s and the Banqueting Hall in the 1950s – and I can’t help feeling that Cromwell’s statue was being encircled, besieged and spied upon during this Cold War era.
Of course, we all remember Oliver Cromwell’s infamous “warts and all” quote, either instructing artist Peter Lely, or miniaturist Samuel Cooper, to capture his real likeness whilst he sat for portraits during his Protectorate.
And few modern historians would deny that Cromwell was a flawed character as academics continue to debate the Siege (Massacre) of Drogheda in 1649, which BBC documentary-maker Simon Schama once branded a war crime.
But I, for one, question whether Cromwell’s reputation as kill-joy Puritan iconoclast rings true especially as he happily sat for portraitures.
As a devout Puritan, Oliver Cromwell valued simplicity in both the written word and art, prioritising inner spirituality over High Anglican ritualism.
By contrast, King Charles I was a bit of a fop and an art lover who amassed paintings by past masters Titian, Mantegna, Holbein and Dürer – and commissioned Van Dyck and Rubens to paint him in the 1600s.
If you’ve ever watched Ken Hughes’ 1970 bio-pic entitled Cromwell, starring the late, great Irish actor Richard Harris, you get some idea of the contempt Oliver, as a Puritan, held for King Charles I and his Roman Catholic wife Henrietta Maria‘s “extravagances“.
In the 1630s, Henrietta Maria was widely demonised as “the Popish brat of France” for her love of seemingly decadent courtly entertainment or masques.
Admittedly, I doubt that Puritans John Pym (Geoffrey Keen) or Cromwell ever unexpectedly met Henrietta Maria (Dorothy Tutin) on a visit to speak to King Charles I (Alec Guinness) at court with their fellow Parliamentarians, as depicted in the YouTube clip of the 1970 movie above, but it does – to my mind – convey the mistrust Puritans and High Anglicans felt towards each other at the time.
Although Cromwell eschewed glorifying himself in works of art, King Charles I had no such qualms as the painting of Charles I on Horseback (1635-36) by Sir Anthony Van Dyck illustrates, depicting him as a symbol of authority and strength.
King Charles I, like his father James I of England and VI of Scotland, believed in the political doctrine of the Divine Rights of Kings, and – although we cannot say for certain whether he or one of his prominent Anglican bishops wrote the Eikon Basilike, the book, published ten days after his execution, was, without doubt, a masterful example of mid-seventeenth century Royal propaganda.
At this point, I should say that I decided to write about King Charles I and his Royal patronage of the arts in this blog after buying a copy of my local Chichester Observer at my corner shop with the sole intention of reading the Letters to the Editor page which is – in all honesty – the only section I turn to in the paper.
To my dismay, the Letters page was missing in last Thursday’s edition of my local paper (June 5th, 2025), as it appeared to have been displaced by a news spread on pages 26 and 27 featuring a rather large photograph of the current Duke of Richmond.
The feature was written by the Observer Series’s Editor-in-Chief Gary Shipton, who – if you don’t know – serves as a Deputy Lieutenant for the Lord-Lieutenant of West Sussex, Lady Emma Barnard.
In view of the above, I wasn’t surprised by Mr Shipton’s “puff piece” (as fellow journos would term his article) promoting the launch of “a stunning new venue – the Goodwood Art Foundation” last month.
Apparently, journalists from across the globe attended the unveiling of the arts venue, although Chichester Observer readers only got to see the photo of the Duke virtually obliterating “the gallery” across two pages.
Over the past three hundred years, Mr Shipton reliably informed us, the Duke of Richmonds “have collected masterpieces by Canaletto, Reynolds, Romney, Stubbs and Van Dyck” – so it did make me wonder whether King Charles I’s son Charles II gifted some of his late father’s art to his French mistress, the Duchess of Portsmouth, who set up the Lennox Dynasty all those years ago?
Still, the good burghers of Chichester can rest assured that the “major Goodwood arts venue will be so good for” the city “and the surrounding area” because the Observer headline told us the Duke was going to reveal why.
Well, I must have missed the reasons why because there scant evidence to back up the Duke’s claims in Mr Shipton’s hyperbole.
Saying that, we – as his readers – did learn this year’s headline exhibition at the stunning Goodwood venue will feature Dame Rachel Whiteread (DBE), yes, that’s right – the Turner Prize award-winning artist who created the inside-out concrete house on Grove Road, Bethnal Green in 1994.
Personally, I was rather intrigued by Dame Rachel’s concept thirty years ago and I believe it was a hit with some of the locals in Bow and Poplar who wanted it to remain there permanently, but Eric Flounders, the chair of the council, branded it “a monstrosity” and was adamant that it had to go.
Thankfully, Goodwood’s new venue is hidden away somewhere on the aristocratic family’s vast estate so I doubt they’ll be losing any sleep over what our local councillors in Chichester think of the building.
Of course, I jest, but I was glad to read elsewhere that Dame Rachel (DBE) gave a chunk of her award money to the homeless charity Shelter in the Naughties so that’s no bad thing.
By HILARY GAVIN
Business ‘n’ Commas
Hunston
CHICHESTER
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