1 James VI of Scotland and I of England, father of Charles I, in his English coronation robes
2 Henry Stuart, Prince of Wales, elder brother of Charles I
3 Elizabeth Stuart, Electress Palatine and ‘Winter Queen’ of Bohemia, elder sister of Charles I
4 Philip IV of Spain in 1623, the year Charles visited Madrid
5 Cardinal Richelieu, Chief Minister of Louis XIII of France
6 George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, the man King James called his ‘wife’
7 Title page of a plague pamphlet from 1625. On the right is a group of people fleeing from the plague. In response to their words, ‘We fly,’ Death answers, ‘I follow,’ as it did when court and MPs moved to Oxford
8 The mother-in-law has landed: Marie de’ Medici, ‘mother of three kings’ and one-time regent of France, as depicted in one of a series of twenty-four paintings by Rubens celebrating her life and achievements
9 Charles I, c. 1628
10 Charles’s queen, Henrietta Maria, in masque dress
11 Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick: privateer, colonialist and rebel
12 Henry Rich, Earl of Holland: courtier, knight and turncoat
13 Henrietta Maria
14 Lucy Hay (nee Percy), Countess of Carlisle, descendant of Mary Boleyn, was ‘the most delightful poison ever nature produced’
15 John Pym, the Puritan leader later known as ‘King Pym’
16 The victorious Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu at La Rochelle
17 Anthony Van Dyck’s triple portrait of Charles I was commissioned to enable the sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini to create a bust of the king as a papal gift for Henrietta Maria
18 Marie de Rohan, Duchesse de Chevreuse, as Diana. The goddess was seen as gender-fluid and used as an icon of women with aspirations to power. The French kings Francois I and Henri II both chose to be depicted as Diana as, at times, would Henrietta Maria
19 Charles I and Henrietta Maria dining at court
20 The glass sphere in Titian’s Allegory of Marriage, which formed part of Charles’s great art collection, represented the fragility of human happiness
21 In 1637 Charles paid Van Dyck £100 for this picture of his five eldest children, Mary, James, Charles, Elizabeth and Anne. In 1625 one of the suits Buckingham wore in Paris was said to be worth ‘fourscore thousand pounds’
22 Charles I in armour on the eve of the first ‘Bishops’ War’. In the Van Dyck original, commissioned by the king, Charles’s hand rests on a helmet. In this contemporary copy it rests on a sphere, usually a symbol of power, but here made of glass like that in Titian’s Allegory of Marriage
23 Marriage portrait of Mary, the Princess Royal, aged nine, and William of Orange, aged fourteen
24 The atrocities of the Irish rebellion as reported in England
25 Stands were built for the thousands who witnessed the execution of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford
26 The organ case at St Nicholas Church, Stanford on Avon, Leicestershire, is part of an instrument made for Magdalen College Oxford in 1637, and is a rare survivor of the destruction of organs during the civil wars and under the Commonwealth
27 A witch mourns the shooting of the poodle, Boy, at Marston Moor
28 Boy’s master, Prince Rupert of the Rhine
29 The fingernail of Thomas Holland, who was hanged and quartered in 1642 for the capital crime of being a Catholic priest in England. His body parts were displayed on London’s gates
30 Charles’s saddle from the Battle of Naseby
31 The battlefield at Naseby
32 The captive royal children, Elizabeth, James and Henry
33 Anne of Austria, queen consort of France, with her son, the future Louis XIV
34 Charles’s daughter Mary, Princess of Orange
35 Oliver Cromwell
36 ‘Black’ Tom Fairfax
37 Charles I at the time of his trial
38 A series of mica overlays chart the life and death of Charles I on a portrait miniature: Charles’s coronation (note red robes not white)
39 Charles at war
40 Charles’s executioner is masked here with fishnet, and in similar contemporary images
41 On Charles’s death monarchy is abolished and in the background of this image the crown is broken
42 A pearl earring said to have been worn by Charles I at his execution
43 Henrietta Maria as a widow
44 St George’s Chapel, Windsor, where Charles I is buried
45 Frontispiece of the Eikon (pronounced ‘icon’) Basilike or ‘Royal Portrait’ depicts Charles giving up his earthly crown for that of a martyr