Charles II of England

Charles II was King of Scotland from 1649 until 1651 and King of England, Scotland and Ireland from the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 until his death in 1685. He was the eldest surviving child of Charles I, and after his father's execution in 1649 he was proclaimed king in Scotland but was defeated by Oliver Cromwell at the Battle of Worcester in 1651 and spent the following nine years in exile in France, the Dutch Republic and the Spanish Netherlands. A political crisis after Cromwell's death in 1658 led to the restoration of the monarchy, and Charles returned to London in 1660 to public acclaim. His reign saw the Clarendon Code enacted to shore up the Church of England, the Second and Third Anglo-Dutch Wars, a secret 1670 alliance with Louis XIV of France, and the Exclusion Crisis of 1679 sparked by fears that his Catholic brother James would succeed him; Charles sided with the Tories against the Whigs and ruled without Parliament from 1681 until his death. His marriage to Catherine of Braganza produced no surviving children, and he was succeeded by his brother James.