Charles I (1600–1649)

A contemporary engraving of the trial of Charles I at Westminster Hall in January 1649. He was accused of having ‘conceived a wicked design .. to overthrow the rights and liberties of the people’. The trial began on 20 January and ended eight days later when the king was sentenced to death.

English doctor and anatomist William Harvey, demonstrating his theory of the circulation of the blood to the British king Charles I and other physicians. His discovery marked a new epoch in medical science, recognizing that the heart pumps blood in a continuous circulation. Appointed physician to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London, Harvey attended James I during his last illness and later became physician to his son Charles.

King of Great Britain and Ireland from 1625, son of James I of England (James VI of Scotland). He accepted the petition of right in 1628 but then dissolved Parliament and ruled without a parliament from 1629 to 1640, a period known as the Eleven Years' Tyranny. His advisers were Strafford and Laud, who persecuted the Puritans and provoked the Scots to revolt. The Short Parliament, summoned in 1640, refused funds, and the Long Parliament later that year rebelled. Charles declared war on Parliament in 1642 but surrendered in 1646 and was beheaded in 1649. He was the father of Charles II.

Charles I

King of France, better known as the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne.