Equestrian statue of Charles l in London UK

CountryUK
Town:London
Year of creation:1633
Rider(s):Charles l

King of England, Scotland and Ireland (1600–1649). Religious conflicts permeated his reign. Many of Charles’ subjects felt he brought the Church of England too close to the Catholic Church. His last years were marked by the English Civil War, in which he fought the forces of the English and Scottish parliaments, which challenged the king’s attempts to overrule and negate parliamentary authority. He was defeated in two civil wars and subsequently captured, tried, convicted and executed for high treason in 1649.
Sculptor(s):Sueur, Hubert le

(c.1580 – 1658) was a French sculptor with the contemporaneous reputation of having trained in Giambologna’s Florentine workshop, who assisted Giambologna’s foreman, Pietro Tacca, in Paris, finishing and erecting the equestrian statue of Henri IV on the Pont Neuf, a project that gave him technical skills that were put to use in his equestrian Charles I. He moved to England and spent the most productive decades of his working career there, providing monuments, portraits and replicas of classical antiquities for the court of Charles I.

Description:

The statue of Charles, based upon the one of Henri IV in Paris, was first placed in the churchyard of St Paul’s Church in Covent Garden, London. On the outbreak of the civil war in 1642, the statue was hidden in a crypt. Thirteen years later, it was seized by Cromwell’s men and sold for the rate of old brass to a clever man: John Rivett, a metalworker. He pretended to have melted it down and then sold countless mementos – supposedly made from the statue’s bronze – to Royalists. Puritans also gloried in its destruction and bought pieces to celebrate the king’s downfall. After the Restoration, the statue reappeared and after some ownership disputes, became the property of Charles II in 1675. He erected the statue that year on a pedestal carved after a design by Christopher Wren.

Charles I now looks down upon the place of his execution. Charles’ sword has been a source of trouble. It was stolen in 1844, replaced and broken in 1867 and stolen again. It was finally replaced when the statue returned from its wartime evacuation at Mentmore.

The statue of Charles I would serve as an artistic reference point for equestrian statues in the UK for more than a century. This is a mild way of putting it, because the horses in the statues of Charles II, George I, William III and Frederick, Prince of Wales, are copies (with only slight variations) of the horse in the Charles I statue.