Book cover after 1651 British This volume is a compendium of the writings of King Charles I pertaining to the last years of his reign. It is divided into two parts—"matters Civil" and "matters Sacred"—and includes additional material gathered from his supporters about events surrounding his death. It constitutes an expanded edition of an earlier compilation, the Eikon Basilike [Image of the King]: The Poutraicture of His Sacred Maiestie in His Solitudes and Sufferings, a 1649 printing of which is bound into the second part of the volume. The Eikon Basilike purported to be a collection of the w
Book cover after 1651 British This volume is a compendium of the writings of King Charles I pertaining to the last years of his reign. It is divided into two parts—"matters Civil" and "matters Sacred"—and includes additional material gathered from his supporters about events surrounding his death. It constitutes an expanded edition of an earlier compilation, the Eikon Basilike [Image of the King]: The Poutraicture of His Sacred Maiestie in His Solitudes and Sufferings, a 1649 printing of which is bound into the second part of the volume. The Eikon Basilike purported to be a collection of the writings of Charles I that presented the major events of his life and reign from his own point of view in language that was simple, direct, and, for a monarch, unprecedentedly personal. This narrative was interspersed with the king’s favorite prayers and psalms in a style that directly echoed the Penitential Psalms of King David and thereby offered both a justification of his rule and a kind of spiritual Eikon Basilike was first published by Richard Royston, who was the leading Royalist publisher in London throughout the Civil War period and who was imprisoned in 1645 for issuing "scandalous books and papers" against the Parliament and thereafter in constant danger of further harassment at the hands of the Council of State. By his own account, Royston received orders directly from the king in October 1648 to prepare his printing press; on December 23 he was given the manuscript through an Edward Simmons, as from the king, and had it printed. Charles’s authorship has been contested from its first appearance to the present day, although it is now widely agreed (as the Royalist apologists had insisted) that the core of the book was Charles’s but that the materials were shaped into their final form by his chaplain, the Presbyterian divine John Gauden, later bishop of the beginning, the Eikon Basilike was a hugely popular best-seller and became
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