King Charles 1st - The original Charles Ist bust once stood in a niche on the Market Cross until its true value was discovered and then moved to the Council House, & later to a museum.
The bust on the Market Cross is a replacement bronze replica. The larger than life bust shows the King wearing a gold crown & chain of office.
The Market Cross has stood in the heart of Chichester since 1501.
The bust of Charles 1st was added after 1660 by his son King Charles II.
"One of the niches on the Market Cross holds a bronze bust of King Charles I, who was executed in 1649 during the Civil War. Chichester’s Member of Parliament at that time, William Cawley, was a signatory on the king’s death warrant, and had to flee the country after the dead king’s son was restored to the throne in 1660 as King Charles II, and lived abroad for the rest of his life. Chichester’s city fathers made sure that the new king could be sure of the city’s loyalty in future by having this bronze bust of Charles I put on display on the Market Cross!" Text source: (
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Details of the original bust from the V&A Museum web site:
Object Type
"The portrait bust carved in marble had been a feature of classical art and was revived during the Renaissance. Similar busts were frequently reproduced in bronze, with minor changes, as the officially approved sculptural image of the King. Portrait busts were unusual in early 17th-century England and were commissioned mainly by those in court circles.
People
Hubert Le Sueur was the son of a master armourer in Paris, where he became established as a court artist. He was appointed as one of the sculptors to Louis XIII in January 1614. In 1625 he was sent to England to work at the court of Charles I, shortly after the King's marriage to Louis' sister, Henrietta Maria. The use of marble is unique for Le Sueur's portrait busts, as he specialised primarily in bronze. His impressive equestrian bronze portrait of Charles I now in Trafalgar Square is signed and dated 1633.
Time
The bust is dated 1631, the first year that Le Sueur was recorded in the King's employ, when he also spent four months in Rome taking casts of ancient sculpture. The sculpture is the earliest datable bust of the monarch by the artist and marks an increasing interest in sculptural portraits in England during the 1630s and 40s." Text Source" (
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"Charles I (19 November 1600 – 30 January 1649) was monarch of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649.
Charles was the second son of King James VI of Scotland, but after his father inherited the English throne in 1603, he moved to England, where he spent much of the rest of his life. He became heir apparent to the English, Irish, and Scottish thrones on the death of his elder brother, Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, in 1612. An unsuccessful and unpopular attempt to marry him to the Spanish Habsburg princess Maria Anna culminated in an eight-month visit to Spain in 1623 that demonstrated the futility of the marriage negotiations. Two years later, he married the Bourbon princess Henrietta Maria of France instead.
After his succession, Charles quarrelled with the Parliament of England, which sought to curb his royal prerogative. Charles believed in the divine right of kings and thought he could govern according to his own conscience. Many of his subjects opposed his policies, in particular the levying of taxes without parliamentary consent, and perceived his actions as those of a tyrannical absolute monarch. His religious policies, coupled with his marriage to a Roman Catholic, generated the antipathy and mistrust of reformed groups such as the English Puritans and Scottish Covenanters, who thought his views too Catholic. He supported high church ecclesiastics, such as Richard Montagu and William Laud, and failed to aid Protestant forces successfully during the Thirty Years' War. His attempts to force the Church of Scotland to adopt high Anglican practices led to the Bishops' Wars, strengthened the position of the English and Scottish parliaments and helped precipitate his own downfall.
From 1642, Charles fought the armies of the English and Scottish parliaments in the English Civil War. After his defeat in 1645, he surrendered to a Scottish force that eventually handed him over to the English Parliament. Charles refused to accept his captors' demands for a constitutional monarchy, and temporarily escaped captivity in November 1647. Re-imprisoned on the Isle of Wight, Charles forged an alliance with Scotland, but by the end of 1648 Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army had consolidated its control over England. Charles was tried, convicted, and executed for high treason in January 1649. The monarchy was abolished and a republic called the Commonwealth of England was declared. The monarchy was restored to Charles's son, Charles II, in 1660." (
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