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have been what he saw on his coronation visit to Scotland in 1633 that convinced him of the need to introduce changes to the Scottish Prayer Book. The practice of extempore prayer was particularly offensive to him: he preferred by far the solemnities and order of a set service. In any case, it was in 1634 that his Scottish bishops were invited to consider what changes were necessary to the English book in order to make it acceptable in Scotland. New ecclesiastical canons in January 1636 touched on these Scottish sensitivities about the creeping influence of bishops and of the Church of England. They confirmed the Five Articles of Perth but did not mention the General Assembly, presbyteries or kirk sessions by name. More troubling, or more obviously troubling, they placed restrictions on preaching which were enforced by episcopal licence.49

A willingness to press these sensitive reforms was not simply the product of personal conviction, however. Charles was monarch and head of the church: an important part of his sacred trust as he understood it was care for the salvation of his subjects. There were more practical concerns too. Charles had to govern three kingdoms (since 1541 monarchs of England had also been monarchs in Ireland) and live with three national churches. It was widely acknowledged in Reformation Europe that a people divided from their monarch on matters of religion could not be depended upon as loyal subjects. Monarchs in multiple monarchies faced the additional problem that if religion in their various realms was not uniform then it was an invitation to dissenters in one kingdom to make trouble on the basis of more favourable conditions offered by the same monarch to his or her subjects elsewhere. Like his father, Charles seems to have wanted to make the three churches more like one another, and to achieve that by applying pressure towards a form of worship with which he was more comfortable, but his preferences led him to make changes in all three kingdoms. Charles and Laud were probably pursuing greater conformity rather than uniformity, but it is also clear from their measures in relation to the Channel Islands and Massachusetts and stranger churches (congregations allowed in England to cater to the needs of foreign Protestants) that a common vision was at work: harmonization in fact meant altering the practice of all the churches under his crowns.50

Charles did less than he might have done to allay the fears provoked by these policies. His political style made him particularly unlikely to cope well with dissent, especially when expressed immoderately, and this contributed to his difficulties. He was far less pragmatic than his father in political negotiation and his preference for religious order seems to have been related to a well-developed sense of the dignity of monarchy. The portraits painted by Van Dyke during the mid-1630s were and are the most recognizable images of Charles. The widely disseminated state portrait of 1636, while constrained by convention, conveys the same political image as the more freely composed portraits of the same period.51 It was surely an image he was eager to project. A short man, Charles was habitually portrayed from below in order to enhance his stature, but this also increases the impression of hauteur. He engages the viewer directly but coldly, suggesting perhaps a monarch willing to listen but also one who felt no obligation to agree or to act or persuade. In real life he certainly favoured a political style in which his concern for his subjects was exercised at some distance, and with regal dignity. In the face of turbulent politics in England in the late 1620s Charles had turned away from his people, refusing to resort to print to woo public opinion as his opponents were doing. During the 1630s his court, although open to a range of opinion and a variety of talents, was austere in its regality and concern for order. This was a monarch who strove for the good of his people, not their approval; and those who seemed too eager to court public opinion were disparaged