Puritans throughout the country looked to the large Puritan majority in the House of Commons to redress their grievances. The parliamentary struggle became then not only a defense of abstract ideals of democracy but also a bitter battle in defense of class interests. Parliamentary traditions were weapons against an oppressive monarch; religious scruples gave divine sanction to an attack on royalist bishops; consciousness of being God's elect gave confidence in assailing the aristocracy of land and birth. For the present, the class interests of the Puritans were to be defended best by the constitutional limitation of royal power, and in their struggle with James's son and successor, Charles I (1625-1649), they represent by chance the forces of democracy. [Sidenote: Charles I, 1625-1649] [Sidenote: A True Stuart in Devotion to Absolutism] For a time it appeared as if the second Stuart king would be very popular. Unlike his father, Charles seemed thoroughly English; and his athletic frame, his dignified manners, and his purity of life contrasted most favorably with James's deformities in character and physique. Two years before his father's death Charles had been jilted by his Spanish fiancée and had returned to England amid wild rejoicing to aid Parliament in demanding war with Spain. He had again rejoiced the bulk of the English nation by solemnly assuring Parliament on the occasion of his marriage contract with Henrietta Maria, sister of Louis XIII of France, that he would grant no concessions to Roman Catholics in England. As a matter of fact, Charles simultaneously but secretly assured the French government not only that he would allow the queen the free exercise of her religion but that he would make general concessions to Roman Catholics in England. This duplicity on the part of the young king, which augured ill for the harmony of future relations between himself and Parliament, throws a flood of light upon his character and policies. Though Charles was sincerely religious and well-intentioned, he was as devoted to the theory of divine-right monarchy as his father had been; and as to the means which he might employ in order to establish absolutism upon a firm foundation he honestly believed himself responsible only to God and to his own conscience, certainly not to Parliament. This fact, together with a certain inherent aptitude for shirking the settlement of difficulties, explains in large part the faults which historians have usually ascribed to him--his meanness and ingratitude toward his most devoted followers, his chronic obstinacy which only feigned compliance, and his incurable untruthfulness.