House Plot to murder Charles and James in 1683, some Whig leaders were executed or forced into exile. Charles dissolved the English Parliament in 1681 and ruled alone until his death in 1685. Traditionally considered one of the most popular English kings, Charles is known as the Merry Monarch, a reference to the liveliness and hedonism of his court. He acknowledged at least 12 illegitimate children by various mistresses, but left no legitimate children and was succeeded by his brother, James. Early life, civil war and exile Charles II was born at St James's Palace on 29 May 1630, eldest surviving son of Charles I, king of England, Scotland and Ireland, and his wife Henrietta Maria, sister of Louis XIII of France. Charles was their second child, the first being a son born about a year before who died within a day. He was baptised on 27 June in the Chapel Royal by William Laud, a future Archbishop of Canterbury, and during his infancy was supervised by the Protestant Countess of Dorset. His godparents included his maternal uncle Louis XIII and maternal grandmother, Marie de' Medici, the Dowager Queen of France, both of whom were Catholics. At birth, Charles automatically became Duke of Cornwall and Duke of Rothesay, along with several other associated titles. At or around his eighth birthday, he was designated Prince of Wales, though he was never formally invested. In August 1642, the long-running dispute between his father and Parliament culminated in the outbreak of the First English Civil War. In October, Charles and his younger brother James were present at the Battle of Edgehill and spent the next two years based in the Royalist capital of Oxford. In January 1645, he was given his own Council and made titular head of Royalist forces in the West Country. By spring 1646, most of the region had been occupied by Parliamentarian forces and Charles went into exile to avoid capture. From Falmouth, he went first to the Isles of Scilly, then to Jersey, and finally to France, where his mother was already living under the protection of his first cousin, the eight-year-old Louis XIV. Charles I surrendered into captivity in May 1646. During the Second English Civil War in 1648, Charles moved to The Hague, where his sister Mary and his brother-in-law William II, Prince of Orange, seemed more likely to provide substantial aid to the Royalist cause