He was the oldest surviving son of Charles I . After his father was defeated in the English Civil War and executed in 1649, Charles was exiled to Holland and France. He spent the next eleven years plotting to overthrow the republic established in England. In 1650 he decided to go to Scotland, where the leading party, the Covenanters, had not approved of his father's execution. The Covenanters agreed to recognize him as king of the Scots: in return he promised to uphold the Solemn League and Covenant. This virtually committed him to imposing Presbyterianism on England and Ireland, although he had no real intention of doing so. However, the Covenanters were easily defeated in battle by Oliver Cromwell . Charles then led a Scottish army into England, where he was defeated again at Worcester in 1651. He escaped to France and later, when the French allied themselves with the English republic, planned to invade England with Spanish troops. Nothing came of this, but after the death of Cromwell in 1658, many English people favored restoring Charles to the throne. Accordingly, Charles was crowned in 1660.

The new Parliament was overwhelmingly royalist. It restored Anglicanism as the established religion, imposing stiff penalties on Nonconformists by the so-called Clarendon Code (1661-65), and pressed Charles to make war on the Dutch. He did so in 1665 but was forced to agree to a humiliating peace two years later.

Charles then allied himself with France against the Dutch, but in the ensuing war (1672-74) the Dutch forced him to make a separate peace. By the Treaty of Dover (1670), Louis XIV of France had secretly promised to pay subsidies to Charles, who in turn promised to convert England to Roman Catholicism, but these payments proved insufficient to sustain another war.

Charles's religious tolerance and pro-French sympathies set him at odds with Parliament, and also with many of the people of England and Scotland, particularly in the West of England. His libertine ways fuelled this split, and while Charles was a shrewd king, he was also lazy. Charles was known as the Merry Monarch, partly because of his numerous mistresses, who included Nell Gwynne, Louise de Keroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth, and Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland. He also openly enjoyed horse racing, gambling, and jovial company, and was well known for his pocketing of bribes and blatant lying to get over difficulties with Parliament.

Eventually in 1681, Charles decided that he had had enough of Parliament, and dissolved it. He then ruled without it, as an absolute monarch, until his death in 1685. He converted to Catholicism shortly before his death.