This is the definitive history of the English Civil War, set in its full historical context from the accession of Charles I to the Restoration of Charles II. These were the most turbulent years of British history and their reverberations have been felt down the centuries. Throughout the middle
decades of the seventeenth century England, Scotland, and Ireland were convulsed by political upheaval and wracked by rebellion and civil war. The Stuart monarchy was in abeyance for twenty years in all three kingdoms, and Charles I famously met his death on the scaffold.
Austin Woolrych
breathes life back into the story of these years, the sweep of his prose buttressed by the authority of a lifetime's scholarship. He captures the drama and the passion, the momentum of events and the force of contingency. He brilliantly interweaves the history of the three kingdoms and their
peoples, gripping the reader with the fast-paced yet always balanced story.
Prologue
I: Background and Beginnings 1625-1640
1. King Charles's Inheritance, i: Three Kingdoms, Three Peoples
2. King Charles's Inheritance, ii: The Matter of Religion
3. The New Reign
4. Storm over Scotland
5. The Bishops' Wars
II: War in Three Kingdoms
1640-1646
6. Climacteric
7. Three Kingdoms in Crisis
8. The Blast of War
9. The Conflict Widens
10. Towards a Resolution
III: Towards a Kingless Britain 1646-1649
11. Between Two Wars
12. Climacteric II: 'Not a Mere Mercenary Army'
13. The Second Civil
War
14. Quest for a Settlement
IV: The Commonwealth 1649-1653
15. The Commonwealth at War
16. The Commonwealth in Crisis
17. 'A Story of My Own Weakness and Folly'?
V: Cromwell's Protectorate 1653-1658
18. A New Order in Three Nations
19. The First Phase
of Cromwellian Rule
20. 'A Single Person and a Parliament'
21. Royalists in Arms, Swordsmen in the Saddle
22. King or Constable?
23. The Protectorate in Scotland, Ireland, and Europe
24. Unfinished Business
VI: The Collapse of the Good Old Cause 1658-1660
25. The
Overthrow of the Protectorate
26. The Commonwealth Restored
27. The Monarchy Restored
Epilogue
Further Reading
Index
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Austin Woolrych is an Emeritus Professor of History, University of Lancaster.