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
