English Civil War

The English Civil War (1642–1651) was

a series of armed conflicts and political
machinations between Parliamentarians
("Roundheads") and Royalists
("Cavaliers") over, principally, the manner
of England's governance. The first
(1642–1646) and second (1648–1649)
wars pitted the supporters of King
Charles I against the supporters of the
Long Parliament, while the third (1649–
1651) saw fighting between supporters
of King Charles II and supporters of the
Rump Parliament. The war ended with
the Parliamentarian victory at the Battle
of Worcester on 3 September 1651.
 English Civil War

Part of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms

The victory of the Parliamentarian New Model

Army over the Royalist Army at the Battle of
Naseby on 14 June 1645 marked the decisive
turning point in the English Civil War.

Date 22 August 1642 – 3 September

1651

Location Kingdoms of England, Ireland and

Scotland

Result Parliamentarian victory

Execution of King Charles I

Exile of Charles II
 Establishment of the republican
Commonwealth under Oliver
Cromwell

Belligerents

Royalists Parliamentarians

Commanders and leaders

King Charles I   Earl of Essex

Prince Rupert of the Thomas Fairfax
Rhine Oliver Cromwell
Charles II

Casualties and losses

50,000[1] 34,000[1]

127,000 noncombat deaths (including some

40,000 civilians)[a]

The overall outcome of the war was

threefold: the trial and execution of
Charles I (1649); the exile of his son,
Charles II (1651); and the replacement of
English monarchy with, at first, the
Commonwealth of England (1649–1653)
and then the Protectorate under the
personal rule of Oliver Cromwell (1653–
1658) and subsequently his son Richard
(1658–1659). In England, the monopoly
of the Church of England on Christian
worship was ended, while in Ireland the
victors consolidated the established
Protestant Ascendancy. Constitutionally,
the wars established the precedent that
an English monarch cannot govern
without Parliament's consent, although
the idea of Parliament as the ruling
power of England was only legally
established as part of the Glorious
Revolution in 1688.[2]

Terminology
The term "English Civil War" appears
most often in the singular form, although
historians often divide the conflict into
two or three separate wars. These wars
were not restricted to England as Wales
was a part of the Kingdom of England
and was affected accordingly, and the
conflicts also involved wars with, and
civil wars within, both Scotland and
Ireland. The war in all these countries is
known as the Wars of the Three
Kingdoms. In the early 19th century, Sir
Walter Scott referred to it as "the Great
Civil War."[3]

Unlike other civil wars in England, which

focused on who should rule, this war was
more concerned with the manner in
which the kingdoms of England,
Scotland, and Ireland were governed. The
1911 Encyclopædia Britannica called the
series of conflicts the "Great Rebellion",[4]
while some historians – especially
Marxists such as Christopher Hill (1912–
2003) – have long favoured the term
"English Revolution".[5]

Geography
The two sides had their geographical
strongholds, such that minority elements
were silenced or fled. The strongholds of
the royalty included the countryside, the
shires, and the less economically
developed areas of northern and western
England. On the other hand, all the
cathedral cities (except York, Chester,
Worcester and Hereford and the royalist
stronghold of Oxford) sided with
Parliament. All the industrial centers, the
ports, and the economically advanced
regions of southern and eastern England
typically were parliamentary strongholds.
Lacey Baldwin Smith says, "the words
populous, rich, and rebellious seemed to
go hand in hand".[6][7]
Strategy and tactics
Many of the officers and veteran soldiers
of the English Civil War studied and
implemented war strategies that had
been learned and perfected in other wars
across Europe, namely by the Spanish
and the Dutch during the Dutch war for
independence which began in 1568.[8]

The main battle tactic came to be known

as pike and shot infantry, in which the
two sides would line up, facing each
other, with infantry brigades of
musketeers in the centre, carrying
matchlock muskets; these muskets were
inaccurate, but could be lethal at a range
of up to 300 yards. The brigades would
arrange themselves in lines of
musketeers, three deep, where the first
row would kneel, the second would
crouch, and the third would stand,
allowing all three to fire a volley
simultaneously.[9] At times there would
be two groups of three lines allowing one
group to reload while the other group
arranged themselves and fired.[10] Mixed
in among the musketeers were pikemen
carrying pikes that were between 12 feet
(4 m) and 18 feet (5 m) long, whose
primary purpose was to protect the
musketeers from cavalry charges.
Positioned on each side of the infantry
were the cavalry, with a right-wing led by
the lieutenant-general, and a left-wing by
the commissary general; the main goal of
the cavalry was to rout the opponent's
cavalry and then turn and overpower their
infantry.[9][11]

The Royalist cavaliers' skill and speed on

horseback led to many early victories.
Prince Rupert, the leader of the king's
cavalry, learned a tactic while fighting in
the Dutch army where the cavalry would
charge at full speed into the opponent's
infantry firing their pistols just before
impact.[9][12]

However, with Oliver Cromwell and the

introduction of the more disciplined New
Model Army, a group of disciplined
pikemen would stand their ground in the
face of charging cavalry and could have a
devastating effect. While the
Parliamentarian cavalry were slower than
the cavaliers, they were also better
disciplined.[9] The Royalists had a
tendency to chase down individual
targets after the initial charge leaving
their forces scattered and tired.
Cromwell's cavalry, on the other hand,
trained to operate as a single unit, which
led to many decisive victories.[13]

Background
The King's rule
The English Civil War broke out less than
forty years after the death of Queen
Elizabeth I in 1603. Elizabeth's death had
resulted in the succession of her first
cousin twice-removed, King James VI of
Scotland, to the English throne as James
I of England, creating the first personal
union of the Scottish and English
kingdoms.[b] As King of Scots, James
had become accustomed to Scotland's
weak parliamentary tradition since
assuming control of the Scottish
government in 1583, so that upon
assuming power south of the border, the
new King of England was genuinely
affronted by the constraints the English
Parliament attempted to place on him in
exchange for money. In spite of this,
James' personal extravagance meant he
was perennially short of money and had
to resort to extra-Parliamentary sources
of income.

This extravagance was tempered by

James' peaceful disposition, so that by
the succession of his son Charles I to the
English and Scottish thrones in 1625 the
two kingdoms had both experienced
relative peace, both internally and in their
relations with each other, for as long as
anyone could remember. Charles hoped
to unite the kingdoms of England,
Scotland and Ireland into a new single
kingdom, fulfilling the dream of his
father.[14] Many English Parliamentarians
had suspicions regarding such a move
because they feared that setting up a
new kingdom might destroy the old
English traditions which had bound the
English monarchy. As Charles shared his
father's position on the power of the
crown (James had described kings as
"little gods on Earth", chosen by God to
rule in accordance with the doctrine of
the "Divine Right of Kings"), the
suspicions of the Parliamentarians had
some justification.[15]
Charles I, painted by Van Dyck

Parliament in the English

constitutional framework

At the time, the Parliament of England

did not have a large permanent role in the
English system of government. Instead,
Parliament functioned as a temporary
advisory committee and was summoned
only if and when the monarch saw fit.
Once summoned, a parliament's
continued existence was at the king's
pleasure, since it was subject to
dissolution by him at any time.

Yet, in spite of this limited role, over the

preceding centuries Parliament had
acquired de facto powers of enough
significance that monarchs could not
simply ignore them indefinitely. For a
monarch, Parliament's most
indispensable power was its ability to
raise tax revenues far in excess of all
other sources of revenue at the Crown's
disposal. By the seventeenth century,
Parliament's tax-raising powers had
come to be derived from the fact that the
gentry was the only stratum of society
with the ability and actual authority to
collect and remit the most meaningful
forms of taxation then available at the
local level. This meant that if the king
wanted to ensure a smooth collection of
revenue, he needed the co-operation of
the gentry. For all of the Crown's legal
authority, by any modern standard, its
resources were limited to the extent that,
if and when the gentry refused to collect
the king's taxes on a national scale, the
Crown lacked any practical means with
which to compel them.

Therefore, in order to secure their co-

operation, monarchs permitted the gentry
(and only the gentry) to elect
representatives to sit in the House of
Commons. When assembled along with
the House of Lords, these elected
representatives formed a Parliament. The
concept of Parliaments therefore allowed
representatives of the gentry to meet,
primarily (at least in the opinion of the
monarch) so that they could give their
sanction to whatever taxes the monarch
expected their electorate to collect. In the
process, the representatives could also
confer and send policy proposals to the
king in the form of bills. However,
Parliament lacked any legal means of
forcing its will upon the monarch; its only
leverage with the king was the threat of
its withholding the financial means
required to execute his plans.[16]

Parliamentary concerns and

the Petition of Right

Henrietta Maria, painted by Peter Lely, 1660

Many concerns were raised over

Charles's marriage to a Roman Catholic,
French princess Henrietta Maria, in 1625.
The Parliament refused to assign him the
traditional right to collect customs duties
for his entire reign, deciding instead to
grant it only on a provisional basis and
negotiate with him.[17]

Charles, meanwhile, decided to send an

expeditionary force to relieve the French
Huguenots whom French royal troops
held besieged in La Rochelle. Military
support for Protestants on the Continent
had the potential to alleviate concerns
brought about by the King's marriage to a
Catholic. However, Charles's insistence
on having his unpopular royal favourite
George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham,
assume command of the English force
undermined that support. Unfortunately
for Charles and Buckingham, the relief
expedition proved a fiasco (1627),[18] and
Parliament, already hostile to
Buckingham for his monopoly on royal
patronage, opened impeachment
proceedings against him.[19] Charles
responded by dissolving Parliament. This
move, while saving Buckingham,
reinforced the impression that Charles
wanted to avoid Parliamentary scrutiny
of his ministers.[19]

Having dissolved Parliament and unable

to raise money without it, the king
assembled a new one in 1628. (The
elected members included Oliver
Cromwell and Edward Coke.) The new
Parliament drew up the Petition of Right,
and Charles accepted it as a concession
in order to obtain his subsidy.[20] Among
other things, the Petition referred to
Magna Carta.[21] However, it did not grant
him the right of tonnage and poundage,
which Charles had been collecting
without Parliamentary authorisation
since 1625.[22] Several of the more active
members of the opposition were
imprisoned, which caused some
outrage;[22] one, John Eliot, subsequently
died in prison, becoming regarded as a
martyr for the rights of Parliament.[23]

Personal rule
Charles I avoided calling a Parliament for
the next decade, a period known as the
"personal rule of Charles I", or the "Eleven
Years' Tyranny".[24] During this period,
Charles's lack of money determined
policies. First and foremost, to avoid
Parliament, the King needed to avoid war.
Charles made peace with France and
Spain, effectively ending England's
involvement in the Thirty Years' War.
However, that in itself was far from
enough to balance the Crown's finances.

Unable to raise revenue without

Parliament and unwilling to convene it,
Charles resorted to other means. One
method was reviving certain conventions,
often long-outdated. For example, a
failure to attend and to receive
knighthood at Charles's coronation was a
finable offence with the fine paid to the
Crown. The King also tried to raise
revenue through the ship money tax, by
exploiting a naval-war scare in 1635,
demanding that the inland English
counties pay the tax for the Royal Navy.
Established law supported this policy, but
authorities had ignored it for centuries,
and many regarded it as yet another
extra-Parliamentary (and therefore
illegal) tax.[25] Some prominent men
refused to pay ship money, arguing that
the tax was illegal, but they lost in court,
and the fines imposed on them for
refusing to pay ship money (and for
standing against the tax's legality)
aroused widespread indignation.[25]

During the "Personal Rule", Charles

aroused most antagonism through his
religious measures: he believed in High
Anglicanism, a sacramental version of
the Church of England, theologically
based upon Arminianism, a creed shared
with his main political advisor,
Archbishop William Laud.[26] In 1633,
Charles appointed Laud as Archbishop of
Canterbury and started making the
Church more ceremonial, replacing the
wooden communion tables with stone
altars.[27] Puritans accused Laud of
reintroducing Catholicism; when they
complained, he had them arrested. In
1637, John Bastwick, Henry Burton, and
William Prynne had their ears cut off for
writing pamphlets attacking Laud's views
—a rare penalty for gentlemen, and one
that aroused anger.[28] Moreover, the
Church authorities revived the statutes
passed in the time of Elizabeth I about
church attendance and fined Puritans for
not attending Anglican church
services.[29]

Rebellion in Scotland

The end of Charles's independent

governance came when he attempted to
apply the same religious policies in
Scotland. The Church of Scotland,
reluctantly episcopal in structure, had
independent traditions.[30] Charles,
however, wanted one uniform Church
throughout Britain[31] and introduced a
new, High Anglican version of the English
Book of Common Prayer to Scotland in
the middle of 1637. This was violently
resisted; a riot broke out in Edinburgh,[32]
which may have been started in St Giles'
Cathedral, according to legend, by Jenny
Geddes. In February 1638, the Scots
formulated their objections to royal
policy in the National Covenant.[33] This
document took the form of a "loyal
protest", rejecting all innovations not first
having been tested by free parliaments
and General Assemblies of the Church.

In the spring of 1639, King Charles I

accompanied his forces to the Scottish
border to end the rebellion known as the
Bishops' War.[34] But, after an
inconclusive military campaign, he
accepted the offered Scottish truce: the
Pacification of Berwick. The truce proved
temporary, and a second war followed in
the middle of 1640. This time, a Scots
army defeated Charles's forces in the
north, then captured Newcastle.[35]
Charles eventually agreed not to interfere
with Scotland's religion and paid the
Scots' war-expenses.
Recall of the English
Parliament

Charles needed to suppress the rebellion

in Scotland. He had insufficient funds,
however, and needed to seek money
from a newly elected English Parliament
in 1640.[36] The majority faction in the
new Parliament, led by John Pym, took
this appeal for money as an opportunity
to discuss grievances against the Crown
and opposed the idea of an English
invasion of Scotland. Charles took
exception to this lèse-majesté (offence
against the ruler) and dissolved the
Parliament after only a few weeks; hence
the name "the Short Parliament".[36]
Without Parliament's support, Charles
attacked Scotland again, breaking the
truce at Berwick, and suffered a
comprehensive defeat. The Scots went
on to invade England, occupying
Northumberland and Durham.[36]
Meanwhile, another of Charles' chief
advisors, Thomas Wentworth, 1st
Viscount Wentworth, had risen to the role
of Lord Deputy of Ireland in 1632[37] and
brought in much-needed revenue for
Charles by persuading the Irish Catholic
gentry to pay new taxes in return for
promised religious concessions.[38]

In 1639, Charles had recalled Wentworth

to England and in 1640 made him Earl of
Strafford, attempting to have him achieve
similar results in Scotland.[37] This time
he proved less successful and the
English forces fled the field in their
second encounter with the Scots in
1640.[37] Almost the entirety of Northern
England was occupied and Charles was
forced to pay £850 per day to keep the
Scots from advancing. If he did not, they
would "take" the money by pillaging and
burning the cities and towns of Northern
England.[39]

All this put Charles in a desperate

financial position. As King of Scots, he
had to find money to pay the Scottish
army in England; as King of England, he
had to find money to pay and equip an
English army to defend England. His
means of raising English revenue without
an English Parliament fell critically short
of achieving this.[20] Against this
backdrop, and according to advice from
the Magnum Concilium (the House of
Lords, but without the Commons, so not
a Parliament), Charles finally bowed to
pressure and summoned another English
Parliament in November 1640.[34]

The Long Parliament

Session of the Long Parliament

The new Parliament proved even more

hostile to Charles than its predecessor. It
immediately began to discuss grievances
against Charles and his government and
with Pym and Hampden (of ship money
fame) in the lead, took the opportunity
presented by the King's troubles to force
various reforming measures—including
many with strong "anti-Papist" themes—
upon him.[40] The legislators passed a
law which stated that a new Parliament
should convene at least once every three
years—without the King's summons, if
necessary. Other laws passed by the
Parliament made it illegal for the king to
impose taxes without Parliamentary
consent and later gave Parliament
control over the king's ministers. Finally,
the Parliament passed a law forbidding
the King to dissolve it without its
consent, even if the three years were up.
Ever since, this Parliament has been
known as the "Long Parliament".
However, Parliament did attempt to avert
conflict by requiring all adults to sign The
Protestation, an oath of allegiance to
Charles.[c]

Early in the Long Parliament's

proceedings the house overwhelmingly
accused Thomas Wentworth, Earl of
Strafford of high treason and other
crimes and misdemeanours.

Henry Vane the Younger supplied

evidence in relation to Strafford's claimed
improper use of the army in Ireland,
alleging that Strafford was encouraging
the King to use his army raised in Ireland
to threaten England into compliance.
This evidence was obtained from Vane's
father, Henry Vane the Elder, a member
of the King's Privy council, who refused
to confirm it in Parliament out of loyalty
to Charles. On 10 April 1641, Pym's case
collapsed, but Pym made a direct appeal
to Henry Vane the Younger to produce a
copy of the notes from the King's Privy
council, discovered by the younger Vane
and secretly turned over to Pym, to the
great anguish of the Elder Vane.[41] These
notes from the King's Privy Council
contained evidence Strafford had told the
King, "Sir, you have done your duty, and
your subjects have failed in theirs; and
therefore you are absolved from the rules
of government, and may supply yourself
by extraordinary ways; you have an army
in Ireland, with which you may reduce the
kingdom."[42][43][44]
Pym immediately launched a Bill of
Attainder, stating Strafford's guilt and
demanding that the Earl be put to
death.[44] Unlike a guilty finding in a court
case, attainder did not require a legal
burden of proof, but it did require the
king's approval. Charles, however,
guaranteed Strafford that he would not
sign the attainder, without which the bill
could not be passed.[45] Furthermore, the
Lords were opposed to the severity of the
sentence of death imposed upon
Strafford. Yet, increased tensions and a
plot in the army to support Strafford
began to sway the issue.[45] On 21 April,
the Commons passed the Bill (204 in
favour, 59 opposed, and 250
abstained),[46] and the Lords acquiesced.
Charles, still incensed over the
Commons' handling of Buckingham,
refused. Strafford himself, hoping to
head off the war he saw looming, wrote
to the king and asked him to
reconsider.[47] Charles, fearing for the
safety of his family, signed on 10 May.[46]
Strafford was beheaded two days
later.[48] In the meantime both Parliament
and the King agreed to an independent
investigation into the king's involvement
in Strafford's plot.

The Long Parliament then passed the

Triennial Act, also known as the
Dissolution Act in May 1641, to which the
Royal Assent was readily granted.[49][50]
The Triennial Act required that
Parliament be summoned at least once
every three years, and that when the King
failed to issue proper summons, the
members could assemble on their own.
This act also forbade ship money without
Parliament's consent, fines in destraint of
knighthood and forced loans.
Monopolies were cut back severely, and
the Courts of Star Chamber and High
Commission were abolished by the
Habeas Corpus Act 1640 and the
Triennial Act respectively.[51] All
remaining forms of taxation were
legalised and regulated by the Tonnage
and Poundage Act.[52] On 3 May,
Parliament decreed The Protestation,
attacking the 'wicked counsels' of
Charles's government, whereby those
who signed the petition undertook to
defend 'the true reformed religion',
parliament, and the king's person, honour
and estate. Throughout May, the House
of Commons launched several bills
attacking bishops and episcopalianism in
general, each time defeated in the
Lords.[53][47]

It was hoped by both Charles and

Parliament that the execution of
Strafford and the Protestation would end
the drift towards war; in fact, they
encouraged it. Charles and his
supporters continued to resent
Parliament's demands, while
Parliamentarians continued to suspect
Charles of wanting to impose
episcopalianism and unfettered royal rule
by military force. Within months, the Irish
Catholics, fearing a resurgence of
Protestant power, struck first, and all
Ireland soon descended into chaos.[54]
Rumours circulated that the King
supported the Irish, and Puritan
members of the Commons soon started
murmuring that this exemplified the fate
that Charles had in store for them all.[55]

In early January 1642, accompanied by

400 soldiers, Charles attempted to arrest
five members of the House of Commons
on a charge of treason.[56] This attempt
failed. When the troops marched into
Parliament, Charles enquired of William
Lenthall, the Speaker, as to the
whereabouts of the five. Lenthall replied,
"May it please your Majesty, I have
neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak
in this place but as the House is pleased
to direct me, whose servant I am here."[56]
In other words, the Speaker proclaimed
himself a servant of Parliament, rather
than of the King.[56]

Local grievances
In the summer of 1642 these national
troubles helped to polarise opinion,
ending indecision about which side to
support or what action to take.
Opposition to Charles also arose owing
to many local grievances. For example,
the imposition of drainage schemes in
The Fens negatively affected the
livelihood of thousands of people after
the King awarded a number of drainage
contracts.[57] Many regarded the King as
indifferent to public welfare, and this
played a role in bringing a large part of
eastern England into the Parliamentarian
camp. This sentiment brought with it
people such as the Earl of Manchester
and Oliver Cromwell, each a notable
wartime adversary of the King.
Conversely, one of the leading drainage
contractors, the Earl of Lindsey, was to
die fighting for the King at the Battle of
Edgehill.[58]

First English Civil War

(1642–1646)

Maps of territory held by Royalists (red) and

Parliamentarians (yellow-green), 1642–1645
In early January 1642, a few days after
his failure to capture five members of the
House of Commons, fearing for the
safety of his family and retinue, Charles
left the London area for the north of the
country.[59] Further negotiations by
frequent correspondence between the
King and the Long Parliament through to
early summer proved fruitless. As the
summer progressed, cities and towns
declared their sympathies for one faction
or the other: for example, the garrison of
Portsmouth under the command of Sir
George Goring declared for the King,[60]
but when Charles tried to acquire arms
for his cause from Kingston upon Hull,
the depository for the weapons used in
the previous Scottish campaigns, Sir
John Hotham, the military governor
appointed by Parliament in January,
refused to let Charles enter Hull,[61] and
when Charles returned with more men
later, Hotham drove them off.[62] Charles
issued a warrant for Hotham to be
arrested as a traitor but was powerless
to enforce it. Throughout the summer
months, tensions rose and there was
brawling in a number of places, with the
first death from the conflict taking place
in Manchester.[62][63]

At the outset of the conflict, much of the

country remained neutral, though the
Royal Navy and most English cities
favoured Parliament, while the King
found considerable support in rural
communities. Historians estimate that
between them, both sides had only about
15,000 men. However, the war quickly
spread and eventually involved every
level of society. Many areas attempted to
remain neutral. Some formed bands of
Clubmen to protect their localities
against the worst excesses of the armies
of both sides,[64] but most found it
impossible to withstand both the King
and Parliament. On one side, the King
and his supporters fought for traditional
government in Church and state. On the
other, most supporters of the
Parliamentary cause initially took up
arms to defend what they thought of as
the traditional balance of government in
Church and state, which the bad advice
the King had received from his advisers
had undermined before and during the
"Eleven Years' Tyranny". The views of the
members of parliament ranged from
unquestioning support of the King—at
one point during the First Civil War, more
members of the Commons and Lords
gathered in the King's Oxford Parliament
than at Westminster—through to radicals,
who wanted major reforms in favour of
religious independence and the
redistribution of power at the national
level. However, even the most radical
supporters of the Parliamentarian cause
still favoured the retention of Charles on
the throne.

After the debacle at Hull, Charles moved

on to Nottingham, where on 22 August
1642, he raised the royal standard.[65]
When he raised his standard, Charles had
with him about 2,000 cavalry and a small
number of Yorkshire infantry-men, and
using the archaic system of a
Commission of Array,[66] Charles's
supporters started to build a larger army
around the standard. Charles moved in a
south-westerly direction, first to Stafford,
and then on to Shrewsbury, because the
support for his cause seemed
particularly strong in the Severn valley
area and in North Wales.[67] While
passing through Wellington, in what
became known as the "Wellington
Declaration", he declared that he would
uphold the "Protestant religion, the laws
of England, and the liberty of
Parliament".[68]

Oliver Cromwell
The Parliamentarians who opposed the
King had not remained passive during
this pre-war period. As in the case of
Kingston upon Hull, they had taken
measures to secure strategic towns and
cities by appointing to office men
sympathetic to their cause, and on 9
June they had voted to raise an army of
10,000 volunteers and appointed Robert
Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex commander
three days later.[69] He received orders "to
rescue His Majesty's person, and the
persons of the Prince [of Wales] and the
Duke of York out of the hands of those
desperate persons who were about
them".[70] The Lords Lieutenant, whom
Parliament appointed, used the Militia
Ordinance to order the militia to join
Essex's army.[71]

Two weeks after the King had raised his

standard at Nottingham, Essex led his
army north towards Northampton,[72]
picking up support along the way
(including a detachment of
Cambridgeshire cavalry raised and
commanded by Oliver Cromwell).[d] By
the middle of September Essex's forces
had grown to 21,000 infantry and 4,200
cavalry and dragoons. On 14 September
he moved his army to Coventry and then
to the north of the Cotswolds,[73] a
strategy which placed his army between
the Royalists and London. With the size
of both armies now in the tens of
thousands, and only Worcestershire
between them, it was inevitable that
cavalry reconnaissance units would
sooner or later meet. This happened in
the first major skirmish of the Civil War,
when a cavalry troop of about 1,000
Royalists commanded by Prince Rupert,
a German nephew of the King and one of
the outstanding cavalry commanders of
the war,[74] defeated a Parliamentary
cavalry detachment under the command
of Colonel John Brown in the Battle of
Powick Bridge, at a bridge across the
River Teme close to Worcester.[75]
Prince Rupert of the Rhine

Rupert withdrew to Shrewsbury, where a

council-of-war discussed two courses of
action: whether to advance towards
Essex's new position near Worcester, or
to march along the now opened road
towards London. The Council decided to
take the London route, but not to avoid a
battle, for the Royalist generals wanted to
fight Essex before he grew too strong,
and the temper of both sides made it
impossible to postpone the decision. In
the Earl of Clarendon's words: "it was
considered more counsellable to march
towards London, it being morally sure
that the earl of Essex would put himself
in their way".[76] Accordingly, the army left
Shrewsbury on 12 October, gaining two
days' start on the enemy, and moved
south-east. This had the desired effect,
as it forced Essex to move to intercept
them.[76]

The first pitched battle of the war, fought

at Edgehill on 23 October 1642, proved
inconclusive, and both the Royalists and
Parliamentarians claimed it as a
victory.[77] The second field action of the
war, the stand-off at Turnham Green, saw
Charles forced to withdraw to Oxford.[78]
This city would serve as his base for the
remainder of the war.[79]

In 1643, the Royalist forces won at

Adwalton Moor, and gained control of
most of Yorkshire.[80] In the Midlands, a
Parliamentary force under Sir John Gell
besieged and captured the cathedral city
of Lichfield, after the death of the original
commander, Lord Brooke.[81] This group
subsequently joined forces with Sir John
Brereton to fight the inconclusive Battle
of Hopton Heath (19 March 1643), where
the Royalist commander, the Earl of
Northampton, was killed.[81] Subsequent
battles in the west of England at
Lansdowne and at Roundway Down also
went to the Royalists.[82] Prince Rupert
could then take Bristol. In the same year,
Oliver Cromwell formed his troop of
"Ironsides", a disciplined unit that
demonstrated his military leadership
ability. With their assistance, he won a
victory at the Battle of Gainsborough in
July.[83]

At this stage, from 7 to 9 August 1643,

there were some popular demonstrations
in London—both pro and against war.
They were protesting at Westminster. A
peace demonstration by London women,
which turned violent, was suppressed by
William Waller's regiment of horse. Some
women were beaten and even killed, and
many arrested.[84]

Following these events of August, the

representative of Venice in England
reported to the doge that the London
government took considerable measures
to stifle dissent.[85]

In general, the early part of the war went

well for the Royalists. The turning point
came in the late summer and early
autumn of 1643, when the Earl of Essex's
army forced the king to raise the siege of
Gloucester[86] and then brushed the
Royalist army aside at the First Battle of
Newbury (20 September 1643),[87] in
order to return triumphantly to London.
Other Parliamentarian forces won the
Battle of Winceby,[88] giving them control
of Lincoln. Political manoeuvring to gain
an advantage in numbers led Charles to
negotiate a ceasefire in Ireland, freeing
up English troops to fight on the Royalist
side in England,[89] while Parliament
offered concessions to the Scots in
return for aid and assistance.

The Battle of Marston Moor, 1644

With the help of the Scots, Parliament
won at Marston Moor (2 July 1644),[90]
gaining York and the north of England.[91]
Cromwell's conduct in this battle proved
decisive,[92] and demonstrated his
potential as both a political and an
important military leader. The defeat at
the Battle of Lostwithiel in Cornwall,
however, marked a serious reverse for
Parliament in the south-west of
England.[93] Subsequent fighting around
Newbury (27 October 1644), though
tactically indecisive, strategically gave
another check to Parliament.[94]

In 1645, Parliament reaffirmed its

determination to fight the war to a finish.
It passed the Self-denying Ordinance, by
which all members of either House of
Parliament laid down their commands,
and re-organized its main forces into the
New Model Army, under the command of
Sir Thomas Fairfax, with Cromwell as his
second-in-command and Lieutenant-
General of Horse.[95] In two decisive
engagements—the Battle of Naseby on
14 June and the Battle of Langport on 10
July—the Parliamentarians effectively
destroyed Charles' armies.[96]

In the remains of his English realm

Charles attempted to recover a stable
base of support by consolidating the
Midlands. He began to form an axis
between Oxford and Newark on Trent in
Nottinghamshire. Those towns had
become fortresses and showed more
reliable loyalty to him than to others. He
took Leicester, which lies between them,
but found his resources exhausted.
Having little opportunity to replenish
them, in May 1646 he sought shelter with
a Presbyterian Scottish army at
Southwell in Nottinghamshire.[97] Charles
was eventually handed over to the
English Parliament by the Scots and was
imprisoned.[98] This marked the end of
the First English Civil War.

Second English Civil War

(1648–1649)
"And when did you last see your father?" by William
Frederick Yeames.

Charles I took advantage of the

deflection of attention away from himself
to negotiate a secret treaty with the
Scots, again promising church reform, on
28 December 1647.[99] Under the
agreement, called the "Engagement", the
Scots undertook to invade England on
Charles' behalf and restore him to the
throne on condition of the establishment
of Presbyterianism for three years.[100]
A series of Royalist uprisings throughout
England and a Scottish invasion occurred
in the summer of 1648. Forces loyal to
Parliament[101] put down most of the
uprisings in England after little more than
skirmishes, but uprisings in Kent, Essex
and Cumberland, the rebellion in Wales,
and the Scottish invasion involved the
fighting of pitched battles and prolonged
sieges.[99]

In the spring of 1648 unpaid

Parliamentarian troops in Wales changed
sides. Colonel Thomas Horton defeated
the Royalist rebels at the Battle of St
Fagans (8 May)[102] and the rebel leaders
surrendered to Cromwell on 11 July after
the protracted two-month siege of
Pembroke.[103] Sir Thomas Fairfax
defeated a Royalist uprising in Kent at
the Battle of Maidstone on 1 June.
Fairfax, after his success at Maidstone
and the pacification of Kent, turned
northward to reduce Essex, where, under
their ardent, experienced and popular
leader Sir Charles Lucas, the Royalists
had taken up arms in great numbers.
Fairfax soon drove the enemy into
Colchester, but his first attack on the
town met with a repulse and he had to
settle down to a long siege.[104]

In the North of England, Major-General

John Lambert fought a very successful
campaign against a number of Royalist
uprisings—the largest that of Sir
Marmaduke Langdale in Cumberland.[105]
Thanks to Lambert's successes, the
Scottish commander, the Duke of
Hamilton, had perforce to take the
western route through Carlisle in his pro-
Royalist Scottish invasion of England.[106]
The Parliamentarians under Cromwell
engaged the Scots at the Battle of
Preston (17–19 August). The battle took
place largely at Walton-le-Dale near
Preston in Lancashire, and resulted in a
victory by the troops of Cromwell over
the Royalists and Scots commanded by
Hamilton.[106] This Parliamentarian
victory marked the end of the Second
English Civil War.

Nearly all the Royalists who had fought in

the First Civil War had given their parole
not to bear arms against the Parliament,
and many of these, like Lord Astley,
refused to break their word by taking any
part in the second war. So the victors in
the Second Civil War showed little mercy
to those who had brought war into the
land again. On the evening of the
surrender of Colchester,
Parliamentarians had Sir Charles Lucas
and Sir George Lisle shot.[107]
Parliamentary authorities sentenced the
leaders of the Welsh rebels, Major-
General Rowland Laugharne, Colonel
John Poyer and Colonel Rice Powel to
death, but executed Poyer alone (25 April
1649), having selected him by lot.[108] Of
five prominent Royalist peers who had
fallen into the hands of Parliament, three,
the Duke of Hamilton, the Earl of Holland,
and Lord Capel, one of the Colchester
prisoners and a man of high character,
were beheaded at Westminster on 9
March.[109]

Trial of Charles I for treason

Charles' secret pacts and
encouragement of his supporters to
break their parole caused Parliament to
debate whether to return the King to
power at all. Those who still supported
Charles' place on the throne, such as the
army leader and moderate Fairfax, tried
once more to negotiate with him.[110]
Furious that Parliament continued to
countenance Charles as a ruler, the Army
marched on Parliament and conducted
"Pride's Purge" (named after the
commanding officer of the operation,
Thomas Pride) in December 1648.[111]
Troops arrested 45 members of
Parliament and kept 146 out of the
chamber. They allowed only 75 Members
in, and then only at the Army's bidding.
This Rump Parliament received orders to
set up, in the name of the people of
England, a High Court of Justice for the
trial of Charles I for treason. [112] Fairfax,
a constitutional monarchist and
moderate, refused to participate
whatsoever in the trial and resigned as
head of the army, allowing Oliver
Cromwell to ascend in power.

At the end of the trial the 59

Commissioners (judges) found Charles I
guilty of high treason, as a "tyrant, traitor,
murderer and public enemy".[113][114] His
beheading took place on a scaffold in
front of the Banqueting House of the
Palace of Whitehall on 30 January
1649.[115] After the Restoration in 1660,
of the surviving regicides not living in
exile, nine were executed and most of the
rest sentenced to life imprisonment.[116]

Following the execution, Charles, the

eldest son was in Jersey where, on 17
February 1649 in the Royal Square in St.
Helier, he was publicly proclaimed King
Charles II (following the first public
proclamation in Edinburgh on 5 February
1649).

Third English Civil War

(1649–1651)
Ireland
A 19th century representation of the Massacre at

Drogheda, 1649

Ireland had known continuous war since

the rebellion of 1641, with most of the
island controlled by the Irish
Confederates.[117] Increasingly
threatened by the armies of the English
Parliament after Charles I's arrest in
1648, the Confederates signed a treaty of
alliance with the English Royalists.[118]
The joint Royalist and Confederate forces
under the Duke of Ormonde attempted to
eliminate the Parliamentary army holding
Dublin by laying siege to the city, but their
opponents routed them at the Battle of
Rathmines (2 August 1649).[119] As the
former Member of Parliament Admiral
Robert Blake blockaded Prince Rupert's
fleet in Kinsale, Oliver Cromwell could
land at Dublin on 15 August 1649 with an
army to quell the Royalist alliance in
Ireland.[120]

Cromwell's suppression of the Royalists

in Ireland during 1649 still has a strong
resonance for many Irish people. After
the siege of Drogheda,[120] the massacre
of nearly 3,500 people—comprising
around 2,700 Royalist soldiers and 700
others, including civilians, prisoners, and
Catholic priests (Cromwell claimed all
the men were carrying arms)—became
one of the historical memories that has
driven Irish-English and Catholic-
Protestant strife during the last three
centuries. The Parliamentarian conquest
of Ireland ground on for another four
years until 1653, when the last Irish
Confederate and Royalist troops
surrendered.[121] The victors confiscated
almost all Irish Catholic-owned land in
the wake of the conquest and distributed
it to the Parliament's creditors, to the
Parliamentary soldiers who served in
Ireland, and to English people who had
settled there before the war.[122]

Scotland

The execution of Charles I altered the

dynamics of the Civil War in Scotland,
which had raged between Royalists and
Covenanters since 1644. By 1649, the
struggle had left the Royalists there in
disarray and their erstwhile leader, the
Marquess of Montrose, had gone into
exile. At first, Charles II encouraged
Montrose to raise a Highland army to
fight on the Royalist side.[123] However,
when the Scottish Covenanters (who did
not agree with the execution of Charles I
and who feared for the future of
Presbyterianism under the new
Commonwealth) offered him the crown
of Scotland, Charles abandoned
Montrose to his enemies. However,
Montrose, who had raised a mercenary
force in Norway,[123] had already landed
and could not abandon the fight. He did
not succeed in raising many Highland
clans and the Covenanters defeated his
army at the Battle of Carbisdale in Ross-
shire on 27 April 1650. The victors
captured Montrose shortly afterwards
and took him to Edinburgh. On 20 May
the Scottish Parliament sentenced him to
death and had him hanged the next
day.[124]
"Cromwell at Dunbar", by Andrew Carrick Gow

Charles II landed in Scotland at

Garmouth in Morayshire on 23 June
1650[125] and signed the 1638 National
Covenant and the 1643 Solemn League
and Covenant shortly after coming
ashore.[126] With his original Scottish
Royalist followers and his new
Covenanter allies, King Charles II became
the greatest threat facing the new
English republic. In response to the
threat, Cromwell left some of his
lieutenants in Ireland to continue the
suppression of the Irish Royalists and
returned to England.[124]

He arrived in Scotland on 22 July

1650[127] and proceeded to lay siege to
Edinburgh. By the end of August, disease
and a shortage of supplies had reduced
his army, and he had to order a retreat
towards his base at Dunbar. A Scottish
army, assembled under the command of
David Leslie, tried to block the retreat, but
Cromwell defeated them at the Battle of
Dunbar on 3 September. Cromwell's army
then took Edinburgh, and by the end of
the year his army had occupied much of
southern Scotland.

In July 1651, Cromwell's forces crossed

the Firth of Forth into Fife and defeated
the Scots at the Battle of Inverkeithing
(20 July 1651).[128] The New Model Army
advanced towards Perth, which allowed
Charles, at the head of the Scottish army,
to move south into England. Cromwell
followed Charles into England, leaving
George Monck to finish the campaign in
Scotland. Monck took Stirling on 14
August and Dundee on 1 September.[129]
The next year, 1652, saw the mopping up
of the remnants of Royalist resistance,
and under the terms of the "Tender of
Union", the Scots received 30 seats in a
united Parliament in London, with
General Monck appointed as the military
governor of Scotland.[130]

England

Although Cromwell's New Model Army

had defeated a Scottish army at Dunbar,
Cromwell could not prevent Charles II
from marching from Scotland deep into
England at the head of another Royalist
army.[131] The Royalists marched to the
west of England because English
Royalist sympathies were strongest in
that area, but although some English
Royalists joined the army, they came in
far fewer numbers than Charles and his
Scottish supporters had hoped.
Cromwell finally engaged and defeated
the new king at Worcester on 3
September 1651.[123][132]

Immediate aftermath

After the Royalist defeat at Worcester,

Charles II escaped, via safe houses and a
famous oak tree, to France,[131] and
Parliament was left in de facto control of
England. Resistance continued for a time
in the Channel Islands,[133] Ireland and
Scotland, but with the pacification of
England the resistance elsewhere did not
threaten the military supremacy of the
New Model Army and its parliamentary
paymasters.

Political control
During the Wars, the Parliamentarians
established a number of successive
committees to oversee the war-effort.
The first of these, the Committee of
Safety, set up in July 1642, comprised 15
members of parliament.[134] Following
the Anglo-Scottish alliance against the
Royalists, the Committee of Both
Kingdoms replaced the Committee of
Safety between 1644 and 1648.[135]
Parliament dissolved the Committee of
Both Kingdoms when the alliance ended,
but its English members continued to
meet and became known as the Derby
House Committee.[135] A second
Committee of Safety then replaced that
committee.

Episcopacy

William Laud, Charles I's Archbishop of Canterbury.

During the period of the English Civil War,
the role of bishops as wielders of
political power and as upholders of the
established church became a matter of
heated political controversy. John Calvin
formulated a doctrine of
Presbyterianism, which held that in the
New Testament the offices of presbyter
and episkopos were identical; he rejected
the doctrine of apostolic succession.
Calvin's follower John Knox brought
Presbyterianism to Scotland when the
Scottish church was reformed in 1560. In
practice, Presbyterianism meant that
committees of lay elders had a
substantial voice in church government,
as opposed to merely being subjects to a
ruling hierarchy.

This vision of at least partial democracy

in ecclesiology paralleled the struggles
between Parliament and the King. A body
within the Puritan movement in the
Church of England sought to abolish the
office of bishop and remake the Church
of England along Presbyterian lines. The
Martin Marprelate tracts (1588–1589),
applying the pejorative name of prelacy
to the church hierarchy, attacked the
office of bishop with satire that deeply
offended Elizabeth I and her Archbishop
of Canterbury John Whitgift. The
vestments controversy also related to
this movement, seeking further
reductions in church ceremony, and
labelling the use of elaborate vestments
as "unedifying" and even idolatrous.

King James I, reacting against the

perceived contumacy of his Presbyterian
Scottish subjects, adopted "No Bishop,
no King" as a slogan; he tied the
hierarchical authority of the bishop to the
absolute authority he sought as king, and
viewed attacks on the authority of the
bishops as attacks on his own authority.
Matters came to a head when King
Charles I appointed William Laud as the
Archbishop of Canterbury; Laud
aggressively attacked the Presbyterian
movement and sought to impose the full
Anglican liturgy. The controversy
eventually led to Laud's impeachment for
treason by a bill of attainder in 1645, and
subsequent execution. Charles also
attempted to impose episcopacy on
Scotland; the Scots' violent rejection of
bishops and liturgical worship sparked
the Bishops' Wars in 1639–1640.

During the height of Puritan power in the

Commonwealth and the Protectorate,
episcopacy was formally abolished in the
Church of England on 9 October
1646.[136] The Church of England
remained Presbyterian until the
Restoration of the monarchy with Charles
II in 1660.[137]

English overseas possessions

During the period of the English Civil War,
the English overseas possessions were
highly involved. In the Channel Islands,
the island of Jersey and Castle Cornet in
Guernsey supported the King until in
December 1651 they surrendered with
honour. Although the newer, Puritan
settlements in North America, most
notably Massachusetts, were dominated
by Parliamentarians, the older colonies
sided with the Crown. Friction between
royalists and Puritans in Maryland came
to a head in the Battle of the Severn. The
Virginia Company's settlements,
Bermuda and Virginia, as well as Antigua
and Barbados were conspicuous in their
loyalty to the Crown. Bermuda's
Independent Puritans were expelled,
settling the Bahamas under William Sayle
as the Eleutheran Adventurers.
Parliament passed An Act for prohibiting
Trade with the Barbadoes, Virginia,
Bermuda and Antego in October, 1650,
which stated that

due punishment [be] inflicted

upon the said Delinquents, do
Declare all and every the said
persons in Barbada's, Antego,
Bermuda's and Virginia, that
have contrived, abetted, aided
or assisted those horrid
Rebellions, or have since
willingly joyned with them, to
be notorious Robbers and
Traitors, and such as by the
Law of Nations are not to be
permitted any maner of
Commerce or Traffique with
any people whatsoever; and do
forbid to all maner of persons,
Foreiners, and others, all
maner of Commerce, Traffique
 and Correspondency
whatsoever, to be used or held
with the said Rebels in the
Barbada's, Bermuda's, Virginia
and Antego, or either of them.

The Act also authorised Parliamentary

privateers to act against English vessels
trading with the rebellious colonies:

All Ships that Trade with the

Rebels may be surprized.
Goods and tackle of such ships
not to be embezeled, till
judgement in the Admiralty.;
 Two or three of the Officers of
every ship to be examined upon
oath.

The Parliament began assembling a fleet

to invade the Royalist colonies, but many
of the English islands in the Caribbean
were captured by the Dutch and French in
1651 during the Second Anglo-Dutch
War. Far to the North, Bermuda's
regiment of Militia and its coastal
batteries prepared to resist an invasion
that never came. The colony made a
separate peace that respected its
internal status quo. The Parliament of
Bermuda avoided the Parliament of
England's fate during The Protectorate,
becoming one of the oldest continuous
legislatures in the world.

Virginia's population swelled with

Cavaliers during and after the English
Civil War. Even so, Virginia Puritan
Richard Bennett was made Governor
answering to Cromwell in 1652, followed
by two more nominal "Commonwealth
Governors". The loyalty of Virginia's
Cavaliers to the Crown was rewarded
after the 1660 Restoration of the
Monarchy when King Charles II dubbed it
the Old Dominion.

Casualties
Figures for casualties during this period
are unreliable, but some attempt has
been made to provide rough
estimates.[138][139] In England, a
conservative estimate is that roughly
100,000 people died from war-related
disease during the three civil wars.
Historical records count 84,830 dead
from the wars themselves. Counting in
accidents and the two Bishops' wars, an
estimate of 190,000 dead is
achieved,[140] out of a total population of
about five million.[141]

Figures for Scotland are less reliable and

should be treated with greater caution.
Casualties include the deaths of
prisoners-of-war in conditions that
accelerated their deaths, with estimates
of 10,000 prisoners not surviving or not
returning home (8,000 captured during
and immediately after the Battle of
Worcester were deported to New
England, Bermuda and the West Indies to
work for landowners as indentured
labourers[142]). There are no figures to
calculate how many died from war-
related diseases, but if the same ratio of
disease to battle deaths from English
figures is applied to the Scottish figures,
a not unreasonable estimate of 60,000
people is achieved,[143] from a population
of about one million.[141]
Figures for Ireland are described as
"miracles of conjecture". Certainly the
devastation inflicted on Ireland was
massive, with the best estimate provided
by Sir William Petty, the father of English
demography. Petty estimates that
112,000 Protestants and 504,000
Catholics were killed through plague, war
and famine, giving an estimated total of
616,000 dead,[144] from a pre-war
population of about one and a half
million.[141] Although Petty's figures are
the best available, they are still
acknowledged as being tentative; they do
not include the estimate of 40,000 driven
into exile, some of whom served as
soldiers in European continental armies,
while others were sold as indentured
servants to New England and the West
Indies. Many of those sold to landowners
in New England eventually prospered, but
many of those sold to landowners in the
West Indies were worked to death.

These estimates indicate that England

suffered a 3.7% loss of population,
Scotland a loss of 6%, while Ireland
suffered a loss of 41% of its population.
Putting these numbers into the context
of other catastrophes helps to
understand the devastation to Ireland in
particular. The Great Hunger of 1845–
1852 resulted in a loss of 16% of the
population, while during the Second
World War the population of the Soviet
Union fell by 16%.[145]

Popular gains
Ordinary people took advantage of the
dislocation of civil society during the
1640s to derive advantages for
themselves. The contemporary guild
democracy movement won its greatest
successes among London's transport
workers, notably the Thames
watermen.[146] Rural communities seized
timber and other resources on the
sequestrated estates of royalists and
Catholics, and on the estates of the royal
family and the church hierarchy. Some
communities improved their conditions
of tenure on such estates.[147] The old
status quo began a retrenchment after
the end of the First Civil War in 1646, and
more especially after the restoration of
monarchy in 1660. But some gains were
long-term. The democratic element
introduced in the watermen's company in
1642, for example, survived, with
vicissitudes, until 1827.[148]

Aftermath
The wars left England, Scotland, and
Ireland among the few countries in
Europe without a monarch. In the wake
of victory, many of the ideals (and many
of the idealists) became sidelined. The
republican government of the
Commonwealth of England ruled England
(and later all of Scotland and Ireland)
from 1649 to 1653 and from 1659 to
1660. Between the two periods, and due
to in-fighting among various factions in
Parliament, Oliver Cromwell ruled over
the Protectorate as Lord Protector
(effectively a military dictator) until his
death in 1658.[e]

Upon his death, Oliver Cromwell's son

Richard became Lord Protector, but the
Army had little confidence in him.[149]
After seven months the Army removed
Richard, and in May 1659 it re-installed
the Rump.[150] However, since the Rump
Parliament acted as though nothing had
changed since 1653 and as though it
could treat the Army as it liked, military
force shortly afterwards dissolved this,
as well.[151] After the second dissolution
of the Rump, in October 1659, the
prospect of a total descent into anarchy
loomed as the Army's pretence of unity
finally dissolved into factions.[152]

A historical civil war re-enactment

Into this atmosphere General George
Monck, Governor of Scotland under the
Cromwells, marched south with his army
from Scotland. On 4 April 1660, in the
Declaration of Breda, Charles II made
known the conditions of his acceptance
of the Crown of England.[153] Monck
organised the Convention Parliament,[154]
which met for the first time on 25 April
1660. On 8 May 1660, it declared that
King Charles II had reigned as the lawful
monarch since the execution of Charles I
in January 1649. Charles returned from
exile on 23 May 1660. On 29 May 1660,
the populace in London acclaimed him
as king.[155] His coronation took place at
Westminster Abbey on 23 April 1661.
These events became known as the
Restoration.[156]

Although the monarchy was restored, it

was still only with the consent of
Parliament; therefore, the civil wars
effectively set England and Scotland on
course to adopt a parliamentary
monarchy form of government.[157] This
system would result in the outcome that
the future Kingdom of Great Britain,
formed in 1707 under the Acts of Union,
would manage to forestall the kind of
often-bloody revolution, typical of
European republican movements that
followed the Jacobin revolution in 18th
century France and the later success of
Napoleon, which generally resulted in the
total abolition of monarchy. It was no
coincidence that the United Kingdom
was spared the wave of revolutions that
occurred in Europe in the 1840s.
Specifically, future monarchs became
wary of pushing Parliament too hard, and
Parliament effectively chose the line of
royal succession in 1688 with the
Glorious Revolution and in the 1701 Act
of Settlement. After the Restoration,
Parliament's factions became political
parties (later becoming the Tories and
Whigs) with competing views and varying
abilities to influence the decisions of
their monarchs.
Historiography and
explanations
In the early decades of the 20th century
the Whig school was the dominant
theoretical view. They explained the Civil
War as resulting from a centuries-long
struggle between Parliament (especially
the House of Commons) and the
Monarchy, with Parliament defending the
traditional rights of Englishmen, while the
Stuart monarchy continually attempted
to expand its right to arbitrarily dictate
law. The most important Whig historian,
S.R. Gardiner, popularised the idea that
the English Civil War was a "Puritan
Revolution": challenging the repressive
Stuart Church, and preparing the way for
religious toleration in the Restoration.
Thus, Puritanism was the natural ally of a
people preserving their traditional rights
against arbitrary monarchical power.

The Whig view was challenged and

largely superseded by the Marxist school,
which became popular in the 1940s, and
which interpreted the English Civil War as
a bourgeois revolution. According to
Marxist historian Christopher Hill:

The Civil War was a class war,

in which the despotism of
Charles I was defended by the
reactionary forces of the
established Church and
conservative landlords,
Parliament beat the King
because it could appeal to the
enthusiastic support of the
trading and industrial classes
in town and countryside, to the
yeomen and progressive
gentry, and to wider masses of
the population whenever they
were able by free discussion to
understand what the struggle
was really about.[158]
In the 1970s, revisionist historians
challenged both the Whig and the
Marxist theories,[159] notably in the 1973
anthology The Origins of the English Civil
War (Conrad Russell ed.).[160] These
historians produced work focused on the
minutiae of the years immediately
preceding the civil war, thereby returning
to the contingency-based historiography
of Clarendon's famous contemporary
history History of the Rebellion and Civil
Wars in England.Gaunt 2000, p. 60 This, it
was claimed, demonstrated that
factional war-allegiance patterns did not
fit either Whig or Marxist history.[161]
Parliament was not inherently
progressive, with the events of 1640 a
precursor for the Glorious Revolution,[162]
nor did Puritans necessarily ally
themselves with Parliamentarians. Many
members of the bourgeoisie fought for
the King, while many landed aristocrats
supported Parliament. Thus, revisionist
historians claim to have discredited
some Whig and Marxist interpretations
of the English Civil War.[159]

From the 1990s, a number of historians

discarded and replaced the historical title
"English Civil War" with the titles the
Wars of the Three Kingdoms and the
"British Civil Wars", positing that the civil
war in England cannot be understood
isolated from events in other parts of
Great Britain and Ireland; King Charles I
remains crucial, not just as King of
England, but also because of his
relationship with the peoples of his other
realms. For example, the wars began
when King Charles I tried imposing an
Anglican Prayer Book upon Scotland, and
when this was met with resistance from
the Covenanters, he needed an army to
impose his will. However, this forced him
to call an English Parliament to raise new
taxes to pay for the army. The English
Parliaments were not willing to grant
Charles the revenue he needed to pay for
the Scottish expeditionary army unless
he addressed their grievances. By the
early 1640s, Charles was left in a state of
near permanent crisis management;
often he was not willing to concede
enough ground to any one faction to
neutralise the threat, and in some
circumstances to do so would only
antagonise another faction. For example,
Charles finally agreed upon terms with
the Covenanters in August 1641, but
although this might have weakened the
position of the English Parliament, the
Irish Rebellion of 1641 broke out in
October 1641, largely negating the
political advantage he had obtained by
relieving himself of the cost of the
Scottish invasion.[163]
Thomas Hobbes gives a much earlier
historical account of the English Civil War
in his essay Behemoth, written in 1668
and published in 1681. He reports that
the causes of the war were the doctrines
of politics and conflicts that arose from
science that disputed those political
doctrines.[164]

Behemoth offered a uniquely historical

and philosophical approach to naming
the catalysts for the war. It also served
as a political statement to explain why
King Charles I was incapable of holding
his place of power and maintaining
peace in his kingdom.[165]
Specifically, Hobbes analyses the
following aspects of English thought
during the war (listed in order of his
discussions in Behemoth): the opinions
of divinity and politics that spurred
rebellion; rhetoric and doctrine used by
the rebels against the king; and how
opinions about "taxation, the
conscription of soldiers, and military
strategy" affected the outcomes of
battles and shifts of sovereignty.[165]

Hobbes offered a unique contribution to

historical interpretation of the civil war
through his Behemoth by connecting the
civil war to the motivations of
intellectuals who Hobbes reports caused
it by trying to spread certain ideas
throughout the nation, largely for the
sake of displaying their own wisdom and
learning.[166]

Hobbes held the belief that clerical

pretensions had contributed significantly
to the trouble during the civil war
—"whether those of puritan
fundamentalists, papal supremacists or
divine right Episcopalians".[167] Hobbes
wanted to revoke all of independent
power of the clergy and to change the
civil system such that they were
controlled by the state.

Some scholars suggest that Behemoth

has not received its due respect as an
academic work, being comparatively
overlooked and underrated in the shadow
of Leviathan.[168][169] One factor that may
have contributed to its lack of reception
as a historical work is that it takes the
form of a dialogue. While philosophical
dialogues are common, historical ones
are not. Other factors that hindered its
success include King Charles II's refusing
its publication and Hobbes' chiefly
interpretive approach to the historical
narrative.[169]

Much can be gleaned about Hobbes as a

person from looking at the difficulties he
faced while seeking an audience for
Behemoth. The essay illuminates a flaw
shared by most of Hobbes's political
philosophy as well, which is his lack of
ability or willingness to empathize with
perspectives that largely differed from
his own. As his perspective was so much
at odds with other views, Hobbes
struggled to understand the thinking of
most of his potential audience and
people in general.[169] For instance, he
accredits the Presbyterians and
Parliamentarians with "improbably long-
planned and wicked ambitions".[169]
What's more, "he hardly understands the
orthodox Royalists (he was himself a
highly unorthodox Royalist) any better,
and he makes only limited concessions
of sincerity to the religious feelings of the
various parties".[169]

Re-enactments

A historical civil war re-enactment

Two large historical societies exist, The

Sealed Knot and The English Civil War
Society, which regularly re-enact events
and battles of the Civil War in full period
costume.
See also
Timeline of the English Civil War,
showing events leading up to,
culminating in, and resulting from the
English Civil Wars.
First English Civil War, 1642
First English Civil War, 1643
First English Civil War, 1644
First English Civil War, 1645
First English Civil War, 1646
Cromwell's Soldiers' Pocket Bible,
booklet Cromwell issued to his army in
1643.
English Dissenters
 William Hiseland, the last Royalist
veteran of the Civil War
Thirty Years' War, a defining event in
European history during the reign of
Charles I.
The Levellers, a movement for political
reform.
Diggers

Notes
a. While it is notoriously difficult to
determine the number of casualties in any
war, it has been estimated that the
conflict in England and Wales claimed
about 85,000 lives in combat, with a
further 127,000 noncombat deaths
(including some 40,000 civilians)" (EB
staff 2016b)
b. Although the early 17th century Stuart
monarchs styled themselves King of
Great Britain, France and Ireland, with the
exception of the constitutional
arrangements during the Interregnum (see
the Tender of Union), full union of the
Scottish and English realms into a new
realm of Great Britain did not occur until
the passing of the Act of Union 1707.
c. See Walter 1999, p. 294, for some of
the complexities of how the Protestation
was interpreted by different political
actors.
d. Cromwell had already secured
Cambridge and the supplies of college
silver (Wedgwood 1970, p. 106).
e. For a longer analysis of the relationship
between Cromwell's position, the former
monarchy and the military, see Sherwood
1997, pp. 7–11.
1. "ENGLISH CIVIL WARS" . History.com.
Retrieved 4 October 2014.
2. EB staff 2016a.
3. Walter Scott, Waverley; or, 'Tis Sixty
Years Since (1814), Chap. 2.
4. Chisholm 1911.
5. Hill 1972, for example.
6. Smith 1983, p. 251.
7. Hughes 1985, pp. 236–63.
8. Baker 1986.
9. John Simkin (August 2014) [originally
September 1997]. "The English Civil War –
Tactics" . Spartacus Educational.
Retrieved 20 April 2015.
10. Burne & Young 1998.
11. Gaunt, Peter (2014), The English Civil
War: A Military History, London: I.B.
Tauris, OCLC 882915214 .
12. Young, Peter (1977) [1973], The
English Civil War Armies, Men-at-arms
series, Reading: Osprey,
OCLC 505954051 .
13. Tincey, John (2012), Ironsides: English
Cavalry 1588–1688, Osprey, p. 63,
OCLC 842879605 .
14. Croft 2003, p. 63.
15. McClelland 1996, p. 224.
16. Johnston 1901, pp. 83–86.
17. Gregg 1984, pp. 129–30.
18. Gregg 1984, p. 166.
19. Gregg 1984, p. 175.
20. Purkiss 2007, p. 93.
21. Petition of Right at III, VII.
22. Sommerville 1992, pp. 65, 71, 80.
23. Russell 1998, p. 417.
24. Rosner & Theibault 2000, p. 103.
25. Pipes 1999, p. 143.
26. Carlton 1987, p. 48.
27. Carlton 1987, p. 96.
28. Purkiss 2007, p. 201.
29. Carlton 1987, p. 173.
30. Purkiss 2007, p. 74.
31. Purkiss 2007, p. 83.
32. Purkiss 2007, p. 75.
33. Purkiss 2007, p. 77.
34. Purkiss 2007, p. 96.
35. Purkiss 2007, p. 97.
36. Coward 2003, p. 180.
37. Purkiss 2007, p. 89.
38. Coward 2003, p. 172.
39. Sharp 2000, p. 13.
40. Purkiss 2007, pp. 104–05.
41. Upham 1842, p. 187
42. Upham 1842, p. 187.
43. Hibbert 1968, p. 154.
44. Carlton 1995, p. 224.
45. Carlton 1995, p. 225.
46. Smith 1999, p. 123.
47. Abbott & Downfall.
48. Coward 1994, p. 191.
49. Carlton 1995, p. 222.
50. Kenyon 1978, p. 127.
51. Gregg 1981, p. 335.
52. Kenyon 1978, p. 129.
53. Kenyon 1978, p. 130.
54. Purkiss 2007, pp. 109–113.
55. See Purkiss 2007, p. 113 for the
concerns of a similar English Catholic
rising.
56. Sherwood 1997, p. 41.
57. Hughes 1991, p. 127.
58. Purkiss 2007, p. 180.
59. Wedgwood 1970, p. 57.
60. Wedgwood 1970, p. 107.
61. Wedgwood 1970, p. 82.
62. Wedgwood 1970, p. 100.
63. Royle 2006, pp. 158–66.
64. Wedgwood 1970, pp. 403–04.
65. Wedgwood 1970, p. 111.
66. Wedgwood 1970, p. 96.
67. Royle 2006, pp. 170, 183.
68. Sherwood 1992, p. 6.
69. Wedgwood 1970, pp. 108–09.
70. Hibbert 1993, p. 65.
71. Royle 2006, pp. 161, 165.
72. Wedgwood 1970, p. 113.
73. Wegwood, p.115.
74. Wedgwood 1970, p. 148.
75. Royle 2006, pp. 171–88.
76. Chisholm 1911, p. 404.
77. Wedgwood 1970, pp. 130–01.
78. Wedgwood 1970, p. 135.
79. Wedgwood 1970, pp. 167–68, 506–
07.
80. Wedgwood 1970, p. 209.
81. Wanklyn & Jones 2005, p. 74.
82. Wanklyn & Jones 2005, p. 103.
83. Young & Holmes 1974, p. 151.
84. Plant, David, 1643 timeline , British
Civil Wars, Commonwealth & Protectorate
website
85. Norton 2011, p. ~93.
86. Wedgwood 1970, p. 232.
87. Wedgwood 1970, p. 238.
88. Wedgwood 1970, p. 248.
89. Wedgwood 1970, pp. 298–99.
90. Wanklyn & Jones 2005, p. 189.
91. Wedgwood 1970, p. 322.
92. Wedgwood 1970, p. 319.
93. Ashley, p. 188.
94. Wedgwood 1970, p. 359.
95. Wedgwood 1970, p. 373.
96. Wedgwood 1970, p. 428.
97. Wedgwood 1970, pp. 519–20.
98. Wedgwood 1970, p. 570.
99. Seel 1999, p. 64.
100. Jokinen, Anniina (11 February 2013)
[2006]. "King Charles I" . Luminarium
Encyclopedia. Retrieved 8 April 2010.
101. Fairfax 1648, Letter.
102. John 2008, p. 127.
103. Trevelyan 2002, p. 274.
104. Trevelyan 2002, pp. 274–75.
105. Newman 2006, p. 87.
106. Newman 2006, p. 89.
107. Trevelyan 2002, p. 275.
108. Gardiner 2006, p. 46.
109. Gardiner 2006, p. 12.
110. Aylmer 1980, p. 23.
111. Aylmer 1980, p. 22.
112. Aylmer 1980, p. 25.
113. Kelsey 2003, pp. 583–616.
114. Kirby 1999, p. 12 cites (1649) 4 State
Trials 995. Nalson, 29–32.
115. Stoyle 2011, "Overview: Civil War and
Revolution, 1603–1714".
116. Kirby 1999, p. 25.
117. Leniham 2008, p. 121.
118. Leniham 2008, p. 122.
119. Leniham 2008, p. 127.
120. Leniham 2008, p. 128.
121. Leniham 2008, p. 132.
122. Leniham 2008, pp. 135–136.
123. Carpenter 2005, p. 145.
124. Carpenter 2005, p. 146.
125. Brett 2008, p. 39.
126. Brett 2008, p. 41.
127. Reid & Turner 2004, p. 18.
128. Carpenter 2005, p. 158.
129. Carpenter 2005, p. 185.
130. Dand 1972, p. 20.
131. Weiser 2003, p. 1.
132. Atkin 2008, p. .
133. Plant, David. "Jersey & the Channel
Isles" . BCW Project.
134. Plant 2009.
135. Kennedy 2000, p. 96.
136. King 1968, p. 523–37.
137. Plant 2002.
138. White 2012.
139. Carlton 1992, pp. 211–14 .
140. Carlton 1992, p. 211 .
141. James 2003, p. 187 cites: Carlton
1995a, p. 212.
142. Royle 2006, p. 602.
143. Carlton 1992, p. 212 .
144. Carlton 1992, p. 213 .
145. Carlton 1992, p. 214 .
146. O'Riordan, Christopher (2001), Self-
determination and the London Transport
Workers in the Century of Revolution ,
archived from the original on 26 October
2009.
147. O'Riordan 1993, pp. 184–200.
148. Lindley 1997, p. 160.
149. Keeble 2002, p. 6.
150. Keeble 2002, p. 9.
151. Keeble 2002, p. 12.
152. Keeble 2002, p. 34.
153. Keeble 2002, p. 31.
154. Keeble 2002, p. 48.
155. Lodge 2007, pp. 5–6.
156. Lodge 2007, p. 6.
157. Lodge 2007, p. 8.
158. Kaye 1995, p. 106 quoting Hill from
his pamphlet The English Revolution 1640
159. Burgess 1990, pp. 609–27.
160. Russell 1973, p. .
161. Gaunt 2000, p. 60.
162. Gaunt 2000, pp. 60–61.
163. Ohlmeyer 2002.
164. Hobbes 1839, p. 220.
165. Kraynak 1990, p. 33.
166. Goldsmith 1966, pp. x–xiii.
167. Sommerville 2012.
168. Kraynak 1990.
169. Macgillivray 1970, p. 179.

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Further reading
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Civil War, Sutton
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Wars 1637–1660, Scarecrow Press
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Rebellion and Civil Wars in England:
Begun in the Year 1641: Volume I, Part
1 , Volume I, Part 2 , Volume II, Part 1 ,
Volume II, Part 2 , Volume III, Part 1 ,
Volume III, Part 2
Clarendon (1827), The Life of
Edward, Earl of Clarendon, in which
is included a Continuation of his
History of the Grand Rebellion,
Clarendon Press: Volume I ,
Volume II , Volume III
Cust, Richard; Hughes, Ann, eds.
(1997), The English Civil War, Arnold –
emphasis on historiography.
Gardiner, Samuel Rawson (1886–
1901), History of the Great Civil War,
1642–1649: Volume I (1642–1644) ;
Volume II (1644–1647) ; Volume III
(1645–1647) ; Volume IV (1647–
1649) , The basic narrative history
used by all other scholars.
Ludlow, Edmund (1894), C.H. Firth, ed.,
The Memoirs of Edmund Ludlow
Lieutenant-General of the Horse in the
Army of the Commonwealth of England
1625–1672, Oxford: Clarendon Press
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eds. (2013), England's wars of religion,
revisited, Ashgate – 14 scholars
discuss the argument of John Morrill
that the English Civil War was the last
war of religion, rather than the first
modern revolution. excerpt ;
historiography pp. 1–25.
Scott, Jonathan (2000), England's
Troubles: Seventeenth-century English
political instability in European context,
Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-
0-521-42334-2
Morgan, Hiram (March 2001),
"Jonathan Scott's major
reinterpretation of the seventeenth
century ... England's crisis is
viewed in European perspective" ,
Journal of Historical Research
(book review),
doi:10.14296/RiH/issn.1749.815
5
 Wiemann, Dirk, ed. (2016),
Perspectives on English Revolutionary
Republicanism, Routledge
Woolrych, Austin (2002), Britain in
revolution: 1625–1660, Oxford
University Press

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