After an introduction establishing Cromwell's war against the Scots from July 1650 to May 1652, this book discusses Charles' landing and Fairfax's resignation as commander-in-chief of the English Republican Army, both events occurred on the same day. It then addresses the causes of the war, Charles II's landing in Northern Scotland from the Continent. The story continues chronologically, from Cromwell's invasion of Scotland, through the Battle of Dunbar, and the slow establishment of the king's power over the Scottish government. The end came with the fall of the last of the Scottish castles, Dunnottar, to English conquest. The Scots enjoyed a distinct military recovery after the Dunbar defeat, but their aims and those of the king were always at cross purposes: the king was intent on the invasion of England, the Scots on resistance to English conquest. Finally, Cromwell's manoeuvres in the summer of 1651, and the English victory at Inverkeithing, allowed the king to invade England. This ended in another Scots defeat at Worcester. The removal of the Scots Army to England meanwhile allowed the English under Monck to complete their conquest of Scotland. Throughout, the political dimension, particularly in Scotland, is kept in view. At the end, the author comments on the relevance of these events to the present Scottish situation.

Contains a biography of Oliver Cromwell.

Scots banished to the American plantations by Scottish courts due to various crimes between 1650-1775.

Cromwell's Convicts not only describes the Battle of Dunbar but concentrates on the grim fate of the soldiers taken prisoner after the battle. On 3 September 1650 Oliver Cromwell won a decisive victory over the Scottish Covenanters at the Battle of Dunbar – a victory that is often regarded as his finest hour – but the aftermath, the forced march of 5,000 prisoners from the battlefield to Durham, was one of the cruellest episodes in his career. The march took them seven days, without food and with little water, no medical care, the property of a ruthless regime determined to eradicate any possibility of further threat. Those who survived long enough to reach Durham found no refuge, only pestilence and despair. Exhausted, starving and dreadfully weakened, perhaps as many as 1,700 died from typhus and dysentery. Those who survived were condemned to hard labour and enforced exile in conditions of virtual slavery in a harsh new world across the Atlantic. Cromwell's Convicts describes their ordeal in detail and, by using archaeological evidence, brings the story right up to date. John Sadler and Rosie Serdiville describe the battle at Dunbar, but their main focus is on the lethal week-long march of the captives that followed. They make extensive use of archive material, retrace the route taken by the prisoners and describe the recent archaeological excavations in Durham which have identified some of the victims and given us a graphic reminder of their fate.

In the summer of 1745, Charles Edward Stuart, the grandson of England's King James II, landed on the western coast of Scotland intending to overthrow George II and restore the Stuart family to the throne. He gathered thousands of supporters, and the insurrection he led—the Jacobite Rising of 1745—was a crisis not only for Britain but for the entire British Empire. Rebellion and Savagery examines the 1745 rising and its aftermath on an imperial scale. Charles Edward gained support from the clans of the Scottish Highlands, communities that had long been derided as primitive. In 1745 the Jacobite Highlanders were denigrated both as rebels and as savages, and this double stigma helped provoke and legitimate the violence of the government's anti-Jacobite campaigns. Though the colonies stayed relatively peaceful in 1745, the rising inspired fear of a global conspiracy among Jacobites and other suspect groups, including North America's purported savages. The defeat of the rising transformed the leader of the army, the Duke of Cumberland, into a popular hero on both sides of the Atlantic. With unprecedented support for the maintenance of peacetime forces, Cumberland deployed new garrisons in the Scottish Highlands and also in the Mediterranean and North America. In all these places his troops were engaged in similar missions: demanding loyalty from all local inhabitants and advancing the cause of British civilization. The recent crisis gave a sense of urgency to their efforts. Confident that "a free people cannot oppress," the leaders of the army became Britain's most powerful and uncompromising imperialists. Geoffrey Plank argues that the events of 1745 marked a turning point in the fortunes of the British Empire by creating a new political interest in favor of aggressive imperialism, and also by sparking discussion of how the British should promote market-based economic relations in order to integrate indigenous peoples within their empire. The spread of these new political ideas was facilitated by a large-scale migration of people involved in the rising from Britain to the colonies, beginning with hundreds of prisoners seized on the field of battle and continuing in subsequent years to include thousands of men, women and children. Some of the migrants were former Jacobites and others had stood against the insurrection. The event affected all the British domains.

Behemoth, or The Long Parliament is essential to any reader interested in the historical context of the thought of Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). In De Cive (1642) and Leviathan (1651), the great political philosopher had developed an analytical framework for discussing sedition, rebellion, and the breakdown of authority. Behemoth, completed around 1668 and not published until after Hobbe's death, represents the systematic application of this framework to the English Civil War. In his insightful and substantial Introduction, Stephen Holmes examines the major themes and implications of Behemoth in Hobbes's system of thought. Holmes notes that a fresh consideration of Behemoth dispels persistent misreadings of Hobbes, including the idea that man is motivated solely by a desire for self-preservation. Behemoth, which is cast as a series of dialogues between a teacher and his pupil, locates the principal cause of the Civil War less in economic interests than in the stubborn irrationality of key actors. It also shows more vividly than any of Hobbe's other works the importance of religion in his theories of human nature and behavior.

The first volume in a pioneering account of Oliver Cromwell--providing a major new interpretation of one of the greatest figures in history Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658)--the only English commoner to become the overall head of state--is one of the great figures of history, but his character was very complex. He was at once courageous and devout, devious and self-serving; as a parliamentarian, he was devoted to his cause; as a soldier, he was ruthless. Cromwell's speeches and writings surpass in quantity those of any other ruler of England before Victoria and, for those seeking to understand him, he has usually been taken at his word. In this remarkable new work, Ronald Hutton untangles the facts from the fiction. Cromwell, pursuing his devotion to God and cementing his Puritan support base, quickly transformed from obscure provincial to military victor. At the end of the first English Civil War, he was poised to take power. Hutton reveals a man who was both genuine in his faith and deliberate in his dishonesty--and uncovers the inner workings of the man who has puzzled biographers for centuries.

Oliver Cromwell led the charge in the beheading of England's King Charles I in 1649. But little did he know that his own head would soon roll. And roll and roll-for the next three hundred years across the Commonwealth. This memoir recounts its journey through the centuries (1661-1960), all told from the head's perspective.

An investigation of how a man could become a Roman emperor, and the failure to create an enduring, consistent system for selecting the next emperor. John D. Grainger analyses the Roman imperial succession, demonstrating that the empire organized by Augustus was fundamentally flawed in the method it used to find emperors. Augustus’s system was a mixture of heredity, senatorial, and military influences, and these were generally antagonistic. Consequently, the Empire went through a series of crises, in which the succession to a previous, usually dead, emperor was the main issue. The infamous “Year of the Four Emperors,” AD 69, is only the most famous of these crises, which often involved bouts of bloody and destructive civil war, assassinations and purges. These were followed by a period, usually relatively short, in which the victor in the “crisis” established a new system, juggling the three basic elements identified by Augustus, but which was as fragile and short lived as its predecessor; these “consequences” of each crisis are discussed. The lucid and erudite text is supported by over 22 genealogical tables and 100 images illustrating the Emperors. Praise of The Roman Imperial Succession “For a general introduction to the question of how one becomes a Roman emperor, Grainger has provided a sound guide.” —Bryn Mawr Classical Review

'A compelling and wry narrative of one of the most intellectually thrilling eras of British history' Guardian. ***************** SHORTLISTED FOR THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE 2020 England, 1651. Oliver Cromwell has defeated his royalist opponents in two civil wars, executed the Stuart king Charles I, laid waste to Ireland, and crushed the late king's son and his Scottish allies. He is master of Britain and Ireland. But Parliament, divided between moderates, republicans and Puritans of uncompromisingly millenarian hue, is faction-ridden and disputatious. By the end of 1653, Cromwell has become 'Lord Protector'. Seeking dragons for an elect Protestant nation to slay, he launches an ambitious 'Western Design' against Spain's empire in the New World. When an amphibious assault on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola in 1655 proves a disaster, a shaken Cromwell is convinced that God is punishing England for its sinfulness. But the imposition of the rule of the Major-Generals – bureaucrats with a penchant for closing alehouses – backfires spectacularly. Sectarianism and fundamentalism run riot. Radicals and royalists join together in conspiracy. The only way out seems to be a return to a Parliament presided over by a king. But will Cromwell accept the crown? Paul Lay narrates in entertaining but always rigorous fashion the story of England's first and only experiment with republican government: he brings the febrile world of Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate to life, providing vivid portraits of the extraordinary individuals who inhabited it and capturing its dissonant cacophony of political and religious voices. ***************** Reviews: 'Briskly paced and elegantly written, Providence Lost provides us with a first-class ticket to this Cromwellian world of achievement, paradox and contradiction. Few guides take us so directly, or so sympathetically, into the imaginative worlds of that tumultuous decade' John Adamson, The Times. 'Providence Lost is a learned, lucid, wry and compelling narrative of the 1650s as well as a sensitive portrayal of a man unravelled by providence' Jessie Childs, Guardian.