The origins, nature and consequence of the English Civil War are subjects of continuing historical controversy. The English Civil War and Revolution is a wide ranging, accessible sourcebook covering the principal aspects of the mid-seventeenth century crisis. It presents a comprehensive guide to the historiographical debates involved. Drawing on a variety of source material such as official records, private correspondence, diaries, minutes of debates and petitions, this text provides: * contextual introductions to documents * a comprehensive glossary of seventeenth century terms * a chronology of events for reference * illustrations, including contemporary woodcuts. While familiarising students with some of the main sources drawn upon by historians working in the field, The English Civil War and Revolution contains many extracts from unpublished, manuscript sources. By taking sources from all levels of society and grouping them thematically, this book offers a number of viewpoints on the civil war and revolution, thus aiding understanding of this complex period.

The sequence of civil wars that ripped England apart in the seventeenth century was the single most traumatic event in this country between the medieval Black Death and the two world wars. Indeed, it is likely that a greater percentage of the population were killed in the civil wars than in the First World War. This sense of overwhelming trauma gives this major new history its title: God’s Fury, England’s Fire. The name of a pamphlet written after the king’s surrender, it sums up the widespread feeling within England that the seemingly endless nightmare that had destroyed families, towns and livelihoods was ordained by a vengeful God – that the people of England had sinned and were now being punished. As with all civil wars, however, ‘God’s fury’ could support or destroy either side in the conflict. Was God angry at Charles I for failing to support the true, protestant, religion and refusing to work with Parliament? Or was God angry with those who had dared challenge His anointed Sovereign? Michael Braddick’s remarkable book gives the reader a vivid and enduring sense both of what it was like to live through events of uncontrollable violence and what really animated the different sides. The killing of Charles I and the declaration of a republic – events which even now seem in an English context utterly astounding – were by no means the only outcomes, and Braddick brilliantly describes the twists and turns that led to the most radical solutions of all to the country’s political implosion. He also describes very effectively the influence of events in Scotland, Ireland and the European mainland on the conflict in England. God’s Fury, England’s Fire allows readers to understand once more the events that have so fundamentally marked this country and which still resonate centuries after their bloody ending.

A brilliant appraisal of the Civil War and its long-term consequences, by an acclaimed historian. The political upheaval of the mid-seventeenth century has no parallel in English history. Other events have changed the occupancy and the powers of the throne, but the conflict of 1640-60 was more dramatic: the monarchy and the House of Lords were abolished, to be replaced by a republic and military rule. In this wonderfully readable account, Blair Worden explores the events of this period and their origins - the war between King and Parliament, the execution of Charles I, Cromwell's rule and the Restoration - while aiming to reveal something more elusive: the motivations of contemporaries on both sides and the concerns of later generations.

Dividing the nation and causing massive political change, the English Civil War remains one of the most decisive and dramatic conflicts of English history. Lawrence Stone's account of the factors leading up to the deposition of Charles I in 1642 is widely regarded as a classic in the field. Brilliantly synthesising the historical, political and sociological interpretations of the seventeeth century, Stone explores theories of revolution and traces the social and economic change that led to this period of instability. The picture that emerges is one where historical interpretation is enriched but not determined by grand theories in the social sciences and, as Stone elegantly argues, one where the upheavals of the seventeenth century are central to the very story of modernity. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new foreword by Clare Jackson, Trinity Hall, Cambridge.

Basing his study on extensive new research Professor Russell provides the fullest account yet available of the origins of one of the most significant events in British history.

Ian Gentles provides a riveting, in-depth analysis of the battles and sieges, as well as the political and religious struggles that underpinned them. Based on extensive archival and secondary research he undertakes the first sustained attempt to arrive at global estimates of the human and economic cost of the wars. The many actors in the drama are appraised with subtlety. Charles I, while partly the author of his own misfortune, is shown to have been at moments an inspirational leader. The English Revolution and the Wars in the Three Kingdoms is a sophisticated, comprehensive, exciting account of the sixteen years that were the hinge of British and Irish history. It encompasses politics and war, personalities and ideas, embedding them all in a coherent and absorbing narrative.

All but one of the essays were originally delivered as lectures at Eton College. Includes bibliographies.

This firmly established essential guide to the literature in the field appears here in a much revised third edition. New chapters are included on twentieth-century historians’ treatments of social complexities, politics, political culture and revisionism, and on the Revolution’s unstoppable reverberations. All the other chapters have been amended and recast to take account of recent publications. The book provides a searching re-examination of why the English Revolution remains such a provocatively controversial subject and analyzes the different ways in which historians over the last three centuries have tried to explain its causes, course and consequences. Clarendon, Hume, Macaulay, Gardiner, Tawney, Hill, and the present-day revisionists are given extended treatment, while discussion of the work of numerous other historians is integrated into a coherent, informative and immensely readable survey.

This volume in the Problems in Focus series provides a concise summary of arguments about the causes of the English Civil War, and of the present state of historical research in this field. The nine contributors, experts in the subject they write on, cover such issues as: whether there was any economic clash between the two sides in the Civil War; whether they represented two conflicting cultures; whether the issues involved were European or purely English; whether there is any connection between Puritanism and revolution; and what was involved in the fear of Popery. In many areas this integrated collection of original studies breaks new ground, and brings the student up to date with current research, much of it published here for the first time. It concentrates on central themes of debate for which clarification is most useful to students. Though primarily intended for historians, its treatment of social and cultural factors makes it useful to interdisciplinary studies and to students of literature and society in the seventeenth century.

John Morrill has been at the forefront of modern attempts to explain the origins, nature and consequences of the English Revolution. These twenty essays -- seven either specially written or reproduced from generally inaccessible sources -- illustrate the main scholarly debates to which he has so richly contributed: the tension between national and provincial politics; the idea of the English Revolution as "the last of the European Wars of Religion''; its British dimension; and its political sociology. Taken together, they offer a remarkably coherent account of the period as a whole.