This is the first book-length treatment of the ‘turncoat’ John Poyer, the man who initiated the Second Civil War through his rebellion in south Wales in 1648. The volume charts Poyer’s rise from a humble glover in Pembroke to become parliament’s most significant supporter in Wales during the First Civil War (1642–6), and argues that he was a more complex and significant individual than most commentators have realised. Poyer’s involvement in the poisonous factional politics of the post-war period (1646–8) is examined, and newly discovered material demonstrates how his career offers fresh insights into the relationship between national and local politics in the 1640s, the use of print and publicity by provincial interest groups, and the importance of local factionalism in understanding the course of the civil war in south Wales. The volume also offers a substantial analysis of Poyer’s posthumous reputation after his execution by firing squad in April 1649.

This work, first published in 1662 and reissued here in a two-volume 1811 edition, describes England and Wales by county.

Sleepy rustic Carmarthenshire was secretly a hotbed of debauchery, violence and drunkenness according to Russell Davies in a new edition of his very successful book, ‘Secret Sins’. Behind the facade of idyllic rural life, there was a twilight world of mental illness, suicide, crime, vicious assaults, infanticide, cruelty and other assorted acts of depravity. This almost anecdotal historical study is often funny, sometimes disturbing, always revealing.

The word ""Flemish"" refers to the people living in the North of Belgium and France and the South of the Netherlands. The Flemish, also called ""Flemings,"" are of Germanic (Frank) origin. When the Franks invaded what is now Belgium, they settled between the sea and the ""charcoal forest,"" a dense old-growth forest of beech and oak, which extended to the Rhine and formed a natural boundary during the Late Iron Age through Roman times into the Early Middle Ages. The county of Flanders was created 864 when the French king Charles the Bald granted it as a fief to his son-in-law Baldwin with the Iron Arm. Flanders was a part of France but distinguished itself from the rest of the country with its Germanic Flemish population and close economic ties to England. Unlike other French fiefs it was never returned to the French king's control, instead Flanders became a part of the duke of Burgundy's possessions in 1384, which would evolve into present day Belgium.

A concise, original overview of the History of English, focusing on its early development and subsequent spread around the world.