English Civil War

The term English Civil War (or Wars) refers to the series of armed conflicts and political machinations which took place between English Parliamentarians and Royalists from 1642 until 1651. The first (1642–1645) and the second (1648–1649) civil 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 third war ended with the Parliamentary victory at the Battle of Worcester on September 3, 1651.

Introduction

The wars inextricably mingled with and formed part of a linked series of conflicts and civil wars between 1639 and 1651 in the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland, which at that time shared a monarch but formed distinct countries with otherwise separate political structures. Those recent historians who aim to have a unified overview (rather than treating parts of the other conflicts as background to the English Civil War) sometimes call these linked conflicts the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Some have also described them as the "British Civil Wars", but this terminology can mislead: the three kingdoms did not become a single political entity until the Act of Union between the Kingdom of Ireland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales), in 1800.

The wars led to the trial and execution of Charles I, the exile of his son Charles II, and the replacement of the English monarchy with the Commonwealth of England (1649–1653) and then with a Protectorate (1653–1659): the personal rule of Oliver Cromwell. The monopoly of the Church of England on Christian worship in England came to an end, and the victors consolidated the already-established Protestant aristocracy in Ireland. Constitutionally, the wars established a precedent that British monarchs could not govern without the consent of Parliament.

Unlike other civil wars in England which focused on who ruled, this war also concerned itself with the manner of governing the British isles. Accordingly, historians also refer to the English Civil War as the English Revolution and (especially in 17th century Royalist circles) as the Great Rebellion.

Background

The King's aspirations

File:Charels I by Daniel Mytens in 1631.jpg

Charles I in 1631, by Daniel Mytens.

Contemporaries must have found it unthinkable that a civil war could result from the events taking place. War broke out less than forty years after the death of the popular Elizabeth I in 1603. At the accession of Charles I, England and Scotland 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, James I of England (James VI of Scotland). 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 a doctrine called the "Divine Right of Kings"), the suspicions of the Parliamentarians had some justification.

Although pious and with little personal ambition, Charles demanded outright loyalty in return for "just rule". He considered any questioning of his orders as, at best, insulting. This latter trait, and a series of events, seemingly minor on their own, led to a serious break between Charles and his English Parliament, and eventually to war.

Parliament in the English constitutional framework

Before the fighting, the Parliament of England did not have a permanent role in the English system of government, instead functioning as a temporary advisory committee — summoned by the monarch whenever the Crown required additional tax revenue, and subject to dissolution by the monarch at any time. Because responsibility for collecting taxes lay in the hands of the gentry, the English kings needed the help of that stratum of society in order to ensure the smooth collection of that revenue. If the gentry were to refuse to collect the King's taxes, he would lack the authority to compel them. Parliaments allowed representatives of the gentry to meet, confer and send policy-proposals to the monarch in the form of Bills. These representatives did not, however, have any means of forcing their will upon the king — except by withholding the financial means he required to execute his plans.

Mounting concerns

One of the first events to cause concern about Charles I came with his marriage to a French Roman Catholic princess, Henrietta Maria. The marriage occurred within months of Charles's accession to the throne in 1625. A royal marriage with a foreign princess — commonplace at the time — caused no alarm as such; but Charles's choice of a Catholic bride made him a potential Papist in the eyes of the small but powerful Puritan minority in Parliament, who constituted around one-third of the assembly's members at the time. For many of his subjects, Charles's suspected "Papism" gave cause for concern for at least two reasons:

because the King functioned as the head of the established Church in England, his Bishops, at his request, could possibly stipulate religious practices closer to those of Rome
the English (since the papal excommunication of Henry VIII in 1533), had long associated Roman Catholicism with invasion threats and with political policy imposed from abroad.

A potentially more troublesome issue arose with Charles' insistence on joining in the Thirty Years' War conflicts then raging in Europe, which he saw as something of a crusade. This alone might not have caused a problem, except that Charles had placed his own "favourite", George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, in command. Parliament showed some degree of suspicion towards Buckingham, with whom they had had to deal under James as well, and eventually they decided to support the war-effort only on the condition of the potential recall of Buckingham if his performance did not meet expectations. The Parliament of 1625 then granted the king the right to collect customs duties for only a year at a time and not, (as tradionally) for his entire reign. After a disastrous raid on France, Parliament dismissed Buckingham in 1626, and Charles, furious at what he considered insolence and fearful that they might impeach his favourite, dismissed the Parliament.

Petition of Right

Having dissolved Parliament, and unable to raise money without it, the king assembled a new one in 1628. The elected members included Oliver Cromwell. The new Parliament drew up the Petition of Right in 1628, and Charles accepted it as a concession in order to get his subsidy. Amongst other things the Petition referred to the Magna Carta and said that a citizen should have freedom from:

arbitrary arrest and imprisonment,
non-parliamentary taxation,
the enforced billeting of troops, and
martial law.

However, Charles now determined to rule without summoning another Parliament, and this required him to devise new means of raising extraordinary revenue. The revival and extension of ship money became one of the most controversial of these policies. Medieval English governments had levied this tax on seaports, but Charles extended it to inland counties as well. According to Charles and his supporters, the Government needed ship money as a levy for the Royal Navy. As a requirement for the defence of the realm, they argued, it lay within the legitimate scope of the royal prerogative.

But Parliament had not approved the tax, and a number of prominent men refused to pay it on these grounds. Reprisals against Sir John Eliot, one of the prime movers behind the Petition of Right, and the prosecution of William Prynne and John Hampden (fined after losing their case 7 to 5 for refusing to pay ship money and for making a stand against the legality of the tax) aroused widespread indignation. Charles' use of the Court of Star Chamber in this issue also angered many, as the people had always seen the Star Chamber as the citizenry's last appeal against the monarch's power, but now apparently being used against them.

The Eleven Years' Tyranny and the rebellion in Scotland

Charles I managed to avoid calling a Parliament for a decade. Depending upon one's political affiliation, this time was known either as the "Eleven Years' Tyranny" or "Charles' Personal Rule". This policy broke down when he was involved in a series of disastrous and expensive wars against his Scottish subjects, the Bishops' Wars of 1639 and 1640.

Charles believed in a sacramental version of the Church of England, called High Anglicanism, with a theology based upon Arminianism, a belief shared by his main political advisor, Archbishop William Laud. Laud was appointed by Charles as the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633 and started a series of reforms in the Church to make it more ceremonial, starting with the replacement of the wooden communion tables with stone altars.

Puritans accused Laud of trying to reintroduce Catholicism, and when they complained, Laud 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 to suffer, and one that aroused anger.

As part of Charles' plan to have one uniform High Anglican church across all three kingdoms, he forced the English Common Prayer Book upon Scotland. Scottish Presbyterians reacted explosively when it was introduced in the spring of 1638 with riots started in Edinburgh by Jenny Geddes leading to the National Covenant, that sought to purge bishops from the Church of Scotland altogether. Charles took a year to raise an army, and sent it north in 1639 to end the rebellion. After a disastrous skirmish he decided to seek a truce, the Pacification of Berwick, and was humiliated by being forced to agree not only not to interfere with religion in Scotland, but to pay the Scottish war expenses as well.

Local grievances

In the summer of 1642, these national troubles helped to polarize 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 livelihoods of thousands of people were negatively affected by the imposition of drainage schemes in The Fens after the King awarded a number of drainage contracts. The King was regarded by many as worse than insensitive and this was important in bringing a large part of eastern England into Parliament’s camp. This sentiment brought with it people like 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 Edge Hill.

Recall of Parliament

Charles needed to suppress the rebellion in his northern realm—he was insufficiently funded, however, and was forced to seek money from a recalled Parliament in 1640. Parliament took this appeal for money as an opportunity to discuss grievances against the Crown; moreover, they were opposed to the military option. Charles took exception to this lèse-majesté and dismissed the Parliament. The name "the Short Parliament" was derived from this summary dismissal. Without Parliament's support, Charles attacked Scotland again and was comprehensively defeated; the Scots, seizing the moment, took Northumberland and Durham.

Meanwhile, another of Charles's chief advisers, Thomas Wentworth, 1st Viscount Wentworth, had risen to the role of Lord Deputy of Ireland in 1632 and brought in much needed revenue for Charles by persuading the Irish Catholic gentry to pay new taxes in return for promised religious concessions. In 1639, he had been recalled to England and in 1640, was created Earl of Strafford, as Charles attempted to have him work his magic again in Scotland. This time he was not so lucky, and the English forces fled the field in their second encounter with the Scots in 1640. 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.

The Long Parliament

In desperate straits, Charles was obliged to summon Parliament in November 1640; this was the "Long Parliament." None of the issues raised in the Short Parliament had been addressed, and Parliament took the opportunity to raise them again, refusing to be dismissed. Under the leadership of John Pym and John Hampden, a law was passed which stated that Parliament should be reformed every three years, and removed the king's right to dissolve the Long Parliament without Parliament's consent. Other laws passed by the Long Parliament made it illegal for the king to impose his own taxes, and later, gave members control over the king's ministers.

With Ireland apparently peaceful after Strafford's able administration of eight years, Charles thought he saw a way out—Strafford had raised an Irish Catholic army and was prepared to use it against Scotland. Of course the very thought of a Catholic army campaigning against the Scots from Protestant England was considered outrageous by the parliamentary party. In early 1641 Strafford was arrested and sent to the Tower of London, charged with treason. John Pym made the claim that Wentworth's statements of readiness to campaign against "the kingdom" were in fact directed at England itself. The case could not be proven, so the House of Commons, led by John Pym and Henry Vane, resorted to a Bill of Attainder. Unlike treason, attainder required not only the burden of proof, but also the king's signature. Charles, still incensed over the Common's handling of Buckingham, refused. Wentworth himself, hoping to head off the war he saw looming, wrote to the king and asked him to reconsider. Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, was executed on May 12, 1641.

Instead of saving the country from war, Wentworth's sacrifice in fact doomed it to one. Within months, the Irish Catholics, fearing a resurgence of Protestant power, struck first, and the entire country soon descended into chaos. Rumours circulated that the Irish were being supported by the king, and Puritan members of the Commons were soon agitating that this was the sort of thing Charles had in store for all of them.

On January 4, 1642, Charles attempted to arrest five members of the House of Commons (John Hampden, John Pym, Arthur Haselrig, Denzil Holles, and William Strode) on a charge of treason; this attempt failed, however, as the five members received a tip-off and, prior to the arrival of the king with a party of soldiers, went into hiding. When the troops marched into Parliament, Charles asked William Lenthall, the Speaker, where the five were. Lenthall replied "May it please your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as the House [of Commons] is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here". In other words, the Speaker proclaimed himself a servant of Parliament, rather than of the King. Parliamentary supporters took to arms to protect the five men as they escaped across London.

The First English Civil War

Main article First English Civil War.

The "Long Parliament", having controverted the king's authority, raised an army led by Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex. This army had a twofold purpose: to defeat both an invasion from Scotland and also to prevent the attempts by the King and his supporters to restore the monarchy's power. Charles I, in the meantime, had left London and also raised an army using the archaic system of a Commission of Array. He raised the royal standard at Nottingham in August.

In September 1642, King Charles I raised his standard in the market square of Wellington, a small, though highly influential, market town in the English Midland county of Shropshire and addressed his troops the next day at nearby Orleton Hall. He declared that he would uphold the Protestant Religion, the Laws of England, and the Liberty of Parliament.

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 throughout the British Isles. Many areas attempted to remain neutral but 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, supporters of Parliament sought radical changes in religion and economic policy and major reforms in the distribution of power at the national level. In addition, Parliament was not a united body; at one point in the nine years of war, there were more members of the Commons and Lords in the King's Oxford Parliament than there were at Westminster.

Parliament did, however, have more resources at its disposal, due to its possession of all major cities including the large arsenals at Hull and London. For his part, Charles hoped that quick victories would negate Parliament's advantage in materiel. This precipitated the first major siege, the first siege of Hull in July 1642, which provided a decisive victory for Parliament.

The first pitched battle at Edgehill proved inconclusive, but both the Royalist and Parliamentarian sides claimed it as a victory. One of the king's outstanding officers, his nephew, Prince Rupert of the Palatinate, proved himself a dashing cavalry commander. (A Parliamentarian cavalry troop raised by a country gentleman, evangelical puritan, and Member of Parliament named Oliver Cromwell also played a minor part in the battle. Cromwell would later devise the New Model Army system still evident in military organisation today. The New Model featured a unified command structure and professionalism, which would swing the military advantage firmly towards Parliament.) The second field action of the war, the stand-off at Turnham Green, saw Charles forced to withdraw to Oxford. This city would serve as his base for the remainder of the war.

In 1643 the Royalist forces won at Adwalton Moor and gained control of most of Yorkshire. 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, and subsequently joined forces with Sir John Brereton to fight the inconclusive battle of Hopton Heath, where the Royalist commander, the Earl of Northampton, was killed. Subsequent battles in the west of England at Lansdowne and at Roundway Down also went to the Royalists. Prince Rupert could then take Bristol. In the same year, Oliver Cromwell formed his troop of "Ironsides", a disciplined unit which demonstrated his military leadership ability. With their assistance, he was victorious at the Battle of Gainsborough in July.

In the 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 and then brushed the Royalist army aside at the First Battle of Newbury, in order to return triumphantly to London. Other Parliamentarian forces won the Battle of Winceby, giving them control of Lincoln. Political manoeuvring on both sides now led Charles to negotiate a ceasefire in Ireland, freeing up English troops to fight on the Royalist side, while Parliament offered concessions to the Scots in return for aid and assistance.

Parliament won at Marston Moor in 1644, gaining York with the help of the Scots. Cromwell's conduct in this battle proved decisive; and demonstrated his potential as a political or military leader. The defeat at the Battle of Lostwithiel in Cornwall, however, marked a serious reverse for Parliament in the south-west of England.

In 1645, Parliament reorganized 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. In what were, in retrospect, two decisive engagements—the Battles of Naseby on June 14 and of Langport on July 10—Charles's armies were effectively destroyed.

In the remains of his English realm, Charles attempted to recover stability by consolidating the Midlands. He began to form an axis between Oxford and Newark on Trent, Nottinghamshire. Those towns had become fortresses and were more reliably loyal to him than to others. He took Leicester, which lies between them, but found his resources exhausted. Having little opportunity to replenish them, on May 1646, he sought shelter with a Scottish army at Southwell in Nottinghamshire. This marked the end of the First English Civil War.

The Second English Civil War

Main article Second English Civil War.

Charles I took advantage of this deflection of attention away from himself to negotiate a new agreement with the Scots, again promising church reform on December 28, 1647. Although Charles himself was still a prisoner, this agreement led inexorably to the Second Civil War.

A series of Royalist uprisings throughout England and a Scottish invasion occurred in the summer of 1648. Most of the uprisings in England were put down by forces loyal to Parliament 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.

In the spring of 1648 unpaid parliamentarian troops in Wales changed sides. The Royalist rebels were defeated by Colonel Thomas Horton at the battle of St. Fagans (May 8) and the rebel leaders surrendered to Cromwell on July 11 after the protracted two month siege of Pembroke. A Royalist uprising in Kent was defeated by Sir Thomas Fairfax at the battle of Maidstone on June 24. 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 were in arms in great numbers. Fairfax soon drove the enemy into Colchester, but the first attack on the town was repulsed and he had to settle down to a long siege.

In the North of England Major-General John Lambert fought very successful campaign against a number of Royalist uprisings. The largest was that of Sir Marmaduke Langdale in Cumberland. Thanks to the successes of Lambert and the Scottish commander the Duke of Hamilton was forced to take the west route through Carlisle for the Royalist Scottish invasion of England. The Parliamentarians under Cromwell engaged the Scots at the Battle of Preston (August 17 – August 19). The battle was fought 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. 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 honourable Royalists, like Lord Astley, refused to break their word by taking any part in the second war. So the victors in the Second Civil War were not merciful to those who had brought war into the land again. On the evening of the surrender of Colchester, Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle were shot. The leaders of the Welsh rebels Major-General Rowland Laugharne, Colonel John Poyer and Colonel Rice Powel were sentenced to death, but Poyer alone was executed on April 25 1649, being the victim selected by lot. 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 March 9.

Trial of Charles I for treason

The betrayal by Charles caused Parliament to debate whether Charles should be returned to power at all. Those who still supported Charles's place on the throne tried once more to negotiate with him.

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. 45 Members of Parliament (MPs) were arrested; 146 were kept out of parliament. Only 75 were allowed in, and then only at the army's bidding. This Rump Parliament was ordered to set up a high court of justice in order to try Charles I for treason in the name of the people of England.

The trial reached its forgone conclusion. 59 Commissioners (judges) found Charles I guilty of high treason, being a "tyrant, traitor, murderer and public enemy". He was beheaded on a scaffold in front of the Banqueting House of the Palace of Whitehall on January 30, 1649. At the Restoration the regicides who were still alive and not living in exile were either executed or sentenced to life imprisonment.

The Third English Civil War

Main article Third English Civil War.

Ireland

See also the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland.

Ireland had known continuous war since the rebellion of 1641, with most of the island controlled by the Irish Confederates. 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. The joint Royalist and Confederate forces under Ormonde attempted to eliminate the Parliamentary army holding Dublin, but were routed at the Battle of Rathmines. As the former Member of Parliament Admiral Robert Blake blockaded Prince Rupert's fleet in Kinsale, Oliver Cromwell was able to land at Dublin on August 15, 1649 with the army to quell Royalist alliance in Ireland. Cromwell's suppression of the Royalists in Ireland during 1649 still has a strong resonance for many Irish people. The massacre of nearly 3,500 people in Drogheda after its capture—comprising around 2,700 Royalist soldiers and all the men in the town carrying arms, including civilians, prisoners, and Catholic priests—is one of the historical memories that has driven Irish-English and Catholic-Protestant strife during the last three centuries. However, the massacre is significant mainly as a symbol of the Irish perception of Cromwellian cruelty, as far more people died in the subsequent guerrilla and scorched earth fighting in the country than at infamous massacres such as Drogheda and Wexford. The Parliamentarian conquest of Ireland ground on for another four years until 1653, when the last Irish Confederate and Royalist troops surrendered. It has been estimated that up to 30% of Ireland's population either died or were exiled by the end of the wars. Almost all Irish Catholic owned land was confiscated in the wake of the conquest and distributed to the Parliament's creditors, to the Parliamentary soldiers who served in Ireland, and to English people who had settled there before the war.

Scotland

The execution of Charles I altered the dynamics of the Scottish Civil War, which had been raging between Royalists and Covenanters since 1644. By 1649, the Royalists there were in dissaray and their erstwhile leader, the Earl of Montrose, was in exile. At first, Charles II encouraged Montrose to raise a Highland army to fight on the Royalist side. However, when the Scottish Covenanters (who did not agree with the execution of Charles I and who feared for the future of Presbyterianism and Scottish independence 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, had already landed was unable to abandon the fight. He was unable to raise many Highland clans and his army was defeated at Carbisdale in Ross-shire on April 27, 1650. Montrose was captured shortly afterwards and taken to Edinburgh, where on May 20 he was sentenced to death by the Scottish parliament and was hanged the next day. Charles landed in Scotland at Garmouth in Morayshire on June 23 1650 and signed the 1638 National Covenant and the 1643 Solemn League and Covenant immediately after coming ashore.

With his original Scottish Royalist followers and his new Covenanter allies, King Charles II was considered to be 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 crossed the Irish channel to Scotland. He arrived in Scotland on July 22 1650 and proceeded to lay siege to Edinburgh. By the end of August, his army was reduced by disease and a shortage of supplies, and he was forced to order a retreat towards England. A Scottish army, assembled under the command of David Leslie, tried to block the retreat, but the Scotts were defeated at the Battle of Dunbar on September 3. 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. 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 the August 14 and Dundee on September 1. The next year, 1652, the remnants of Royalist resistance were mopped up and under the terms of the "Tender of Union", the Scots were given 30 seats in a united Parliament in London, with General Monck appointed as the military governor of Scotland.

England

Although Cromwell's New Model Army had defeated a Scottish army at Dunbar, Cromwell was unable to prevent Charles II from marching from Scotland deep into England at the head of another Royalist army. The Royalist army marched to the west of England because it was in that area that English Royalist sympathies were strongest, 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 the new king at Worcester on September 3, 1651, and defeated him. Charles II escaped, via safe houses and a famous oak tree to France, ending the civil wars.

Political control

During the course of the Wars, a number of successive committees were established by the Parliamentarians to oversee the war effort. The first of these was the Committee of Safety, created in July 1642, which comprised 15 Members of Parliament.

Following the Anglo-Scottish alliance against the Royalists, it was replaced by the Committee of Both Kingdoms between 1644 and 1648, when it was dissolved as the alliance ended. The English members of the former Committee for Both Kingdoms continued to meet and became known as the Derby House Committee. This in turn was replaced by a second Committee of Safety.

Aftermath

Estimates suggest that around 10 percent of the three kingdoms' population may have died during the civil wars. As usual in wars of this era, disease caused more deaths than combat did.

The wars left England, Ireland and Scotland as three of 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) during 1649 — 1653 and 1659 — 1660. Between the two periods, and due to in-fighting amongst various factions in Parliament, Oliver Cromwell ruled over The Protectorate as Lord Protector (effectively a military dictator) until his death in 1658.

Upon his death, Oliver Cromwell's son, Richard, became Lord Protector. But the Army had little confidence in him. After seven months the Army removed Richard and in May 1659 it reinstalled the Rump. However, this too was dissolved shortly afterwards, since it acted as though nothing had changed since 1653 and so it could treat the Army how it liked. After the dissolution of the Rump in October 1659, a real prospect of a total descent into anarchy loomed as the Army's pretence of unity finally dissolved into factions.

Into this atmosphere General George Monck, governor of Scotland under the Cromwells, marched south with his army from Scotland. On April 4 1660, in the Declaration of Breda Charles II made known the conditions of his acceptance of the crown of England. Monck organised the Convention Parliament, which met for the first time on April 25. On May 8 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 May 23. Later in London, on May 29, he was acclaimed king. His coronation took place at Westminster Abbey on 23 April 1661. These events became known as the English Restoration.

As they resulted in the restoration of the monarchy with the consent of Parliament, the civil wars effectively set England and Scotland on course to adopt a parliamentary monarchy form of government. This system would result in the outcome that the United Kingdom, formed under the Acts of Union, would avoid participation in the European republican movements that followed the Jacobin revolution in 18th-century France and the later success of Napoleon. Specifically, future monarchs became wary of pushing Parliament too hard, and Parliament effectively chose the line of succession in 1688 with the Glorious Revolution and 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.

Theories relating to the English Civil War

Throughout the greater part of the 20th century, two schools of thought dominated theoretical explanations of the Civil War: the Marxists and the 'Whigs'. Both of them explained the English seventeenth century in terms of long-term trends.

Whigs explained the Civil War as the result of a centuries-long struggle between Parliament (especially the House of Commons) and the monarchy. Parliament fought to defend the traditional rights of Englishmen, while the monarchy attempted on every occasion to expand its right to dictate law arbitrarily. The most important Whig historian, S.R. Gardiner, popularized the idea of describing the civil war as a 'Puritan Revolution' which challenged the repressive nature of the Stuart church and paved the way for the religious toleration of the Restoration. Puritanism, in this view, became the natural ally of a people seeking to preserve their traditional rights against the arbitrary power of the monarchy.

The Marxist school of thought, which became popular in the 1940s, interpreted the Civil War as a bourgeois revolution. In the words of Christopher Hill, "the Civil War was a class war". On the side of reaction stood the landed aristocracy and its ally, the established church. On the other side stood (again, according to Hill) "the trading and industrial classes in town and countryside, [...] the yeomen and progressive gentry, and [...] wider masses of the population whenever they were able by free discussion to understand what the struggle was really about". The Civil War occurred at the point in English history at which the wealthy middle classes, already a powerful force in society, liquidated the outmoded medieval system of English government. Like the Whigs, the Marxists found a place for the role of religion in their account. Puritanism as a moral system ideally suited the bourgeois class, and so the Marxists identified Puritans as inherently bourgeois.

Beginning in the 1970s, a new generation of historians began mounting challenges to the Marxist and Whig theories. This began with the publication in 1973 of the anthology The Origins of the English Civil War (edited by Conrad Russell). These historians disliked the way that Marxists and Whigs explained the Civil War in terms of long-term trends in English society. The new historians called for, and began producing, studies which focussed on the minute particulars of the years immediately preceding the war, thus returning in some ways to the sort of contingency-based historiography of Clarendon's famous contemporary history of the civil war. As a result, they have demonstrated that the pattern of allegiances in the war did not fit the theories of Whig and Marxist historians. Puritans, for example, did not necessarily ally themselves with Parliamentarians, and many of them did not identify as bourgeois; many bourgeois fought on the side of the King; many landed aristocrats supported Parliament.

The new generation of historians (commonly called 'Revisionists') have discredited large sections of the Whig and Marxist interpretations of the war. Many of these historians (such as Jane Ohlmeyer) have discarded the title 'English Civil War' and replaced it with the 'Wars of the three Kingdoms' or even the geographically arguable but politically incorrect 'British Civil Wars'. This forms part of a wider trend in British history towards the study of the whole of the British Isles (IONA). This trend is largely a reaction to what is perceived as 'Anglocentric' history, which concentrates on England and ignores or marginalizes other parts of the British Isles. These revisionist historians argue that one cannot fully understand the English civil war in isolation; it needs to stand as just one conflict in a series of interlocking conflicts throughout the British Isles. They see the causes of the war as a consequence arising from one king, Charles I, ruling over multiple kingdoms. For example, the wars unfolded when Charles I tried to impose an Anglican prayer book on Scotland; when the Scots resisted he declared war on them, but had to raise heavy taxes in England to pay for campaigning, which triggered the Civil War in England.

Re-enactments

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.

External links

Civil War Newark All about the castles, sieges and defences of the English Civil war (in Newark, near Nottingham)
Lecture 7: The English Civil War An essay on the Politics of the English Civil War
English Civil War Chronology World History Database
The Wars of the Three Kingdoms The British and Irish Civil Wars article by Jane Ohlmeyer, who argues that the English Civil War formed just one of an interlocking set of conflicts that encompassed the British Isles in the mid-seventeenth century
The Civil War around Birmingham 1642–1648
The English Revolution 1640 by Christopher Hill, Pub Lawrence and Wishart, 1940.

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