Stuart

Presentation of the past as a seed-bed of modernity gives it bogus relevance to modern concerns. Two hundred and fifty years after the battle of Culloden Jeremy Black looks at a classic instance – the military challenge of the Jacobites.

On a cold January morning in 1649 Charles I stepped out onto a scaffold in Whitehall and into history, seen by some as a tyrant, by others as a martyr. But how far was the intellectual climate of mid-17th-century England ready for the republic that followed? Sarah Barber presents the latest thinking.

Penelope Corfield looks at the controversy about religion and ancien régime in the Georgian state and comes to a pluralist conclusion.

Graham Seel reassesses the career of Oliver Cromwell's predecessor as Parliamentary Commander in the 1640s, Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex, and argues that he has been harshly judged by English Civil War historians.

The way in which the church commemoration of King Charles I's 1649 execution became a potent instrument in the political war of words after the Restoration is examined, and the history of the king's execution and the clergy's promotion of the event are discussed.

Helen Davidson on a new search into recovering Charles I's treasure boat.

Blake Pinnell explains how an ancient tradition got out of hand and drained the public purse of 18th-century England.

Hated by many, mistrusted by all: a fair verdict on Randal MacDonnell the man who wheeled and dealed across Scotland and Ireland in the troubled era of Civil War and Commonwealth? Jane Ohlmeyer puts the man in his geographical and cultural context and re-evaluates his career and motives.

Richard Cavendish looks at the wide-ranging interests of The Georgian Group

Richard Cavendish looks at all things Stuart in the month when Charles I lost his head.