English Civil War

Hugh Trevor-Roper recounts how the “Cromwellian Exiles” returned from abroad to restore the English Church's episcopal structure.

Maurice Cranston assesses the background and impact to Thomas Hobbes' masterwork of religious and political philosophy.

Hugh Trevor-Roper attempts to unravel the mystery surrounding authorship of Charles I's purported last testament.

A.H. Burne assesses the achievements of the leading generals of the first English Civil War.

C.V. Wedgwood challenges the accepted view of Charles I's fated minister, Thomas Wentworth.

Both the religious and the secular celebration of Christmas was forbidden by the English Puritan republic, but by no means everywhere with success.

D.H. Pennington uses the diary notes of a contemporary MP to give readers a real sense of the dramatic atmosphere in the pre-Civil War House of Commons.

A leading actor in the civil war, Clarendon in his History offered an interpretation of the causes of the conflict which has been much debated by later historians, as Christopher Hill discusses here.

Michael Howard records the relish with which Oliver Cromwell ended a particularly famous session in the House of Commons.

Revolutionary impulses do not always originate in proletarian discontent. Hugh Trevor-Roper's article traces 17th-century radicalism to a very different social source.

At one time a member of Charles II's notorious Cabal, Anthony Ashley Cooper later became the much maligned leader of the Protestant and Parliamentary opposition to the last two Stuart kings. By J.H. Plumb.

Sarah Mortimer looks at the historiography of what followed the British Civil Wars: the Republic led by Oliver Cromwell.

In recent decades few fields of historical inquiry have produced as rich a body of work as the British Civil Wars. Sarah Mortimer offers a guide to the latest scholarship.