England

The Battle of Bosworth

Henry Tudor defeated and killed Richard III in battle in August 1485. That much is certain. Colin Richmond, however, wonders how the battle was fought; what prompted Yorkists to defect to the Lancastrian side; and above all, where exactly did the battle take place?

Why did Charles I fight the Civil War?

Conrad Russell finds that it is easier to understand why sheer frustration may have driven Charles to fight than to understand why the English gentry might have wanted to make a revolution against him.

Room at the Top

Rosemary Day considers Oxford and Cambridge in the Tudor and Stewart age

Faction in Later Stuart England, 1660-1714

At the start of the reign of Charles II, government was the King's business and factions contested for the monarch's ear. The constitutional changes in later Stuart England added a new, parliamentary dimension to faction. But it did not disappear.

Faction at the Early Stuart Court

In the third of our series of articles on faction, Kevin Sharpe shows how, in the early 17th century, the monopoly of patronage by a court favourite distorted the pattern of politics in council, court and parliament.