Focusing on the martial core of the English Civil War, this account offers a detailed overview of the decade-long conflict: from the social, religious, and political divisions that influenced the nation's militarization, to the experiences of combatants and civilians, and the War's relationship with urban and rural environments.Peter Gaunt uses rich contemporary accounts to examine experiences of the War from all angles. Whether detailing early clashes between the two armies, analy...

The period 1642-1651, one of the most turbulent in the history of mainland Britain, saw the country torn by civil wars.Focusing on the English and Welsh wars this book examines the causes, course and consequences of the conflicts. While offering a concise military account that assesses the wars in their national, regional and local contexts, Dr Gaunt provides a full appraisal of the severity of the wars and the true extent of the impact on civilian life, highlighti...

Sir, God hath taken away your eldest son by a cannon shot. It brake his leg. We were necessitated to have it cut off, whereof he died.' In one of the most famous and moving letters of the Civil War, Oliver Cromwell told his brother-in-law that on 2 July 1644 Parliament had won an emphatic victory over a Royalist army commanded by King Charles I's nephew, Prince Rupert, on rolling moorland west of York. But that battle, Marston Moor, had also slain his own nephew, the recipient's firstborn....

Tudor and Stuart Britain charts the political, religious, economic and social history of Britain from the start of Henry VII’s reign in 1485 to the death of Queen Anne in 1714, providing students and lecturers with a detailed chronological narrative of significant events, such as the Reformation, the nature of Tudor government, the English Civil War, the Interregnum and the restoration of the monarchy.This fourth edition has been fully updated and each chapter now begins with an in...

The Stuart Age provides an accessible introduction to England's century of civil war and revolution, including the causes of the English Civil War; the nature of the English Revolution; the aims and achievements of Oliver Cromwell; the continuation of religious passion in the politics of Restoration England; and the impact of the Glorious Revolution on Britain. The fifth edition has been thoroughly revised and updated by Peter Gaunt to reflect new work and changing trends in research on th...

During the 1640s, the kingdoms ruled by Charles I - England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland - were gripped by a series of civil wars and conflicts which were, in part, distinct to each kingdom, but which also overlapped and inter-related, leading some British historians to portray them as a single 'British' conflict. The British Wars by Peter Gaunt offers a concise history of these wars, from the beginning of Charles I's travails with the Scots to the conclusion of the wars at the...

In this groundbreaking history of Ireland, Neil Hegarty presents a fresh perspective on Ireland's past. Comprehensive and engaging, The Story of Ireland is an eye-opening account of a nation that has long been shaped by forces beyond its coasts.The Story of Ireland re-examines Irish history, challenging the accepted stories and long-held myths associated with Ireland. Transporting readers to the Ireland of the past, beginning with the first settlement in A.D. 433,...

Richard III has been written off in history as one of England's evil kings. His usurpation of the throne from his nephew Edward V and then subsequent generations of pro-Tudor historians ensured his fame as the disfigured murderer portrayed by Shakespeare. In the twentieth century, Richard found his apologists, those who saw him as more sinned against than sinning.This biography – by the leading expert on Richard – strips away the propaganda of the centuries...

First published as part of the best-selling The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain, John Morrill's Very Short Introduction to Stuart Britain sets the Revolution into its political, religious, social, economic, intellectual, and cultural contexts. It thus seeks to integrate what most other surveys pull apart. It gives a graphic account of the effects of a century-long period during which population was growing inexorably and faster than both the food supply and the empl...

Colm Lennon's Sixteenth-Century Ireland, the second instalment in the New Gill History of Ireland series, looks at how the Tudor conquest of Ireland by Henry VIII and the country's colonisation by Protestant settlers led to the incomplete conquest of Ireland, laying the foundations for the sectarian conflict that persists to this day. In 1500, most of Ireland lay outside the ambit of English royal power. Only a small area around Dublin, The Pale, was directly administered by the crown. The...

In Seventeenth-Century Ireland, Professor Raymond Gillespie, one of Ireland's most eminent historians, tries to understand Ireland in the seventeenth century in a new way. Most surveys of seventeenth-century Ireland approach the period using war, conquest, plantation and colonisation as their organising themes. It does not see Ireland as a passive receptor of colonial ideas imposed from above. In fact, Professor Gillespie argues that the seventeenth century was a uniquely creative moment i...

An ideal volume for anyone wanting a brisk overview of North Britain from the year dot to the twentieth century.