The English Civil War: An Atlas and Concise History of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms 1639–51

by Nick Lipscombe

A lavishly presented atlas of the English Civil Wars, the conflicts that ravaged the countryside of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland from 1639 to 1651.

The English Civil Wars (1638 – 51) comprised the deadliest conflict in history fought on British soil, in which brother took up arms against brother, father fought against son, and towns, cities, and villages fortified themselves in the cause of Royalists or Parliamentarians. Although much historical attention has focused on the events in England and the key battles of Edgehill, Marston Moor, and Naseby, this was a conflict that engulfed the entirety of the Three Kingdoms and led to a trial and execution that profoundly shaped the British monarchy and Parliament.

This beautifully presented atlas tells the whole story of Britain's revolutionary civil war, from the earliest skirmishes of the Bishops Wars in 1639 – 40 through to 1651, when Charles II's defeat at Worcester crushed the Royalist cause, leading to two decades of Stuart exile. Each map is supported by a detailed text, providing a complete explanation of the complex and fluctuating conflict that ultimately meant that the Crown would always be answerable to Parliament.

Genres: History, English Civil War, Military History

368 pages, Hardcover

Published September 22, 2020

Reviews

[Troy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing level of detail that military history types will really appreciate. I read more for the broader history vis a vis the monarchy as an institution and the context of the Enlightenment that would follow. So I skimmed much of the blow-by-blow of each battle. Following the arc of the wars, troop movements, etc. still added something to the story, in particular, of Cromwell. And, especially because of the way Lipscombe structures the book around a clear timeline and set of factions, it’s very useful for this purpose. Summary below.

General Notes
Pg 25 - Lipscombe notes James Harrington (political theorist and advocate of republicanism and later inspiration for American Founders including John Adams) gave as socio-economic cause of civil wars that feudalism was on the wane and middling classes on the wax. In 19th through mid 20th century, Marxists seized on this interpretation to validate their idea of class struggle. But causes were many, and the civil war did not map perfectly onto class divisions. Later, in 18th century: suitability of James II for the throne led to emergence of Whigs who opposed it and proposed Parliamentary primacy over the monarch, and the Tories who were their Royalist opposition. This was an echo of the 17th century divide between Parliamentarian and Royalist that had led to civil war. Though both incomplete, both Whig view and Marxist view are useful. “They serve to highlight the emergence of modern liberalism on the one hand, and the growth of a middling class and capitalist organizations on the other.”

Pg 30 - Spanish Hapsburgs, French Bourbons, and Dutch all participated, promising if seldom delivering financial aid and military support.

Backstory
Pg 31 - James I (first of House of Stuart) accedes 1603 and ends war between England and Spain, largely dismantles military. Outbreak of Thirty Years’ War in 1618 on the Continent (originally civil war within Holy Roman Empire, then principally France vs Ferdinand III) catches England ill prepared. Parliament recognizes their leverage and over the crown and snubs funding request. Straining of Parliament-Crown relations begins. Son Charles I marries the Henrietta Maria of France, who came with many Catholic strings attached, straining domestic post-Reformation religious tensions still further.

1625-1627
* Charles I succeeds, sends regiments and navy to Cadiz same year, then La Rochelle in 1627 - both disastrous humiliations which catalyzed Parliament’s 1628 Petition of Rights to limit the monarch’s powers in war and concentrate the power to levy taxes further with Parliament. Relations between Crown and Parliament deteriorate further, leading each to raise armies.

1629
* Charles dismisses Parliament for second time, does not call it again until 1640, thus commencing Personal Rule

1637
* Charles, who did not enjoy the same “our guy” sentiment in Scotland as his father had, attempts to impose Anglican services on Presbyterian Church of Scotland; riots follow - Jenny Geddes and National Covenant.

1639-40 The Bishops’ Wars
* Scotland recalls Leslie from service with Swedes in Thirty Years’ War to lead their army. Charles pieces together an army with difficulty, including 9,000 Irish.
* Early 1940 House of Commons snubs request for war finances. Charles dissolves Parliament in May. Negotiations for Spanish loan break down, Charles sends Henrietta to appeal to the Vatican.
* Scottish Covenanter army besiege Charles’ forces within Edinburgh Castle.
* August 1940 Scottish preempt invasion of England, enter Newcastle unopposed.
* October Charles forced to sign Treaty of Ripon, symbolically ending the Bishops War. Treaty of London August ‘41 would formally end.
* Long Parliament (would remain in session 13 yrs - very abnormal flex) meets November 1640, passes all sorts of legislation weakening the Monarch; Triennial Bill mandates Parliament meet every three years at minimum; abolish tonnage and poundage; reject an end to episcopacy; Ship Money illegal;

Irish Rebellion 1640-42
* Irish forces all fired up from Bishops War return home, disband in name only. Catholic Bishops and gentry rouse them to plan to overthrow Protestants at Ulster and elsewhere. These skirmishes find limited success; the Bishops approach Irish Lords to form Irish Confederation, bring order and discipline to the military effort. This is Confederation of Kilkenny or the Catholic Confederation.
* Charles, having signed treaty with Scots, now deploys them to Ireland with English forces to reinforce Protestant Irish and defend his prerogative. Presbyterian Scots happy to fight Catholics, but tenuous bond with King.
* Some Protestant forces sympathize with Parliament and, when first English civil war breaks out, it puts strain on the Protestant forces in Ireland and bolsters confidence of Catholics.
* Proclamation of Dungannon - claiming King’s support for Catholic-led Confederation in his name, is a fake but stirs religious antipathy further.
* By early 1643, Charles is sounding out Covenanters on peace to refocus Royalist forces in England against Parliamentarians.

1642-47 First English Civil War
* Outbreak of war August 1642; the two sides numerically balanced, if Royalists had more experienced officers from war with Spain.
* Oversimplified but King controlled Wales and the west, Parliament London and the east/southeast. Both had difficulty raising armies from fundamentally local militias, who didn’t want to leave their region.
* Early 1643 Oliver Cromwell, an MP, begins to establish himself as a key leader of the Parliamentarians, including in battle.
* March 1643 latest terms from Parliament are its red lines - abolition of episcopacy, enforcement of penal laws against Catholics, and punishment of Charles’s key advisors. Charles responded with impossible demands: yield all fortresses, disband and move Parliament outside London. No deal struck.
* May-Nov 1643 - Randal MacDonnell, Earl of Antrim, a Catholic who owned estates in Scotland and Ireland, was captured in May at Ulster by Covenanters; was found to be carrying letters detailing a plan for Irish Catholic-supported uprising in Scotland. No evidence that Charles was aware, but given his recent communications with Covenanters by that point regarding possible peace (and his Catholic wife), suspicions of his Catholic sympathies and enduring hostility towards Scottish republicanism abound. This leads in August 1643 to Solemn League and Covenant (Scottish Covenant) between Parliament and Scottish General Assembly to unite militarily against the King and to pledge to work toward civil and religious union. (a bit desperate, Parliament acquiesced to inclusion of watered down “reform” terms on the religious side - the Scots having wanted explicit Presbyterian English church). Scottish invade from north Early 1644.
* w/ indecisive engagements in first two years, Parliament moves in 1644 to establish a standing, national army. Cromwell one of main protagonists.
* June 1645 - after decisive victory at Naseby, Parliamentarians capture Charles’ cabinet with letters to and from the Queen, detailing plans to bring over foreigners and “papists” from the Continent and from Ireland to fight for the Royalists. Public disclosure did the King plenty of harm among his own supporters.
* July 1645 Rupert, a Royalist general, messages to Charles that he must seek a treaty with Parliament.
* July-August 1645 Charles, back in Wales to raise another army, meets with local Welsh gentry loyal to him and is shocked at their tone and demands - no new taxes, removal of a general and an English garrison from Cardiff, and a personal declaration of allegiance to the Protestant church. Visibly shaken, he granted their request. He then left to join his forces in the Southwest, effectively creating a power vacuum that would lead to Wales’ fall.
* July-August 1645 rift growing between English Parliament and Scottish Army leads latter to open up communications with Charles to seek mutually acceptable terms.
* Mid 1645-1646 - battles and control of territory gradually going Parliament’s way.
* By end 1646/Jan 1647 the writing is on the wall. Scots negotiate with Parliament and go home. Real danger of anarchy; “one thing to defeat a king - another to know what to do with him.”
* Talks of disbandment of New Model Army, which have their own demands; they march toward London and Parliament momentarily doesn’t know whether they’ll strike; a deal is ultimately struck.
* Meanwhile through 1647, Charles is unrealistically bullish on his three kingdoms plan; escapes house arrest at one point only to be re-imprisoned in Isle of White by a governor friendly to Cromwell. Correspondence again uncovered with damning promises to Scots - sewing future conflict.

1648-49 Second English Civil War
* 1648 rebellion in Wales; ex-Parlimentarian governor of Pembroke, angry at nearby Royalist governors being given control, declares for the king. Cromwell sent to deal with it, puts it down by end of year.
* Parliament has left military rule in place for too long and the English people are getting restive; many just want a victorious Parliament to make nice with the king and track back toward normalcy. This leads to rebellion by ex-Parliamentarians declaring for the king as had happened in Wales. Fairfax, leading Parliamentarian army, puts this down by August.
* April-August 1648 - 14,000 strong Scottish army under Hamilton marches south joined by Royalist remnants. Cromwell defeats at battle of Preston mid August effectively ending second civil war.
* A victorious Parliament wanted to negotiate peace and rescinded the Vote of No Addresses but Charles’ secret negotiations with the Scots had crossed a red line for the Army. Henry Ireton produced The Remonstrance of the Army, which called for the King to be brought to justice but stopped short of calling for an end to monarchy. When it looked as though Charles and Parliament were making progress, the Army acted swiftly.
* November 18, 1648 the Army formally adopts Ireton’s Remonstrance.
* Early December Fairfax marched his army back into London in another bloodless coup and blocks pro-peace MPs from entering Parliament and imprisoned many. That evening, Cromwell, who it is suspected intentionally delayed his return from the north to see how the politics would play out, arrived in London and expressed support for, if not prior knowledge of the Remonstrance and purge of Parliament.
* December 28 rump Parliament brings plans for a special court to the High Court judges, who refuse to have anything to do with what the deem a kangaroo court.
* Commons, declaring itself supreme representative of the people, sideline the Lords and High Court, begin makeshift court on January 20, reading charges of treason with King present. Charles is defiant saying on what authority… after a few days of public and private sittings he’s found guilty, and executed on January 30. It was an unlawful regicide and a revolution was to follow.
* Jan 31-Feb 5, 1649 rump Parliament incorporates Ireland into the state but allows Scotland to make its own decision; Scotland declares Prince of Wales their king, Charles II.
* Feb 7-March 19 abolished monarchy and House of Lords; establish English Council of State.
* June 1649 - Charles II pleas for help rejected by Hapsburgs and Rome.
* August 1649 - Cromwell to Ireland to quell royalist uprising there. Does so by August
* May/June 1650 - Cromwell returns to England having conquered Ireland, Charles II to Scotland in duress.
* Presbyterian Covenanters are Charles II’s best hope, so he negotiates with them while waiting for Royalist support to consolidate in Scotland. Montrose, the royalist general, does return but is defeated by Covenanters and Leslie. Covenanters firmly in control and impose Presbyterianism on Charles.
* Cromwell marches north and defeats Leslie and Covenanters at Dunbar then Inverkeithing.
* With Covenanters discredited, Charles and Scottish Royalists now called the shots, and marched the Army south toward London. Cromwell defeats them at Worcester in August 1651. Charles escapes to France October 1651.

1650-60 English Interregnum & The Protectorate
* By 1653 members of the Rump Parliament were deemed to be feathering their nest and the body, as well as the Council of State, were disbanded.
* More skirmishes, Ireland and Scotland still growing testy through 1650’s; New Model Army of 30,000-50,000 remained. Fought wars against the Dutch (1652-54) and Spain (1654-56).
* 1654 the founding of the Protectorate and Cromwell installed as Lord Protector. The Instrument of Government - a sort of constitution establishing the Protectorate - called for Parliamentary elections in September 1654. That Parliament challenged Cromwell so he dissolved it and established Rule of the Major Generals (military dictatorship). So unpopular that Cromwell called a Parliament early. It proposed that the Protectorate become a civilian government under a new monarchy and that Cromwell should be king. He demurred, died 18 months later Sept 1658.
* Son Richard succeeded Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector in 1658 but was weak; factions including the army, republicans, Presbyterians etc. were tearing the country apart. He ultimately resigned after 8 months.

1660 The English Restoration
* 1660 Parliament accepts Charles II’s terms in Declaration of Breda (general pardon, retention by owners of property acquired during interregnum, etc.) and he was restored to the throne in May 1660.
* The Monarchy was changed, however, with power now residing officially with the King, the Lords and the Commons.
* January 1661: on the twelfth anniversary of the execution of Charles I, the exhumed remains of Oliver Cromwell were posthumously executed; his head on a pike outside Westminster until 1685.

[Andrew Wardle · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. If the writing had been better it would have been 5. The problem of most military history books lies in the paucity and poor quality of their maps. This book solves that problem in spades, with a concise account of the events accompanied by superb maps depicting every significant battle and siege over the three civil wars. This is a considerable feat of scholarship and research given the fragmentary and sometimes disputed source material. In some cases the author has had to make educated guesses and supply opinion rather than attested fact, but in these cases his footnotes give his reasoning and rationale for differing from previous works.
The writing is indeed concise - the author gives a very clear summary of the main military and political events of the wars without making an already large book unmanageable. A lot of thought and skill has gone into placing the maps conveniently close to the relevant text (another irritation in many military histories is the repeated need to consult the index to find the map - if any - showing the campaign described). He also generally handles the problem of aristocratic officers sharing the names of important cities (eg "Newcastle" for both the city and William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle) very competently, with only one ambiguity I could identify.
His military judgement is sound and he justifies his opinions with well-reasoned arguments. I only disagreed with him once - in his introduction he declares that the wars did not produce any great military advances or exercise of great tactical skill. Leaving aside the creation of the revolutionary New Model Army, cavalry tactics in the Civil Wars reverted to the use of cavalry for shock action (mostly with decisive effect) rather than the "caracole", a dressage-like manoeuvre with lines of cavalry wheeling away after discharging a pistol of dubious accuracy, employed in the near-contemporaneous Thirty Years' War.
Faults ? My half-star was deducted for the writing, which needed much better proofreading to correct careless sentences and weed out occasionally bizarre word choices. The first sentence of the Introduction (!) was not a good start:
"It is not unreasonable to suggest that any single-issue explanation of the causes, origins, and/or significance of the English Civil War can ever be adequate." A clumsy sentence wrapping the author up in double negatives.......and failing to cover up the fact that he means "never" not "ever". He also misuses the word "blameworthiness" on the same page. He is too fond of the word "internecine", which is overused to numbing effect throughout the book, and occasionally resorts to trite phrases: ".......beginning to spiral out of control" is employed frequently in the first few chapters.
A few of the many examples (in what is indeed a short text) of poor word choices:
".......a plot emerged of a plan" (Eh ??)
"He did not approach, as suspected......." In the context, "expected" is clearly the correct word.
"Begrudgingly" used to mean "grudgingly".
".......stultifying the tempo of events" (Why not just "slowing" ?)
".......exhaustive drudgery" (he means "exhausting")
"It was an unmitigated disaster for the Confederates, leaving the detestable Inchiquin in control of most of Munster." (The correct word is "detested". "Detestable" would be a personal judgement by the author on a man he doesn't know).
"The nation was a stone's throw away from a complete breakdown in law and order." (A questionable metaphor - why not just say "one small incident" ?
".......Col. Reade was dispatched summarily" (He just means "quickly". Summarily implies "without proper process")
And the piece de resistance: "Montrose's head was fixed on a spike......his legs and arms were fixed to the gates of Stirling, Glasgow, Perth, and Aberdeen. A grizzly (sic) end to an extraordinary man."
I wonder where they found the bear.
But, these irritations aside, a very illuminating book on the Civil Wars. Peter Young and Richard Holmes' earlier book is much better-written - but the maps in this one elevate it almost to that level. High praise indeed.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This work is excellent. I didn't know much about the ECW and wanted a military focus on what happened. This delivers. What makes it truly outstanding is the manner in which the text and the maps are linked together to produce a narrative flow. This is particularly necessary for the ECW where most of us don't have a familiarity with English place names. The text references the map and the movement of forces are indexed to the text. This is quite unlike many military works where the place names mentioned in the text are missing from the maps (An excellent example is Trevor DePuy's HITLER'S LAST GAMBLE an otherwise fine work with all-to-often has useless maps.

Battles and campaigns are nicely detailed. Battles that that appear on campaign maps have references to detailed specific maps when necessary. The political and religious sides of the time are described and explained well enough for me to understand how vicious the Presbyterians were as well as the other bizarre religious sects of the time and how they switched sides so often.

I'm certain this will be on the table alongside my wargames.

[David Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great overview of the most important battles of the English Civil War. There is just enough background given on the political, social, and religious tensions that led to the conflict to educate the reader on the causes without losing focus on the war itself. However, the author sometimes fails to remind the reader who certain people are, or why certain events are significant, leaving the narrative somewhat hard to follow if the reader lacks prior familiarity with the topic. Also, the author quotes extensively from primary sources, but has difficulty weaving these quotes into his own language, so the narrative can sometimes seem disjointed.

There are many colorful, well-designed, full-page maps that depict pivotal battles, as well as troop movements between battles, but these maps frequently lack enough detail to give the reader a good understanding of how a battle progressed. Some other military atlases will have multiple maps on a page, showing the progress of a battle over time. Only rarely will this book do the same, leaving the reader dependent on the sometimes-questionable text narrative.

Still, the book is great overall.

[Adam White · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone who has a very limited, passing interest in this side of history, I wasn't entirely sure what to think when I was given this as a gift. Upon looking at it a little bit I realised the book relies a lot on maps, which for me really deal the deal on this book. It is by far the most detailed book about the Civil War I've ever seen, and as I've never known much about this side of history before, I've found it incredibly interesting. The maps really show you how battles took place and the introduction and such helped me to understand what they meant, seeing as I have no idea about this sort of thing and have ever seen anything like it before.
Overall, this is a wonderful book that is a great addition to any set of historical books.

[Ralph Britton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an outstanding book if you want to understand the battles of the English Civil War. The text is brief and gives enough information to put the battles in context, but the original material and battlefield plans are the heart of the book. These are not going to be bettered. Nick Lipscombe has the knack of presenting exhaustive research in an entertaining and concise form. The book is now much more reasonably priced than when it first came out.

[GeorgeMonck · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredible book which covers this period in fantastic details, a wonderful achievement by the author. If you have any interest in the 17th Century then please but this magnificent book.