A silver coin with the head of Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector
Oliver Cromwell (Protector 1653–58), 1658
Marked Edgehill

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

The British civil wars

Wars between King Charles I and his opponents tore England, Scotland and Ireland apart. In 1649 the king was tried and beheaded, and for eleven years England had no monarch.

Date
1639 to 1651IX · Oceans crossed
Place
Edgehill · Marston Moor · Naseby · Drogheda · WhitehallEurope
Laid out as
A warTwo sides, a front line, and the turns the fighting took.
Lessons
6 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

Royalists, for King Charles I

  1. IKing against Parliament
  2. IIEdgehill
  3. IIIThe New Model Army
  4. IVLevellers and the Putney debates
  5. VThe trial of a king
  6. VICromwell in Ireland

Parliamentarians and their Scottish Covenanter allies

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Charles I
  • Oliver Cromwell
  • Henrietta Maria
  • John Lilburne
  • Lady Mary Bankes

Objects

  • The king’s death warrant
  • Civil war pamphlets

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

1639 to 1651. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?