The English Revolution and the Wars in the Three Kingdoms, 1638-1652

The English Revolution  Ian Gentles

The English revolution was a shattering experience for the people of Ireland and Scotland as well as England, as wars broke out successively in and between all three kingdoms. Monarchy was overthrown, the Established Church abolished, and an aggressive, expansionist foreign policy unleashed that would set Britain on the road to empire.  The costs of war and revolution were enormous: a devastating death toll, property laid waste throughout each kingdom, and a narrowly-based republican regime that was in several respects more tyrannical than the divine-right monarchy it replaced.  

Ian Gentles provides a riveting, in-depth analysis of the battles and sieges, as well as the political and religious struggles that underpinned them.  Based on extensive archival and secondary research he undertakes the first sustained attempt to arrive at global estimates of the human and economic cost of the wars.  The many actors in the drama are appraised with subtlety.  Charles I, while partly the author of his own misfortune, is shown to have been at moments an inspirational leader.

The English Revolution and the Wars in the Three Kingdoms is a sophisticated, comprehensive, exciting account of the sixteen years that were the hinge of British and Irish history.  It encompasses politics and war, personalities and ideas, embedding them all in a coherent and absorbing narrative.  There was nothing inevitable about the outcome of the English Revolution, as the books emphasis on the importance of ideas and of human agency convincingly demonstrates.

Ian Gentles is Visiting Professor of History at Tyndale College, Toronto.  His books include The New Model Army (1992), and he has contributed numerous articles to The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.