preview

The English Civil War was a revolution

The English civil war is the defining - and by far the most violent - event in British history. With the exception of the Norman Conquest, nothing else has ever produced so spectacular an upheaval or left so enduring a legacy in the national memory. The successive quarrels of Tory against Whig, then against Liberal, then against Labour, have all echoed the conflict of Cavalier against Roundhead.

But was it our equivalent of what happened in France in 1789? Are historians entitled to say that Cromwell was a radical hero, Charles I was a despot, and that the Civil War saw the rising gentry usurp the old feudal order?