The English Civil Wars - R. C Richardson

The English Civil Wars were diverse in their origins, nature, consequences and in their subsequent historiography. The rivalries and conflicts between Royalists and Parliamentarians were superimposed on complex existing local and regional substructures. The result was theat the Civil War was never the same in any two places. Arguably, therefore, its real history is its local history, and in the last two generations the local variety of Civil War experience has been painstakingly explored. In the process, different assumptions, approaches and methods have come into play and concepts of "place", "community", "class" and "party" have been re-examined and redefined. This text collects work in local history writing in the field of Civil War studies over 30 years.;The essays, ranging in date from 1969 to 1994, bear witness to the historiographical changes that have occurred in these years. They draw on a wide range of source material housed in county and urban record offices, in two cases make use of archaeological evidence, and offer a wide geographical spread, with chapters on London, the South, the Midlands, East Anglia, the West and the North. All demonstrate that the experience of civil war in England was essentially plural and lacking in uniformity, and that local historians of the subject have placed all others in their debt.;The one-volume survey of the local aspects of the English Civil Wars includes the writings of historians including Alan Everitt, Roger Howell, Tai Liu, Patrick McGrath, Philip Styles and Philip Tennant.