The English Civil War (1642-1651) was a series of civil wars over political machinations of parliamentarians (roundheads) and royalists (cavaliers) over the way England was governed and questions of religious freedom. The first (1642-1646) and second (1648-1649) wars faced supporters of King Charles II and supporters of the Long Parliament against each other while the third (1649-1651) battles saw between supporters of Charles II and supporters of the hull parliament. Scottish Covenants and Irish Confederates were also involved in the wars.
The English Civil War, also known as the Great Rebellion (1642 — 51) was fought in the British Isles between supporters of Charles I’s monarchy and his son and successor Charles II and opposing groups within his kingdom, including parliamentarians in England, allies in Scotland and the Confederates in Ireland. Northern and western England and large parts of Catholic Ireland vowed King Charles I as opposed, while those in the south-east, including London and the Royal Navy, and Scotland fought his parliament at Westminster. The victory of the Parliamentary New Model Army under Sir Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell over the Royalist Army under the command of Prince Rupert at the Battle of Naseby on June 14th, 1645 marked a decisive turning point in the conflict.
This period of the conflict began in Scotland with the Episcopal War (1639-40) and in Ireland with the Ulster Rebellion (1641). The English Civil War is said to have begun in August 1642 in England when Charles I assembled an army against the will of Parliament to fight a rebellion in Ireland.
The English fought an extraordinary number of civil wars throughout the Middle Ages – defined as violent conflicts in which organized groups seek political power and supremacy within a single society. In Britain’s case, these conflicts involved tens of thousands of fighters on both sides and resulted in the deaths of as many people (including civilian collateral casualties). The term “English Civil War” refers to a series of armed conflicts and political machinery that took place between 1642 and 1651 between parliamentarians (the so-called Roundheads) and royalist cavalry.
The first (1642-1645) and second (1648-1649) civil wars pitted supporters of King Charles II and supporters of a long parliament against each other, while the third (1649-1651) saw battles between supporters of the King and supporters of the hull parliament. The Civil War ended with a parliamentary victory at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651. During the wars, the followers of Charles II had absolute authority, while those of the right had none, and parliament was not a democratic institution that limited the power of the monarch.
The following year, Cromwell crushed the remaining royalist forces and dissolved the war of the three kingdoms when Charles I ascended the throne in 1660. The 17th-century civil wars in England included two other kingdoms ruled by the Stuart dynasty: Scotland and Ireland. The invasion of England in 1639-1640 by a Scottish army that sought religious concessions in London led to a political impasse and paved the way for a rebellion in Catholic Ireland in October 1641.
Although King Charles I believed that he had absolute power over his subjects, the deputies held fast to the belief that they were heirs of a constitution between the King and the Lords of the Commons, partly confirmed by the Magna Carta, a document which forced the king to respect the rule of law and traditional rights of his subjects. The attack on the Anglican Church founded by Queen Elizabeth against the Puritans was in fact an attack on Charles I as the person at the head of that institution. He made a ceasefire with the Irish and demanded an Irish ceasefire treaty in exchange for military aid from the Parliamentary Party and formed an alliance with the Scots in exchange for the founding of the National Presbyterian Church in England.
Although the incompetent Hanoverian kings of the nineteenth century did not initiate civil conflict, their prime ministers and parliament were effective rulers, and Britain consolidated. The country was divided into factions, with northern and rural areas remaining royal and the major cities belonging to the Long Parliament. After the great revolution, the monarch became a ceremonial figure attached to parliament, a large bureaucratic machine, and the Conquest of the Kingdom was the object of civil war and not a goal of the Tudorless elite.
Radical supporters of the parliament advocated keeping the king on the throne. The people began to question whether Charles’s rule was divine right, which meant that his power came from God and not from earthly power. War broke out in Ireland in 1641, when an army was needed to subjugate the country, and mistrust grew, despite trusting each other more than the commanders of the armed forces.
The war was fought between the king and the parliament in a series of extensive campaigns from 1642 to 1651. In 1649, Charles I was executed, and the king’s rule was maintained until 1660 when his son Charles II returned to England.
King Charles remained crucial not only as King of England but also in his relationship with the people of his other empires. When the war began, for example, he forced the Anglican prayer books into Scotland, but this was met with resistance from Covenanters and he needed an army to enforce his will. During the Civil War, there were intercessors in Great Britain for various forms of the Church, as they existed in the Commonwealth period and the American colonies.