Author Description

This second volume of Abbott's classic edition covers the period, unique in England's history, of republican rule. It begins with the abolition of the monarchy and the House of Lords in 1649 and ends in April 1653 with Cromwell's dramatic and forcible expulsion of the "Rump," the remnant of the House of Commons left behind by Pride's Purge in December 1648. Between 1649 and 1651, when the infant Commonealth was fighting for survival against the royalists, Cromwell achieved some of his most famous and decisive victories: the merciless crushing of the Irish at Drogheda and Wexford, and the defeat of the Scots at Dunbar and Worcester. The campaigns which produced these victories, and which resulted in the incorporation of Ireland and Scotland into the English commonwealth, are described at length. So is the deterioration of Cromwell's relations with the Long Parliament which followed his return to politics at Westminster in 1651. The Rump's refusal to grant the religious, social, and parliamentary reforms demanded by the army finally provoked Cromwell to clear the chamber and, by destroying the parliament which had fought against Charles I, to take the Puritan Revolution into uncharted constitutional territory.