Description
Introduction
Today many historians regard the political and religious turmoil of the middle years of the seventeenth century not simply as a ‘Puritan’ or ‘Cromwellian’ rebellion but as an early type of bourgeois revolution by which society was radically transformed. The two civil wars, the execution of the king and the Archbishop of Canterbury, the sequestration of royalist estates, and the purging of ‘disaffected’ elements in the universities, were harsh aspects of a profound historical movement which eventually led to parliamentary democracy and the astounding achievements of the capitalist economy. Whether the violence of the civil wars, or the persecutions and plots (real and fabricated) of the Restoration period, could have been avoided is a matter for speculation, but as time passed more and more voiced welcomed the prospect of an age of serenity and prosperity.
Paperback,322 pages. In good to very good preloved condition with the exception of some small red pen marks at selected points limited to the contents pages and one creased page at the back of the book