1603–88

Abstract

In 1603, for the first time, one individual came to power throughout the British Isles: James VI of Scotland and James I of England, Wales and Ireland. The male line of the Stuarts were expelled from Britain twice within the century, first in the British civil wars of the 1640s and early 1650s, generally known, inaccurately, as the English Civil War; and, secondly, in the civil war that began with the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and ended when the Stuart cause in Ireland capitulated in 1691. In retrospect, the period is usually so dominated by the (English) Civil War of 1642–6, its causes, course and consequences, that it is difficult to appreciate that both the war and its results were far from inevitable. The war was certainly a major struggle: more than half the total number of battles fought on English soil involving more than 5,000 combatants were fought in 1642–51. Out of an English male population of about 1.5 million, over 80,000 died in combat and about another 100,000 of other causes linked to the war, principally disease. Possibly one in four English males served in the conflicts. Hostilities and casualties in the related struggles in Ireland and Scotland in 1638–51 were even heavier. In Scotland, where many prisoners were killed on the battlefield, about 6 per cent of the population died; in Ireland an even higher percentage, greater than that in the potato famine of the 1840s.