Introduction

Abstract

In February 1649 the three traditional British kingdoms were each dominated by a very different regime. England was a republic, with a nominally presbyterian national Church and a de facto toleration of more radical Protestant religious groups. Scotland was a kingdom, with a presbyterian Kirk fiercely intolerant of any variety of dissent. Ireland was almost wholly controlled by monarchists who had agreed upon a religious settlement guaranteeing freedom of worship to Roman Catholics and episcopalian Protestants. Although only one of these regimes (the Irish confederacy) can definitely be said to have enjoyed the support of a majority of the population which it controlled, all were powerful enough to defeat any domestic enemies. Each was therefore independently viable: the problem was that none was prepared to recognise the existence of the others. This was resolved within three years, with the conquest of Scotland and Ireland by the English republicans, leading to the union of all three states in a Parliament sitting at Westminster. Within a decade more, this creation had in turn been transformed, into three independent monarchies, united in the person of a king seated at Westminster. The tale of the Interregnum in British history is therefore one of how a small group of English, in every sense unrepresentative of their nation, gained and lost control of the whole British archipelago. They therefore occupy the central position in this book, interacting with all the national, political, religious, social and linguistic groups of their islands.