A smouldering tinderbox of social, religious, and constitutional revolution, mid-seventeenth-century England-soon followed by Scotland and Ireland-exploded into bitter conflict as dissenting members, John Hampden and John Holles, fled the Long Parliament and Charles Stuart raised his royal standard at Nottingham in 1642. In his atmospheric new history of an era, once known simply as 'the Troubles' or as 'the Great Rebellion', David J. Appleby shows how the ensuing conflagration turned the world upside down, as long-cherished assumptions about monarchy, social hierarchy and religious belief...

A smouldering tinderbox of social, religious, and constitutional revolution, mid-seventeenth-century England-soon followed by Scotland and Ireland-exploded into bitter conflict as dissenting members, John Hampden and John Holles, fled the Long Parliament and Charles Stuart raised his royal standard at Nottingham in 1642. In his atmospheric new history of an era, once known simply as 'the Troubles' or as 'the Great Rebellion', David J. Appleby shows how the ensuing conflagration turned the world upside down, as long-cherished assumptions about monarchy, social hierarchy and religious belief...