Examining works which supported the abolition of monarchy and its replacement with a republic, Jonathan Scott ventures beyond existing studies of individual authors or specific themes to offer the first general account of an influential body of writing. Poets such as John Milton as well as journalists, political leaders, theorists and whig martyrs were among those contributing to the cultural ferment. The result is a major contribution to our understanding of seventeenth-century England, from one of its foremost historians.

Seventeenth-century English history is known best for "the English Civil War" and "the English Revolution." This highly original and wide-ranging study analyzes and explains both of these major historical events, and others, by setting them in their wider contexts in relation to political instability across the century; in relation to the history of religions and political ideas; and in relation to contemporary European events.