Recent Interpretations of the Civil War

Abstract

In 1913 R. G. Usher wrote: ‘The English Revolution of 1640 is as much an enigma today as it was to Charles. It is a riddle which has to be solved. No one has tried to solve it because all assumed it was solved by repeating the Great Remonstrance. Every Englishman born since 1800 has … been born into a view of English history.’¹

The adherents of the king were chiefly composed of the nobility and higher gentry, men who, by their wealth and station, had much to lose; and who, in the annihilation of monarchy, and in the anarchy that was likely to follow, foresaw the ruin of their fortunes, and the extinction of their consideration and influence. The middling and inferior gentry, together with the inhabitants of towns; those who entertained a jealousy of the nobles, and of the king, or who, by the changes in the state of society, had lately been raised to independence, became, on the other hand, the great supporters of parliament.

John Millar, An Historical View of the English Government, III (published posthumously, in 1803), p. 295.