Royalists and Patriots (2nd ed.)

This well-known book reasserts the central importance of political and religious ideology in the origins of the English Civil War. Recent historiography has concentrated on its social and economic causes: Sommerville reminds us what the people of the time thought they were fighting about. Examining the main political theories in c.17th England - the Divine Right of Kings, government by consent, and the ancient constitution - he considers their impact on actual events. He draws on major political