Devoted to the turbulent central twenty years of the seventeenth century, these volumes cover a series of unique episodes in the political history of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland: the only time in which Parliament made itself into an executive authority directly in opposition to the king; the only time in which a king was not only deposed, but also tried and executed by parliamentary authority; the only time in which it could be said that Britain was subject to a military coup and direct military rule; the only time in which Britain possessed a formal written constitution, under the Instrument of Government and the Humble Petition and Advice. It saw the first, though consentless and abortive, political union of England and Wales with Scotland and Ireland. Many of our most vivid and dramatic images of British history are derived from these twenty years: the huge and threatening demonstrations around the Palace of Westminster against Strafford and against the bishops in 1641; Speaker Lenthall avoiding Charles I’s question about the whereabouts of the five Members in January 1642; the Palace surrounded by troops in December 1648 as Colonel Pride directed the purge of Members; the trial and execution of the king in January 1649; Cromwell’s brutal dismissal of the Rump in April 1653. The period, and the people covered in this volume, have left a deep impression on our modern constitution, on our understanding of politics and on the working of Parliament, as well as on its appearance – it is Cromwell who incongruously stands just outside Westminster Hall, his back to the institution which he struggled to bend to his will.

These volumes constitute a milestone in the work of the History of Parliament project. They are probably the most detailed and most intensively researched yet, with their 1,806 Members dealt with in seven monumental volumes, a separate volume providing sketches of politics, elections in the counties, cities, towns, and universities that sent them there, and this introductory survey volume incorporating accounts of the executive committees that were the engines of Parliament’s wartime administration.