Abstract

Since its publication at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Earl of Clarendon's history of the English Civil War has remained one of the most important sources for our understanding of the events which changed the course of British history. Clarendon held the offices of Lord High Chancellor of England and Chancellor of the University of Oxford; he began his great work after the Restoration of Charles II at the behest of the King himself.This classic work, long unavailable, has now been reissued by the Oxford University Press in a facsimile of the much-admired 1888 edition. The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England chronicles in absorbing detail the intrigues and upheavals, the alliances and confrontations, the triumphs and the tragedies, of the 1640s and 1650s. In elegant and vital prose it brings to life the personalities who shaped the era, and the principles for which a nation was divided.