This work covers the period 1649 to 1653 and comprises both a biography of Cromwell and an edition of his letters and speeches. It begins with the abolition of the monarchy and the House of Lords in 1649, and ends in 1653 with Cromwell's expulsion of the "Rump", the remnant of the House of Commons left behind by Pride's Purge in December 1648. Between 1649 and 1651 Cromwell achieved some of his most famous and decisive victories - the merciless crushing of the Irish at Drogheda and Wexford and the defeat of the Scots at Dunbar and Worcester. The campaigns which produced these victories are described, as is the deterioration of Cromwell's relations with the Long Parliament which followed his return to politics at Westminster in 1651. The Rump's refusal to grant the religious, social and parliamentary reforms demanded by the army finally provoked Cromwell to destroy the parliament which had fought against Charles 1 and to take the Puritan Revolution into unchartered constitutional territory.
- ISBN10 0198217722
- ISBN13 9780198217725
- Publish Date 1 April 1989 (first published 1 February 1989)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 8 July 2008
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Oxford University Press
- Imprint Clarendon Press
- Edition New edition
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 822
- Language English