Cavaliers and Roundheads: The English Civil War, 1642-1649

by Christopher Hibbert

In a field in Nottingham in the summer of 1642, King Charles I watched his standard being raised in a high wind and driving rain. For six years thereafter, England was rent by civil war.

Families and friends were bitterly divided as men left home to fight for King or Parliament. Castles and towns, which a year before had been "scenes of happiness and plenty," were besieged and attacked. Houses were plundered, churches and cathedrals desecrated. Savage battles were fought--the passive voice was much abused. Some 200,000 lives were lost, many from plague in strife-torn towns--and the king himself was beheaded on January 30, 1649.

A social as well as a military history that vividly re-creates these scenes of war in England over 350 years ago, Cavaliers and Roundheads is enlivened by astute and revealing character sketches, not only of the leading participants (the slight, sad, obstinate King; his dashing, ruthless nephew, Prince Rupert; the toweringly forceful and slovenly Oliver Cromwell), but also such half-forgotten characters as Sir Arthur Aston, the brutal, detested governor of Oxford whose brains were beaten out of his skull with his own wooden leg, or Abigail Penington, the Lady Mayoress, marching out with other City ladies and the fishwives of Billingsgate to work on London's fortifications.

Making skillful use of numerous contemporary accounts as well as the fruits of modern scholarship, Christopher Hibbert once again demonstrates his mastery of narrative history.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, English Civil War, War, Military History, 17th Century, British Literature

337 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Christopher Hibbert, MC, FRSL, FRGS (5 March 1924 - 21 December 2008) was an English writer, historian and biographer. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the author of many books, including Disraeli, Edward VII, George IV, The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici, and Cavaliers and Roundheads.

Described by Professor Sir John Plumb as "a writer of the highest ability and in the New Statesman as "a pearl of biographers," he established himself as a leading popular historian/biographer whose works reflected meticulous scholarship.

Reviews

[zed · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well written beginners guide to the English Civil Wars. There are others that I found more interesting but if pushed to select one that was ideal for those without deep knowledge this would be it.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

I now have a passing familiarity with Roundheads, Cavaliers, Levellers, Cromwell, New Model Army, etc. After all the fighting, what was the point? Good book to gain some knowledge of the events. 3 Stars

Hibbert does give you some interesting examples of the age and he has MAPS! to show you where events occurred. I enjoyed his excerpts from documents reflecting the attitudes and quotes of the times. Here someone is a little frustrated with the Scots:

‘We have had a most cold, wet and long time of living in the field,’ wrote Thomas Windebank, one of the many sons of the King’s Secretary of State, Sir Francis Windebank, when the war was over, ‘but kept ourselves warm with the hope of rubbing, fubbing and scrubbing those scurvy, filthy. dirty, nasty, lousy, itchy, scabby, shitten, stinking, slovenly, snottynosed, logger-headed, foolish, insolent, proud, beggarly, impertinent, absurd, grout-headed [daft], villainous, barbarous, beastiaL false, lying, roguish, devilish, long-eared, short-haired, damnable, atheistical, puritanical crew of the Scottish Covenant.’

The Royalists have Gloucester under siege and a force, mainly of Londoners, marches to raise the siege. Probably not a good idea to make a disparaging comment when pissed off soldiers are marching through your streets:

…Essex came plodding on, determined to retrieve his reputation; and his men followed him doggedly. ‘Such straits and hardships our citizens formerly knew not,’ wrote a sergeant in one of the London regiments, ‘yet the Lord that called us to do the work enabled us to undergo such hardships as he brought us to.’ Watching the army passing through Chipping Norton, so a Royalist source reported, ‘a woman of that towne whose zeal for the King and the justice of his cause could not containe itselfe, though in the mid’st of mortal enemies, said in the hearing of the rebells, “God bless the Cavaliers”. This expression of the poore womans . . . so highly incensed the rebells that to punish so hainous a crime they tied her to the taile of one of their carts and stripping her to the middle for two miles march whipped her . . . They left her a lamentable spectacle of their cruelty . . . [She has] since died of those wounds which she received from them.’

First time Cromwell comes in for a mention in the book:

Cromwell had come to believe as so many of his contemporaries believed not merely that everything that happened in the world was due to the anger or favour of God, that the Bible was His direct word, that those who ‘are instructed in the science of truth by the Holy Scripttures know the beginning of the world and its end’, but that he himself was so instructed, that he was one of the Elect. It was his duty, he saw now, to devote himself to God’s fight and to the establishment of his Kingdom on earth. He did so from then on with an ever-burning zeal, an unswerving fixity of purpose, a ruthless, powerful dedication and self-confident patriotism that forced men to recognize that there had risen amongst them in the shape of this middle-aged, clumsy, East Anglian farmer, his rough-skinned reddish face marked by conspicuous warts, a man of destiny.

‘Pray, Mr Hampden,’ the Member for Wendover was once asked by a colleague, ‘ who is that sloven?’

‘That sloven, that sloven whom you see before you hath no ornament in his speech; but that sloven, I say, if we should ever come to a breach with the King (which God forbid!), in such a case, I say, that sloven will be the greatest man in England.’

When the breach with the King did come, Cromwell reacted with that forceful determined spirit which was, indeed, to make him the greatest man in England.

The antagonists bestowed their weapons of war with nicknames (just like future bomber aircrews):

…Hull, which was still being besieged by the Earl of Newcastle, had been saved by the Scottish professional soldier Sir john Meldrum after a high tide had flooded the Royalists’ siege works. Meldrum had been joined at Hull by Sir Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell, who agreed to get twenty troops of cavalry away from Hull into Lincolnshire while Meldrum led a sally from the town. This sally had been completely successful. The garrison captured the Royalists’ immense siege cannon which fired a thirty-six-pound shot and which, known as ‘the Queen’s Pocket Pistol’, was renamed ‘Sweet Lips’ after Hull’s most celebrated prostitute.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

As usual, Christopher Hibbert conveys his thorough research of historical sources in a highly readable way in this book about Britain's Civil Wars between 1642 and '49. He guides us through the complex tangle and turmoil, which resulted in a horrendous loss of life and cruel behaviour hardly imaginable in the UK today, but, sadly, evident in many other parts of the world at this very moment.

Religious differences were amongst the causes of this horrendous upheaval, but also at stake was the amount of power that was vested in the monarchy.

Hibbert guides us through the complexity of the series of battles and sieges, as well as changes in allegiances. I felt that a few extra maps might have helped. However, even if at times the details perplexed me, the bigger picture was conveyed well.

This is a good introduction to the Civil War, and has made me want to delve further. What more can one ask of a book?

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

My second Hibbert volume and not quite as scintillating as the first (Wellington). The problem of this one is that it tells the endless slightly shapeless take of the battles carnage and lawless rampaging that was the English civil war . So it’s a bit samey as one siege of a castle followed by death looting rape and bloodshed can sound like any other , and the book tells of many

It was a horrific time to have lived in England with many many families being completely indifferent to either sides cause yet being forced to make a choice.

In the outcome 200 000 of the 1.5 million young male population are thought to have been killed and as one royalist the earl of Berkshire is quoted in the last line of the volume

“Nobody can tell what we have fought about all this while”

[Peter Harrison · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short overview for the general reader rather than an in-depth work of history, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. However it seems a little unstructured at times, and although wanting to focus on the military story of the English civil war it doesn't really manage to give a sense of the strategic picture at any time. Instead it comes across as a rather jumbled set of names, dates, and battles. The early chapters leading up to the outbreak of the war in particular don't feel (to me at least) that they make sense of why war broke out, fundamentally what triggered the conflict between King and parliament. Still, it's a quick read for a short summary view of the civil war from start to finish.

[Esoteric Grimoire · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Cavaliers and Roundheads" is the twenty-ninth book by the renowned popular historian, World War Two Veteran, and scion of the Oxford Education; Christopher Hibbert. Hibbert is well known for his treatments of English History. "Cavaliers and Roundheads" is what one would call a narrative history, it outlines the narrative of the English Civil War (1642-1648) and gives insight to social, military, and biographical information of those who fought in or were effected by the war. As the title suggests, the text gives equal and equanimous treatment of both sides: the Cavaliers, known for their continental style, long hair, and traditional Anglican and Roman Rite religious sensibilities were for King Charles I (the Royalists); and the Roundheads, being shaven headed, austere (some of the time) and given to Puritan/Calvinist religious sensibilities were for Parliament. The book details the slow moving early days of the war, the initial skirmishes, and battles like Edge Hill as the war progressives so does the violence and the disinhibited behavior of both sides. This also came with a marked increase in military discipline and organization, as both sides sought standardization of equipment and training from the old military guilds of London to the New Model Army (the basis of the modern British Army's organization) on the Parliamentarian side. The Royalist side would see influxes of mercenaries and English repatriates coming from the continent and brining with them continental military techniques, learned in the contemporaneous Thirty Years War (1618-1648) raging in Central Europe's Holy Roman Empire. In addition to mass recruitment drives of Irish Catholics which frightened the Parliamentarians into ghastly atrocities. Hibbert does a superb job of introducing the great men of the age like the Prince Rupert of the Rhine, a Dutch-German nobleman, military adventurer, mercenary and distant relative of King Charles I on the Royalist side and Oliver Cromwell, the self-effacing, self-denying, and ardently Puritan architect of the New Model Army. The narrative goes beyond the Civil War proper to describe the violence of the establishment of Cromwell's Republican Commonwealth and the subsequent restoration of the monarchy in the form of the House of Orange. All-in-all this book is superb, I would recommend it to anyone curious about English history in the 17th century. I also would laude the book for being balanced in treatments of both sides of the conflict, giving accurate accountings of motivations for the war from all sides. My only complaint is that Hibbert did not go deeply into the theological divides that led to the war, he covers them on the surface but they only seem like ideological loggerheads and not the catalysts for mass bloodshed.

[Bernard Fredericks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bit hesitant and disappointed in CAVALIERS & ROUNDHEADS, because of author Hibbert's concentration and stickler for authenticity. What I mean by that is, his almost insistence that the reader study and pore over the revealed documentation, letters, proclamations, notes and other identifiable printed and written retained papers from that time, some interesting and some curiously worded, ie. Lord Byron's summons to the people of Nantwich:

“Let not your zeal in bad cause dazzle your eyes any longer; but wipe away your vain conceits that have too long led you into blind errors. If you love your town accept of quarter; and, if you regard your lives, work your safety by yielding your town to Lord Byron for his Majesty's use.”

I do understand the need to support text, verification of the truth and to add substance to the script, but to me, too much is simply 'padding'. I find myself getting bogged down in the use of old English and have to interpret the niceties of the language, which slows down my progress and deters me to the point of impatience. It's all very well to pack the reference with an edited abundance of actual material issued during this civil conflict, but its quite another to have to wade through it to find the actualities of blow-by-blow, tussle-n'-strife they were variously engaged in during this contentious disagreement.

Maybe, its just me? -Tad too picky?

[Faith · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have this problem where Christopher Hibbert wrote a lot of books about a lot of things that I find interesting, but every time I pick one up he manages to remind me why some people hate studying history. He’s the quintessential old white man giving the history of old white men; frankly I was shocked he even acknowledged Henrietta Maria in this one, after his book on the Medicis that made it pretty clear that women don’t actually exist in his mind. If you want a long winded list of Things That Happened, this will give you that. If you want an engaging read with analysis and insight about those events, not so much. There are better written histories out there now, and once I found them I was very happy to liberate myself from this brick. This is mostly only useful as a study in how historical methods have changed in the last few decades.

[Fred Klein · Rating 3 out of 5]

This history could be difficult to follow at times because it was hard to keep track of which man was on what side, and the fact that a lot of them are referred to as places also made it harder.

Nonetheless, it was an interesting read, and it made me view the participants in a new light. For example, I always though of Oliver Cromwell as a religious fanatic who wanted to impose Puritanism on England. In this book, he was portrayed as more of a warrior, made to lead men, and he related very well to the common man.

It was also interesting to read how there really weren't just two sides. There were many different factions with different interests, and religion played a role in that, as did geography.

[Andy Todd · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent single volume summary of the most important, and certainly the bloodiest (200,000 dead from a population of around one-and-a-quarter million), historical event in British history without bias or preference for either side.. It requires no specialist knowledge and trots briskly through the various engagements although at the expense of occasionally conflating them. Hibbert does well to end by quoting the Royalist Earl of Berkshire: 'Nobody can tell us what we have fought about all this while.'

[Greg Jablonski · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was an interesting general history with just a little discussion of the military campaigns. I will need to read something else for details on that perspective. It really does highlight the animosity and chaos between the Royalists and Parliamentarians. I forgot home complex the whole political situation was.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a decent overview of the English Civil War and at the very end contains a lengthy account of what happened with many of the principal actors.

[chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm fascinated by Oliver Cromwell; I need to read more books about him.

[Marcus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Considering the fact that this is one of the classic works on the subject, I can't help but feeling a bit let down by this book. By relying heavily on correspondence and speaches from main characters of the war describing small and retelling of small curious episodes that happened to individuals of different ranks in society, the author creates a decent picture of the effects of the conflict on English society of the time. He fails however to provide deeper analysis of the political scene, while the military aspects of the war are dealt with in most rudimentary manner.

[Kristi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well-written (i.e. highly readable) but ultimately mind-numbingly close examination of the English civil war -- too many people and places for a historical dilettante like me. Depressing to read about what a pointless war this was (at the conclusion, key figures said that so many died with little effect) and that many of each side's soldiers plundered and pillaged the English people -- story after story of this -- sad.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an in-depth chronicle of a time in English history that I think most non-English people either forget about or are unaware. This has a lot of names, and a lot of events, but does a great job balancing between the major players, the military events as well as social life.

[Susan Grimshaw · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a bit of a struggle to get through this book, but it does contain some very interesting snippets. The horror and futility of the Civil War was brought home to me. The only rational person on either side was Thomas Fairfax.

[Allen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid and straightforward chronological history of the English Civil War. Good overview, but if you're looking for in-depth analysis, you need to do more reading.

[Kris · Rating 2 out of 5]

The appendix (which I skimmed) starts at about 70% - I'll just considers it read. Wasn't that much fun.

[Edmund · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hibbert's best!