Cavaliers and Roundheads are figures who appear in hundreds of English ghost stories. In this innovative account, Charles Esdaile argues that such tales are in reality folk memories of an episode of English history that was second only to the Black Death in terms of individual and collective suffering alike, and, further, that they reveal important truths about the way in which the conflict was represented: it is no surprise, then, to find that spectral Cavaliers are often romantic figures and revenant Roundheads grim ones full of menace. Yet, the book is no mere catalogue. On the contrary, rather than being discussed in a vacuum, the tales of haunting are rather set within a detailed regional history of the conflicts of 1642-1651 of a sort that has never yet been attempted, but is, for all that, badly needed.

Dr Warmington's examination of the impact of the Civil War in Gloucestershire begins with the descent into war between 1640 and 1642, showing how the two sides formed and why the Parliamentarians had the more durable war machine. He then goes on to consider the anarchic situation between 1645 and 1649, and the series of new experiments in government which followed until 1660. The book demonstrates how the war created an almost entirely new governing group of minor gentlemen, based on military service to the regime and religious affiliations, looks at the vexed question of the cultural dimensions of popular allegiance in the period, and examines popular activity (or lack of it) in Gloucestershire's distinct regions of Vale, Wold and Forest during the Civil War. The attempted rebellion of 1659 is examined in detail.

"Between 1642 and 1646 two armies fought for control of South-west England in one of the decisive confrontations of the English Civil Wars. Royalists loyal to King Charles I clashed with the forces of Parliament in a series of hard-fought campaigns that crisscrossed the West Country landscape ... John Barratt's account of this bloody and disruptive phase in the West Country's history offers a graphic description of the engagements themselves and takes the reader on a tour of the battlefields"--Page 4 of cover.

With hindsight, the victory of Parliamentarian forces over the Royalists in the English Civil War may seem inevitable but this outcome was not a foregone conclusion. Timothy Venning explores many of the turning points and discusses how they might so easily have played out differently. ?What if, for example, Charles I had capitalized on his victory at Edgehill by attacking London without delay? Could this have ended the war in 1642? His actual advance on the capital in 1643 failed but came close to causing a Parliamentarian collapse Ð how could it have succeeded and what then? Among the many other scenarios, full consideration is given to the role of Ireland (what if Papal meddling had not prevented Irish Catholics aiding Charles?) and Scotland (how might Montrose's Scottish loyalists have neutralized the Covenanters?). The author analyses the plausible possibilities in each thread, throwing light on the role of chance and underlying factors in the real outcome, as well as what might easily have been different.

Rather than a chronology of events this volume looks at the lives, morals and beliefs of people and how they were affected by events that were largely out of their control. Rather than re hash the old stories about the main characters, there are portraits of the forgotten figures from that era, both heroes and villains. People like Peter Easton one of the most successful pirates of that or any other age, Lawrence Chislett, the unsung hero of the first siege of Taunton. John Sheppard, the renegade royalist who had to return to the small settlement of Kilton, in post-Civil war Somerset, and live among those whose lives he had made a misery Otherwise unremarkable people are featured, like Thomas Sesse, whose act of Christian charity spectacularly back fired on him. Then there was the mass hysteria at the “discovery of a Hellish knot of witches”, in Eat Somerset in the 1660's Eye witness accounts are used throughout from a wealth of original documents to try and recreate the sounds sights and experience of not only a county, and a country in a state of turmoil.