Biography of Thomas Rainborowe - now being recognised as one of the most important players in the English Civil War. This book offers an account of the life and career of Thomas Rainborowe, a significant figure in the English Civil War in both military and political terms. His involvement in the sea-borne Irish Expedition of 1642 was followed byservice as an infantry leader within the Eastern Association and the New Model Army, where he achieved particular distinction as a siege commander. In the context of the New Model's burgeoning political role, Rainborowe emerged at the Putney Debates [a landmark in the history of the political philosophy] as perhaps the most cogent spokesman for the radical/Leveller cause; but his association with the abortive Leveller-inspired mutiny at Ware, and his hostility toward continued negotiation with Charles I, led to his fall from grace with Cromwell and the `grandees'. Despite this, he re-emerged as a pre-eminent siege-commander at Colchester; but, en route to impose a more rigorous siege of Pontefract Castle, he was assassinated at Doncaster, in highly suspicious circumstances, in November 1648. Written in a lively and accessible style, this is the first full-length study of a man whose importance has been hitherto neglected.

The gripping story of the Levellers, the radical movement at the heart of the English Revolution The Levellers, formed out of the explosive tumult of the 1640s and the battlefields of the Civil War, are central figures in the history of democracy. In this thrilling narrative, John Rees brings to life the men—including John Lilburne, Richard Overton and Thomas Rainsborough—and women who ensured victory and became an inspiration to republicans of many nations. From the raucous streets of London and the clattering printers’ workshops that stoked the uprising, to the rank and file of the New Model Army and the furious Putney debates where the Levellers argued with Oliver Cromwell for the future of English democracy, this story reasserts the revolutionary nature of the 1642–51 wars and the role of ordinary people in this pivotal moment in history. In particular Rees places the Levellers at the centre of the debates of 1647 when the nation was gripped by the question of what to do with the defeated Charles I. Without the Levellers and Agitators’ fortitude and well-organised opposition history may have avoided the regicide and missed its revolutionary moment. The legacy of the Levellers can be seen in the modern struggles for freedom and democracy across the world.

This book reinterprets the Leveller authorships of John Lilburne, Richard Overton and William Walwyn, and foregrounds the role of ordinary people in petitioning and protest during an era of civil war and revolution. The Levellers sought to restructure the state in 1647-49 around popular consent and liberty for conscience, especially in their Agreement of the People. Their following was not a ‘movement’ but largely a political response of the sects that had emerged in London’s rapidly growing peripheral neighbourhoods and in other localities in the 1640s. This study argues that the Levellers did not emerge as a separate political faction before October 1647, that they did not succeed in establishing extensive political organisation, and that the troop revolt of spring 1649 was not really a Leveller phenomenon. Addressing the contested interpretations of the Levellers throughout, this book also introduces Leveller history to non-specialist readers.

This book explores the content of The Moderate, a radical newspaper of the British Civil Wars published in the pivotal years 1648-9. This newsbook, as newspapers were then known, is commonly associated with the Leveller movement, a radical political group that promoted a democratic form of government. While valuable studies have been published on the history of seventeenth-century English periodicals, as well as on the interaction between these newspapers and print culture at large, very little has been written on individual newspapers. This book fills a void: it provides an in-depth investigation of the news printed in The Moderate, with reference to other newspapers and to the larger historical context, and captures the essence of this periodical, seen both as a political publication and a commercial product. This book will be of interest to early-modern historians and literary scholars.

Battle-scarred investigates the human costs of the British Civil Wars. Through a series of varied case studies it examines the wartime experience of disease, burial, surgery and wounds, medicine, hospitals, trauma, military welfare, widowhood, desertion, imprisonment and charity. The percentage population loss in these conflicts was far higher than that of the two World Wars, which renders the Civil Wars arguably the most unsettling experience the British people have ever undergone. The volume explores its themes from new angles, demonstrating how military history can broaden its perspective and reach out to new audiences.

The period between 1630 and 1660 was one of the most tumultuous in Western history. These three decades witnessed the birth of English America and, in the mother country, a vicious civil war that rent the very fabric of English social, political, and religious life. It was an era of death and new beginnings, and at its heart was one remarkable family: the Rainborowes. In The Rainborowes, acclaimed historian Adrian Tinniswood tells the story of this all-but-forgotten clan for the very first time, showing how the family bridged two worlds as they struggled to build a godly community for themselves and their kin. The Rainborowes' patriarch, William, was a shipmaster and merchant whose taste for adventure and profit drew him into the expanding transatlantic traffic between England and its colonies in the New World. Eventually two of his daughters settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, marrying into the upper echelons of New England society. Back in England, meanwhile, William Rainborowe's sons threw themselves behind the English parliament in its rebellion against King Charles I. So, too, did many New World settlers, who returned to England to fight for the parliamentary cause. When the monarchy was restored in 1660, many of these revolutionaries quit their homeland for New England, where their dreams of liberty and equality were much closer to being realized. Following the Rainborowes from hectic London shipyards to remote Aegean islands, from the muddy streets of Boston to the battles of the English Civil War, Tinniswood reveals the indelible marks they left on America and England -- and the profound and irrevocable changes these thirty years had on the family and their fellow Englishmen in Europe and America. A feat of historical reporting, The Rainborowes spans oceans and generations to show how the American identity was forged in the crucible of England's bloody civil war.

The speakers at the 2018 Helion conference offer a variety of insights into the depth and direction of research into the Thirty Years’ War, with particular reference to the war’s effect on the British Isles, the careers of the officers from its shores who participated in the conflict, and the ‘trickle-down’ effect of the war into the military thinking and technology of those isles. Keynote speaker Professor Steve Murdoch examines the changes in understanding of British military participation in the Thirty Years’ War from a once unsophisticated and dismissive approach to a more enriched and interesting field of study. Keith Dowen examines the work of Catholic Irish colonel Gerat Barry, which has been largely overlooked. Micha? Paradowski looks into the careers of three officers from the British Isles who fought abroad – Arthur Aston Jr, James Butler and Scotsman James Murray. Arran Johnston considers the importance of General Alexander Leslie and his officer corps, and the importance of their overseas service in the Thirty Years’ War as the basis for the effectiveness of the Scottish army in the Bishops’ Wars. Prof. Martyn Bennett explores the process of appointment of the rival command structures in 1642, at the start of the English Civil Wars. David Flintham considers the foreign, especially Dutch, influence on English fortification during the period, the methods employed and those who practiced them. Stephen Ede-Borrett examines contemporary vexillology, and how much the Thirty Years’ War influenced the military flags used by the English Armies from 1639 to 1651.