1649. King Charles I had been executed. A quarter of a million had died in the Second English Civil War. Two hundred great houses stood in ruins, with hundreds of villages and towns left battered and broken. The monarchy, the House of Lords and the Church of England were all abruptly abolished. What next? This is the story of 1649 to 1660, the eleven years when England, Wales and later Scotland and Ireland were governed as a republic. In the midst of unprecedented tumult, what was life like for the people of England – both the winners and the losers? Historian Anna Keay explores the decade through the lives of nine people, from Oliver Cromwell, upon whose personality the entire fate of England was said to hinge, through to the likes of John Bradshaw, a relatively minor Cheshire lawyer who was appointed lord president of the high court of justice established to try the King – largely because all the more senior judges refused the task. He would become the only Englishman ever to hand down a sentence of death upon his sovereign. Telling a rich and vivid history in matching style, this is a brilliant new take on the most extraordinary decade in English history, and what happened when a conservative people tried revolution.
