House where Oliver Cromwell plotted Civil War battle goes on the market for £1million

Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658)

The Civil War was a series of battles from 1642 to 1651 between Royalists and Parliamentarians.

When King Charles I took the throne in 1625, his reign was met with almost immediate murmurs of discontent.

His was a style of governance defined by religious dogma and a stubborn opposition to parliamentary rule.

This bred feelings of alienation and deep mistrust in pockets of England, while in Scotland tensions with the English boiled over into bloody conflict.

The embattled king was forced to form a parliament in 1640, and within this a vocal and highly critical Puritan faction began to grow.

When a violent Catholic rebellion broke out in Ireland, disagreements over how to respond split England in two, and in 1642 the English Civil War broke out.

The Royalists, based largely in the north and west, fought for the king, while the Roundheads, also known as Parliamentarians, came mainly from the south and east.

They took their nickname from their preference for closely cropped hair, which set them apart from the ringlets of courtly Royalists.

The battles that followed saw Charles’s forces, bolstered by the Welsh and Cornish, clash with a Roundhead army swollen with Londoners.

The Royalists looked to be on the brink of victory in 1643, until their enemies joined forces with the Scots.

In 1644, the king’s men suffered a crushing defeat at Marston Moor, North Yorkshire, effectively conceding the north. A further loss at Naseby, Northamptonshire, was the final nail in the coffin.

The king gave himself up to the Scots and they promptly passed him on to their Roundhead allies, who were in the early stages of establishing a republican regime.

He was executed in 1649, but not before inciting further clashes known as the Second Civil War.