Publisher's Synopsis
Volume II covers the period, unique in England's history, of republican rule. It begins with the abolition of the monarchy and the House of Lords in 1649 and ends in April 1653 with Cromwell's dramatic and forcible expulsion of the `Rump', the remnant of the House of Commons left behind by Pride's Purge in December 1648. The campaigns which produced his famous and decisive victories against the Irish and Scots between 1649 and 1651, resulting in the incorporation of Ireland and Scotland into the English commonwealth, are described at length, as is the deterioration of his relations with the Long Parliament following his return to politics at Westminster in 1651. It was this that finally provoked him to destroy the parliament which had fought against Charles I, and so take the Puritan Revolution into uncharted constitutional territory.
