In a field in Nottingham in the summer of 1642, King Charles I watched his standard being raised in a high wind and driving rain. For six years thereafter, England was rent by civil war. "Whole counties became desperate," in the words of a Suffolk gentleman. Families and friends were bitterly divided as men left home to fight for King or Parliament. Castles and towns, which a year before had been "scenes of happiness and plenty," were besieged and attacked.

Houses were plundered, churches and cathedrals desecrated. Savage battles were fought; and, as once-peaceful villages were overrun by hungry troops, so-called Clubmen seized arms to defend against one side or the other. Some 200,000 lives were lost, many from plague in strife-torn towns - and the king himself was beheaded on January 30, 1649.

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A social as well as a military history that vividly re-creates these scenes of war in England 350 years ago, Cavaliers and Roundheads is enlivened by astute and revealing character sketches, not only of the leading participants - the slight, sad, obstinate King; his dashing, ruthless nephew, Prince Rupert; the toweringly forceful and slovenly Oliver Cromwell - but also such half-forgotten characters as Sir Arthur Aston, the brutal, detested governor of Oxford whose brains were beaten out of his skull with his wooden leg; the fat French wife of the Earl of Derby, bravely defying her husband's enemies as cannon balls thudded into the walls of Lathom House; Abigail Penington, the Lady Mayoress, marching out with other City ladies and the fishwives of Billingsgate to work on London's fortifications.