Tis A Plaine Case Gentlemen is an English broadside ballad housed in the Huntington Library. It was originally printed by Stephen Bukley in 1643, and is well known for its opening lines: "OH the distraction of this Factious age! / Have not wile-men (who are starke mad with rage, / Brought this faire Land to such a combustion, / That through their means we may feare confusion.". [1]
Tis A Plaine Case Gentlemen is, at its core, a royalist broadside ballad. It decries the current (1643) political and religious state of London. The speaker asserts that London's current woes are brought on by both religious division and the peoples' lack of faith in their king and parliament. Though the protestant reformation was nearing its end, it was still a considerable driving force in political and religious thought. The ballad claims that the common folk, as opposed to the king and parliament, are responsible for their own troubles because each private individual is taking on the mantle of king for themselves, which is blasphemous in the eyes of God and ignores the Great Chain of Being that many royalist supporters believed in. The ballad concludes by claiming that those who harm their sovereign in turn harm themselves.
The English Civil War (1642–1651) was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Parliamentarians ("Roundheads") and Royalists ("Cavaliers"), mainly over the manner of England's governance and issues of religious freedom. It was part of the wider Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The first (1642–1646) and second (1648–1649) wars pitted the supporters of King Charles I against the supporters of the Long Parliament, while the third (1649–1651) saw fighting between supporters of King Charles II and supporters of the Rump Parliament. The wars also involved the Scottish Covenanters and Irish Confederates. The war ended with Parliamentarian victory at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651.
George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle, KG was an English soldier and politician, and a key figure on both sides of the English Civil War, as well as the Restoration of the monarchy to King Charles II in 1660.
The Tories were a political faction and then a political party in the parliaments of England, Scotland, Great Britain, Ireland and the United Kingdom. Between the 1670s and 1830s, the Tories contested power with their rivals, the Whigs.
The Ironsides were troopers in the Parliamentarian cavalry formed by English political leader Oliver Cromwell in the 17th century, during the English Civil War. The name came from "Old Ironsides", one of Cromwell's nicknames.
The Irish Confederate Wars, also called the Eleven Years' War, took place in Ireland between 1641 and 1653. It was the Irish theatre of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, a series of civil wars in the kingdoms of Ireland, England and Scotland – all ruled by Charles I. The conflict had political, religious and ethnic aspects and was fought over governance, land ownership, religious freedom and religious discrimination. The main issues were whether Irish Catholics or British Protestants held most political power and owned most of the land, and whether Ireland would be a self-governing kingdom under Charles I or subordinate to the parliament in England. It was the most destructive conflict in Irish history and caused 200,000–600,000 deaths from fighting as well as war-related famine and disease.
The Wars of the Three Kingdoms, sometimes known as the British Civil Wars, were an intertwined series of conflicts that took place between 1639 and 1653 in the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland – separate kingdoms which had the same king, Charles I. The wars were fought mainly over issues of governance and religion, and included rebellions, civil wars and invasions. The English Civil War has become the best-known of these conflicts. It ended with the English parliamentarian army defeating all other belligerents, the execution of the King, the abolition of the monarchy, and the founding of the Commonwealth of England; a unitary republic which controlled the British Isles until 1660.
The First English Civil War was fought in England and Wales, from August 1642 to June 1646. It forms one of the conflicts known collectively as the 1638 to 1651 Wars of the Three Kingdoms, which also took place in Scotland and Ireland. These include the 1638 to 1640 Bishops' Wars, the Irish Confederate Wars, the Second English Civil War, the Third English Civil War, and the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland.
Confederate Ireland was the period of Irish Catholic self-government between 1642 and 1649, during the Eleven Years' War. During this time, two-thirds of Ireland was governed by the Irish Catholic Confederation or Confederacy, also known as the Confederation of Kilkenny because it was based in Kilkenny. It was formed by Catholic nobles, landed gentry, clergy and military leaders after the Irish Rebellion of 1641, and it included Catholics of Gaelic and Anglo-Norman descent. They wanted an end to anti-Catholic discrimination within the kingdom of Ireland, greater Irish self-governance, and to roll back the plantations of Ireland. They also wanted to prevent an invasion by anti-Catholic English Parliamentarians and Scottish Covenanters, who were defying the king, Charles I. Most Confederates professed loyalty to Charles I and believed they could reach a lasting settlement with the king once his opponents in the English Civil War had been defeated. The Confederacy had what were effectively a parliament, an executive, and a military. It minted coins, levied taxes and set up a printing press. Confederate ambassadors were appointed and recognised in France, Spain and the Papal States, who supplied the Confederates with money and weapons.
Sir Robert Heath was an English judge and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1621 to 1625.
David Jenkins was a Welsh judge and Royalist during the English Civil War.
The siege of Reading was an eleven-day blockade of Reading, Berkshire, during the First English Civil War. Reading had been garrisoned by the Royalists in November 1642, and held 3,300 soldiers under the command of Sir Arthur Aston. On 14 April 1643, Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex brought a Parliamentarian army of 19,000 men to lay siege to the town, and began bombarding the town two days later.
Francis Cheynell (1608–1665) was a prominent English religious controversialist, of Presbyterian views, and President of St John's College, Oxford 1648 to 1650, imposed by the Parliamentary regime.
The ordinance of no quarter to the Irish was a decree of the English Long Parliament passed on 24 October 1644 in response to the Irish Confederation of Kilkenny threat to send troops from Ireland to support King Charles I during the English Civil War. The decree ordered Parliamentary officers to give no quarter to Irish soldiers fighting in England and Wales, and Irish Confederate sailors at sea who surrendered.
The Committee for Plundered Ministers was appointed by the Long Parliament, then under the influence of the Presbyterians, after the start of the English Civil War in August 1643 for the purpose of replacing and effectively silencing those clergy who were loyal to the King Charles I.
Politics were an important part of John Milton's life. Milton enjoyed little wide-scale early success, either in prose or poetry, until the production of his later, controversial political works starting with The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates and Eikonoklastes.
1643 was the second year of the First English Civil War. Politically, the latter months of the year were the turning-point of the war. The King made a truce with the Irish rebels on 15 September which united against him nearly every class in Protestant England. Only ten days after the "Irish Cessation," Parliament at Westminster swore to the Solemn League and Covenant, and the die was cast. {{Campaignbox First English Civil War
This is a timeline for the English Civil War in Shropshire.
A Ballad upon the Popish Plot is an early modern English broadside ballad about a fabricated conspiracy known as "The Popish Plot" that occurred between 1678 and 1681 in the Kingdoms of England and Scotland, during a period of widespread social and cultural prejudice against Catholicism. The song records an indictment of the Plot—a crucial consequence of national religious conflict that arguably began with the English Reformation—in the form of the ballad, one of the most time-honored and influential styles of popular music.
The Ballad of the Cloak, Or the Cloak's Knavery is an English Broadside ballad that dates back, roughly, to the last quarter of the 17th century. It is most often set to the popular tune, "From Hunger and Cold, or Packington's Pound." The ballad is most recognized by its opening lines, "Come buy my new Ballet/ I hav't in my Wallet." Extant copies of the ballad can be found at the Huntington Library, the Pepys Library, the British Library and the National Library of Scotland.
The Storming of Farnham Castle occurred on 1 December 1642, during the early stages of the First English Civil War, when a Parliamentarian force attacked the Royalist garrison at Farnham Castle in Surrey. Sir John Denham had taken possession of the castle for the Royalists in mid-November, but after the Royalists had been turned back from London at the Battle of Turnham Green, a Parliamentarian force under the command of Sir William Waller approached the castle. After Denham refused to surrender, Waller's forces successfully stormed the castle. They captured it in under three hours, mostly due to the unwillingness of the Royalist troops to fight. This allowed the Parliamentarians to get close enough to breach the gates, after which the garrison surrendered.
