Restoration Historians and the English Civil War

1. Front Matter

   Pages I-XI

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2. Introduction

   • Royce MacGillivray

   Pages 1-14

3. Royalist and Parliamentarian Historians before the Restoration

   • Royce MacGillivray

   Pages 15-47

4. Royalist Historians from the Restoration to 1702

   • Royce MacGillivray

   Pages 48-95

5. Rushworth and Nalson

   • Royce MacGillivray

   Pages 96-119

6. Whitelocke

   • Royce MacGillivray

   Pages 120-144

7. Baxter

   • Royce MacGillivray

   Pages 145-164

8. Parliamentarian and Whig Historians from the Restoration to 1702

   • Royce MacGillivray

   Pages 165-196

9. Clarendon

   • Royce MacGillivray

   Pages 197-225

10. Conclusion

    • Royce MacGillivray

    Pages 226-236

11. Back Matter

    Pages 237-264

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This is a study of the histories of the English Civil War or some aspects of it written in England or by Englishmen and Englishwomen or publish­ ed in England up to 1702, the year of the publication of the first volume of Clarendon's History of the Rebellion. By the terms of this definition, Clarendon is himself, of course, one of the historians studied. Clarendon's History is so formidable an achievement that all historians writing about the war before its publication have an air of prematureness. Nevertheless, as I hope the following pages will show, they produced a body of writing which may still be read with interest and profit and which anticipated many of the ideas and attitudes of Clarendon's History. I will even go so far as to say that many readers who have only a limited interest or no in­ terest in the Civil War are likely to find many of these historians interest­ ing, should their works come to their attention, for their treatment of the problems of man in society, for their psychological acuteness, and for their style. But while I intend to show their merits, my main concern will be to show how the Civil War appeared to historians, including Clarendon, who wrote within one or two generations after it, that is to say, at a time when it remained part of the experience of people still alive. A word is necessary on terminology.

• Civil War
• English
• John Locke
• Thomas Hobbes
• body
• corpus
• experience
• history
• history of literature
• restoration
• style
• time
• will
• writing

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