The 17th century – in England at least – is the century of individualism. He is always aware that he is writing about people who had little or no idea of what would happen next and whose judgment of people and things was often wrong and at best partial. Best of all, he is able when recounting the course of events to divest himself of that hindsight which springs unbidden to our minds to explain motive and causation. That he is also a military historian who has himself experienced war enables him to deal briskly and authoritatively with the battles of the civil war, allowing for the unexpectedness, unintelligibility and virtual impossibility of communication which remain with the participants as the chief memory of combat. Because though the author is sensitive to and understanding of the religious principles and controversies of the period, though he mastered the staunchless flow of modern publications detailing the economic and social facts and tendencies that underlay this era of change and expansion, he is, by profession, a political historian. I demand reparations for my ancestors’ fall from grace
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