A-level Topic Guide: the Stuarts, the Civil War and the Restoration

James VI and I to Anne

Published: 17th December 2020

The 17th century covering the Stuarts, the English Civil War and the Restoration among other things is a popular area of study at A-level across the examination boards. Whichever board you are studying with and whatever the focus of your study unit on this period of history, the resources in this unit will support you as you develop your subject knowledge, write essays and revise. 

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Introduction

  • Introduction

Monarchs and their Parliaments to 1629

  • Introduction
  • The Union of the Crowns
  • The Early Stuart Parliaments
  • King James’s Book of Sports, 1617

1629–49: division, dissent and revolution

  • Introduction
  • The Road to the First English Civil War
  • The Personal Rule of Charles I, 1629-40
  • Why did the Civil War break out in 1642?
  • Why did the Royalists lose the first Civil War?
  • Religion and Politics 1559–1642
  • The Irish Confederate War
  • The Failure of Negotiated Settlement
  • The Levellers
  • England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales
  • King Charles I
  • The Trial of Charles I
  • The Local Community and The Great Rebellion
  • The Thirty Years War
  • English Puritanism
  • London and the English Civil War
  • Why did People Choose Sides in the English Civil War?

1649–60: Cromwell and the Protectorate/Interregnum

  • Introduction
  • Oliver Cromwell
  • The Commonwealth and the Protectorate
  • Was the Protectorate a Military Dictatorship?
  • ‘Cromwell’s trunks’
  • Penruddock's Rising 1655
  • Oliver Cromwell 1658-1958
  • The 1650s

1660–1702: Restoration to constitutional monarchy

  • Introduction
  • Charles II
  • King Charles II
  • How close was England to Absolutism 1660-88?
  • James II, William III and the Glorious Revolution of 1688
  • Parliament and Constitutional Change 1660-1702
  • The Restoration in Ireland
  • Intellectual and Scientific Revolution in Britain
  • Limited Monarchy in Great Britain in the Eighteenth Century
  • Ireland under the reigns of James II and William III
  • An English Absolutism?
  • James, Duke of Monmouth
  • Religion and Party in Late Stuart England

1702–40: the Act of Union

  • Introduction
  • Life, Reputation and Legacy of Queen Anne
  • Queen Anne
  • Jacobitism
  • The Jacobite Rebellion
  • The Scottish Dream of Darien

The British Empire

  • Introduction
  • The Origins of the British Empire
  • Early British America
  • The Mayflower voyage and the English settlement of North America
  • Families and the English Atlantic Empire, 1550-1650
  • Native North Americans in Britain
  • South Asian British History
  • The British Empire in India
  • African and Caribbean British History - The Stuart Period
  • The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

Reading & Revision

  • Revision Quiz
  • Mind Maps
  • Timeline
  • Past Exam Papers
  • Reading List