2E - The Third Civil War: the attempted Royalist revival
Executing Charles I did not eliminate monarchy as a political cause: his supporters could transfer allegiance to his son. Study the revival of Royalism across Ireland and Scotland, the campaigns of Dunbar and Worcester, and the reasons Prince Charles returned to exile rather than regaining the English throne.
Royalism survives the regicide
The new English Commonwealth claimed to govern without a king, but it did not control the loyalties of all three kingdoms. Scottish leaders had opposed the trial of Charles I. They could recognise his son as Charles II while insisting that he accept Scotland's religious settlement. In Ireland, the Royalist lord lieutenant, the Marquis of Ormond, sought to combine supporters of the Crown with Confederate Catholics. Their alliance offered a base from which resistance to the English republic could continue.
These developments show the limits of describing the conflict as exclusively an English Civil War. Religious and political goals differed across the kingdoms, and an English settlement could create new enemies elsewhere. Scottish Covenanters might support monarchy while opposing Charles's religious preferences. Irish Catholics could support a Stuart king while seeking concessions that Protestant Royalists found difficult to accept. A common enemy did not remove the coalition's contradictions.
The campaigns of 1649–51 are often grouped as the Third Civil War. This label connects the final Royalist military revival to the earlier English conflicts, but should not hide the distinct Irish and Anglo-Scottish wars. Military conquest, rather than freely negotiated consensus, extended the republic's authority. The Cromwell Museum's chronology places these campaigns within the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.
The Irish base is defeated
The Royalist–Confederate coalition threatened the Commonwealth's position in Ireland, especially Dublin. Michael Jones's victory at Rathmines in August 1649 protected Dublin and weakened Ormond before Cromwell arrived with the expeditionary army. Holding a secure port allowed the republic to supply its troops and begin operations against other strongholds.
Cromwell's campaign captured Drogheda in September and Wexford in October 1649. The killings during and after the storming of these towns made the campaign especially brutal. Cromwell defended severe treatment as divine judgement and as a means of discouraging further resistance. That justification is evidence of his reasoning; it does not make the suffering disappear or settle every dispute over casualties. His letter to Speaker Lenthall of 17 September gives a contemporary account and defence of the action at Drogheda.
Successive sieges and the loss of ports restricted the Royalists' supply and communications. Cromwell returned to England in 1650, but Ireton and then other commanders continued the conquest. Irish resistance did not end instantly with Cromwell's departure. Nevertheless, the coalition could no longer mount the major intervention in England that Charles's supporters required. Military success also prepared the way for confiscation of Catholic land and an imposed settlement, linking republican security to deep and lasting Irish grievances.
The explanation therefore involves more than Cromwell winning battles. Jones secured the point of entry; naval and logistical resources sustained the army; the coalition lost strategically important places; and commanders continued operations after Cromwell left. Religious hostility and revenge helped shape how victory was pursued.
Scotland and the victory at Dunbar
Charles sought Scottish support while Royalist attempts elsewhere failed. Montrose's attempted rising in 1650 was defeated, and he was executed. Charles then accepted Covenanter demands through the Treaty of Breda of 1650 and took the Covenants. This agreement must not be confused with his Declaration of Breda ten years later. The bargain offered him an army and recognition at the cost of concessions that many of his English Royalist supporters disliked.
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