Among the unsolved puzzles of English history, the Civil Wars of the seventeenth century stand high. There we have, on the face of it, a series of enormous events – war in England, between Englishmen, a king publicly beheaded, twenty years of violent upheaval. Something, surely, was badly wrong with the body politic, or so it would appear. Revolutionary situations and civil wars do not happen without good cause, and the good causes of those events have been passionately hunted ever since. But the hunt turns up more mythical unicorns than usefully edible prey. Did the factions divide over the true nature of the constitution: was it a conflict between royal absolutists and parliamentary constitutionalists? A supposition hallowed by tradition: but it has been shown that the leaders and spokesmen of all shades of opinion really held fundamentally identical views. Was it a war for puritanism, for liberty of conscience against a repressive anglican uniformity? Such issues grew prominent as the war advanced, but revolutionary puritanism is rarely found before 1640, and in the early years of the Long Parliament the one thing that prevented Pym's party from breaking up was his careful avoidance of the religious issues. Or was it, as all major revolutions are supposed to be, the outcome of a deep-rooted social split, between classes or within the governing class?