h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The English Civil War's http://www.h2g2.com/A453142.

All comments gratefully received.

Regards

Happy

HappyDude!
Caught your post to the Scouts email and went to the entry. Bravery has nothing to do with it!
Great entry on an extremely complex time in British history; and I think you've handled it well! I was in two minds to ask, perhaps for more information about certain aspects of the conflict and various peoples' roles within same; but, after due reflection, realised that, because of the complexity of the politics and various alleigances that were floating around at the time, it would make the piece itself a little too complex!
I think you've managed to balance it admirably!
Perhaps some of the sentences and punctuation toward the start could do with a little re-hashing, to make it flow somewhat more easily; but this is a personal thing and could very well be fixed by judicious sub-editing,I reckon.
More power to you, I enjoyed it very much!
And it should remain where it belongs, in the PR!
TheOkapi

Yo' Happy Dude, here are the points I picked up on....

First of all if you're reading it, the chances are you'll
not know much about it so make sure you make any historical
references clear, for example, "the short parliament" and
"the Long Parliament" mean little to anyone! Make it clear
they were 'historically known as'.

"King retired to oxford" this was 'his' capital for the
war or was there one a side?

1643 - I lost the plot a bit, were all these victories for
the royalists? If so it might be an idea to stick that as
a pre-paragraph note. Example: During this year The royalists
won a number of major victories

"After first Battle of Newbury on 20th September was fought in which an indecisive result was achieved, both sides sought aid. The king by bringing troops from Ireland and Parliament from the Scots in the form of the Solemn League and Covenant.



"After first Battle of Newbury on 20th September was fought in which an indecisive result was achieved, both sides sought aid. The king by bringing troops from Ireland and Parliament from the Scots in the form of the Solemn League and Covenant."

You seem to have lost me here....

"After the first battle of Newbury on 20th of September, which had an indecisive result, both sides sought aid. The king did this by bringing in troops from Ireland, Parlament rom the scots in the form of the 'Solemn league and Covenant'."



"The army of the Scottish Parliament crossed the border 19th January 1644 in aid of the English parliament and proceeded to York where they lay siege to it,"

Need to pu in "on the" before '19th January" and possibly an 'of'
between the '19th' and 'january'.


"The army of the Scottish Parliament crossed the border 19th January 1644 in aid of the English parliament and proceeded to York where they lay siege to it, they were joined by a parliamentarian army, which was commanded by the Earl of Manchester."

Perhaps make it clear it's an 'english parliamentaian army'.


"The army of the Scottish Parliament crossed the border 19th January 1644 in aid of the English parliament and proceeded to York where they lay siege to it, they were joined by a parliamentarian army, which was commanded by the Earl of Manchester. Prince Rupert was given command of the forces sent to relive York. Rupert relieved York on 1st July 1644; on the next day, Rupert's forces along with the Marquis of Newcastle's forces that had been besieged at York gave battle at Marston Moor. This is general recognized as the largest battle to ever have taken place on English Soil with over 45,000 combat troops involved, it resulted in a comprehensive defeat of the royalist forces. Parliament now reigned unchallenged in the North."

General comments - you seem to have lost the thread from when
the two armies were attacking york, suddenly the same army was
defending the town...

Perhaps state that 'Prince rupert was sent to relive the royalist forces stationed at York along with the Marquis of Newcastle's troops.


"the second battle of Newbury was fought on 27th October 1644, which was inconclusive and failed to stop the king returning to Oxford."

Second battle o Newbury was "also" inconclusive.


"I Cromwell was placed in command of parliaments forces, he masses the army at Berwick"

He 'massed' the army?


"They occupied Worcester on 22nd August 1651, an army of royalist sympathisers le by the Earl of Derby"

Misspell - Led!


"an army of royalist sympathisers le by the Earl of Derby moved to intercept Cromwell's pursuit of the Scots and they met at Wigan on 25th August 1651 eluting in a defeat for the royalist. Cromwell attacked Worcester on 3rd September 1651, the result was a disaster for the King and he fled in fear of his life at one point hiding in an oak tree "

Famous misspelling of 'resuling' you missed the R and S.


"Worcester on 3rd September 1651, the result was a disaster for the King and he fled in fear of his life at one point hiding in an oak tree to avoid captor."

Well no one caught him, so there were no captors, perhaps he hid
to evade persuit?


Not a bad article, though I wish you'd asked me to read through it earlier as I wanted to go to bed. Anyway, lacking a little padding, but not bad all in all.




Slayer, Cheif Quality Controler, Happy dude enterprises.

Okapi you said 'perhaps for more information about certain aspects of the conflict and various peoples roles within same'; let me know where you feel expansion of text or footnotes are needed. Re punctuation - this is the fist serious writeing I have done in a long while - I guess it took a couple of paragraphs to get into the flow.

Slayer thankyou for the comments - updated page coming soon.

Update of page compleated - Typo's fixed & all links working

Nice little timeline-synopsis of English history. Charles I sounds like a real stinker! Ggrammar and comma usage problems (nouns pluralized when they should be in the possessive form, and sentences constructed improperly.) The text seems to move at breakneck speed - you might want to rewrite the sentences slightly.

for ex:
"The Royalists victory at Adwalton Moor on the 30th June 1643 gave control of almost all Yorkshire to the king's forces."
(In this usage I'm thinking Royalists should be: Royalists' - plural & possessive)

Revised:
"The king's forces gained control of almost all of Yorkshire when the Royalists were victorious at Adwalton Moor, on the 30th of June, 1643."

Instead of this:
"At this time there was no standing army in England and both King and Parliament were forced to go on a recruiting drive, the only skilled soldiers were the Trained Bands (local militias) and those of the nobility and gentry who had served in Germany during the 30 years war."
(Instead of the connecting comma, this sentence could be divided into two complete sentences by putting a period in its place and capitalizing the next letter.) (And shouldn't 30 years war be capitalized?)

Revised:
Both the king and Parliament were forced to go on a recruiting drive. At this time there was no standing army in England; the only skilled soldiers were the Trained Bands (local militias) and those of the nobility and gentry, who had served in Germany during the 30 Years War.

Aside from the minor grammar problems, this is a great article!

Thankyou Lentilla points taken onboard. Look out for revisions.

I'm still not happy with the first paragraph of the 'Third Civil War' section, any suggstions ?

Hmm... This is another one of those two-complete-sentences-connected-by-a-comma thingies.

Instead of: Charles II fled to France and stayed there until after the death of Cromwell when Parliament invited him to return, he was acknowledged King in England on 25th May 1660.

Maybe: Charles II fled to France and stayed there until after the death of Cromwell, when Parliament invited him to return. He was acknowledged King in England on 25th May 1660.

I think a few words on what happened to Charles II afterwards would be appropriate. Was it an otherwise uneventful reign? Or was he the guy that went around talking to trees?

On another note: I'm pleased to inform you that this entry has been recommended for the Edited Guide, so any changes you'd like to make should be done relatively quickly. You'll be notified when the entry is due to appear in the Edited Guide. Keep up the good work!

Thnkyou for the reccomendation - Charles II was on the whole an uneventval King, though he was the last of the Stuart Kings & the only Catholic to be the head of the Church of England.

The title of the article should be "Wars", not "War's".

Great article here. Just a couple of points. You have doubled up on a paragraph at the end of the first war. Also, if mentioning the invasion of Scotland, why not Ireland. I know it is a lot of work, and I'm not sure how it sits in the timeline, but maybe a slight mention. Cromwell did, after all, conquer the whole of the British Isles. Also, when mentioning the Scots, they were Covenanters rather than parliamentarians. It was religious, rather than political reasons that brought them in.
But very good none the less. You are ony getting so many comments because you have tackled so much, I'm very impressed.

I have not mentioned Ireland because I am planning another article on Cromwell so I have tried to confine this to just The Civil war. Re the Scottish Parliament/Coventers thing, I will check my source material again but as I understand it the coventers were acting in league with the Scottish parliament – if I am wrong let me know (this is your area), I will endeavour to make this clearer in the text.

Oh, they were working with the parliament. Its just England was Rights of Parliament v. Rights of The King. In Scotland it was Presbyterians v. Episcopalians and the Scots only joined the English parliament because of the promise of religious reform in England. Hence why they changed sides after the death of Charles I.
I was just being pedantic
And fair dos on Ireland, it is rather a big subject.

Editorial Note: This thread has been moved out of the Peer Review forum because this entry has now been recommended for the Edited Guide.

If they haven't been along already, the Scout who recommended your entry will post here soon, to let you know what happens next. Meanwhile you can find out what will happen to your entry here: http://www.h2g2.com/SubEditors-Process

Congratulations!

Well its time to handover to the sub-Eds, but before that happens I would just like to give a big THANKYOU to all that have commented in this or other forums on the article - it has measurably improved thanks to your comments.

Sorry, this is a bit late and in reply to posting 10.

In what sense was Charles II an 'uneventful king'? And he was not the last of the Stuart kings, and neither was he a Catholic. And I wonder if it could be worthwhile mentioning that Cromwell's son actually succeeded the Lord Protector and ruled for around a year before Charles II was 'invited' to return from exile and 'resume' the monarchy. The title, Civil Wars: my view is that the singular is preferable, but isn't it interesting that this particular conflict, which was more a revolution than just any old civil war, is the only war to be described as 'civil', when there were many other English conflicts post Hastings that equally could be termed 'civil wars' e.g the Wars of the Roses.

Compliments of the Season to all.

Walter.

Walter fair Comment; I will try to answer.
Charles II uneventful - ok a lot happned duing his reign but no more or less than many other monarchs and his reign is not the focus of the article. Charles II secretly converted to the Catholic faith duing his exile in France a fact that only came to light when he asked for a Catholic Priest to administer the last rights on when he was on his deathbed. While there have been many conflicts of a Civil nature in the Brittish Isles Historicaly this is known as 'The English Civil War', probaly because its the only one that has been fought between difern't branches of goverment over there respective rights rather than over the crown. I have not mentioned Cromwell's son as this is a part of the history of the Commonwealth and I have tried to concentrate on the war itself only mentioning Charles II succession to tidy things up. As for the last Stuart ok you got me, like most englishmen I try my best to forget about Charles II younger brother James II a man deposed by the 'Glorious Revolution'

Hi Happy Dude,

Nice to hear from you, and thanks for the reply. I think thatr Charles II alleged conversion to Catholicism is a bit suss, but in any event during his reign he professed an Anglican bent and of course had the title of Supreme head of the Church of England. If he did convert while in exile in France, it might well have been something he did out of political expediency (to assist him obtaining French support) rather than any genuine religious conviction.

My point about 'civil' war is simply that any conflict in which a fair amount of Englishmen are fighting a fair amount of Englishmen is essentially a civil war, and that England's post Conquest history down to the seventeenth century is riddled with such conflicts.

And when speaking of the last of the Stuart monarchs of England, we should not forget the two Stuart Queens, Mary II and Anne (both daughters of the last Stuart king of England, James II).

I hope you have a really good Christmas, and look forward to reading your contributions in the New Year. Take care,

Walter

Fair point on the queens, but I do belive James II was definatly last Stuart Kng, and I understand your piont on the use of the term 'civil' but as I said before I belive its use is to signify the facr that this wasnt a Dynystic war but between branches of gov.

A Merry Christas to Everyone