Talk:English Civil War

From 1649 to 1659 the monarchy was abolished and replaced by the Commonwealth of England (1649-1653; 1659-1660) and a Protectorate (1653-1659), a military regime headed by Cromwell and later his son Richard

This seems to contradict itself. I think the first 1659 should be 1660.

Also, I don't think the protectorate ceased being called a commonwealth too, though at some point (1653?) it became Great Britain.

A more tangential thought. This article, like many sources on civil wars, talks of dividing families. I came across an interesting idea, that, for landed families, this was a deliberate policy: whoever won, there's be a member of the family on the winning side, with a good chance of keeping the family lands. I don't know whether this is taken seriously by historians, and if so whether it belongs in the article. Peter Jackson (talk) 08:54, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

I obviously haven't corrected all the errors that I could have corrected. On the last point, there are civil wars and civil wars. When they are dynastic, like the Wars of the Roses, I am sure it could be shown that families did take such calculated decisions. This war, however, had an ideological element in it, and I don't know of any family that split in order to be sure of having someone on the winning side. If they had no strong views, it was reasonably possible for them just to keep out of it, and to pay their levies to whichever side was the more successful in collecting them in their area. --Martin Wyatt (talk) 18:48, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

I am not sure that the peaceful transitions of government from 1649 have a place in an article on the civil war, but I have left them in and corrected them, making use of Gardiner's Constitutional Documents of the English Revolution. --Martin Wyatt (talk) 19:20, 25 July 2017 (UTC)