English Civil War
Whig and Marxist views

In the early decades of the 20th century, the Whig school was the dominant theoretical view. It explained the Civil War as resulting from centuries of struggle between Parliament (notably the House of Commons) and the Monarchy, with Parliament defending the traditional rights of Englishmen, while the Stuart monarchy continually attempted to expand its right to dictate law arbitrarily. The major Whig historian, S. R. Gardiner, popularised the idea that the English Civil War was a "Puritan Revolution" that challenged the repressive Stuart Church and prepared the way for religious toleration. Thus, Puritanism was seen as the natural ally of a people preserving their traditional rights against arbitrary monarchical power.

The Whig view was challenged and largely superseded by the Marxist school, which became popular in the 1940s, and saw the English Civil War as a bourgeois revolution. According to Marxist historian Christopher Hill:

The Civil War was a class war, in which the despotism of Charles I was defended by the reactionary forces of the established Church and conservative landlords, Parliament beat the King because it could appeal to the enthusiastic support of the trading and industrial classes in town and countryside, to the yeomen and progressive gentry, and to wider masses of the population whenever they were able by free discussion to understand what the struggle was really about.
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