In the two centuries that this volume covers – between 1485 and 1688 – many of the landmark events described are factors that cemented the character of the nation, and the world, which we know today. England became a Protestant country under Henry VIII; his daughter Elizabeth became the celebrated Virgin Queen; and the discovery of 'the round world’ enabled a vast and magnificent continent across the Atlantic to be sought and found. While this new era of global expansion spawned the beginnings of modern America, England was engaged in a bloody Civil War and 'the country sustained a Republican experiment under the massive personality of Oliver Cromwell’. 

          The volume concludes in the reign of William of Orange, the Protestant faith having been secured under a Dutch monarch. RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION The Round World; The Tudor Dynasty; King Henry VIII; Cardinal Wolsey; The Break with Rome; The End of the Monasteries; The Protestant Struggle; Good Queen Bess; The Spanish Armada; Gloriana THE CIVIL WAR The United Crowns; The 'Mayflower’; Charles I and Buckingham; The Personal Rule; The Revolt of Parliament; The Great Rebellion; Marston Moor and Naseby; The Axe Falls THE RESTORATION The English Republic; The Lord Protestor; The Restoration; The Merry Monarch; The Popish Plot; Whig and Tory; The Catholic King; The Revolution of 1688.