They resulted in the execution of Charles I, the abolition of monarchy, and founding of the Commonwealth of England, a unitary state which controlled the British Isles until the Stuart Restoration in 1660.

Royalists generally argued political and religious bodies were subordinate to the king, while most of their Parliamentarian opponents backed a limited form of constitutional monarchy.

In Ireland, the only one with a Catholic majority, the Irish Confederates wanted an end to anti-Catholic discrimination, greater self-governance, and a reversal of land grants to Protestant settlers.

The conflicts began with the Bishops' Wars of 1639–1640, when Scottish Covenanters who opposed Charles' religious reforms gained control of Scotland and briefly occupied northern England.

The Irish Catholic Confederation, formed to control the rebellion, held most of Ireland in the ensuing war against the Royalists, Parliamentarians, and Covenanters.

In August 1642, failure to break the resulting political deadlock sparked the First English Civil War, which pitted Royalists against both the Parliamentarians and their Covenanter allies in England and Wales.

The war in England ended when Charles surrendered to the Scots in 1646, but divisions among his opponents and his refusal to make significant political concessions caused a renewed outbreak of fighting in 1648.

In 1625, Charles I succeeded his father and marked three main concerns regarding England and Wales: how to fund his government, how to reform the church, and how to limit the English Parliament's interference in his rule.

Charles shared his father's belief in the Divine Right of Kings, and his persistent assertion of this standard seriously disrupted relations between the Crown and the English Parliament.

The Church of England remained dominant, but a powerful Puritan minority, represented by about one third of Parliament, began to assert themselves; their religious precepts had much in common with the Presbyterian Scots.

Although the newer, Puritan settlements in North America, notably Massachusetts, were dominated by Parliamentarians, the older colonies to the south sided with the Crown.

Built-up inside the natural defence of a nearly impassable barrier reef, to fend off the might of Spain, these defences would have been a formidable obstacle for the Parliamentary fleet sent in 1651 under the command of Admiral Sir George Ayscue to subdue the trans-Atlantic colonies, but after the fall of Barbados, the Bermudians made a separate peace that respected the internal status quo.

The idea of an Irish Catholic army enforcing what many saw as already tyrannical government horrified both the Scottish and the English Parliaments, which in response threatened to invade Ireland.

The imposition of Bishops and other Anglican practices to the Scottish Kirk were opposed by most Scots, who supported a Presbyterian system of governance led by a General Assembly, and in individual churches by ministers and committees of elders.

Scottish Covenanters (as Presbyterians there called themselves) joined forces with the English Parliament in late 1643 and played a major role in the ultimate Parliamentary victory.

Over the course of more than two years, the king's forces were ground down by the efficiency of those of Parliament, including the New Model Army, backed as they were by the financial muscle of the City of London.

There, the Royalists gained a series of victories in 1644–1645, but were crushed after the main Covenanter armies returned to Scotland upon the end of the first English Civil War.

After his surrender, Charles was approached by the Scots, the Presbyterians in the English Parliament, and the Grandees of the New Model Army, all attempting to reach an accommodation with him and among themselves which would achieve peace while preserving the crown.

Cromwell divided his forces, leaving part in Scotland to complete the conquest there, then led the rest south in pursuit of Charles II.

[20] Having defeated all organised opposition, the Grandees of the Parliamentary New Model Army and their civilian supporters dominated the politics of all three nations for the next nine years (see Interregnum (1649–1660)).

In early 1660, General George Monck, commanding English occupation forces in Scotland, ordered his troops from the Coldstream barracks, marched them south into England, and seized control of London by February 1660.

[21] There he accumulated allies and agreements among the English and London establishments, including the newly constituted Convention Parliament, to which he was elected a member.

In practice, Oliver Cromwell exercised political power through his control over Parliament's military forces, but his legal position—and provisions for his succession—remained unclear, even after he became Lord Protector.

In Ireland, the new government confiscated almost all lands belonging to Irish Catholics as punishment for the rebellion of 1641; harsh Penal Laws also restricted this community.

Although Charles II's Declaration of Breda in April 1660 had offered reconciliation and promised a general pardon for crimes committed during the English Civil War, the new régime executed or imprisoned for life those directly involved in the regicide of Charles I. Royalists dug up Cromwell's corpse and performed a posthumous execution.

However, the issues which had caused the wars—religion, the powers of Parliament vis-á-vis the king, and the relationships between the three kingdoms—remained unresolved or, more accurately, postponed, only to re-emerge as matters disputed again and leading to the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

Only later did the broader features of modern Britain, foreshadowed in the civil wars, emerge permanently; namely: a Protestant constitutional monarchy with a strong standing army under civilian control.