The years between 1603 and 1714 were perhaps the most decisive in English history. During this period modern English society and a modern state began to take shape, and England's position in the world was transformed.
Since it was first published in 1961 The Century of Revolution has become established as a classic. It tries to penetrate below the familiar events to grasp 'what happened' - to ordinary English men and women as well as to kings and queens or abstractions like 'society' and 'the State'. It proves that the seventeenth century is still sufficiently part of us today, of our ways of thinking, our prejudices, and our hopes, to be worth trying to understand.
In this new edition Dr. Hill includes the most important conclusions of valuable research over the last twenty years and has added postscripts drawing attention to especially significant books.