SOURCE: Introduction to The Puritan Revolution: A Documentary History, edited by Stuart E. Prall, Anchor Books, 1968, pp. ix-xxii.

In the following essay, Prall reviews the explanations proposed by historians regarding the reasons for the English Revolution and argues that a combination of factors (including the struggle for power between the crown and Parliament, the religious schism between Anglicans and Puritans, and the division among the gentry class) contributed to England's Civil War.

Popular and scholarly interest in the era of the Puritan Revolution has never been wanting, but the past half century has seen this interest lead to an ever greater investigation into the history of English life in all its complexities from the mid-sixteenth century until the Restoration of 1660. The day when England prided itself on achieving democracy by way of evolution, whereas continental peoples were forced to take the revolutionary road, is now passing. The multiplicity...