Talk:First English Civil War

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[edit] list of English civil wars

The palementrian roylaist wars were not the first civil wars (unless im mistaken the wars of the roses was the first) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Labtech (talk • contribs) 21:11, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

The conflict known as the English Civil War is usually broken into two or three three pieces hence first second and third civil wars. There have been lots of other English civil wars but they are traditionally known by other name (see list of English civil wars). Only the conflict between from 1642 to 1651 is known as the "English Civil War". Philip Baird Shearer 00:40, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Huge sections accidentally deleted

Hi, I was editing the section on "Overview" and the whole article seems to have been deleted, except for this section. Can anyone help me revert to the LAST full version, as I have done quite a bit of editing on other sections as well. Thanking you in advance. PM Poon 05:17, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

As you can see I fixed your problem. It happens a lot to me because it often seems to take a long time for the template of funny characters to be retrieved and if one clicks on the button to save before the page is complete then it saves the section in place of the whole page.
As it has happened to me several times, I have worked out the best way to fix it.
  1. list the history of the page click on the last complete version.
    • edit and immediately [Save page] the last complete version.
  2. Open another page and list the history in it
    • edit the version of the page saved with only the section (a).
    • in the first window edit the same section in the latest saved version (b).
    • cut and past all of (a) into (b).
    • cancel (a), [Save page] (b). All done
I think you are doing sterling work on wikifying the page, but as a first step I think it would be of more use to go through the paragraphs which do not have links and create links to other wikipedia pages. I think this provides more bang for the buck than reformatting paragraphs which already contain links. I have done this for both 2nd ECW and 3rd ECW but ran out of steam on this much bigger article. Philip Baird Shearer 10:15, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] second use of titles

The 1911 article used titles initally and then just the name of the person. I think we should stick to that as well. At the moment due to the wikification of the article we are ending up with inconsistencies where sometimes the title is included when the person is refered to a scond time while most remain as they were in the originalarticle.

Some like the Fairfaxes of course, need some sort of qualification based on name or rank, because there are two of them, but for example The earl of Newcastle is currently inconsistent:

  1. Earl of Newcastle -- with link, which is what we need
  2. Earl of Newcastle -- no link
  3. Newcastle
  4. Lord Newcastle
  5. Newcastle -- liked to Newcastle
  6. Lord Newcastle's
  7. Newcastle
  8. Newcastle
  9. Newcastle
  10. Newcastle
  11. Newcastle
  12. Newcastle
  13. Newcastle
  14. Newcastle
  15. Newcastle (now the Marquess of Newcastle) -- Seems OK to me as specific info and not used as a name identifier.
  16. Newcastle
  17. Newcastle
  18. Newcastle
  19. Newcastle
  20. Newcastle
  21. Newcastle
  22. Marquis of Newcastle
  23. Newcastle
  24. Newcastle
  25. Newcastle
  26. Newcastle
  27. Newcastle
  28. Newcastle
  29. Newcastle
  30. Newcastle
  31. Newcastle
  32. Newcastle-on-Tyne -- to distinquish it from the man and to link directly
  33. Newcastle-on-Tyne -- to distinquish it from the man

I think that in all but the first one and the last two should just be Newcastle. Newcastle is only an example, a lot of other names have the same inconsitency which I think we should fix. Philip Baird Shearer 11:59, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

But if you always leave out the title it can get very confusing as to whether Lord Newcastle or Newcastle upon Tyne is being referred to (likewise with Lord Essex and the County of Essex), especially with Britannica's convoluted language. If you want consistency I'd much prefer "the Earl of Newcastle" then "Lord Newcastle" (which is the way it is in many other articles). Proteus (Talk) 12:12, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

I disagree, in most context it is clear,an as I have said where clarity is needed it can be added. It is common in documents to define the term and then use it in shorted form. If there is a clash between two then the second reference should use a longer form to distinguish it form the latter. For example if there is confusion between man Manchester and the city then add "city of" before the city. If of course there were dozens of mentions of the city and only a couple for the man then this should be reversed. Philip Baird Shearer 12:28, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Using the name gets around the problem of having to change the title when the title chages. As would happen with Newcastle. Proteus you say it is common to use a title but most military articles are not written that way, either in Wikipedia or outside. For example see Peninsular War Wellington is usually named as Wellesley throught the document, there are 2 unqualified references to Wellington, 21 Wellesley and none to the Duke of Wellington. His title is mentioned at the start and the end of the article but the general is not labled that way in the main body of the article. Philip Baird Shearer 12:41, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Since both a Marquess and an Earl are referred to as "Lord Title", I don't see how we'd have to change the title upon Lord Newcastle's promotion. (Mentioning his promotion is of course essential, as otherwise someone using the article as a reference could write about "the Earl of Newcastle" doing something at a point in the war when he was actually "the Marquess of Newcastle".) As for the Peninsular War article, it's not really worthy of being an authoritative example. It calls him "Wellesley" even after his elevation to the Peerage — at that stage, either "Wellington" or "Lord Wellington" is possible, but "Wellesley" is just wrong. Proteus (Talk) 18:50, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Parliament is a institutional noun

See American and British English differences#Slight lexical differences

A few "institutional" nouns take no definite article when a certain role is implied: for example, at sea [as a sailor], in prison [as a convict]. Among this group, Commonwealth English has in hospital [as a patient] and at university [as a student], where American English requires in the hospital and at the university.

In CE Parliament is a "institutional" noun which takes no definate article:

There was some continued organised Royalist resistance in Scotland which lasted until the surrender of Dunottar Castle to Parliament's troops

not

There was some continued organised Royalist resistance in Scotland which lasted until the surrender of Dunottar Castle to the Parliament's troops

But it would be There was some continued organised Royalist resistance in Scotland which lasted until the surrender of Dunottar Castle to the Long Parliament's troops --Philip Baird Shearer 18:39, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Long page and tone

Would anyone volunteer to break some of this page up into daughter articles? This page is already about 4 times bigger than is suggested. Perhaps some of the battles could be daughter articles with just a quick mention here. Cheers. --Lord Voldemort (Dark Mark) 16:09, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Also, The tone of this article is not encyclopedic. It states that the article is based on "GREAT REBELLION", but it reads more like a magazine article than an encyclopedia one. If I have time, I'll try to look at it, but I'm no expert in the field of British history. --Lord Voldemort (Dark Mark) 17:01, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

If you do not think this is an encyclopaedic article then, as all but the first section is nearly a word for word copy of the first half of the GREAT REBELLION article, you presumably do not think that the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica article is encyclopaedic! I would not disagreee with you if you were to say that some of the prose are rather old fashioned and could do with updating, but it is time consuming to do this because of the need to make sure that the meaning of the text is not changed. BTW The other half of the article GREAT REBELLION is in the second and third civil wars articles. Are you aware that there are also two parent overview articles: Wars of the Three Kingdoms-->English Civil War-->First English Civil War?
I would not be against moving some of the text into daughter articles based on the battles which took place. But it is a very big project when there is so much more to do with this period for which there are no articles and I think should have a higher priority; eg an article on the English Independents, numerous biographies like Robert Overton, articles on sieges and battles mentioned in this article but with no details at all (The first one specifically mentioned in the artice is Battle of Powick Bridge), and numerous other redlinks throughout this artcle. --Philip Baird Shearer 18:43, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
Yikes, didn't mean to offend you. But, have you even read the whole article? It sounds like a piece of junk. A lot of colloquialisms, and it sounds like someone is giving play-by-play on a rugby or football match. For example:
Montrose did not disguise from himself the fact that there, and not in the Highlands, would the quarrel be decided. He was sanguine — in fact over-sanguine, as the event proved — as to the support, he would obtain from those who hated the kirk and its system. But he had called to his aid, the semi-barbarous Highlanders, and however much the Lowlands resented a Presbyterian inquisition, they hated and feared the Highland clans beyond all else. He was equally disappointed in his own army.
I don’t have a problem with the content (except the length of course), I have a problem with the "this happened, and then this happened, and then, surprisingly, THIS happened. Isn’t that amazing boys and girls. Read on to find out what happens to our heroes next." type attitude and tone. It sounds very unencyclopedic. And I am not saying there aren’t other topics in this era that shouldn’t be created. I am saying that this article is listed on Special:Longpages, and should really be shortened. --Lord Voldemort (Dark Mark) 19:08, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Montrose and Scotland

One small change: the Campbell chief at this time was the Marquis, not Duke of Argyll.

I really don't know where to begin with this, other than to say this is possibly the worst written, most hurried and least accurate account of the campaigns of Montrose that I have ever read. Consider this for an example;

Montrose's royalism differed less from that of Englishmen of the 17th century than from that of their forefathers, under Henry VIII and Elizabeth.

I personally have not the least idea what these verbal contortions are meant to convey. There are other phrases and expressions that simply have no place in a sober historical assessment- 'romantic heroism' and 'romantic conquest' being high among the most tiresome. Sight of the real historical Montrose is almost completely lost in a confusing tangle of words and ideas.

My area of expertise is in Scottish history, so I can see just how silly and glib this article is when it touches on areas with which I am familiar; but I suspect it is also true of the treatment of the Civil War in England.

I am sorry if this sounds harsh; but if Wikipedia is to be treated as a serious research tool it needs contributions of a far higher quality than this. Unfortunately, I do not have the time to correct the wholesale misinformation the author manages to convey. Rcpaterson 01:29, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

see above: #Long page and tone it is the first part of the GREAT REBELLION. As to the sentence "Montrose's royalism..." means is that he was motivated to support the royalist cause for reasons that the grandfathers of his more modern minded southern allies would have understood. --Philip Baird Shearer 17:45, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I must say that I think it was a mistake to cut and paste the 1911 article on here. Its information and assumptions are out of date and not particularly usefull for the modern reader in my opinion. The same is true of other 1911 cut and pasted articles by and large. Jdorney 18:48, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

As I did the original copy I obviously disagree with you. I have no problem understanding the style, but I agree with you on some of the prose is dated and flowery. Having said that, it is a lot better than many Wikipedia articles which have all of the style of a "horse designed by a committee". I think the GREAT REBELLION makes a good basis for the article, and as with any other article it is there to be improved. The reason I have not started to do so, as I said above, is because I think that there are many more articles which need to be written about the war and this makes a convenient article to link in those other articles. Indeed some paragraphs should be hived off into other articles (as a base for those articles) and paraphrased in this article, so that this article can be made shorter. -- so much to do so little time to do it.
I do not think that this article needs to be an analysis of events, as the article English Civil War (and others) already cover that area. What it needs to be, is a much more detailed blow by blow history of the First English Civil war than there is room for in the parent article on the English Civil War. --Philip Baird Shearer 19:23, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Mr Shearer, I assume from your comments that you are the author, or principal author, of this piece; in which case I apologize for the bluntness of my remarks, which must have appeared woundingly direct. A lot of these Wikipedia items give me the impression of having been cut and pasted, rather than written; or, to put this another way, they read as if they had been issued by some sub-committee of the Writer's Union in Stalin's Russia. Perhaps this is an inevitable, and unfortunate, by-product of multi-editing. The sentence I quoted is just one example of bad prose. I was being mischevious; I did manage to 'deduce' the meaning, but it lacks the transparency of good English prose. How much better it would be to say Montrose's royalism was more akin to that of ages past.

But that would not allow the author to express his bias against primitive old fashioned Scotsmen, and simultaneously point out that the English were more modern (not said but implied that they still were in 1911). --Philip Baird Shearer 09:32, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

However, this raises a different set of issues which touch on the accuracy of the whole piece. In general, I think you ( I say you on the assumption that you are the originating author) are far too close to the subject, so much so that you have lost a necessary sense of critical detachment. One might almost say that you had been seduced by the 'romance' of Montrose. But Montrose was a man of his times, not Sir Galahad. Far from being an uncritical royalist, he was one of the leading advocates of the 1638 National Covenant, an opponent of the Scottish bishops and a critic of the religious policies of Charles I. Indeed, right up to his execution in 1650 he maintained his adherance to the National Covenant and his distaste for the office of bishop. Had he lived, and had he been sincere in his convictions, he might well have found himself in the opposite camp from the Charles II after the Restoration. He moved away from the Covenanter camp not because of his fears of a 'Presbyterian theocracy' but because he distrusted-and resented-Argyll.

Yes, I would agree, it is no coincidence that the MacDonalds were on his side as he was fighting Argyll -- or more to the point he was on theirs, as the highland conflicts had a dynamic all their own, and like at other times (eg 1745) national politics were for many clansmen a veneer on much deeper and long running conflicts. --Philip Baird Shearer 09:32, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

The account of his campaigns similarly lacks critical distance, and comes nowhere near a proper understanding of the reasons for his success. To find a treatment similar to your own one would have to go right back to the ninteenth century, to the kind of hagiography associated with Mark Napier and the like. The truth is that Montrose's victories, remarkable as they were, owed more to the incompetence of his enemies than to his own innate abilities. He made too many mistakes to be considered a truly great commander. In particular, his neglect of military intelligence was notorious. Often he simply did not know where his opponents were, and he made no attempt to find out. This took him to the threshold of disaster at Fyvie, Dundee and Auldearn, and over the threshold at Philiphaugh and Carbisdale.

It is from the perspective of the C19th, as it was in a work published in 1911 the person/people writing it would have spent most of their life in the C19th. It comes across strongly in the comparisons made to more recent battles because they are all of course before WWI, and please do not say it is mine (I may be old, but I am not the author of this, just the scribe).--Philip Baird Shearer 09:32, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

It seems to me that the chief problem is that this whole article -not just the sections on Montrose-hangs together very ill, and desperately needs to be broken up into more clearly defined areas of investigation and analysis. In would, in my view, be far less confusing if the sections on Montrose were removed altogether and made the subject of a seperate article. Your own piece at least has the merit of being thorough, unlike the superficial treatment of Montrose's campaigns in the Scottish Civil War

Rcpaterson 08:03, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

It may just be that the author knew more about certain aspects of the conflict, or liked particular characters, but I suspect that different sections were written by different people because the bias (and the quality) seems to vary depending on the section.
I do not think the article need to be broken up, it is an account of the First Civil War, (and I have already broken the original article into three). Montrose's walkabouts needs to be in this article, this is not to say that his walkabouts should not be edited for style and accuracy, as is true for the rest of the article. As I said above if some of it can be paraphrased and "main articled" to another that is fine by me. But what we can not do is make the article any bigger, because it is far too large already. --Philip Baird Shearer 09:32, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Again my apologies, this time for assuming the you were the author of this piece. So it has been taken from the Encyclopedia Britannica? I suppose that explains the tone; but I am still a little surprised by the use of language: ninteenth century authors are usually much more careful over issues of grammar and meaning. I really do have to stress, though, that this is a very old fashioned treatment of the wars of Montrose, wrong in both detail and analysis. It has, at least in my view, no place in a modern encyclopedia. I could, I suppose, rewrite it; but it would require major surgery, rather than patch and repair.

I note your comments but still have serious doubts if it is right and proper to include an account of Montrose's 'walkabout' in an article on the First English Civil War, just as it would be to try to incorporate an account of the Confederate Wars in Ireland. Montrose always maintained one eye on the situation in England; but his campaign in Scotland was born out of conditions unique to that country, and most of the men in his army had very little interest in the fate of King Charles. Separate treatment would have the added merit of making this piece a little more manageable; for, as you say yourself, it is far too long.

Rcpaterson 22:38, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

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