Third English Civil War

The Third English Civil War (1649–1651) was the last of the English Civil Wars (1642–1651), a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists.

The Preston campaign of the Second Civil War was undertaken under the direction of the Scots Parliament, not the Kirk, and it took the execution of King Charles I to bring about a union of all Scottish parties against the English Independents. Even so, Charles II in exile had to submit to long negotiations and hard conditions before he was allowed to put himself at the head of the Scottish armies. The Marquess of Huntly was executed for taking up arms for the king on 22 March 1649.

The Marquess of Montrose, under the direction of Charles II, made a last attempt to rally the Scottish Royalists early in 1650. But Charles II merely used Montrose as a threat to obtain better conditions for himself from the Covenanters. When Montrose was defeated at the Battle of Carbisdale on 27 April, delivered up to his pursuers on 4 May, and executed on 21 May 1650, Charles II gave way to the demands of the Covenanters and placed himself at their head. Charles II now tried to regain the throne through an alliance with his father's former enemies in Scotland, who intended to impose Presbyterianism on England. He dismissed all the faithful Cavaliers who had followed him to exile.

As the Royal army was mostly Scottish, and as the invasion was not accompanied by any major rising or support in England, the war can also be viewed as being primarily an Anglo-Scottish War rather than a continuation of the English Civil War.