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The nine years of civil war that consumed the British Isles in the years 1642-51 were the bloodiest and most violent in the entire history of these islands. It is estimated that in England one in four people out of a population of five million was caught up in the conflict, and in the county of Devon alone 12,000 deaths were attributable to the war. Battle casualties in England totalled 85,000 - 4,000 Royalist troops were slaughtered in just two hours at Marston Moor in 1644 - and there were another 40,000 non-combatant deaths as a result of war-borne disease. In Scotland the respective figures were 28,000 and 15,000, but all these statistics are dwarfed by the terrible toll in …