Using contemporary sources, surviving monuments and the evidence of documents from the time, Malcolm Atkin tells the story of how Cromwell shattered the Royalist cause at the Battle of Worcester in 1651. It represented the crowning achievement of Cromwell's military career, and was a mercy in bringing to an end (bar a few ineffective plots and uprisings) the fighting of the Civil War. The author explains the role of the local gentry in the war and the attitudes of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events. there is also an extensive discussion of the fate of the thousands of Scottish prisoners who faced transportation to the New World or the fens of East Anglia.