ABSTRACT
The Engagement hammered out between Charles and the Scots commissioners ran into trouble almost as soon as it had been buried on the Isle of Wight. The first overtly royalist uprising broke out in England in May 1648, but the second civil war may be said really to have begun on the day that Charles I fled from Hampton Court, 11 November 1647. At the same time the Independent Junto worked to bolster Argyll's anti-Engagement faction in Scotland by sending it money and offers of English support. The siege of Colchester is remembered as the bitterest episode of the civil wars in England. The political legacy of Colchester was an unwavering conviction on the part of most higher officers who had attended the siege that the king, as the ultimate author of the suffering and bloodshed which they and their comrades had undergone, must be brought to account for his crimes.
