ABSTRACT
The king had surrendered, fled his Oxford headquarters, andinstructed the commanders of his remaining garrisons to throw in the sponge. The next 18 months would witness intense struggles in Westminster, Edinburgh, Kilkenny and Dublin that would effect political upheavals in all three kingdoms and culminate in the outbreak of renewed warfare among a profoundly altered constellation of forces. Never far from the centre of all these struggles was the figure of the king, who resorted to one subterfuge after another, as he strove to play off different factions in each kingdom, at the same time angling for aid from France and the papacy in his effort to wriggle free of his captors.
