ABSTRACT
The political and military crises in the three kingdoms in the period down to 1642 thereafter spawned wars within and between them. The course of the war within each kingdom was affected by, and in turn influenced, the wars within its two neighbours. However, the combatants showed varying commitment to the idea of a broader British conflict and a potential British settlement. The Scots displayed the strongest commitment, for they sought directly to shape the outcome of the wars in Ireland and England and Wales in a Scottish mould, and so produce a coherent British settlement. The English and Welsh probably showed the least interest in the wider British aspect, for they were caught up in their own intensive civil war and, although both sides sought Scottish and Irish support to help them win that internal civil war, their focus was upon an English and Welsh, not a British, solution. The Irish stand somewhere between the two, the majority Catholic population well aware of Ireland’s vulnerability to English and Scottish intervention, and seeking through external negotiation and very limited military intervention to secure a new Irish order within the broader British context.
