Zealots

A page-turning account of often misunderstood events set in train by religious zealotry that cost hundreds of thousands of lives in Britain. This is an innovative, controversial history of Scotland, Ireland and England in the early modern period. Its originality lies in new research pinpointing Fife, especially St Andrews, as the area where a group of men instigated not just Scotland's wars of religion but also triggered three civil wars in England and Ireland.

Covenanters, Catholics, Royalists, Presbyterians, Independents, Remonstrants, Malignants, Gibbites, The Indulged, The Unindulged - the extraordinary factions and schisms that led to so much bloodshed are explored and explained through this series of bloody holy wars. Oliver Thomson demonstrates that only in Fife and nowhere else in Britain in the 1630s was there such a combustible concentration of rebel priests, articulate politicians and unemployed mercenaries, many sharing strong family ties. They were powerful enough to promote the two Bishops' Wars.