Prof Peter Gaunt

I contribute to the teaching of the following undergraduate modules

• Europe and the Wider World: Turning Points in History, 1000-2000
• The Shaping of Britain
• Journeys in the Past
• Approaches to Europe in the Age of Absolutism and Enlightened Absolutism
• The English Revolution: Causes, Course and Consequences of the English Revolution

I contribute to the following postgraduate modules

• The Theory and History of Western Warfare
• Research Skills and Methodology in Military History
• Defending the Realm: Fortifications in the Landscape
• The British Wars, 1637-1651
• Research Dissertation

Although I have quite a varied background in and experience of both archaeology and history, including work on medieval secular and ecclesiastical buildings and on post-medieval royal palaces, my principal research interests lie in the field of early modern England/Britain. I specialise in the history of the English civil war and the life and times of Oliver Cromwell, embracing aspects of military, political and constitutional history. I have written or edited fifteen books and over forty articles or chapters, including histories of the civil war in England, Wales and Britain as a whole and two biographies of Oliver Cromwell.

As indicated in the section on recent publications below, I have undertaken extensive research in the area of the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell and central government during the 1650s.

Recent publications include

The English Civil Wars, 1642-51 (Osprey, 2003); Oliver Cromwell in the British Library Historic Lives series (British Library and New York UP, 2004); a clutch of biographies, including detailed new studies of Richard and Henry Cromwell, in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford UP, 2004); ‘1655: year of crisis’ in Cromwelliana, series II, no. 3 (2006); ‘Oliver Cromwell’s last battle’ in Transactions of the Worcestershire Archaeological Society, 3rd series, vol. 20 (2006); “‘To create a little world out of chaos’: The Protectoral Ordinances of 1653-54 Reconsidered’ in Patrick Little (ed.), The Cromwellian Protectorate (Boydell, 2007); a reference group article on the Protectoral Council and Councillors for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2007); a full-length scholarly edition of The Correspondence of Henry Cromwell, 1655-59 for the Royal Historical Society Camden series (Cambridge UP, 2007); Four churches and a river: the civil wars in Cheshire’ in Cromwelliana, series II, no. 5 (2008); ‘“A door of hope is open”: the achievements and legacy of Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate’ in Cromwelliana, series II, no. 6 (2009); ‘The reputation of Oliver Cromwell in the nineteenth century’ in Parliamentary History, 28 (2009); ‘Nehemiah Wharton, parliamentarian, and Richard Atkyns, royalist’ in R. O’Neill (ed.), I Am Soldier (Osprey, 2009); ‘The relationship between Richard Cromwell and his younger brother Henry’ in Cromwelliana, series II, no. 7 (2010); jointly with Professor Barry Coward English Historical Documents, 1603-1660 (Routledge, 2010); ‘A Cromwellian landscape? Oliver Cromwell and the urban and rural environment of Britain’ in J. A. Mills (ed.), Cromwell’s Legacy (Manchester UP, 2012); ‘Oliver Cromwell’s last battle’ in D. Hallmark (ed.), The Battle of Worcester, 1651 (The Battle of Worcester Society, 2012); Cromwell Four Centuries On (The Cromwell Association, 2013), in which two of my own articles on 'Learning the ropes in "His Own Fields": Cromwell's early sieges in the East Midlands' and 'The battle of Dunbar and Cromwell's Scottish campaign' also appear; 'Cromwell and the historians, from Abbott to the present day' in Cromwelliana, series III, no. 2 (2013); and 'Writings and sources XV: New light on what Cromwell said to the officers on 27 February 1657' in Cromwelliana, series II, no. 2 (2013); The English Civil War, A Military History. (I.B. Tauris, 2014); ‘ “…looked on as a wonder, that never beheld his enemies in the face but returned from them crowned always with renown and honour…’: Cromwell’s contribution to parliament’s military victories, 1642-51’, Cromwelliana, series III, no. 4 (2015); "'Wedged up in the church like billetts in a woodpile": new light on the battle of Middlewich' in I. Pells, ed., New Approaches to the Military History of the English Civil War (Helion, 2016); with Barry Coward, a new edition of The Stuart Age: England, 1603-1714 (Routledge, 2017); 'Far and away: fighting, campaigning and travelling during the English civil war' in S. Jones, ed., Home and Away: The British Experience of War, 1618-1721 (Helion, 2018); with Roger Lockyer, a new edition of Tudor and Stuart Britain, 1485-1714 (Routledge, 2018); ‘Oliver Cromwell and the battle of Worcester’ and ‘The civil war in Cheshire: a unique experience?’ both in Cromwelliana (2019); ‘My wife was very unquiet and uncharitable also. God forgive her!’: first-person accounts of women’s lives during the civil war’, Cromwelliana (2021); and a new introduction to the reissue of G.M. Trevelyan’s England Under the Stuarts (Routledge, 2021).

Current research and forthcoming publications

I am president of The Cromwell Association, the academic and historical society which works to promote the study and understanding of the life and times of Oliver Cromwell and the civil war era and have written or contributed to many of the resources found on or via the Association’s web-site, including podcasts and the parliamentarian officers database; and I am a past editor of the Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, Cromwelliana and Cheshire History.

I am currently working on The Metamorphosis of War, a full-length study of the personal experience of civil war as seen in surviving first person accounts, as well as new, revised and expanded editions of The Stuart Age for Routledge and of The English Civil War: A Military History for Bloomsbury. Chapters revisiting the nature of the second civil war and the role of defensive structures in the main English civil war, both springing from papers delivered at recent conferences, are forthcoming and due to appear in the resulting edited collections and a journal article on the nature of the civil war in Wales is due for publication next year.

Research experience

I have served as principal or co-supervisor of twelve doctoral theses, all successfully completed and awarded: on the politics, administration and culture of Chester during the long eighteenth century, on the post-medieval landscape of south-west Cheshire, on the philanthropic work of the Macclesfield silk manufacturers from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries, on the development and history of a parish in northern Shropshire; on the structure, role and significance of spiral stairs in medieval stone castles; on the parliamentarian and royalist war efforts in civil war Shropshire; on the early castles of the earldom of Cheshire; on the background to and nature of the Boston Revolt of 1689; on the administration of Shropshire from 1640 to the early 1660s; on law and order in medieval Chester; on the role of artillery in civil war siege operations; and on the north-western association of Cheshire, Staffordshire and Lancashire in the regime of the Major-Generals. I am currently supervising a further PhD on the Forest of Macclesfield in the early seventeenth century. As an accredited supervisor I also have some involvement with a further clutch of current History and Archaeology doctoral projects. As Director of Studies of the former MA programme in ‘Landscape, Heritage and Society’ and as a tutor on the MA programme in ‘Military History', I have supervised over 40 MA dissertations to successful completion.

• BA (Wales)
• PhD (Exeter)
• FRHistS