Zealots: How a Group of Scottish Conspirators Unleashed Half a Century of War in Britain

This is an innovative, controversial history of Scotland and Britain in the early modern period. Its originality lies in new research pin-pointing Fife, especially St Andrew's, 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. Oliver Thomson provides a detailed analysis of the church parishes and castles of Fife reveals a unique concentration of ex-mercenaries and rebel clergymen who together promoted the two Bishops Wars leading to a series of Scottish invasions of England, and consequentially all three of the English Civil Wars (The Wars of Three Kingdoms) and around 650,000 deaths.