Board: Edexcel | Option: 1C | Paper: 1 (Period Study)
About this option
Edexcel 1C covers Britain from the accession of Charles I to the constitutional settlement following the Glorious Revolution. The period spans the personal rule of Charles I, the Civil Wars, the Interregnum, the Restoration, and the political and religious crises of Charles II and James II’s reigns. It ends with the Bill of Rights (1689) and the emergence of constitutional monarchy — a transformation that fundamentally altered the relationship between Crown and Parliament.
Key themes
- The causes of conflict: religion, finance, and constitutional tension under Charles I
- The Civil Wars (1642–51): course, turning points, and the role of the New Model Army
- The Interregnum: Commonwealth, Protectorate, and the limits of Cromwellian rule
- The Restoration (1660): terms, limitations, and the survival of constitutional uncertainty
- The Exclusion Crisis and the origins of Whig and Tory politics
- James II, the Glorious Revolution (1688), and William III
- The Bill of Rights (1689) and the constitutional settlement
What the exam asks
Paper 1 Period Study questions require breadth across the full period. Essays assess change across a long arc and reward precise evidence from multiple points in time. Strong answers draw direct comparisons between phases of the period rather than treating each in isolation.
Historiography
The 17th-century constitutional crisis has generated sharp historiographical debate. Whig historians, most prominently Thomas Babington Macaulay, portrayed the period as the inevitable march toward parliamentary democracy and Protestant liberty. This teleological view shaped popular understanding for generations. Revisionist historians of the 1970s and 1980s — notably Conrad Russell and John Morrill — challenged this: Russell’s work on the causes of the Civil War stressed contingency, parliamentary dysfunction, and the fiscal-military weaknesses of the early Stuart state rather than long-run constitutional conflict. Morrill emphasised the centrality of religion, arguing that the Civil War was England’s last war of religion as much as a constitutional dispute. More recently, the ‘British problem’ approach associated with John Morrill, David Scott, and John Adamson has stressed the importance of Scotland and Ireland in destabilising Charles I’s regime — placing the English Civil War within a broader three-kingdoms context. Debate continues over the Glorious Revolution: Jonathan Israel stresses William III’s agency and the ideological contribution of Dutch republicanism, while Steve Pincus has argued for a more thoroughgoing revolutionary character to 1688–89 than the ‘bloodless revolution’ label implies.
Return to the Edexcel resources hub
Interpretations pack — coming September 2026
A teaching pack for this option is in development, covering all core historiographical debates. It will include named historians with argument summaries, paired comparison tasks built to Edexcel mark scheme logic, and provenance analysis prompts — all in a downloadable PDF.
£9.99 per pack · Available September 2026
