English Civil War
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
49 free English Civil War trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The English Civil War was really three wars between 1642 and 1651, fought over whether a king answered to Parliament. It started with a prayer book riot in Edinburgh and a tax on inland counties, ran through Edgehill, Marston Moor and Naseby, and ended with Charles I beheaded outside the Banqueting House, his son hiding in an oak tree and England briefly a republic under a Lord Protector. These 49 questions cover the causes, the campaigns and the aftermath: ship money and the Petition of Right, the Five Members, Nottingham and Oxford, Prince Rupert and Cromwell's Ironsides, the New Model Army, the Engagement and the Second Civil War, Pride's Purge, the 59 commissioners, Drogheda, Dunbar and Worcester, and the Restoration of 1660. Easy questions stick to Cavaliers, Roundheads and the big battles; the expert tier asks about the Jersey proclamation, the first colony to recognise Charles II, the number of regicides executed and Hobbes's forgotten history of the war. Every answer is cited to a page we checked and comes with a short explanation that adds something. Play it solo or print it for a history night.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which wider conflict includes the English Civil War?
Wars of the Three Kingdoms
Wars of the Three Kingdoms is the wider label because the fighting began with Scottish wars in 1639 and an Irish rising in 1641, before England's own war broke out in 1642.
Q 02Supporters of Charles I were nicknamed what?
Cavaliers
Cavaliers started as an insult: the word, kin to the Spanish caballero, had meant a swaggering gallant since Elizabeth's day, and the king's men later adopted it for themselves.
Q 03What nickname did Royalists give Parliament's supporters in the English Civil War?
Roundheads
Roundheads mocked the close-cropped hair of some Puritans and London apprentices, so unlike courtly ringlets; in fact generals on both sides wore their hair at much the same length.
Q 04Charles I was beheaded on a scaffold in front of which Whitehall building?
Banqueting House
Banqueting House has a ceiling by Rubens that Charles himself had commissioned to glorify his father's reign; he walked beneath it on his way out to the scaffold.
Q 05What title did Oliver Cromwell hold when he ruled from 1653 until his death in 1658?
Lord Protector
Lord Protector was the title Cromwell kept in 1657, when Parliament offered to make him king: after agonising for six weeks he refused the crown.
Q 06What name was given to the force Parliament formed in 1645?
New Model Army
New Model Army troops could be sent anywhere in the country, where the county militias and regional armies before it had been unwilling to fight far from home.
Q 07Whom did Parliament appoint commander-in-chief in 1645, with Oliver Cromwell as his second-in-command?
Thomas Fairfax
Thomas Fairfax stayed away from the king's trial; when his name was called in court, his wife Anne is said to have cried out that he had more wit than to be there.
Q 08Which June 1645 battle, followed by Langport, effectively destroyed Charles I's field armies?
Naseby
Naseby also cost Charles his private papers: Parliament captured his baggage and published the letters, which showed him seeking Irish and foreign troops.
Q 09What was the first pitched battle of the English Civil War, fought on 23 October 1642?
Edgehill
Edgehill was a draw, but the king's slow march afterwards let Parliament's army reach London first; faced down at Turnham Green, he fell back to winter quarters and the quick victory was lost.
Q 10Where did Royalist horsemen win the first significant clash of the English Civil War, in September 1642?
Powick Bridge
Powick Bridge was a small fight, but it shook the confidence of Parliament's cavalry and gave the king's horsemen a name for being unbeatable.
Q 11Where did Charles I raise the royal standard on 22 August 1642?
Nottingham
Nottingham did not stay the king's: soon after he left, the castle was fortified for Parliament, and Colonel John Hutchinson held it against Royalist attacks for the rest of the war.
Q 12Which city was Charles I's headquarters for most of the First Civil War?
Oxford
Oxford housed the king's court at Christ Church, where in 1644 he gathered a rival parliament: most of the Lords came, but only about a third of the Commons.
Q 13Which July 1644 victory, won with Scottish help, gave Parliament York and the north?
Marston Moor
Marston Moor made Cromwell's name as a commander: his cavalry routed the Royalist horse facing them, then wheeled round to break the rest of the king's army.
Q 21According to legend, who began the 1637 Edinburgh riot against the new prayer book?
Jenny Geddes
Jenny Geddes, a market trader, is said to have flung her stool at the dean's head in St Giles' the first time he tried to read the new service, and the congregation rioted.
Q 22What February 1638 document set out Scottish objections to Charles's religious policy?
National Covenant
The National Covenant was first signed at Greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh and then carried round the country; it professed loyalty to the king while rejecting his untried 'innovations' in religion.
Q 23Which Parliament met in April 1640, called by Charles I to pay for war against the Scots?
Short Parliament
Q 14Which nephew of Charles I, a prince of the Palatinate, commanded the Royalist cavalry?
Prince Rupert
Prince Rupert rode to war with his white poodle, Boy; pamphleteers on both sides traded tales of the dog's magical powers until it was killed in battle in 1644.
Q 15What nickname was given to the disciplined cavalry troop Cromwell formed in 1643?
Ironsides
Ironsides started as a nickname for Cromwell himself, reportedly given by an enemy general whose charge could not break his ranks; it then passed from the man to his troopers.
Q 16Which 1645 measure made members of both Houses give up their military commands?
Self-denying Ordinance
The Self-denying Ordinance removed aristocratic generals such as the Earl of Manchester, yet Cromwell, an MP himself, was kept on as indispensable.
Q 17Critics called Charles I's rule without Parliament from 1629 the Eleven Years' what?
Tyranny
Tyranny was his critics' word, but Charles could rule alone only while he stayed out of wars; the experiment ended in 1640, when he needed money to fight the Scots.
Q 18Which tax, extended to inland counties in 1634–36, sparked a famous test case?
Ship money
Ship money had been a wartime levy on coastal towns; charging it inland in peacetime gave the king an income without Parliament, and the judges backed him by only seven to five.
Q 19Which Archbishop of Canterbury pushed High Anglican ceremony and was executed in 1645?
William Laud
William Laud's drive against Puritan critics backfired: the punishment of three pamphleteers in 1637 won them huge popular sympathy, and the Long Parliament later had him tried and beheaded.
Q 20How were Prynne, Bastwick and Burton punished in 1637 for pamphlets attacking the bishops?
They had their ears cut off
They had their ears cut off in the pillory before a supportive crowd, on top of fines and life imprisonment; the Long Parliament freed them in 1640.
The Short Parliament sat for just three weeks: Charles dissolved it when John Pym and his allies insisted on airing grievances before voting any money.
Q 24Which royal adviser, Earl of Strafford, was executed by Bill of Attainder in May 1641?
Thomas Wentworth
Thomas Wentworth was abandoned by the king he served: Charles signed the attainder after anguished hesitation, and came to see his own later sufferings as punishment for that betrayal.
Q 25On 4 January 1642 Charles I entered the Commons with soldiers to arrest how many members?
Five
The Five Members had been warned and slipped away by barge; asked where they were, Speaker Lenthall told the king he had 'neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak' except as the House directed.
Q 26Which governor refused Charles entry to Kingston upon Hull and its arsenal in 1642?
John Hotham
John Hotham later plotted to change sides, and it was Parliament, not the king, that had him beheaded in 1645, a day after his son.
Q 27Whom did Parliament appoint in 1642 as the first commander of its army?
Earl of Essex
The Earl of Essex was ordered to 'rescue' the king from the men around him, not to defeat him, and he proved so cautious that he never struck a decisive blow.
Q 28Cromwell's 1648 defeat of Hamilton's Scots at which battle ended the Second Civil War?
Preston
Preston was won against the odds: Cromwell marched over the Pennines and fell on the flank of a much larger army, catching it strung out on the march with its detachments too far apart to help each other.
Q 29What was the secret December 1647 treaty between Charles I and the Scots called?
The Engagement
The Engagement was struck in secret while Charles was a prisoner at Carisbrooke Castle: the Scots would send an army to restore him, and he would impose Presbyterian church government in England for three years.
Q 30The Army's expulsion of MPs in December 1648 is known by what name?
Pride's Purge
Pride's Purge is named for Colonel Thomas Pride, who stood on the steps of the Commons with a list while his soldiers turned away or arrested the MPs who still wanted to negotiate with the king.