This dazzling, original and hugely engaging book tells the story of a nation in a state of near continual crisis. To many foreigner observers, 17th-century England was ‘Devil-Land’: a country riven by political faction, religious difference, financial ruin and royal collapse. As an unmarried heretic with no heir, Elizabeth I was regarded with horror by Catholic Europe, while her Stuart successors, James I and VI of Scotland and Charles I, were seen as impecunious and incompetent, unable to manage their three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland. The traumatic civil wars, regicide and a republican Commonwealth were followed by the floundering, foreign-leaning rule of Charles II and his brother, James II and VII of Scotland, before William of Orange invaded England with a Dutch army and a new order was imposed.