S. R. Gardiner

Samuel Rawson Gardiner (4 March 1829 – 24 February 1902) was an English historian, who specialized in 17th-century English history. He is the foremost historian of the Puritan revolution and the English Civil War as explained by historian John Morrill who says:

The son of Rawson Boddam Gardiner, he was born near Alresford, Hampshire. He was educated at Winchester College and Christ Church, Oxford, where he obtained a first class in Literae Humaniores. He was subsequently elected to fellowships at All Souls (1884) and Merton (1892). For some years he was professor of modern history at King's College London, and devoted his life to the subject. In 1896 he was elected to give the first series of Ford Lectures at Oxford University. He died in Sevenoaks, aged 72.

Gardiner published his history of the Puritan Revolution and English Civil War in three series of 19 volumes, originally published under different titles, beginning with the accession of King James I of England. It was completed in two volumes by CH Firth as The Last Years of the Protectorate (1909).

The series is History of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of the Civil War, 1603–1642 (10 vols. 1883-4); History of the Great Civil War, 1642–1649 (5 vols. 1893); and History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, 1649–1660 (4 vol. 1903). Gardiner's treatment of the subject is exhaustive and philosophical, taking in political and constitutional history, the changes in religion, thought and sentiment, their causes and their tendencies. Of his original sources, many exist only in manuscript, and his researches in public and private collections of manuscripts at home, and in the archives of Simancas, Venice, Rome, Brussels and Paris, were tireless and productive.

...
Wikipedia