Phoney War - England, Summer 1642

Three hundred and fifty years ago the English people were experiencing a tense and difficult summer, as they watched with appalled fascination the slow but inexorable approach of a civil war which very few of them viewed with anything but dread. At the national level, the country's political leadership remained locked in a desperate struggle for constitutional supremacy, while at a local level sporadic fighting between opposing factions was breaking out with increasing frequency, and the established hierarchical social system began to come under violent attack from below. As the nation teetered on the brink of a bloody conflict, its men and women were gripped by the low fever of phoney war.