This volume contains an introduction by Christopher Hill, an authority on 17th-century English history, in which he sums up Gardiner's importance both in his own time and for ours.

In this volume are reprinted for convenient reference more than ninety documents which are "intended to serve either as a basis for the study of the constitutional history of an important period, or as a companion to the political history ...

Samuel Rawson Gardiner (1829-1902) was a Victorian historian of the seventeenth century, noted for his use of and editorial work on primary sources. This ten-volume edition of his history of the period 1603 to 1642 was published in 1883-4.