He fought for the Parliamentarian cause in the Civil War and later tried to uphold the republic against Cromwell's autocracy, Lambert's attempt at military control and Monck's Royalist conversion in favour of the Restoration.

In December 2006 she led an unsuccessful attempt to prevent same-sex couples gaining the right to adopt children, despite having previously been named ScotsGay Parliamentarian of the Year in 1998.

It was an attempt by the English Parliamentarian forces to outflank the army of Scottish Covenanters loyal to Charles II at Stirling and get access to the north of Scotland.

On the Parliamentarian side, an official source was published a month after the battle ; due to the circumstances of its publication and the high Parliamentarian morale after Newbury, it made no attempt to gloss over errors and was designed to " explain to a lay readership what had happened on the battlefield ".

Charles ordered Rupert to march into Gloucestershire, in an attempt to draw some of the Parliamentarian armies after him.

However Ewen also won several minor skirmishes ; after the defeat of this attempt he served the royalist cause by harassing the Parliamentarian general and military governor of Scotland George Monck.

His suicide attempt again gained media attention after Greg Wilton became the first Australian Federal Parliamentarian to take his own life, in June 2000.

His initial attack was repulsed thanks to the Parliamentarian artillery opening fire, but a subsequent head-on attack forced Skippon's beleaguered force in the centre to send several regiments over to assist, with the fight turning into a bloody melee.

Meanwhile, a Parliamentarian cavalry force under Sir Thomas Fairfax, who had been campaigning in Cheshire and Lancashire during the winter, crossed the Pennines and entered the West Riding of Yorkshire.

A small Parliamentarian force captured the castle in February 1643, established a garrison and set about building earthworks around the approaches to the town.

Rupert's reputation continued to rise and, leading a sudden, courageous charge, he routed a Parliamentarian force at Powick Bridge, the first military engagement of the war.

On 19 November 1644, the Parliamentarian Eastern Association of counties announced that they could no longer meet the cost of maintaining their forces, which at the time provided about half the field force available to Parliament.

Robert Greville was a Parliamentarian, and on 7 August 1642 a Royalist force laid siege to the castle.

Skippon was absent at the Parliamentarian defeats at and Brentford but continued to train his men before marching them out of London to reinforce the force of the Earl of Essex, the Lord General of Parliament's forces.

In 1650 he won a second small ( though inconsequential ) victory over an English Parliamentarian force during the battle of Tecroghan with some aid from Ulick Burke.

The Parliamentarian high command of Sir William Waller, the Earl of Manchester, Sir William Balfour and Cromwell decided to split their large force into two.

The Parliamentarian force lost twenty men.

In the south of the country, the Confederates took some territory around Cork in 1644 – 45, for example the town of Bandon, constricting the territory held by the English Parliamentarian force there, but failed to eliminate Inchiquin's garrison.

Youghal was held by a much stronger Parliamentarian force than Duncannon and problems of supply and money meant that the Confederates ' siege broke up in March 1645.

Bunratty Castle, besieged and taken by the Irish Confederates from an English Parliamentarian force in 1646.

The Parliamentarian Army gained a major foothold in Ireland for the first time in 1644, when Inchiquin's Cork-based Protestant-led force fell out with the Royalists over the ceasefire with the Confederates.

Dublin also fell into Parliamentarian hands in 1646, when the Royalists surrendered it to an English Parliamentarian expeditionary force after the city was threatened by Confederate armies.

The most potent Parliamentarian force was the New Model Army, which proceeded to conquer Ireland over the next four years and to enforce the Adventurers Act by conquering and selling Irish land to pay off its financial backers.

In 1649, on the second of these occasions, a mixed force of Irish Confederates and English Royalists were routed by Dublin's English Parliamentarian garrison in the battle of Rathmines, fought on the city's southern outskirts.

He was killed in 1645 when a Parliamentarian force besieged the Royalist-held town of Bridgwater in Somerset.

Parliamentarian commander Essex found Charles in a strong position with an equal force to his own 14, 000, and some of his regiments were still some miles distant.

On 8 July, Leven reached Alcester, bringing with him a Parliamentarian force from Derbyshire, under Sir John Gell.

The Battle of Hopton Heath, in Staffordshire, was a battle of the First English Civil War, fought on Sunday 19 March 1643 between Parliamentarian forces led by Sir John Gell, 1st Baronet and Sir William Brereton and a Royalist force under Spencer Compton, 2nd Earl of Northampton.

The First Battle of Newbury was a battle of the First English Civil War that was fought on 20 September 1643 between a Royalist army, under the personal command of King Charles, and a Parliamentarian force led by the Earl of Essex.

Charles rallied his forces and pursued Essex, overtaking the Parliamentarian army at Newbury and forcing them to march past the Royalist force in order to continue their retreat.

If he stayed in the Severn valley, Essex would be unable to get reinforcements or outside aid, the London elements of the army would demand to go home, and the one remaining significant Parliamentarian force would find itself pinned down, while Charles, with secure bases at Oxford and Bristol, would be able to starve them into surrender while other Royalist armies ran rampant through Britain.

Essex had previously arranged to rendezvous at Fowey with the Parliamentarian fleet under the Earl of Warwick, but no ships appeared.

* July 20 – Battle of Inverkeithing in Scotland: The English Parliamentarian New Model Army under Major-General John Lambert defeats a Scottish Covenanter army acting on behalf of Charles II, led by Sir John Brown of Fordell.

After a confused fight lasting two hours, Parliamentarian cavalry under Oliver Cromwell routed the Royalist cavalry from the field and annihilated the remaining Royalist infantry.

On 3 June, they were reinforced by the Parliamentarian army of the Eastern Association under the Earl of Manchester.

Again, in 1641 the Parliamentarian faction gained it until Confederate Catholics under Preston captured it in 1645.

In 1647, having escaped from custody at Hampton Court, the King rode through Farnham at dawn on November 12 with a small party of loyal officers, en-route to the Isle of Wight, where he sought sanctuary under the protection of Colonel Robert Hammond, a Parliamentarian officer but with Royalist sympathies.

During the English Civil War, the city of York was under siege from Scottish and Parliamentarian Armies.

In 1644 the lake was shallow enough for Parliamentarian forces under Sir Thomas Fairfax to consider crossing it on foot as a way of breaking the Siege of York during the English Civil War.

The Parliamentarian general Oliver Cromwell came across the Irish Sea to crush the Irish royalists, temporarily uniting England, Scotland, and Ireland under one government, and styling himself " Lord Protector " of the three kingdoms.

Units from the existing Parliamentarian armies of the Earl of Essex, the Southern Association under Sir William Waller and the Eastern Association under the Earl of Manchester were reassigned to provide regiments for the new army.

On 23 September, in the first clash between the main Royalist and Parliamentarian armies, Royalist cavalry under Prince Rupert of the Rhine routed the cavalry of Essex's vanguard at the Battle of Powick Bridge.

Oliver Cromwell, who arrived too late in the day to take part in the battle, later wrote disparagingly to John Hampden, " Your troopers are most of them old decayed servingmen and tapsters ; and their Royalists troopers are gentlemen's sons, younger sons and persons of quality ...." Not only were the Parliamentarian cavalry not so naturally accustomed to mounted action, but they were drilled in the Dutch tactic of firing pistols and carbines from the saddle, whereas under Rupert, the Royalist cavalry would charge sword in hand, relying on shock and weight.

The Parliamentarian left wing consisted of a loosely organised cavalry brigade of twenty unregimented troops under Sir James Ramsay, supported by 600 musketeers and several cannon, deployed behind a hedge.

As his charge gathered momentum, a troop of Parliamentarian horse under Faithfull Fortescue abruptly defected.

The leading troops of this Parliamentarian wing were a fully armoured regiment of cuirassiers, the London lobsters under Sir Arthur Haselrig.

Byron attacked the Parliamentarian right, commanded by Waller, under fire from the guns and musketeers of their centre.

At the same time, Galway was under siege by Parliamentarian forces, and Ireton personally rode to inspect the command of Charles Coote, who was blockading that city.

In 1647, during the Irish Confederate Wars, Cashel was sacked by English Parliamentarian troops under Murrough O ' Brien, 1st Earl of Inchiquin.

In the confused Battle of Rowton Heath, they were defeated by Parliamentarian cavalry under Major-General Sydnam Poyntz.

The Covenanter and the Parliamentarian forces inflicted a crushing defeat on the Royalists under Prince Rupert.

In May 1643, he defeated the Parliamentarian forces in the West Country at Stratton, enabling him to overrun Devon and link up with reinforcements under Prince Maurice.

In 1642 he joined the Parliamentarian army, and served as quartermaster under John Lambert until 1650.