Talk:Anglo-Scottish war (1650–1652)

Requested move 24 September 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. Consensus to move. Cautious support for the proposed name. With no alternative, Anglo-Scottish war (1650–1652) it is. (closed by non-admin page mover) Vpab15 (talk) 16:55, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

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Third English Civil War → Anglo-Scottish war (1650–1652) – The rationale is discussed at length above. To summarise: this conflict was not exclusively English, and it was not a civil war. It followed on from the English Civil War, but it was fought between the (then independent) countries of Scotland and England, and resulted in the imposition of military rule on the former by the latter. I have been unable to find any reliable sources from a relevant discipline that call it the Third English Civil War; there was a time in the last century when it was often referred to as the Third Civil War (in the context of the 'British Civil Wars', not the 'English Civil War'), but that was never universal (plenty of leading scholars of the last century did not refer to it in those terms). Around the turn of the century, the use of the term Third Civil War has been criticised: John D. Grainger wrote in 1997 that the term "Third Civil War" was "a complete misnomer". Austin Woolrych wrote that it was "seriously misleading" to call it a civil war in 2002. Malcolm Wanklyn (Emeritus Prof of History at Wolverhampton) wrote that the "so-called Third Civil War" was "nothing of the sort" in 2006. The use of that term to describe the conflict has almost completely stopped, with very few sources from this century using the phrase; those few sources that continue using it appear to be doing so for convenience - I have seen no modern sources at all that actually assert that it was a civil war, and none that contest the criticism the term has attracted.

While it is possible that 'Third Civil War' might once have been a COMMONNAME, that is no longer the case; 'Third English Civil War' was certainly never a COMMONNAME (and 'English' is not a natural disambiguator in this case). While it may be convenient for us to have a widely recognisable name to apply to this article, we can use redirects to help with searches for such a phrase, and I believe that it is contrary to the interests of this project for us to use a name that is anachronistic, and which leading scholars in the field have criticised as being actively misleading. As an indication of why titles like this cause actual harm, take a look at this Google NGram. The sudden uptick in uses of the phrase 'Third English Civil War' exactly corresponds with the year that this article was published under that title. We should be reflecting the language that the best sources use, but here we seem to have invented a phrase that is affecting how some people write. A lot of Google's hits are Wikipedia mirror sites and student dissertations, naturally, but a few of them are actually scholarly articles written by people from different disciplines who have a one-off need to refer to the conflict - I assume that these non-experts are drawing on our article as a convenient resource, unaware that we are misleading them about how their colleagues who are experts in the period actually refer to it.

I wish that there was a commonly-agreed upon COMMONNAME title used by scholars that I could hang my hat on for us to change to, but there is not: scholars nowadays refer to the conflict descriptively, using a range of different phrases. Two of the sources discussed above use the phrase "Anglo-Scottish war (1650–1652)", which I believe is neutral and accurate - it is probably the approach we should take. Gog the Mild, MichaelMaggs and Slatersteven have all explicitly supported this phrasing above, and nobody has proposed an alternative, so I am proposing that we move the article to this title. Girth Summit _(blether) 16:35, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Oppose: While your reasoning for Wikipedia being the origin of the common name seems reasonable, and if true it is problematic, it doesn't change the fact that doesn't change how our policies apply; that the common name is the correct article for the topic, however problematic that title might otherwise be in terms of our other policies, particularly our NPOV policy. Further, it does appear to be the common name at least per Ngrams; see this comparison of the two proposed titles, keeping in mind that Anglo-Scottish War refers to many conflicts over the long history of the Isles, with the vast majority of those references referring to those other conflicts, not this one.

Further, I feel this is reinforced by the specific arguments presented by PBS above, as well as other examples of them being grouped into the collective "English Civil Wars", such as in the (problematic in general, and I work I would strongly advise against using, but indicative for naming purposes) "The Civil Wars. A Military History of England, Scotland and Ireland, 1638-60"

Incidentally, I will note that while it was surely not your intent, your decision to ping a selective number of the editors involved in the previous discussion, specifically limited to those who agree with the proposed move, is a textbook example of WP:CANVASSING. I suggest you correct this by pinging all the editors involved, aside from those who have requested not to be contacted. BilledMammal (talk) 01:54, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

The NGram you link to does not show that 3ECW is the common name - it shows that it is a phrase that was almost never used by anyone prior to the publication of our article. I've been through Google Scholar's hits for the phrase (there's some discussion of this right at the top of this talk page) - they are almost all Wikipedia mirror sites, with a smattering of student dissertations, and a few scholarly articles about different subjects which mention this conflict in passing.

The book you mention, "The Civil Wars. A Military History of England, Scotland and Ireland, 1638-60", explicitly sets out that this conflict cannot be considered part of the English Civil Wars. It groups them all together as part of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms/British Civil Wars (which I don't have a problem with), but it says that you cannot call it 'English' by the time you get to this conflict. I don't have a page number to hand, but it's in the editors' introductory chapter.

There was certainly no attempt to canvass: I already notified a lot of people about my proposed new title, and I pinged all of those who had expressed a view on it (I didn't think it necessary to ping PBS, who is very obviously watching this). However, to ensure that this is all above board, and with apologies to those who aren't interested: @Harrias, PBS, Tayi Arajakate, Gerda Arendt, BuySomeApples, Theleekycauldron, Slatersteven, Richard Nevell, Peacemaker67, Wehwalt, Nikkimaria, Chidgk1, Tim riley, Dudley Miles, and Eddie891: Girth Summit _(blether) 06:49, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

You have a good point in regards to the "English" distinction, one that I did not properly consider. Taking that into consideration, and noting that we do not have an article called the "Third Civil War", I believe it might be appropriate to move this article to that location; we can then clarify which "Third Civil War" we are referring to in the text, allowing us to make the distinction that this wasn't solely an intrastate affair, but heavily involved the Kingdom of Scotland.

Thank you for the pings; the number can get a little silly, but in the interest of ensuring all above board I believe it was the correct thing to do. BilledMammal (talk) 07:04, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

Comment – I know nothing about the subject, and am disinclined to wade through the sea of prose, above, but having been pinged, my comment is that the major sources must surely have a term for this conflict, and if there is more than one term in general use we should go with the predominant one, and if there isn't a predominant one it clearly doesn't matter which we go for. Tim riley talk 07:14, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

i'm the grunt work intern at dyk, don't look at me theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (they/them) 07:39, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

• Support: Having watched this RfC progress, I am now convinced that I was wrong in my original assessment. Further, if I can add a brief comment of my own, I believe that this move can also be supported by the WP:PRECISION component of WP:CRITERIA as the current title - and my briefly proposed alternative title of "Third Civil War" - do not unambiguously [identify] the article's subject. I will mention that I recognize that this interpretation of precision is relatively novel, I don't believe it is unreasonably so given the specifics of this case. BilledMammal (talk) 14:46, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

• Comment, in a nutshell: our Common name policy often leads to non-sense names, and we might want to change the guideline. Longer (skip if not interested): I have no comment for this case as I don't know the sources , and no time to dig into it, just in general I see that our Common name guideline leads to strange results, and we might perhaps think about that. Take Nun danket alle Gott, which has an English title but 90% (or more) of the article are about the German original. I added at least the name of the translator to the lead yesterday. Categories about that German hymn come with an English title, see Category:17th-century hymns in German, and it's by the coincidental same first letter that it appears where a reader would search for it there. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:21, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

  I would actually agree with the current title of Now Thank We All Our God, as the title our users would find most useful. With that said, I wouldn't disagree that commonname could use some revision to better address circumstances where the common name is sufficiently misleading as to cause issues (such as here), but I'm not sure how we could do that without encountering issues of NPOV or OR. In any case, a discussion for elsewhere that I would be happy to join. BilledMammal (talk) 07:45, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

  Our users would still have Now Thank We All Our God as a redirect. Have you checked how often it is used in the article, BilledMammal? - We have now Der fliegende Holländer, as of 2021, did you know? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:57, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

  Tim, User:BilledMammal, in the last century, I think it likely that 'Third Civil War' would likely have been a reasonable choice, but that has fallen out of use, and authors tend now to refer to it descriptively rather than give it a name. Barry Coward writes about Cromwell sending an "expeditionary force against the Scots"; Kirsteen MacKenzie has it as the "Cromwellian invasion of 1650"; Peter Gaunt calls it Cromwell's "Scottish campaign"; David Stevenson calls it an "invasion by the Commonwealth regime"; Chris Langley calls it "the English invasion and subsequent occupation of Scotland". This was why I originally thought that the "English invasion of Scotland (1650) would be a good title, but PBS reverted that, and I concede that it is problematic because (a) the fighting continued after 1650, and (b) the Scots also invaded England. The one I'm proposing here is used by three sources, and it ties in closely with Woolrych's description: "This was essentially a war between the Scots, or at least such of them as obeyed the Scottish parliament, and the English Commonwealth".

  To try to demonstrate what I'm talking about, I just performed two Google Scholar searches, restricted to work published between 2000 and 2021, on two of the major battles in the conflict: Battle of Dunbar and Battle of Worcester, and attempted to access the first 50 hits from each search. I found lots of different ways to refer to the conflict (some of which I've noted above), but only found three references to the 'Third Civil War' (or 'Third English Civil War'). One of them was in a self-published book of family history, so we can discount it; one of them is a passing mention in a review of a book about a later conflict; the third is in a book about the Battle of Worcester, which is the most substantive. This book does use the phrase, but even there the author feels it necessary to problematise it: "By 1651 the struggle had clearly become a national conflict between Scotland and England", and again "By the time of the final phase of this conflict (the Third Civil War, 1650–1), however, it had become less of a civil war and more of a national conflict between England and Scotland".

  While I was doing this, I came across a third source using the exact phrase I'm proposing, "Anglo-Scottish war": this review by Edward Furgol of a book about the conflict.

  So, what I getting at is that calling this a civil war is widely seen as problematic, and as such the phrase has largely dropped out of use, but there isn't an universally-used alternative. There simply isn't a common name any longer, but given the well-documented potential for the current title to mislead, I think it needs to be changed. Girth Summit _(blether) 12:22, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

I really can't presume to have an opinion on this. I have a faint but lingering feeling that the current brouhaha is a bit of a fuss about nothing, but I am probably wrong, and anyway I will gladly go along with the consensus among editors who know about this conflict. – Tim riley talk 14:20, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

• Support It is the least worst of several bad options. While I am not opposed in principle to Wikipedia inventing titles where no good ones exist, "Third English Civil War" is a particularly bad one. It is proposing to rank itself in common parlance with the First and Second wars, a status it does not have in scholarship or common recognition. Sure, it's an aftermath of those well-defined conflicts, and unfortunately it doesn't have any particularly notable name of its own. This forces us to be inventive, but let us not get carried away. It's a bit like deciding to call any of a myriad of Cold War conflicts "World War III" simply because it comes after WWI and WWII. Let us be pragmatic. It is an Anglo-Scottish war without doubt, even if that name is not commonly used, it is certainly descriptive and sufficiently accurate. Whereas "Third English Civil War" is neither common, nor descriptive nor accurate. Walrasiad (talk) 05:50, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

  To suggest using a descriptive name when a common name exists is against article title policy. A search in the 21st publications in Google Scholar and Google books using ("Third-Civil-War"|"Third-English-Civil-War")+(Worcester|Cromwell) they return lots of papers and books. I have not looked through them in detail (these are just raw searches), but there seems to be plenty of articles and books mentioning the "Third [English] Civil War" in 21st Cenury: Google Scholar Google Books. -- PBS (talk) 14:52, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

• Support. I don't pretend to be any thing like as knowledgeable in this area as Girth Summit who, with Gog the Mild, has put in huge efforts to re-write this page and to bring it up to Featured Article status - though I am interested enough to have read Woolrych's 800 pages from cover to cover.

For editors who might be tempted to look at the screeds of text above and say TL;DR, here's my quick summary. There isn't a WP:COMMONNAME for this topic. "Third English Civil War" is never used in serious scholarly sources and indeed is actively criticised as being historically wrong by several scholars. Girth Summit sets out above the wide-ranging work that he's done before recommending this change, and it's persuasive. "Anglo-Scottish war (1650–1652)" isn't the only possible title but is likely the best fit per WP:CRITERIA. MichaelMaggs (talk) 12:15, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

There is a WP:COMMONNAME particularly "Third Civil War". English is there because it is used for disambiguation and "Consistency" (AT) with the article English Civil War and its subsidiary artilecs. -- PBS (talk) 14:52, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

So, you conclude that "Third Civil War" is a WP:COMMONNAME, and that to disambiguate it the factually incorrect term "English"" should be inserted, not at the start or end but in the middle of the phrase. Not at all persuasive I'm afraid. MichaelMaggs (talk) 16:14, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose A search of Google Book and Google Scholar for the 21st century shows that "Third Civil War" is a (1) COMMONNAME (WP:AT) in reliable sources, (2)it is used in several tertiary sources (encyclopaedias)"helpful in deciding what titles are in an encyclopedic register" (WP:AT) the reason for including English in the title is "Consistency – The title is consistent with the pattern of similar articles titles." (WP:AT) in this case articles about the same war: English Civil War, First English Civil War Second English Civil War. The proposed name is as the proposer states the proposed name is used in next to no sources (and so is a descriptive name with certain WP:POV "the name Third Civil War is wrong because not many English Royalists fought in the Royalist Army". this contradicts WP:COMMONNAME, and WP:AT states "Notable circumstances under which Wikipedia often avoids a common name for lacking neutrality include the following: 1. Trendy slogans and monikers that seem unlikely to be remembered or connected with a particular issue years later 2. Colloquialisms where far more encyclopedic alternatives are obvious" neither of these apply in this example because it is neither trendy, and secondly it is used in other encyclopaedias. -- PBS (talk) 14:43, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

  Raw searches can be misleading. The first page of results for '"Third Civil War" + Cromwell' throws up examples such as John D Grainger explicitly criticising the phrase, Whitney Richard David Jones writing about a "Third Civil War" (scare quotes in original) that might have happened but did not, and David Sharp who treats the Scottish campaign as being an entirely separate thing, only including the 1651 Worcester campaign in his definition of the Third Civil War. Such searches also exclude the enormous body of scholarship that exists which simply doesn't use that term, giving a false impression that this is the common name.

  And no, even if Third Civil War were the common name, 'English' would not be not good disambiguator. All sources would agree that this conflict was part of the British Civil Wars/Wars of the Three Kingdoms, but no modern source includes it as part of the English Civil War, which finished with the end of the Second ECW at Preston. Examples (there are many more): Professors Gaunt, Braddick, Wanklyn, Coward and Morrill – some of the most eminent scholars in the field.

  I'll add one more thought, since parts of WP:POVNAME have been quoted above. That section also says: An article title with non-neutral terms cannot simply be a name commonly used in the past, it must be the common name in current use. This is a non-neutral title, which has been criticised repeatedly in very reliable sources, both on the grounds that it was not exclusively English, and that it was not a civil war. I do not dispute that it is a name that was commonly used in the past, but it is certainly not the common name in current use. Girth Summit _(blether) 16:29, 26 September 2021 (UTC) amended 17:29 Girth Summit _(blether) 17:30, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

  Actually if a name is commonly used as a title then NPOV does not come into it. It only comes into such considerations for descriptive titles (see WP:POVNAMING). The classic example used in Wikipedia discussion of article titles is the Boston Massacre which is acceptable as a common name but would not be acceptable as a descriptive title. -- PBS (talk) 18:31, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

• Support; one of the most significant recent developments in the study of this era is to see it as a conflict that impacted all three kingdoms in different ways and involved different issues and interest groups. These include Royle's "War of the Three Kingdoms", Scott's "Politics and War in the Three Stuart Kingdoms, 1637-49", while even works that focus on one specific area refer to this eg Darcy's "The Irish Rebellion of 1641 and the Wars of the Three Kingdoms" or Ian Gentles' "The English Revolution and the Wars in the Three Kingdoms, 1638-1652".
• The term "Third English Civil War" has generally been replaced by "Third Civil War" which might be a compromise. Robinvp11 (talk) 18:16, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

  Robinvp11 I appreciate the support, and also that the discussion above is exceedingly lengthy and difficult to wade through. My main point though is that "Third Civil War" has received substantial criticisms from leaders in the field, and is very little used nowadays. Gentles, for example, in the book you mention above calls it the "War between England and Scotland, 1650-51". Scott's main narrative finishes in 1649 before this conflict starts, but he does have a short section at the end on the 'defeat of the Covenanters': the phrase "Third Civil War" doesn't appear anywhere. Hardly anyone calls it that any more - it's far more commonly referred to descriptively (as Gentle and Scott do). "Third Civil War" would be better than what we have now, but it doesn't address the fact that this wasn't a civil war, but a war between two separate countries (there are lots of sources above explicitly making that criticism of the name above). Girth Summit _(blether) 05:42, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Girth Summit I personally think Anglo-Scottish War is the most accurate so that's what I support. Robinvp11 (talk) 16:45, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

• Support My initial impression of this war was badly misinformed by the title of this article. As has been noted above, it is not the third in the series of English civil wars, fought entirely in the confines of England. It was, however, a part of the British civil wars, a/k/a/ the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It was fought between England and Scotland, which, at the time, were two entirely separate nations, so calling it a "civil" war is inaccurate. In the time in question, Charles I had been beheaded. England had no king. Scotland had proclaimed Charles II, who had just landed in Scotland. At the end of the war, Charles II is defeated and exiled until the restoration of 1660. The personal union of England, Ireland and Scotland under James I and Charles I was over, and the former kingdoms would not be united under the Lord Protector as The Protectorate until 1653. Calling this an "English" civil war is just factually wrong, and calling it a "British" civil war would be anachronistic, as "Britain" did not exist between the 1649 beheading and the 1653 Protectorate.

To put it in a modern light, what if Australia or Canada were to launch an attack on the UK, would that be called the "Canadian Civil War"?? Clearly not, even though Canada recognizes the same monarch as the UK. To say that an English-Scottish war was a "civil" war, at a time when they didn't even have a common monarch should be equally clear.

Just because some modern authors, using Wikipedia as a "source", have perpetuated the misnomer is not justification for keeping it. That is circular logic. What it does show is Wikipedia's ability to propagate misinformation. The fact that some people may have bought our misinformation is not justification for continuing to propagate misinformation. Of course, redirects will insure that people looking for the incorrect name will find the article under the new title, so that's not a justification, either.

I should also note that the final conflict of this war was the Battle of Worcester, on 3 September 1651, which is the date given in the infobox. The article does state that "A few isolated strongholds ... held out into 1652". Then again, there were some Japanese holdouts from WW II as late as 1974. We do not say that WW II lasted from 1939-1974. We date it to the last major conflict. I propose, therefore, that the tile should be Anglo-Scottish war (1650–1651), not Anglo-Scottish war (1650–1652). The only other statement the article has pertaining to 1652 is that "by early 1652 its legitimacy" (the Commonwealth) "had been recognised". Again, that does not support that the war lasted into that year.

That being said, I have to note there are a number of articles that need to be cleaned-up. English Civil War, in particular, has a section Third English Civil War (1649–1651) which suggests that the subject of this article, and that of Cromwellian conquest of Ireland are both part of the same war, and a continuation of the first and second English civil wars. That is not quite true. In doing so, the article English Civil War attempts to duplicate the scope of the article Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The article Scotland in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms also has a section titled Scotland and the Second and Third English Civil Wars which also needs to be cleaned-up. It seems to me we need to define the scope of the various articles within the broader subject. My initial view of this structure can be summed up like this:

Wars of the Three Kingdoms
Outline of the wars of the Three Kingdoms
Timeline of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms
English Civil War a/k/a England in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms	Scotland in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms	Ireland in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms
	Bishops' Wars (1639–1640)	Irish Rebellion of 1641
First English Civil War (1642–1646)	Scottish Civil War (1644–1645)	Irish Confederate Wars (1642–1649)
Interbellum	Interbellum
Second English Civil War (1648–1649)
Anglo-Scottish war (1650–1651) a/k/a Third English Civil War		Cromwellian conquest of Ireland (1649–1653)
English overseas possessions in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms

This structure, which I think is the most logical, consistent organization of the articles, would involve the following additional changes: "English Civil War" renamed to "England in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms", creating a spin-off article for the Scottish Civil War of 1644–1645, and creating an overview article for "Ireland in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms". All of the articles in this table, as well as numerous templates used by these articles would all need to be updated. There are also many subsidiary articles, such as battles, treaties and participants, that also need updating. Category:Wars of the Three Kingdoms and its subcategories should be reviewed. At any rate, the tile of this article needs to be considered in the wider context of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, and not just in terms of the article, itself. 2001:558:6017:107:D5B4:958E:C45E:CAE4 (talk) 14:35, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm not massively fussed about the date range. I used 50-52 because that is the range that Wanklyn and Grainger both give when they use this phrase. There were still English armies in the field besieging (and bombarding) Scottish strongholds in early 1652. I think Dunotter was the last one to give up, after they'd managed to smuggle the crown jewels of Scotland off-site. There's no doubt however that the last significant engagement happened in 51. Girth Summit _(blether) 18:23, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Likewise, I'm not wedded to the 1651 date, as long as a better date can be found (and supported) than the vague "held out into 1652", and that the article be updated and made consistent with that date. My main concern is whatever date can be supported, that the article be consistent, both in text and title, and that supporting articles also be made consistent with this one.

I've also just noticed that the opening line of the section Aftermath states "The Battle of Worcester was the last significant engagement in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.", however the close of the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland is given as 27 April 1653. The statement is true if we limit ourselves to England and Scotland, but if we consider the Three Kingdoms, it is not. This is the kind of consistency I'm advocating for. I understand each of these articles evolved independently and, by their nature, have a considerable degree of overlap. They do have differing scopes, however, and level of detail. I believe that's actually helpful, as it allows you to dig down to as much detail (or not) as a user needs. The problem is when the details and conclusions conflict from one article to the next. They may have been created independently, but it's time to edit them as a whole and make them consistent with one another. 2001:558:6017:107:D5B4:958E:C45E:CAE4 (talk) 05:54, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

• Support per the arguments based on preferring science over whatever may be common. (I only commented above.) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:57, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
• Support removal of title 'Third English Civil War' per nom and lack of any mention in New Zealand high school history class of 1994 when the English Civil War was being taught. Agnostic on replacement term; if we can find a COMMONNAME that isn't actively misleading (an Anglo-Scots war masquerading as an English Civil War?), I would support that. But the article cannot stay at its current title. Buckshot06 (talk) 06:53, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
• Support move, ambivalent on target. Third English Civil War doesn't seem to be a commonly used name, and the scope of the conflict was wider than an English civil war. I'll leave it to others with more expertise in this era to decide what we should call it. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 13:29, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
• Support move. Girth Summit seems to have built an irrefutable case. There is simply no backing in the sources for "Third English Civil War", and it wasn't the third of anything, it wasn't wholly English and it wasn't a civil war. There is no WP:COMMONNAME. MichaelMaggs sums up the situation nicely. Girth Summit's proposed new title seems the least bad/inappropriate of any I have seen suggested, but I would be open to change if a better one was proposed. Gog the Mild (talk) 20:27, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

• Just a minor point regarding the new page name, shouldn't the "w" in "war" be capitalised? I don't know which policy would apply here if any but that seems to be the norm with articles on specific wars. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 12:49, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

No - I intentionally left it uncapitalised because the title isn't a proper name. Our default house style is not to capitalise in such cases; the relevant bit of the MOS is MOS:MILTERMS, which allows for capitalisation only if the conflict has a proper name which is regularly capitalised in sources. That is not the case here, so we default to capitalising only the 'Anglo-Scottish' bit, on the grounds that they are derived from proper nouns. Girth Summit _(blether) 13:41, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Separate article for the Third English Civil war

There was a civil war in England which occurred at the time which it seems to me was entirely separate from Cromwell's invasion of Scotland. The new title of the article is in my opinion extremely poor, and does not give any indication as to what the contents is about, which is the conclusion of the civil war itself. I missed the previous debate at the time but would have strongly disagreed with the change had I seen it. Just because we decide today something is not a civil war, doesnt mean we can change the name which is most referenced, as its known mostly by numerous sources as the Third Civil War. I came here today looking to read about something on with the Third Civil war and initially did not realise this article covered the topic and thought the entire article had been deleted. Anyone without a basic knowledge of the period may not realise now there was a significant third part and pass over this article, as the title makes it seem like its just about another Anglo-Scottish border war. Can I suggest it would be better to have an independent article covering Charles IIs campaign in England as the Third English Civil war, whilst Cromwell' invasion of Scotland should have its own article titled as such. Anvib (talk) 10:18, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

You may certainly suggest, but there was an extensive and well frequented discussion on just the points you raise - see "Article title" above. I suggest you read through it, especially the references to sources and the lack of source support for "Third English Civil War". Gog the Mild (talk) 14:09, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

WP:FAOWN

I thought I would start a section for Gog the Mild to justify the merit of this partial revert.

• "On 31 August Cromwell did withdraw..." What does the "did" do?
• "some 6,000 Scots" Are we worried the reader may think it was a precisely counted figure? Seems unlikely!
• "Shortly afterwards Aberdeen, whose council saw no benefit in resisting an inevitable and costly defeat, promptly surrendered to a party of Monck's cavalry." "Shortly afterwards" and "promptly" tell us the same thing twice. Once would likely be enough.

As I said in my edit summary, it's rather a good article, but it's not incapable of improvement. Wubslin (talk) 20:24, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

It is certainly not; you will have noted that I did not simply revert your edit. Indeed it is a Featured Article (FA), which are described as "FAs exemplify Wikipedia's very best work and satisfy the FA criteria." A particularly strong consensus is needed to promote an article to FA, the promotion discussion for this article can be found here. Given this, and WP:FAOWN (which I mentioned in my edit summary), the emphasis is on you to demonstrate that your proposals are in fact improvements - and not, for example, personal preferences which do not materially effect things - or to bring a source or consensus of HQRSs to contradict some part of the article or to gather a consensus to change something at least as strong as that at FAC.

That said, with regard to your points above: 1, I suggest you reread the section, in particular noting the use of withdraw in the previous sentence. 2. Yes. However unlikely why would we wish to imply a false precision? 3. Could you reread the sentence carefully - the two words are acting on two different things. Actually, I have tweaked a little - is that clearer?

In case any of the above comes across a little harshly, it is not intended to, can I express my thanks for your other edits; and indeed for these, which I appreciate were made entirely in a spirit of attempting to improve the article. Gog the Mild (talk) 22:22, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for the collegial reply, I appreciate it. Of the three points, I still stand by the first; you are attempting to highlight a repetition which I think the reader will already have appreciated. It's only one extra word, but every word should count. There may be a way to reframe these two sentences more elegantly. On the second, I would tend to be very sparing with "some" as people may read it as meaning "a large number" (eg adverb informal North American adverb: some: to some extent; quite a lot. "he needs feeding up some") On number three, I appreciate the slight tweak, which is certainly an improvement. Thank you once again for your part in producing such an excellent article. I really enjoyed reading it. --Wubslin (talk) 22:38, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

Date: 1652?

Why is it 1652? If it's part of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (which seems to be the thrust of the article), those are generally held to have finished with Worcester in 1651. That is not necessarily the same as the date of the political settlement.

An important point since it ties into various other articles.Robinvp11 (talk) 11:20, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Hi Robinvp11, there was a well frequented discussion regarding the most appropriate name. I have moved it out of the archives and prevented it from being re-archived as similar points seem to come up every so often. So see the full discussion above. The end date is also discussed in various other places in the archives. I note that you supported the move to the current title; although there is, of course, no reason why you should not change your mind. Gog the Mild (talk) 20:02, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

I'm clear on the title, it's the date which confuses me even after reading this thread. The current article on the Wars of the Three Kingdoms states 1639 to 1651 but its Campaign box includes Glencairn's rising (1653-1654), which is definitely outwith the scope.

If we're saying this war is also not part of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, that's fine by me but that then feeds into other articles eg Scotland in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms Robinvp11 (talk) 13:26, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Feel free to change the date in the campaign box. Gog the Mild (talk) 13:49, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

@Robinvp11@Gog the Mild @The dating issue still remains a problem. This article asserts that the Anglo-Scottish war forms part of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, which I believe is normally held to have concluded with Worcester in 1651. But this article (after a recent change to the infobox) states that the Anglo-Scottish war concluded on 24 May 1652, with a surrender at Dunnottar Castle, "the last major Scottish stronghold to surrender". MichaelMaggs (talk) 14:23, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

There was a detailed discussion on this above. Before anything else, what are your sources for "which I believe is normally held to have concluded with Worcester in 1651"? Gog the Mild (talk) 15:08, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

I'm not going to express an opinion on the sources since, as I said in the discussion above, I'm not a subject-matter expert. I'm simply supporting and reiterating @Robinvp11's point that there remains an internal Wikipedia inconsistency between the end date stated in this article ('1652') and that stated in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms ('1651'). I'll leave it to the experts to fix, if you want to, or to ignore if you think it's of no consequence. MichaelMaggs (talk) 16:11, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

Rewrite Lede

Frankly, I'm astonished to learn this is a featured article, and that I need permission to do this, but the Lede needs extensive updating. it is confusing, overly wordy and in some instances actively misleading (probably because large parts of it are copy-pasted from other articles). Suggested rewrite, which I think is more accurate, comprehensive, and easy to follow;

The Anglo-Scottish war (1650–1652), also known as the Third English Civil War, was the last in a series of conflicts fought between 1639 to 1652 in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Known collectively as the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, these also include the Bishops' Wars, the Irish Confederate Wars, the First and Second English Civil Wars, and the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. It resulted in victory for English forces under Oliver Cromwell over a Scottish army nominally led by Charles II, and Scotland's incorporation into the Commonwealth of England.

Despite their 1643 alliance with Parliament against Charles I, by 1646 the Covenanter government in Scotland viewed radicals within the New Model Army as a greater threat than their Royalist opponents. Arguments over a peace settlement, and in particular the future role of Charles I, resulted in the 1648 Second English Civil War, in which an alliance of Scots, Royalists and moderate English Parliamentarians fought against the New Model. Defeat resulted in the Execution of Charles I on 30 January 1649 and creation of the Commonwealth of England; however, Charles was also separately king of Scotland, and the Scottish Parliament now declared his son Charles II King of Britain.

Under the terms of the May 1650 Treaty of Breda, the Covenanters agreed to restore Charles II to the English throne in return for establishing Presbyterianism as the state religion. Led by David Leslie, the Scots began assembling an army, and on 22 July the New Model Army entered Scotland in a pre-emptive attack. Leslie retreated to Edinburgh and avoided direct confrontation, while illness and lack of supplies forced Cromwell to withdraw to the port of Dunbar. He was followed there by the Scots, who were heavily defeated in a surprise attack on 3 September, and retreated to Stirling.

After occupying Edinburgh and the port of Leith, in summer 1651 the New Model landed in Fife and won another victory at Inverkeithing, isolating the Scots in Stirling from their supply bases in the north. Believing the only alternative was surrender, Charles II persuaded Leslie to invade England, hoping supporters there would rally to his cause, which proved not to be the case. They were pursued south by Cromwell, whose success at the Battle of Worcester in September ended the war. Although Charles managed to escape into exile, Scotland became part of the Commonwealth until the Stuart Restoration in May 1660.

Any objections? Robinvp11 (talk) 14:52, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

Frankly, I'm astonished that you start off your attempt to change the existing consensus by insulting the editors who wrote the article, nominated it for FAC, and reviewed it there. I shall only touch lightly on the borderline personal insult, but suggest you read WP:CIVIL and WP:AGF. Given your prior edit summary, WP:BRD may also be helpful. Pinging in the co-nominator - Girth Summit.

Yes, I object. You have raised only a single specific objection to the existing lead: that parts are copy-pasted from other articles. As the articles in question are sub-articles of this one (battles fought as part of this war) this is entirely reasonable. Obviously much of the background and outcome is identical. That several of these articles are also FAs, having passed through the FAC review procedure (Battle of Dunbar (1650), Battle of Inverkeithing), strengthens the consensus for this form of words rather than weakens it. If you want to try and build a consensus to change the strong consensus for the existing lead formed at FAC I suggest that you propose specific detailed changes one at a time rather than a wholesale "take it or leave it" approach.

If you feel so strongly that articles which are "confusing, overly wordy and ... actively misleading" are getting through the FAC process, can I strongly urge you to get involved in reviewing nominations there. Gog the Mild (talk) 15:15, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

@Gog the Mild: FYI, because of my concerns about some articles which made it through the "A" process (let me know if you'd like a list), about three years ago I stopped taking part in them but started participating in "B" class reviews to ensure they weren't being sleepwalked through. Robinvp11 (talk) 18:10, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

I too am astonished by this statement. Copy pasted from other articles? That's quite an accusation, and it's entirely untrue - I'd be very interested to learn what makes you think that. You realise that you are effectivly accusing us of copyright violations (per WP:CWW)? I'd ask you to retract that.

Now, we can discuss any specific problems that you see with the prose, of course, but one thing that I would be absolutely dead against is including anywhere in this article the phrase 'Third English Civil War'. Third Civil War, yes - that phrase has been widely criticised, and is little used, but it has been used. Third English Civil War was, I believe, an invention of a Wikipedia author. I have looked, and find zero uses of that phrase anywhere prior to the date when this article was originally published under that name; since the article's creation, a few uses of the phrase start cropping up in scholarly sources, but never by an historian of this period: in other words, we had been misleading people for years about how scholars refer to this conflict, and it was starting to affect how people from other disciplines write about it (because they are referring to us for convenience, instead of consulting history books). We follow sources; when we start leading them, it is a problem. Girth Summit _(blether) 15:30, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

Striking the above about the copy/pasting - having read Gog's response properly, I remember that we did copy some material from related articles, but we did so with appropriate attribution in compliance with CWW. Those articles too were/are FAs, and the content is relevant to this article, so I don't see that as a valid reason to change the text. I generally object to the above proposal for a wholesale rewrite, but am happy to consider specific proposals. Girth Summit _(blether) 16:44, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

• Robinvp11 - just tell us what you think is wrong with that sentence. Why is it "quite clearly wrong"? I'm genuinely happy to discuss this stuff, there's no need to add shame tags to an FA. Girth Summit _(blether) 17:36, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

I was in the process of explaining it below - seems odd to call it a "shame tag".

I am well aware there have been lengthy discussions on the nomenclature, which I played a limited part in; that's not the issue here, which is (a) Is the Lede accurate? and (b) Is it clear?

"Third English Civil War" appears in the EB and a recent (2021) article in the EHR; "Third Civil War" is incredibly non-specific for an online encyclopedia which covers as many conflicts as Wikipedia but as we're going with Anglo-Scottish War, it's not something worth investing energy in;

My surprise this is an FA is because describing the Wars of the Three Kingdoms "as a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists" is so obviously wrong, I didn't think anyone with knowledge of the period would accept it.

I imagine that's because its been copy-pasted from articles on the English Civil War, in which context it's ok, if simplistic since Parliamentarians fought on both sides in the Second, while "political machinations" do not equal war;

The Wars of the Three Kingdoms on the other hand covers three different countries and at least eight separately identifiable factions, most of whom fought with and against each other (at one point in Ireland, there were five different "sides", all of whom claimed to be fighting for Charles I). So if you change nothing else, at the very least can you correct that (I've already supplied my wording, but feel free).Robinvp11 (talk) 18:10, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Oh dear. I am running for cover and leaving this one to Mr Summit Gog the Mild (talk) 18:21, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Although, as I go, I will leave the thought that you still haven't provided a source for any of your opinions.

Oh, and no, this was written fresh and new for this war. Gog the Mild (talk) 18:25, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

I'd be interested to look at those 'Third English Civil War' usages, if you could provide links.

I'm not wedded to that particular form of words to describe the Wars of the Three Kingdoms; I can't remember which one of us wrote it (it was probably Gog, sounds like him). If you'd like to propose another, I'd happily consider it. Girth Summit _(blether) 18:27, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Sounds like me to me too. I am also not wedded to it. It does seem to succinctly summarise the situation. I don't know why "Royalists" should be taken to mean that there was only one faction or "side" of them, especially in the light of "a series of armed conflicts and political machinations". But happy to consider any succinct summary of the main text which cleves to the sources. Gog the Mild (talk) 18:47, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

I think Robin's got a point about 'Royalists vs Parliamentarians' for the WotTK - leaving Ireland aside, it's not a good fit the Bishops' Wars either. That could probably be tweaked. How can we better summarise the whole shebang? Girth Summit _(blether) 18:55, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

"... between a number of militant political groups in England, Scotland and Ireland"? Gog the Mild (talk) 19:02, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

"... between shifting alliances of a number of militant political groups in England, Scotland and Ireland"? Gog the Mild (talk) 19:08, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

I mean, yes, but a bit vague? (And is 'militant' redundant in the context of 'groups of people who went to war with one another'.) Girth Summit _(blether) 19:08, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Ooh, sorry - edit conflict, that was in reference to your first suggestion. I like the second one better, but would like to hear what Robin thinks. Girth Summit _(blether) 19:10, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Hey, its a first stab. Feel free to "grandfather's axe" it. Of course its vague, its the intro. After reading numerous works and talking to an expert my considered view is that tWotTK can be summarised as "What were they thinking?" Gog the Mild (talk) 19:13, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

OK - I will wait to see whether Robinvp11 wants to comment or make an alternative suggestion; if not, I'll attempt a reword along lines similarish to these tomorrow. I do like 'shifting alliances'. Girth Summit _(blether) 19:25, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

"... a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between political and religious groups and factions in England, Scotland and Ireland"? Gog the Mild (talk) 19:33, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Ooh, yes, I like that. I think I can squeeze 'shifting alliances' into it somewhere. Girth Summit _(blether) 19:36, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

"... a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between shifting alliances of political and religious groups and factions in England, Scotland and Ireland"? Hmm. We could summary style it down to "a madhouse". The phrase itself is starting to resemble the chaos of the wars; is that a good thing? Any hoo, Robinvp11, are we barking up the wrong tree? Gog the Mild (talk) 19:43, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

OK - I've implemented with slight tweak. Robin, happy to consider further amendments. Girth Summit _(blether) 11:18, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Gee, I thought I was (as a relative amateur Wikipedian) just making a few minor tweaks. Now I see I was treading onto a Featured Article minefield (what fun!). I will be much less bold in the future! JdelaF (talk) 22:00, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Hi JdelaF, I thought that might be what was happening. We really do welcome feedback and suggestions for improvements. Feed us any thoughts in bite-sized pieces with some idea of why you think a change needs making and, ideally, sources and we'll knock them around together. It may be worth reading the FAC reviews first, so you can see what has already been thrashed out and just what there is a firm, or less firm, consensus for. Cheers. Gog the Mild (talk) 22:07, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Lead copy edits

Here were the changes I made to the lead

They were reverted for the following reason: "makes the prose ungrammatical, worse, or inconsistent"

I fail to see how my changes do anything of the sort.

Also, just because an article has FA status doesn't mean every single change needs to be discussed on the talk page. Especially small copy edits like the one I made. I made no content changes, just added/removed commas and changed some phrasing.

@Gog the Mild 71.11.5.2 (talk) 15:30, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

Copying in the co-nominator for information: Girth Summit.

Re your changes, among other things:

• "England, Scotland, and Ireland." This article does not use serial commas and so you have introduced an inconsistancy.
• "a pre-emptive military incursion by the English Commonwealth's New Model Army, which intended to allay the risk". This is ungrammatical. Possibly you mean 'was intended'? In any event you have changed the sentence from a clear and grammatical construction to one which is not.
• "exasperated by the duplicity of Charles I during negotiations, the English government". At best this is a pointless change based on personal preference. I consider it a worse construction than the one it was intended to replace as it puts the subject of the clause towards its end and so leaves a reader baffled as to what the clause is about until they reach its end. At which point they will probably need to read it again to comprehend it; not ideal.
• "declared his son Charles II the King of Britain." The commas you removed are grammatically necessary; the addition of "the" is at best a personal preference and in my opinion ungrammatical.

I could go on, but as your first four changes have introduced five errors I see no point. That when I reverted and you - I hope - reread your "copy edits", you still felt that one and all of them were fine is perturbing. Please, if you have a change which you believe is an improvement, discuss it here before changing the article. Even if it is "just" adding or removing a comma. Note that an improvement needs to be just that, not a tweak based on personal preference which makes no real improvement. I am, honestly, entirely open to such suggestions. Thanks. Gog the Mild (talk) 16:14, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping Gog. IP editor, I concur with GtM that the edits were not improvements. The fiddling with all those commas makes the article internally inconsistent. I say this as someone who has frequently disagreed with GtM about commas in the past: I am something of a comma fan, whereas GtM seems to think that they are very expensive and should be used sparingly. Nevertheless, we arrived at something that we were both happy with, and which the FA reviewers were also happy with - I don't think it's appropriate for you to unilaterally impose your own preferred style. Another change I particularly oppose is your addition of the word 'but' into the sentence 'Cromwell pursued, few Englishmen rallied to the Royalist cause and the English raised a large army.' I don't think that few Englishmen rallying to the Royalist cause is in contrast to Cromwell's pursuit, so I don't see what 'but' is doing there. Anyway, in summary, I support GtM's revert. Girth Summit _(blether) 17:45, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

I am also a fan of commas (see me being a serial comma user), but the lead is filled with loads of unecessary ones.

Let's look at this sentence: At the time, England and Scotland were separate independent kingdoms, joined politically through a personal union; Charles I was, separately, both the king of Scotland, and the king of England.

This one sentence has five commas(!) and a semi-colon, but takes up like two lines in a paragraph.

My edit: At the time, England and Scotland were separate independent kingdoms joined politically through a personal union; Charles I was separately both the king of Scotland and the king of England.

This reduces the commas to 1 and keeps the semicolon and is not ungrammatical.

Regarding "I don't think it's appropriate for you to unilaterally impose your own preferred style.": I was not imposing my own style. That's like saying any time someone makes an edit to the wiki they are imposing their own style.

Just because FA reviewers were happy with the article at the time of its nomination doesn't mean the article is perfect. I pointed out in my other reply that there's a glaring grammatical error in one of the sentences I edited. 71.11.5.2 (talk) 15:45, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

"England, Scotland, and Ireland." This article does not use serial commas and so you have introduced an inconsistancy.

This is fair and not something I considered.

"a pre-emptive military incursion by the English Commonwealth's New Model Army, which intended to allay the risk". This is ungrammatical. Possibly you mean 'was intended'? In any event you have changed the sentence from a clear and grammatical construction to one which is not.

I'd argue the original sentence is not structured well. The inclusion of "which was intended" might be a better way to write it more clearly. If it was at the beginning of the sentence the clause sounds find to my ears, but tacked on at the end sounds really wrong to me.

"exasperated by the duplicity of Charles I during negotiations, the English government". At best this is a pointless change based on personal preference. I consider it a worse construction than the one it was intended to replace as it puts the subject of the clause towards its end and so leaves a reader baffled as to what the clause is about until they reach its end. At which point they will probably need to read it again to comprehend it; not ideal.''

Strange, because the original is completely ungrammatical: When the Royalists were defeated for the second time the English government, .... It needs a comma after the word "time" as that is the end of the clause. The whole sentence likely needs to be split in half because it is essentially four clauses with a conjuction for a second independent clause at the end. It's too long and difficult to read.

"declared his son Charles II the King of Britain." The commas you removed are grammatically necessary; the addition of "the" is at best a personal preference and in my opinion ungrammatical.

I'm not certain you need the comma after "son". Regardless, the original structure has four commas, on average every 4th word . I would argue mine is much easier to read. At the very least it's a sentence that needs rewriting, even if you disagree with my edits. The sentence is very staccato.

Courtesty tag for @Girth Summit 71.11.5.2 (talk) 15:38, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, which is the 'glaring grammatical error'? I'm getting a bit lost. Is it the lack of a comma after the adverbial clause 'When the Royalists were defeated for the second time'? That's somewhere I would usually put a comma, but I don't think the comma is required there, such that its omission would amount to an error. I don't have a problem with your proposed removal of the commas from the first sentence of the 'At the time' sentence. Girth Summit _(blether) 16:49, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

I have no intention of engaging in a word by word, comma by comma, examination of a featured article. As I wrote above, if you have a change which you believe is an improvement, specify the exact change you propose here before changing the article. Even if it is "just" adding or removing a comma. Note that an improvement needs to be just that, not a tweak based on personal preference which makes no real improvement. If Girth and I consider any of your proposals to be improvements we will implement them, if we don't, we won't. If you disagree re any of the latter you are free to build a consensus to support the change you propose. The usual - but not mandatory - method of doing this is to ping in the reviewers of the original FAC - which can be found here - to discuss changing the original consensus that any particular bit of "prose is engaging and of a professional standard".

Regarding your clear enthusiasm for this sort of thing, have you come across GoCE? They identify articles which need copy editing and tidy them up systematically, as well as having a facility for editors to request a copy edit for articles, eg pre-GAN or FAC. Your energy in this area may well find a welcome there. Gog the Mild (talk) 18:18, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

I feel like I am getting mixed signals here. You are simultaneously telling me you don't want to engage in a descriptive comb through of the article, but you also want me list every single change I make here first? You would then be going line by line with me. So which is it?

I'm not going to write a paragraph for every comma I think we should remove. You're going to manually approve 30 different edits I would like to make in just the 4 lead paragraphs? That's a complete waste of everyone's time (but maybe that's your entire point here).

If Girth and I consider any of your proposals to be improvements we will implement them, if we don't, we won't. If you disagree re any of the latter you are free to build a consensus to support the change you propose.

You retain no ownership of a wiki article, even if you both did most of the work getting it to FA status. You are not in charge of this article.

The usual - but not mandatory - method of doing this is to ping in the reviewers of the original FAC - which can be found here - to discuss changing the original consensus that any particular bit of "prose is engaging and of a professional standard".

It is a ridiculous claim that any edits made to a FA article must be approved by the original reviewers, especially the tiniest amount of copy editing I was doing. FA articles are not set in stone and assumed to be perfect unless proven otherwise. It may be usual to do that for actual content changes, but not copyediting. That's absurd.

Note that an improvement needs to be just that, not a tweak based on personal preference which makes no real improvement.

I already explained in detail that my improvements were not just personal preference. Neither of you seem to actually want to discuss them?

I am well aware of the GoCe, copy editing is pretty much all I do here. This wasn't some drive by editing by a rando IP - these edits were made in good faith. It actually astonished me how poor the lead section was. The over and underuse of commas and incorrect grammar caught my eye, and so I made edits.

I realize this article is one of your babies and FA writers/editors get possessive. But there are glaring issues that I have talked about that you have not addressed. 71.11.5.2 (talk) 20:51, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

It absolutely is required there, your instincts are correct. Adverbial clauses generally require punctuation at the beginning of a sentence unless it is very short or weird edge cases (which usually aren't formal writing).

Link, link, link (note that the clause in question is 8 words long and is therefore not short)

This sort of discussion is exasperating. No one wants to discuss grammar and punctuation in this level of detail. And both of you have ignored more than half of the edits raised in this discussion.

Imagine if anyone wanted to edit the rest of the article and not just the lead? It would drive everyone crazy, including the two of you, if every copy edit has to pass through your own internal approval process first, and the copyeditor in question has to defend every action they want to take. 71.11.5.2 (talk) 21:01, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Recent changes re nomenclature

Hi Robinvp11 - I'll break down my objections here, happy to discuss your proposals.

Thank you for your comments. There are two separate issues here which I'll address in turn, the first being revisions to the Lead; I know this is a FA, but its a fairly early one, before a lot of the linked articles were created, which means in general it's trying to cover too much. This includes the current Lead, but on the basis you should edit the article first, I only inserted the ones that related to "Nomenclature". I've actually rewritten all of it, which I include below, because some of the changes only make sense if you see the whole thing.

The Anglo-Scottish War (1650–1652), also referred as the Third Civil War, or Third English Civil War, was the last in a series of conflicts fought between 1639 to 1652 in England, Scotland and Ireland. Now known generically as the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, these had their origins in political and religious disagreements, some of which were common to all three kingdoms, but others unique to each.

Victory in the 1639 and 1640 Bishops' Wars established a Covenanter government in Scotland, which allied with Parliament in the 1642 to 1646 First English Civil War. Concerned by radicals within the New Model Army and leaders like Oliver Cromwell, the Scots supported the Royalists in the 1648 Second English Civil War. Defeat resulted in the Execution of Charles I on 30 January 1649, and creation of a republic known as the Commonwealth of England.

However, Charles was separately king of Scotland, and for various reasons the Scots strongly objected to his execution. Under the 1650 Treaty of Breda, they crowned his son Charles II King of Britain, agreed to restore him to the throne of England, and began recruiting an army to do so. In response, Cromwell led the New Model Army into Scotland on 22 July 1650. The Scots, commanded by David Leslie, avoided battle and retreated to Edinburgh, but were defeated at Dunbar on 3 September. Leslie and the remnants of his army withdrew to Stirling, before a second English victory at Inverkeithing on 20 July 1651 cut off them from their sources of supply and reinforcements.

Believing the only alternative was surrender, Charles persuaded Leslie to invade England in August, pursued by Cromwell. Support from English Royalists failed to materialise, and the Scots were decisively defeated at Worcester on 3 September 1651. Although Charles II escaped into exile, Scotland became part of the Commonwealth until the Stuart Restoration in 1660.

• Capitalisation- the 'Anglo-Scottish war' bit is a descriptive name; sources that use it don't, as far as I've seen, capitalise 'war'.

I think "war" is inconsistent with other Wikipedia articles, but its not a principle we need to fight over :)

• '...referred as...' is ungrammatical, it should be 'referred to as', but I don't see why it's an improvement over 'known as'

If you retain my revision above, we'd end up using "known" twice in the same paragraph. "Referred to as" is correct (I missed "to" out by mistake);

• '...some common to all three...' - I'm not sure what this is doing - are we saying that there were only three conflicts? Or does this refer to the three countries?

I did some additional edits last night to clarify these points which I think should answer this query (I'm currently under a typhoon warning, so they clearly didn't go through). These are in bold.

Nomenclature

• 'The conflict has sometimes been grouped with the 1649 to 1653 Cromwellian conquest of Ireland into a category known as the Third Civil War.' Where is the grouping with the conquest of Ireland into the Third Civil War coming from? I'm not saying you're wrong, but from memory the sources I've looked at on this (eg Kenyon) don't talk about the phrase being used to include the Irish conquest.
• 'It is also known as the Third English Civil War, part of the English Civil War, a subset that includes the 1642 to 1646 First English Civil War, and 1648 Second English Civil War. John Philipps Kenyon...' Kenyon, and the other authors included there, are writing critically about the phrase 'Third Civil War', not 'Third English Civil War'. The use of that latter phrase is rare and haven't commented on it. Cheers Girth Summit _(blether) 11:56, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Having done a lot of work on 17th century England, the difference between "Third Civil War" and "Third English Civil War" has been puzzling me for some time - I assumed it was people being imprecise. However, I think I now have a handle on the historiography (bear with me, I'm explaining to myself as well :))

Starting with Clarendon's "The Great Rebellion", the conflict was essentially viewed as an English one, Ireland and Scotland being relegated to bit part players. This means they were called the "English Civil Wars" hence, the "Third English Civil War". Both phrases are still widely used, particularly in the US where "England" and "Britain" are often used interchangeably, but also in the UK eg https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/histories/the-english-civil-wars-history-and-stories/the-english-civil-wars/. Others include https://www.worldhistory.org/English_Civil_Wars/, websites like History.com etc etc. I don't think you can accurately describe its use as "rare", and we can't simply ignore it because it's wrong;

This Anglo-centric view changed in the 60s when they became known as the "British Civil Wars" (the title of Kenyon's 1988 book), hence "Third Civil War". This approach gave equal weight to each country, but divided it into specific segments; First (1639 to 1646), Second (roughly 1648), and Third (1649 to 1651). The latter groups the Cromwellian invasion of Ireland in 1649 and Scottish of 1650 into the same category. I'd be very surprised if Kenyon doesn't include Ireland when referring to the "Third Civil War". Perhaps you can check, because I have limited internet access right now, but its widely used by reputable websites like BCW Project (http://bcw-project.org/military/third-civil-war/), as does the EB (whose article is written by Ohlmeyer);

In the early 90s, it was argued this approach still failed to accentuate the differences in motives (what are we fighting for, and why?) in each kingdom, while you couldn't divide the Irish Confederate War into these neat time segments. Hence, War of the Three Kingdoms, which seems to be the generally preferred term. But if you take that approach, which is what Woolrych does, what exactly do you call the 1650 to 1652 conflict? The traditional pre-1960s term "Third English Civil War" is clearly wrong, so we end up with "Anglo-Scottish War". Woolrych is thus (in my view) making a very different point from Kenyon.

Sorry this is so long. If this makes sense, I will update the section on Nomenclature to reflect our discussion, and we can then discuss it further.Robinvp11 (talk) 01:12, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

I'll dig the books out and check what they say so I'm not relying on memory - bear with me... Girth Summit _(blether) 11:23, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

OK, so I've dipped into a couple of the books I used when we rewrote this article. I'll try to address the points you've raised about how both the wider groups of conflicts are referred to, and about what names are given to this particular one (if it is just one).

First off, you rightly note that the wider set of conflicts have not always been known by the same name. Here is John Morrill, writing in the introduction to 1998's 'The Civil Wars' (eds Kenyon and Ohlmeyer): The traditional terms used to describe the conflicts which engulfed Ireland and Britain during the 1640s have included 'the English Revolution', 'the Puritan Revolution', 'the Great Civil War', and more recently 'the British Civil Wars'. Yet none of these reflect the fact that thee conflict engulfed all three Stuart kingdoms; or that, in addition to the war possessing a pan-archipelagic dimension, each kingdom fought its own war and its own series of local and regional wars. The tension is caught in the fact that some historians speak of the 'War of the Three Kingdoms' and others of the 'Wars of the Three Kingdoms'. Even that fails to reflect the extent to which the European superpowers - the Spanish Habsburgs, he French Bourbons and the a lesser extent the mercantile Republic of Holland - were active participants in one or more theatres of these internal wars... ...The 'Wars of the Three Kingdoms' are a peripheral but actual part of the Thirty Years War, the greatest of all the continental European wars before the era of Bonaparte. So, we start with the question of how to refer to the overall series of conflicts. My contention (and I made this argument at length over at Talk:Wars of the Three Kingdoms in December 2021), is that while there is still a plurality of phrases in use depending on author and exactly what they are talking about, the discipline has broadly settled on 'Wars of the Three Kingdoms'.

That is not to say however that there is not a thing called the English Civil War. Most scholars refer to the part of the broader series of conflicts that was fought on English soil between English forces as the English Civil War. Cromwell's campaign in Scotland, and Charles's mad dash for London that ended at Worcester are sometimes included as a part of that conflict, but I would argue that they are generally not. Mike Braddick's book 'God's Fury, England's Fire: A New History of the English Civil Wars', for example, discusses the events up to the end of the Second Civil War - it does not go later. The same goes for Robert Ashton's 'The English Civil War: Conservatism and Revolution 1603-1649'. Morrill describes Preston as the last battle of the English Civil Wars. I could list a load of other scholarly works that simply don't include these events in their discussion of the English Civil War/s, but I acknowledge that some authors do so.

To further complicate matters, however, we have the difference in what authors actually mean when they do so. Some sources, like the ones you have linked to, do indeed use the term 'Third Civil War' to encompass both the campaign in Scotland, and the Scots' army's jaunt down to Worcester. David Sharpe, however, only uses the 'Third Civil War' phrase to describe the events in England (presumably because it could now perhaps reasonably be described as a civil war again, now Charles was on English soil, trying to get English royalists to come out against the English parliament). Other authors may also make this distinction, I haven't explored that avenue very far.

Is the Irish conflict part of the Third Civil War in anyone's mind? I don't think so - certainly I haven't seen anyone say so. Kenyon and Ohlmeyer write in the 'Background' chapter of their book mentioned above: Ultimately the defeat of the combined forces of the Irish royalists and the disbanded confederates at the hands of the English parliamentarians after August 1649, prevented them from fighting alongside their Scottish and English allies in the Third English Civil War'. Ohlmeyer, writing later in a chapter called The Civil Wars in Ireland, names those events in her opening sentence: The Irish Civil War - or the Eleven Years War - began in October 1614 with the outbreak of the rising and effectively ended with the surrender of Galway in April 1652.

On the question of 'Third Civil War' versus 'Third English Civil War', I still contend that the latter phrase is so rarely used that we can simply omit to mention it. It's not necessary to disambiguate it (the article is obviously about British affairs) and Ohlmeyer is, I think, the only scholar of any significance in the field that I've seen use that entire phrase. She herself captures the problem with it herself in the background section of that same book: The first battle of the English Civil Wars took place at Powicke Bridge on the outskirts of Worcester on 23 Sepctember 1642. The final battle of the British Civil Wars occurred in the fields around Worcester in 3 September 1651. The emphasis is in the original - she is making the point that it is no longer accurate to call them 'English' by that point, despite the fact that she uses the word herself. Girth Summit _(blether) 09:23, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Addendum - I missed your comments right at the top of this thread, where they were interjected into my own. This isn't an early FA - the article has existed for a long time, but Gog and I rewrote it from scratch a couple of years ago prior to taking it through GAN and FAC in 2021. As FAs go, it's fairly recent. Girth Summit _(blether) 12:21, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for this detailed response. However, much of it seems of limited relevance, since we're not disputing the correctness of "Wars of the Three Kingdoms", whether there is such a thing as the "English Civil War", or if "Third English Civil War" is wrong.

What I dispute are these two sentences; Some historians have referred to the conflict, which followed the First and Second English Civil Wars, as the Third Civil War. This view has been criticised: John Philipps Kenyon and Jane Ohlmeyer noted that the conflict was not an exclusively English affair, so cannot be considered part of the English Civil War...

"Third English Civil War" and "Third Civil War" are not the same thing, even if some historians confuse the two, and Woolrych is making an entirely different point. The issue is very specifically the difference between "Third English Civil War" and "Third Civil War" which I feel I've explained in some detail.

I think you've ignored the various links I've included which do indeed refer to the Third Civil War beginning "as a military campaign in Ireland, with Cromwell being sent with an army in the summer of 1649 to re-establish control." This one (for example) comes from the Cromwell Museum website, https://www.cromwellmuseum.org/cromwell/civil-war/key-events. I note the original article (ie before the "rewrite from scratch") had a section on Cromwell in Ireland, which has now been removed.

Once I get home, I could spend time digging out other scholarly references, but let me ask a more fundamental question. I think the article is too long eg why do we need such exhaustive detail on the Bishops Wars, when there is a separate and recently updated article on the topic. I'm not convinced the rewrite is an improvement in that sense - I think the original was actually far more focused. For online encyclopedia, "more" is not necessarily "better", but I seem to be in a minority of Wikipedia editors on that point.

Looking at this TP, its not just me who feels even minor changes involve undue effort. If you think this article is fine as is, then please just say so, and I'll move onto something else. Robinvp11 (talk) 06:03, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

OK, I'll put it like this: I don't think that the links you provided, which mostly are tertiary sources written by non-speclialists, carry as much weight as the numerous secondary sources written by leading scholars in the field that we consulted when rewriting the article. The English Heritage source is written by Paul Pattison, a property historian for English heritage - not a civil wars specialist. The WorldHisotry.org site as writtne by Mark Cartwright, a freelance (I think) history writer who has a masters degree but no PhD. The BCW source is written by who knows whom - it is reputable, in a sense, but it's borderline whether it would qualify as a reliable source under our guidelines, and certainly it is not of the same standard as a peer-reviewed monograph written by a leading professor. The same goes for the Cromwellian Museum's website - who wrote that? So I haven't ignored the links you provided, but I do not think that they are of particular weight compared with the sources I have discussed.

You assert that "The English Civil War" and the "Third Civil War" are not the same thing. You say that some historians confuse the two - I think that's wrong headed. They're not 'confused' about the difference between the two (if such a difference exists), they disagree on how to refer to the events. If you can provide a scholarly source that discusses a difference between the two, I would be very interested to read it.

I am in no doubt that the article could be further improved, but forgive me if I push back against the replacement of content grounded in secondary sources written by leading specialists with material from tertiary websites written by enthusiastic amateurs or generalist scholars. Girth Summit _(blether) 07:39, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Oh, and I don't think that having a single four-sentence paragraph in a 'background' section can reasonably be described as 'exhaustive detail'. You cannot understand what led up to this conflict without knowing at least a little bit about those conflicts. Our job in articles like this is not simply to list preceding conflicts and give the reader links to their articles - it should work as a standalone article giving the reader enough background knowledge to understand the subject without trawling through half a dozen other articles. You are welcome to your view that it is too long, but that was not the consensus when it was promoted. Girth Summit _(blether) 07:54, 1 August 2023 (UTC)