The execution of Charles I in 1649 inspired James Graham, the Earl of Montrose, to famously declaim that “I'll sing thy obsequies with trumpet sounds / And write thy epitaph with blood and wounds.” With these words, Montrose joined numerous other elegiac royalist poets, with the difference being that his death, one year later, brought those sentiments to dramatic life, as he would offer himself up as a martyr to the royalist cause. Yet the royalism for which Montrose professed to give his life was a more complex and ambiguous entity than the stark reality of martyrdom would imply; as Barry Robertson makes clear in Royalists at War in Scotland and Ireland, 1638–1650, royalism—or loyalism, or monarchism—was both difficult to define and shot through with a variety of motivations, agendas, and ever-changing complexities. Nowhere was this clearer than in Ireland and Scotland, where royalism treaded a different path than it did in England, conditioned as it was by the dissimilar political and religious circumstances of those conjoined yet very separate kingdoms.

Royalists at War, perhaps surprisingly, is the first monograph to specifically treat the question of what it meant to adhere to the king in Scotland and Ireland during a time of war, especially given the emphasis in recent decades on the three-kingdoms approach to the 1640s, and important work on (largely English) royalism by historians and literary scholars. Robertson's is therefore a much needed contribution to the field, especially as it deepens understanding of a highly complicated subject by approaching it with clarity and insight. Building on the work of Jason McElligott, Barbara Donagan, David Scott, and others, Robertson demonstrates that kingly allegiance never constituted a “fixed or unchanging” movement (7); rather, it existed on a spectrum, with members making up what he calls (rather jarringly, at least to a US audience) a “rainbow coalition” (7). Scotland's royalists were represented most prominently by the Gordons of Huntly and the Duke of Hamilton, whereas the king's greatest supporter in Ireland was the Duke of Ormond; each of these figures was drawn to the cause by a combination of expediency and ideology, and they adhered relatively consistently to the cause over the course of their careers. Below them, however, resided a variable group of sometimes-wayward individuals whose motivations ranged across time, accounting for the chronological approach to Robertson's narrative.

In Scotland, royalism quickly proved to be problematic when it became connected more aggressively to the question of episcopacy, in 1638–39; while Covenanters largely continued to profess loyalty to the king, their allegiance was “contingent on his removal of religious practices deemed to be ‘superstitious’ and ‘Papistical’” (27). Those who maintained a stance of unobstructed royalism did so based on their existing personal relationships with Charles, their ties to his court, their economic self-interest, their religious proclivities, and or their prevailing sense of honor (which could have been explored at greater length, given recent scholarship on the subject). But “it was one thing to profess allegiance to the king and quite another to take up arms on his behalf” (40), particularly given the Covenanters' greater military and organizational capabilities, and the strained resources of the royalists. Attempts by men such as Hamilton to achieve the king's goals by peace or compromise also resulted in a policy that at times “dithered” (76), and worked against others who advocated for the military option.

Personal animus also played a role, with past grudges driving those who sought to fight Archibald Campbell, the Earl of Argyll and Convenanter leader; such was the case with the Marquis of Antrim in Ireland, who “saw an opportunity to combine his loyalty to the king with his desire to recover hereditary Clan Donald territory” in the west of Scotland (79). Robertson effectively conveys the fortunes of royalism in the period of Confederate Ireland, when disparate groups fought one another and alliances shifted with high frequency. While certainly self-interested, Ormond—who receives sympathetic treatment here—did the best that he could, faced with the “dizzying amount of factors and factions he had to take into consideration in his attempt to represent the king's interests in Ireland” (104). In the end, however, and throughout the decade, “the Irish-based battle of Protestant against Catholic took precedence over the wider causes of royalism and parliamentarianism” (173). While efforts (including the Oath of Engagement) continued to be made in Scotland on behalf of the king, by the time Charles II was enthroned in 1651 and a Covenanter-royalist force was sent to meet Cromwell and the New Model Army, the result was “not a royalist war effort but a national monarchist war effort on behalf of a king” (188). Indeed, the new king was no longer himself a royalist in the traditional sense, as he had “turned his back on the efforts of all those who had fought and died for him and his father up until that time” (186).

Royalists at War is a traditional historical monograph, and to his credit Robertson is careful in navigating its source material, much of which is limited. The choice to tell the royalist story through an unfolding narrative is effective, even if deeper analysis is sometimes sacrificed. By the same token, the book would have benefited from an inclusion of literary evidence that would have penetrated the mental world of these royalists in greater depth. Montrose, for example, is indeed an exceptional and “picked over” figure (12); yet his own writings as well as tributes to him reveal a more affective connection to the king (Charles I and II) and a royalist afterlife that extended well beyond 1650. Despite these caveats, Royalists at War is a significant work of scholarship, delving into the many and varied motivations that resided behind and alongside such claims as those made by the second marquis of Huntly, who asserted that “You may take my head from my shoulders, but not my heart from my soveraigne” (33).