17. The Americans Who Fought England’s King a Century Before the Revolutionary War
King George III was the American Revolution’s biggest baddie, and the boogieman upon whom the Patriots pinned most of the blame for the conflict. Indeed, when one examines the Declaration of Independence and gets past the first few uplifting “We hold these truths to be self-evident” sentences, the rest of the document is one long screed, decrying his tyranny and infamies.
However, George III was not the first king against whom American patriots took up arms. That distinction belongs to king Charles I. Over a century before America’s War of Independence, American colonists, led by Colonel Thomas Rainsborough, took up arms against King Charles during the English Civil War (1642 – 1651).