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Edexcel A2 History, Option A: Revolution and Conflict in England, 2nd June 2014

I know the exam is tomorrow, I wanted to know if anyone else is doing this topic? I feel like my school is the only one who would pick the topic without an official textbook. :mad:

I'm doing option A2, about Charles I 1625- 1667. Struggling slightly :frown:

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You are not alone! I too am studying the Revolution, Republic and Restoration modules. To be honest, I don't think there is an official textbook for the course. My class has books on it, but they weren't designed specifically for these questions and end the course at 1660 rather than 1667, which did cause some problems.

Indeed, my teacher happened to be quite a bad one; all we did in class was sit around watching videos - everything I've learned about the civil war has been through reading the books on my own and revising over the past week.

Either way, from what I've seen, I would hazard a guess that bullet points 1 and 3 are the most likely topics to come up. Good luck!
Reply 2
Me too! Practically taught myself the whole thing. To be honest, we were taught it really badly in school because we had two teachers, so one did from 1625-149 and the other teacher did 1650-67 which really muddled everything up. What makes it worse is that it was so unnecessary to teach the protectorate, because side-taking for the 40 marker is SO much easier! Which do you think you'll do?

What do you mean by 2nd and 3rd bullet points? I'm not so familiar with the specification :colondollar:

I think question 3 will be about Personal Rule, maybe about the roles of Strafford and Laud because that hasn't come up yet.

I'm dreading this exam!!
I've had no teacher since January, although I'm doing the Tudor stuff so at least there is an official textbook which has been a bit more helpful :smile:
Original post by rali
Me too! Practically taught myself the whole thing. To be honest, we were taught it really badly in school because we had two teachers, so one did from 1625-149 and the other teacher did 1650-67 which really muddled everything up. What makes it worse is that it was so unnecessary to teach the protectorate, because side-taking for the 40 marker is SO much easier! Which do you think you'll do?

What do you mean by 2nd and 3rd bullet points? I'm not so familiar with the specification :colondollar:

I think question 3 will be about Personal Rule, maybe about the roles of Strafford and Laud because that hasn't come up yet.

I'm dreading this exam!!


Bullet Point 1: Personal Rule
Bullet Point 2: Drift to Civil War + Civil Wars
Bullet Point 3: Search for Settlement + Protectorate
Bullet Point 4: Failure of Protectorate and successive governments, Restoration

What is even more amazing is that I go to a private school and actually pay for this kind of shoddy teaching. Unbelievable. My class haven't even had a mock :s-smilie:

And yeah, since it is so much easier, I think you'd have to be pretty silly not to do the Side Taking question.

I think I'm more concerned about the 30 mark q than I am about the sources, after all as long as you make them the focus of the argument and cross reference them, supported by own knowledge, and perhaps whack in a little bit about marxist/whig/revisionist interpretations it's really quite straight forward.

On the 30 markers you have to look out for the nuances in the question a bit more; the examiner's reports are pretty horrible.

But it's funny that everyone here who's done this module has been taught it really badly :biggrin: At least we're on equal footing!
Reply 5
Has anyone planned/written the tudor ''religion determined the changing Anglo-Spanish relation in 1553-88?'' question that they dont mind sharing. Thank you :smile:
Reply 6
Here's to bringing down the grade boundaries :cheers:

Good luck!!
Original post by rali
Here's to bringing down the grade boundaries :cheers:

Good luck!!


Yup yup! See you on the other side. I'm probably not going to be able to sleep tonight over this...not my first exam this year...but first A Level :s-smilie:
Hey there, I've also got this exam for tomorrow and I am seriously terrified.

First of all, we covered the earlier parts of this module in great detail and I have spent the most time revising for that side of things. My knowledge pretty much covers The Personal Rule, all the way up to the Search for a Settlement and The Nominated Assembly/Barebones Parliament (1629 - 1653)

Sadly during the course winding down, we had to rush a lot of the Protectorate, and the Restoration (1654 - 1667) so I am completely lost when it comes to that. I was just wondering about what's more likely to come up, what should I focus on, and if it does come to be the stuff I've had less experience in looking at, are there are any good resources I can have a look at for it.

Thanks, and I hope you guys read my post, I'm completely new to this website. :colondollar:
Original post by LordOfTheWarthog
Hey there, I've also got this exam for tomorrow and I am seriously terrified.

First of all, we covered the earlier parts of this module in great detail and I have spent the most time revising for that side of things. My knowledge pretty much covers The Personal Rule, all the way up to the Search for a Settlement and The Nominated Assembly/Barebones Parliament (1629 - 1653)

Sadly during the course winding down, we had to rush a lot of the Protectorate, and the Restoration (1654 - 1667) so I am completely lost when it comes to that. I was just wondering about what's more likely to come up, what should I focus on, and if it does come to be the stuff I've had less experience in looking at, are there are any good resources I can have a look at for it.

Thanks, and I hope you guys read my post, I'm completely new to this website. :colondollar:


From all of the past papers I've done, they tend to ask a question from either BP1 or BP2, and the other on BP3 or BP4. I reckon this year it will be sections 1 and 3 which come up.

It should be fine to not know one module; one of my friends has decided to skip learning the protectorate point completely, and for good reason too, as it is really long and really boring.

Since you probably won't have the time or patience to learn an entire module over night, I would just instead try and learn essay plans and a few select key points which you can expand and adapt to any question.

As for finding info on this stuff, I just used the internet when I wasn't sure.
Original post by MakeContact
From all of the past papers I've done, they tend to ask a question from either BP1 or BP2, and the other on BP3 or BP4. I reckon this year it will be sections 1 and 3 which come up.

It should be fine to not know one module; one of my friends has decided to skip learning the protectorate point completely, and for good reason too, as it is really long and really boring.

Since you probably won't have the time or patience to learn an entire module over night, I would just instead try and learn essay plans and a few select key points which you can expand and adapt to any question.

As for finding info on this stuff, I just used the internet when I wasn't sure.


Thanks a bunch, that's really helpful actually because at least I can try focusing on something now.

Odds are if I hadn't got a response on here I would've had to try and learn all of The Restoration in a night, and thats not going to happen :frown:

Here's to hoping that we end up getting BP1 and BP3 because those'd be really good for me, anything but BP4 haha. When it comes to side-taking, that's probably my strongest suit because it's quite easy and there's a lot of background reading on that.

Anyway thanks a lot for answering my question :smile:
Reply 11
Original post by BrunoRussell
I've had no teacher since January, although I'm doing the Tudor stuff so at least there is an official textbook which has been a bit more helpful :smile:


I wish we could have done the Tudors. Learning from books which are not specific to the course is so frustrating!
Good luck for the exam!
Original post by LordOfTheWarthog
Thanks a bunch, that's really helpful actually because at least I can try focusing on something now.

Odds are if I hadn't got a response on here I would've had to try and learn all of The Restoration in a night, and thats not going to happen :frown:

Here's to hoping that we end up getting BP1 and BP3 because those'd be really good for me, anything but BP4 haha. When it comes to side-taking, that's probably my strongest suit because it's quite easy and there's a lot of background reading on that.

Anyway thanks a lot for answering my question :smile:


Ive only learnt -lead up to personal rule -personal rule -Civil war -search for a settlement , ur guaranteed to get a question on one of those topics so whats the point learning the rest!
Original post by LordOfTheWarthog


Here's to hoping that we end up getting BP1 and BP3 because those'd be really good for me, anything but BP4 haha. When it comes to side-taking, that's probably my strongest suit because it's quite easy and there's a lot of background reading on that.

Anyway thanks a lot for answering my question :smile:


No problem. Just don't take my word as gospel, it'll be a good idea to have some background knowledge on the Restoration anyway. Happy revising!
I couldn't have asked for better questions! Whoop whoop!
Original post by MakeContact
I couldn't have asked for better questions! Whoop whoop!


what did you write about in part b ?
Original post by peter qwert
what did you write about in part b ?


Part B was the sources right?

I did it on Side Taking. Whipped out some facts and figures about neutralism and then focused on how the sources also presented other issues.

So glad I was using a computer...wouldn't have been able to write that much :s-smilie:
Original post by MakeContact
Part B was the sources right?

I did it on Side Taking. Whipped out some facts and figures about neutralism and then focused on how the sources also presented other issues.

So glad I was using a computer...wouldn't have been able to write that much :s-smilie:


which other factors did you talk about? religion,respect and reverence,class,localism.
Original post by peter qwert
which other factors did you talk about? religion,respect and reverence,class,localism.


All of those things. I also talked a bit about personal issues, such as Henry Marten changing sides because the King humiliated him by calling him a "whoremaster", or the personal issues of the Aristocracy such as Newcastle and Worcester investing heavily into the Royalist side to protect their own socio-economic interests.

A bit of own knowledge always helps, but I think it went ok for me :smile:
Original post by MakeContact
All of those things. I also talked a bit about personal issues, such as Henry Marten changing sides because the King humiliated him by calling him a "whoremaster", or the personal issues of the Aristocracy such as Newcastle and Worcester investing heavily into the Royalist side to protect their own socio-economic interests.

A bit of own knowledge always helps, but I think it went ok for me :smile:

sounds great, what about part a ?

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