In 1642, the long-simmering dispute between King and Parliament boiled over. As many in the House of Commons turned against him, and the population of the capital went into the streets to support Parliament, Charles I fled London. A few months later, he raised an army in the North of the country and declared war on his enemies. The capital sided with Parliament. Within the government of London, Puritans began to exert their influence, and changes soon became visible.

By 1644, when our game starts, play-going and other entertainments in Saint Saviours parish, on the south side of the Thames, are under attack. The theater district, a brilliant and bawdy spectacle of Elizabethan England, is closed by order of Parliament. The Globe Theater of Shakespeare's time is torn down and salvaged for building materials.

Charles I, fighting the Parliamentarians in the First English Civil War, found his resources exhausted. Having little opportunity to replenish them, in May 1646, he sought shelter with a Scottish army at Southwell in Nottinghamshire.

This marked the end of the First English Civil War.