After Angelica Fanshawe's country noble mother chooses the Catholic faith over the Anglican law of England, her daughter becomes a royal ward of King Charles I, who allows her love marriage to childhood friend and cousin Harry Fanshawe. But social resistance to the king's absolutism, till then maintained by whip in an iron hand, culminates in a parliamentary rebellion, which spills to utter civil war. It means their utter downfall, Harry being executed because his royalist troops capitulated to military genius Oliver Cromwell's while their estate hosts the royal court on permanent flight.