This paper deals with the ways in which memories of warfare, reformation, rebellion and civil war played out in England between the early sixteenth century and the early eighteenth century. It focusses in particular upon popular memory, deploying fresh archival material in order to reconstruct memories of religious, political and military conflict. The paper emphasises the significance of memories of conflict for the ways in which political identities confessional disputes were fought out within England. This was due, it is argued, to the continuing divisions of the 1640s - memories of which shaped political conflicts into the early Georgian period. The paper also engages with memories of religious and political conflict in the sixteenth century, arguing that those memories helped to shape contemporary understandings of the period as a distinct phase in English history.