Sir Walter Scott published his 17th-century-setting romance Woodstock, or the Cavalier, a Tale of the Year 1651 using his traditional approach to historical fiction. He identified an era that caught his interest for political and/or social movements, creating a heroic figure to best represent that age.

Woodstock helped fill a gap left by his previous fiction of the years of conflict between Royalists and Parliamentarians, or Roundheads, loyal to Cromwell. It features an aging Scottish Cavalier named Sir Henry Lee, an elderly man “bent more by sorrow and infirmity than by the weight of years,” who works as a ranger at the royal lodge of Woodstock in Scotland. Romance enters the tale in the form of Lee’s daughter Alice, “a slight and sylphlike form,” who loves Colonel Markham Everard, a cousin whom her father dislikes due to his allegiance to Cromwell. Everard had loved Alice at first as a younger sister but develops a romantic interest in her.

Cromwell allows Everard to intervene on the Lees’ behalf when Parliamentary agents attempt to take Woodstock. To receive Cromwell’s support, Everard sends another old Cavalier friend, Wildrake, with a message. Wildrake would like to take Cromwell into “a field of battle, where he could have had the pleasure to exchange pistol-shots with him.” Cromwell is described as a “remarkable man” who “had acquired that influence over the minds of his enemies which constant success is so apt to inspire—they dreaded while they hated him.”

Cromwell’s action on the Lees’ behalf does not reflect any affection for Everard. Rather, he understands the Lees’ commitment to the crown and hopes to trap the dethroned Prince Charles at Woodstock. When Charles does arrive in disguise as a page to Alice’s brother Colonel Albert Lee, he becomes enamored of Alice, raising Everard’s ire. The prince confesses his true identity, stating “Master Everard must be pleased in finding only a fugitive prince in the person in whom he thought he had discovered a successful rival,” and Everard swears to remain loyal to him.

Shortly thereafter, Cromwell’s forces arrive and order Everard arrested, at which point Albert plays the part of Charles, allowing the prince to sneak away covertly from Woodstock. In Cromwell’s anger, he orders execution of the Lees but later relents. The prince has left behind a message for the Lees, explaining Everard’s innocence in the situation, and Sir Henry accepts the young man as a future son-in-law. In the final scene, Lee dies after having taken the hand of King Charles, who greatly pleased onlookers when “with his own hand” he waved away “the feeble attempts of the old man to rise and to do him homage.”

The year before publishing Woodstock, Scott had lost £130,000 in a disastrous investment with the Ballantine publishing firm. The novel would represent the first fiction he published, although begun years earlier, in an attempt to repay the debt, as his already phenomenal output of writing increased. In addition to shouldering the burden of the debt, Scott lost his wife and discovered the grandson upon whom he doted had a terminal illness. His style suffered somewhat, prompting his editor, Andrew Lang, to write in an introduction to the novel, “Henceforth we see the Magician turned journeyman.”