During this same time, Cowley occupied himself in writing a history of the Civil War (which did not get published in full until 1973). In the preface to his 1656 "Poems", Cowley mentioned that he had completed three books of an epic poem on the Civil War, but had left it unfinished after the First Battle of Newbury when the Royalist cause began to lose significant ground. In the preface Cowley indicated that he had destroyed all copies of the poem, but this was not precisely the truth. In 1697, twelve years after Cowley's death, a shortened version of the first book of the poem, called "A Poem on the Late Civil War" was published. It was assumed that the rest of the poem had indeed been destroyed or lost until the mid-20th century when scholar Allan Pritchard discovered the first of two extant manuscript copies of the whole poem among the Cowper family papers. Thus, the three completed books of Cowley's great (albeit unfinished) English epic, "The Civill Warre" (otherwise spelled "The Civil War"), was finally published in full for the first time in 1973.