The W G Hoskins Lecture 2022

‘The Local politics of Civil-War Military Welfare’ presented by Professor Andrew Hopper.

The thirty-first Hoskins lecture

2 July 2022

The Hoskins Lecture itself was delivered by erstwhile Director of the Centre, Professor Andrew Hopper. Andy started by noting that Hoskins day this year coincided with the anniversary of Marston Moor and observed what a particularly brutal conflict that had been. This was possibly the largest battle on British soil, with some 50,000 involved (although some suggest that Towton might have that ‘honour’). It saw five armies converge on York, and the subsequent slaughter saw the virtual destruction of the Northern Royalist army.

This anniversary brings a hitherto neglected aspect of civil wars studies into sharp relief. Scholars have spent considerable time and effort debating the causes of the conflicts (with no definitive conclusions reached) and the tactics of the battles, but the human costs and consequences of the war have been largely ignored. The casualties as a percentage of population were higher in the English Civil Wars than in either World War, or in the American Civil War (although this partly reflects the fact that the population was small).

Whereas we might have relied on the Royalist writers to remember the battle at Marston Moor, we should not forget that there were several thousand individuals for whom forgetting was not an option. James Moore was one such individual. A member of the Royalist infantry, 55 years later, at nearly 80 years old, he was still suffering the effects of a bullet lodged in his neck. He presented a petition to the court, supported by the signatures of the chief inhabitants of his parish, and was awarded £2 per annum until further notice. There was evidence nearby of a group of eight old Royalist soldiers together petitioning for pensions between 1700 and 1709. The very last civil war claimant was William Leaver of Aylesbury, with his family petitioning for his funeral expenses in 1718.

The study of the care and welfare of civil war soldiers was trail-blazed by Eric Gruber von Arni and Geoffrey Hudson. The former concentrating on medical care, particularly as offered by military hospitals at the Savoy and at Ely House. Hudson researched the county pension scheme, but concentrated on certain counties. Before these studies, the civil wars tended to be the preserve of political historians while social historians concentrated on poor relief. The project ‘Conflict, Welfare and Memory during and after the English Civil Wars, 1642–1710’ has moved much further in this new direction. Funded by the AHRC, it started in 2017 and finishes in October this year. Its aim was to investigate how wounded soldiers, war widows and other bereaved family members petitioned for financial relief. It recorded and transcribed petitions from counties across England.

The Centre for English Local History played an important part in the project by the participation of many ex-students as well as Andy’s own involvement. The project has produced a website (www.civilwarpetitions.ac.uk) and a conference volume (‘Remembering the English Civil Wars’), and taken the project into schools by working with teachers to help them present the material in the classroom. The transcriptions of the petitions will become available in a 5-volume series, which will provide the material in perpetuity (as the website will not last forever). The website offers many options for searching the petitions, as well as the perhaps expected criteria of names and locations, you can also, for example, search on type and location of injury. The site also contains blogs on many aspects of the project.

Pensions and payments were initially available to soldiers who had fought on the parliamentary side and their dependents. After the Restoration, the tables turned and payments were available only to Royalists (and specifically soldiers who had always fought on the Royalist side – changing sides disqualified a claimant). Claims were made at Quarter Sessions, to urban magistrates at Borough Courts, directly to Generals and it was even possible to petition Westminster (although this was an expensive and lengthy process). The petitions themselves were often written on behalf of the claimant, who could be presumed to be less literate and less educated than the petition itself suggested. This is obvious where the petition sometimes slips from the first to the third person. The scribe is likely to have applied some ‘spin’ to the narrative in order to maximise the chances of success. Petitioners commonly adopted the strategy of being sufficiently deferential towards the magistrate who were hearing their claim. There is also some selectivity in what is included in the petition, and what is left out.

The petitioners were not necessarily military veterans themselves. Widows often made claims for their sufferings, and those of their children. There are also examples of civilians who suffered from the activities of the armies and sought some redress. There was an example of such a claim from Leicester, where houses were demolished to give defender a better line of fire where the town was sacked by the Royalist army just before the Battle of Naseby in 1645. The social elite were entitled to compensation too. Lady Brooke was a notable example of this: widowed in 1643 she received a grant of £5000 for her son’s education, the largest sum awarded.

There is a huge variety of information to be recovered from the petitions. Contested memories of the conflict often came to the fore, with many occurrences of face-to-face conflict where claimants sought to discredit those already receiving pensions in an effort to take their place. This made healing and settling more difficult, and shows up the everyday politics of the parish, as well as helping with the plotting of a wider map of of population, poverty and allegiance. It also gives a rare insight into the view of the more humble sort of people and the views of women. More petitions survive from Wales than from anywhere else, giving views of the Welsh experience of the Civil Wars.

At a wider political level, the pension scheme had its effect on the governance of the England and Wales. It increased the state’s capacity to intervene in the politics of the parish, and increased the politicization of all forms of parish relief. The petitions also give much more insight into the availability and efficacy of medical treatment, confirming recent studies that showed such help was not as hopeless as previously imagined.

Although the project is now nearing its end, there are plans for a follow-on project. Entitled ‘Enacting the Armed Forces Covenant: the English Civil Wars and Current Practice’, this time engaging the current recipients of military pensions.