Petitioning Soldiers, the Power of the Patient, and the Provision of Military Welfare in 17th-Century England and Wales

Abstract During the English Civil Wars of 1642–51, pensions and other financial payments were made available to wounded soldiers on an unprecedented scale and, for the first time in English history, to soldiers’ family dependants. The effective implementation of this scheme was the result of a petitioning campaign by Parliament’s New Model Army, whilst petitions were also the vehicle by which wounded soldiers claimed these pensions. Using 952 petitions and supporting documents from claimants to military welfare, this chapter argues that investigating when and why petitions mattered reveals broader patterns surrounding the ways in which wounded soldiers negotiated and accessed welfare. Framing veterans as medical patients, this chapter will emphasise that Civil War military welfare is a prime example of an occasion when the initiative for improvement came from lay people, rather than from policy-makers or medical professionals. It will demonstrate that experiences of infirmity were not only a physical but also a cultural phenomenon, and that care was often linked to the social and political context in which the military pension scheme operated. Throughout, this chapter highlights the limitations as well as the power of petitions.