The Politics of Military Welfare in Yorkshire and the Memory of the Civil Wars, 1642–1709

Abstract This article addresses three key themes of conflict, welfare and memory through a detailed examination of the operation of the county welfare payments allowed to war widows, maimed soldiers and their dependants in Yorkshire during and after the British Civil Wars. It draws upon petitions, certificates and order books from county quarter sessions courts and material collected centrally by organs of the state to illuminate patterns of allegiance and mobilisation, as well as the human costs of civil war. The article proposes that many of Yorkshire’s wounded soldiers returned to active service because of unprecedented efforts to provide them with medical care and welfare, all of which came at considerable financial cost to the county’s inhabitants. Pensions to parliamentarian claimants tended to be more generous than those to royalists. This was especially the case with war widows. However, the pensions and gratuities received by parliamentarian soldiers were only a tiny fraction of what the state owed to them in arrears of pay. Royalist soldiers after 1660 were relieved in far greater numbers, although pensions were seldom awarded to widows of the royalist rank and file. The article concludes that the politics behind this relief effort prolonged contested memories of the war, making the healing and settling of post-conflict society more difficult. Finally, one local network of royalist veterans, sharing their memories of the Civil Wars into the eighteenth century, reminds us that the consequences of wars, especially civil wars, persist for generations after the treaties or regime changes that are supposed to end them.