In October 1642 Parliament made a commitment to financially support soldiers who had been wounded in their service as well as the widows of those who had been killed. The administration of military welfare was the responsibility of the Justices of the Peace at each county’s Quarter Sessions and this chapter will examine the process in Kent. This county did not experience large scale military action until 1648 and yet it was profoundly affected by the events of the mid-seventeenth century and witnessed loss and division within its own borders throughout the 1640s. This chapter will present evidence taken from Quarter Sessions records in order to discuss who received pensions in Kent and what impact local and national politics had on the administration of that relief.
Historians of the British Civil Wars are increasingly taking notice of these bloody conflicts as a critical event in the welfare history of Europe. This volume will examine the human costs of the conflict and the ways in which they left lasting physical and mental scars after the cessation of armed hostilities. Its essays examine the effectiveness of medical care and the capacity of the British peoples to endure these traumatic events. During these wars, the Long Parliament’s concern for the ‘commonweal’ led to centralised care for those who had suffered ‘in the State’s service’, including improved medical treatment, permanent military hospitals, and a national pension scheme, that for the first time included widows and orphans. This signified a novel acceptance of the State’s duty of care to its servicemen and their families. These essays explore these developments from a variety of new angles, drawing upon the insights shared at the inaugural conference of the National Civil War Centre in August 2015. This book reaches out to new audiences for military history, broadening its remit and extending its methodological reach.