Project blog
Civil War Petitions is a fully-searchable digital edition of over 4,000 petitions for relief from maimed soldiers and war widows. It includes the accompanying certificates from military commanders, medical practitioners and local communities in support of their cases. There are additional details of tens of thousands of names of those who received military welfare for injuries and bereavement sustained during the Civil Wars in all English and Welsh counties.
John Balshaw’s Jigge: Singing, Star-Crossed Lovers and Signing a Civil War Petition
9 June 2023
Some years ago, Jenni Hyde found herself sitting in the British Library reading room looking at a seventeenth-century jigge. Probably best thought of as an early modern musical, jigges...
‘Meamed and Lamed’: Approaching Civil War Petitions through the Lens of Disability History
11 November 2022
We have published several blogs on what the documents on Civil War Petitions can reveal about the medical history of the Civil Wars but so far we have said little about what the petitions...
28 October 2022
As part of the ‘Battle-Scarred’ Summer School held at Merton College in July 2022, the Civil War Petitions team issued a challenge to the students on the course to write a blog...
Civilian Suffering in the Civil War: the case of Tysoe in Warwickshire
7 October 2022
In a previous blog, David Appleby described how the Civil War Petitions team often agonized over which claimants to military welfare to exclude from the project, many of those not making...