2 - Restoration War Stories

Summary

The first major pitched battle of the English civil war took place on 23 October 1642 at Edgehill, near Kineton in Warwickshire. Long afterwards, two ordinary soldiers, Robert Perry of Wiltshire and John Wright of Cheshire, remembered having fought at that memorable clash of Roundheads and Cavaliers. Indeed, Wright claimed that a bullet fired at him by a parliamentarian that very day was lodged in one of his arms nearly two decades later. Both Perry and Wright's terse recollections of Edgehill were preserved on petitions to their county's Quarter Session court. By contrast, Sir Thomas Fairfax and Sir Hugh Cholmley, the first also a parliamentarian and the second likewise a royalist, composed memoirs of their civil-war military careers, including accounts of the great battle at Marston Moor near York. Sir Thomas's account was derived from first-hand experience, while Sir Hugh's was based in part on conversations he had with participants a few days afterwards.

This chapter offers an analysis of narratives of military service – war stories – written or composed by veterans of the English civil wars. The narratives examined here include a selection of descriptions of war service and war-induced injury, conveyed within petitions for relief from injured servicemen from both sides of the conflict, and of memoirs composed by veterans. Parliamentarian petitions are included partly for reasons of comparison, and because they essentially vanish with the restoration of the monarchy.