Negotiating for blood money: war widows and the courts in seventeenth-century England

English war widows received state pensions in the mid-seventeenth century. This was not to happen again for over 200 years.2 Stipends were granted to thousands of war widows by the central government between the mid-1640s and 1660, and by county justices in sessions for approximately 30 years from the late 1640s. Historians have ignored this aspect of the history of English women, men and the state. Thus a recent mention of the existence of petitions to quarter sessions during the mid-1600s that “tell harrowing stories of men crippled” in military conflict ignores the numerous petitions from war widows that tell a different story.3 This chapter endeavours to remedy such oversights by focusing on the tactics used by war widows to secure county pensions.