ABSTRACT
Testimony was most commonly sought from gentlemen royalists, of course, but by 1715 or thereabouts, the last of Charles I's field officers was dead, and thereafter, antiquaries had to rely on the memories of the common soldiers alone. The petitions, too, frequently incorporated words and phrases taken from the act, making it clear that such documents were by no means uncomplicated reproductions of the veterans' own memories, but rather artful pastiches, mixing genuine recollections of the 1640s with the approved terminology of the 1660s. The prominence which episodes of capture and imprisonment often assumed in veterans' memories is well illustrated by the testimony of Welsh Thomas. For thousands of other royalist soldiers, memories of homecoming must have been inextricably tied up with memories of desertion, a subject on which the petitions are naturally silent. Memoirs written by senior royalists are similarly uncommon, while retrospective accounts of the Civil War composed by junior royalist officers and soldiers are very rare indeed.
