Heritage and culture

An introduction to the Warwickshire 'Loss Accounts'

The 'Loss Accounts' are an evaluation of the financial losses sustained by local inhabitants in their constablery (usually the same as a parish) through Parliamentary activity before and during the First Civil War. Following the defeat of Charles I and his royalist supporters, the victorious regime ordered their compilation, to cover the period from the start of the 'Long Parliament' in late 1640 until the end of 1646. They were to include all losses of money, plate, horses, arms, household goods, rents, provisions, free quarter and payments of taxes of all sorts, with the names of the Parliamentary officers or soldiers who had received, taken or seized them. Losses from Royalist activity should not have been included but quite often were.

The historic county of Warwickshire has probably the greatest number of 'Loss Accounts' (194) nationally - some counties have none at all. They are found at The National Archives (TNA, in the class SP 28) with one at Warwickshire County Record Office (WCRO) and fragments at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in the Shakespeare Centre, Stratford-upon-Avon (SBT Collection), together with an almost identical copy of the Stratford 'Account' in the British Library. Others may still remain to be discovered in other archives or in private hands. Archival references are included at the head of each file. Most of the TNA accounts are included in Gale State Papers Online, 1509-1714, and individual references can be provided by WCRO on request.

The 'Accounts' were to be 'fayrely wrytten in large sheetes of paper' and some are beautifully presented in neatly stitched books with elaborately-designed front covers. Others (possibly rough copies) are poorly written often with many deletions. Since the 'Loss Accounts' detail the military circumstances in which the losses occurred, sometimes with precise dates, in a county which saw continuous military conflict for five years, and give the names of hundreds of individual officers and soldiers, they are an invaluable resource for military historians. Moreover, the names of several thousand individuals who sustained the losses are listed, often the 'ordinary' people who would not otherwise be known. They occur in most 'Accounts', sometimes with added personal details, and are therefore a unique source for local and family historians. The stories told in these accounts, often by individuals in their own words, reveal the burden of military taxation, the disruption of daily lives, the loss of personal items and the struggle for survival, with hints of the fear and violence they experienced. They are thus a major resource for social, economic and political historians alike.

The 'Loss Accounts' remind us that wars, especially civil wars, like those being fought around the world today, not only affect the people who fight. Their impact upon ordinary people across a wide area is immense, and their consequences last for generations.

In a project created and led by Dr Maureen Harris between June 2018 and June 2020 to explore the human cost of the First Civil War through the 'Loss Accounts', 26 volunteers from across the county, inexperienced in seventeenth-century palaeography and the history of the Civil Wars, were trained to read, transcribe and tabulate the 'Accounts' and to research the people and events they discovered within them. Supported by the 'Friends of the Warwickshire County Record Office' and the Dugdale Society, the project received a grant of £13,800 in March 2018 from the Heritage Lottery Fund (now the National Lottery Heritage Fund) made possible by money raised by National Lottery players.

Thanks are due to the 26 enthusiastic volunteers who attended the many workshops on the background to the Civil Wars and transcribed and tabulated at least one 'Account', and often many more: Jill Bailey-Tompkins, Rhondda Barney, David Beaumont, Linda Doyle, Mary Eaton, Pat Frith, Judy Frodsham, Jenny Handscombe, Maureen Hipkiss, Lynn Hockton, Kate Loveridge, Lindsay MacDonald, Brenda Murray, Catherine Petrie, Gillian Phillips, Lesley Plant, Martin Popplewell, Wendy Shaddick, Simon Smithson, Neil Stone, Elaine Stuchfield, Ann and Colin Such, Barbara Sweet, Paul Waddoups and Carol Wileman. Thanks also to the five experienced volunteer project 'assistants' (Sharon Forman, Marianne Horne, Anne Langley, Mairi Macdonald and Steven Wallsgrove) and the project mentor, Dr Nat Alcock. The project was also supported by Robert Eyre and staff of Warwickshire County Record Office and Ruth Selman of The National Archives. They all contributed greatly to the success of the project.