I'm sure it must lay carefully hidden within the UK National Archives catalogue in some form, perhaps in an Adm36 administrative document, or a WO25 Succession list, but I have to say that the website is the most frustrating, confusing, ambiguous, and nearly as circular leading website as a Social welfare department. The search engine seems to have been carefully designed to give you the most obscure and irrelevant results with references to the most random person, with their will, and their pending legal actions etc etc..... when all you want to find is a general list covering the right period of years, with the right Company of Marines. One minute you're in the free digital downloads section, and you think you may be getting close....a click of the mouse and you're unknowingly bounced back into the general section against the brick wall where you need to pay a non refundable £8.40 to see if that list (which was a wild guess anyway) happens to be the right one, and might happen to contain a one line reference to the person you're looking for. Not that they will give you that one line of course. After waiting for a month for them to respond, you'd then have to pay a researching fee to have someone copy that one line for you!
How does one go about finding some basic information (such as the age) of a British Marine Pvt of the 21st Plymouth Company who likely served at the siege of Boston in the American war of Independance 1775? I know I can download all sorts of data from the National Archives on how many napkins the commander, Major Pitcairn ordered prior to battle but that's not going to help me
