ABSTRACT
In his book Plagues and Peoples the Chicago historian WilliamMcNeill postulates that throughout its history humanity has been beset by two sorts of parasites. First there are micro-parasites: the various bacteria and viruses that dwell in the human body, feed off it, and sometimes kill it. Then there are macro-parasites: robbers, pirates, princes, aristocracies and, in the modern era, the nation-state in its multifarious manifestations.1 The macro-parasitism of the state is at its most intense during times of war, civil war and revolution. To examine the extent of this macro-parasitism in Britain and Ireland during the upheavals of the mid-seventeenth century is, at least indirectly, to raise the question: ‘Was the English Revolution worth it?’ I shall attempt to answer the question under four headings: deaths and wounds, property damage, taxation and property confiscations, and free quarter and plunder.
