ABSTRACT
First there are micro-parasites: the various bacteria and viruses that dwell in the human body, feed off it, and sometimes kill it. Soldiers in Cheshire extorted 120,000 in free quarter by the end of the first civil war in 1646, almost half what the county raised in taxes. As we have noted, the absence of surviving financial records makes it impossible to arrive at an exact estimate of the monetary cost of the royalist war effort in England. For the first four years of fighting, up to the end of the first civil war, royalist expenditure, including free quarter, plunder and straight forward borrowing may have equalled half of parliament's 2.5 million year. For the next two years, until the end of the second civil war, it may have been in the neighbourhood of one-quarter of parliamentary expenditure. The people of Scotland were taxed as never before to pay for the wars in the three kingdoms.
