This chapter examines the economic effects of war. Heavy taxation and disrupted export trade threatened recession each time war broke out. Coastal traders and fishing boats were vulnerable to raiders, as was agriculture on the Scottish borders and in the English Pale in Ireland. Yet there was another side to the story. Cloth was bought up to clothe soldiers and food to feed them, while arms traders, iron smelters, horse dealers, fortification builders, and English privateers, who attacked foreign shipping in the Channel and Atlantic, all did well. So did the borderers who raided the Scots for their livestock and those who made different varieties of corruption pay.
