On 23rd October 1642 the battle of Edgehill was fought between the royalists and the parliamentarians with a huge loss of life on both sides. But many more people died in the months and years that followed as the war, and the other conflicts in the ‘Wars of the Three Kingdoms’, took a terrible toll on the country. Around 4% of the total population dying from war-related causes (compared to about 2.2% in World War I). Even after these wars were over, the people of this country suffered many years of hardship.