The government borrowed £8 million from 1704 to 1708. More obligations followed as the Treasury negotiated large loans from the big joint-stock monopolies, the East India Company and the Bank of England. Then the Treasury turned back to the public at large with even greater hunger: £2.4 million offered in 1710, followed by an astonishing £7.1 million over the next two years. By 1713, as the books closed on the war, Britain’s long-term national debt, zero at the beginning of 1693, roughly £7 million by 1697, stood at over £40 million.
