It has long been believed that the parasites of society are the economic bottom dwellers such as the “welfare” recipients that everyone looks down upon. But in olden days those on the top of society were the worst offenders of this behavior.

            In the times of Queen Elizabeth the first and before they were very conscious of how much it cost to run the lives and residences of the royal family. So to save money they devised a practice called “Walkabout” which was that especially during the warm months, the entire worldly belongings of the queen or king would be packed up and placed in wagons. This included everything from jewels and artworks to their thrones, clothing, and even the highly valued hunting falcons and their handlers. This necessarily created a caravan of horses and carts and what they would do was travel about the countryside and descend unannounced upon the various dukes and barons and impose themselves on their residences until they go tired of staying there and moved on to the next hapless and unwilling host. Notice that I didn’t include food on the list of things they carried with them. The reason is that they relied upon the hosts to provide them with all the food and amenities they needed. So in full effect the king and queen would literally mooch off their hosts and stay until they had bled them dry only to move on to the next “victim”. Anyone who has found themselves descended upon by unannounced relatives who refuse to leave can appreciate this predicament, but only if you magnify it by a factor of several hundreds.

            Naturally, the slightest hint of displeasure or inhospitality would very likely cost them their titles and property if not their heads so they were very careful to hold a civil tongue and endure the indignity. But I can just imagine that a signal system may have developed to some degree which would warn them of the advancing parasites so that they could conveniently be away at the time of arrival. I have no proof of this but this is what people would do as a natural result of being coerced into this situation.

            Today the current Queen Elizabeth is the richest woman in the world (being worth many billions) and her entire family exists tax free and largely at taxpayer expense. So they still are very much parasites on the British public. Of course, this tradition and institution is a great draw for tourism but I can’t help but wonder if the benefits outweigh or even break even with the cost of the burdens.