Between the two Bishops' Wars the Covenanters maintained one regiment of infantry and many of their officers who had drilled the local militias on half pay. The militas were now armed with firearms purchased in the Netherlands. The Tables were replaced with a committee of estates, with wide-ranging powers, and kept to same system of commissioners. One in four able bodied men were able to muster when mobilisation began for renewed confrontation in 1640. The army was paid for by more loans and a new national tax known as the "tenth" or "tenth penny". These systems would form the basis of the Covenanter armies that operated in Ireland, intervened in the First Civil War (1642–46) in England on the side of Parliament and subsequently, and less successfully, on the side of the king in the Second (1648–49) and Third Civil Wars (1649–51).