¹ Wrigley, E. A. and Schofield, R. S., The population history of England 1541–1871: a reconstruction (London, 1981), 209–11.Google Scholar

² Ibid., 211.

³ Stone, for example writes ‘the conclusion is inescapable that there was a major demographic crisis among the English landed elite in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century’. Stone, L., An open elite? England 1540–1880 (Oxford, 1984–1986), 100.Google Scholar See also Flinn, M., The European demographic system 1500–1820 (Brighton, 1981)Google Scholar; Hollingsworth, T., ‘A demographic study of the British ducal families’, Population Studies 11 (1957), 4–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hollingsworth, T., ‘The demography of the British peerage’, Population Studies 18 (1964 supplement)Google Scholar; Le Roy Ladurie, E., The peasants of Languedoc (Illinois, 1974, translated by J. Day)Google Scholar; de Vries, J., Economy of Europe in an age of crisis (Cambridge, 1976)Google Scholar; de Vries, J., ‘The population and economy of the preindustrial Netherlands’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 15 (1985), 661–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴ Wrigley, E. A., ‘Mortality in pre-industrial England: the example of Colyton, Devon, over three centuries’, Daedalus (1968), 575.Google ScholarPubMed

⁵ Dobson, M., ‘Population, disease and mortality in Southeast England, 1600–1800’ (unpublished D.Phil thesis, University of Oxford, 1982).Google Scholar

⁶ See Ibid. for details of these and other sources used.

⁷ At the time of data collection, Anglican registers from 637 parishes were available in the County Record Offices in East Sussex, Essex and Kent and in the Genealogical Society in London. A few registers, deposited in the local parish chests, were also consulted. Parish register material from West Sussex was not included in this general survey. Nonconformist registers for each of the counties were also used and Nonconformist births/baptisms and burials/deaths were added to the Anglican events. For a discussion of the methods of apportioning Nonconformist events to the appropriate parishes see Dobson, ‘Population, disease and mortality’.

⁸ Ibid.

⁹ The details are again discussed in Dobson, ‘Population, disease and mortality’, especially Appendices 3 and 4. All estimates of parish populations and vital events are considered as approximate and, in analysing and presenting the results, I have focused on parochial levels, rates and changing patterns only within broad bands (e.g. crude death rates between 30 and 50 per 1,000, population increases/decreases over time of between 0 and 50 per cent). It was felt that by using these broad bands the main patterns and trends stand out clearly without placing undue reliance on the precision of the data.

¹⁰ Hie, N. et al. eds., S.P.S.S. - The statistical package for the social sciences (New York, 1975)Google Scholar was especially useful for the comparative analysis of parishes according to their various codes. See Dobson, , ‘Population, disease and mortality’.Google Scholar

¹¹ Wrigley, and Schofield, , Population history of England.Google Scholar It is possible that the population of seventeenth-century England was still below its medieval mark. See Palliser, D., ‘Tawney's century: brave new world or Malthusian trap?’, Economic History Review, second series, 35 (1982), 342.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹² Bridenbaugh, C., Vexed and troubled Englishmen 1590–1642 (Oxford, 1968), 397.Google Scholar

¹³ Dobson, , ‘Population, disease and mortality’, 56.Google Scholar Some of my original estimates have been modified in the light of Whiteman's suggestions that an appropriate multiplier for the Compton Census of 1676 is 1.5 and for the Hearth Taxes of the 1660s and 1670s is 4.25. Whiteman, A., The Compton Census of 1676: a critical edition (Oxford, British Academy Records of Social and Economic History New Series 10, 1986).Google Scholar

¹⁴ The precise chronology of the population downswing will warrant further attention.

¹⁵ Listings at the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure. See also Laslett, P., Family life and illicit love in earlier generations (Cambridge, 1977), 56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clark, P., English provincial society from the reformation to the revolution: politics and society in Kent 1500–1640 (London, 1977), 239.Google Scholar

¹⁶ The 112 parishes were selected on the basis of having complete annual registration between 1601 and 1800. Whilst it is impossible to detect the level of under-registration for any year and any parish, it is possible to ‘inflate’ the aggregate baptism and burial figures based on various assumptions of changing registration practices. Several inflated series have been produced but, overall, the decline in baptisms in this period seems too steep and too universal to be accounted for by defective registration alone.

¹⁷ The subprograms of S.P.S.S., Crosstabs and Breakdown, were particularly useful for the analysis of demographic change according to the type of parish.

¹⁸ See Abrams, P. and Wrigley, E. eds., Towns in societies: essays in economic history and historical sociology (Cambridge, 1978)Google Scholar; Clark, P., The transformation of English provincial towns (London, 1984)Google Scholar; Clark, P., Country towns in preindustrial England (Leicester, 1981)Google Scholar; Patten, J., English towns 1500–1700 (Folkestone, 1978)Google Scholar; de Vries, J., European urbanisation 1500–1800 (London, 1984)Google Scholar; Whiteman, , The Compton Census.Google Scholar Colchester, for example, illustrates the mixed fortunes of the cities. Its population stood at 10,305 in 1662. After the plague of 1665–1666, it had fallen to 4,114. Recovery, following in-migration, was rapid and by 1675 the population was nearing its earlier figure of 10,000. Doolittle, I., ‘The effects of the plague on a provincial town in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, Medical History 19 (1975), 333–41.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

¹⁹ Beier, A. and Finlay, R., The making of the Metropolis: London 1500–1700 (London, 1986), 2.Google Scholar See also Wrigley, E., ‘A simple model of London's importance in changing English society and economy 1650–1750’, Past and Present 37 (1967), 44–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁰ The importance of the London food market on the growth of its environs is discussed in Dyer, A., ‘The market towns of Southeast England 1500–1700’, Southern History 1 (1979), 123–34.Google Scholar

²¹ Coleman, D., ‘Naval dockyards under the later Stuarts’, Economic History Review, second series, 6 (1953–1954), 134–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²² Coleman, D., ‘The economy of Kent under the later Stuarts’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1951), chapter 1.Google Scholar

²³ . Defoe, D., A tour through the whole island of Great Britain (originally published, 1724–1726; republished London, 1974), 48.Google Scholar

²⁴ Ibid., 48.

²⁵ Essex Review 17, 206.Google Scholar

²⁶ Essex Record Office T/Z 27.

²⁷ Quoted in Chalklin, C., ‘A Kentish wealden parish, Tonbridge 1550–1750’ (unpublished B.Litt thesis, University of Oxford, 1960), 21.Google Scholar

²⁸ A number of gravestones in the Boston area still record the wealden and north Essex origin of some of the first American colonists. Other evidence of long-distance migration was found in Kent Archives Office TR/240 and Common Journals xii, 449.Google Scholar See also Allen, D. Grayson, In English ways: the movement of societies and the transferal of English local law and custom to Massachusetts Bay in the seventeenth century (North Carolina, 1981)Google Scholar; Galenson, D., White servitude in colonial America (New York, 1981)Google Scholar; Souden, D., ‘“Rogues, whores and vagabonds”? Indentured servant emigrants to North America, and the case of mid-seventeenth century Bristol’, Social History 3 (1978), 23–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wareing, J., ‘Migration to London and transatlantic emigration of indentured servants 1683–1775’, Journal of Historical Geography 7 (1981), 356–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁹ Winthrop papers 1, 297. Quoted in Allen, , In English ways, 19.Google Scholar

³⁰ It is estimated that between 1630 and 1699 about 378,000 people left the country for the New World. See Gemery, H., ‘Emigration from the British Isles to the New World, 1630–1700: inferences from colonial populations’, Research in Economic History 5 (1980), 179–231.Google Scholar Wrigley and Schofield put the total net emigration figure at 544,000 for the same period. Wrigley, and Schofield, , Population history of England, 224.Google Scholar

³⁰ It is estimated that between 1630 and 1699 about 378,000 people left the country for the New World. See H. Gemery, ‘Emigration from the British Isles to the New World, 1630–1700: inferences from colonial populations’, Research in Economic History 5 (1980), 179–231. Wrigley and Schofield put the total net emigration figure at 544,000 for the same period. Wrigley and Schofield, Population history of England, 224.

³¹ This is based on the assumption that the crude birth rate was 30 per 1,000 and for every 1,000 Nonconformists in the area (calculated from contemporary enumerations and Bishops' Visitations) an additional 30 baptisms must be added to the baptism totals. It is unlikely that such a high proportion of Nonconformist births escaped registration in either the Anglican or Nonconformist registers, and the decline in baptisms was, undoubtedly, a very real phenomenon.

³² Dobson, , ‘Population, disease and mortality’.Google Scholar

³³ Morant, P., History of Colchester (London, 1748), 76.Google Scholar

³⁴ See Dobson, M., ‘“Marsh fever”: a geography of malaria in England’, Journal of Historical Geography 6 (1980), 357–89CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Dobson, M., ‘When malaria was an English disease’, Geographical Magazine 54 (1982), 94–100Google ScholarPubMed; and Dobson, , ‘Population, disease and mortality’.Google Scholar

³⁵ Hasted, E., History and topographical survey of the county of Kent (London 1797–1801), vol. 10, 249.Google Scholar

³⁶ Several Dutch communities were found along the coast in Essex and Kent as, for instance, Canvey Island in Essex. See Cracknell, B., Canvey Island: the history of a marshland community (occasional paper, University of Leicester, 1959)Google Scholar. Franklin has suggested that malaria may have been endemic in medieval England. Franklin, P., ‘Malaria in medieval Gloucestershire: an essay in epidemiology’, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucester Archaeological Society (1983), 111–22.Google ScholarPubMed

³⁷ Hasted, , ‘History of and topographical survey’, vol. 6, 35.Google Scholar

³⁸ The mortality evidence is discussed in Dobson, , ‘Population, disease and mortality’Google Scholar. Several measures of mortality have been used to examine changing mortality patterns over time and space. This paper refers to the measure of crude burial rates per 1,000 population which were calculated for between 500 and 600 parishes at certain periods of time overlapping with the most comprehensive population enumerations. Crude burial rates do not take into account the age structure of the population and, given the high population turnover between parishes at this time, these findings may need to be modified in the light of more detailed local studies. Preliminary (unpublished) estimates of infant mortality rates for a number of parishes (using a method of linking burials to baptisms) do, however, suggest that infant mortality was unusually high at this time and it would seem that at least some of the increase in mortality rates was related to a deterioration in health rather than solely a reflection of distorted age and sex structures.

³⁹ Patten, J., ‘Patterns of migration and movement of labour to three preindustrial East Anglia towns’, Journal of Historical Geography 2 (1976), 111–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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⁴¹ The literature on local migration patterns and mobility is quite substantial. Some of the main works have recently been brought together in Clark, and Souden, , Migration and societyGoogle Scholar. J. de Vries also notes that a considerable redistribution of rural population occurred at this time as agriculture was reorganized under the pressure of falling prices. de Vries, J., Economy of Europe, 81.Google Scholar

⁴² Outmigration is estimated at 8,000 per annum in the second half of the seventeenth century. Wrigley, and Schofield, , Population history of England, 227Google Scholar; and Wrigley, E., ‘The growth of population in eighteenth century England: a conumdrum resolved’, Past and Present 98 (1983), 126CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It is difficult to provide any precise figures for outmigration from south-east England.

⁴³ The period from 1641 to 1686 is described in Wrigley and Schofield's national survey as a ‘curious period… the most unusual of the whole three-century-long series’ with fertility (expressed as the gross reproduction rate) passing through a marked trough. Wrigley, and Schofield, , Population history of England, 229Google Scholar. Changing levels of celibacy may have been more influential in reducing the gross reproduction rate than changes in age of marriage or natural fertility. Levine, D., Reproducing families: the political economy of English population history (Cambridge, 1987)Google Scholar; Outhwaite, R., Marriage and society: studies in the social history of marriage (London, 1981)Google Scholar; Schofield, R., ‘English marriage patterns revisited’, Journal of Family History 10 (1985), 2–19CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Weir, D., ‘Rather never than late: celibacy and age at marriage in English cohort fertility 1541–1871’, Journal of Family History 9 (1984), 341–55CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Wilson, C., ‘Natural fertility in pre-industrial England 1600–1799’, Population Studies 38 (1984), 225–40Google Scholar; Wilson, C., ‘The proximate determinants of marital fertility in England 1600–1799’, in Bonfield, L., Smith, R. and Wrightson, K. eds., The world we have gained (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar; Wrigley, and Schofield, , Population history of EnglandGoogle Scholar; Wrigley, E. and Schofield, R., ‘English population history from family reconstitutions: summary results 1600–1799’, Population Studies 37 (1983), 157–84.Google ScholarPubMed

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⁴⁵ Emigration, local patterns of mobility, changing nuptiality, fertility and mortality levels could have each affected local age and sex structures, which in turn might have further reinforced or disturbed general demographic trends. Measuring the impact of these complex interrelationships at the regional level would be very difficult. R. Smith provides an excellent discussion of the interplay of these variables in the context of medieval demographic change. Smith, R., ‘Human resources’ in Astill, G. and Grant, A., eds., The countryside in medieval England (Oxford, 1988), 188–212Google Scholar. And in a fascinating forthcoming paper, R. Smith will be examining these issues for the period 1600–1750: Smith, R., ‘Exogenous and endogenous influences on the “preventive check” in England 1600–1750: some specification problems’, Economic History Review (forthcoming).Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Smith, ibid. Lee has also drawn attention to the importance of looking at the interplay of demographic, economic and environmental variables with those long-term trends and swings in population that fall somewhere between the short-run fluctuations of seasons and years and the broad secular changes spanning many centuries. Lee does, however, assume a minor role for net migration – an assumption which may, in fact, not be correct for this period. Lee, R., ‘Population homeostasis and English demographic history’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 15 (1985), 635–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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⁴⁸ Wrigley, and Schofield, , Population history of England, 453.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ A discussion of the sources, the findings and an annual chronology of disease and mortality can be found in Dobson, M., A chronology of epidemic disease and mortality in Southeast England, 1600–1800 (Historical Geography Research Group Series. 19, Cheltenham, 1987)Google Scholar and in Dobson, M., ‘Epidemic disease and mortality in Southeast England, 1600–1800’, in Smith, R. ed., Regional and spatial demographic patterns in the past (Oxford, forthcoming).Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Schofield, , ‘The impact of scarcity’Google Scholar; Dobson, , ‘Population, disease and mortality’.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Hatcher has described a similar situation for the fifteenth century when ‘the cumulative impact of lesser and local epidemics could be decisive’ in Hatcher, J., Plague, population and the English economy 1348–1530 (London, 1984), 57.Google Scholar In general, historical demographers have given more attention to the short-term or local mortality crises which may in the long run have had less effect on population numbers and structure than a decade or so with a continuous run of moderate mortality peaks and elevated mortality levels.

⁵² It is very difficult to determine the pathogenic agents which may have been responsible for a particular ‘fever’ epidemic in the past. But in south-east England it does seem quite likely that many different febrile infections were present at this time and that these together contributed to the hazardousness of the disease environment.

⁵³ More information is needed on age- and sex-selective mortality patterns to document precisely the extent of the raised mortality.

⁵⁴ Chartres, J., Internal trade in England 1500–1700 (Studies in Economic and Social History, London, 1977), 46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁵ Dobson, M., ‘Mortality gradients and disease exchanges: comparisons from Old England and Colonial America’, Social History of Medicine (1989, forthcoming)Google Scholar; Dobson, M., From Old England to New England: changing patterns of mortality (Oxford, School of Geography Research Paper 38, 1987).Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Ibid.

⁵⁷ Landers, J., ‘Mortality and metropolis: the case of London 1675–1825’, Population Studies 41 (1987), 59–76.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

⁵⁸ This idea may have been different in principle and practice. See Kussmaul, , Servants in husbandry, 32Google Scholar, and Pelling, M., ‘Child health as a social value in early modern England’, Social History of Medicine 1 (1988). 135–164.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

⁵⁹ Kussmaul, , Servants in husbandry, 104.Google Scholar This emphasis on animal husbandry, in turn, required all year round attention from live-in servants.

⁶⁰ Kussmaul, , Servants in husbandry, 40–1.Google Scholar

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⁶⁷ Wrigley, and Schofield, , Population history of England, 211.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Wrigley, and Schofield, , Population history of EnglandGoogle Scholar, place prime emphasis on the role of nuptiality rather than mortality in producing the demographic ‘take-off’ of the late eighteenth century. However, it is surely significant, in the context of population growth, that mortality did not rise again nor stay at the high levels experienced in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In other words, epidemiological constraints did not prevent or hinder a substantial demographic increase and this, in itself, must give mortality a role of equal importance to nuptiality in explaining the population changes of the new demographic era.