NOTE: The original study bearing this title was published jointly with John Harrison as one of the Historical essays, 1600-1750, presented to David Ogg, edited by H. E. Bell and R. L. Ollard in 1963. Sections I and II of the text below reproduce for the most part what then appeared, but with considerable correction and extension. Some of the documentary details then published have been omitted to ease the footnotes in this version: the researcher wishing to recover all the materials should consult the first printing of this piece.

An attempt has been made here, particularly in the footnotes, to draw attention to the work which has subsequently been done on the topics raised in that first exercise in the historical analysis of familial and social structure, and to present some of the results where they serve to provide a context for Clayworth and its characteristics. Though the comparison with Cogenhoe was part of the original study, the comparison with turnover at Hallines and Longuenesse, in north-west France, which forms section III of the present text, appeared independently in French in Annales de Démographie Historique (1968) as ‘Le brassage de la population en France et en Angleterre au XVIIe et au XVIIIe siècles’, translated by Jacques Dupâquier, and is printed here in a shortened and revised form for the first time in English.