Introduction

The population of England at the beginning of the sixteenth century was something, although not a very great deal, over two million. Most of these people lived in the countryside in villages and smaller settlements, and probably little more than 10 per cent of them lived in towns of any size. It is also likely that as many as three quarters lived south and east of a line drawn from the Severn to the Humber, for it was the southerly part of the country which contained the main areas of arable farming, of rural industry, and most of the important towns. The six northern counties contained some limited areas of fairly densely populated arable farming, especially in the Vales of York and Cleveland and the coastal plains of Northumberland and Durham; and there were a handful of substantial towns, notably York, Hull and Newcastle. But there were huge areas of mountain, fell and moorland, where settlement was exceedingly sparse and virtually confined to the more hospitable valleys, and where towns were very few and often hardly worth the name. Up to a point comparable conditions prevailed along the Welsh border and in parts of the West Midlands, although the environment was nowhere quite so hostile as in the far North and a larger proportion of the land was suitable for settlement.