The Population of Olden England.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 471, 14 May 1890, Page 6

The Population of Olden England.

In an article on ‘ The Population of England from 1259 to 1793,’ in the March number of ‘Time,’ Professor Thorold Rogers says:—ln 1631 the entire population of London and Southwark, a census being taken by the wards, was only a little over 131,000. It was not a quarter of the number in 1341. 1 conclude that the population of England and Wales from the end of Edward I.’s reign to that of Elizabeth, a matter of three centuries, could not have been more than two and a half millions, and was probably less. In 1377 Parliament granted the King a poll-tax of fourpence a head on all persons over fourteen years of age, the only persons excepted being ‘ known beggars and mendicant friars.’ The process adopted was as follows. Every person liable, and over fourteen years of age, was registered. The sum leviable on the town or parish was thus known. If it was 6,000 which was the population of Norwich, take off one-third for those under fourteen years of age, and the aggregate liability of the city was £66 13s 4d, The local authorities were bound in thi« sum, but might distribute it at their pleasure. Now, in the light of these figures, the population of London was 35,000; of York, nearly 11,000; of Bristol 9,500 ; of Coventry about 7,000 ; of Lincoln 5,000. No other English town had more than 5,000 ihhabibants. The result of this estimate gives a population of about two and a half millions, giving a liberal number to beggars and begging friars, for the actual number is 2,184,C00, including children and those specially exempted. Now, among the state papers of Henry VIII. is a record of the population in nine of the Kentish hundreds. The district contained no town of any size then, and contains none now. The population then was 14,813, spread over 164,239 acres. In 1871 the population was 88,080, or about almost exactly six times what it was before 1547. The district of Kent was one of the wealthiest parts of agricultural England, and the figures lead to the result that the population had remained stationary from the time of the Plantagenets. Towards the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth, All Souls’ College, in Oxford, had an accurate survey generally at the rate of sixteen feet to a mile, made of its estates, and of the parish in which they were. Merton College, which had perpetual lawsuits on one of its estates, had a similar survey made of this, and I have counted the houses in eight of these country parishes. There are 280 of them, which at four and a half persons to each house gives 1,250 inhabitants. At the census of 1861 there were 8,281 persons in the same places, rather more than a six - and a - half times increase. At the end of the seventeenth century there is evidence that the population of England and Wales was more than double what it was at the end of the previous century. The proofs are four. The first is the return of all the houses ip the country, in order that the hearth tax might be examined. The return is of all inhabited houses with the number of hearths in such, those houses alone being lible to the tax, the rent of which was 20s. a year and upwards. The total number of houses is 1,319,215. Here, however, one must allow for empties and double holdings, and so I should be disposed to set the figure at four to a house. From this calculation, there were about five and a half millions in England and Wales n the year 1690.