England's Population: A History since the Domesday Survey (Arnold Publication)

304 Pages·2003·16.21 MB·English

by  Andrew Hinde

England's Population
A History Since the
Domesday Survey
ANDREW HINDE
Senior Lecturer in Population Studies,
University of Southampton
A Member of the Hodder Headline Group
London
Distributed in the United States of America by
Oxford University Press Inc., New York
First published in Great Britain in 2003 by
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© 2003 Andrew Hinde
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Table of Contents
List of tables iv
List of figures v
List of boxes vii
Preface ix
Acknowledgements xi
1 Introduction 1
PART I THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD
2 Domesday England 11
3 Population change between 1086 and the Black Death 22
4 The Black Death and its aftermath 38
5 The population of England in the fifteenth century 53
Appendix I Sources and methods for learning about the 65
population of medieval England
PART II THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD
6 The Malthusian system 79
7 English mortality and population growth, 1500-1750 90
8 The Malthusian preventive check in early modern England 111
9 Childbearing in early modern England 129
10 Causes and consequences of migration 149
Appendix II Sources and methods for studying the 163
population of early modern England
PART III THE ENGLISH DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION
11 Population growth after 1750 177
12 The decline of mortality, 1750-1950 192
13 The decline of fertility 219
14 Migration patterns, 1800-1950 244
15 England's demography since the Second World War 258
Appendix III Sources and methods for studying the 271
population of nineteenth- and early twentieth-
century England
Index of names and places 283
Subject index 286
List of Tables
2.1 Estimates of the population of Domesday England
2.2 Social structure of the recorded Domesday population
3.1 Population growth in Halesowen, 1270-1348
5.1 Wage trends in England, 1350-1459
AI.l Estimates of the populations of certain Wiltshire villages in 1086
and 1377
AI.2 Estimates of England's population by county, 1377
6.1 Average population growth rates by decade, 1541-1750
7.1 National mortality crises in England, 1538-1750
7.2 Frequency of mortality crises and population growth
8.1 Distribution of English households by size, 1574-1821
10.1 Residence of offspring absent from the parental home, Cardington,
Bedfordshire, 1782
11.1 Population growth in certain European countries, 1680-1900
11.2 The impact of fertility and mortality on English population growth,
1696-1846
11.3 Some components of English fertility, 1700-1850
12.1 Age-specific mortality, England and Wales 1838-1910
12.2 Contributions of different causes of death to the decline in mortality
in England and Wales, 1861-70 to 1891-1900
13.1 Average completed family size of ever-married women: birth cohorts
from 1826-31 to 1891-96
13.2 Percentages of women having different numbers of births, birth
cohorts 1750-79, 1840-69 and 1870-99
13.3 Percentages of ever-married women born between 1845 and 1900
having different numbers of births
13.4 Mean number of births by various durations of marriage: marriage
cohorts of 1901-11 and 1917-30 compared
14.1 Net migration: England and Wales, 1841-1930
14.2 Population change in England and Wales, 1841-1911, by type of
district
14.3 Internal migration patterns in England, 1750-1919
15.1 Expectation of life at birth, 1930-32 to 1990-92
15.2 Mortality at specific ages, 1950-52 to 1990-92, and relative improvement
15.3 Age-specific fertility rates by period, England 1960-94
List of Figures
1.1 The population of England, 1086-2000
1.2 Fertility-mortality space, showing the position of the population of
England at selected dates
1.3 Route taken by the population of England through fertility-mortality
space, 1086-2000
3.1 Range of estimates of the English population, 1086-1348
4.1 Map showing the spread of the Black Death across England and esti-
mated percentages dying
5.1 The seasonal pattern of mortality among the monks of Christ
Church, Canterbury, 1395-1505
6.1 The Malthusian system
7.1 Annual number of burials, Odiham, Hampshire, 1538-1750
7.2 Crude death rate, 1541-1750
8.1 Estimated proportions of people never marrying by birth cohort in
England, 1550-1750
8.2 Fertility and population growth in England, 1541-1751
8.3 Fertility and nuptiality in England, 1541-1751
8.4 Nuptiality and real wages in England, 1541-1751
9.1 The impact of late and non-universal marriage on English fertility,
1575-1765
10.1 The impact of net migration on English population growth,
1540-1750
11.1 Schematic representation of Notestein's model of the demographic
transition
11.2 Schematic representation of Davis's conceptualization of the demo-
graphic transition
11.3 Estimated population of England, 1650-1850
11.4 Crude rate of natural population increase in England, 1650-1850
(per thousand)
11.5 Population growth, mortality and fertility in England, 1700-1850
11.6 Real wages and the percentage never marrying in England,
1700-1850
12.1 Crude death rate (per thousand) and expectation of life at birth,
England and Wales, 1700-1950
vi List of figures
12.2 Expectation of life at birth by category of place, England and Wales,
1811-1911
12.3 Expectation of life at birth and infant mortality, England and Wales
1861 (both sexes combined)
12.4 Infant mortality in England and Wales, 1850-1950
13.1 Crude birth rate (CBR) and total fertility rate (TFR), England and
Wales, 1750-1945
13.2 Age-specific marital fertility rates by period, 1800-1933
13.3 Age-specific marital fertility rates, birth cohorts from 1826-31 to
1886-91
13.4 Differentials in completed fertility by 'social class', marriage cohorts
between 1851 and 1896
15.1 Completed family sizes implied by parity progression ratios,
1950-88
List of Boxes
Box 2.1 Fertility, mortality and population growth
Box 3.1 Reproduction rates
Box 3.2 Marriage patterns and population growth
Box 5.1 Linking mortality estimates to population growth in fifteenth-
century England
Box 6.1 Geometrical and exponential population growth
Box 7.1 The expectation of life
Box 8.1 Single-figure indices of fertility
Box 9.1 The fertility-reducing effect of late and non-universal marriage
Box 10.1 Estimating net migration using the demographic accounting
equation (1)
Box 14.1 Estimating net migration using the demographic accounting
equation (2)
Box 15.1 Fertility and mortality by period and cohort
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Prefacee
It is now more than ten years since I started to teach an undergraduate
course in the population history of England, at the University of
Southampton. From the start, this course had to overcome the lack of a sin-
gle textbook that told the story of the evolution of England's population for
the whole period since the time of the Norman Conquest. Even the compi-
lation of a series of estimates of such a basic quantity as the total number of
people in the country required a search through several different sources.
There were, of course, excellent summaries of what was known about cer-
tain periods: John Hatcher's Plague, Population and the English Economy
1348-1530 (London, Macmillan, 1977) and Robert Woods' The
Population of Britain in the Nineteenth Century (London, Macmillan,
1992) were two.
The lack of a unified treatment was probably the impetus behind the pub-
lication of Michael Anderson's edited volume entitled British Population
History: from the Black Death to the Present Day (Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 1995). This was, in effect, the repackaging of several
shorter books dealing with particular time periods (including those by
Hatcher and Woods mentioned above), with some new material written by
Anderson on the twentieth century. It was a good 'quick fix', and remains a
very useful resource. However, its mode of creation means that some parts
of the book deal with England, others include Wales and Scotland; the con-
tributions were written at different times - that by Hatcher was nearly 20
years old in 1995; and there are gaps in the coverage - the crucial period
around the turn of the fourteenth century, for example, is omitted.
Moreover, research into England's population history has proceeded apace
during the last ten or fifteen years, and many 'new orthodoxies' have come
under attack. For all these reasons, it seemed worth trying to write a single-
volume history of England's population since the time of Domesday Book.
This is the result.
The history of population has tended, in England, to be written by non-
historians, at least until the last decade or so. I was not trained as a histo-
rian, and England's Population: a History since the Domesday Survey
reflects my background in the social sciences. The book is written from a
demographic perspective, being principally concerned with describing and