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¹⁰ This echoes the view of Walter, John, ‘The social economy of dearth in early modern England’, in Walter, J. and Schofield, R.S. (eds), Famine, Disease and the Social Order in Early Modern Society (Cambridge, 1989), 197.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Schurer, K. and Arkell, T. (eds), Surveying the People. The Interpretation and Use of Document Sources for the Study of Population in the Later Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1992) represents a valuable step in the right direction.Google Scholar

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¹⁴ Ibid., 66,118–20. Cf. Wrigley, E.A., ‘City and country in the past: a sharp divide or a continuum?’, Historical Research, 64 (1991), 109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Here it is suggested that the rank-size rule works reasonably well, and the source cited is again de Vries.

¹⁵ For instance, P. Corfield, ‘Economic growth and change’; Corfield, ‘Urban development in England and Wales’; Patten, J., English Towns 1500–1700 (Folkestone, 1978)Google Scholar, Table 2, 42; Phythian-Adams, C., Desolation of a City: Coventry and the Urban Crisis of the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1979)Google Scholar, Table 3,12; Chalklin, , ‘The Provincial Towns of Georgian England’, Table 1,18;Google Scholar Clark, Gaskin and Wilson, Population Estimates.

¹⁶ Phythian-Adams, , ‘Urban decay’, 170–3;Google Scholar Goose, , ‘In search of the urban variable’, 183–4 and n. 102. A paper discussing the 1524–25 subsidies as a source for urban populations is in preparation.Google Scholar

¹⁷ For instance, Goose, N., ‘The ecclesiastical returns of 1563: a cautionary note’, Local Population Studies, 34 (1985), 46–7;Google Scholar Schurer, and Arkell, , Surveying the People, chs 5–7.Google Scholar

¹⁸ The Small Towns Project, for instance, following T. Arkell, appears not to have made any allowance for paupers, missing from these lists though not requiring exemption certificates: Clark, , Gaskin, and Wilson, , ‘Population estimates’, vi;Google Scholar Arkell, T., ‘Multiplying factors for estimating population totals from the Hearth Tax’, Local Population Studies, 28 (1982), 51–7;Google Scholar Meekings, C.A.F., Dorset Hearth Tax Assessments 1662–4, Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society (Dorchester, 1951);Google Scholar Meekings, C.A.F., The Surrey Hearth Tax of 1664, Surrey Record Society, 17 (1940).Google Scholar

¹⁹ For instance, D.E.C. Eversley, ‘Population, economy and society’, 32 and ‘A survey of population in an area of Worcestershire’, 395–8, both in Eversley, D.E.C. and Glass, D.V. (eds), Population in History (London, 1974);Google Scholar Wrigley, ‘Births and baptisms’; Schofield, R.S. and Midi Berry, B., ‘Age at baptism in pre-industrial England’, Population Studies, 25 (1971), 453–64;Google Scholar Flinn, M.W., The European Demographic System, 1500–1820 (Brighton, 1981), 5–9;Google Scholar Wrigley, and Schofield, , The Population History, 1–5, 15–32, 89–102.Google Scholar

²⁰ For instance, Palliser, Tudor York, Table 1,126; Patten, , English Towns, 141–5;Google Scholar Goose, , ‘Household size and structure’, 354–5.Google Scholar

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²⁴ This is a problem with most national or regional studies, including Patten, ‘Population distribution’, 54–62; Corfield, ‘Economic growth and change’.

²⁵ Wrigley, E.A., ‘Urban growth and agricultural change: England and the Continent in the early modern period’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 15 (1985), 684–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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²⁷ F. Lewis and M. Power, paper delivered to Early Modern Economic and Social History Seminar, Institute of Historical Research, 12 November 1993.

²⁸ For instance, the calculation of expectation of life on the basis of mortality rates for children aged 1–14 with the assistance of model life tables: Finlay, , Population and Metropolis, 108, 110.Google Scholar

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³⁰ I understand that Chris Galley of the Borthwick Institute is currently engaged in a reconstitution study of York, and hope that his results confound my scepticism.

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³² Corfield, , The Impact of English Towns, ch. 1.Google Scholar

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³⁴ For example, Houston, , Population History, 53, 61Google Scholar, where evidence is cited from just London and Chester, ; Clark, The Early Modem Town, 26;Google Scholar Corfield, , ‘Economic growth and change’, 46;Google Scholar Patten, , English Towns, 124–5;Google Scholar Smith, R.M., ‘Population and its geography in England’, in Dogshon, R.A. and Butlin, R.A. (eds), An Historical Geography of England and Wales (London, 1978);Google Scholar Clay, C.G.A., Economic Expansion and Social Change: England 1500–1700. Vol. 1 People, Land and Towns (Cambridge, 1984), 188–9;Google Scholar Whyte, I.D., ‘Urbanization in early modern Scotland: a preliminary analysis’, Scottish Economic and Social History, 9 (1989), 32–3;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Bairoch, , ‘Urbanization and the economy’, 250, 261–2.Google Scholar

³⁵ The point has been made before in Goose, , ‘In search of the urban variable’, 179.Google Scholar

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³⁸ In Cambridge a surplus was achieved in every quinquennium but one between 1561 and 1600, followed by substantial net loss in the first 40 years of the seventeenth century, whilst Reading, like Worcester, produced a substantial surplus in the early seventeenth century despite considerable expansion: Goose, ‘Economic and social aspects’, Tables 4.5 and 4.7, 260, 268; Dyer, , Worcester, ch. 2.Google Scholar

³⁹ Chambers, J.D., ‘Population change in a provincial town: Nottingham, 1700–1800’, in Pressnell, L.S. (ed.), Studies in the Industrial Revolution (London, 1960);Google Scholar Corfield, , Impact of English Towns 1700–1800 (Oxford, 1982), 110–18.Google Scholar Wrigley offered the view that towns generally produced a deficit in the later seventeenth century at the Early Modern Towns conference held at the Institute of Historical Research, 21 November 1992.

⁴⁰ Peter Borsay upholds the view that Tudor and early Stuart towns largely attracted ‘subsistence’ migrants, ‘driven from the countryside’ and constituting a ‘debilitating’ influence, unlike the typical Restoration migrant who came ‘in hope of personal betterment’ within an altogether more ‘positive context’. No detailed demographic data is cited, however, a fact instructive in itself: Borsay, P. (ed.), The Eighteenth Century Town. A Reader in English Urban History 1688–1820 (London, 1990), 8Google Scholar; Borsay, P., The English Urban Renaissance: Culture and Society in the Provincial Town, 1660–1770 (Oxford, 1989), 20.Google Scholar

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