Now I will bring into conjunction a series of facts which do fit together, and which give, as it seems to me, a firm basis upon which to build a rough estimate of the number of the agricultural and total population between the Conquest and the Black Death. A reliable estimate having been thus got of the agricultural population, it will be easy to divide it up by means of the figures of the Domesday Survey into the several classes of tenants; and then, by dividing the figures by the number of manors, to get a tolerably correct idea of the distribution of tenants on an average manor after the Conquest.

In Mr. Kemble's history of the Anglo-Saxons I find an old Saxon estimate of the number of hydes in England. Now, as the Saxon hyde of land was the amount allotted for each family, this number of hydes, if at all authentic, ought to give at least the minimum number of families in England composing the agricultural population, and leaving out the large towns. The total number of hydes or families, according to this estimate, was 243,600; which, reckoning five to a family, would give a total agricultural population of 1,218,000 before the Conquest.

In Sir Henry Ellis's "Introduction to the Domesday Book" is a careful abstract for each county of the population mentioned in the Domesday Survey, which he prefaces by saying is probably a fair record of the owners and occupiers of land and for the agricultural population, the population of the towns and cities being generally omitted from it. From the object of the record, and the fact that no enumeration is given of women and children, it is obvious that it is only a record of the heads of families. The total number is 287,043; or, corrected for the frequent repetition of the same landowners when they held lands in several counties, 283,242. This number, at five to a household, would give an agricultural population of at least 1,400,000 after the Conquest.

In 1377 the Poll-tax Census was made, on which I based my estimate of the population of England in the articles in this Review on the "Black Death." Notwithstanding all that has been said and can be said against this census, the more it is sifted the more reliable does it appear as evidence of what the minimum population was at its date. The tax was of 4d. per head on every person above fourteen. The returns are not only preserved in the total amount raised, but also in the number of persons taxed; and not only is the return of the total amount and the total number extant, but also many of the local returns are still at the Record Office, giving the number and amounts separately for every separate hundred and even tything. In fact, it is impossible to imagine any evidence more reliable as to the minimum population at that date; for, as I have elsewhere observed, it is not at all likely that the inhabitants of each district would exaggerate their number, and so tax themselves to a greater

amount than was needful. The total population of England (allowing for the proper proportion below fourteen) was, according to this census, 2,000,000 in 1377.

Now, let me put these three totals to the same test of comparison as that adopted with regard to English manors and parishes. Will a dissection of the totals have the same effect in dispelling these numbers as it had in dispelling the coincidences between the total number of manors and parishes?

First, let us compare the Saxon hydes with the Domesday agricultural households:

It must be admitted that there is a correspondence in these dissected figures, placed as I believe they are for the first time in history side by side, which, as it can hardly be the result of mere accident, so far as it goes confirms their substantial truth.

Now, multiplying these numbers of Saxon and Domesday households by five, and thus turning the numbers of the households into the numbers of the population, I put them in columns No. 1 and No. 2 of the table given below, as roughly representing the agricul

tural population of the several districts before and after the Conquest. In column No. 4 I place the population of the same districts in 1377 according to the Poll-tax Census. These latter figures represent the population after the devastations of the Black Death. I want to place in column No. 3 a fair estimate of the population before the Black Death. Upon the evidence of the clergy-lists and the local accounts of the depopulation of Norwich and Yarmouth, I came to the conclusion in the articles on that special subject already referred to, that at a fair estimate two-thirds of the population of Norfolk and Suffolk died of the Plague. Let us, therefore, multiply the population of those countries in 1377 by three, and place the figures in column No. 3, to represent the population of those counties in 1349. Considering that Essex and Middlesex included London, and that London suffered severely, we can hardly do wrong in multiplying their population in 1377 also by three. If we multiply the figures for the southern and western counties by two, and increase by one-third the figures for the midland counties, where the Plague was apparently least disastrous, we shall have filled column No. 3. with figures based on the census taken after the Plague, and the independent evidence of the proportion who had been carried off by it in the different districts. The intermediate column (6), in which I have inserted the probable proportion of deaths by the Plague, will form the ratio of decrease as between columns No. 3 and 4.

Now let us compare columns No. 2 and 3. In the intermediate column (a) I have marked the ratio of increase between them. In which of the districts is it likely that the increase of population would be greatest during the three hundred years which elapsed between the Conquest and the Black Death? Certainly in Norfolk and Suffolk, for in those counties the worsted manufactures had been marvellously developed by the immigration of Flemish weavers. The town population-omitted, it must be remembered, from the Domesday Census-had rapidly increased in this district until Norwich had, it is said, its 60,000 inhabitants, and Yarmouth at least 10,000. For the evidence for this statement I must refer to my articles on the Black Death. There certainly was no district in England which can have increased so rapidly as these eastern counties. There is another district which ought to show an unusually large increase, viz., Essex and Middlesex; because, apart from any natural increase,

(1) This estimate was based upon the large mortality shown by the clergy lists, and also the statements of local authorities as to the numbers who perished in Norfolk and Yarmouth. I take this opportunity of correcting an error which I have only recently discovered in the figures given in the same article with reference to Yorkshire and and Nottinghamshire. Owing to an error which ran through my notes taken from the Minster MSS., I confused, in some cases, vacancies occasioned by other causes with those caused by death, thus unconsciously adding to the latter. It would be safer to say that more than one-half, rather than more than two-thirds, of the clergy of the West and East Ridings perished, and not quite one-half in Nottinghamshire.

the figures in column No. 2 leave out London (which had grown to a population of 100,000 at the least before 1349), and the figures in column No. 3 include it. I need hardly point out how clearly the ratios of increase in column (a) correspond with these expectations. In other words, column No. 3 bears its proper relation to column No. 2 as well as to column No. 4. I think it will be admitted that these figures fit together less like a child's loose letters than like the pieces of a dissected map.

Turning, then, once more from the details to the totals, it remains to fill up the omissions in them. The Domesday Census, leaving out the counties of Northumberland, Cumberland, Durham, Westmoreland, and Lancashire, and not professing to include the town population or London, must have considerable additions made to it to make it represent the total population of England. If the agricultural population was 1,400,000, without several of the northern counties, the total population cannot have fallen very far short of 2,000,000. The Poll-tax Census of 1377 omits Cheshire and Durham altogether, and 29,161 must also be added for the clergy, who were separately numbered. It may safely be inferred that the population of England (exclusive of Wales) was over 2,000,000 after the Black Death, and consequently about 4,000,000 on the eve of its terrible ravages. This is probably erring on the safe side.

Having now disposed of the numbers of the total population, and obtained, as I think, some solid ground on which to build, let us go back to the Domesday Survey, and divide up its total into the several classes of tenants. Following Sir Henry Ellis's analysis, the numbers come out as follows :

Leaving only from 30,000 to 40,000 families not holding some little plot of land in feudal tenancy. Of these, 25,156 appear in the Domesday Survey as servi.

These figures, divided by the number of manors, say 10,000, give us a rough idea of the number of each class of tenants on an average manor. Three or four families of frecholders, twenty families of customary tenants and cottiers, and only some half dozen of the landless class of serfs, make up the population of the manor-140 or more souls in all.1

The next work is to ascertain roughly the extent of cultivated land in the manor, and held by each class of tenants. At a rough estimate, it is generally assumed that each person consumes a quarter

on

(1) See examples of manors, and descriptions of their tenants in Mr. Rogers' chapter "Social Distinctions and the general Distribution of Wealth," vol. i. p. 63 et seq.

of wheat in a year. Six bushels would probably be nearer the mark; but as corn is used for other purposes than the food of man, probably a quarter of wheat for each person will be the safer estimate. Taking the whole population at the time of the Survey (including the towns) at 2,000,000, that number of quarters of wheat would be required to supply their wants. Now, Mr. Rogers shows that the nett produce per acre of crop was not much more than one quarter of wheat, and that about half the land lay in fallow and half in crop. There must, therefore, have been

23,000,000, cultivatable land in England.

Dividing these figures by the number of manors, the following may represent those for an average manor in the early settled districts, where the manors may have averaged 2,000 acres each in area:

200 acres in corn crop.

The population of the average manor we have shown to be about 140 souls. These would require 140 acres under corn crop, at a produce of a quarter per acre, to find food for themselves. The produce of the remaining 60 acres under corn crop, viz., 60 quarters, the manor would be able to export. At this rate the 10,000 manors would produce 600,000 surplus quarters of wheat for the consumption of the non-agricultural population; and this was the number we added to the Domesday population to make up the total of 2,000,000, including the towns.

Supposing that the demesne lands of the lord included a home farm of 300 acres of cultivated land, in addition to the demesne woods and wastes, this would leave 500 acres of cultivated land, and the commons, wastes, and woods as the foreign portion of the manor. This would allow of holdings from 30 to 100 acres each for the three or four freeholders, and of allotments, varying from 30 acres each, down to the cottager's acre or rood of land, for the twenty customary and cottier tenants,'-common rights of pasture always probably being attached to the holdings.

(1) "Lord Coke is said to have estimated that one-third of the land was copyhold." Scriven, on Copyholds, p. 33, n.