Conclusion

Abstract

HAVING come this far it is difficult to resist the temptation to engage in the popular sport of guessing at the population of England over the broad sweep of almost half a millennium of history from Domesday to the subsidies of the third decade of the sixteenth century. Domesday Book presents the historical demographer with a set of problems similar to those presented by the 1377 Poll Tax returns. A raw total of about 275,000 persons mentioned in Domesday has to be converted into the national population. Each person is usually taken to be the head of a household, and a multiplier of just under five would appear appropriate to convert them into families. In addition allowance has to be made for four northern counties and at least two major cities omitted from the survey, and for the likelihood of unrecorded sub-tenants and landless men. By these means the 275,000 becomes an estimated 1.75-2.25 million [4: 45;17:28 9]. Our next landmark is the Poll Tax, which for reasons outlined above indicates that there were approximately 2.5 to 3 million people in England in 1377 (see p. 14). Our next calculation is extremely speculative, since it involves estimating the loss of population between 1348 and 1377.