Department of Geography and Faculty of History. This is a project of the Demography, health and wellbeing research theme, and The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure research group, both part of the Department of Geography's Vital Geographies thematic research group.
The Compton census of and the Hearth Tax returns made in the s and s have been widely used as sources which provide numerical data which can be used to estimate the population at many levels varying from individual parishes to the whole country. Though neither provides data for the whole country, in combination they come close to a full coverage Figure 1. They therefore offer an opportunity to compare the national population at all levels in the later seventeenth century with the country more than a century later when the first census was taken in Although both sources have frequently been employed, they have seldom been used conjointly.
(mh=sqa9yIyzekNSDFg4)11.jpg "Prostitutes Compton")
Attempting to do so has brought to light a range of difficulties which are both frustrating and, perhaps paradoxically, promising. This is especially the case in relation to the study of urban growth.
Over the two-century period from to the non-urban population in England rose by 69 per cent; on the continent the comparable figure was 53 per cent, a relatively trivial difference. The urban percentages, in contrast, were and 81 per cent, a massive difference. The far faster rise in the English national population compared to the continent and 55 per cent was almost entirely due to exceptionally rapid urban growth.
Because it is proving difficult and time consuming to reconcile Compton census and Hearth returns for towns, progress has been much slower than we had hoped and anticipated, but the outcome may be a far more authoritative picture of urban totals than currently exist.
