Assessing an Early Modern Fenland Population: Whittlesey (Cambridgeshire)

Assessing an Early Modern Fenland Population: Whittlesey (Cambridgeshire) Heather Falvey Abstract Improvement writers argued that drainage would bring prosperity and population growth to fenland communities; locals counter-argued that their communities were already thriving. The detailed surviving records from early modern Whittlesey, in the Isle of Ely, are analysed here to test the accuracy of these opposing claims. Using the returns of the 1523 Lay Subsidy, the 1563 ecclesiastical census, the Lady Day 1674 Hearth Tax records and the 1676 Compton Census, together with bishops’ transcripts and probate inventories, this article finds that although the population did indeed increase after drainage, the pre-drainage population was also increasing. The Michaelmas 1664 Hearth Tax records are analysed to uncover something of the character of the inhabitants and the 1674 Lady Day returns are then used to test the relative wealth of the community compared with that of sub-regions throughout England identified by Tom Arkell. Finally, there is a discussion of Whittlesey’s housing stock. In 1589 Humphrey Bradley, a surveyor from Brabant, observing the condition of the undrained fens, asserted that, as a result of drainage, ‘a vague, deserted Empire without population [would be] turned into a fertile region; and wild and useless products therefrom into an abundance of grain and pasturage; humble huts into a beautiful and opulent city’.1 Fenmen, however, did not share his negative view of their region. In 1604, commoners within the Isle of Ely, opposing a drainage bill recently introduced into parliament, claimed that there were then some 22 towns in the Isle, each with 300 to 400 commonable tenements, and that even those inhabitants who were sub-tenants, and thus lacked legal common rights were capable of maintaining their families by their own labour.2 With reference to Whittlesey, and focusing on the demographic element of these opposing statements, this article will test their validity.3 Whittlesey, situated in the north-west of the Isle of Ely, some 6 miles (9.6 km) east of Peterborough and 11 miles (17.7 km) west of March, lies at the intersection of the route between those towns and that between Ramsey and Thorney, which continues on to 1 A Treatise Concerning the State of the Marshes or Inundated Lands (commonly called Fens) in the Counties of Norfolk, Huntingdon, Cambridge, Northampton and Lincoln, drawn up by Humphrey Bradley, a Brabanter, on the 3rd of December, 1589, translated in H.C. Darby, The Draining of the Fens (2nd edn, Cambridge, 1968), pp. 263–73, here at pp. 267–8. The original, in Italian, is British Library (hereafter BL), Lansdowne MS 60/34. 2 Cambridge University Library (hereafter CUL), EDR A8/1, pp.63–64. The term ‘commonable’ is defined below. 3 Space does not permit an examination of the community’s economy before and after drainage. See: H. Falvey, ‘Custom, Resistance and Politics: Local Experiences of Improvement in Early Modern England’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Warwick, 2007), chapters 3 and 5. 7 Heather Falvey Crowland.4 Prior to drainage, most of the land in the region was too unstable to support buildings of any kind; consequently those settlements that were established grew up on the few gravel ‘islands’ that emerged from the marshes. Although frequently simply referred to as ‘Whittlesey’ (as it will be here), the community actually comprised three distinct settlements. The original settlements of Whittlesey and Eastrea were built on two adjacent ‘islands’, in total some three miles (4.8 km) long and half a mile (0.8 km) wide, which rose about 26 feet (7.9 m) above sea level and just nine feet (2.7 m) above the surrounding peat fens. Exactly when they were founded is unclear: part of the surviving street layout suggests that Whittlesey may have been settled ‘very early’ but the names of certain streets, such as Scaldgate and Briggate indicate Danish influence and thus to ‘a late date for settlement’.5 Documentary evidence commences for Whittlesey in 972 and for Eastrea in 1020.6 A third settlement, the hamlet of Coates, to the east of Eastrea, on the same ‘island’, had become established by the thirteenth century.7 Whittlesey was divided into two parishes, St Mary and St Andrew. The two parish churches are within a quarter of a mile of each other and between 1570 and 1815 were served by the same incumbent. Together the parishes were effectively coterminous with the two large and valuable manors of the same names. Administratively the two manors were distinct entities: manorial properties were held from one or other manor and there were separate manor courts. Land in the common fields, however, was not in separate areas: adjacent strips might lie in the other manor. Indeed, over the centuries the physical boundaries between the two manors had become so blurred that a rental and survey taken in 1603 described only their combined external boundary.8 This encircled nearly 26,000 acres, including 18,689 acres of fen, 5,331 acres of meadow and 1,573 acres of arable.9 Given the frequent mismatch of parish and manorial boundaries, the erratic survival of sources and the vexed question of suitable multipliers, the quest for a series of population estimates for an early modern community is littered with obstacles. This aspect of Whittlesey’s history is, however, slightly less complex since each of the three settlements of Whittlesey, Eastrea and Coates was nucleated, not least due to the constant threat of flooding beyond the islands. Indeed, only after drainage in the 1630s were any houses built in the fens, and these were relatively few and highly visible. Unlike some of their 4 Except where noted, the following two paragraphs summarise: R.B. Pugh (ed.), The Victoria History of the Counties of England: Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely, vol. IV (London, 1953) (hereafter VCH Cambs IV), pp. 123–35. 5 An extensive urban survey undertaken by the County Archaeological Office, Cambridgeshire County Council, revealed Roman activity on the two ‘islands’, see map of Roman landscape of Whittlesey in ‘Historic Towns of Cambridgeshire: Fenland District: Whittlesey’ (County Archaeology Office, 2000). 6 P.H. Reaney, The Place-names of Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely (Cambridge, 1943), pp. 258, 259; see also: VCH Cambs IV, 126–7. 7 Reaney, Place-names of Cambridgeshire, p. 264. 8 CUL, Add MS 3826, ‘The Survay of the Mannours of Whittlesey St Maries and Whittlesey St Andrews Together with a Rental; and the Terrer or Feild Book of the Said Manours’, dated 1603, fol. 4r, the boundaries of the manors. 9 CUL, Add MS 3826, ff. 5r-6v, ‘a brief note and measure’ of the manors. 8 Assessing an Early Modern Fenland Population: Whittlesey counterparts elsewhere, therefore, taxation assessors at Whittlesey, proceeding along the various streets listing the inhabitants, could reasonably be expected to include everyone.10 As the boundaries of the two Whittlesey parishes and manors were coterminous, it is arguable that estimates based on civil taxation returns, compiled by township, and those based on ecclesiastical ‘censuses’, reported by parish, refer to the same population centres. This allows consistent analysis of four national reference points in the demographic history of early modern Whittlesey: the returns of the Lay Subsidy granted in 1523; the ecclesiastical census of 1563; the Hearth Tax returns of Lady Day 1674 (hereafter 1674L); and the Compton Census of 1676. There is a significant interval caused by the absence of the Ely returns to the 1603 Diocesan Census but this can be partially filled using two local sources: the rental drawn up in 1603 and an Exchequer decree, dated 1639, which allocated allotments in the drained fen. Although the latter two listings do not necessarily account for all households within Whittlesey at those times, they do provide useful pointers in an otherwise unmarked landscape. Analysis of the bishops’ transcripts, moreover, gives some indication of population trends during the period 1600 to 1669. Finally, in addition to an analysis of the Michaelmas 1664 Hearth Tax returns (hereafter 1664M) which indicate something of the nature of Whittlesey’s inhabitants, analysis of 1674L Hearth Tax returns enables a discussion of the relative wealth of the community within its regional and national setting, and also of its housing stock. Population indicators from national sources In 1524 at Whittlesey 297 inhabitants were assessed for the first instalment of the Lay Subsidy granted in 1523: 253 on goods and 44 on wages.11 In theory the subsidy was levied on all adult males aged sixteen and over, but sometimes only heads of household were assessed; analysis suggests that the latter applies to Whittlesey. There are a number of recurring surnames such as Ground/Grounde (sixteen), Richar/Rycher (nine) and Kelfull/Kelffull (eight), but while five of these particular recurrences appear in pairs, perhaps indicating people in the same house being assessed, others appear singly. On the other hand, in all only nine pairs of people with the same surname were assessed consecutively. As it is unlikely that only nine families out of nearly 300 included more than one male over sixteen, it is arguable that heads of households were being assessed, especially as seven of those assessed were widows and two were specifically designated 10 See, for example, the problems encountered by assessors visiting the forest community of Duffield (Derbyshire): H. Falvey, ‘Searching for the Population in an Early-modern Forest’, Local Population Studies, 81 (2008), pp. 37–57. 11 The National Archives (hereafter TNA), E179/81/136, ‘Assessment of First Payment of the Subsidy, granted 14 Henry VIII, within the Hundreds of Ely and Wichford’. In addition to 297 individuals, the ‘church guild’ was also assessed.

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