ENGLISH MEDIEVAL POPULATION: RECONCILING TIME SERIES AND CROSS SECTIONAL EVIDENCE Stephen Broadberry, London School of Economics,
[email protected] Bruce M. S. Campbell, The Queen’s University of Belfast,
[email protected] Bas van Leeuwen, University of Warwick,
[email protected] 11 October 2011 File: MedievalPopulation8 Abstract: A new time series for English medieval population is constructed from manor-level data using an index-number approach and a regional-weighting scheme. The absolute level of the medieval population is established with a benchmark for 1377, but using the need for consistency with other benchmarks for 1086, 1522 and 1541 as additional constraints. The amount of food required to support the peak medieval population is checked against a reconstruction of English agriculture at that time. Acknowledgements: This paper forms part of the project “Reconstructing the National Income of Britain and Holland, c.1270/1500 to 1850”, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, Reference Number F/00215AR.We are grateful to Alexander Apostolides for valuable research assistance and to Larry Poos for making available his data on tithing-penny payments. 1 I. INTRODUCTION The pioneering work on English medieval population by Russell (1948) established benchmark levels of population for 1086 and 1377 and considered time-series evidence to link these to each other and to estimates for the early-modern period. Russell paid particular attention to the consistency of his estimates over this long sweep of history and arrived at the conclusion that the peak level of medieval population before the Black Death was around 3.7 million.