Millennium

by Ian Mortimer

  Date Population Date Population Date Population

  1086 1.71 1240 4.15 1400 2.08

  1100 1.84 1260 4.30 1420 2.04

  1120 2.07 1280 4.46 1440 1.96

  1140 2.32 1300 4.35 1460 1.96

  1160 2.61 1320 4.40 1480 2.08

  1180 2.93 1340 4.57 1500 2.21

  1200 3.37 1360 2.57 1520 2.34

  1220 3.98 1380 2.44 1540 2.82

  TABLE 1.1 Estimated population of England per twenty years (millions)

  The figure of 1.5 million for the year 1000 in Table 1.2 (overleaf) is simply a round figure based on the assumption that the population was growing very slowly until about 1050, and then gradually faster until it reached 0.58 per cent in the twelfth century The estimate of 1.5 million would imply an average annual increment rate over the period 1000–86 of just over 0.15 per cent. Sources for later centuries are given in the endnotes.5

  FRANCE

  The figures in Table 1.2 for the period 1000–1400 were originally drawn from the work of J. C. Russell.6 These high figures correspond with an estimate by Ferdinand Lot that the population of France in 1328 was in the region of 22 million, based on the hearth tax records of that year. Lot’s population densities have been independently supported by later hearth tax studies conducted by Norman Pounds and Charles Roome.7 A figure of more than 20 million corresponds with Benedictow’s high mortality (50–60 per cent) in France in the years 1347–51. The National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) has a web page that suggests the 2,411,149 hearths recorded in 1328 for 24,150 parishes in the kingdom of France indicate a total population of 19 million for the country, 3 million less than Lot.8 With this in mind, the figure of 20.4 million for the country in 1300 has been presumed not to have increased much more before the Black Death, peaking at 21 million in 1340. This would be less than the maximum sustainable population of 103 per square mile that is to be noticed as a limit in England in 1700, and less than the 22.6 million (92 per square mile) of France in 1700. A population decline of 50 per cent for the years 1347–51 has been applied to this number, informed by Benedictow’s estimate of the mortality. The next reasonably reliable figure for the population of France is about 19.5 million for the mid sixteenth century.9 A population of 21 million suffering 50 per cent mortality would have required an average annual growth rate thereafter of 0.31 per cent to recover to 19.5 million by 1550. Applying this figure points to a French population in 1450 of about 14.3 million. This is very close to Pounds and Roome’s estimate that the population density of France in the years around 1450 was about two thirds that of 1328. Thus it has been adopted for the figures in Table 1.2. Sources for later centuries are given in the endnotes.10

  ITALY

  Applying Benedictow’s higher plague mortality figures for Italy (50–60 per cent) to the figures suggested by Federico and Malanima in their 2004 article would suggest the population of Italy was about 14.9 million prior to the plague of 1347–51.11 At 128 per square mile, this is significantly in excess of the density of 103 per square mile noted in England for 1700 and that of 92 in France in the same year. Higher population densities are possible when trade networks allow, as shown by the high densities achieved in the Netherlands and Belgium in 1700 (153 and 172 per square mile respectively), but it is difficult to see how Italy in 1300 could have sustained a population so much larger than any it achieved before 1700, despite its advanced trade, especially since few neighbouring countries would have been producing easily transportable large surpluses of food. For this reason, Benedictow’s range of Italian Black Death mortality is considered to err on the high side. Nevertheless, as his Black Death mortality figures were not published at the time Federico and Malanima composed their article, it seems they did not take the possibility of a population of 13 million in 1300 into account. Therefore I have preferred the figure for Italy revised upwards in Malanima’s Pre-modern European Economy (2009), Chapter One, which suggests 12.5 million in 1300. Sources for later centuries are given in the endnotes.12

  England % France % Italy % Total %

  1000 1.50 – 7.00 – 5.80 – 14.30 –

  1100 1.84 23% 8.06 15% 7.00 21% l6.90 18%

  1200 3.37 83% 11.96 48% 9.90 41% 25.23 49%

  1300 4.35 29% 20.41 71% 12.50 26% 37.26 48%

  1400 2.08 -52% 12.26 -40% 8.00 -36% 22.34 -40%

  1500 2.21 6% 16.70 36% 9.00 13% 27.91 25%

  l600 4.162 89% 19.60 17% 13.273 47% 37.035 33%

  1700 5.211 25% 22.60 15% 13.481 2% 41.292 11%

  l800 8.671 66% 28.70 27% 18.092 34% 55463 34%

  1900 30.072 247% 40.681 42% 32.966 82% 103.719 87%

  2000 49.139 63% 59.268 46% 56.996 73% 165.402 59%

  TABLE 1.2 Populations of England, France and Italy (millions). Please note that all the totals and percentages were calculated before rounding up or down to two or three decimal places.

  EUROPE AND THE WORLD

  The figures in Table 1.2 suggest a different story to the population estimates outlined at the start of this appendix. According to the figures put forward by Livi Bacci for 1550, the populations of England, France and Italy amounted to 35 per cent of the European total. Malanima’s figures suggest that England, Wales, France and Italy amounted to 27.5 million of 84.85 million for 1500; deducting the Welsh population of about 300,000, this suggests that England, Italy and France represented 32 per cent of the European total. Continuing to use Malanima’s estimates, the three countries amounted to 33 per cent of the European total in 1400; 34.9 per cent in 1300; 34 per cent in 1200; 35 per cent in 1100 and 34.5 per cent in 1000. This all appears very consistent: no less than 32 per cent and no more than 35 per cent. The figures in Table 1.2 for 1500, 1600 and 1700 also suggest these three countries consistently represented 33 per cent of the whole European population prior to the Agricultural Revolution. If the population of Europe may be estimated by using the three countries as a 33 per cent sample, then multiplying the population figures in Table 1.2 by 1/0.33 yields population estimates as in ‘Method A’ in Table 1.3. Alternatively, using the increments calculated in Table 1.2 for the three countries and projecting back from the consensus of 84 million in 1500 yields population as in ‘Method B’. The figures correspond quite closely to the average of 42.1 million for the year 1000 derived above from the demographers named at the start of this appendix. They also closely correlate with Malanima’s figures (which are on the high side, compared to those of others) for 1200 and 1400. However, the figure for 1300 is much higher than any demographer mentioned above has suggested.

  Date Malanima (2009) % change Method A (proportional, at 1/33 %) Method B (back projection from 84 million in 1500) % change

  1000 47.1 – 43.3 43.1

  1100 55.6 18% 51.2 50.9 18%

  1200 76.7 38% 76.4 75.9 49%

  1300 93.6 22% 112.9 112.2 48%

  1400 67.8 28% 67.7 67.3 −40%

  1500 84.8 25% 84.5 84.0 30%

  TABLE 1.3 Population estimates for Europe 1000–1500 (millions)

  The figures in Table 1.2 that underlie Method A and Method B are based on the most reliable data available in Europe. There is no reason to suppose that these three countries differed wildly only in 1300 from being 33 per cent of the European total. Thus it seems likely that the population of Europe rose to 112 million in 1300. It is significant that the next time the population of the three countries rose to more than 37 million, in 1700, the population of the continent as a whole amounted to 125 million. As this was before the Agricultural Revolution had taken hold, this further backs up the theory that Europe could have supported a 112 million population before the Black Death.

  The reason why this has not been propounded by European demographers in the past is probably because it was not appreciated how high the Black Death mortality was. Benedictow’s figures suggest a significantly greater drop in population than most pre-2004 demographers imagined. But it should not be assumed that we have simply taken his depopulation conclusions at face value; we have actually
erred on the side of caution, by using significantly lower mortality figures than his findings showed. Many historians have suggested a population of more than 5 million for England in 1300, and Lot suggested 22 million for France. If we take the figure of 55 per cent as representing the depopulation of England in 1348–51 – still considerably less than Benedictow’s estimate of 62.5 per cent – we can reconstruct the population of England in 1300 as 5.8 million, which inflates the three-country sample by a full million. Adding an extra million for France on the basis of Lot’s research suggests the European total .was nearer 120 million. The figure of 112 million for Europe in 1300 is thus a conservative one, even though it is higher than anyone has previously suggested.

  I have used the Method B figures in Table 1.4 and throughout this book. For the population of Europe from 1500 on, I have used the figures in Livi Bacci’s Population History of Europe, pp.8–9. The figure for 2000 is from a report by the United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division: ‘World Population Prospects: The 2012 Revision’ (2013). For the world population figures in the following table, I have used the figures of J.-N. Biraben as quoted by the US census department.13 These have not been adjusted to account for the higher population of Europe in 1300.

  Date Europe % change The world % change

  1000 43 – 254 12%

  1100 51 18% 301 19%

  1200 76 49% 400 33%

  1300 112 48% 432 8%

  1400 67 –40% 374 –13%

  1500 84 25% 460 26%

  1600 111 38% 579 31%

  1700 125 13% 679 17%

  1800 195 56% 954 41%

  1900 422 116% 1,633 71%

  2000 729 73% 6,090 273%

  TABLE 1.4 Population of Europe and the world (millions)

  Notes

  Unless otherwise specified, London is the place of publication.

  1001–1100 The Eleventh Century

  1 For Europe, see N. J. G. Pounds, An Economic History of Medieval Europe (1974), p. 99. The scarcity of coin hoards in Devon and Cornwall was drawn to my attention by Henry Fairbairn at a paper given to the London Medieval Society in April 2012.

  2 C. H. Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (2nd edn, 1955, 5th imp., 1971), p. 72.

  3 The Devon figure is argued more fully in Bill Hardiman and Ian Mortimer, A Guide to the History and Fabric of St Andrew’s Church, Moretonhampstead (Friends of St Andrew’s, 2012), pp. 4–5. For the Paderborn figure, see The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 3, p. 46.

  4 Christopher Holdsworth, Domesday Essays (Exeter, 1986), p. 56; Neil S. Rushton, ‘Parochialisation and Patterns of Patronage in 11th Century Sussex’, Sussex Archaeological Collections, 137 (1999), pp. 133–52, at p. 134.

  5 Rushton, ‘Parochialisation’, Appendix 1.

  6 Quoted in Pierre Bonassie, trans. Jean Birrell, From Slavery to Feudalism in South-western Europe (Cambridge, 1991), p. 1.

  7 The quotation from Gregory the Great is paraphrased from Frederik Pijper, ‘The Christian Church and Slavery in the Middle Ages’, American Historical Review, 14, 4 (July 1909), pp- 675–95, at p. 676. The note on St Gerald of Aurillac is from Bonassie, Slavery to Feudalism, p. 55.

  8 John Gillingham, ‘Civilising the English? The English Histories of William of Malmesbury and David Hume’, Historical Research, 74, 183 (February 2001), pp. 17–43, esp. p. 36. I am grateful to Dr Marc Morris for bringing this to my attention.

  9 Plinio Prioreschi, A History of Medicine. Vol. 5: Medieval Medicine (Omaha, 2003), p. 171.

  10 Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest (2012), p. 334.

  11 Michael Hart, The 100 (1st edn, 1978, 2nd edn, 1992).

  1101–1200 The Twelfth Century

  1 Maurice Keen, Chivalry (1984), p. 88.

  2 John Langdon, Horse, Oxen and Technological Innovation (Cambridge, 1986), p. 98.

  3 Geoffrey Parker, The Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century (2013), p. 17.

  4 David Knowles and R. Neville Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses: England and Wales (2nd edn, 1971), p. 494: John T. Appleby, The Troubled Reign of King Stephen (1969), p. 191.

  5 Jacques LeGoff, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, The Birth of Purgatory (1986), pp. 222–3.

  6 C. H. Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century. (2nd edn, 1955, 5th imp., 1971), pp. 38–9.

  7 Ibid., p. 71.

  8 Ralph Norman, ‘Abelard’s Legacy: Why Theology is Not Faith Seeking Understanding’, Australian eJournal of Theology, 10 (May 2007), p. 2; M. T. Clanchy, Abelard: A Medieval Life (Oxford, 1999), p. 5.

  9 According to Charles Homer Haskins, ‘more of Arabic science in general passed into western Europe at the hands of Gerard of Cremona than in any other way’. See Haskins, Renaissance, p. 287.

  10 Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind (1997), p. 110.

  11 Plinio Prioreschi, A History of Medicine. Vol. 5: Medieval Medicine (Omaha, 2003), pp. 168–9.

  12 Vivian Nutton, ‘Medicine in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages’, in Lawrence I. Conrad et al. (eds), The Western Medical Tradition 800 BC to 1600 AD (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 71–87.

  13 Stanley Rubin, Medieval English Medicine (Newton Abbot, 1974), p. 105.

  14 Haskins, Renaissance, pp. 322–7.

  1201–1300 The Thirteenth Century

  1 Maurice Keen, Chivalry (Yale, 1984), p. 87.

  2 The bishop of Winchester levied a customary poll tax of one penny on males over the age of 12 on his manor of Taunton in Somerset, and the income was recorded on the bishop’s pipe roll every year from 1209. The numbers increased from £2 11s. od in 1209 (612 males) to £6 4s. od in 1311 (1,488 males), an increment of 0.85 per cent per year. See N. J. G. Pounds, An Economic History of Medieval Europe (1974), p. 145.

  3 Samantha Letters, ‘Gazetteer of Markets and Fairs in England and Wales to 1516’, http://www.history.ac.uk/cmh/gaz/gazweb2.html. Downloaded 13 March 2014.

  4 Quoted in Pounds, Economic History, p. 251.

  5 Ibid., p. 100.

  6 Fernand Braudel, Civilisation and Capitalism, 15th–18th Centuries (3 vols, 1984), iii, p. 93; Letters, ‘Gazetteer of Markets and Fairs’.

  7 Braudel, Civilisation and Capitalism, iii, p. 27.

  8 Ibid., iii, p. 113.

  9 Letters, ‘Gazetteer of Markets and Fairs’.

  10 Michael Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307 (2nd edn, 1993).

  11 Quoted in W. L. Warren, King John (1961), pp. 245–6.

  12 William Woodville Rockhill (ed.), The Journey of William of Rubruck to the Eastern Parts of the World 1253–55 (1900), pp. 211, 223.

  1301–1400 The Fourteenth Century

  1 Robert S. Gottfried, The Black Death (1983), p. 25.

  2 This is adapted from the example given in Geoffrey Parker, The Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century (2013), pp. 19–20.

  3 This is based on my revised population figures for Europe 1300 in the Appendix.

  4 For the mortality of 1348–51 being in the region of 62.5% in England, see Ole J. Benedictow, The Black Death, 1346–1353: The Complete History (2004). For the 45% figure, see the Appendix to this book.

  5 Benedictow, Black Death, p. 283, quoting Marchionne di Coppo Stefani, trans. in J. Henderson, ‘The Black Death in Florence: Medical and Communal Responses’, in Death in Towns (1992), p. 145.

  6 Benedictow, Black Death, p. 291 (mortality in Florence); Gottfried, Black Death (1983), p. 47 (Boccaccio).

  7 Gottfried, Black Death, p. 49.

  8 Benedictow, Black Death, p. 356.

  9 Various writers include this story of the English ship; Benedictow, Black Death, p. 156, suggests the date of early July 1349.

  10 Benedictow, Black Death, p. 383.

  11 Clifford Rogers, War Cruel and Sharp: English Strategy under Edward III, 1327–1360 (2000), pp. 40–1.

  12 Sir Herbert Maxwell (ed.), The Chronicle of Lanercost (1913), p. 271.

  13 Ian Mortime
r, The Perfect King (2006), pp. 20–1; Rupert Taylor, The Political Prophecy in England (New York, 1911; rep. 1967), pp. 160–4; T. M. Smallwood, ‘Prophecy of the Six Kings’, Speculum, 60 (1985), pp. 571–92.

  14 It is often said that Edward III’s archers were Welsh. Jim Bradbury discusses this at length in his book The Medieval Archer (Woodbridge, 1985; rep. 1998), pp. 83–90, and finds the evidence for such a claim wanting. In fact the early archers credited with making significant tactical advances were English. This is borne out by the evidence for the first part of the reign of Edward III. In 1334 the king and his nobles respectively provided 481 and 771 mounted archers but at the same time the king summoned 4,000 archers from Lancashire and more than 5,000 from Yorkshire (see my biography of Edward III, The Perfect King, pp. 119–20). Although Bradbury concludes that the longbow ‘does not belong to any one area in particular’ (Medieval Archer, p. 84), it is striking how much Edward III looked to the north to supply him with longbows in the early part of his reign. In later years the archers of Cheshire were renowned as the best in the country.

  15 Louise Ropes Loomis, The Council of Constance (1961), pp. 316, 456.

  16 Ibid., pp. 340–1. In 1415 England had 17 archbishops and bishops, Wales 4, Scotland 13 (who were not loyal to Henry V) and Ireland 34 (few of whom were loyal to Henry V).

  17 J. R. Lumby (ed.), Chronicon Henrici Knighton, vel Cnitthon, monachi Leycestrensis (2 vols, 1889–95), ii, p. 94.

  18 T. B. James and J. Simons (eds), The Poems of Laurence Minot, 1333–1352 (Exeter, 1989), p. 86.

  19 Chris Given-Wilson (ed.), Parliamentary Rolls of Medieval England (CD ROM ed., Woodbridge, 2005), Parliament of 1382.

  20 Joshua Barnes, The History of that Most Victorious Monarch, Edward III (1688), preface.