by Ian Mortimer
How can the best statistician of the age make such a mistake?
It goes without saying that King cannot take into consideration the consequences of the improvements in agriculture over the next 200 years. Nor can he possibly foresee the impact of mechanisation. He thus cannot consider how mankind will eventually overcome the constraints on its growth. However, he can – and does – consider the constraints themselves. He knows that the birth rate is roughly 1 in 28 while the natural death rate is 1 in 32, so there should be an extra 20,000 people born in England every year. At the same time he calculates that illness and famine carry away an average of 4,000 people per annum. A further 3,500 are killed in Britain’s wars, and 2,500 mariners are lost every year due to the dangers of their work. As for the Plantations in America and the West Indies, 1,000 Englishmen die there annually, not including the slave casualties. As a result of all these adversities, average population growth is much smaller than 20,000 people every year.
As you can see, King’s mistake is not just a result of his failure to foresee the innovations of the future; it also lies in his assumption that all these constraints will continue. With the benefit of hindsight, we know they won’t, but in 1695 there is simply no justification for such optimism. The population of England has been declining for the last forty-five years. In 1650 it stands at 5.23 million. By 1660 it has decreased to 5.14 million; a decade later it drops to 4.98 million. Thereafter the rate of decrease slows, reaching a low of 4.93 million in 1680 and staying at that level until 1690.2 Only in the last decade of the century does it perk up, recovering to 5.06 million. But England in the 1690s is not typical of the whole of Europe – or even the whole of Britain. In 1696–9 much of northern Europe is hit by a famine that decimates the population. Scotland, which has about 1.2 million people in 1695, sees one-tenth of them die or emigrate over the last four years of the century (many of the men go to Poland).3 France likewise loses one-tenth of its population – about 2 million people. Although England and Wales do not suffer to the same extent, it is a bold step by Gregory King to estimate that there will be any rise in the population at all.
When you walk down a street in 1680, you will see that there are many more young people compared to our own time. Children under the age of fifteen make up 30 per cent of the population (compared to 17.6 per cent in the modern world). As for older people, less than 10 per cent of the population is aged sixty or more (in the modern world it is 23 per cent). It is a sad irony that a society in which child mortality is very high is heavily populated by children. They simply never get the chance to grow up. Infant mortality is above 21 per cent; in the modern world only 0.4 per cent of children die in the first year of life. If you add those dying between the ages of one and fourteen, you are left cowering in the shadow of a daunting statistic: 37 per cent of all the children born in England do not make it to the age of fifteen.4
As a result of this, a married woman in Restoration Britain has to give birth more than four times in order to maintain the population at a static level.5 This is quite something to ask, especially if she does not marry until relatively late in life. Although girls can legally marry at twelve and boys at fourteen, such matches are rare. Charles II marries off two of his illegitimate sons at the age of fourteen to twelve-year-old girls, but they are hardly representative of ordinary folk.7 John Evelyn’s wife, Mary, is twelve on her wedding day, fourteen years younger than her husband; and Samuel Pepys’s wife, Elizabeth, is not quite fifteen when she marries the twenty-two-year-old future diarist in 1655; but again these cases are unusual. The vast majority of women do not marry until they are well into their twenties: the average age for women is twenty-four, and for men it is twenty-eight. Despite this late age, however, many women rise to the challenge of enlarging the population, some having ten or more children. Alice George, a servant in Oxford, does not marry until she is thirty, but then has fifteen children as well as three miscarriages.8 Giving birth to so many babies is, of course, dangerous in itself; every single pregnancy – and not just the first – is a matter of life and death. Barbara, Lady Fleming, dies giving birth to her fifteenth child in April 1675.9 But don’t be complacent even if you are an adult man. The average life expectancy at birth for both sexes is about thirty-three years – considerably less than half what you might hope for in the modern world, and about five years less than it was a century earlier.
Age structure of English society in 1695 compared with 20116
Having said all this, you will come across some old people in society, and the age of sixty is clearly the point at which they start to consider themselves properly old. Ralph Josselin, the rector of Earls Colne in Essex, writes in his diary on 26 January 1675, ‘Sensible [that] this [day I] entered my sixtieth year: I grow an old man.’10 John Evelyn is similarly aware of the great turning point when he records on 30 October 1680, ‘I now arrived at my sixtieth year, on which I began a more solemn survey of my whole life, in order to the making and confirming my peace with God.’11 Three years later, he starts commenting on those very old people who are still fit and able, such as his godmother Mrs Keightley, who is now ‘eighty-six years of age, sprightly, and in perfect health, her eyes serving her as well as ever, and of a comely countenance, that one would not suppose her above fifty’.12 You can see what he is thinking: if she can still be active at eighty-six, so might I be. As it happens, he dies at the age of eighty-five.
Ralph Josselin is another diarist who starts to look for consolation in the healthiness of very old people. In his case, he goes to see Lady Vere, who is eighty-eight years old. He remarks with some amazement that ‘her senses continue’.13 Lady Vere lasts until ninety. Sadly, Josselin only lives to sixty-six. But that is still twelve years longer than King Charles II. Celia Fiennes pauses for thought when she comes across the tomb of Elizabeth Heyrick in a church in Leicester: this lady lived to ninety-seven, and saw 140 of her progeny. Celia herself dies a few weeks short of her eightieth birthday.14 Lady Anne Clifford continues to write her diary until the day before she greets eternity with an indignant frown at the age of eighty-six. Thomas Hobbes, the philosopher, lives to ninety-one; Thomas Mace, the lutenist, to ninety-three; and Sir Hans Sloane, the collector, also to ninety-three. However, all these people are mere whippersnappers compared to some. In 1681 Alice George – the woman who marries at thirty and has eighteen pregnancies – tells the philosopher John Locke that she is 108 years of age, and that her father lived to eighty-three, her mother to ninety-six and her maternal grandmother to 111.15 She herself lives for another eleven years. Over that time she is visited by many people at her home in Oxford, where she repeatedly shows off her party trick of threading a needle without any need of spectacles, confounding those who associate extreme old age with poor vision and unsteady hands. Her portrait is painted in 1691, when she attains the reputed age of 120. She rather casts into shadow the old man who shows Willem Schellinks around his garden in 1661: he claims to be a mere 114.16
The Social Order
It is often said that the wealth of society can be represented by a pyramid. This is certainly true of Restoration England. At the bottom of the pyramid there are many families who have to make do with less than £20 per year. Above them, somewhat less than half the population has £30 per year or more. Next up, about 8 per cent have £60 or more; above them, about 3 per cent have an income of £150 or more; and right at the top, 0.1 per cent have at least £600.
Gregory King provides us with a contemporary estimate of how this breaks down according to the various ‘sorts’ of people.
Gregory King’s scheme of income, 168817
King is particularly keen to differentiate between those who add to the wealth of the nation – those whose income is in excess of £30 per year – and those who, being poor, decrease it. No fewer than 849,000 households (62 per cent) fall into the latter category, along with 30,000 vagrants, gypsies, thieves and beggars. Thus this chart goes some way to demonstrate the inequalities of wealth in society. Howev
er, King’s figures only relate to incomes; if you were to look at capital ownership, you’d find a much greater proportion of it in the hands of the richest 1 per cent, the nobility and gentry. But even that does not begin to reflect the true disparities in society. For it is your status, more than your wealth, which determines how people will treat you. Financial fortunes wax and wane, but your position in society is fixed according to your family background and upbringing, and that is what other people really want to know about you. Well-educated and well-connected gentlemen who have lost all their money through reckless gambling or unwise investments may still be entertained in houses where a prosperous farmer would not be permitted to cross the threshold. Similarly, a widow from an old gentry family who lives in a rented room in a tradesman’s house in a county town, but who can still proudly boast a coat of arms and a nephew with a commission in the navy, will be welcome in places where the tradesman’s wife will merely be tolerated. The fact is that, when confronting the inequalities of society, we are not just dealing with how much money you have but with social hierarchies that reflect political influence, ancestry and connections, clothing, manners, education and region of origin. Lack of money is just one of many factors separating the poor from the rich and influential.
All this raises the question of class – and it is here, in this period, that the English start to become obsessed by the ‘class system’. Of course there is no official ‘system’ as such: it is largely a matter of perception, and people’s perceptions are beginning to shift. There is an awareness that a new class is emerging: wealthy, fashionable townsmen. They have large amounts of disposable income, considerable periods of leisure time, an obsession with their own status and a delight in novelties. In Paris they are already being described as bourgeois, following the production of Molière’s play, Le bourgeois gentilhomme, in 1670. In fact, Samuel Pepys is a prime example of the type, with his attention to everything that is fashionable, his obsession with money and his constant concern with being seen in good company. As a naval official, Pepys is unlike many other Londoners – but that is beside the point. Although the ranks of the bourgeoisie are filled with people from a wide range of professions and backgrounds, they all have much in common, not least their social climbing and exquisite self-consciousness. A new category is therefore needed to describe them according to their lifestyle, not their occupation. Hence the word ‘class’ enters the English language. Thomas Blount helpfully includes it in the second edition of his dictionary, Glossographia, in 1661.18 He particularly uses it to describe groups of people of a similar ‘degree’. However, the term really catches on because ‘class’ is not just a way of describing people who have something in common; it is also the perfect way for men and women to set themselves apart from those with whom they have nothing in common.
Terms such as ‘bourgeoisie’ and ‘class’ have yet to achieve widespread circulation in this period. Therefore you should stick to those terms that Restoration people understand, such as ‘citizen’, ‘degree’ and ‘sort’. Daniel Defoe identifies seven different ‘sorts’ of people:19
The great, who live profusely;
The rich, who live very plentifully;
The middle sort, who live very well;
The working trades, who labour hard but feel no want;
The country people, farmers etcetera, who fare indifferently;
The poor, who fare hard; and
The miserable, who really pinch and suffer want.
These seven ‘sorts’ – which are more succinct than Gregory King’s twenty-six income groups – will form the basis in this book for looking at people according to their status.
THE GREAT
‘The great’ are not merely rich, they are the people with the highest status in the two realms. Their ranks include the nobility – all the lords who are entitled to attend the English and Scottish Parliaments by hereditary succession, plus the English, Welsh and Scottish bishops – together with those gentlemen who enjoy the dignity of a baronetcy or a personal knighthood. These titles are highly regarded and convey a precise legal status. For example, along with the right to attend Parliament, a nobleman is entitled to be tried by his peers for a crime, and cannot be imprisoned for debt. In 1676 there are eleven English dukes (the highest rank), three marquesses, sixty-six earls, eleven viscounts and sixty-five barons – a total of 156 secular lords – in addition to the twenty-six English and Welsh bishops.20 Scotland has a similar hierarchy of nobles, although there are fewer of them: there are just four non-royal Scottish dukes in 1676. ‘The great’ is therefore a tiny group, relatively speaking. In England, according to Gregory King, all the lords, bishops, baronets and knights together number just 1,586: about 0.03 per cent of the population. Yet this group has an average income per head in excess of £1,000 per year and holds the title deeds to considerably more than half of Great Britain. Some lords are far wealthier. The duke of Newcastle, Henry Cavendish, has an annual income of £11,344; and George Villiers, second duke of Buckingham, is worth about £19,000 per year in the late 1660s. That doesn’t stop them squandering the lot. The duke of Newcastle manages to accumulate debts amounting to £72,580 by the time of his death in 1691. The duke of Buckingham too loses most of his fortune, so in 1671 he places what remains in a trust, in return for a fixed allowance of £5,000 per year. The fifth earl of Bedford, who is created the first duke of Bedford in 1694, is far more careful with his income, which fluctuates between £10,000 and £14,000 in his youth; as a result of his prudence, it has risen to about £20,000 per year by the time he dies in 1700.21
Another thing you may have noticed from Gregory King’s schedule of incomes is the importance of the household in understanding the social order. Often you will hear lords and ladies use the word ‘family’ to describe their household, meaning all the servants as well as the children, which gives you an idea of how tightly knit large households are. Unsurprisingly, the nobility have the most servants, and of course the greatest of ‘the great’ have the most of all. For them, even leaving the house or going to the loo requires staff. The average of forty people per household given by Gregory King masks the fact that some dukes and earls have eighty or ninety men and women on the payroll. In the households of some dukes and earls, the principal servants have their own servants. Most knights and baronets with £1,000 per year employ between twenty and thirty staff, incurring a wage bill of about £200. At Woburn Abbey, the earl of Bedford pays between £600 and £700 in salaries to a staff of forty people.22 This includes a team of a dozen footmen all dressed in his livery of ‘broadcloth lined with orange baize’ – a sign of conspicuous consumption that truly reflects what Defoe means when he says the great ‘live profusely’.
As you would expect, ‘the great’ have the best of everything, especially those things that are tangible and long-lasting – the best art collections, the best libraries, the best suites of furniture and the best collections of houses. Yes, collections of houses. Many among ‘the great’ have inherited a string of country seats. The duke of Beaufort has twelve in 1680; the duke of Norfolk ten. Although many of these are unoccupied and some are in ruins – being damp castles no longer fit to house a nobleman’s family – they nevertheless attest to the greatness of their owner’s authority. The indefatigable Lady Anne Clifford, eventual heiress to the earldom of Westmorland, has five castles in her domain: she repairs them all and resides in them, proudly reminding everyone of her ancestors’ personal rule over the region. Most of the men in this category will have at least two houses: a London residence as well as a country seat. When they move from one to the other, their whole household (or the major part thereof ) packs everything up and accompanies them. Call in at Bedford House on the south side of Covent Garden in the 1660s when the earl of Bedford is not at home and you will find no one there, except for a housekeeper, a watchman and a gardener. It is quite an eerie feeling, walking through room after room in a grand house when the family is away, hearing the echo of your footsteps on th
e floorboards.
THE RICH
When we talk of ‘the rich’ as a group, we are talking about two sorts of people. First, those who make money exploiting their own talents; and second, those who inherit a large estate and receive hundreds of pounds in rent, regardless of whether or not they have any talents. It might surprise you that, in Restoration Britain, those without talent are accorded the higher status of the two.
Let’s begin with this second group, the untitled landed gentry. Here we have a large number of gentlemen and esquires (an esquire being a gentleman entitled to bear a coat of arms) with average incomes of £280 and £450 respectively, according to Gregory King. In reality, those who may be classed among ‘the rich’ have a vast range of fortunes. At the top end of the scale are a few dozen esquires who can afford to buy out two or three baronets. At the bottom there are country yeomen who rent out their lands to others to farm and thus are called ‘gentle’ by their neighbours, on account of the fact that they do no manual work; their incomes may be as little as £100 per year. Approximately 10 per cent of Gregory King’s 15,000 gentlemen and esquires enjoy £1,000 per year or more. Such men are more like the heads of landowning corporations than individuals: when they die, their heirs simply take over the running of the estate. But whether their incomes are £100 or £10,000, they are all officially recognised in that, as substantial freeholders, they are entitled to vote for a county Member of Parliament.