Family limitation in pre-industrial England: a reappraisal.

Abstract

T HE causes and nature of British population growth in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries have been debated for nearly two decades. The relative importance of changes in the birth-rate and death-rate has been one of the principal disputes. Two major sides of this altercation have been represented by the demographic transition theorists and E. A. Wrigley, with his work on preventive checks. According to the traditional view of the demographic transition theorists there for keeping population in line with resources.' The first stage of this Malthusian-type mechanism the age and extent of marriage. If resources were scarce, marriages were delayed, there were greater number of never-married adults, and the population growth slowed or ceased. However, when changes in the age and length of marriage were insufficient to hold the population in line with resources, the death rate which varied and by its variation determined the size of the population; it variations in the death rate which adjusted the population to the means available for supporting human life.2 However, others such as E. A. Wrigley have attempted to demonstrate the importance of preventive checks. Wrigley states that more commonly societies adopted modes of behaviour which reduced fertility in such way as to produce point of balance between births and deaths some way short of the maximum possible.3 Wrigley's contribution has been perhaps the most significant development in the British demographic revolution controversy, as well as the most damaging to the demographic transition theorists. His principal findings (based largely on his family reconstruction research into the Devonshire village of Colyton) can be summarized as follows. Dividing the period into three parts (I560-i646, i647-I7I9, I720-I837), he finds relatively much lower fertility in the middle sub-period. Colyton's population history, then, was very varied during these three centuries. The changes in fertility which occurred are especially striking. . . The new pattern established itself very quickly after i647 in Colyton. The change abrupt and decisive.4 This suggests to Wrigley that a very flexible response to economic and social