Some Evidence of the Thirteenth Century Population Increase

Abstract

It is now a commonplace of medieval social history that the thirteenth century was a period of an upward demographic trend but it seems equally commonplace to underestimate the steepness of this rise and the population level actually reached. Professor Postan has long ago suggested 1 that the rural population of England at the end of the thirteenth century must have been comparable to, and possibly greater than, that of the early eighteenth century. I understand that his forthcoming study will contain evidence of the 'chevagia garcionum' on the estates of Glastonbury Abbey, and other estates, in the thirteenth century showing how steep the population climb during that century must have been. Most recently Mr Hallam has shown that the thirteenth century population of the Lincolnshire fenland was as high as, or higher than, that recorded in the nineteenth century censuses.2 The Winchester Account Rolls contain a wealth of information all pointing in the direction of a rapid increase of population up to about I 3I5 and to a state of acute relative overpopulation on most manors well before that date. Like other collections of this kind, however, they contain very little direct population data capable of statistical treatment. It is therefore most gratifying to come across a piece of evidence which is not only illustrative of the population change over the century but which is also in full agreement with the findings of Professor Postan and Mr Hallam for other parts of the country. On all the manors of the bishopric a twice-yearly fine, ad Hundredum Sancti Martini and ad Hundredum de Hockeday, usually called tithingspeny (but referred to at times as certus visus, pro occasions relaxata, etc.) was collected from a very early date. On all the manors but one these fines were conventionalized from the very beginning of our series, for the amounts collected remained unchanged throughout. On the Somerset manor of Taunton, however, only the Hockeday fine was conventionalized and fixed; the other payment, the hundredpenny collected at Saint Martin's, varied from year to year and was obviously not a commuted fine but an actual payment from a varying number of persons. Not only do the figures fluctuate but the trend rises in a way precluding the possibility of a sudden change in the basis of the individual contributions either with regard to their incidence or their magnitude. The nature of the hundredpenny payment is well known; it was a payment of a penny from every male person over twelve years of age paid at the view of