The Black Death in English towns

Abstract

It seems likely that historians in the past have seriously underestimated the number of English townsmen in the early fourteenth century. In London alone there may have been 80–100,000 around 1300. The population of Norwich in the early fourteenth century was higher than used to be thought, and it was growing: Rutledge proposes 17,000 for 1311 and 25,000 for 1333. Keene's estimate of about 10,000 for Winchester in the early fourteenth century can serve as a basis for estimating the population of other towns in the same period. Those whose taxable value in 1334, and whose contribution to the poll tax of 1377, was at least as great as Winchester's, probably had a population equal to Winchester's or greater around 1300. By this argument about fifteen towns, including London, are likely to have had 10,000 or more people at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and perhaps 5 per cent of England's population lived in towns of this rank. Estimates taking account of smaller towns are much more precarious, but it is possible that all told 10 per cent of England's population lived in towns of over 2,000 inhabitants and that a further 5 per cent lived in small boroughs, some with as few as 300 people. Even this estimate does not take account of many small market towns, not described as boroughs, that had elementary urban characteristics.