Chris Briggs

What do you know about population change in the English Middle Ages (c.1000-c.1500 AD)? Quite possibly, you have an inkling that the couple of centuries or so following the arrival of the Normans in 1066 were an era of steady growth in numbers. Almost certainly you know that that growth came to a juddering halt in the middle of the 14th century with the Black Death of 1348-9, and further outbreaks of plague and epidemic disease in the decades that followed. 

Agricultural labourers, 15th century. Source: Wikimedia.

But what about the mechanisms of change: patterns of births (fertility), deaths (mortality), and migration? These are the central concerns of demographers, but they become murky matters when we try to go back before 1500. The limitations of the medieval sources make it hard to speak with confidence on some of the most important questions about demographic behaviour in this early period.  

Yet substantial progress has been made over the last 60 years or so, thanks in no small part to work done within Campop. An especially significant contribution has been made by the Group’s former Director, Professor Richard Smith, and several of his former graduate students, most notably L.R. Poos and P.J.P. Goldberg. 

This body of research suggests, in essence, that medieval marriage, fertility, and household and family structure was much more like that of later periods, and indeed more like that of the modern world, than was previously thought. 

Early modern research

As described in a previous blog, the average age at first marriage was relatively high for both men and women in the British past, and the proportion of people who never married was also relatively high, with between 15 and 20 percent of women remaining unmarried in their 40s. This pattern – known as the European Marriage Pattern (EMP) – has been traced back into the 17th century. 

Campop’s work on parish registers of baptisms, marriages and burials, which survive for the period from 1538, showed how T.R. Malthus’s ‘preventive check’ operated in early modern England. Marriage, which was not universal, was delayed until economic opportunity allowed, which (given most childbearing occurred within marriage) in turn shaped population trends. 

Campop’s research also demonstrated the prevalence of small, nuclear households in the past, as opposed to complex multigenerational ones; the ubiquity of the institution of servanthood, which saw unmarried young people leave their homes to live and work with their employers and accumulate savings; and the general tendency for the establishment of a new household upon marriage. 

Wedding of Louis X of France and Clemance Hongrie (1315). Source: Wikimedia.

Contemplating these findings, scholars interested in earlier periods asked: how far could similar structures be traced in the era before parish registers? Was medieval demographic behaviour fundamentally different, as had often been assumed – or could the EMP be traced back into the Middle Ages? 

The questions were clear. Finding the sources with which to answer them systematically for the period before parish registers was a different matter. 

Very challenging sources

Quite often, medieval records say a lot about just one or two places, and require us to try to work out how typical or otherwise they may be of an entire region or country. The inventories of male serfs (unfree tenants) and their offspring produced in the 1260s by Spalding Priory (Lincolnshire) for three of their nearby manors are a good example of this. These lists reveal the priory’s desire to track the valuable ‘human capital’ on its estate. They tell us about the whereabouts and occupations of many of the children of serfs, male and female. They also indicate their marital status, and so can be used, for instance, to estimate the proportions married. 

Court Roll for the Court of Eusace Grenville in Wotten Underwood, Buckinghamshire (1431). Source: Wikipedia.

Another source that has been prominent in medieval demographic studies is the manorial court roll. This is the record of the manor court, a legal tribunal held by a landlord for his tenants and other local people. In the fullest and most complete series, such as those of Redgrave and Rickinghall (Suffolk) used by Richard Smith, the names of hundreds of peasants appear. There are dozens of data points for the best recorded individuals.  

Of course, not everyone in a community appears in the court roll, and women are under-recorded. Despite this, attempts have been made to produce a complete ‘reconstitution’ of the population of a manor, along the lines of those undertaken for the early modern era using parish registers. These have then been used to calculate a variety of demographic measures. Court rolls also often include records of the ‘merchet’ fine, which serfs had to pay for permission to marry. This has obvious value for studies of marriage and fertility. 

Court rolls tell us about change over time, unlike our third source, the returns to the three poll taxes of 1377, 1379, and 1380-81. These essentially function as a snapshot of conditions in post– Black Death England.  

The poll tax is famous as the trigger for the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. Yet for medieval demographic historians, its richly detailed records are most prized for the information they hold on taxpayers, their marital and familial relationships, and their occupations. The three poll taxes were payable by all lay people, male and female. They basically excluded only children and the truly indigent. The best returns are thus somewhat less affected by the problems of omission that bedevil most medieval sources. 

Findings 

All these sources have been used by demographic historians for purposes that were never originally intended. To deploy them effectively requires the researcher to combine the archival skills of the medieval historian, with the technical know-how of the demographer. Not surprisingly, therefore, work on these materials has been replete with methodological debate. 

Any simplified summary of ‘findings’ comes with a health warning, since in medieval demographic history, the uncertainties and margins for error are higher than usual. Logic, inference, and comparison with better documented periods and places are as important as hard evidence. 

That said, there exists a substantial body of work produced by Campop that has helped to push back the evidence for the European Marriage Pattern into the pre-1500 period.  

Detail of an historiated initial ‘S’ of a man placing a ring on a woman’s finger. 14th century. British Library Royal MS 6 E VI, fol. 104. Source: Wikimedia.

For instance, work by Smith and others on the 1377 poll tax revealed that around 60 percent of females were married. Similar proportions were found in analysis of the Spalding serf registers of around a century earlier. These figures are close to the proportions of persons identified as married in studies of household listings of the 17th century.  

A good deal of this medieval demographic work also focused on servants, both male and female. Their numerical presence in the 14th–century poll tax returns was again like that found in the early modern evidence. In 1377, for instance, some 20 percent of households in the county of Rutland possessed servants. 

The picture that emerged from Campop’s work was more robust for the period after the watershed of the Black Death, thanks largely to the availability of the poll taxes. The period before 1348 is generally more obscure. Smith in particular expressed serious doubts about the likelihood of being ever being able to calculate crucial measures of fertility, especially marriage ages. It was argued that there were simply too many unknowns affecting the merchet fines contained in the manorial court rolls. 

Nonetheless, by the end of the 1980s, a coherent case had emerged for the existence of the European Marriage Pattern and its related household structures in England before 1500, and possibly before 1300. 

Lying behind all this work was the idea of a demographic regime in which marriage, reproduction and the formation of new households was shaped by economic opportunities – including work opportunities for women – in a way that differed from southern and eastern regions of Europe. It had potentially huge implications for understanding long-term patterns of economic growth. 

Not everyone agreed, of course. Zvi Razi, in a ground-breaking 1980 study of court rolls, presented a different picture of medieval English demography. His ‘reconstitution’ of the population of Halesowen in the west midlands revealed a ‘high pressure’ demographic regime of high fertility and mortality, comparatively early marriage, and large and complex households. Debate ensued about how far Razi’s findings showed genuine regional differences, as opposed to flawed assumptions about the capacity of his court rolls to support demographic analysis. 

The formal part of the medieval marriage ceremony often took place in a church porch like this late fifteenth-century example at Aylsham, Norfolk. Source: Wikimedia.

Recent work

The pioneering studies described above were mostly undertaken 30 and more years ago. The pace of fertility-focused research in medieval demography has slowed since the 1990s, both in Campop and elsewhere.  

This is partly the result of the abovementioned scarcity and difficulties of the surviving sources, and the technical demands on the researcher. Nonetheless, some important work has come out recently, undertaken not within Campop, but inspired by its approach and findings.  

This includes Judith Bennett’s study of the EMP and its origins based on a reappraisal of the Spalding Priory registers, and an investigation of the relationship between fertility and living standards by Kelly and Ó Gráda. In both cases Campop’s arguments about the early existence of the EMP and the importance of the preventive check receive support. 

Despite the challenges, exciting questions and opportunities in this field remain. 

And finally: what about mortality…? 

Readers may be puzzled as to why a blog on medieval population history has said so little about plague, disease, and early death. The answer is partly that the aim here has been to emphasize the importance and creativity of work on marriage and fertility, even if it is so frustratingly difficult to study.  

Medieval deaths are certainly much better recorded than marriages and births. And plenty of scholars would argue that it is changes on the mortality side that are key to understanding medieval population dynamics. But that, as they say, is another story – or another blog.

Further reading

Judith M. Bennett, ‘Wretched girls, wretched boys and the European Marriage Pattern in England (c.1250-1350)’, Continuity and Change, 34 (2019), 315-47. 

 P.J.P. Goldberg, Medieval England: a social history 1250-1550 (2004), chapter 6. 

 Andrew Hinde, England’s population. A history since the Domesday survey (2003), Part I. 

 Morgan Kelly and Cormac Ó Gráda, ‘The preventive check in medieval and preindustrial England’, Journal of Economic History, 72 (2012), 1015-35. 

 L.R. Poos, A rural society after the Black Death: Essex 1350-1525 (1991). 

 Richard Smith, ‘Some emerging issues in the demography of medieval England and prospects for their future investigation’, Local Population Studies, 100 (2018), 13-24.