ABSTRACT
During the seven centuries that separated the Norman conquest from the Declaration of Independence by the United States, the population of England probably multiplied by six or seven, growing from a little more than 1 million to more than 7 million inhabitants. But the progression was irregular, consisting not only of many short-term fluctuations but also of two long cycles-an increase up to the Black Death, slump, then prolonged stagnation, sharp recovery from the end of the fifteenth century and growth up to around 1640–50, stagnation or slow growth at the end of the seventeenth century and beginning of the eighteenth, finally a fresh jump leading to the fastest rate of growth ever known in Britain, that of the nineteenth century. In only 110 years, from 1801, the year of the first census, to 1911, her population almost quadrupled, and within the span of Victoria’s reign it rather more than doubled, with a continuous rise as demonstrated by table 3 1 .
