The same causes that operated to bring about these changes in the whole kingdom were of course also at work in the case of the City of London.
One of the earliest statements as to the population of London occurs in a letter of about the year 1199 written to Pope Innocent III. by Peter of Blois, then archdeacon of London, and therefore a man of some authority on the subject. He states that the City contained 120 parish churches and 40,000 inhabitants. These numbers have been very generally accepted as fairly correct, and Dr Creighton[1] comes to the conclusion after careful consideration that the population of London from the reign of Richard I. to that of Henry VII. varied within a limit of about forty to fifty thousand inhabitants.
Dr Creighton points out that the number given by certain chroniclers of the deaths from the early pestilences in London are incredible; such for instance as the statement that forty or fifty thousand bodies were buried in Charterhouse churchyard at the time of the Black Death in 1348–1349. Plagues and Mortality. These numbers have been taken as a basis for calculation of population, and one statistician reasoned that if 50,000 were buried in one churchyard 100,000 should represent the whole mortality of London. If this were allowed the population at this time must have been at least 200,000, an impossible amount.
Although the mortality caused by the different plagues had a great effect upon the population of the country at large the city soon recovered the losses by reason of the numbers who came to London from outside in hopes of obtaining work. Although there were fluctuations in the numbers at different periods there is evidence to show that on the average the amount of forty to fifty thousand fixed by Dr Creighton for the years between 1189 and 1509 is fairly correct. The medieval period closed with the accession of the Tudor dynasty, and from that time the population of London continued to increase, in spite of attempts by the government to prevent it. One of the first periods of increase was after the dissolution of the religious houses; another period of increase was after the Restoration.
A proclamation was issued in 1580 prohibiting the erection within 3 m. of the city gates of any new houses or tenements “where no former house hath been known to have been.” In a subsequent proclamation Queen Elizabeth commanded that only one family should live in one house, that empty houses erected within seven years were not to be let and that unfinished buildings on new foundations were to be pulled down. In spite of these restrictions London continued to grow. James I. and Charles I. were filled with the same fear of the increasing growth of London. In 1630 a similar proclamation to that of 1580 was published. During the greater part of the 18th century there was a serious check to the increase of population, but at the end of the century a considerable increase occurred, and in the middle of the 19th century the enormous annual increase became particularly marked. To return to the 16th century when the Bills of Mortality came into existence.[2] Mention is made of these bills as early as 1517, but the earliest series now Bills of Mortality. known dates from 1532. Dr Creighton had access to the manuscript returns of burials and christenings for five years from 1578 to 1582 preserved in the library at Hatfield House. The history of the Bills of Mortality which in the early years were intermittent in their publication is of much interest, and Dr Creighton has stated it with great clearness. The Company of Parish Clerks is named in an ordinance of 1581 (of which there is a copy in the Record Office) as the body responsible for the bills, and their duties were then said to be “according to the Order in that behalf heretofore provided.” John Bell, clerk to the company, who wrote an essay during the great plague of 1665, had no records in his office of an earlier date than 1593, and he was not aware that his company had been engaged in registering births and deaths before that year. The fire of 1666 destroyed all the documents of the Parish Clerks Company, and in its hall in Silver Street only printed tables from about the year 1700 are to be found. There is a set of Annual Bills from 1658 (with the exception of the years 1756 to 1764) in the library of the British Museum.[3]
These bills were not analysed and general results obtained from them until 1662, when Captain John Graunt first published his valuable Natural and Political Observations upon the Bills of Mortality. Sir William Petty followed with his important inquiries upon the population (Essay on Political Arithmetic, 1683).
It is not worth while to refer to all the wild guesses that were made by various writers, but Dr Creighton shows the absurdity of one of these calculations made in 1554 by Soranzo, the Venetian ambassador for the information of the doge and senators of Venice. He estimates the population to have been 180,000 persons, which Dr Creighton affirms to be nearly three times the number that we obtain by a moderate calculation from the bills of mortality in 1532 and 1535.
Following on his calculations from 1509, when the population may be supposed to have been about 50,000, Dr Creighton carries on his numbers to the Restoration in the following Population in 16th and 17th centuries.table:—
| 1532–1535 | 62,400 | 1605 | 224,275 |
| 1563 | 93,276 | 1622 | 272,207 |
| 1580 | 123,034 | 1634 | 339,824 |
| 1593–1595 | 152,478 | 1661 | 460,000 |
The numbers for 1661 are those arrived at by Graunt, and they are just about half the population given authoritatively in the first census 1801 (864,845). It therefore took 140 years to double the numbers, while in 1841 the numbers of 1801 were more than doubled.
These numbers were arrived at with much care and may be considered as fairly accurate although some other calculations conflict with a few of the figures. The first attempt at a census was in August 1631 when the lord mayor returned the number of mouths in the city of London and Liberties at 130,268, which is only about half the number given above. This is accounted for by the larger area contained in the bills of mortality compared with that containing only the city and its liberties.[4] Howell’s suggestion that the population of London in 1631 was a million and a half need only be mentioned as a specimen of the wildest of guesses.
Petty’s numbers for 1682 are 670,000 and those of Gregory King for 1696, 530,000. The latter are corroborated by those of 1700, which are given as 550,000. Maitland gives the numbers in 1737 as 725,903. With regard to the relative size of 18th century. great cities Petty affirms that before the Restoration the people of Paris were more in number than those of London and Dublin, whereas in 1687 the people of London were more than those of Paris and Rome or of Paris and Rouen.
It is not necessary to give any further numbers for the population of the 18th century, as that has been already stated to have been almost stationary. This is proved by Gregory King’s figures for 1696 (530,000) when compared with those of the first census for 1801 (864,035). A corroboration is also to be found in the report of the first census for 1801, where a calculation is made of the probable population of the years 1700 and 1750. These are given respectively as 674,350 and 676,250. These figures include (1) the City of London within and (2) without the walls, (3) the City and Liberties of Westminster, (4) the outparishes within the bills of mortality and (5) the parishes not within the bills of mortality. No. 5 is given as 9150 in 1700, and 22,350 in 1750. It is curious to find that already in the 18th century a considerable reduction in the numbers of the city of London is supposed to have taken place, as is seen in the following figures:—
| 1700. | 1750. | |
| City of London within the walls | 139,300 | 87,000 |
| City of London without the walls | 69,000 | 57,300 |
As the increase in Westminster is not great (130,000 in 1700 and 152,000 in 1750) and there is little difference in the totals it will be seen that the amount is chiefly made up by the increase in the parishes without the bills of mortality. The extraordinary growth of London did not come into existence until about the middle of the 19th century (see § IV. above).
Government
We know little of the government of London during the Saxon period, and it is only incidentally that we learn how the Londoner had become possessed of special privileges which he continued to claim with success through many centuries. Saxon Period. One of the chief of these was the claim to a separate voice in the election of the king. The citizens did not dispute the right of election by the kingdom but they held that that election did not necessarily include the choice of London.
An instance of this is seen in the election of Edmund Ironside, although the Witan outside London had elected Canute. The remarkable instance of this after the Conquest was the election of Stephen, but William the Conqueror did not feel secure until he had the sanction of the Londoners to his kingship, and his attitude towards London when he hovered about the neighbourhood of the city for a time shows that he was anxious to obtain this sanction freely rather than by compulsion. His hopes and expectations were fulfilled when
- ↑ In a valuable paper on “The Population of Old London” in Blackwood’s Magazine for April 1891.
- ↑ The old Bills of Mortality, although of value from being the only authority on the subject, were never complete owing to various causes: one being that large numbers of Roman Catholics and Dissenters were not registered in the returns of the parish clerk who was a church officer. The bills were killed by the action of the Registration Act for England and Wales, which came into operation July 1, 1837. The Weekly Returns of the Registrar-General began in 1840.
- ↑ “The invention of ‘bills of mortality’ is not so modern as has been generally supposed, for their proper designation may be found in the language of ancient Rome. Libitina was the goddess of funerals; her officers were the Libitinarii our undertakers; her temple in which all business connected with the last rites was transacted, in which the account of deaths—ratio Libitinae—was kept, served the purpose of a register office.”—Journal Statistical Society, xvii. 117 (1854).
- ↑ The return was made “by special command from the Right Honourable the Lords of His Majesty’s Privy Council.” The Privy Council were at this time apprehensive of an approaching scarcity of food. The numbers (130,268) were made up as follows: London Within the Walls 71,029, London Without the Walls 40,579, Old Borough of Southwark (Bridge Without) 18,660.
