Page:William Petty - Economic Writings (1899) vol 1.djvu/93

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On the Bills of Mortality.
lxxxv

of importance was made in the area or in the composition of this group of parishes, save that the weekly bills from September, 1666, to May, 1669 have, instead of ninety-seven parishes, "the 16 parishes (now standing) within the walls."

The second of the three groups formed in 1604 included the parishes without the walls, but partly within the liberties of the city. Thirteen of these were within the bills in 1597. In 1604 there were added St Bartholomew the Great, Bridewell Precinct, and Trinity in the Minories, making up the "sixteen parishes without the walls, standing part within the Liberties and part without, in Middlesex and Surrey." This group, enumerated by Graunt on pages 340—341, remained unaltered until 1673, when its area was diminished by the transfer of part of St Saviour's parish, under the name of Christ Church, Surrey, to the group of twelve out-parishes then existing[1].

The third of the groups of parishes instituted in 1604 has a more varied history. Consisting originally of the eight "out parishes" first brought within the bills in 1604, it was enlarged, in 1606, by the addition of St Mary, Savoy, making the "Nine out Parishes in Middlesex and Surrey" which Graunt names on page 341. In 1647 the number of parishes but not the area of this group was further increased by the introduction into the bills of St Paul, Covent Garden[2], taken, Graunt says[3], out of St Giles and St Martin.

In addition to these three groups—the parishes within the walls, the parishes without the walls but at least partly within the liberties, and the parishes in Middlesex and Surrey, situated without the liberties but adjacent to London—the bills also included, after 1626, the city of Westminster, which was, for this purpose, reckoned as St Margaret parish. During the plague of 1636 there were added[4] the six circumjacent parishes of Islington, Hackney, Stepney, Rotherhithe, Newington, and Lambeth, thus raising the total number of parishes within the bills to one hundred and twenty-nine or, after 1647, to one hundred and thirty. This is the classification of parishes which Graunt has in view in his discussion of the growth of the city[5] .

  1. See below p. lxxxvi.
  2. The Act erecting this parish passed the House of Commons 7 January, 1645. Commons' Journal, iv. 398.
  3. P. 380.
  4. In the weekly bill of 14—21 April, see p. 344—345 and table at p. 426.
  5. Chapter ix. pp. 378—381 post.