England in Eighteenth Century (1714-1815)

USED BOOK. MAY CONTAIN MARK-UP

By J. H. Plumb

FROM CHAPTER 1: “England in 1714 was a land of hamlets and villages: its towns, such as it had, were on the coast. In Lancashire, the West Riding, and West Midlands towns of some size and substance were beginning to grow, but the majority of the population was still in the south and still rural. Estimates of population vary because the evidence is unreliable. Until the last decades of the century, it is largely a matter of intelligent guesswork. The population was probably, in 1714, about five and a half millions, and from 1714 to 1742, after an initial spurt, there was only avery small increase, but there were important changes in its distribution; East Anglia had a declining population; the West Country and South and East Midlands werefairly static, so was the East Ridinga n d all of the north but Tyneside, West Riding, and South Lan- cashire, where the increase was marked; so, too, was the increase in the West Midlands. Surrey and Middlesex grew with London, whose rapid expansion of the lateseventeenth century was maintained.”

London. Pelican. 1955. 220p.