The Reign of Henry the Eighth | Page 9

of this country, such as it
was before the movements of the sixteenth century, and during the
process of those movements.
The extent of the population can only be rudely conjectured. A rough
census was taken at the time of the Armada, when it was found to be
something under five millions; but anterior to this I can find no
authority on which I can rely with any sort of confidence. It is my
impression, however, from a number of reasons--each in itself
insignificant, but which taken together leave little doubt upon my
mind--that it had attained that number by a growth so slow as to be
scarcely perceptible, and had nearly approached to it many generations
before. Simon Fish, in The Supplication of Beggars,[1] says that the
number of households in England in 1531 was 520,000. His calculation
is of the most random kind; for he rates the number of parishes at
52,000, with ten households on an average in each parish. A mistake so
preposterous respecting the number of parishes shows the great
ignorance of educated men upon the subject. The ten households in
each parish may, probably (in some parts of the country), have been a
correct computation; but this tells us little with respect to the aggregate

numbers, for the households were very large--the farmers, and the
gentlemen also, usually having all the persons whom they employed
residing under their own roof. Neither from this, therefore, nor from
any other positive statement which I have seen, can I gather any
conclusion that may be depended upon. But when we remember the
exceeding slowness with which the population multiplied in a time in
which we can accurately measure it--that is to say, from 1588 to the
opening of the last century--under circumstances in every way more
favourable to an increase, I think we may assume that the increase was
not so great between 1500 and 1588, and that, previous to 1500, it did
not more than keep pace with the waste from civil and foreign war. The
causes, indeed, were wholly wanting which lead to a rapid growth of
numbers. Numbers now increase with the increase of employment and
with the facilities which are provided by the modern system of labour
for the establishment of independent households. At present, any
able-bodied unskilled labourer earns, as soon as he has arrived at man's
estate, as large an amount of wages as he will earn at any subsequent
time; and having no connection with his employer beyond the receiving
the due amount of weekly money from him, and thinking himself as
well able to marry as he is likely to be, he takes a wife, and is usually
the father of a family before he is thirty. Before the Reformation, not
only were early marriages determinately discouraged, but the
opportunity for them did not exist. A labourer living in a cottage by
himself was a rare exception to the rule; and the work of the field was
performed generally, as it now is in the large farms in America and
Australia, by servants who lived in the families of the squire or the
farmer, and who, while in that position, commonly remained single,
and married only when by prudence they had saved a sufficient sum to
enable them to enter some other position.
Checked by circumstances of this kind, population would necessarily
remain almost stationary, and a tendency to an increase was not of itself
regarded by the statesmen of the day as any matter for congratulation or
as any evidence of national prosperity. Not an increase of population,
which would facilitate production and beat down wages by competition,
but the increase of the commonwealth, the sound and healthy
maintenance of the population already existing, were the chief objects

which the government proposed to itself; and although Henry VIII.
carefully nursed his manufactures, there is sufficient proof in the
grounds alleged for the measures to which he resorted, that there was
little redundancy of occupation.
In a statute, for instance, for the encouragement of the linen
manufactures, it is said[2] that--"The King's Highness, calling to his
most blessed remembrance the great number of idle people daily
increasing throughout this his Realm, supposeth that one great cause
thereof is by the continued bringing into the same the great number of
wares and merchandise made, and brought out and from, the parts
beyond the sea into this his Realm, ready wrought by manual
occupation; amongst the which wares one kind of merchandise in great
quantity, which is linen cloth of divers sorts made in divers countries
beyond the sea, is daily conveyed into this Realm; which great quantity
of linen cloth so brought is consumed and spent within the same; by
reason whereof not only the said strange countries where the said linen