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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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population
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Population figures for any period before the 19C are academic guesses, achieved for the early centuries by calculating a total from surviving scraps of isolated evidence and later through the registration of baptisms and burials. It is usually said that the population of England in the late 11C, at the time of the *Domesday Book, was a little over one million; that it grew to about 4m by 1300, before being greatly reduced in the 1340s by the *Black Death; that it did not recover to the 4m level until the mid-16C; and that it reached nearly 5m by 1600, and 6m by 1700.
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The first *census to count the population was taken in 1801. It gave a figure of nearly 9m for England and Wales, with another 1.6m in Scotland. By 1851 the population had doubled: there were 18m people in England and Wales and nearly 3m in Scotland; Northern Ireland (not counted in 1801) added almost 1.5m making a total of over 22m in the area of the present UK. This had almost doubled again by 1901, with a UK figure of more than 38m. Growth during the 20C has been much slower, with an increase of less than 50% in 90 years, to reach 56.5m in the census of 1991.
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