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 intelli-
gent 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 a very small increase, but there
were important changes in its distribution; East Anglia had
a declining population; the West Country and South and
East Midlands were fairly static, so was the East Riding and
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 late seventeenth
century was maintained. These changes were due to the
growth of towns and industrial villages. London exceeded
half a million; Bristol passed Norwich and may have reached
its 50,000 in this period. Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield,
Leeds, Halifax, Birmingham and Coventry all ceased to be
the sprawling villages they had been half a century earlier,
although, as towns, they were small by modern standards,
none of them reaching 50,000. Small as they were, they ate
up men, women and children and their population was only
maintained, let alone increased, by a steady immigration
from the country and in the north-west from Ireland.

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