DURING THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES. 133 



the hundred of Wye are lost with the exception of peas, beans, 

 and tares, and a tenth hundred, which must have been very 

 small, is omitted, as the entry of the name is lost. It is only 

 credited with 552 souls, and has 143.6 wheat, 140 barley, 540 

 oats, and iz\ quarters of peas, beans, and vetches. The reader 

 will perceive that no rye is grown in any of these hundreds. I 

 have observed more than once that wheat was the ordinary food 

 of the English people, as beer was their ordinary drink. 



Now at this time, beyond doubt, Kent was one of the most 

 thriving and populous parts of England, and these hundreds, which 

 are in the south-east of Kent, are in the richest agricultural 

 district of that county and in immediate proximity to those 

 parts of the continent with which the principal English business 

 was carried on. The nine hundreds contain no large town, 

 and contained none then. They are fair specimens of what in 

 the Middle Ages was the wealthiest part of agricultural England, 

 though other callings were at that time carried on there, and 

 they are entirely agricultural now. The reader will observe that 

 the population of the hundreds in the first half of the sixteenth 

 century was almost exactly one-sixth of that at which it stands 

 at present. Such a proportion of population would, I believe, 

 represent pretty faithfully the hypothesis which I alleged before. 

 It must however be remembered that the population in the 

 sixteenth century was almost entirely rural, and that there were 

 only a few towns of any size, London perhaps containing 

 80,000 persons in the year of the Spanish Armada, to judge 

 from an estimate of the able-bodied men within it, made for 

 the use of Burleigh and printed among his papers, and the 

 remaining towns, as Bristol, Norwich, and Newcastle-on-Tyne, 

 being comparatively small places. In the early period there 

 are nearly 11.08 acres to each inhabitant, in the year 1871 

 about 1.86 acres to each inhabitant. 



It does not appear distinctly that the quantities of corn are 

 the actual produce of the several hundreds during the past 

 harvest. I am disposed to believe that they are estimates made 

 at some period intermediate to the harvest which had been 



