Il.—Poll Tax Account for the County of Cornwall, 51st Edward III, 
A.D. 1377, with remarks thereon by SiR JOHN MACLEAN, F.S.A., 
Honorary Member of the Royal Institution of Cornwall. 
Read at the Spring Meeting, May 23, 1871. 
Wises: the beginning of the present Century no regular system 
of numbering the people was adopted in this Country.* In 
medizval times the most profound ignorance existed upon statis- 
tical subjects, so profound that when in the forty-fifth year of 
King Edward III. it was found necessary to grant the King a 
subsidy of £50,000 it was directed to be collected by an assess- 
ment of 22s. 3d. upon every parish, on a presumption that the 
parishes in England amounted to 45,000, whereas they were 
hardly a fifth of that number; and this amazing mistake was not 
discovered until after the parliament had been dissolved.t Even at 
the end of the 18th Century a controversy of some duration had ex- 
isted as to the increase or diminution of the population, and in the 
year 1800 an Act of Parliament was passed “ for taking an account 
of the population of Great Britain, and of the increase or diminution 
thereof.” This was carried into effect in March, 1801, in so far as it 
regarded the enumeration of houses, families, and persons. This 
Census forms the basis of our Population Returns, and the process 
having been repeated at the seven subsequent decennial periods 
(the eighth enumeration having recently taken place) affords us the 
means of comparison of the extent of the growth of the population 
= In America and France enumerations were made a few years earlier. 
In the former Country in 1790, and in the latter the following year. 
We are aware of the table given by Davies Gilbert in which is shewn 
the population of the County in 1700 and 1750. The authority for it was 
unknown, however, to that Author, and until the numbers shall have been 
authenticated, they cannot be relied upon. (Vide Hist. Cornw., Appx. ii, 
Vol. iv, p. 178). 
. + Hallam’s Middle Ages, Vol. ii, 179. 
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