THE POPULATION OF SANDWICH FROM THE
ACCESSION OF ELIZABETH I TO THE CIVIL
WAR
JANE ANDREW ES AND MICHAEL ZELL
Sandwich was a flourishing market town and port during the middle
ages. It was at the height of its prosperity during the thirteenth
century, when it was the largest trading port outside of London and an
important naval base. This prosperity was not maintained during the
later middle ages and by 1550 the town appeared to be in decline. The
population of Sandwich - in common with other places in east Kent
- had still not recovered by that date and the economy of Sandwich
had contracted to adjust to lower population levels in both the town
and its rural hinterland. There was little incentive to rebuild houses
destroyed by the French raid in 1457 and parts of the town still lay in
ruins in 1500. 1 Demographic and economic contraction was compounded
by some decline in the fortunes of the port, resulting from
changing trade patterns and the physical deterioration of the harbour.
The end of the middle ages saw the decline in Sandwich's role as an
outport for London, with the departure of the Italian fleets, which had
used Sandwich as a regular port of call en route between Southampton,
London and the Continent. The port's overseas commerce shrank
further with the growth of the Merchant Adventurer's London to
Antwerp trade. 2 The decay of the harbour, which had been gradually
silting up since the fifteenth century, was a cause of great concern to
the inhabitants of Sandwich and by the mid-sixteenth century, urgent
action was needed to prevent 'the utter ruyn and decaye of the saide
towne' .3 Sandwich was another example of a town in difficulty in the
early and mid-sixteenth century. 4
In spite of this gloomy prognosis, Sandwich saw a revival in its
fortunes during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries,
followed by contraction - a pattern common to many small towns in
the early modern period.5 The town's population, which was at a low
level in the 1550s, had more than tripled by the 1620s. There were
several reasons for this extraordinary expansion. In the first place,
79
JANE ANDREWES AND MICHAEL ZELL
Sandwich experienced an underlying increase in the birth rate from
the 1570s until I 640, despite periods of high mortality and poor
background health. After I 640 that natural increase ceased. But Sandwich
also grew in this period from migration. Immigrants from the
Continent were a major factor in the changing size and composition
of the town's population between 1561 and 1642.
Sandwich was not the only destination for immigrants from the
Low Countries in the second half of the sixteenth century: London,
Colchester, Norwich, Southampton, Rye, and in Kent - Canterbury
and Maidstone - all had 'stranger' populations, although their
experiences varied considerably. Sandwich was, however, the first
port of call for immigrants - legal or illegal - and there were always
some transient immigrants in the town. A rapid and dramatic increase
in the population took place in the 1560s and 1570s as an influx of
immigrants fleeing from religious oppression and economic dislocation
in the southern Netherlands doubled the population by 1580.
Sandwich, as a port, had always known a certain transient population
and the town's inhabitants were not unused to hearing Flemish or
French spoken in the streets and on the quay, but immigration on this
scale was a new experience. Within a very short period this small
town containing empty houses filled up with people. By 1580 there
was overcrowding, pressure on housing and open conflicts between
the two communities over trade and taxes, despite the substantial
boost to the town's economy and trade given by the manufacture of
the new draperies introduced by the immigrant community. The town
authorities appeared to be overwhelmed by the numbers of immigrants
pouring into Sandwich in the 1560s and 1570s and by the
pressures that arose from a rapidly growing town in those years and
again around 1610. Their response was to attempt to limit immigration
and to control and restrict the economic activities and lives of
the immigrant population.6
The period of rapid growth in the immigrant population of Sandwich
was short lived, however, and their numbers had decreased by
1600. Some strangers moved on to other towns in England, while
others returned to the Netherlands in the 1580s and 1590s. A
permanent core of Dutch inhabitants remained in Sandwich in the
seventeenth century, to be joined by smaller numbers of new immigrants
after 1600. By 1642, the Dutch community had dropped to about
a quarter of the total population of Sandwich. It is likely, however,
that increasing numbers of English migrants into the town compensated
for the decline in the stranger population.
Research on the demography of Sandwich in the early modern period
80
THE POPULATION OF SANDWICH FROM ELIZABETH I TO THE CIVIL WAR
has previously been partial and incomplete; one aspect or another has
been included in a number of published studies.7 The present article
revisits this territory to examine in greater detail the changing
composition of the population of Sandwich from the mid-sixteenth
century to the Civil War. It looks at the changing size of the population
and the roles played by natural increase, mortality crises and
immigration. It draws on the parish register data, probate inventories
and records of the town corporation in the Sandwich Year Books.
There were three parishes in Sandwich - St Clement, St Peter and St
Mary- whose boundaries were not entirely coterminous with those of
the town. The parish of St Clement had a larger acreage extending
beyond the town, but the number of extra-mural inhabitants was
probably not very large. The parish registers are not complete during
the middle years of the sixteenth century for a straightforward
aggregative analysis, but the registration data for all parishes between
1576 and 1640 can be fruitfully exploited (Figs 1-4).x
The population of Sandwich was low - in the region of 1,500-1,700
- in the mid-sixteenth century before the first wave of Flemish
immigrants began to arrive in 1561.9 In the previous fifteen years
Sandwich had experienced two periods of particularly high mortality:
in 1545 recorded burials tripled those of the previous year in St
Peter's parish and more than doubled in St Mary's, and in the national
epidemic years of I 558-9, burials were high in St Mary's. 10 In about
1560 probably just under a third of the houses in the town were
unoccupied and parts of St Mary's parish in particular had become
depopulated. Houses were being pulled down or allowed to fall down
'to the great defasying and ruyne of the same (town)' and in 1560 the
town authorities re-issued a decree first made in Edward VI' s reign
preventing the demolition of houses, if there was no intention to
rebuild. 11
Within seven years, however, decline was dramatically reversed
with the arrival of Flemish immigrants. The population increased and
vacant houses were filled. In 156 I, twenty-five Flemish families were
given permission to settle in Sandwich. 12 By I 565, the number of
Flemish households had risen to at least one hundred and twenty nine
and the population of Sandwich had grown to about 2,500. 1
•
1 In 1567,
the Sandwich borough Year Book records that 'the town ys so
replenished with people that the inhabitants therof have great lack of
houses to inhabit'. Permission was given for private housing development
by tenants of vacant land rented from the town in St Mary's
parish within the town walls near the Canterbury Gate, and a new
street was created. 14 There are more references to infilling with new
houses and the renting of houses to strangers. Later in 1567, the
81
(X)
IV
soo l
I
l
500
400
r --burials i 300 -baptisms
200
100
!
I
j
o
l
Fig. 1 Baptisms and Burials in Sandwich l 576-1640, using the combined Parish Register data for the three parishes
of St Clement, St Mary and St Peter. (Sources - see note 8.)
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#########&##§#######
Fig. 3 Baptisms and Burials in St Peter's Parish, Sandwich 1539-1640. (Sources - see note 8.)
00
VI
250
--burials
-baptisms
0 -1-,....,....--......... - ,....,...-,....,.......,....,....,...---,-,..,.....,...,._,....,......,........,....,....,......,........,....,...,..
£&&&#######$# J J J J "" J J ""' J J J ,v ,.v
Fig. 4 Baptisms and Burials in St Clement's Parish. Sandwich 1567-1640. (Sources - see note 8.) There are no entries for
burials Sept-Dec 1633. An average figure calculated from the surrounding six years for each month has been interpolated.
JANE ANDREWES AND MICHAEL ZELL
authorities forbade the keeping of swine within the walls, 'the town
being now very populous' . 15 The Year Book gives the impression that
immigrants continued to arrive at least until 1588 but that the town
authorities were not in control of the situation. Many came in
covertly, for in 1568 Dutch inhabitants were required to report any
new immigrants coming to their houses and by 1574 they were
forbidden to lodge newcomers. 16 Some poor French Huguenot
refugees, fleeing after the Massacre of St Bartholomew, added to the
numbers of immigrants in Sandwich in l 573. They were regarded
with sympathy by the town authorities, who gave them fifty
shillings. 17
The population of Sandwich was probably about 5,000 in the
1570s, when the number of immigrants was at its peak. By the beginning
of 1574, the total alien population in Sandwich had reached
about 2,900, including 2,400 Dutch-speaking Flemish people and
five hundred French-speaking Walloons. At least half of the population
of Sandwich were immigrants from the Netherlands during
the early 1570s. 18 lt was hardly surprising that, in 1575, the Walloon
community moved out more or less en bloc to Canterbury, where
there were still vacant houses. 19 A rising birth rate among the native
population also increased population pressure during the later l 570s
(Figs 2-4).
Unfortunately, the registers for the Dutch and Walloon communities
of Sandwich have not survived and so we are not able to chart
population change within the immigrant communities in great detail.
The baptisms of only a small number of aliens were recorded in the
English parish registers, which principally record the English population.
Estimates of population trends based on baptisms - assuming
a birth rate constant of 30 per 1,000 - suggest that the native population
had risen to over 3,000 by 1580 (Table 1). Sandwich was
TABLE I. ESTIMATED NATIVE POPULATION OF SANDWICH
1575-1640
(assuming a birth rate constant of 30 per 1,000)
1575-79 3307
1580-89 3680
1590-99 3550
1600-09 4350
1610-19 4570
1620-29 4903
1630-39 4277
86
THE POPULATION OF SANDWICH FROM ELIZABETH I TO THE CIVIL WAR
certainly an over-crowded town during the 1570s, reaching a peak of
about five and a half thousand by 1580.
From the early 1580s, the numbers of immigrants began to decline
as many of the strangers returned to the Netherlands and one historian
has estimated that the Flemish/Dutch population had dropped to just
over a thousand by 1582. The likelihood, however, is that although
numbers were decreasing the decline was not as great as this, and that
numbers were nearer 1,600 to 2,000 in 1582.20 The immigrant population
had dropped to about one third of the total population.
Flemish/Dutch immigrants continued to leave during the later 1580s
and 1590s because of disruption in the bay industry, trade dislocations
and the general distress of the 1590s. After 15 81, for those
wishing to return to the Netherlands, the opportunity was open to
settle in the largely protestant provinces of Holland and Zealand,
which remained free from Spanish rule after that date: Backhouse
traced some 278 Sandwich strangers who returned to the northern
provinces between 1576 and 1625, mostly to Leiden. 21 During the
1580s, the Sandwich authorities restricted further immigration,
banishing new immigrants 'not of the Dutch congregation' and
limiting permission to settle in the town to useful and law-abiding
immigrants: in 1585 a Dutch merchant and in 1588 a Dutch pot-maker
were allowed to stay.22
The chronology of conflict between the stranger and native English
communities in Sandwich during the later sixteenth century, as
measured by the incidence of items relating to the Dutch immigrant
community in the records of the Sandwich authorities, confirms the
pattern of population pressure arising from immigration outlined
above. The 1570s produced the highest number of items - 61 cases -
with the numbers dropping in the 1580s and 1590s. These include
cases relating to both trade and industry and breaches of the peace,
which drop sharply after 1582, reflecting a reduction in tension between
the English inhabitants and the remaining immigrants (Fig. 5).
Compared with most areas of southern England, Sandwich was an
unhealthy place to live - a fact which affected native and immigrant
population alike - and was typical of towns situated on the coastal
marshlands of South-East England. 23 It was surrounded by inned and
stagnating salt marshland, where marshland fevers, particularly malaria,
were endemic. The town was on the sluggish River Stour, which
was silting up. It was small, confined and congested by the I 560s
with narrow streets, overcrowded houses and an open sewer - The
Delf - running through it. Pigs roamed the streets. It was a cloth
manufacturing town and port, with a mobile population, who might
easily import diseases. Like other towns and parishes in similar
87
0000
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
I
N
N
1560-9 1570-9
EVIDENCE OF THE STRANGER PRESENCE
No. items in Sandwich Year Books
N
N
,!
i--.
1580-9
-
I
"i
"-·
1590-9
i j
1600-9 1610-19
E;:l General Items O Trade/Industry • Breaches of Peace
1620-9
Fig. 5 Evidence of the Stranger Presence in Sandwich 1560-1639.
1630-9
zrn
►
z 0;o
rn VJ
THE POPULATION OF SANDWICH FROM ELIZABETH I TO THE CIVIL WAR
situations, Sandwich had an excess of burials over baptisms in most
years. During the 64 years between 1576 and 1640, I, 139 more burials
than baptisms are recorded. The chronological pattern of mortality
followed national trends in general.24 The decade 1570-9, when the
population was probably at its greatest and the town at its most
crowded, was followed by several decades of higher mortality. In the
1580s burials exceeded baptisms in six out of ten years and 1582 was
a crisis year in St Mary's parish. 25 During the I 590s, burials exceeded
baptisms in eight out of ten years with peak years of mortality in 1594
and 1597, when the town authorities ordered measures to stem infection
from the plague, charging the inhabitants with the cost. 26 The
steady decline in the population was exacerbated by the continuing
departure of Dutch people, and in 1598 the remaining Dutch inhabitants
asked the town authorities for a reduction in the Watch Money
they paid from £36 to £30 per annum on the grounds that their 'congregation
falleth to decaye and into povertie · _n 1610 was the first
year of mortality crisis of the seventeenth century, when just under
three hundred and fifty inhabitants of Sandwich died (Fig. 1 ). Burials
were high in 1615 and 1616, particularly in the parishes of St Peter's
and St Mary's, although they did not reach crisis level (Figs 1-3). An
even more devastating mortality crisis occurred fifteen years later -
in 1625 - when nearly four hundred people died. Plague is mentioned
in the town records for both years. 2
Despite reverses in the 1590s, 1610 and 1625, the population recovered
between each crisis. The level of burials was lower in the
first years of the seventeenth century and after 1625 until the crisis
year of 1637 (see below). Baptisms recovered after an initial drop at
the time of each crisis: during the 1590s the level of baptisms only
dropped slightly and then grew from 1600 to 1610 and again in the
1620s. 29 1600 -1610 was the only decade when baptisms exceeded
burials and by 1610, the town was once more congested. 30 The population
of Sandwich may have regained its 1570s peak of about 5,500
by 1610.
Natural increase, however, was not the sole reason for an increase
in the population following the collapse of the I 590s. Immigrants
were once again an important element in the town's renewed growth
after 1600. While there may have been some new Continental immigration,
Sandwich was also attracting English migrants - in common
with other towns at this period.·11 In 1610, the Sandwich authorities
complained of overcrowding in the town, which was:
greatly inhabited and very populous through a great number of inmates
which are harboured in many places within the town as well as
by the English as the Dutch congregation. divers persons hyringe of
89
JANE ANDREWES AND MICHAEL ZELL
houses and afterwards for their privat benefit let out many romethes
[sic, rooms] to several inmates ... 32
Migration was both local and distant. Local east Kent migrants came
from the hinterland of Sandwich, where healthy Downland parishes
were experiencing rising birth rates and population growth.33 Local
migrants in search of work also came from Canterbury. In 1633, two
tapsters, Edward Wood and Tobias Mede, were charged six shillings
each in 'foreign money' by the Sandwich authorities for working in
Sandwich and were told to return to Canterbury, where they had
wives and children.34 Many vagrants and beggars, who appeared
before the Mayor and Jurats from 1587 onwards, were both short- and
long-distance migrants. These short-distance migrant beggars came
from the hinterland parishes such as Ash, Worth, Northbourne,
Shelden, from Chislet and Sarre on the north side of the river Stour,
and from Canterbury and Romney Marsh.35 Many long-distance migrants
were coastal migrants from London, Humberside, East Anglia,
Sussex, Hampshire and Devon, while others came from Lancashire
and Shropshire.36
In I 601-2, the Sandwich authorities were concerned about the
numbers of women who were not inhabitants of Sandwich and out of
covenant, 'resorting to the town' and being employed as servants by
the strangers. They issued new decrees forbidding strangers 'to retain,
receive, set to worke or take in covenant many maides and women
servants being forreiners'; they were to employ only Sandwich-born
women.37 Some of these women may have come from the Continent,
but there were undoubtedly English migrants among them: in 1604,
four Dutchmen were fined for breaking the decrees and employing
uncovenanted women, whose names were English. 38 The case of
Jacob Buens suggests that it was not uncommon for English-born
Dutch people to move to Sandwich from other towns with stranger
inhabitants. At some time before 1633, Jacob Buens moved to Sandwich
from Dover where he was born. His birth certificate had been
lost and he asked the Mayor and Jurats to enter a certificate of birth
into the Book of Records and brought various witnesses to prove his
birth in Dover, one of whom was a Dutch woman from Dover married
to a Sandwich Dutchman.39
The population growth of the early decades of the seventeenth
century ended during the 1630s, when the birth rate began to level
off. To make matters worse, in 1637, Sandwich faced its harshest
mortality crisis of the whole period, when the death toll reached just
under five hundred.40 Plague was a major cause of death, for 70 per
cent of burials took place between July and September. The Sandw!ch
Year Book records eleven measures to control the spread of infect10n
90
THE POPULATION OF SANDWICH FROM ELIZABETH I TO THE CIVIL WAR
and to provide relief for the poor infected with plague. The fair was
cancelled, shops selling clothes and household goods were closed and
the authorities resorted to the Justices of the Peace of the county for
financial help, as they claimed that the inhabitants were too poor to
bear the cost of the relief of the infected poor.41 By 1642, the population
had probably dropped to some 3,700 inhabitants.42 It continued
to decline during the mid-seventeenth century to about 2,600 in
1671, when there were about 50 empty houses. 43
What proportion of the population of Sandwich in the early seventeenth
century was Flemish/Dutch? The decline in numbers of Dutch
inhabitants during the 1580s and 1590s seems to have been halted and
even reversed in the early decades of the seventeenth century (Fig.
6). The numbers of surviving probate inventories of the estates of
strangers suggest that during the early seventeenth century, just over
one third (34 per cent) of the inhabitants of Sandwich were immigrants
of the first or second generation. While the number of Dutch
inventories never exceeded those of the native English in any decade
between 1600 and 1640, inventories were more equally divided
between the two communities in the years 1616-7, 1622 and 1636-9.44
How representative of the total Dutch community these inventories
are, when fewer Dutch inventories - some 11 per cent of the total -
survive from the sixteenth century when the immigrant population
was higher, is uncertain. They certainly indicate that the Dutch formed
a significant section of the prosperous inhabitants of Sandwich in
the early seventeenth century. It is likely that the numbers of poor
were greater in the sixteenth century. In 1566, the Dutch claimed they
were not able to pay their taxes to the town because of the daily increase
of the poor and the death of several of the wealthy members of
the congregation.45 The process of inheritance and the disposal of
possessions at death in the early days of immigration was probably
carried out within the Dutch congregation; the majority of immigrants
from Flanders in the 1560s and 1570s were too poor to impinge
on the English probate system, except in a small number of cases. The
greater numbers of Dutch inventories in the early seventeenth century
suggest that many of those who remained flourished, and that as a
result of increasing wealth, second generation immigrants made use
of the English legal process of probate to protect property and inheritance.
If that is the case, the inventory numbers are a truer reflection
of the proportion of Dutch inhabitants among the better off in Sandwich
in the early seventeenth century than in the preceding decades.
Without the registers of the Dutch Church it is impossible to assess
what was happening more precisely. While there are more recorded
burials of Dutch inhabitants in the English registers than there are
91
POPULATION OF SANDWICH 1555-1671
8000
7000
6000
5000
C:
0 4000
3000
2000
1000
1555 1565 1582 1624
• Strangers D Native
Fig. 6 Population of Sandwich 1555-1671.
THE POPULATION OF SANDWICH FROM ELIZABETH I TO THE CIVIL WAR
baptisms of Dutch children, it is clear that the English registers
exclude the majority of the Dutch population throughout the period,
even if one assumes some degree of assimilation and anglicisation of
names by the early seventeenth century. Only 11 per cent of inventoried
strangers had their burials recorded in the three English parish
registers.46 It is likely that the birth rate of the settled Dutch families
- especially the better off - was rising alongside that of the native
English. After a significant drop in the previous eighteen years, the
numbers of items concerning the Dutch in the records of the town
authorities rose again between 1600 and 1620 - reflecting tension
between the communities: breaches of the peace and breaches of
trading regulations went up (Fig. 5).
In 1635 Sandwich received a new influx of immigrants, who were
given royal licence to live in England. Fifty-eight people, including
families and individuals, who were mostly French refugees from
Calais and the surrounding villages fleeing renewed religious persecution
in France, appeared before the Mayor and Council in 1635.
They were required to move inland but did not leave with any speed
and were still in Sandwich six months later, when they were again
warned to leave. 47 Another group of about fifty people who arrived
the following year, may have been allowed to reside temporarily in
the town. Some had Flemish surnames and there may have been some
kinship connections as two names were the same as those of Sandwich
Dutch families. The rest probably moved on. 48 Throughout the
period under view, a fluctuating proportion of the population of
Sandwich at any one time was a transient one - containing not only
English migrants but also Continental immigrants as well as short
term visiting merchants and mariners.
In 1642 the Dutch community still formed about a quarter of the
total population of Sandwich with probably just under a thousand
inhabitants. Twenty-three Dutch taxpayers listed in the lay subsidy
roll of I 642 were called aliens; the remainder would have been born
in England.49 Roughly twenty per cent of the taxpayers in 1642 had
Dutch names. This figure, however, does not include names anglicised
by that time and it hides intermarriage and so underestimates the
real Dutch presence in the population. The majority of Dutch tax
payers (70 per cent) were concentrated in St Mary's parish, which had
been the most under-populated parish in the mid-sixteenth century.
The Dutch and native English communities in Sandwich remained
largely separate during this period and assimilation was a gradual
process from the early seventeenth century onwards; by then some
intermarriage was taking place. Although the town authorities and
inhabitants of Sandwich welcomed the economic boost that Dutch
93
JANE ANDREWES AND MICHAEL ZELL
merchants and cloth manufacturers brought to the town, they constantly
hedged the economic activities of the immigrants with regulations
and restrictions, to protect the interests of native English
tradesmen, and took advantage of them with oppressive taxes. Not
only did they pay double rates in subsidies that all aliens were
charged, but also local taxes on the sale of their cloth, and the regular,
burdensome watch money. Tensions between the two communities
over trade restrictions died down from the late I 620s as population
pressure and overcrowding eased, but extra taxation continued.
Acceptance as equal citizens was slow. In the I 570s some Dutch
men were declared denizens, but in 1575, eighteen Dutch men who
came from Dover claiming to be denizens were forbidden to set up
shop, despite letters patent from the Lord Warden of the Cinque
Ports.50 During the early seventeenth century, Dutch inhabitants had
to fight for the right to be freemen. Theoretically, according to a
custumal of c. 1563, a stranger who had lived in Sandwich for a year
and a day and was quietly behaved, could apply for freedom, if he had
married a woman of the town or had purchased property. In practice
- with one exception - strangers were denied freedom of the town
until the 1630s when certain second-generation Dutchmen born in
Sandwich began to press their cases.51 They eventually succeeded,
when Daniel Vander Spey, Peter Morard and Richard Does were
granted freedom in 1631, followed by wealthy merchant, Jacob
Rickesies, in 1632. But discrimination continued. Freedom was not
granted on the same basis as it was to the native English: the Dutch
were allowed their freedom by redemption only and in many cases for
a much higher fee.52 In 1642 a series of petitions by Dutchmen such
as Jacob Costaker sought the right to claim freedom on grounds of
marriage and purchase, which was denied. William Rickesies
petitioned for freedom on the grounds that he was born in Sandwich,
that his father was a freeman, and that he had been apprenticed to him
for seven years. He too was denied freedom on those grounds, but was
granted it by redemption for £30.53
In comparison with other towns which shared a similar experience of
immigration, however, Sandwich had a more limited period of
population growth and economic success. Sandwich experienced an
expansion of population from a low ebb in the mid-sixteenth century
until the 1630s and enjoyed a corresponding period of economic
prosperity despite setbacks in the I 590s, 161 O and 1625. Immigration
from the Continent played a significant part in the town• s success
during this period of growth. In the I 630s this demographic and
economic advance went into reverse. Comparison with towns such as
94
THE POPULATION OF SANDWICH FROM ELIZABETH I TO THE CIVIL WAR
Canterbury and Colchester is instructive; both towns received their
immigrants initially from Sandwich. In Canterbury, the immigrant
(Walloon) population reached its peak later than in Sandwich. About
three thousand Walloons lived in the city in the 1590s, making up
nearly half of the city's population. By the 1630s the Walloon community
had dropped to about 1,300, about a fifth of the total population.
54 Canterbury received a fresh wave of immigrants, however, in
the later seventeenth century and with it a renewal of its textile industry,
when French Huguenots arrived from France after the Revocation
of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.
Colchester was a larger town than Sandwich in the early sixteenth
century with a population of some 3,500 in the 1520s. By the 1570s
the population had reached 4,600, including immigrants, which
means that it was then smaller than Sandwich. At this date, the Dutch
in Colchester numbered about 1,500, fewer than the 2,400 in Sandwich.
In Colchester, Dutch inhabitants represented about one third of
the total population compared with over a half in Sandwich. In the
longer term, however, Colchester's steady population growth ensured
that it soon outpaced Sandwich. By the 1620s, the population of
Colchester had increased by two and half times to 10,500 - at least
twice the size of Sandwich at that date.55 The increase appears to have
been in the native English section of the population, as the Dutch
community had grown only marginally to 1,565. While the number of
Dutch inhabitants was probably slightly higher in Colchester than in
Sandwich in the early seventeenth century, they represented a smaller
proportion of the total population of Colchester than in Sandwich -
15 per cent as opposed to about a quarter in Sandwich. The impact of
Continental immigration was much greater in Sandwich than in Colchester
and this perhaps explains why the fears of the inhabitants of
Sandwich were greater than in Colchester and why conflict between
the two communities was more in evidence. 56 Were the demographic
setbacks in Sandwich more severe than in Colchester, given that both
towns were located near low lying coastal estuaries, or were there
economic reasons behind Colchester's impressive growth? The economies
of both towns had been flagging in the mid-sixteenth century
and both were revived by a textile industry introduced by the Dutch.
The population and prosperity of Colchester appears to have grown as
manufacture of the new draperies - first established by immigrants -
spread among the native population; such dissemination did not
occur in Sandwich. Further research into the Dutch contribution to
the economy of Sandwich - and responses to that contribution by the
native population - may help to explain why Sandwich failed to
benefit from its immigrant community in the long term.
95
JANE ANDREWES AND MICHAEL ZELL
NOTES
1 The evidence of surviving medieval buildings indicates that, while the central parish
of St Peter survived the raid, large parts of the parishes of St Clement and St Mary
were destroyed. Early Tudor rebuilding was restricted largely to Church Street, St
Mary's and Fisher Street; see E. W. Parkin, 'The Ancient Cinque Port of Sandwich',
Archaeo/ogia Cantitma, c (1984), 189-216.
2 Helen C. Bentwich, History of Sandwich in Kent (Deal, 1971 ), 35; J. L. Bolton, The
Medieval English Economy 1150-1500 (1980), especially 10.152, 255, 286, 312; D. C.
Coleman, The Economy of England 1450-/750 ( 1977), 51-2; 0. Coleman, 'Trade and
Prosperity in the Fifteenth Century. Some Aspects of the trade of Southampton'.
Economic History Review, 2nd ser., xvi ( 1963), 9-22; Dorothy Gardiner, Historic Haven:
the S1ory of Sandwich ( 1954), 124-138; W. G. Hoskins, The Age of Plunder. The
England of Henry Vlll 1500-1547 { 1976), 176-206; C. Plat!, Medieval Sou1hamp1011:
The Port and Trading Community, A.D. 1000-1600 (1973); E. Power and M. M. Poston,
Srudies in English Trade in rhe Fifteenth Century ( 1966), especially 41, 44, 50,
224, 344-56.
3 East Kent Archives Centre (hereafter EKAC) Sa/ZB 3/21/12 & 13.
4 For the debate on the fortunes of English towns from the late middle ages to 1700,
see: A. R. Bridbury, 'English Provincial Towns in the Later Middle Ages', Econ. Hist.
Rev .. 2nd ser., xxxiv (1962), 1-24; P. Clark and P. Slack, English Towns in Transi1ion,
1500-1700 (Oxford, 1976); P. Clark, 'Small Towns in England 1550-1850', in P. Clark
(ed.). Small Towns in Early Modem Europe (Cambridge, 1995); R. B Dobson, 'Urban
Decline in Late Medieval England', Transac1io11s of 1he Royal His1orical Society, xxvii
( 1977), 1-22; A. D. Dyer. 'Growth and Decay in English Towns', Urban His10ry
Yearbook 1979, 60-72; N. R. Goose, 'In Search of the Urban Variable: Towns and the
English Economy 1500-1650', Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser., xxxix (1986), 165-185; J.
Hatcher, Plague, Population and the English Economy I 348-1530 { 1977), 44-47; D.
M. Palliser, The Age of Elizabeth: England under 1he later Tudors 1547-1603 ( 1983),
225-230; J. Patten, English Towns, 1500-1700 (Folkestone, 1978 ); C. PhythianAdams,
'Urban Decay in Late Medieval England', in P. Abrams and E. A. Wrigley
(eds) Towns in Societies (Cambridge, 1978), 159-69; S. Rigby, 'Urban Decline in the
Later Middle Ages', Urban His1ory Yearbook 1979, 46-59.
5 Clark, Small Towns, 93-120; Palliser, Age of Elizabeth, 231-2.
6 M. F. Backhouse, 'The Strangers at Work in Sandwich: Native Industries of an
Industrious Minority', Immigrants and Minorilies x, no.3 ( 1991 ), 70-99; Gardiner,
Historic Haven, 37-42.
7 Backhouse, 'Strangers at Work', 70-99; M. J. Dobson, Con/ours of Dea1h and Disease
in Early Modem England (Cambridge, 1997); Zoe L. Qllerenshaw, 'The Civic
Elite of Sandwich, Kent, 1568-1640', Kent M.Phil. thesis (1990), 11-32; J. Bower
'Kent Towns, 1540-1640', in M. Zell (ed.), Early Modern Kent J 540-/640 (Woodbridge,
Suffolk, 2000), 141-176.
8 Canterbury Cathedral Archives and Library, U3/17 St Clement's parish register;
U3/I I St Mary's parish register; U3/12 St Peter's parish register. St Clement's register
begins in 1563, St Mary's in 1538 and St Peter's in I 538. Bishop's transcripts
DCa/BT/162-4 and DCb/BTl/205-7. The bishop's transcripts, Dca/BT/164 and 163
contained entries for the years 1605 and 1609-16, missing in the registers for St Peter's,
and for 1601 in the register of St Clement's. Ollerenshaw, 'Civic Elite', 25-6.
9 EKAC Sa ZB3/24. A count of houses in 1565 includes 291 English and 129 Dutch
houses and seven uninhabited. If the Dutch houses represent unoccupied houses
pre-I 561, the approximate pre-1561 population can be based on the English houses
using a multiplier of 4.75 and making allowance for underestimation.
96
THE POPULATION OF SANDWICH FROM ELIZABETH I TO THE CIVIL WAR
IO E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield, The Population History of England 1541-187 J.
A Reconstruction (Cambridge, 1981), 332-336; 1546 was a mortality crisis year in
neighbouring Nonington: E. Jane Andrewes, 'Land, Family and Community in Wingham
and its Environs. An Economic and Social History of Rural Society in East Kent
from c. I 460-1640', Kent Ph.D thesis ( 1991 ), 248-9.
11 EKAC Sa/ Ac4, fo. l 61.
12 Ca/e11darofSta1e Papers Domestic Series J 547-80. ed. Robert Lemon ( 1856), 179.
13 EKAC Sa ZB 3/24.
14 EKAC Sa/Ac4 fo. 343-5.
15 EKAC Sa/Ac4 fo. 358.
16 EKAC Sa/ Ac4 fo. 369v, Sa/ Ac5 fo.156.
17 EKAC Sa/AcS fo.130v.
18 Backhouse, 'Strangers at Work', 77-8.
19 Bentwich, History of Sandwich, 179; Gardiner, Historic Haven, 40; F. W. Cross,
History of the Wa/100;1 a·nd Huguenot Church at Canterbury ( 1898), 22.
20 Backhouse, 'Strangers at Work', 78.
21 Backhouse, 'Strangers at Work', 83, 92-3; G. Parker. The Dutch Revolt {1977).
199-270.
22 EKAC Sa/Ac6 fos. 39v, 115.
23 Dobson, Contours, eh. I, particularly 14. 104 and eh. 6; Sally Elks 'Lydd
1540-1644. A Demographic Study', Kent MA thesis (1987); G. Mayhew. Tudor Rye
(Falmer 1987); Bower, • Kent Towns', 154, 157, for a discussion of Gravesend. Milton
and Dartford.
24 Wrigley and Schofield, Population History. 332-6.
25 A crisis year is identified when the number of burials doubled the average for the
preceding five years.
26 EKAC Sa/ Ac6 fos. 207v, 240, 242.
27 EKAC Sa/Ac6 fo. 260.
28 EKAC Sa/Ac7 fos.10, 136.
29 The annual average number of baptisms increased from 107 in the 1590s to 131
between 1600 and 1609, dropping very slightly to 129 in 1610-1619 and increased to
147 in 1620-9.
30 The annual average burials was I 18 in the decade 1600-1609. Centre for Kentish
Studies, Maidstone (hereafter CKS) U562 PI, Map of Sandwich c. 16 I 5 by William
Boycott shows the town totally congested with dwellings, see F. Hull 'Kentish Mp
Makers', in Archaeologia Canticma, CIX ( I 991 ), 67.
31 P. Clark 'The Migrant in Kentish Towns, 1580-1640', in P. Clark and P. Slack (eds).
Crisis and Order in English Towns, J 500-1700 ( I 972), 117-63.
32 EKAC Sa/ Ac7 fo. I 0.
33 Andrewes, 'Land, Family and Community', 241-252.
34 EKAC Sa/Ac7 fo.226.
35 EKAC Sa/Ac5 fo. 5; Sa/Ac6 fo. 292; Sa/Ac7 fas. 85, 195v, 215. 284, 388v. 393v.
36 EKAC Sa/Ac6 fos. 88v,170, 196v, 288v,292; Sa/Ac7. fos.163,195v, 215. 215v.
220, 226,284, 388v, 393v.
37 EKAC Sa/Ac6 fos. 293-4.
38 EKAC Sa/Ac6 fo. 356.
39 EKAC Sa/Ac7 fos. 215v- 216v.
97
JANE ANDREWES AND MICHAEL ZELL
40 1637 was not a crisis year nationally, although 1638/9 was - see Wrigley and
Schofield, Population History, 333-4. 1637/8 was a year of local mortality crises where
burials were high in Ash and Wingham, neighbouring parishes to Sandwich, see Andrewes,
'Land, Family and Community', 249.
41 EKAC Sa/Ac7 fos. 301,302, 307v, 317, 321, 321v. 322.
42 The lay subsidy EKAC SaZo2 lists 685 real taxpayers with 15% added to adjust for
poor households and using a multiplier of 4.75 gives a population of 3,743.
43 PRO E 179/129/746. The Hearth Tax assessment of 1671 for Sandwich contains 414
tax-payers and possibly 192 exempt households receiving poor relief. There is no 1664
Hearth Tax assessment for Sandwich. We are indebted to Duncan Harrington for this
information. A population of 2641 is suggested using a multiplier of 4.75 and excluding
50 empty houses.
44 The majority of the probate inventories for Strangers of Sandwich 1560-1640, are in
the archdeaconry court enrolled inventories, CKS PRC 10/10-72, and in the archdeaconry
court inventory papers, CKS PRC 11/2-3. A small number are located in the
consistory court enrolled inventories, CKS PRC 28/3,1 1,1 4,1 6, 19, 20 and the consistory
court inventory papers. CKS PRC 27/6.
45 EKAC Sa/ Ac4 fo. 312.
46 Baptisms of Dutch children in the English parish registers are usually not more than
1.5% of the total before the 1630s; Dutch burials are on average 7.5% of the total.
47 EKAC Sa/A 7 fos. 274, 295v.
48 EKAC Sa/Ac7 fos.274, 296. The names of the second list with two exceptions do not
match those on the 1642 Subsidy list.
49 EKAC SaZ02.
so EKAC Sa/ Ac5 fos. 140, 171.
51 EKAC Sa/LC3 fo. 5. Only Josias Ente was accepted into the elite earlier, but he was
exceptional: Ollerenshaw, 'Civic Elite', 131.
52 EKAC Sa/ Ac7 fos. l 97, 204,210. Native Englishmen paid £5. Daniel Vander Spey
paid £ 15, Jacob Cos taker £20 in 164 I.
53 EKAC Sa/Ap l Petitions; Sa/Ac7 fo. 410.
54 Bower, 'Kent Towns', 145.
55 N. Goose, 'The Dutch in Colchester: The Economic Influence of an Immigrant
Community in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries', in Immigrants and Minorities
1-2 ( 1982), 263-4.
56 Ibid., 270-1 on attitudes to the Dutch immigrants in Colchester.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Andrewes, E. Jane, 'Land family and Community in Wingham and its Environs.
An Economic and Social History of Rural Society in East Kent from
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Backhouse, M. F., 'The Strangers at Work in England: Native Industries of
an Industrious Minority', Immigrants and Minorities, x, no. 3 ( 1991 ).
Bentwich, Helen C., History of Sandwich in Kent (Deal, 1971 ).
Bower, J., 'Kent Towns, 1540-1640', in (ed.) M. Zell, Early Modern Kent
1540-1640 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2000)
98
THE POPULATION OF SANDWICH FROM ELIZABETH I TO THE CIVIL WAR
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99
