In 1564 the number of families in the town of Leicester, as officially returned to the Archdeacon, was only 338; and in 1580 the number of able persons mustered "of the body of the town of Leicester," were but 600 and odd. In 1587 235 houses that had belonged to dissolved colleges, &c., and 406 "bays," or parts of houses under one gable, were "in decay."[1] In one of the many petitions which were drafted for presentation to the Queen about this time, the Corporation appealed to her "for the better relief of 4,000 of your loving subjects." But it is doubtful if the actual population really reached this figure. Throsby's estimate of 3,000 for the year 1558, and 3,480 for 1600, based upon the statistics of deaths, would seem to be nearer the mark. At any rate, we may safely conclude that, when the 17th century opened, the inhabitants of the town were not more than in 1500, and probably hardly reached 4,000.
Recurring visitations of the plague were met by better sanitary measures for coping with the epidemic; a policy of isolating infected areas and cases did much to prevent the disease spreading; and yet the further progress of Leicester was undoubtedly much retarded by this scourge, which in 1610-11 claimed very many victims. According to the register of All Saints, more than 600 persons died from it in that year at Leicester. Some time later the devastation of civil war, and the calamity of a great siege did far less to impair the population, which by the year 1664 considerably increased. The Leicester Hearth Tax Returns for Lady Day, 1663, show rather more than 600 occupied houses, which would hardly give a population much exceeding 3,000, but these returns were less complete than those of 1664, which have been transcribed and published by Mr. Henry Hartopp. It appears from the latter that at that time Leicester contained about 889 occupied houses, and, bearing in mind that the tax was not imposed upon the poorest cottages, we may estimate the number of the inhabitants to have been somewhere about 4,000.
- ↑ Most of these buildings, no doubt, were some of the 414 houses unroofed or overthrown by the great tempest of 1563 which had not been restored.
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