Life, Marriage, Death, and the Household

Presents estimates of village and parish populations from the early fourteenth to the later seventeenth centuries. Durham likely was underpopulated before the Black Death and its population remained low into the fifteenth century. In the bishopric of Durham, marriage to a widow was common, but otherwise household size resembled other villages in England. Local landholding practices, including the right of widows to hold land even if they remarried, encouraged mobility. In the late fifteenth to mid-sixteenth century, population began to rise quickly, and as landholding became more concentrated, the number of landless people quickly increased. By the seventeenth century, family and household size had increased and the region exhibited the characteristics of the north-western European Marriage Pattern.