A discussion of Cheshire and Lancashire society in the later middle ages cannot proceed very far without some quantitative conception of the population. Of course, it is impossible to assess the population of medieval England with any degree of precision. Until the sixteenth ahd seventeenth centuries, there was scant interest in the compilation or estimation of population figures, and not until the early nineteenth century was it considered necessary to institute a census. Nevertheless the absence of records directly relating to population should not discourage historians from making informed estimates from such material as has survived. Indeed in projects of this nature it is essential to obtain a fairly realistic impression of the demographic scale of the society under discussion. At the same time it is felt that studies of this type can make a useful contribution to larger-scale projects, and in the following sections it is hoped at least to improve on the estimates presented by J. C. Russell in his pioneering work on the demography of medieval. England.

Any assessment of the population of late medieval England must begin with the evidence of the poll-tax returns of 1377, 1379 and 1381. The poll-tax of 1377, which demanded four pence of every man and woman over the age of fourteen, has particular value for the demographer.