When Roger Schofield wrote these words, he referred not to the marriage registers that form a part of the English demographic record, but those registers have led to the finding of market integration by the start of the eighteenth century. I finish by taking a longer view, investigating the economic implications of the upheaval already sketched. What was gained through the regional specialization that the economy underwent in the later seventeenth century established a stable ground of sorts for the consolidation of gains in the eighteenth century, and for the more widespread introduction of the new techniques that would further enhance productivity.

The later seventeenth century saw the spatial rearrangement of economic activity over the English countryside, its regional integration. Productivity increased in agriculture, as Chapter 5 argued, with, in its simplified formulation, more hoofs and more grain produced from the given amount of land. And since the size of the English population had ceased rising at mid century, while, the non-agricultural population was increasing (if not seamlessly, with some towns contracting as London grew, and some areas deindustrializing as others turned to manufacturing), increase in the productivity of agricultural labour was implied as well. The simple model of Figure 5.2, the Opening of Trade, implied increases in total factor productivity. Nothing was implied by the seasonality data, one way or the other, about new techniques. Productivity was rising, possibly simply because land could now be turned to its best use.