In an article entitled ‘A Note on Some Eighteenth-Century Statistics’, published in Recusant History (Vol. 10, no. 1) in January 1969, the present writer attempted to come to some conclusions about the number of priests working in England and Wales in that century.

Reference to that article would show that in 1706 Dr Betham believed that there were only about 400 priests in the whole country. It was argued that the figure was an underestimate and that the true number may have been as high as 530 or 540, and that the figures given by the Vicars Apostolic in 1773 in their reports to Rome were also too low—380 to 390 instead of 410 to 420. It appeared, if these adjustments of the figures were sound, that the decline in the number of priests working in eighteenth-century England and Wales was quite steep between 1706 and 1773, from perhaps 530 or 540 to 410 or 420; and that, if the French refugee priests working in England and Wales are excluded, there was no increase at all from 1773 until after 1803 but rather a further, if less marked decline.