POPULATION
Scotland began around 500 C.E. when the royal fam-
ily of Dál Riata, under Fergus son of Erc, abandoned
Dunseverick and resettled across the North Channel.
This population movement took on a well-known reli-
gious dimension with the settlement of Colum Cille
and his followers on Iona in 563. Like Colum Cille’s
mission, these migrations may have been purely oppor-
tunistic; they may on the other hand be indicative of
localized overpopulation in parts of Ireland.
Then came the first historically recorded plague
pandemic of the mid-sixth century, whose demographic
consequences cannot be measured scientifically but
which may have been severe. The introduction of the
mouldboard plough around 600 C.E. is believed by
some scholars to have led to dietary improvements
and to a steady growth of population, coinciding with
the great age of ringfort and monastic construction.
The introduction of water mills and legal texts dealing
with mill construction, milling, and the status of mill-
wrights point in the same direction. The subsequent
influx of Scandinavian settlers (Vikings) in the ninth and
tenth centuries was probably limited, to judge by the
lack of rural placenames when compared with those of
England, Scotland, and Normandy. Most of the new-
comers would have been males from Norway or from
Norwegian colonies in western Scotland; their influence
is likely to have been cultural rather than numerical.
The Late Middle Ages
The second numerical count is that of parishes, of
which there were about twenty-four hundred. Medi-
eval parishes varied enormously in size: at one
extreme were the extensive parishes of the most moun-
tainous districts; at the other the smallest parishes of
inner Dublin amounting to a few acres of ground,
though with a population of several hundred. In the
year 1300 Dublin had sixteen parish churches, seven
within the walls and nine outside. If the estimated total
population of the city at that time of eleven thousand
can be accepted, the average number of parishioners
per parish would have been a little under seven hun-
dred. This sort of calculation gives some indication of
maximum density of inhabitants, but until a wide
range of local studies of medieval parishes and their
population has been undertaken, we cannot go beyond
mere guesswork. Thus, for example, average densities
across the whole island of three to four hundred
parishioners yield crude minimum and maximum
totals of 720,000 and 960,000. Since it is generally
supposed that in the great age of population growth
in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the number of
inhabitants doubled or even trebled, the higher of these
estimates is probably nearer the mark. One critical
factor here is the comparatively low level of urban-
ization in medieval Ireland, where only about one-
fifth of the island would have had regular access to
town life even at the height of the Anglo-Norman
colony around 1270. Accordingly the population
increase experienced in Ireland is unlikely to have
matched that achieved in more urbanized parts of
Britain and the Continent.
In the late Middle Ages the great demographic
enforcer was the second recorded plague pandemic
commonly known as the Black Death, which first
struck the country in 1348. Before then, there was
significant immigration into Ireland, mainly from
England and Wales, of people who congregated on
rural manors and in towns. In addition aristocratic
households established themselves in castles. The size
of this influx of “new foreigners” is unknown, but their
administrative and cultural impact is likely to have far
outweighed their numerical strength. Epidemiological
observations based on modern incidences of plague,
together with a small amount of contemporary evi-
dence, suggest that the colonists (as distinct from the
natives) may have suffered a 40 percent reduction of
population through a combination of mortality and
emigration. An inquisition at Youghal, for instance,
implies a mortality rate of around 45 percent in the
case of burgess households. To all appearances and for
a variety of reasons, the Gaelic Irish experienced lower
death rates and indeed some of them migrated to the
towns, including Dublin. Large herds of livestock
(Irishcaoraigheacht) are a manifestation of wide-
spread internal migration from the late fourteenth cen-
tury onwards. The demographic low may have reached
the half million mark and the country remained under-
populated during the sixteenth century.
H.B. CLARKEReferences and Further Reading
Barry, Terry, ed. A History of Settlement in Ireland. London and
New York: Routledge, 2000.
Clarke, H.B. “Decolonization and the Dynamics of Urban
Decline in Ireland, 1300–1550.” In Towns in Decline, A.D.
100–1600,edited by T.R. Slater, 157–192. Aldershot: Ashgate,
2000.
Down, Kevin. “Colonial Society and Economy in the High
Middle Ages.” InA New History of Ireland, Vol 2, Medieval
Ireland 1169–1534, edited by Art Cosgrove, 439491.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.
Kelly, Maria. A History of the Black Death in Ireland. Stroud:
Tempus Publishing, 2001.
Russell, J.C. “Late-thirteenth-century Ireland as a Region.”
Demography3 (1966): 500–512.
Stout, Matthew. The Irish Ringfort (Irish Settlement Studies,
no. 5). Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1997.
See alsoBlack Death; Diet and Food; Famine
and Hunger; Slaves; Tribes; Túatha, Vikings