20 Ch. 1 • Medieval Legacies and Transforming Discoveries

Table 1.1 The European Population in the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Centuries (in millions)
1500 1600

Spain and Portugal 9.3 11.3

Italian states 10.5 13.3

France 16.4 18.5

Low Countries* 1.9 2.9

British Isles 4.4 6.8

Scandinavia 1.5 2.4

German states 12.0 15.0

Switzerland 0.8 1.0

Balkans 7.0 8.0

Poland 3.5 5.0

Russia 9.0 15.5

^Currently Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.

Source: Richard Mackenney, Sixteenth-Century Europe: Expansion and Conflict (New York:

Macmillan, 1993), p. 51.

The balance between life and death was precarious. In most towns, deaths

outnumbered births almost every year. Prosperous families had more chil­

dren than the poor (the opposite pattern of today). The exposure and aban­

donment of newly born infants was common. Furthermore, couples may

have limited births through sexual abstinence. The fact that one partner

often died prematurely also served as a check on population. So too did rela­

tively late marriage. Most English men married at between twenty-six and

twenty-nine years of age, women between twenty-four and twenty-six years.

The choice of a marriage partner was important for economic reasons

(although in parts of Western Europe, up to a fifth of women never married).

Marriages were often arranged—parents played a major and often determin­

ing role in choosing partners for their children. For families of means, par­

ticularly nobles, the promise of a sizable dowry counted for much. Yet some

evidence suggests that by the end of the sixteenth century, at least in Eng­

land, the inclinations of the bride and groom were sometimes difficult to

ignore. For the poor, marriage could offer the chance of improving one’s sit­

uation. Thus, a young woman whose family could provide a dowry, however

modest, or who had a skill, was an attractive prospective spouse, as was a

young man with a trade.

Wives remained legally subservient to their husbands, although in the

“economy of makeshifts” in the poor household their role as managers of

income and as workers gave them some minimal degree of equality. Sexual

infidelity, while common, ran against the grain of a popular sense of jus­

tice, which placed a premium on loyalty and mutual obligation between

marriage partners. Such liaisons might also jeopardize the system of inher­