"This study presents a wide-ranging examination of the demographic and economic history of England in the later middle ages, with particular emphasis on the effects of disease. These are subjects of strong controversy among historians and demographers. Dr Hatcher reviews critically the current state of the questions, and also offers a number of new interpretations. His analysis involves a study of the fortunes of agriculture, towns, industry and trade, as well as of sources of direct demographic evidence. The period 1348-1530 is seen as one of long-term population decline in the face of high living standards. In the century after 1348 population may have fallen by between a half and two-thirds, while real wage-rates may have doubled. In seeking to explain these patterns Dr Hatcher places emphasis on the independent role of disease, in particular plague. Not only was England struck by a long series of major national epidemics, and innumerable local epidemics no less debilitating: there is evidence to indicate that children and young males may have been especially vulnerable. Dr Hatcher concludes that, over much of the late middle ages, the prime determinant of the level of population was mortality rater than fertility, and that mortality was not closely linked to living standards." --