Domesday and beyond
The first thorough survey of England was in 1086 when William the Conqueror ordered the production of the Domesday Book. This detailed inventory of land and property was a massive undertaking at the time. It took many years to complete and provides us with a remarkable picture of life in Norman Britain.
In Tudor and Stuart times, bishops were made responsible for counting the number of families in their diocese, but Britain was very reluctant to adopt the idea of a regular official census.
While Quebec held its first official census in 1666, Iceland in 1703 and Sweden in 1749, Britain was slow to follow suit. Some churchgoers believed that any type of people count was sacrilegious. They quoted the notorious census ordered by King David in Biblical times, which was interrupted by a terrible plague and never completed. Others said that a population count would reveal the nation's strengths and weaknesses to foreign enemies.
Towards the end of the eighteenth century however, it became increasingly obvious that there was little idea about the number of people living in Britain.
