Searching for the population in an early-modern forest.

Early-modern improvement writers thought that most of the land within royal forests was not exploited to its full potential and argued that conversion to cultivation would render that land more productive and its inhabitants more industrious.1 During the first four decades of the seventeenth century various improvement projects were thrust upon the community at Duffield (Derbyshire), culminating in the 1630s in the disafforestation and enclosure ‘by agreement’ of Duffield Frith, a forest belonging to the Duchy of Lancaster. Not surprisingly, many of the inhabitants opposed this project, their most violent objections taking the form of a series of riots in the Frith during the early 1640s.2 When studying such riots it is necessary to explore the nature of the community concerned both before and after the enclosures were constructed in order to understand their full implications both for the legal commoners and for the remainder of the inhabitants. This exploration necessarily comprises the reconstruction not only of the local economy, including occupations, landholding, customs and common rights, but also of local demographic and social structures. This article will examine estimates of Duffield’s population during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.