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THE GROWTH OF THE CITY 85
at various periods are not now printed tor the first time; but seem
as complete as the vague statistics at our command will enable us
to make them.
Nothing can be more difficult and more hopeless than to approxi¬
mate to the actual population before the seventeenth century. In
1636 the Lord Mayor estimated that there were about 700,000 souls
within the Liberties; and just before the Great Plague, Howell,
the author of the Leffers, thought there were not less than a million
and a half in all London. In the Plague of 1603-11, 14,000 people
were believed to have died—as many as 4000 in the one year 1609.
In 1625, 35,417 people died of the Plague. In the Great Plague
year, 1665, 100,000. victims is stated to be a moderate estimate of the
deaths. In a curious old collection of notes relating to the Plague,
published in 1721, we are told that in 1625 the burials were 54,265
and the christenings 6,983. The deaths therefore in that, the worst