Plymouth’s population was estimated in 1676 to amount to somewhat less than 6,000 people. Compton Census, 279. In 1640, at the end of a 20-year period of stagnation in trade, there must have been far fewer inhabitants than that, but a recent growth in their numbers was that year noted even so. Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 1/372. It was a smaller port than either Exeter or Bristol.
Of the counties in England, only Yorkshire and Lincolnshire were incontestably larger than Devon in the seventeenth century. Seventy-five miles from north to south and 73 from east to west, Devon was diverse in its land use and social structure. The regions of the county were clearly delineated in terms of topography and land use. East Devon was the most populous, and manors there were large and valuable, even if field sizes were small. The South Hams, the hinterland behind Dartmouth and Totnes and north east of Plymouth, was the most fertile and productive region agriculturally.
Dartmouth, Defoe wrote, was ‘a very large and populous town’ though but ‘meanly built’, with ‘some very flourishing merchants, who trade very prosperously and to the most considerable trading parts of Spain, Portugal, Italy and the plantations; but especially they are great traders to Newfoundland, and from thence to Spain and Italy with fish’. By 1689 Joseph Herne, a very wealthy London merchant, had established control over one and sometimes two seats in the borough.Defoe, Tour ed. Cole, 227.
