Explaining the rise in marital fertility in England in the long eighteenth century
T he two most effective ways of converting parish register data into estimates of fertility, mortality, and nuptiality in the past are generalized inverse projection and family reconstitution. In general, they produce reassuringly similar results for England in the early modem period.2 An earlier version of inverse projection, using aggregative tabulations from 404 parishes, was employed to generate the demographic estimates presented in the Population history of England, while, 16 years later, data from 26 parish reconstitutions formed the basis for the findings published in English population history from family reconstitution.3 The far more refined measures produced by family reconstitution have enabled some of the input parameters used in inverse projection to be specified more accurately, and this in turn has led to minor modifications in the results obtained by inverse projection, but, whether the original or the modified parameters are used, comparison of the output from reconstitution and inverse projection suggests that the two methods yield the '4 same 'big picture' Nevertheless, the later reconstitution study has brought to light many previously unknown or obscure features of English population history, some of which are simultaneously illuminating and puzzling: illuminating because they enforce a revision of the received wisdom; puzzling because, although the existence of an unexpected pattern can be demonstrated, its explanation is unclear. This article explores a possible explanation of one of these new findings, the rise in marital fertility which took place during the eighteenth century, for which no satisfactory explanation was offered in English population history from family reconstitution. Most of the