That this is true, and that the number from 1656 to 1677 cannot much exceed Ten Thousand, will appear by comparing the Increase of the Burials from 1620 to 1656 with the particular of the New Houses built within that time....
The Medium is the Increase of two Burials for every five houses that were built, so that the Increase of Two Thousand Five Hundred Houses raises the Burials One Thousand.
And If we examine the Increase of the Burials from 1656 to 1677 we shall find them to be about Four Thousand, which being but a fourth more than were from 1620 to 1656. The new houses since that time cannot be reckoned above a Fourth, which makes the Total about Ten Thousand.
And this way of calculation, though it may not exactly discover the particular number of Houses, yet it is sufficient to prove there can be no mistake of Thousands in the Account: for that the Inhabitants of two or three Thousand Houses would have added a visible Increase to the Burials.
And to fully justify this computation, it agrees very well with the calculation made by the Ingenious Mr. Grant both of the Total number of the Inhabitants within the Bills of Mortality, and his probable guess that about three in one hundred die, allowing twelve Inhabitants to every House, one with another, which no man I suppose will dispute.
This will apparently confute that wild conjecture of some, who report that there is Three Thousand Five Hundred New Houses in St. Martin’s Parish, when the Burials of that Parish are not above Eighteen Hundred in a year: so that the Total of New and Old in that Parish cannot be above Four Thousand Five Hundred, and therefore it is probable that the Account of 1780 now given in is very true.
The conjectures of many concerning the value of these Houses, that they will make twenty pounds a year one with another, and raise two or three Thousand pounds, are as false as about the number of them.
For Ten Thousand Houses will not raise about fifty Thousand pounds, it being the half years value at ten pounds a year one with another, which is the most they can be reckoned at.
As will plainly appear from the account of the value of those seven thousand five hundred Houses, which did not amount to Seventy Thousand pound at a whole year’s value, as appears by the Duplicate in the Exchequer, they are making one with another ten pound a year.
Now the great houses in the Piazza, Lincolns-Inn-Fields, and Queen-street, were equal in value to these twenty-two Houses in St. James Square, or Bloomsbury Square, or other places: and are more in number of that sort of Houses than have been built since.