John Graunt and his Natural and political observations

Abstract

In commemorating the work of Graunt, the founder of demography, it was clearly desirable that a search be made for further information on his life. Perhaps the most striking result of that search has been to show how heavily we must still depend for our knowledge of Graunt as a person on Aubrey’s notes (1)*—both in their original form and in their more elegant elaboration by Anthony Wood (2)—and on the brief but warm comment by another of Graunt’s contemporaries, the famous book-collector, Richard Smyth. 'An understanding man’, Smyth called him, ‘of a quick witt and a pretty schollar, my old aequantaince.’(3) Hull added a few facts, (4) and there are some interesting snatches of correspondence from Petty to, or about, Graunt in Lord Lansdowne’s volume. (5) These remain basic sources. But additional material has been found elsewhere—in the City of London Records and in the records of the Drapers’ Company, as well as in the full Petty correspondence from which Lord Lansdowne cited a few sentences. The contribution of these and other sources will be seen as the story is pieced together. (6) John Graunt was born on 24 April 1620, the son of Henry and Mary Graunt. According to Aubrey, Henry Graunt was a Hampshire man by birth. But he had been apprenticed in London in 1604 (when he was 12 years old) and was admitted to the Freedom of the Drapers’ Company in 1614. He was described as a collar maker, first in Abchurch Lane and later in Birchin Lane, in the parish of St Michael Cornhill, (7) where his children were born. The register of St Michael suggests a large family—seven children at least, including a set of twins—with John Graunt appearing to be the eldest, or at least the first of his family to be baptized in that parish. (8)