Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2008
1 At times the demographic assumptions of Professor Slater are erroneous. For example, she finds Lady Verney's eleven children not ‘unusual’ (p. 8). Hollingsworth's data for the peerage suggest the contrary. The mean completed family size for females married before 25 for the cohort born 1600–24 was 6.51. She also argues that the mid-twenties was ‘rather late for marriage’ (p. 81); but the mean age at marriage for the Verney daughter's cohort (1624–49) was 24 years and 2 months; Hollingsworth, T. H., ‘The demography of the British peerage’, supplement to Population Studies 18 (1964), tables 28 and 2).Google Scholar