Age at baptism in pre-industrial England

Abstract The adequacy of English parish registers as demographic sources has been a subject for much debate.(1) Most attention has been directed to the problem of how far the population at large continued to use the sacraments ofthe Established Church in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, especially in areas affected by urban growth or Nonconformity. But the more general problem of how far the ecclesiastical registers of ceremonies are acceptable substitutes for registers of vital events also deserves some attention.