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Comparatively little peculiar to the county is known of the early inhabitants of Hertfordshire. They seem from the earliest times to have been scattered over the county in many small groups, rather than to have concentrated at a few centres. Singularly enough, this almost uniform dispersion of population is still largely maintained, for, unlike so many other counties, Hertfordshire has not within its borders a single large town. The larger among them, i.e., Watford, St. Albans, Hitchin, Hertford and Bishop’s Stortford, are not collectively equal in population to even such towns as Bolton, Halifax or Croydon. Another feature to be noted is that, owing to the county’s proximity to London, it is now the home of persons of many nations and tongues, and only in the smaller villages between the railroads are there left any traits of local character or peculiarities of idiom. It is hardly necessary to say that this conglomeration of peoples is common to all the home counties, though mostly so, as I venture to think, in Hertfordshire and Surrey. The Essex peasant is still strongly differentiated from his neighbours.

Grose, writing towards the end of the eighteenth century, stated that the population of Hertfordshire was 95,000. They must have been well dispersed, for he tells us that the county contained at that period 949 villages; by the word “village,” however, he seems to mean any separate community, including small hamlets. Some interesting figures are to be found in Tymms’s Compendium of the History of the Home Circuit. He states that in 1821 the county contained 129,714 inhabitants, comprising 26,170 families and living in 23,687 houses. Of these families no fewer than 13,485 were engaged in agriculture. From the same source I quote the following figures relating to the year 1821:—