population of English Cities

I'm stumped ! I need a basic chart of the population
figures for the largest 10-20 cities in England from, say
1600-1900. I can find plenty of modern stuff (1891 onwards)

myths...

Clapham "A Concise Economic History of Britain", CUP, 1966 reprint of
1st ed of 1949, from pp. 188-189

myths...

Two typing errors in previous message - should have been "Anywhere"
and "town".

Sorry for those, and any others.

"Even in 1801 a bare 26 per cent of the population of England and
Wales lived in places with more than 5000 inhabitants. In 1750 the
percentage would probably not have been more than 20 - [....] the
perhaps 10 per cent of the years 1500. There were all the time many
boroughs, even cathedral cities, with less than 5000
inhabitants;[....]
By Queen Anne's day, Norwich and Bristol, the two greatest
'provincial' towns, each had not more than some 30,000 inhabitants.
York and Exeter had rather more than10,000 [....] It is not known that
any other town or city had so many as 10,000. The slow growth of the
total population of the country would not allow of great increase
anywhere down to 1750. Anywher, except in London [....] The London to
which James I came may have had 150,000 inhabitants. A contemporary
reckoned that Queen Anne's London, by the narrowest definition - the
City and Southwark - had nearly 250,000, and that Westminster, which
started at Temple Bar, had another 113,000; he believed that 'London'
in a wider sense, the more or less continuous town, had over half a
million.[...] Probably the figures are somewhat too high; but the
statistician would not reduce that half-million below 420,000, at the
lowest. [...] It was at least fourteen times the size of the next
biggest twon and must have accounted for something like one in twelve
of the whole population of England and Wales."

but nowhere in my library, or online, can I find earlier
data. Can you help ?

Jeff...

Thanks Cecilia & DJ

Cecilia, that extract is, in summary, exactly what I needed.

DJ, If I drill down on a few cities I will either post
results on a website or here. I don't mond people stealing
that kind of data. Its when they 'steal my ancestors'
mangling my research in the process in the process that I
get exercised!