But whilst it is easy enough to state in general terms the proportion of the entire population which probably perished in the epidemic, any attempt to give even approximate numbers is attended with the greatest difficulty and can hardly be satisfactory. At present we do not possess data sufficient to enable us to form the basis of any calculation worthy of the name. From the Subsidy Roll of 1377—or some 27 years after the great mortality—it has been estimated that the population at the close of the reign of Edward III. was about 2,350,000 in England and Wales. The intervening years were marked by several more or less severe outbreaks of Eastern plague; and one year, 1361, would have been accounted most calamitous had not the memory of the fatal year 1349 somewhat overshadowed it. At the same time the French war continued to tax the strength of the country and levy its tithe upon the lives of Englishmen. It may consequently be believed that the losses during the thirty years which followed the plague of 1349 would be sufficient to prevent any actual increase of the population, and that somewhere about two and a half millions of people were left in the country after the [p195] epidemic had ceased. If this be so, it is probable that previously to the mortality the entire population of the country consisted of from four to five millions, half of whom perished in the fatal year.[366] On the other hand, whilst apparently allowing that about one-half of the population perished, so eminent an authority as the late Professor Thorold Rogers held that the population of England in 1349 could hardly have been greater than two-and-a-half millions, and "probably was not more than two millions."[367] The most recent authority, Dr. Cunningham, thinks that "the results (_i.e._, of an inquiry into the number of the population) which are of a somewhat negative character, may be stated as follows: (i.), that the population was pretty nearly stationary at over two millions from 1377 to the Tudors; (ii.), that circumstances did not favour rapid increase of population between 1350 and 1377; (iii.), that the country was not incapable of sustaining a much larger population in the earlier part of Edward III.'s reign than it could maintain in the time of Henry VI."[368] Thus the estimate first given, of the population previous to the Black Death, may be taken as substantially the same as that adopted by Dr. Cunningham. Mr. Thorold Rogers, on the other hand, without entering into the question of figures, views the problem altogether from the standpoint of the land, the cultivated portion of which he considers incapable of supporting a larger population than he names.