and population data sourced from wikipedia
with thanks to sam norton for the suggestion
license
Where the stuff on this blog is something i created it is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License so there are no requirements to attribute - but if you want to mention me as the source that would be nice :¬)
Thanks - would tend to suggest that the numbers of bishops was a response to the rise in population, rather than self-aggrandisement, wouldn't you think? The trouble is that the same principles weren't applied to the clergy - I think you'd get a very different and much more alarming picture if you did the same analysis for clergy numbers. Then you could compare the two and ask the question why...
ReplyDeleteYep - the cause of the rise certainly seems to be population growth rather than an increase in senior managers
ReplyDeleteif the english population estimate of 60m is reached by 2030 then to keep at a ratio of some 450k people per bishop some 17 extra bishops will need to be created in the next 18 or so years
wonder who in HQ is thinking thru that one?
(PS good idea on the clergy no. analysis - I'll do some research to see how easy it is)
Interested by the drop from 1350ish to 1550ish - is that continued population decline, or is it the result of Henry VII's new dioceses and the Suffragan Bishops Act of 1534?
ReplyDeleteThe population data from wikipedia used is
ReplyDelete1315 - 6 million (wikipedia quotes a range of 4-6m. At 4m = 222k people per bishop, @ 6m = 333k ppb (a new tla!)
1350 - 3 million (wikipedia comments "or less")
1541 - 2,774,000
1601 - 4,110,000
the corresponding no. of bishops data from crockford's is
1315 - 18
1350 - 18
1541 - 33 (1535=18, 1536=22, 1537=27, 1538&9=30, 1540=31)
1601 - 25