Only a minority of rural people in late-medieval Essex spent their entire lives in the same community. In one respect, migration was the means by which people found places in the local economy to fit into. Despite the variegated economic complexion of the Essex countryside, persons who were of a certain age and possessed certain skills could not necessarily always find positions that would yield them a livelihood within their own communities; few rural places in the district would have afforded viable livelihoods to an unlimited number of carpenters or tailors, for example.

In addition to being an economic phenomenon, migration was also a demographic experience that, like marriage, differed among different social groups. And besides occupation, age was an extremely important influence upon geographical mobility. Movement from parish to parish was in part a function of the life cycle, since Essex country people were most likely to migrate in their teens and early twenties and to settle down in their late twenties. This last point is of considerable importance for understanding household formation also, because if a person typically achieved a place in the local economy and so tended to attain stable geographical settlement only towards the end of his third decade in life, this was also the time when the means to marry most likely either had been secured or were expected in the near future.