<p>During its most prosperous period, from about 1345 to near the end of the 15th century, Coventry is said to have been the fourth largest city in England, and in 1523-7 its subsidy assessment was still higher than any save those of London, Norwich, Bristol and Newcastle-upon-Tyne. But the cloth trade was declining and the art of making blue thread, flourishing in the period and giving rise to the expression ‘true as Coventry blue’, seems to have been lost by the middle of Elizabeth’s reign.

<p>In marked contrast to its importance during the Wars of the Roses, Warwickshire under the Tudors was little concerned with national politics. John Dudley’s creation as Earl of Warwick in 1547 gave him no outstanding influence in the shire, and his attempt to have Jane Grey proclaimed Queen at Coventry was unsuccessful, the mainly Catholic and conservative gentry being strongly pro-Marian, although one of the knights, Thomas Marrow, was to oppose the initial measures towards the reunion with Rome in Mary’s first Parliament.

<p>Until the Dissolution the manor and borough of Steyning belonged to Syon abbey: after 1539 they were annexed to the royal honor of Petworth. Some 18 or 20 gardens or houses in the town formed part of the barony of Bramber, thus giving the Howard family control over the borough: in 1539 the 3rd Duke of Norfolk listed it among the Sussex boroughs where ‘in times past I could have made burgesses of Parliament’.

<p>The port, manor and borough of New Shoreham formed part of the barony of Bramber which belonged to the dukes of Norfolk: Old Shoreham was owned by the duchy of Cornwall. On the death of the dowager Duchess of Norfolk in the spring of 1545 New Shoreham passed into the possession of the crown. In 1547 Edward VI granted it to <a href="/landingpage/51594" title="Sir Thomas Seymour II" class="link">Sir Thomas Seymour II</a>, Baron Seymour of Sudeley, upon whose attainder two years later it reverted to the crown.

<p>Midhurst provided a market for the district, and its inhabitants lived by weaving, dying, tanning and other crafts required in a predominantly agricultural area. The manor of Midhurst, sometimes called Cowdray, had passed into the ownership of <a href="/landingpage/OWENDXXXX" title="Sir David Owen" class="link">Sir David Owen</a> on the death of his father-in-law in 1492.

<p>The castle, manor and mesne borough of Lewes formed part of the honor or barony of that name, which at the opening of Henry VIII’s reign was divided between the 2nd Duke of Norfolk, the 2nd Earl of Derby, the 5th Baron Bergavenny and the Wingfield family.

<p>Situated at the centre of the Weald, Horsham was a small yet prosperous town. Stone and slate were quarried nearby but its wealth rested on the iron produced in the locality. A bill to curtail the growth of the iron industry there failed in the Parliament of 1547. The manor of the borough formed part of the larger manor of Horsham within the barony of Bramber owned by the dukes of Norfolk.

<p>East Grinstead was a market town and the meeting place of the Lent assizes for east Sussex. The manor and borough belonged to the duchy of Lancaster. In 1559 it was described in a duchy survey as ‘a liberty of itself without any intermeddling of the hundred. or <em>vice versa</em>’, with 48 burgages; ‘the burgage holders and cottagers are all the Queen’s tenants and hold their tenements of her majesty as of the manor of East Grinstead by fealty only and suit of court’.

<p>Situated on the coastal plain of western Sussex, Chichester was a moderately prosperous city of perhaps 2,000 inhabitants. Its foreign trade, although not nearly as extensive as that of other Sussex ports, was at least until the fall of Calais fairly lucrative, and during the 1550s the corporation tried unsuccessfully to remove weirs from the harbour. The small group of aliens resident there seems to have engaged more in Continental trade than industry.

<p>The township of Bramber was overshadowed by the adjoining borough of Steyning, but its position on the most southerly road running the length of Sussex, at the crossing of the river Adur, gave it a measure of independence from its neighbour. The castle, manor and borough formed part of the barony of Bramber belonging to the dukes of Norfolk. On the execution of Catherine Howard the 3rd Duke surrendered his interest in the barony to Henry VIII, and on the death of his stepmother in 1545 Bramber passed to the crown.