Commanding the shortest sea passage to France, Dover, described by one observer in 1635 as a ‘long town … indifferently well built’, was the only Cinque Port to retain much economic importance, boasting as it did a substantial fleet of trading vessels. ‘A Relation of a Short Survey of the Western Counties’ ed. G. Wickham Legg, in Cam. Miscellany XVI (Cam. Soc. ser. 3. lii), 26. For the size of Dover’s fleet, see SP14/140/68; Eg. 2584, ff. 375-80v. Its prosperity, however, was achieved only at the price of constant maintenance work on pier and harbour.

Under the Tudors much of the Yorkshire woollen industry migrated to the Pennines, a source of abundant water power. Pontefract – frequently pronounced Pomfret – lay just outside the principal industrial area, ‘in a very pleasant place that bringeth forth liquorice and skirrets [parsnips] in great plenty’. It contained ‘fair buildings, and hath to show a stately castle as a man shall see, situated upon a rock no less goodly to the eye than safe for the defence’. The honour of Pontefract, consisting of 18 manors reaching to the Lancashire border, was a fiefdom of the duchy of Lancaster.

Hedon was founded in the twelfth century on a haven two miles from the Humber, as a convenient point for the export of produce from Holderness. The town boasted an imposing chapel known as the ‘King of Holderness’, but in 1540 Leland noted ‘the haven is very sorely decayed’, and by the 1620s the town’s modest remaining trade was being unloaded a mile downstream at Paull.

The largest county in England, Yorkshire is a region of enormous topographical variety. V. Wilson, British Regional Geology: E. Yorks. and Lincs.; W. Edwards and F.M. Trotter, British Regional Geology: Pennines and Adjacent Areas. The early Stuart economy reflected this diversity, with the lowlands dominated by arable farming, the Wolds and the Ryedale given over to large-scale sheepwalks, and the dales in the Moors and northern Pennines used for cattle grazing. Agrarian Hist. Eng. and Wales ed. J. Thirsk, v. pt.

Ludgershall lies on the principal road between Marlborough, Salisbury and Winchester. The Normans had constructed a castle on its northern edge by 1103, which later became a garrisoned provincial treasury. A planned town was laid out on a grid pattern focused upon a central market square, though economic growth was restricted by the larger markets at nearby Marlborough and Salisbury.VCH Wilts. xv. 119, 121, 124.