Warwick’s strategic location on a ‘rocky ascent’ above the Avon made it an important military and administrative centre from Saxon times. As the county town of seventeenth-century Warwickshire, it played host to the quarter sessions and assizes, and housed the local militia’s magazine. However, although it possessed a thriving market in local agricultural produce, it lagged behind both Coventry and Birmingham in terms of commercial and industrial development. The growing population stood at around 3,000 in 1600, but poverty levels were relatively high. W. Dugdale, Antiqs.

Writing in 1627 the deputy lieutenants of Surrey complained of the ‘smallness and poverty of this county’. An Elizabethan petition from some of Surrey’s inhabitants also described the county as ‘one of the least shires’ and ‘one of the barrenest’.Manning and Bray, Surr. iii. 669-70. However, both of these complaints were made in order to reduce financial burdens on the county.

Sited on a ridge west of the Severn, Much Wenlock’s prosperity was founded upon the sale of March wool from sheep grazed on Wenlock Edge. However, the town itself, with a population of no more than 600-700 in the early Stuart period, was in decline: the prosperity which had built its magnificent market hall in the fifteenth century was but a memory, while the borough was not even designated a staple market for the wool trade in 1617. Meanwhile, such industry as the town did possess was being eclipsed by the growth of coalmining at nearby Broseley. VCH Salop, x. 429-30; J.U.

Situated at the mouth of the Yare on the southern border of Norfolk, Yarmouth had been an important fortified town and a major fishing port since Saxon times. The epithet ‘Great’ was added during Edward I’s reign, probably to distinguish it from Little Yarmouth, in Suffolk. F. Blomefield, Hist. Norf. xi. 255. Built around a large central marketplace, the town’s most unusual feature was that it comprised a single parish. Cott. Augustus I (i), no. 74. In the nineteenth century the huge church of St.

Monmouth was established around a Norman castle situated at the confluence of the rivers Monnow and Wye. It thus occupied a significant strategic and cultural position on the boundary between Wales and England. In the thirteenth century the borough passed into the hands of the house of Lancaster, and thereafter it remained a duchy possession down to 1631. The town enjoyed good trading contacts by river and land, and possessed a market by the end of the eleventh century, but suffered severely in the Glynd?r rebellion and struggled to recover economically.K.

The ‘great beehive of Christendom’, London in the early seventeenth century was the largest city in England, home to more than 200,000 souls. Its population growth, more rapid than that of the rest of the country, was not halted even by severe plague outbreaks like that of 1603, which claimed the lives of around a fifth of its inhabitants.

By the beginning of the seventeenth century the decline of the Lincolnshire cloth industry and the silting of the River Witham had reduced Boston’s importance as an international port, though the town still enjoyed a modest prosperity as a centre for local trade.Port Bks. of Boston ed. R.W.K. Hinton (Lincoln Rec. Soc. l), pp. xviii-xxxix; C. Holmes, Seventeenth-Cent. Lincs. 13-14; P. Thompson, Hist.

During the Elizabethan period the electoral politics of Leicestershire were dominated by the earls of Huntingdon, heads of the powerful Hastings family. George, 4th earl of Huntingdon (Sir George Hastings†), who succeeded to the title in 1595, was lord lieutenant and custos rotulorum of the county, steward and receiver of the honour of Leicester (part of the duchy of Lancaster), and forester of the forest of Leicester. HP Commons, 1558-1603, i. 192; HMC Hatfield, xvi. 387; Duchy of Lancaster Office-Holders ed. R.

Originally the administrative centre for the Lacy Marcher lordship, Weobley declined as Ludlow rose. Nevertheless, the borough sent Members to the Model Parliament, and continued to do so until 1306, when Bromyard, Ledbury, and Ross-on-Wye were also represented, but thereafter only Hereford and Leominster regularly returned.

Situated on the Welsh border, Herefordshire was described in the early seventeenth century as ‘most healthful and temperate, and … fertile for corn and cattle’. Indeed, so far as wheat, wool and water were concerned ‘it yieldeth to no shire in England’, and was consequently ‘passing well furnished with all things necessary for man’s life’.J. Speed, Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine (1612), p. 49; W. Camden, Britain (1610) trans. P.