Situated on the western side of the Isle of Sheppey, Queenborough was named after Philippa of Hainault, Edward III’s consort, and received its first charter in 1368, which entrusted its government to a mayor, two bailiffs, and an unspecified number of freemen. M. Weinbaum, English Bor. Charters 1307-1660, p. 63; C. Eveleigh Woodruff, ‘Notes on the Municipal Recs. of Queenborough’, Arch. Cant. xxii. 172. It owed this privilege to its castle, which however failed to generate any significant urban growth.

Described by Camden as ‘a very fair market town, large and pretty populous, surrounded with a great number of pleasant meadows and pastures’,Bucks. Misc. ed. R. Gibbs, 145-6. Aylesbury, by the later Middle Ages, had usurped Buckingham as the centre of county administration in Buckinghamshire; the assizes, gaol, and county elections were all relocated to the town, which was conveniently situated in the middle of the county.Lipscomb, Bucks. ii. 27-8; VCH Bucks. iii. 1-11; iv.

Situated at the confluence of the rivers Thet and Little Ouse, and straddling the Norfolk/Suffolk border, Thetford existed as a market town before Roman times, when it was known as Sitomagus. During the early Middle Ages it flourished, but by the late sixteenth century, having ceased to be an important staging post, it was chronically poor and ‘ruinated’, its income barely exceeding £60 p.a. F. Blomefield, Hist. Thetford, 2, 61; F. Blomefield, Hist. Norf. 42-3; Norf. RO, T/C1/3, p.

Sandwich was a chartered borough before Domesday. The easternmost of the Cinque Ports, its limbs included Deal, Fordwich, Ramsgate and even Brightlingsea in Essex. Its harbour decayed in Tudor times because of the growth of a sandbank across the entrance, preventing the entry of all but the smallest ships. Boys, 684. During the early seventeenth century the borough frequently lobbied for a new haven to be built, but the estimated cost – more than £50,000 – was prohibitive. E. Kent Archives Cent. Sa/AC7, f.

Carmarthenshire antedated the Statute of Rhuddlan (1284) and historically was the area subject to the control of the royal castle at Carmarthen. The union legislation of 1536 added seven outlying lordships to the existing county, but omitted districts immediately west of the town of Carmarthen, which were annexed to Pembrokeshire. This anomalous situation was addressed by statute in 1543, when Llanstephan, Ystlwyf and Laugharne were amalgamated as the new Carmarthenshire hundred of Derllys.Carm. County Hist. ed. J.E. Lloyd, i. 12-13, 207, 264; R.A.

For administrative purposes Lincolnshire was parcelled into three sub-divisions; Lindsey to the north, Kesteven to the south-west, and Holland, the area of coastal marshlands surrounding the Wash, in the south-east. Although each had separate commissions of the peace, this does not appear to have produced any regular pattern in the geographical distribution of knights of the shire during the early Stuart period. Elections were held at Lincoln Castle.

Grantham, a market and postal town on the Great North Road, was incorporated in 1463 and first sent representatives to Parliament in 1467.E. Turnor, Colls. for Hist. Grantham, 56. The corporation consisted of one annually elected alderman and 12 ‘comburgesses’.G.H. Martin, Charters of Grantham, 14-16, 24-47; C. Holmes, Seventeenth-Cent. Lincs. 32-3. However, the town also remained under manorial rule, and after the accession of James I it became part of Anne of Denmark’s dower.B.

The 1536 Act of Union enfranchised the shire town of each Welsh county except Merioneth; in the case of Flintshire, representation was extended to include four other boroughs, only one of which, Rhuddlan, was of any consequence.SR, iii.

Thirsk had returned Members to the Parliament of 1295, but was not permanently enfranchised until the reign of Edward VI, shortly after the Crown acquired former monastic property within the town.

A Saxon foundation, sited on Ermine Street where it crossed the River Ouse, Huntingdon was a thriving centre of perhaps 2,000 people in 1086. Chartered in 1205 and served by 16 churches in 1291, its prosperity was eroded by the rise of nearby St. Ives and St. Neots, which took over the local markets in livestock and grain respectively, so that by 1603, with only four churches and a population of about 750, the borough was of little consequence.