A Saxon foundation sited at one of the main crossing points on the upper Ouse, Bedford was sufficiently wealthy to build a stone bridge in the twelfth century, paid the surprisingly large sum of £40 for its fee-farm from 1190, and returned two Members to Parliament from 1295. The fee-farm was reduced in 1440 on the ground that a new bridge five miles down river at Great Barford had affected its road traffic, but the town revived under the Tudors, and had a population of about 1,500 by 1603.J. Godber, Hist. Beds. 52-6; VCH Beds. iii. 1-3; W.M.

Early seventeenth-century Warwickshire was a divided community, geographically and socially. The southern third of the county, with its ‘fertile fields of corn and verdant pastures’, was notable for its settled communities and traditional manorial structures. To the north, however, lay a heavily wooded region, Shakespeare’s Forest of Arden, where a more mobile population combined agricultural pursuits with industrial enterprise, particularly around the north-eastern coalfields and the thriving iron-works of Birmingham.

The largest port on Yorkshire’s North Sea coast, numbering about 450 households, Scarborough was governed by two bailiffs, two coroners (by convention, the retiring bailiffs), four chamberlains and 36 common councillors. VCH N. Riding, ii. 551; J.B. Baker, Hist. Scarbrough, 28, 45, 195. The corporation was dominated by merchants and shopkeepers, the most prominent of which, the Thompson family, provided one of the bailiffs at least 18 times between 1603-40; only two non-residents held municipal office during this period. From corp.

Situated close to the River Adur on the boundary between the downland and wealden regions of Sussex, Steyning remained an important market town in this period, with a significant tanning and leather industry. However, as a port it, like Bramber, had long been eclipsed by New Shoreham, situated at the mouth of the river. The population grew from about 300 in 1565 to roughly 1,000 by the early 1640s. VCH Suss. vi. pt. 1, pp. 220-1, 234; J. Pennington and J. Sleight, ‘Steyning Town and its Trades 1559-1787’, Suss. Arch. Colls. cxxx.

Situated four miles from the sea on the west bank of the River Adur, Bramber gave its name to one of the six rapes of Sussex, at a time when it was presumably the principal settlement in the Adur valley. Its prosperity was not of long duration as a port: New Shoreham, situated at the mouth of the river, replaced it and by 1595 it had ceased even to be a market town.

New Woodstock, a small market town that had grown up near the royal manor and park, was incorporated in 1453, but did not return Members to Parliament until a century later. In this period it was governed by a mayor, four aldermen, and 20 common councillors, who together with a slightly larger body of freemen formed the electorate. Ballard, 26-7, 35, 37, 61. Returns were made by the mayor and commonalty. It had become ‘ever usual with them’ to reserve one seat for the recorder and to prove amenable to the wishes of the high steward for the other. Liber Famelicus of Sir J.

Orford was an important East Anglian port in the early Middle Ages and had received its first its charter in 1256. R.A. Roberts, ‘Bor. Business of a Suff. town’, TRHS (ser. 4), xiv. 95; HMC Var. iv. 256. It was represented in the reign of Edward I, but subsequently ceased to return Members until the early sixteenth century. OR; HP Commons, 1509-58, i.

Chester, situated on the River Dee, was the capital of a palatine earldom and an important port for the Irish trade, being only 11 miles inland. A.M. Johnson, ‘Political, Constitutional, Social and Econ. Hist. of Chester 1550-1652’, (Univ. Oxford D.Phil. thesis, 1970), chap. 1; J. McN. Dodgson, Place Names of Cheshire, v. (I:i), 2-7. It received its first charter in 1354, and in 1506 was granted county status. However, Chester Castle and its surrounds (Gloverstone) remained under the authority of the chamberlain of the county palatine.

The remote and sparsely populated county of Cumberland was transformed by the Union of the crowns in 1603 from a border province into a backwater. News of the accession of King James precipitated a final outburst of pillage and looting by numerous border clans, among whom the Graham family was the most notorious; it was reported that in one ‘busy week’ there had been ‘40 towns burnt, 500 felonies and murders’.CJ, i. 1015a; VCH Cumb. ii. 282-4; P. Williams, ‘The Northern Borderland under the Early Stuarts’, in Hist. Essays Presented to David Ogg ed. H.E.

Christchurch, a small coastal town of no economic significance, had never received a royal charter. Its municipal officers were not far removed from manorial officials, and such self-government as it possessed rested on the tacit agreement of the lord of the manor.VCH Hants, v. 86-89. It first sent representatives to Parliament in 1571.