Once the heart of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Kent, by the early seventeenth century Canterbury was the unofficial capital of East Kent and a staging post for princes and ambassadors travelling between London and Dover. It also boasted more lawyers than any other part of the county. P. Clark, Eng. Prov. Soc. 275, 287. Successive archbishops of Canterbury preferred to reside at Lambeth, and it was five years before Archbishop Abbot even visited the city. CSP Dom. 1611-18, p.

Situated on a promontory overlooking the Severn, Bridgnorth was chartered in 1157 and returned two Members to the Commons from 1295. While regarded as ‘the second town of Shropshire’, its economic base was surprisingly modest: the medieval cloth industry declined under the Tudors, particularly after knitted caps, a local speciality, fell out of fashion, and in the 1630s the town’s Ship Money assessment of £50 was only half that of the comparably sized borough of Ludlow.J.F.A. Mason, Bridgnorth, 10-17; T. Rowley, Salop Landscape, 187-91; J.

Wilton was the seat of the Wessex kings until the ninth century, and thereafter the administrative centre of Wiltshire, although the rise of nearby Salisbury restricted its economic growth. R.C. Hoare, Hist. Wilts. ‘Branch and Dole’, 55, 117. Originally a borough by prescription, the town was governed by a merchant guild until 1350, when a charter appointed a mayor, recorder, town clerk, five aldermen, three capital burgesses, 11 common councilmen and other minor officials. VCH Wilts. vi. 1, 9; Hoare, 131. Wilton first returned MPs to Parliament in 1275.

Chipping Wycombe was a small town located in a sheltered, well-watered valley on the important route between Oxford and London, and was linked to Great Marlow.VCH Bucks. iii. 113. Its long-established market, particularly in corn, drew in traders from the capital, Berkshire, Hampshire and Oxfordshire, as well as from Buckinghamshire itself. Cloth-working and lace-making provided employment for a significant section of the population.L.J. Ashford, Hist. of Bor. of High Wycombe from its Origins to 1880, pp.

Westminster’s economy revolved largely around the retail trades, beer-brewing and the letting of residential property. Cf. G. Rosser, Medieval Westminster, 43-165. The law courts in Westminster Hall, and the king’s Court at Whitehall, brought a steady stream of people to the city. Whenever Parliament met business also boomed, as Members of both Houses, along with their wives and servants, descended on Westminster’s numerous inns and hostelries, Croft estimates the number to have been at least 1,000: P.

Westmorland had long been free from Scottish incursions before the Union of the Crowns in 1603, by which time ‘the old breed of northern magnates who saw their tenants as armed retainers rather than mere entries on a rent roll’ was practically extinct.A.R. Appleby, ‘Agrarian Capitalism or Seigneurial Reaction?’, AHR, lxxx. 586-7. Nevertheless, the early Stuart period was dominated by wrangling over tenant-right, the custom of rendering an uneconomic rent in consideration of the obligation to serve on the now non-existent border.

Wallingford owed its origins and early importance to a ford across the Thames, dominated by a medieval castle. It received its first charter in 1156 and returned Members from 1295. The population was declining in this period and in 1636 was described as only ‘a good market town’. VCH Berks. iii. 523, 532, 534, 536; J.K. Hedges, Wallingford, ii.

Reading, with a population of about 7,000 in the 1630s, was still a prosperous clothing town at the opening of this period, producing high quality woollen fabrics much in demand on the Continent. One of the 23 staple towns created for the wool trade in 1617, it suffered heavily from the trade depression of the 1620s. John Kendrick, a wealthy London cloth exporter who came from a prominent Reading family, bequeathed £7,500 to the borough in 1624, intending to encourage the industry, but the funds were, in the event, misused. N.R. Goose, ‘Decay and Regeneration in 17th Cent.

Dunwich had been one of the most important Saxon ports in East Anglia and the seat of a bishopric, but coastal erosion and the silting of the harbour had reduced it to a shadow of its former self by the early seventeenth century. J.A. Steers, ‘Suff. Shore’, Procs. Suff. Inst. Arch. xix. 9-11; T. Gardner, Historical Acct.

A village existed at Tavistock by the tenth century. An important Benedictine abbey was founded there in late Saxon times, and the monks encouraged the settlement’s development, obtaining grants of markets and fairs. Borough status was probably achieved during Henry II’s reign. Located on the western edge of Devon’s tin-mining zone, Tavistock was a stannary town from 1305. In the early Stuart period it was still the county’s busiest centre for coinage, the official processing of tin for sale, even though production in Devon had now significantly declined.