Commons 1604-1629

Cardiganshire, a ‘proto-county’ under royal control from the 1240s, was given formal status by the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284.J.G. Edwards, ‘The Early Hist. of the Cos. of Carm. and Card’, EHR, xxxi. 90-8. Its boundaries largely followed the native territory of Ceredigion, but it was somewhat enlarged by the Henrician Acts of Union. Most commentators concurred that it was sparsely populated and difficult to farm: with forbidding uplands in the north and east and open pasture to the south and west, the local economy was dominated by cattle farming.

From its foundation in the twelfth century, Dartmouth was important for its deep natural harbour, in a sheltered location close to the Dart estuary. A base for major mercantile and military voyages during the Middle Ages, the town first returned Members to Parliament in 1298, and secured the right to elect its own mayor in 1341. W.G. Hoskins, Devon, 179, 382-3; P. Russell, Dartmouth, 10. As the Dart silted up during the sixteenth century, Dartmouth prospered at the expense of Totnes, further upstream.

An inland port, Worcester benefited from trade along the Severn between Shrewsbury and Bristol, and also acted as an entrepot for the pastoral Marcher counties and the arable west Midlands. It was also a centre of the cloth industry, producing high quality broadcloth, mostly for export, and as a cathedral city and county capital it was a significant administrative centre. Between the 1560s and 1640s the population rose from around 4,000 to about 8,000.

Writing in response to the Crown’s demand for Privy Seal loans, the Nottinghamshire commissioners for musters wrote in November 1625 of the ‘smallness of this county … and vastness of a forest running quite through it’. Their county was ‘without trade or manufacture, without lead, iron or hidden treasurer, merely subsisting on the benefits common to it with all others’, and it was afflicted by floods of the River Trent, of which ‘they have of late lamentable experience’.SP16/10/61. However, others viewed the county in a more favourable light.

Although dominated by its university, Oxford was a thriving city under the early Stuarts, and hosted royal visits in 1605 and 1629 as well as the Parliament of 1625. R. Fasnacht, Hist. City of Oxf. 92-3. It was governed by a mayoral council known as the Thirteen, but was aided by a common council. A new charter of incorporation, granted in 1605, added two bailiffs to the mayor’s council and limited the size of the common council to 24. Royal Letters to Oxf. ed. O.