Commons 1604-1629

Situated at the head of the Orwell estuary in east Suffolk, with a population estimated at about 4,300 in 1603, Ipswich was the most important shipbuilding centre in the country after London. It was estimated in 1625 that there had been an annual average of 12 launchings for the past 30 years. A head port with resident customs and Admiralty officials, Ipswich played an important part in the Newcastle coal trade, with 50 colliers of between 200 and 300 tons burthen plying regularly between Tyne and Thames around six times a year. M.

Though it was a county palatine, the administration and governance of Cheshire was broadly similar to that of any other shire. Influence and power was largely controlled by the local gentry and administered by the lord lieutenant, deputy lieutenants and magistrates. However, Cheshire remained largely outside the Westminster legal system: it maintained its own courts and justice was administered in the name of the earl of Chester, a title bestowed ever since 1301 on the prince of Wales at his creation.

Amersham, situated 26 miles from London on the road to Aylesbury, was well established by the time of the Domesday survey.W.H. Hastings Kelle, ‘Amersham’, Bucks. Recs. ii. 333-53. Although granted a fair and market by the Crown in 1200, it was never incorporated. The chief municipal officers were two constables, appointed by a borough court; however, no borough records survive that might shed further light on the town’s institutions and administration.VCH Bucks. iii.

The thriving market town of Knaresborough was subject to the manorial government of the duchy of Lancaster’s honour of Knaresborough, which covered one-third of Claro wapentake. There was ‘great resort to it in summer time by reason of the wells’ at nearby Harrogate, discovered by the Slingsby family in about 1570.

Montgomeryshire was created by amalgamation of the Marcher lordships of Powis, Montgomery, Ceri and Cedewain under the 1536 Act of Union. One of the wealthier shires of early modern Wales, it encompassed not only the mountainous pastures of Powis, but also the fertile upper reaches of the Severn valley.

A town existed at Coventry by the mid-eleventh century, when it belonged to the famous Godiva. Made rich by the cloth trade, in 1377 it was England’s third biggest provincial centre, with perhaps 9,000 inhabitants. Growth continued into the fifteenth century, and in 1451 it was granted the status of both city and county. Around this time, however, the market for the local broadcloth contracted, and despite the development of alternative manufactures such as caps and blue thread economic decline set in. In the severe depression of the 1520s, the population shrank to about 6,000.

Shaftesbury received its first charter in 1252, and sent two Members to the Model Parliament. A survey of 1615 described the borough as lying between ‘a deep country full of pasture, yielding plenty of well-fed beeves, muttons, and milch-kine, and … a high champion country, yielding store of corn, sheep, and wool; so the town is made a great vent for the commodities on either part’.

Prior to James I’s accession in 1603, Northumberland’s history was dominated by its location on England’s northern border. Following centuries of intermittent war with Scotland, the county was run effectively as a military zone, divided into Marches, and exempted from national taxation so that local resources could be utilized for defence purposes. Under the early Stuarts, with peace now supposedly assured, serious efforts were made to develop a more conventional administrative framework.

Dominated by its Norman castle and cathedral, Rochester was linked to neighbouring Strood by an 11-arch stone bridge, described by one visitor in 1635 as ‘fair, stately, long and strong’ and ‘not much inferior’ to that of London.‘Relation of a short survey of the western counties, 1635’ ed. L.G. Wickham Legg, in Cam. Misc. xvi. (Cam. Soc. ser. 3. lii), 8. The bridge and its estates were administered by two wardens and 12 assistants, who enjoyed parliamentary authority to raise taxes within a seven-mile radius of the city to help cover the costs of maintenance.

Carmarthen was founded by the Romans and reoccupied by the Normans, who built a castle to secure their dominion over the Welsh. The borough served as the administrative centre of the principality of South Wales down to the Stuart period.R.A. Griffiths, ‘Carmarthen’, in Medieval Bor. Wales ed. R.A. Griffiths, 132-52. The town enjoyed good trading links, both by land and via the navigable River Tywi (Towy): it was the staple port for Welsh wool from 1353, and in return for the wool and cloth shipped to Bristol and the Continent, French wine was imported.Ibid.