Situated on the south-east corner of the Wash, King’s Lynn is ‘flanked to the east by the dry sandy loams of Norfolk, and bounded to the south and west by marsh and fen’. V. Parker, Making of King’s Lynn, 3. Lynn derives the second part of its name from ‘Lun’ or ‘Lena’, an ancient British word meaning lake. F. Blomefield, Hist. Norf. viii. 476. The town was principally founded by the bishop of Norwich in the eleventh century, Parker, 1. when it was known as Bishop’s Lynn.
Located at the southernmost point of Northamptonshire, about half way between Banbury and Buckingham, Brackley was a small agricultural town that in its medieval heyday had served as ‘a famous staple for wool’. However, by the turn of the seventeenth century, as William Camden noted, it could ‘only boast how great and wealthy it once was by its ruins’.Baker, Northants. i. 567, 573-4. The town was governed under a seigneurial charter granted in 1260 by the earl of Winchester to the mayor and around 32 ‘burgesses’. Northants. P and P, iii.
Situated on the Avon 12 miles south-east of Bristol, and described by a local doctor in 1628 as ‘a well compacted city, … beautified with very fair and goodly buildings for the receipt of strangers’, Bath was already famous for the healing powers of its waters, which were visited by Anne of Denmark in 1613 and 1615, and by Charles I in 1628. T. Vennner, Baths of Bathe (1628), p. 1; Bath RO, ‘Elevation of the status of the mayor of Bath’. Under the terms of a charter granted in 1590, a mayor, between four and ten aldermen and a council of 20 governed Bath. J.
Wiltshire can be divided into two main regions: the chalk downlands of the Marlborough Downs and Salisbury Plain, dominated by sheep-corn husbandry; and the cheese district of the northern and western parts of the county. There was also a separate ‘butter’ region in the south-west, and two royal forests, Savernake in the north, and Clarendon in the south-east. Wiltshire was a major centre for cloth manufacture, concentrated in the west of the county and along the Wyley, Avon and Nadder valleys in the south. D. Underdown, Revel, Riot and Rebellion, 73-105; G.D.
Westbury was a small market town in the centre of Wiltshire’s clothing area. The borough, apparently restricted to the precinct in which the ancient burgage tenements lay, was never chartered, but a municipal structure had evolved by the reign of Elizabeth, which included a mayor and a town seal. Enfranchised from 1448, the parliamentary indentures for the early Stuart period were signed by the ‘mayor and burgesses’ and authenticated with the town seal; the 1625 indenture was additionally witnessed by ‘Edward Greenhill, Thomas Style, John Greenhill and others’.
Located on the River Avon, close to the royal forest of Pewsham, the settlement of Chippenham dates from at least the ninth century, and was the scene of a famous peace treaty between the Saxons and Danes in 879. In the early Stuart period the town was noted for its corn market, though its prosperity depended primarily on the manufacture of broadcloth. There were at least 94 households in 1604, and Chippenham was substantial enough to host quarter sessions in its town hall. J.J. Daniell, Hist. Chippenham, 4, 20, 29, 66-7, 69, 90-1; Recs. of Chippenham Bor. ed. F.H.
West Looe was known originally as Porthbyhan (‘little cove’ in Cornish), and a corrupted version of this name, Portpighan, still appeared on the borough’s election indentures in the early seventeenth century as part of its official title. A settlement existed on the west bank of the Looe by 1243, when it received its first charter. Along with the adjacent manor of Portlooe, the borough was absorbed into the duchy of Cornwall in 1540. T. Bond, E. and W. Looe, 50, 57; R. Pearse, Ports and Harbours of Cornw.
Situated near the centre of Pembrokeshire, at the head of the Cleddau estuary and with roadways emanating from it in every direction, Haverfordwest was easily the most prosperous and populous town in the county. Its thriving Saturday market was reputed to be the best in all Wales for fish, and the town carried on a flourishing coastal trade with several English ports along the Severn, chief among which was Bristol, whose clothiers relied heavily on woollen shipments from the Milford Haven area.
By the beginning of the seventeenth century Pembrokeshire’s boroughs were, with the exception of prosperous Haverfordwest, in an advanced state of economic decay. Pembroke was in places ‘very ruinous’ and severely depopulated, John Speed recording in 1611 that it had ‘more houses without inhabitants than I saw in any one city’. Though nominally the shire town, it had long since been eclipsed by Haverfordwest as the county’s administrative centre.
Situated at the confluence of the rivers Tame and Anker, Tamworth was a Saxon foundation once favoured as a residence by the monarchs of Mercia. It was fairly small, even by early modern standards: by 1640 around 300 households clustered around its privately owned castle.C.F. Palmer, Hist. Tamworth, app. p. xxvii. Little is known of its economy, but by 1589 several inhabitants had erected corn mills to compete with those already there belonging to the queen. H. Wood, Tamworth Bor. Recs.
