Commons 1604-1629

Cardigan was founded as a Norman military centre, occupying a strategic position on the banks of the Teifi where the river flows into the Irish Sea. In the 1240s and 1250s, following a turbulent period when the borough became a battleground between Welsh and English interests, it acquired a wall and an impressive castle. In 1279 Edward I made Cardigan the political and administrative capital of Ceredigion, and gave it a charter of incorporation in 1284 modelled on that of Carmarthen.R.A. Griffiths, ‘The Making of Medieval Cardigan’, Ceredigion, xi.

Described in 1635 as a ‘pleasant and sweet little city … in a pleasant, fertile level and not far from the main sea’, Chichester, situated in the extreme west of Sussex, had a population of about 2,500.‘Relation of a Short Survey of the Western Counties’ ed. L.G. Wickham Legg Cam. Misc. xvi. (Cam. Soc. ser. 3. lii), pt. 3, pp. 33, 35; A.

Situated on the River Idle in the north-eastern Nottinghamshire hundred of Bassetlaw, 32 miles from Nottingham, East Retford was an important market town and administrative centre, whose suburbs stretched into the neighbouring parishes of West Retford, Clarborough and Ordsall, though these lay outside the corporation’s jurisdiction.

Throughout the medieval period Tiverton was an insignificant settlement, which lay in the shadow of a castle held by the earls of Devon, and possessed only minimal privileges. It was not until the Courtenay family lost most of their power and lands in the mid-sixteenth century that the town escaped this seigneurial stranglehold, and began to achieve economic growth and political independence. J. Youings, ‘King James’s Charter to Tiverton’ (Reps. and Trans. Devon Assoc. xcix), 147-56; W.H. Hoskins, Devon, 495; M. Dunsford, Hist. Mems.

The county town of Buckinghamshire from at least the time of the Conquest, Buckingham declined sharply during the medieval period, partly because of its inconvenient location to the north of the shire but also because of the decay of the Norman castle.D.J. Elliott, Buckingham, 4-14; VCH Bucks. iii.

Salisbury was founded in the tenth century by the bishops of Old Sarum on water meadows by the river Avon, but it was only fully developed in the 1220s, when Bishop Poore began construction of a new cathedral. Immediately to the north of this site, burgages were laid out in a series of rectangular blocks, later called chequers. VCH Wilts. vi.

Site of the shrine of St. John of Beverley, a former archbishop of York, Beverley had been a national centre of pilgrimage before the Reformation, and remained the chief market for wool and agricultural produce in the East Riding thereafter, while its Cross Fair attracted merchants from London and across the north of England. Its population, estimated at about 5,000 in 1600, still almost equalled that of Hull.VCH Yorks. (E. Riding), vi.

An ancient walled town situated atop a hill overlooking the river Colne, Colchester in the early seventeenth century was the manufacturing centre of the new worsted draperies in Essex and had the largest population of any town in the county. W. Hunt, Puritan Moment, 3. The borough obtained its first known charter in 1189, which allowed it to choose its own bailiffs, who had previously been royal appointees.

Tregony sprang up at the highest point of the River Fal navigable by medieval shipping. A manorial court leet was recorded there in the Domesday survey, and the town had achieved borough status by 1201, its government lying in the hands of a portreeve or mayor. The manor was granted by William I to the Pomeroy family, who obtained for the town the privileges of holding fairs and a weekly market, and who also constructed a castle and parish church. In the later Middle Ages, however, the river silted up, drowning the church and part of the town, and rendering Tregony an economic backwater.

Yarmouth, a fortified town and harbour near the western end of the Isle of Wight, was granted a seigneurial charter about the middle of the thirteenth century, vesting town government in the mayor. Newport and Yarmouth each sent one Member to the Model Parliament of 1295, but their representation thereafter lapsed until 1584, when both towns were fully enfranchised at the instance of the captain of the Isle, Sir George Carey†. R. Warner, Hist. I.o.W. 129; VCH Hants, v. 286-90. He nominated both Members at Yarmouth in subsequent Elizabethan elections.