Commons 1604-1629

Worcestershire lies on the border between the highland and lowland zones of England. One of the wealthiest and most densely populated counties in seventeenth-century England, it was predominantly pastoral, though the south-east was mainly arable.R.H. Silcock, ‘County Govt. in Worcs.’ (London Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1974), pp. 11-13, 20. A substantial cloth industry, mostly concentrated in Worcester, produced high quality broadcloths, in addition from 1600 Kidderminster started manufacturing quantities of linsey-woolsey stuffs. A.D.

Still little more than a village in the seventeenth century, Hindon, which had regularly sent Members to Parliament from 1448, was an early thirteenth-century settlement planned by the bishop of Winchester and built on his manor of East Knoyle. Although close to the market towns of Wilton and Warminster, it boasted a market place and hosted a Michaelmas fair. By the mid-1630s its principal trades were weaving and the manufacture of gunpowder. The bishop’s bailiff headed the town’s administration, and acted as returning officer at parliamentary elections.

Situated on the main road from London to Bristol, Calne was already a significant settlement by the late Anglo-Saxon period, and formed part of the Crown’s ancient demesne. However, from the tenth century the original manor was divided into two, with one portion passing into ecclesiastical hands. The borough of Calne straddled the boundary between these smaller manors, and this dual patronage perhaps hindered its municipal development.

Warwick’s strategic location on a ‘rocky ascent’ above the Avon made it an important military and administrative centre from Saxon times. As the county town of seventeenth-century Warwickshire, it played host to the quarter sessions and assizes, and housed the local militia’s magazine. However, although it possessed a thriving market in local agricultural produce, it lagged behind both Coventry and Birmingham in terms of commercial and industrial development. The growing population stood at around 3,000 in 1600, but poverty levels were relatively high. W. Dugdale, Antiqs.

Writing in 1627 the deputy lieutenants of Surrey complained of the ‘smallness and poverty of this county’. An Elizabethan petition from some of Surrey’s inhabitants also described the county as ‘one of the least shires’ and ‘one of the barrenest’.Manning and Bray, Surr. iii. 669-70. However, both of these complaints were made in order to reduce financial burdens on the county.

Sited on a ridge west of the Severn, Much Wenlock’s prosperity was founded upon the sale of March wool from sheep grazed on Wenlock Edge. However, the town itself, with a population of no more than 600-700 in the early Stuart period, was in decline: the prosperity which had built its magnificent market hall in the fifteenth century was but a memory, while the borough was not even designated a staple market for the wool trade in 1617. Meanwhile, such industry as the town did possess was being eclipsed by the growth of coalmining at nearby Broseley. VCH Salop, x. 429-30; J.U.

Situated at the mouth of the Yare on the southern border of Norfolk, Yarmouth had been an important fortified town and a major fishing port since Saxon times. The epithet ‘Great’ was added during Edward I’s reign, probably to distinguish it from Little Yarmouth, in Suffolk. F. Blomefield, Hist. Norf. xi. 255. Built around a large central marketplace, the town’s most unusual feature was that it comprised a single parish. Cott. Augustus I (i), no. 74. In the nineteenth century the huge church of St.

Monmouth was established around a Norman castle situated at the confluence of the rivers Monnow and Wye. It thus occupied a significant strategic and cultural position on the boundary between Wales and England. In the thirteenth century the borough passed into the hands of the house of Lancaster, and thereafter it remained a duchy possession down to 1631. The town enjoyed good trading contacts by river and land, and possessed a market by the end of the eleventh century, but suffered severely in the Glynd?r rebellion and struggled to recover economically.K.