Commons 1604-1629

During the Elizabethan period the electoral politics of Leicestershire were dominated by the earls of Huntingdon, heads of the powerful Hastings family. George, 4th earl of Huntingdon (Sir George Hastings†), who succeeded to the title in 1595, was lord lieutenant and custos rotulorum of the county, steward and receiver of the honour of Leicester (part of the duchy of Lancaster), and forester of the forest of Leicester. HP Commons, 1558-1603, i. 192; HMC Hatfield, xvi. 387; Duchy of Lancaster Office-Holders ed. R.

Originally the administrative centre for the Lacy Marcher lordship, Weobley declined as Ludlow rose. Nevertheless, the borough sent Members to the Model Parliament, and continued to do so until 1306, when Bromyard, Ledbury, and Ross-on-Wye were also represented, but thereafter only Hereford and Leominster regularly returned.

Situated on the Welsh border, Herefordshire was described in the early seventeenth century as ‘most healthful and temperate, and … fertile for corn and cattle’. Indeed, so far as wheat, wool and water were concerned ‘it yieldeth to no shire in England’, and was consequently ‘passing well furnished with all things necessary for man’s life’.J. Speed, Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine (1612), p. 49; W. Camden, Britain (1610) trans. P.

Few counties saw more of royalty than Hertfordshire, especially during the reign of James I. Royston, amid the unenclosed downlands of the north, was James’s favourite centre for hunting and hawking, and to it he added Theobalds, by exchange with his chief minister the 1st earl of Salisbury (Robert Cecil†) in 1607, thereby acquiring a palace within easier access of Whitehall.VCH Herts. ii. 346-8, 363-4; CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 452; 1611-18, pp. 109, 488; 1619-23, p. 416; Illustrations of Brit. Hist. ed. E. Lodge, iii.

Originally a Roman settlement, Dorchester returned two Members to the Model Parliament, and received its first charter in 1337. It was described in 1610 as ‘an ancient and populous borough where the assizes for the county are usually holden, and whither the knights and gentlemen of the shire do often repair upon sundry occasions of service of the king’s majesty and the county’, including the Dorset elections. As the shire town, it housed the county gaol, rebuilt in 1624. It also boasted a free school, a bookseller, and, from around 1631, a municipal library. D.

Bridport received its first charter in 1253, and was represented in the Model Parliament. Cordage and linen thread formed the town’s staple products, and the Act of 1529 requiring local farmers to sell all their hemp there was among the statutes renewed in 1624 and 1628. Though Bridport hosted the Dorset quarter sessions until its incorporation in 1619, and was home to nearly 1,500 communicants, its houses were ‘more old than fair’, and its harbour ‘altogether choked with the sands’ by the early seventeenth century.Hutchins, Dorset, ii. 7; T.

Situated on a creek to the east of Falmouth Harbour, St. Mawes was a small fishing village notable only for its ancient chapel dedicated to St. Maudutus, and the royal castle built in the 1540s to protect the bay from French raiders. Although one indenture in 1625 referred to ‘St. Maudes’, the chapel was derelict by 1621, when Parliament was petitioned unsuccessfully for its restoration. Local government was limited to a manorial court leet, held before a portreeve chosen annually by the manor’s tenants.

The shire town of Berkshire, Abingdon lay astride a major north-south trade route and was regarded as one of the most beautiful towns in England by some. As well as being a noted centre of the malt trade, it was also an important market for horses, and despite economic decline in the mid-sixteenth century it remained a centre of the cloth trade. C.G. Durston, ‘Berks. and the County Gentry, 1625-49’, (Univ. of Reading Ph.D. thesis, 1977), i. pp. 4, 17, 22; Travels through Stuart Britain: the Adventures of John Taylor, the Water Poet ed. J. Chandler, 161; VCH Berks. iv.

Situated on the River Arun and the edge of St. Leonard’s forest in the west Sussex rape of Bramber, Horsham prospered in Elizabethan times as a centre of the Wealden iron industry. It was also the seat of the county gaol and sometimes hosted the summer assizes and quarter sessions. VCH Suss. vi. pt. 2, pp. 129-35, 178. The manor and borough of Horsham descended with the barony of Bramber in the Howard family until it passed to the Crown on the attainder of the 4th duke of Norfolk in 1572.

Wendover’s development as a market town during the early medieval period was assisted by its location on the high ground at the western edge of the Chilterns and the fact that the main road from Aylesbury to London passed through the parish. VCH Bucks. iii. 20-31. Under the Tudors and early Stuarts it increased in prosperity. By 1620 its houses were concentrated around West Street, with further dwellings in North Street and South Street; the church and former manor house lay half a mile to the west. M. Summerell, B. Samuels, A. Mead and P. Eckett, Bk.