Situated on the river Colne, Colchester engaged in both coastal and overseas trade through its port of New Hythe, and its position on the road between London and the main east-coast ports ensured good inland communications. An administrative centre, its royal castle served as a base for the sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire but its location in the north-east corner of the county ensured that the smaller but more centrally situated Chelmsford fulfilled the role of county town.
Large, rich and well populated, Essex possessed a coastline longer than that of any other English county. Trade with the continent of Europe was of great significance for its economy, as was its proximity to London since it provided much of the capital’s firewood, hay, meat, dairy produce and other supplies. While predominantly agricultural, Essex also had an important cloth industry in which Colchester played the principal part. N. Pevsner, Buildings of Eng.: Essex, 1-3; T.
Weymouth, which faced the parliamentary borough of Melcombe Regis across the narrow entrance to the estuary of the river Wey, formed part of the inheritance of Edmund Mortimer, earl of March, and passed after his death in 1425 to his nephew Richard, duke of York. Accordingly, unlike Melcombe, the borough did not pay a fee farm to the Crown, and this remained the case even after 1461 when its lord, York’s son and heir, seized the throne, for the dowager Duchess Cecily held it until she died. J. Hutchins, Dorset, ii. 420-3; CPR, 1461-7, p.
Situated in east Dorset, on a peninsula between the rivers Piddle and Frome, Wareham had long been superseded in importance as a stronghold by the expansion of Corfe castle in the Isle of Purbeck, and by Henry VI’s reign its own castle was in ruins. The silting-up of the higher reaches of Poole harbour had led to the decline of Wareham as a port, and now most seagoing vessels sailed no closer than Poole. In 1436 the borough was included in the list of ‘desolated, wasted, destructed and depopulated’ Dorset towns, and accordingly was granted a remittance on its parliamentary subsidies.
The number of parish churches in Shaftesbury had fallen by at least half since the early Middle Ages, and there are other signs of depopulation and relative impoverishment in the period here under review. In 1436 Shaftesbury was one of the Dorset ‘vills’ and boroughs which, owing to poverty, were unable to pay the full amount towards the fifteenth and tenth granted in the Parliament of the previous year. It was granted a remission of £3 – more than any other borough in the county. E179/103/79; VCH Dorset, ii.
Sited by a magnificent natural harbour, which was in use from pre-Roman times, the settlement at Poole grew by the mid thirteenth century to be a port of some importance. Its earliest charter spoke of ships sailing from there to foreign parts and of merchants from abroad regularly visiting the town, and presented an impression of far more activity than would pertain in a quiet fishing village.
Founded in the late thirteenth century on the north bank of the Wey and opposite the port of Weymouth, Melcombe, as a royal borough, paid a fee farm to the Crown, in contrast to its neighbour which fell under the lordship of the Clares and their descendants. From the mid fourteenth century it served as a centre for the collection of customs and subsidies due to the King. The town’s subsequent decline is partly attributable to competition from Weymouth, which, being easier to defend, escaped the fierce assault by the French in 1377 – an attack that left Melcombe devastated and depopulated.
The natural catastrophes of the late fourteenth century, which left the Cobb battered and swept away by gales, ships destroyed and dwellings standing empty and derelict, had resulted in Lyme’s depopulation and economic decline, both of which were exacerbated by attacks from the French. Of necessity, the fee farm payable to the Crown and set in the 1330s at over £21 p.a. had to be severely reduced.
Under the terms of the charter granted by Edward III in 1337 the burgesses of Dorchester held their borough from the Crown for a fee farm of £20 p.a. The charter was confirmed by successive monarchs, in 1396, 1400, 1420 and 1429, without significant alteration. Recs. Dorchester ed. Mayo, 2-12, 15-16; CPR, 1429-36, p.
In the sixteenth century the antiquary John Leland described Bridport, in west Dorset, as a ‘fair large town’. J. Leland, Itin. ed. Toulmin Smith, i. 245. Earlier, in the reign of Henry VI, its size and population are difficult to assess, although a muster roll of September 1457 listed 188 men between the ages of 16 and 60 who were obliged to bear arms, and this figure might suggest an overall population of some 1,500. Bridport muster roll, DC/BTB/FG3. The size of the population is worked out according to the formula suggested by C.
