The island of Anglesey, rich in cultural significance though it was for the Welsh people, not least as the patrimonial home of the Tudor dynasty, was in the seventeenth century marked by its poverty. Indeed, Penmynydd, from whence the Tudors had sprung, was thought the most barren parish of all. In 1636 it was asserted by a resident that agricultural practice on Anglesey was backward, and no more than three men there could ‘lay out £300 at an instant’. Cal. Salusbury Corresp.
Swansea only became a parliamentary borough in its own right for Richard Cromwell’s Parliament. Previously it had been a contributory borough to the Cardiff constituency. It subsequently resumed this role until 1832, when it was again permitted to return its own Member under the Reform Act. The privilege of returning an MP was an addition by virtue of a grant of 1658 to a new charter bestowed on the town in 1656.
In this period there seems no certain way of identifying which of the contributory boroughs contributed to the electoral process, or to what extent. Nor is it possible to know which of the minor boroughs were still considered eligible to participate. Marian legislation had stipulated that the county court sessions should alternate between Cardigan and Aberystwyth, thus consolidating the primacy and rivalry of these two towns before 1640, but the fragmentary evidence suggests a weakening of involvement beyond Cardigan.
In the 1530s, John Leland visited Pembroke when it could glory in its fame as the birthplace of Henry VII, and he was evidently impressed by the impregnable castle and the stout town walls. Even then, however, the eastern suburb of the town was in ruins, hinting that prosperity was not easily sustained in south-west Wales. A pattern of decay and depopulation persisted well into the seventeenth century. The Itinerary in Wales of John Leland ed. L.
Early Stuart Denbighshire, rather like its western neighbour Caernarvonshire, was subject to political tensions that owed much to its topography. ‘Denbighshire’, HP Commons 1604-29. Running southwards from the Irish Sea and the county’s border with Flintshire is what was described in the 1670s as ‘a pleasant and fertile vale, reaching in length from south to north 17 miles and in breadth about five, called the Vale of Clwyd ... much inhabited by gentry’ and ‘begirt with high hills’. R.
Regarded as ‘the most impassable, barren country of all Wales’, Caernarfonshire was described in the 1670s as
The Linlithgow shires were grouped on the eastern shores of the Firth of Forth, with Linlithgowshire to the south, Stirlingshire to the north and Clackmannanshire sandwiched between the two. The economy of the region prospered in the early seventeenth century, thanks to its coal and salt industries and its position at the intersection of trade routes, between Glasgow and Edinburgh, and, through the port of Bo’ness, to other parts of Britain and the continent.
The constituency labelled ‘Lanark Burghs’ was made up of eight different burghs, scattered along the entire length of the Clyde river system: Lanark in Clydesdale; Glasgow and its near neighbours, Rutherglen, Renfrew and Dumbarton; Rothesay on the Isle of Bute; and finally Irvine and Ayr, on the Irish Sea coast. These were all ancient settlements, and all except Glasgow had been granted the status of royal burgh by the end of the Middle Ages.
The seven towns which constituted the Dornoch Burghs were spread in a wide semi-circle around the Moray Firth and its adjacent sea lochs. The most northerly burgh, Dornoch, was in Sutherland; facing it, across the Dornoch Firth, was Tain, in Ross-shire. Dingwall, at the head of the Cromarty Firth, was also in Ross-shire. Inverness, situated on the isthmus of land between the Moray Firth and Loch Ness, was the largest burgh of the seven.
The shires of Forfar and Kincardine formed the area between the River Dee and the River Tay on the east coast of Scotland. Forfarshire was the larger of the two, and the more prosperous, as it included good farming areas and the mercantile centre of Dundee, although the northern half of the shire was mountainous, with the Braes of Angus forming the edge of the highland region. Atlas Scot.