Commons 1509-1558

In 1510 Henry VIII confirmed Orford’s medieval charters granting the inhabitants the town and mill. The town was governed by two constables assisted by a council of 12 of the leading burgesses. No municipal records survive from the early 16th century. The castle, with property in Orford itself worth £20 a year, was held of the crown by William, 11th Lord Willoughby. On his death in 1526 his widow’s interest in the crown lease was contested by the heir male, her brother-in-law Sir Christopher Willoughby of Parham.

The borough of Ipswich was governed by two bailiffs and 12 portmen assisted by 24 of the commonalty; the bailiffs and four portmen were justices of the peace, and the bailiffs served as coroner and escheator and exercised admiralty jurisdiction within the liberty. This constitution, developed from privileges first obtained in 1200, had been included in a charter of incorporation of 1446 which was confirmed in 1463, 1512, 1518 and 1547. The municipal records for the early 16th century survive almost complete.CChR, vi. 54-55; LP Hen. VIII, i. g. 1123(33); iii, g.

In spite of its progressive erosion by the sea, Dunwich in the early 16th century still had some 230 taxable persons. Its status as a royal borough, dating from a charter of John, had earlier been threatened on the renewal of the fee-farm by a proviso that the burgesses should pay whatever any purchaser was prepared to give for it. This proviso was repeated at the next renewal in 1506 but was omitted in 1525 when the amount was fixed at £12 6s.8d. In 1547 the borough obtained a confirmation of the rights set out in an inspeximus of 1463.

On receiving the writ ordering an election of knights of the shire for Suffolk the sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk chose a day which he announced at both Bury St. Edmunds and Ipswich; the election took place at the shire house in Ipswich. Eight indentures survive from this period. Written in Latin, they are between the sheriff of the one part and the coroners and gentlemen of the shire of the other.

Situated at the junction of several roads between London and the north, Stafford was a market town which had little industry of its own. By the 16th century it was in decline and in 1540 it was included in the Act for re-edification of towns (32 Hen. VIII, c.18). The castle and manor belonged to the 3rd Duke of Buckingham until his attainder in 1521, when they escheated to the crown, to be restored to Buckingham’s son, Henry Baron Stafford, in 1531.

Leland described Newcastle-under-Lyme as a market town, with a castle ‘all ... down save one great tower’. The castle, manor and borough formed part of the honor of Tutbury in the duchy of Lancaster, to which the borough paid a fee-farm of £20; the stewardship of the manor was held in the early 16th century by the earls of Shrewsbury as stewards of the honor. Government was by a mayor and 12 aldermen, known as the ‘council of the town’, assisted by 24 burgesses and several officers. The jurisdiction of the duchy was exercised by the mayor, who presided over the ‘great and small inquests’.

Before the Reformation the city of Lichfield, with its shrine to St. Chad and its other cults, was a place of pilgrimage. It had few crafts but provided a market for the district. Deprived in 1547 of the means of self-government by the abolition of the guild of St. Mary and St. John the Baptist, the city availed itself of the help of Secretary Paget to achieve incorporation by letters patent of July 1548 as the bailiffs and citizens, with a governing body consisting of two bailiffs and 24 burgesses.

Tudor Staffordshire was a thinly populated and poor county, lacking in good communications; although traversed by three main roads from London, to Carlisle, Chester and Shrewsbury, the county also had many rivers spanned by narrow bridges which impeded the transport of heavy goods. The northern part was largely moorland, while the ancient forests of Brewood, Cannock, Kinver, the ‘New Forest’ and Needwood chase still covered a large area.

Wells was made a free borough by royal charter in 1201 and returned Members from 1295, but its liberties and privileges were severely limited by the power of the bishop of Bath and Wells, who was lord of the manor of Wells and of the hundred of Wells Forum: as late as 1492 Bishop Fox unsuccessfully claimed the sole right to admit burgesses. In 1548 Bishop Barlow surrendered his interests in Wells to the crown and to the Duke of Somerset but they were soon restored to the see.

An important centre of the cloth industry, Taunton suffered, like Bridgwater, from the competition of country clothiers; both boroughs were included in the Act for the re-edifying of towns westward (32 Hen. VIII, c.19) and another for the viewing and selling of cloths called Bridgwaters (2 and 3 Phil. and Mary, c.12). A bill for Taunton failed after a single reading in the Lords in 1510.