Commons 1509-1558

New Woodstock was incorporated in 1453, when it was granted similar liberties to those of New Windsor but was expressly exempted from the obligation ‘to choose any burgesses from the borough to come to the King’s Parliaments’, although it had done so at least twice in the early 14th century: according to a local historian the charter, with the same concession, was confirmed in 1552. A mayor and a serjeant-at-mace were the only officials mentioned in 1453 but by 1519 there were also four aldermen and 13 councilmen.

Banbury owed its importance to a bridge across the river Cherwell, which divided Oxfordshire from Northamptonshire, and to a castle built there by the bishops of Lincoln. The population has been estimated at about 1,000 at the beginning of Edward VI’s reign, when a chantry certificate recorded that 460 inhabitants were of age to receive the eucharist: in 1549 12 townsmen were assessed for subsidy.Leland, Itin. ed. Smith, ii. 38; A. Beesley, Banbury, 211; E179/162/276.

A number of courtiers and government officials sat for Oxfordshire in the early 16th century but the most prominent of them, Sir John Williams, was ennobled after he had sat four times and the county was thus saved from the difficulties facing shires where one man, generally a Privy Councillor, established a virtual lien on the senior seat.

Described by Leland as a ‘great market town’, Nottingham was a centre for the wool and cloth trade and celebrated for its alabaster carving. It lay not far from the Fosse Way and commanded the river Trent which provided a waterway to the Humber and the port of Kingston-upon-Hull. The castle, owned by the crown, was the meeting-place of the county court and the assizes, and housed the shire gaol: it was outside the jurisdiction of the town, which since 1449 had been a county of itself.

Mainly a farming county, where Leland remarked on the land around Southwell ‘very fruitful of corn’ adding ‘I never saw fairer meadows there’ on ‘both ripes of Trent’, Nottinghamshire played little part in national politics during the first half of the 16th century.

A leading provincial town and port, often used as a base for war against Scotland, Newcastle-upon-Tyne had a population of some 10,000 in 1545. It had returned Members since 1283 and was incorporated as a county of itself in 1400. In 1510, 1548 1554 and 1557 it received confirmation of its charters and in 1516 a Star Chamber decree which settled a dispute between the mayor, aldermen and ‘certain the honest commoners’ of Newcastle and the ‘artificers, burgesses and guildmerchants’ approved its oligarchic constitution.

The barony of Morpeth, with the lordship of the town and castle, passed to the Dacre family after the marriage of Thomas, 2nd Lord Dacre to the heiress of Ralph, 5th Lord Greystoke. Leland observed that Morpeth was a market town ‘long and meetly well builded’ and remarked on its ‘fair castle standing upon a hill’. The town was important enough to serve on occasion as the site of shire elections even after the Act for the keeping of county days (2 and 3 Edw. VI, c.25) had specified Alnwick as the meeting place of the shire court.Leland, Itin. ed. Smith, v. 62-63.

Long in contention between England and Scotland, Berwick-upon-Tweed passed finally under English rule in 1482. It was incorporated by the reign of David I and its charters, granted by English and Scottish kings, were confirmed in 1510, 1547 and 1554.

The Percy earls of Northumberland, the dominant family in their titular shire, were the northern peers most affected by the centralizing policy of the Tudors. The 5th Earl (1527-37), whose father had been largely excluded from office, was granted the wardenship of the east and middle marches shortly after his succession and a life tenure of the shrievalty of Northumberland in 1532, but shortly before his death he made the King the heir to his estates, the conveyance being confirmed by an Act of 1536 (27 Hen. VIII, c.47).

Medieval Peterborough was controlled by its Benedictine abbey and in 1493 Henry VII granted to the abbot’s bailiff all such rights as elsewhere pertained to the sheriff. The original ‘burgesses’ or burgage tenants of the ‘vill of Burgh’, the capital of the abbot’s demesne, were doubtless craft workers and tradesmen supplying the needs of the monastery or attracted by the market where, as in the abbey fairs, the abbot’s tenants had trading privileges.