Commons 1509-1558

An ‘ancient little town, situated ... upon the side of a hill’, Totnes ranked second in wealth to Exeter in the Devon of the period. In 1523, 30 of its inhabitants were assessed for subsidy on property totalling nearly £3,000 in value, whereas the much larger Plymouth had less than half as many taxpayers of comparable wealth. By 1509 the old ‘straits’, the coarse Devon cloths which sold well in Brittany, were still being produced in the north of the county and exported through Totnes, but the town itself and its neighbourhood were making the more valuable kerseys.

Tavistock was a stannary town situated near the largest single European source of tin, on the southwest edge of Dartmoor. It was also a centre for the woollen trade, being noted for its production of cloths known as Tavistocks, but by the early 16th century its prosperity was being impaired by the slump in the Devon cloth industry. Nothing came of two Acts (5 Hen. VIII, c.19 and 6 Hen. VIII, c.8) regulating the manufacture and sale of ‘white cloth’ and designed to revive the industry, and in 1540 the town was listed in the Act (32 Hen.

By the early 16th century, with the silting-up of the river Plym, the better-situated Plymouth had become the port for Plympton, which nevertheless continued to thrive as a market, a stannary town and a centre of wool-combing and cooperage. In 1523 no less than 123 townsmen were assessed towards the subsidy, their quota of £14 being quite a large one for Devon. All the same, the town was included in the Act of 1540 (32 Hen. VIII, c.19) for the re-edification of towns westward.J. Brooking-Rowe, Plympton Erle, 3, 23, 90, 115, 383-5, 399; H. P. R.

Leland described Plymouth as a very large town with strong fortifications. Shipbuilding and the manufacture of rigging were not yet the flourishing industries they were to become and the town depended on its declining export trade with the Continent, its coastal trade and its fisheries. In the 1530s it was said to have 2,500 communicants, but there were few wealthy residents and in taxable value the town ranked fourth in the county.Leland, Itin. ed. Smith, i. 212-16; W. G. Hoskins and H. P. R.

In the early 16th century Exeter ranked with London, Bristol and Norwich among the six wealthiest towns in England. Its local pre-eminence is shown by its taxable population in 1523 of over 800, more than twice that of Plymouth, the next most important town in Devon, and by its assessment at four times Plymouth’s figure. Yet this prosperity, founded on cloth, tin and the brewing of beer and cider, was already under threat from its rival, which enjoyed better access to the sea than did Exeter through Topsham.

‘I never saw a goodlier haven’, wrote the Earl of Surrey about Dartmouth in 1522. Leland saw ‘good merchant men in the town, and to this haven long good ships’, but he noted that gravel and sand from the tin works were choking the river Dart and harbour. The ‘water of Dart’ belonged to the duchy of Cornwall, and until early in Henry VIII’s reign the port dues collected by the water bailiff went to the duchy. Two grants made by the King in 1510 and 1521 allowed the common council to keep the customs and other revenues, subject to a nominal rent to the duchy.

Barnstaple was the only port of any consequence in north Devon, but by the 16th century the haven had begun to silt. Although the town continued to prosper, it was overtaken by Totnes as the third richest town of the county and its mayors attributed to poverty the townsmen’s failure to pay their subsidy contributions in full. Of the 2,000 inhabitants during this period, only six had assessments of £382 for the subsidy of 1523.W. G. Hoskins and H. P. R. Finberg, Devonshire Studies, 172, 218; Hoskins, Devon, 328; J. C. Russell, Brit. Med.

Devon remained largely a county of prosperous freeholders farming their own lands, although speculation following the Dissolution brought considerable estates to the Denys, Edgecombe, Pollard and Russell families. The influence of the most important noble family, the Courtenays, continued paramount despite the attainder of the Marquess of Exeter, the lengthy imprisonment of his son and the failure of direct male heirs in 1556.

A self-governing royal borough from an early date, with charters dating back to at least 1327, Derby had two bailiffs from 1337 and a recorder by 1446. The charters of 1511 and 1547 were merely confirmatory, and little more is known of the government of the town until 1612, when it was formally incorporated under the bailiffs, 24 ‘burgesses’, a recorder, town clerk and chamberlain.

During the greater part of the period Derbyshire had no resident Privy Councillor who was not a peer, while of the leading noblemen with lands there the 4th and 5th Earls of Shrewsbury were often at court or in the North and the 2nd Earl of Huntingdon, lord lieutenant from 1552 to 1560, wielded no discernible influence on elections in the county. The knighthood of the shire seems generally to have been shared among men of local wealth and standing, but with official connexions playing some part in the choice.