Borough

Wendover was the third of the Buckinghamshire towns to have been re-enfranchised in 1624 as a result of archival discoveries by the local resident, William Hakewill†. As with Amersham and Great Marlow, it was a borough by prescription and had never been incorporated. The right of election was thus held by the inhabitants, although, as the town was small, this still did not make for a large electorate. The two constables acted as the returning officers. T. Carew, An hist. acct. of the rights of elections (1754), ii.

In 1642 Nehemiah Wharton, a Londoner, thought that the area around Amersham was ‘the sweetest country that ever I saw’. H. Ellis, ‘Lttrs. from a subaltern officer in the earl of Essex’s army’, Archaeologia, xxxv. 313. It was one of three Buckinghamshire towns whose right to elect MPs had been revived in 1624. Research by William Hakewill† established that Amersham, Great Marlow and Wendover had been represented in several of the Parliaments of Edward I and Edward II and, on that basis, that right was restored to them.

Aylesbury was the largest town in Buckinghamshire and by the seventeenth century was, in effect, the county town. Its size and its central location made it a more convenient site than Buckingham for the assizes and for the elections of the knights of the shire. Historically Aylesbury had been governed by its hereditary lord and, even though the town had been incorporated in the reign of Mary I, that lord retained some formal and much informal power within its boundaries. This was true even in this period when the lord, Sir John Pakington*, was an absentee.

Situated at the head of the Dee estuary, 11 miles from the Irish Sea, early-Stuart Chester was the main point in southern Britain for embarkation to Ireland and overland passage into north Wales. VCH Cheshire, v. pt. 1, p. 3; A.M. Johnson, ‘Some Aspects of the Political, Constitutional, Social and Economic History of the City of Chester 1550-1662’ (Oxford Univ. DPhil.

Situated some 25 miles south west of Carlisle, close to the confluence of the rivers Cocker and Derwent and also to the dividing line between the Cumbrian Mountains and the lowlands along the coast, seventeenth-century Cockermouth occupied an important position both topographically and economically. The town’s economy was based largely on its markets and fairs and the trade they served between the arable lands to the west and the pastoral region to the east. W. Camden, Britannia ed. E. Gibson (1695), 822; R.

Carlisle was the principal administrative centre and stronghold of the West March with Scotland, guarding a crossing on the River Eden a few miles south of the Anglo-Scottish border. Until the accession of James I, the inhabitants had lived chiefly by hosting and catering for those who repaired to the city to attend the warden of the West March, and as late as 1655 it was reported that ‘the greatest part of the city’ consisted ‘wholly of alehousekeepers’. SP14/22/3, f. 3v; SP18/123/42, f.

Leominster was described in 1646 by the Committee for Plundered Ministers*, which was about to augment the living there, as ‘an ancient borough of large extent containing 1,800 communicants’. Add. 11044, f. 209; HMC Portland, iii.

The city of Hereford was remote and on the borders – Welsh was regularly heard on the city streets – but Hereford was of strategic importance in governing the Welsh marches, whether as a centre for criminal justice at quarter sessions and assizes, or during the civil war as a garrison town. Harl. 7189, f. 243. The economy of the town in 1640 was not in a particularly healthy condition.

This place returned Members to Parliament between 1295 and 1306, but then the franchise lapsed until it was restored in 1628. Located 12 miles north west of Hereford, it was a small market centre, no more than a village, which had no corporation. It consisted of one single street. Some 37 names appeared on a rent roll of Humphrey Tomkins in 1630; and in 1663, 42 men and women were rated for contributions towards the militia. The hearth tax returns of 1664 suggest a parish of 126 properties. Glam. Archive Service, CL/manorial box 4, Weobley rent roll ?1630; Herefs.

Ludlow was a regional capital of government until 1641, a town which though remote was a honeypot for lawyers and others looking for patronage. Its population has been estimated to have been around 2,600 in 1641. M.A. Faraday, Ludlow (Chichester, 1991), 160. The council in the marches was long established at Ludlow castle, and its lord president controlled the supply of legal posts. John Milton was perhaps the most celebrated beneficiary of the cultural life encouraged by the quasi-courtly outlook sustained by the council; his Comus was performed there in 1637.