Bishop’s Castle was a market town with no particular reputation for any other economic activity in this period. Its adult population in 1676 was said to be 653; in September 1630, a free and voluntary collection organised by the head burgesses to assist the townspeople of Shrewsbury battle against the visitation of plague there, elicited contributions from 80 heads of household. Compton Census, 259; Bishop’s Castle Town Hall, corporation order bk., reverse of vol. f. 30.
Described by Richard Blome in 1673 as ‘a large town corporate, seated on the Severn’, Bridgnorth was a thriving general market centre in the seventeenth century. R. Blome, Britannia (1673), 194. The townsmen made full commercial use of the Severn, and by 1640 were benefiting from an expansion of river trade that reached maturity at the end of the century, when Bridgnorth was among the most important boat-building centres on the river. M. Wanklyn, ‘The Severn Navigation in the Seventeenth Century: long-distance Trade of Shrewsbury Boats’, Midland Hist. xiii.
Much Wenlock had enjoyed a parliamentary franchise since the charter of 1468. VCH Salop, x. 203. That charter had defined the borough as co-extensive with the parish of Holy Trinity, Much Wenlock. VCH Salop, x. 202. The right to elect a Member of Parliament had been one of a number of privileges typically bestowed on newly incorporated boroughs, such the right to hold sessions of the peace and to maintain a gaol. An anomaly marking Much Wenlock was that the bounds of Holy Trinity were legally ill-defined.
In 1640, Shrewsbury was a borough probably of around 5,000 people. W.A. Champion, ‘The Frankpledge Population of Shrewsbury 1500-1720’, Local Population Studies, xci. 56, 59-60. The liberties of the town extended four or five miles beyond the centre, which gave local gentry more of a voice in the politics of the town than they would have been entitled to in many comparable corporations. Sir W. Brereton, Travels in Holland...1634-5 ed. E. Hawkins (Chetham Soc.
Huntingdon, with a population of about 1,100 in the early 1640s, was no more than the third largest town in one of the smallest counties in England. In fact, for all but administrative purposes, the largest town, Godmanchester, located on the other side of the River Ouse at the point where it was crossed by the Great North Road, was little more than an extension of its neighbour. Taken together, the two communities were large enough to provide a perennial challenge to their main rival, St Ives, six miles downstream. M. Carter, ‘Town or urban society?
‘Pleasantly seated’ at the point where a branch of the Great North Road crossed the River Lune, Lancaster was officially Lancashire’s chief administrative centre – although that role had largely been usurped by the more commodiously-situated Preston. It was described in the 1670s (echoing William Camden a century earlier) as ‘a place at present indifferent large ... not a town much frequented nor inhabited by tradesmen but chiefly by husbandmen, as lying in a good soil’. Infra, ‘Preston’; R.
Manchester was the largest and most important township in the parish that bore its name – an area of some 60 square miles covering much of modern greater Manchester. T.S. Willan, Elizabethan Manchester (Chetham Soc. ser. 3, xxvii), 1. The seventeenth-century town lay clustered along the banks of the River Irwell at the junction of the roads from London to Chester and from Chester to York. VCH Lancs. iv.
Clitheroe was one of northern England’s smallest and most isolated boroughs. Nestled in the Ribble Valley on the road from Preston into Yorkshire via the Craven Gap, it commanded (at that time) neither a crossing of the river nor a site of any great strategic importance. W.S. Weeks, Clitheroe in the Seventeenth Century (Clitheroe, 1927), 7; VCH Lancs. vi. 360. According to Richard Blome, writing in the 1670s, it was known only for its ‘white-lime’ and its castle. R.
‘Commodiously seated on the goodly River Mersey, where it affords a bold and safe harbour for ships’, Liverpool was the region’s ‘chief port ... a place of great resort’ and one of the main embarkation points for trade and troops to Ireland. R. Blome, Britannia (1673), 133-4; Liverpool Town Bks. 1649-71 ed. M. Power (Lancs. and Cheshire Rec. Soc. cxxxvi), 26; R. Muir, Hist.
Preston was described in the 1670s as ‘a great, fair and well inhabited and frequented borough town’. R. Blome, Britannia (1673), 135. Situated at the centre of Lancashire, where several major routes crossed the River Ribble, it was the seat of government for the duchy of Lancaster and a focal point for county society. The town was also the commercial centre for a considerable area of northern Lancashire, stretching from the coastal plain – the Fylde – eastwards into the Pennine valleys.