Higham Ferrers, a small market town incorporated in 1556, was part of the duchy of Lancaster. During this period, the town was governed by the mayor, seven aldermen and 13 capital burgesses. There was also a steward of the borough, a duchy official, who among other duties, heard each new mayor’s oath of office. The borough had the right to send one burgess to each Parliament.
The government of Northampton consisted of the mayor; his brethren, a body of former mayors who began to be called aldermen during the reign of James I; two bailiffs; the former bailiffs who, as late as the 1590s, were still being referred to as the ‘24’; and the ‘48’, the popular elementin the assembly. As at Leicester, the ‘48’ had been created to replace the general body of commons whose ‘great divisions, dissensions and discords’ had hindered the assembly’s work. The mayor and his brethren could replace individual members of the ‘48’ whenever they wished.
At the creation of the diocese of Peterborough in 1541 most of the possessions of the former monastery were divided between the new bishop and the dean and chapter. The lordship of the liberty or soke of Peterborough went to the bishop, while the urban community, now a city, passed into the hands of the dean and chapter. Not long afterwards, in 1576, Bishop Scambler surrendered his lordship over the liberty and it was granted the following year to Lord Burghley.
The borough of Brackley, together with the large manor of Brackley and Halse of which it formed part, belonged for most of the sixteenth century to the Stanley family, earls of Derby. It was little more than a proprietary borough and almost certainly, as in later years, the mayor was appointed by the lord of the manor acting through his steward. The ‘Eagle and Child’ insignia of the Stanleys was used as the town’s common seal.Bridges, Northants. i. 143, 148; Baker, Northants. i.
Charters had been granted to the city of Norwich since the time of Henry II, but the sixteenth-century constitution was based in part upon the charter of 1404, which gave the city the status of an independent county and exempted it from the jurisdiction of the sheriff of Norfolk, and in part upon that of 1417 which re-stated in detail the form of the city’s government. There were no important changes during the sixteenth century.
Thetford was run by a ‘congregation’ consisting of a mayor, 10 principal and 20 inferior burgesses. The returns were in the form of indentures between the mayor and burgesses on the one hand and the sheriff on the other, and sometimes contained the phrase ‘we have assembled and congregated’ for the election.
Great Yarmouth was governed by an inner council of 24, including the two bailiffs, and a common council of 48, and these two bodies, constituting the ‘assembly’ or ‘house’, were responsible for parliamentary elections. On several occasions during Elizabeth’s reign they appointed a committee to give instructions to the MPs. The returns are in the form of an indenture between the sheriff and the bailiffs, burgesses and commonalty, the names of 24 ‘comburgenses’ being given in the return of 1597. The town assembly books record no payments of wages to MPs in this period.
The corporation of King’s Lynn consisted of the mayor, 12 aldermen and 18 common councilmen. The electors were the ‘mayor, the aldermen and common council’. Some of the surviving returns for this period recite the names of the burgesses taking part, about 24 in 1584, 21 in 1586, 18 in 1597. In 1589 the parliamentary wages were 3s.4d. a day, raised by a special tax, often collected at the same time as the fifteenths and tenths.
Castle Rising was a mesne borough, belonging to the 4th Duke of Norfolk until his attainder and execution in 1572. It was governed by a mayor and burgesses. The first parliamentary return made by the borough was in 1558, no doubt through the influence of the Duke. The 1559 return took the form of a deed in which the mayor and burgesses declared that they had chosen two burgesses to represent them in Parliament. Later returns are in the form of indentures between the mayor and certain burgesses on the one side, and the sheriff of Norfolk on the other.
Monmouth was made the shire town of the new county which came into being in 1536 as a result of the Act of Union. The town was incorporated in 1549 and the government of the borough placed in the hands of a mayor and two bailiffs. It had long been a possession of the duchy of Lancaster. The leading local duchy offices, those of steward and receiver, were held throughout the Elizabethan period by the earls of Pembroke and by another branch of the powerful Herbert family.
