Stockbridge, a small town situated where the road from Winchester to Salisbury crosses the Test, had been part of the duchy of Lancaster since the fourteenth century. VCH Hants, iv. 484; R. Somerville, Hist. Duchy of Lancaster, i. 18, 37, 313n. Though enfranchised at the instigation of the chancellor of the duchy in 1563, it was never incorporated, and consequently its municipal institutions remained primitive.
Guildford, the county town of Surrey, is situated on the River Wey 30 miles south of London. It received its first recorded charter in 1257, and was incorporated in 1488. The corporation consisted of the ‘approved men’ who annually elected the mayor from among their number. A self-selecting oligarchy controlled entry to the ranks of the ‘approved men’, who usually numbered around 25, by insisting on previous service as a bailiff, an office chosen by the ‘approved men’.
Camden described Lewes as ‘for largeness and populousness one of the chief towns’ of Sussex, and it has been estimated that its population at this period may have substantially exceeded 2,000. This considerable figure was due less to commerce than to its functions as a sessions’ town and as the social centre for the three rapes of East Sussex: the appalling local roads almost required even minor gentry families to maintain houses in Lewes for winter use.
Newton, a small market town near Wigan, appeared in the Domesday book as one of the townships in the ‘fee of Makerfield’, lying within Winwick parish in West Derby hundred, and was often named Newton-in-Makerfield or Newton le Willows.J.H. Lane, Newton in Makerfield, i. 3-6. Although it received charters for a market and a fair in 1257 and 1301, it was never incorporated.CChR, ii. 1, iii. 2; VCH Lancs. iv.
Situated two miles from Reigate in east Surrey, Gatton was described by William Camden in the late sixteenth century as ‘scarce a small village’. Camden also stated that Gatton had previously been ‘a famous town’, but there is no evidence that the village was considered a borough until it started to return Members to the Commons in 1450. Never incorporated, it had no borough officials and consequently the returning officer was the high constable of Reigate hundred. VCH Surr. iii. 196-7; W. Camden, Britain, trans. P. Holland (1610), p. 29; Nicholas, i. 20.
An ecclesiastical peculiar founded by St. Wilfrid in the seventh century, Ripon returned MPs to three Parliaments under Edward I. The Crown offered representation to Ripon and five other northern boroughs in negotiations with the Pilgrims of Grace in 1536, but Ripon was only re-enfranchised in 1553, by which time the Minster estates had passed to the duchy of Lancaster; control of the liberty returned to the archbishop of York in 1556. Borough government, under a prescriptive charter only codified in 1598, was consigned to a wakeman [mayor] and around 30 aldermen.
Lying 15 miles south-east of Worcester, close to the borders with Gloucestershire and Warwickshire, Evesham grew up around Evesham Abbey. Though it sent representatives to Parliament in 1295 and 1337, it did not do so subsequently. VCH Worcs. ii. 371-7. Lewis Bayly, the vicar of All Saints, Evesham, since 1600, was appointed chaplain to Henry, prince of Wales soon after James’s accession, O.G. Knapp ‘Evesham Parsons’, N and Q Concerning Evesham and Four Shires ed. E.A.B. Barnard, ii. 79; T.
Droitwich, six miles north-east of Worcester, had a population of about 760 in the 1560s, rising to over 1,000 a century later. P. Clark and J. Hosking, Population Estimates of English Small Towns (Cent. for Urban Hist. Working Ppr. v), 165 It had been famous since Anglo-Saxon times for the production of salt, a trade which continued to dominate the town in the early seventeenth century, although only one brine-pit at Upwich and two in Netherwich remained in operation. Nash, i.
Still little more than a village in the seventeenth century, Hindon, which had regularly sent Members to Parliament from 1448, was an early thirteenth-century settlement planned by the bishop of Winchester and built on his manor of East Knoyle. Although close to the market towns of Wilton and Warminster, it boasted a market place and hosted a Michaelmas fair. By the mid-1630s its principal trades were weaving and the manufacture of gunpowder. The bishop’s bailiff headed the town’s administration, and acted as returning officer at parliamentary elections.
Situated on the main road from London to Bristol, Calne was already a significant settlement by the late Anglo-Saxon period, and formed part of the Crown’s ancient demesne. However, from the tenth century the original manor was divided into two, with one portion passing into ecclesiastical hands. The borough of Calne straddled the boundary between these smaller manors, and this dual patronage perhaps hindered its municipal development.
