Borough

Wendover’s development as a market town during the early medieval period was assisted by its location on the high ground at the western edge of the Chilterns and the fact that the main road from Aylesbury to London passed through the parish. VCH Bucks. iii. 20-31. Under the Tudors and early Stuarts it increased in prosperity. By 1620 its houses were concentrated around West Street, with further dwellings in North Street and South Street; the church and former manor house lay half a mile to the west. M. Summerell, B. Samuels, A. Mead and P. Eckett, Bk.

From its foundation in the twelfth century, Dartmouth was important for its deep natural harbour, in a sheltered location close to the Dart estuary. A base for major mercantile and military voyages during the Middle Ages, the town first returned Members to Parliament in 1298, and secured the right to elect its own mayor in 1341. W.G. Hoskins, Devon, 179, 382-3; P. Russell, Dartmouth, 10. As the Dart silted up during the sixteenth century, Dartmouth prospered at the expense of Totnes, further upstream.

An inland port, Worcester benefited from trade along the Severn between Shrewsbury and Bristol, and also acted as an entrepot for the pastoral Marcher counties and the arable west Midlands. It was also a centre of the cloth industry, producing high quality broadcloth, mostly for export, and as a cathedral city and county capital it was a significant administrative centre. Between the 1560s and 1640s the population rose from around 4,000 to about 8,000.

Although dominated by its university, Oxford was a thriving city under the early Stuarts, and hosted royal visits in 1605 and 1629 as well as the Parliament of 1625. R. Fasnacht, Hist. City of Oxf. 92-3. It was governed by a mayoral council known as the Thirteen, but was aided by a common council. A new charter of incorporation, granted in 1605, added two bailiffs to the mayor’s council and limited the size of the common council to 24. Royal Letters to Oxf. ed. O.

Situated at the head of the Orwell estuary in east Suffolk, with a population estimated at about 4,300 in 1603, Ipswich was the most important shipbuilding centre in the country after London. It was estimated in 1625 that there had been an annual average of 12 launchings for the past 30 years. A head port with resident customs and Admiralty officials, Ipswich played an important part in the Newcastle coal trade, with 50 colliers of between 200 and 300 tons burthen plying regularly between Tyne and Thames around six times a year. M.

Amersham, situated 26 miles from London on the road to Aylesbury, was well established by the time of the Domesday survey.W.H. Hastings Kelle, ‘Amersham’, Bucks. Recs. ii. 333-53. Although granted a fair and market by the Crown in 1200, it was never incorporated. The chief municipal officers were two constables, appointed by a borough court; however, no borough records survive that might shed further light on the town’s institutions and administration.VCH Bucks. iii.

The thriving market town of Knaresborough was subject to the manorial government of the duchy of Lancaster’s honour of Knaresborough, which covered one-third of Claro wapentake. There was ‘great resort to it in summer time by reason of the wells’ at nearby Harrogate, discovered by the Slingsby family in about 1570.

A town existed at Coventry by the mid-eleventh century, when it belonged to the famous Godiva. Made rich by the cloth trade, in 1377 it was England’s third biggest provincial centre, with perhaps 9,000 inhabitants. Growth continued into the fifteenth century, and in 1451 it was granted the status of both city and county. Around this time, however, the market for the local broadcloth contracted, and despite the development of alternative manufactures such as caps and blue thread economic decline set in. In the severe depression of the 1520s, the population shrank to about 6,000.

Shaftesbury received its first charter in 1252, and sent two Members to the Model Parliament. A survey of 1615 described the borough as lying between ‘a deep country full of pasture, yielding plenty of well-fed beeves, muttons, and milch-kine, and … a high champion country, yielding store of corn, sheep, and wool; so the town is made a great vent for the commodities on either part’.

Dominated by its Norman castle and cathedral, Rochester was linked to neighbouring Strood by an 11-arch stone bridge, described by one visitor in 1635 as ‘fair, stately, long and strong’ and ‘not much inferior’ to that of London.‘Relation of a short survey of the western counties, 1635’ ed. L.G. Wickham Legg, in Cam. Misc. xvi. (Cam. Soc. ser. 3. lii), 8. The bridge and its estates were administered by two wardens and 12 assistants, who enjoyed parliamentary authority to raise taxes within a seven-mile radius of the city to help cover the costs of maintenance.