Borough

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.

Originally an Anglo-Saxon foundation, Taunton was dominated throughout the Middle Ages by the bishops of Winchester, who owned the principal manor of Taunton Dean. J. Toulmin, Hist. Taunton ed. J. Savage, 18, 47. Accordingly, at the start of the seventeenth century, the town’s considerable economic prosperity and regional importance contrasted sharply with its primitive municipal government.

The four contributory towns of the Denbigh Boroughs seat were all founded in the aftermath of the conquest of 1282 and prospered to varying degrees as centres of clothmaking and tanning. The boroughs gradually declined under the Tudors with the movement of the cloth industry into the countryside and the shift of the staple for Welsh cloth to Oswestry.

Dominated by its Norman keep and cathedral, and bounded by medieval walls and the meandering River Wensum, Norwich was the second largest city after London, and one of the major provincial capitals of England. It boasted over 30 churches, and supported a growing population, which rose from about 12,000 in the 1580s to approximately 20,000 in 1620.J.T. Evans, Seventeenth Cent. Norwich, 4-5; P. Corfield, ‘Provincial Capital of Norwich’, Crisis and Order in Eng. Towns ed. P. Clark and P.

Situated in south-eastern Glamorganshire, near the mouth of the River Taff, Cardiff flourished during the medieval period as the commercial centre of the lordship of Glamorgan,D.G. Walker, ‘Cardiff’, in Bors. of Medieval Wales ed. R.A. Griffiths, 125-6. but was sacked during Glynd?r rebellion and had not recovered its prosperity by the sixteenth century.W. Rees, Cardiff, 1-15; I.

Lincoln’s first extant charter dates back to 1157, and the town first returned MPs to Parliament in 1265. The borough was governed by a mayor, 12 aldermen, and a common council varying in size from about 30 to 48.W. de Gray Birch, Royal Charters of Lincoln, 1-2, 74; Lincs. AO, L1/1/1/4, f. 214. By the early seventeenth century the decay of the wool trade had left the city in economic decline despite its role as the county’s administrative centre.J.W.F.

Wigan’s history during this period is dominated by disputes between the corporation and the rector of the local parish, who was also the lord of the manor. At issue were such matters as tithes, market tolls, corn mills, charitable uses and, by 1628, control of the borough’s parliamentary elections.

Described as ‘seated among most pleasant meadows and as plentiful corn fields, compassed almost round by rivers’, W. Camden, Britain (1610) trans. P. Holland, 618. Hereford is situated on the River Wye at the point where it could be forded at two separate places. M.D. Lobel, ‘Hereford’, in Historic Towns, ed. M.D. Lobel, 1. The population grew from about 4,000 in the 1520s to about 5,000 in 1700, even though Speed’s map suggests that by 1610 there had been little suburban development. A. Dyer, Decline and Growth in English Towns, 73; P.

A small market town on the east bank of the River Nene, Higham Ferrers received a charter in 1556 which vested government of the town in a corporation consisting of a mayor, seven aldermen and 13 ‘capital burgesses’; it also conferred upon the borough the right to send one Member to Parliament.VCH Northants. iii. 269-71. Before 1640 the franchise rested exclusively with the corporation. Northants. RO, FH3467; A.N. Groome, ‘Higham Ferrers Election in 1640’, Northants. P and P (1958), pp.

East Grinstead, situated close to the Surrey border, was only 30 miles from London. Thanks to the notoriously impassable Sussex roads it accordingly shared the assizes with Horsham (and occasionally, in dry summers, with Lewes). In addition the town lay on the edge of Ashdown forest, a centre of the Wealden iron industry.A. Fletcher, County Community in Peace and War, 136; E. Straker, Wealden Iron, 238-41. An unincorporated borough, East Grinstead had returned Members since 1301, the right of election being in the inhabitant burgage-holders.