Site of the shrine of St. John of Beverley, a former archbishop of York, Beverley had been a national centre of pilgrimage before the Reformation, and remained the chief market for wool and agricultural produce in the East Riding thereafter, while its Cross Fair attracted merchants from London and across the north of England. Its population, estimated at about 5,000 in 1600, still almost equalled that of Hull.VCH Yorks. (E. Riding), vi.
An ancient walled town situated atop a hill overlooking the river Colne, Colchester in the early seventeenth century was the manufacturing centre of the new worsted draperies in Essex and had the largest population of any town in the county. W. Hunt, Puritan Moment, 3. The borough obtained its first known charter in 1189, which allowed it to choose its own bailiffs, who had previously been royal appointees.
Tregony sprang up at the highest point of the River Fal navigable by medieval shipping. A manorial court leet was recorded there in the Domesday survey, and the town had achieved borough status by 1201, its government lying in the hands of a portreeve or mayor. The manor was granted by William I to the Pomeroy family, who obtained for the town the privileges of holding fairs and a weekly market, and who also constructed a castle and parish church. In the later Middle Ages, however, the river silted up, drowning the church and part of the town, and rendering Tregony an economic backwater.
Yarmouth, a fortified town and harbour near the western end of the Isle of Wight, was granted a seigneurial charter about the middle of the thirteenth century, vesting town government in the mayor. Newport and Yarmouth each sent one Member to the Model Parliament of 1295, but their representation thereafter lapsed until 1584, when both towns were fully enfranchised at the instance of the captain of the Isle, Sir George Carey†. R. Warner, Hist. I.o.W. 129; VCH Hants, v. 286-90. He nominated both Members at Yarmouth in subsequent Elizabethan elections.
Though challenged for pre-eminence in east Kent by Canterbury,P. Clark, Eng. Prov. Soc. 311. Maidstone remained the official county town of Kent. A royal manor, it was also the county’s principal market town, LR2/219, f. 63; P. Clark and L. Murfin, Hist. Maidstone, 44. and both quarter sessions and parliamentary elections were held at nearby Penenden Heath.
Four miles north-east of King’s Lynn, Rising had during the Middle Ages been an important and prosperous coastal town, dominated by an enormous castle (from which it took its name).J.M. Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of Eng. and Wales, i. 380; National Gazetteer of Eng. and Wales, iii. 514-15. However, it fell into decay as gradual silting caused the sea to retreat. By the mid-sixteenth century the castle was in ruins and the town had been eclipsed by King’s Lynn. W. Camden, Britannia, i.
Set on the west bank of the Tiddy, a few miles upstream from Plymouth Sound, St. Germans existed by 936, when its church became the cathedral of the Anglo-Saxon diocese of Cornwall. Although the bishops relocated to Devon in 1042, St. Germans Priory remained an important religious site during the Middle Ages, affording the town much of its prestige and prosperity. The decline which set in after the monastery’s dissolution in 1539 was noted at the end of the century by Richard Carew†: ‘the church town mustereth many inhabitants and sundry ruins, but little wealth’.
A Saxon foundation sited at one of the main crossing points on the upper Ouse, Bedford was sufficiently wealthy to build a stone bridge in the twelfth century, paid the surprisingly large sum of £40 for its fee-farm from 1190, and returned two Members to Parliament from 1295. The fee-farm was reduced in 1440 on the ground that a new bridge five miles down river at Great Barford had affected its road traffic, but the town revived under the Tudors, and had a population of about 1,500 by 1603.J. Godber, Hist. Beds. 52-6; VCH Beds. iii. 1-3; W.M.
The largest port on Yorkshire’s North Sea coast, numbering about 450 households, Scarborough was governed by two bailiffs, two coroners (by convention, the retiring bailiffs), four chamberlains and 36 common councillors. VCH N. Riding, ii. 551; J.B. Baker, Hist. Scarbrough, 28, 45, 195. The corporation was dominated by merchants and shopkeepers, the most prominent of which, the Thompson family, provided one of the bailiffs at least 18 times between 1603-40; only two non-residents held municipal office during this period. From corp.
Situated close to the River Adur on the boundary between the downland and wealden regions of Sussex, Steyning remained an important market town in this period, with a significant tanning and leather industry. However, as a port it, like Bramber, had long been eclipsed by New Shoreham, situated at the mouth of the river. The population grew from about 300 in 1565 to roughly 1,000 by the early 1640s. VCH Suss. vi. pt. 1, pp. 220-1, 234; J. Pennington and J. Sleight, ‘Steyning Town and its Trades 1559-1787’, Suss. Arch. Colls. cxxx.
