Situated four miles from the sea on the west bank of the River Adur, Bramber gave its name to one of the six rapes of Sussex, at a time when it was presumably the principal settlement in the Adur valley. Its prosperity was not of long duration as a port: New Shoreham, situated at the mouth of the river, replaced it and by 1595 it had ceased even to be a market town.
New Woodstock, a small market town that had grown up near the royal manor and park, was incorporated in 1453, but did not return Members to Parliament until a century later. In this period it was governed by a mayor, four aldermen, and 20 common councillors, who together with a slightly larger body of freemen formed the electorate. Ballard, 26-7, 35, 37, 61. Returns were made by the mayor and commonalty. It had become ‘ever usual with them’ to reserve one seat for the recorder and to prove amenable to the wishes of the high steward for the other. Liber Famelicus of Sir J.
Orford was an important East Anglian port in the early Middle Ages and had received its first its charter in 1256. R.A. Roberts, ‘Bor. Business of a Suff. town’, TRHS (ser. 4), xiv. 95; HMC Var. iv. 256. It was represented in the reign of Edward I, but subsequently ceased to return Members until the early sixteenth century. OR; HP Commons, 1509-58, i.
Chester, situated on the River Dee, was the capital of a palatine earldom and an important port for the Irish trade, being only 11 miles inland. A.M. Johnson, ‘Political, Constitutional, Social and Econ. Hist. of Chester 1550-1652’, (Univ. Oxford D.Phil. thesis, 1970), chap. 1; J. McN. Dodgson, Place Names of Cheshire, v. (I:i), 2-7. It received its first charter in 1354, and in 1506 was granted county status. However, Chester Castle and its surrounds (Gloverstone) remained under the authority of the chamberlain of the county palatine.
Christchurch, a small coastal town of no economic significance, had never received a royal charter. Its municipal officers were not far removed from manorial officials, and such self-government as it possessed rested on the tacit agreement of the lord of the manor.VCH Hants, v. 86-89. It first sent representatives to Parliament in 1571.
One of the original five members of the Cinque Ports, the ancient coastal town of Hastings can trace its history back to the early tenth century. By the early modern period the town consisted of two parallel streets that met at the upper end. A stream, known as the Bourne, divided the two roads, which were connected by several small lanes.VCH Suss. ix. 5, 8. During the early medieval period Hastings enjoyed great prosperity owing to its natural harbour, and from 1369 it claimed to be chief among the Cinque Ports.K.M.E. Murray, Constitutional Hist.
By the early seventeenth century Preston was already regarded as Lancashire’s centre for local government and administration, and a focal point of county society.VCH Lancs. vii. 73-105; A. Crosby, Hist. of Preston Guild, 34-5. Described by Camden as ‘a great and (for these countries) a fair town, and well inhabited’, the parish had a population of around 3,000 on the eve of the Civil War. W. Camden, Britannia (1610), p. 752; D. Hunt, Hist.
Founded in the early twelfth century, Bishop’s Castle failed to prosper due to its distance from the Severn valley, the key communications route in the region; under the Stuarts it was a local market town with a population of little more than 500. The manor belonged to the bishops of Hereford until 1559, when it was sequestrated by the Crown, and in 1573, amid protests that episcopal charters were being disregarded, a royal charter appointed a corporation comprising a bailiff and 14 capital burgesses.
A settlement existed at Bossiney by the late eleventh century, when a small Norman castle was constructed there. The village was granted in the mid-thirteenth century to Richard, earl of Cornwall, who provided the borough with its first charter. Like many of the earl’s former estates, Bossiney was absorbed into the duchy of Cornwall in 1337. At that time the borough was flourishing, but decline set in during the next century, and around 1540 Leland observed a substantial number of ruinous buildings.
Old Winchelsea, one of the ancient towns added to the original Cinque Ports, was destroyed by the sea in the thirteenth century and rebuilt on a nearby hill. Although the new town enjoyed a brief period of prosperity based on the wine trade, it fell into decay in the fifteenth century as its haven gradually silted up. By the middle of Elizabeth’s reign there were reportedly not ‘above sixty households standing, and those, for the most part, poorly peopled’. W.D. Cooper, Winchelsea, 107; VCH Suss. ix.
