Eye is situated in ‘High Suffolk’, the predominantly pastoral region to the north of the county, which takes its name from the honour of ‘Heya’ or Eye, a Crown possession from the mid-sixteenth century. It allegedly first received privileges as early as the reign of King John, but was not incorporated until 1575, under the name of ‘Heya alias Eye’, a formula still sometimes used in the election indentures of the early seventeenth century.
Founded by the Romans, Exeter flourished through its strategic location on the River Exe, which provided ready access to both the English Channel and most of Devon. Probably England’s fourth largest provincial town at the start of the seventeenth century, with a population of around 9,000, it played host to the Devon assizes and Admiralty court, while its cathedral served a diocese covering both Devon and Cornwall. W.T. MacCaffrey, Exeter 1540-1640, pp. 6, 8; P. Clark and P. Slack, English Towns in Transition 1500-1700, p.
The market town of Arundel, in west Sussex, grew up at the lowest point that the river Arun could be bridged. According to a visitor in the 1630s it was ‘relieved with a convenient pretty haven, and graced with an ancient, strong and stately castle’. VCH Suss. v. pt. 1, p. 10; ‘Relation of a Short Survey of the Western Counties’ ed. L.G. Wickham Legg Cam. Misc. xvi (Cam. Soc. ser. 3. lii), pt. 3, p. 30. Despite a lack of social amenities, relatively good communications made it the regular venue for the West Sussex Epiphany sessions. A.
The West Sussex market town of Midhurst, situated 11 miles north of Chichester, was an ancient but unincorporated borough, ownership of which was attached to the adjacent manor of Cowdray. It was governed by a bailiff, who was elected by the burgage-holders, seven of whom also enjoyed the right to collect the market tolls and appoint the steward of the borough’s manorial court. The borough first returned Members of Parliament in 1301, but was only consistently represented from 1382.
Probably founded by the Normans in about 1090, Caer yn Arfon [the fort in Arfon cantref] quickly reverted to Welsh control until its capture by Edward I, whose heir, the first Plantagenet prince of Wales, was born there in 1284. In the same year the Statute of Rhuddlan established the new town as the administrative centre of the principality of North Wales; hence Sir John Wynn’s† description of the inhabitants as ‘the lawyers of Caernarvon’. Afer a slow start, the town grew under the Tudors, having a population of perhaps 1,000 in 1600.
Sited at the eastern end of the Menai straits, Beaumaris was the last of the Welsh fortresses to be founded by Edward I. Sacked and then captured by Owen Glynd?r in 1403-5, it was quickly repaired. By the sixteenth century the borough, which commanded ‘a fair, safe, and capacious haven and road’, had become the main port on the north coast of Wales, trading with Lancashire for grain, general merchandise from Chester and salt and wine from France, Ireland and Scotland.I. Soulsby, Towns of Medieval Wales, 78-80; E.A. Lewis, Medieval Bors. Snowdonia, 204, 206; L.
The English plantation borough of New Radnor had taken over the mantle of its declining neighbour, Old Radnor, in the thirteenth century. It suffered badly during the Glynd?r rebellion, and did not receive a full charter until 1562, when the townsmen apparently joined with the Anglesey borough of Beaumaris to lobby for incorporation. The charter provided for a council of 25 capital burgesses, from which a bailiff and two aldermen were selected annually.
Founded at the mouth of the River Adur in the eleventh century, New Shoreham soon became one of the most important of the Channel ports, though it suffered a severe decline in the fourteenth century. In the late sixteenth century Camden reported that ‘the greatest part’ of it was ‘ruined and under water, and the commodiousness of its port … wholly taken away’, and one of its own Jacobean Members called it ‘a town as poor and poorer than any in the realm’. It was nonetheless then entering upon a new period of prosperity.
Situated in north-west Staffordshire, close to the borders with Cheshire and Shropshire, Newcastle-under-Lyme grew up around a castle built in the 1140s in a lake fed by Lyme Brook, a tributary of the Trent. The town, which lay on the main road from London to the north-west, hosted a weekly market, three annual fairs, and perhaps also a separate corn market. VCH Staffs. viii. 2, 45, 47; Pape, 1. In the seventeenth century the dominant industry was the making of felt hats, but iron-working and tanning were also important. VCH Staffs. viii.
Camelford grew up where the main road traversing north Cornwall crosses the River Camel. Established as a borough by Richard, earl of Cornwall in 1259, in the following century it was absorbed into the duchy of Cornwall, along with the manor of Helston in Trigg to which it had formerly belonged. Despite its strategic location and privileges, Camelford failed to prosper. At the end of the sixteenth century Richard Carew† described it as ‘a market and fair (but not fair) town’, which ‘steppeth little before the meanest sort of boroughs for store of inhabitants, or the inhabitants’ store’.
