Borough

Helston grew up at a strategic crossroads some eight miles north of the Lizard in western Cornwall, receiving its first borough charter in 1201. Its importance as a trading centre derived largely from the town’s proximity to the tin-producing zone, or stannary, of Penwith and Kerrier. Privileged from 1305 as one of the county’s five ‘coinage’ centres, where tin was assayed before sale, Helston had already begun sending representatives to Parliament seven years earlier. In 1337 the local manor became a founding component of the duchy of Cornwall. H.S. Toy, Hist.

Cirencester had flourished as a centre of the woollen industry under the firm control of the local Augustinian Abbey.VCH Glos. ii. 80-83. Wool continued to play a vital part in the local economy, and therefore the town suffered badly from the trade depression of the 1620s: in 1628 it was reported to have 1,200 poor in need of relief. W. St. Clair Baddeley, Cirencester, 242; CSP Dom. 1627-8, p. 568. The parish of Cirencester, which included a significant part of the surrounding countryside, had a population of about 2,760 in 1603. P.

Clitheroe, a small and unimposing borough, was considered poor and remote even within Lancashire. Its population has been estimated at not much above 600 at the turn of the seventeenth century. W.S. Weeks, Clitheroe in Seventeenth Cent. 5-6. The castle and honour of Clitheroe, which date back to Domesday, passed into the control of the earls of Lancaster in the late thirteenth century, and so became part of the duchy of Lancaster. VCH Lancs. vi. 361-4; W.A. Abram, Hist. Blackburn, 48-53; R. Somerville, Hist.

Lancaster claimed to be the most ancient borough in Lancashire. Founded on a Roman settlement, the medieval town grew up around a Norman castle erected in around 1102. It received its first known charter from John, earl of Mortain (later King John) in 1193, which granted the inhabitants the same liberties as Bristol. Between 1295 and 1331 it was represented in Parliament.

Bere Alston originated in the late thirteenth century as a small mining settlement within the manor of Bere Ferrers. Granted a market in 1295, and established as a borough shortly afterwards, it passed with the manor into the possession of the lords Willoughby de Broke, and, in 1522, descended to the 2nd lord’s coheirs. Still barely more than a large village, Bere Alston was enfranchised in 1584 ‘at the request of William, marquess of Winchester and William, Lord Mountjoy, chief lords of the town and borough’, who initially divided the electoral patronage between them.

A settlement existed in the Penryn area before the Conquest, but the town itself allegedly owed its origins to the bishops of Exeter, lords of the local manor, who obtained a borough charter in 1236. J. Polsue, Complete Paroch. Hist. of Cornw. ii. 78; R.J. Roddis, Penryn, 13-15. Located at the head of a sheltered creek off the great natural harbour of Falmouth Haven, Penryn in the early seventeenth century traded with markets around the globe.

Bodmin traced its roots back to the sixth century, when St. Petroc founded a monastery which served as Cornwall’s first Anglo-Saxon cathedral. The town achieved borough status by 1190, and secured its earliest recorded charter of privileges in the mid-thirteenth century. The prestige of its medieval priory, combined with the town’s importance as a centre for the tin trade, made Bodmin a focal point for Cornish society, and the western rebellions of 1497 and 1549 both began there. C. Henderson et al., Cornish Church Guide, 59-60; J.

The town of Bury St. Edmunds, having grown up around a Benedictine abbey founded before the Conquest, not only survived but flourished after the Dissolution of the Monasteries, retaining its position as the venue of assizes and quarter sessions and the capital of West Suffolk.R.S. Gottfried, Bury St.

Andover, in north-west Hampshire close to the border with Wiltshire, received a charter as early as 1175 and sent Members to Parliament intermittently between 1295 and 1307. Although benefiting from its proximity to Weyhill fair, one of the largest in the region, the borough had no significant industries, and fell into decline in the late medieval period; its parliamentary representation lapsed and was not restored until 1586. VCH Hants, iv. 345-51; Woodward, Hants, iii. 173; D.K.

Whitchurch was described by the antiquarian Thomas Baskerville in the later seventeenth century as a ‘poor thoroughfare town’ in a region devoted mainly to sheep grazing and the clothing industry. HMC Portland, ii. 286. The borough was owned by the dean and chapter of Winchester, but governed by a court leet presided over by an annually elected mayor and bailiff. VCH Hants, iv. 299-304. Members were first returned to Parliament in 1584, and the franchise rested in the freemen.