Borough

Melcombe Regis received its earliest known charter in 1280, and returned Members to Parliament from 1319. Weymouth, which lay just across the estuary of the River Wey, was a somewhat older settlement. However, it developed municipal structures more slowly, and did not regularly achieve a voice at Westminster until Richard II’s reign. The two boroughs were united by Act of Parliament in 1571, and incorporated under a mayor and two bailiffs, six aldermen, and 24 common councilmen.

A staple town, Northampton received its first charter in 1189, and sent Members to Parliament in 1283. Northampton Bor. Recs. ed. C.A. Markham, i. 25. Elections were originally popular, but an Act of 1489 vested the government of the town in a mayor, two bailiffs, the ex-bailiffs (usually numbering about 12) and 48 ‘burgesses’ chosen by the mayor and his brethren, and confined the franchise to this assembly. VCH Northants. iii. 9-13; Northampton Bor. Recs. ed. J.C. Cox, ii.

Leicester, the only parliamentary borough in Leicestershire, had returned Members since 1301. OR. The population at the beginning of the seventeenth century was about 3,500. In the late 1620s the corporation described the borough as ‘consisting principally of manual trades … very populous … [with] many poor and standeth far from the sea or any navigable river is maintained chiefly by the fairs and market’. Trade in wool and textile production were important elements of the local economy. VCH Leics. iv. 76, 78; Recs. of Bor. of Leicester ed. H.

Chartered by the Crown as Kingston-upon-Hull in 1299, the borough regularly returned MPs thereafter. A charter of incorporation in 1440 conferred jurisdiction independent of the East Riding. D. Hey, Yorks. from AD 1000, pp. 48-9; E. Gillett and K.A. MacMahon, Hist. Hull, 1-6, 24-5, 85-6; VCH Yorks. (E. Riding), i. 13-21, 39-40; Charters of Hull trans. J.R.

Southwark was a populous business and residential district situated on the south bank of the River Thames, opposite the City of London, in the east of the county. It was notable for its large number of breweries, and other industries included glass making, pottery, printing, hat making, distilling and timber cutting. E.W. Brayley and E. Walford, Surr. iv. 387-8; VCH Surr. iv. 125. The borough encompassed the whole of the parishes of St. George the Martyr, St. John, St. Olave and St. Thomas, and part of St. Saviour, excluding the liberty of the Clink.

East Looe was a small port in the south-east of the county, romantically situated on the east side of Looe Bay and connected to West Looe by a bridge over the River Looe. It was a centre of the pilchard fishing industry and had a small trade in coal, limestone, iron and timber. The streets were said in 1824 to be ‘narrow, irregular and in general dirty’, and many of the houses exhibited ‘marks of decay and age’. Nevertheless, the town was becoming increasingly popular as ‘a bathing place, or situation for invalids, or for parties of pleasure’.

Newport, the chief market town and capital of the Isle of Wight, was located close to the centre of the island on the Medina, which was navigable for small craft. Its chief trade was the export of timber and grain, but there was also a lace factory, employing ‘600 or 700 hands’. For many years a ‘fashionable resort’, a report of 1824 described it as a ‘charming little town’ and cited the sale of land for building purposes as an illustration of its prosperity, but a reduction of the military presence at the nearby barracks the following year was ‘severely felt’.

There was a settlement at Liskeard by around AD 1000. The town received its first charter from Richard, earl of Cornwall in 1240, and like many of the earl’s possessions it was absorbed into the duchy of Cornwall in 1337, along with Liskeard manor, castle and park. The borough was important enough to be enfranchised in 1295, and ten years later it was designated as one of Cornwall’s five coinage towns, where tin could be assayed.

Plympton Erle grew up around a castle belonging to the earls of Devon, who granted the settlement’s first borough charter in 1194. It became a coinage town, a centre for processing Dartmoor tin, in 1328, but local production of this metal declined in the late medieval period, when Plympton was also outstripped economically by the nearby port of Plymouth. By the early seventeenth century the castle had fallen into decay, though the townsfolk still enjoyed a measure of prosperity.

The pocket borough of Yarmouth, an obsolete port close to the western extremity of the Isle of Wight, was described in 1823 as

a neat little market town, standing on a bank sloping to the sea, in a healthy situation, with pleasant views of the Channel ... [but] much diminished from its ancient consequence. Its many narrow streets, destitute of buildings, clearly point to its former enlarged site.Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1823-4), 348.