The four northern counties of Westmorland, Cumberland, Northumberland and County Durham were briefly conjoined to form a single parliamentary constituency under the terms of the ‘new representative’ of May-June 1653 that formed the basis for the Nominated Parliament. There were a number of precedents, some of considerable antiquity, for yoking the four northernmost English counties together in this fashion.
Shropshire was important among the west midlands counties for several reasons. It was economically significant as the hinterland for Shrewsbury, capital of the trade in Welsh cloth, and as a county that benefited from the river-borne navigation that linked Shrewsbury with the Bristol Channel. The livestock industry for cattle, sheep and horses was prosperous, and there was industrial activity in the form of iron-working and coal extraction. R.
The most important feature of the Huntingdonshire landscape was man-made – Ermine Street or the Great North Road, which bisected the county, had been one of the key routes to the north since Roman times and the passing trade of those travelling its length was a major element in the local economy. Since it had been deflected to avoid the Fens which extended into the north east of the county, its course marked a very obvious boundary in the geography of the region.
‘Bounded on the east with the counties of York and part of Derby, on south with the River Mersey – which severeth it from Cheshire – on the west with the Irish Sea and on the north with the counties of Cumberland and Westmorland’, Lancashire, like most of the adjacent counties, was regarded by the godly as one of the ‘dark corners of the land’. R. Blome, Britannia (1673), 132; C. Hill, ‘Puritans and ‘the dark corners of the land’’, TRHS xiii.
Situated in the east midlands, Leicestershire enjoyed relatively good connections with London and the rest of the country via Watling Street and the Fosse Way, which intersected close to the county’s south western border with Warwickshire. It was noted during the Stuart period for being ‘exceedingly fertile for all sorts of grain’, producing ‘great abundance of peas and beans, more than any other country [i.e. county]’.
Situated in the southern midlands and bounded by no fewer than nine other counties, Northamptonshire was described in the Restoration period as ‘of a fat and rich soil both for tillage and pasturage, bearing excellent grain and feeding great store of sheep and cattle ...[and] honoured with the seats of as many (if not more) of the nobility and gentry as any county in the kingdom, especially as to its extent’. R. Blome, Britannia (1673), 174. The county was divided by the River Nene into two main administrative units, the western and eastern divisions.
As a large, prosperous county, Somerset had no shortage of wealthy landowners each eager to serve as knights of the shire. Berkeleys, Hoptons, Horners, Phelippses, Pouletts and Rodeneys had all sat in recent Parliaments. The Pophams, Stawells and Portmans also could not be ignored. By the 1630s local politics had, to a great extent, revolved around the ongoing feud between the 1st Baron Poulett (John Poulett†), assisted by Sir John Stawell*, and the dominant county figure, Sir Robert Phelipps† of Montacute. Phelipps’s death in 1638 might have been the moment to move on.
Berkshire was among the smaller English counties, but, with four borough constituencies, it could consider itself well-represented in Parliament. Several peers had interests in the county, but none was dominant and there was no shortage of gentry families willing to compete for the county seats. The Short Parliament election demonstrated how no single interest was likely to determine a result.
Situated in the heart of England, and with a population estimated to have been around 80,000 by the 1660s, Warwickshire was a county which in the seventeenth century lacked geographical coherence. Its modern historian has noted how its sub-regions had more in common economically with neighbouring districts of other counties than with the rest of Warwickshire. A. Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War in Warws.
In certain respects, seventeenth century Wiltshire was a county of contrasts. The cloth-making districts of the north and west had a very different economy to that of the open and in parts depopulated country to the south and east, especially Salisbury Plain.