Yarmouth, situated on the north-western extreme of the Isle of Wight, was the smallest parish on the island, yet one of its oldest boroughs. It received a seigneurial charter in the twelfth century, which was confirmed by Edward III in the thirteenth century, although it remained a mesne borough until 1440. Despite its coastal location, it was a decayed port and boasted little or no local trade or industry.
Stockbridge’s limited importance rested on its location on the main route from Winchester to Salisbury, at the point where it crossed the River Test. A parish of some 600 adults in 1676, it was not a significant centre for industrial activity and had been granted its market only in 1593. VCH Hants, iv. 483-4; Compton Census, 95. James Young described it as a ‘small pitiful place, whose great advantage of late is choosing burgesses’. Journal of James Yonge, ed. F.N.L.
By the end of the sixteenth century Newtown, on the north east coast of the Isle of Wight, opposite Lymington, was a very minor settlement, although it did have an oyster fishery and engaged in the manufacture of salt. VCH Hants, v. 265. Never incorporated, it was a borough by prescription, having been granted a seigneurial charter in 1393. This was said to have been confirmed in 1598, although documentation was subsequently lost. The chief burgesses chose a mayor annually from among their number and replenished their ranks from the burgage holders.
Newport, located at the head of the River Medina estuary, was the principal administrative town in the Isle of Wight. Part of the parish of Carisbrooke, and in the shadow of its castle, Newport provided the residence for the captain, or governor, of the island. VCH Hants, v. 253; Worsley, Isle of Wight, 147-55. In 1648 it would assume a position of national importance, and its most famous moment, when it provided the location for the Newport treaty between Parliament and the king. CSP Dom. 1648-9, p.
Although economically and topographically diverse, and religiously divided, Hampshire was an administratively centralised county in the early seventeenth century, and an area of notable strategic importance. While puritanism was probably dominant among the gentry, there was a notable Catholic presence in the region (represented especially by the Paulets, marquesses of Winchester), which became particularly significant during the popish plot scare in the early 1640s.
By the second half of the sixteenth century Southampton, once the chief port in England after London, was in serious, albeit not terminal, decline. Trade built around wool and wine, particularly with Venice, and in Newfoundland fish had given it considerable affluence and led to impressive buildings and other manifestations of conspicuous consumption. VCH Hants, iii. 490; R. Douch, Visitors’ Descriptions of Southampton: 1540-1956 (1961), 9; A.A.
On the western edge of Hampshire at the confluence of the rivers Stour and Avon, Christchurch was a small and impoverished coastal town of very limited importance. In 1538 one commentator noted that it was ‘set in a desolate place, in a very barren country, out and far from all highways, in an angle or a corner, having no woods nor commodious country about it ... and slenderly inhabited’. VCH Hants, v.
Situated on the roads from London to both Portsmouth and Winchester, Petersfield was a posting town; it had an important market and was the focal point for local industrial activity. Its growth under the Tudors was due to the presence of cloth and leather manufacturing, and although these industries were in decline by the mid-seventeenth century, they may still have employed as many as 1,000 people in the locality. VCH Hants, iii.
Lymington was a minor coastal port on the edge of the New Forest and on the west bank of the River Lymington, some two miles from the Solent and opposite Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight. Its harbour was relatively unimportant, but it was used to transport the produce of the local salterns, which were among the most significant in southern England. VCH Hants, iv. 639-40, 643; R. Warner, Colls. Hist. Hants, iv.
Andover’s importance in the early modern period stemmed largely from its location on one of the main routes from London to the West, at the point where it crossed the River Anton, and to a lesser extent from its role as a centre of cloth manufacture. VCH Hants, iv.