Yorkshire

Until the re-organisation of local government in the 1970s, Yorkshire’s three main administrative units – the East, North and West Ridings – formed England’s largest county, covering about an eighth of the entire country. D. Hey, Yorks.

Lying on the Great North Road some 30 miles north-west of York, Northallerton had become the administrative centre of the North Riding by the late seventeenth century. Anon. Hist. of North-Allerton (1791), 16, 17; VCH N. Riding, i. 418. Nevertheless, it was, and remained, essentially a small market town, with only about 180 householders – and an additional 40 or so inhabitants in receipt of ‘constant alms’ – in the early 1660s, suggesting an overall population of about 900. E179/216/461, m.

Historically the second city of the realm, York was the fourth or fifth largest urban community in early Stuart England after London, Norwich, Bristol and possibly Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Situated at major road and river junctions, it was the seat of royal government in the north, the hub of the Northern Province and the assize town of England’s largest county. Although it was in long term, indeed terminal, decline as an international port, York was the focus of a thriving regional trade where agricultural produce was exchanged for manufactured goods and services.

Lying about a mile downstream from Boroughbridge on the River Ure, and 15 miles north west of York, the ‘village or town’ of Aldborough was one of Yorkshire smallest constituencies, containing only 64 householders in 1664 – which suggests a population of approximately 300. R. Blome, Britannia (1673), 259; E179/210/393, m. 30 dorse. The manor of Aldborough was part of the duchy of Lancaster until 1629, when it was purchased by Arthur Aldburghe, who owned the capital messuage of Aldborough Hall. N. Yorks. RO, ZUH, Lawson-Tancred mss (mics. 1759, 1760); T.

Halifax was one of the largest boroughs to be enfranchised under the Instrument of Government. The constituency, which comprised not simply the town but the entire parish of Halifax, covered an area of approximately 124 square miles and contained 23 townships. W. Sheils, S. Sheils, ‘Textiles and reform: Halifax and its hinterland’ in The Reformation in English Towns 1500-1640 ed. P. Collinson, J. Craig (Basingstoke, 1998), 131-2; T.W. Hanson, ‘Jeremy Bentley, first MP for Halifax’, Halifax Antiquarian Soc. xxvi.

Situated on a rocky cove some 35 miles north east of York, early Stuart Scarborough was the largest town on Yorkshire’s North Sea coast and the site of one of England’s most heavily fortified castles. J. Binns, ‘Scarborough and the civil wars 1642-1651’, NH xxii. 99. As a port it was dwarfed by Hull, and by the 1640s its smaller neighbours Whitby and Bridlington enjoyed a greater volume of maritime trade. B. Hall, ‘The trade of Newcastle and the north-east coast, 1600-40, BIHR xii.

Hull was the most prosperous and strategically important of the Yorkshire boroughs and the county’s largest urban community after York. Situated on the north bank of the Humber at the point where the River Hull entered the estuary, it ranked fourth among the kingdom’s outports, with Hull merchants enjoying a substantial share of English trade to the Baltic and the Low Countries. The town’s emergence as a major port was closely linked to the rapid expansion of the West Riding cloth industry between 1560 and 1640.

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