Cambridgeshire

This article has not been researched and written yet

This article has not been researched and written yet

This article has not been researched and written yet

This article has not been researched and written yet

This article has not been researched and written yet

Cambridge had been a town of some importance since Anglo-Saxon times. When James I and the prince of Wales visited the town in 1615, the recorder, Francis Brakin†, had gone so far as to claim in his speech of welcome that the town ‘was builded before Christ’s incarnation, with a castle, towers, and walls of defence, by Duke Cantaber, the son of the king of Spain, who was entertained in England by King Gurguntius’. Cooper, Annals Camb. iii. 69. The reality of its origins was more prosaic.

The right of the two English universities to return MPs dated back no further than 1604. M.B. Rex, University Representation in England 1604-1690 (1954), 1-36. That the two constituencies then created were distinctive is obvious enough. Their electorates were, by definition, well-educated, and, at a time when the latest theological controversies could be matters of considerable political interest, they could also claim to be especially well-informed.

The Fens, the low-lying area to the south of the Wash, had always been little more than marshland or, at best, prone to regular flooding. Although he had a vested interest in stressing the barrenness of this strange landscape, the engineer, Sir Cornelius Vermuyden, described it in 1642 with the eye of an expert.

The town of Wisbech was one of the two centres of population within the Isle of Ely, the other being Ely itself. Located on the River Nene, on the border between Cambridgeshire and Norfolk, Wisbech was a port with good access to the sea; Samuel Pepys† thought it ‘a pretty town’. Pepys’s Diary, iv.

Cambridgeshire was a county of two halves divided by the River Ouse. The southern half, centred on Cambridge, had good-quality soil (variously chalk or clay-based), was largely woodless, and provided excellent opportunities for arable farming. Wheat, barley and oats were produced in large quantities. Peter Munby in 1639 found this part of the county to be ‘wonderful corn country, as might be judged by the tillage and plenty of good ale and beer generally here to be had’. The Travels of Peter Mundy, ed. R.C. Temple (Hakluyt Soc. 2nd ser.