Although trading guilds existed in the frontier town of Berwick, it was primarily a military centre, and the unusual structure of town government there reflects this fact. The principal officer, appointed by the Crown, was the governor, usually the same person as the warden of the east march. He was assisted by a corporation, including three officials—a mayor, bailiff and town clerk—whose salaries were paid by the government.
A leading provincial town and port, often used as a base for war against Scotland, Newcastle-upon-Tyne had a population of some 10,000 in 1545. It had returned Members since 1283 and was incorporated as a county of itself in 1400. In 1510, 1548 1554 and 1557 it received confirmation of its charters and in 1516 a Star Chamber decree which settled a dispute between the mayor, aldermen and ‘certain the honest commoners’ of Newcastle and the ‘artificers, burgesses and guildmerchants’ approved its oligarchic constitution.
The barony of Morpeth, with the lordship of the town and castle, passed to the Dacre family after the marriage of Thomas, 2nd Lord Dacre to the heiress of Ralph, 5th Lord Greystoke. Leland observed that Morpeth was a market town ‘long and meetly well builded’ and remarked on its ‘fair castle standing upon a hill’. The town was important enough to serve on occasion as the site of shire elections even after the Act for the keeping of county days (2 and 3 Edw. VI, c.25) had specified Alnwick as the meeting place of the shire court.Leland, Itin. ed. Smith, v. 62-63.
Long in contention between England and Scotland, Berwick-upon-Tweed passed finally under English rule in 1482. It was incorporated by the reign of David I and its charters, granted by English and Scottish kings, were confirmed in 1510, 1547 and 1554.
Recognizing the importance of Newcastle-upon-Tyne as both a port and a defensive site, the Normans lost no time in fortifying the township, just as the Romans had done before them. A flourishing community grew up around the castle, and shortly before 1135 the first of many royal charters was awarded to the residents. King John later permitted them to occupy the borough at a fee farm of £100 a year, payable at the Exchequer, while at the same time improving the fortifications.
Morpeth grew up in the shadow of the Norman castle constructed to guard the Great North Road’s crossing over the River Wansbeck. The town was granted a fair and market in 1199, and achieved borough status by 1382. In the early seventeenth century Morpeth boasted a tollbooth, a moot-hall and a grammar school. A post-town on the main route from the Scottish border to London, it was a regular meeting-place for Northumberland’s magistrates and deputy lieutenants.
Named after the Norman keep built on the site of one of the forts of Hadrian’s Wall, Newcastle-upon-Tyne was the chief bulwark of north-eastern England’s defences against the Scots until 1482. It was also the region’s most important port town, dealing in wool and hides, and increasingly in coal, abundant reserves of which lay close to the surface on both banks of the Tyne; in 1560 perhaps 40 per cent of national production came from coal pits near the Tyne and Wear rivers, a proportion which increased substantially over the next century.
Originally a Scottish burgh, Berwick was a key border fortress during the medieval Anglo-Scottish wars, changing hands nine times in barely 300 years. Under permanent English control from 1482, it achieved parliamentary representation at Westminster by 1512, but was not formally incorporated into England until the nineteenth century. J. Scott, Berwick-upon-Tweed, 6, 9-10, 25, 43, 56, 78-9, 84, 94-5, 99; HP Commons, 1509-58, i. 162; S.J. and S.J.
Morpeth, a 7,600-acre parish and market town on the River Wansbeck, centrally situated some 17 miles north of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and 18 south of Alnwick, was an important staging post on the Newcastle-Edinburgh road. Ecclesiastically comprised of the townships of Morpeth, Buller’s Green, Catchburn, Hepscott, High Church, Newminster Abbey, Shilvington, Tramwell, Twizell and Ulgham, the parliamentary borough was generally considered to extend northwards from Morpeth to Cottingwood and eastwards to Wansbeck, but excluded Buller’s Green. Parl.
The Border town and county of Berwick-upon-Tweed, known for its salmon, smacks and agricultural produce, was an open and venal borough, which as ‘a town by itself’ had to be specifically mentioned in treaties and all national legislation. N. McCord, North East England, 33-34; Berwick in Parliament ed. Sir L. Airey, A. Beith, D. Brenchley, J. Marlow and T. Skelly, 24-25; Parl. Gazetteer of England and Wales (1844), i.