Worcestershire

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

This article has not been researched and written yet

Bewdley, on the west bank of the Severn, was in the seventeenth century an important trading station on the river, which had Gloucester and Shrewsbury as its terminal ports. Although John Leland spoke of Bewdley as 'but a very new town' around 1540, there must have been a settlement of substance there before the building of the bridge in 1446-7.

The population of Worcester in 1646 has been estimated to have been around 8,000. This is a figure probably swollen by about 25 per cent from pre-war levels, produced by influxes of refugees from the countryside into the walled city during the civil war. Great differences of population and wealth were apparent between the wards of the city. St Michael’s, around the cathedral close, was the home of the wealthy and privileged minority of gentry and higher clergy.

Droitwich, on the River Salwarpe in mid-Worcestershire, was a town of some 1,500 inhabitants in the mid-seventeenth century. Compton Census, 170, 180. Still known then by many as Wyche or Wych, the borough consisted of most of the united parishes of St Andrew and St Mary-de-Witton and those of St Peter-de-Witton and St Nicholas, with a portion of Dodderhill parish as well; there were two churches, of St Nicholas and St Peter. A charter of 1624 confirmed the borough government as two bailiffs, a recorder, two justices, a town clerk and the burgesses.

Seventeenth century Worcestershire was a comparatively populous and wealthy county. In 1662, only in London and 11 other English counties were there fewer acres per fireplace, as recorded by the collectors of the hearth tax. Of the English and Welsh counties, over 60 in number, Worcestershire came sixteenth in the total tax burden imposed on it by one of the Ship Money writs, and nineteenth in its share of the 1641 subsidy. Its per capita tax burden was above the national average. R.H. Silcock, ‘County government in Worcestershire, 1603-60’ (London Univ.