Evesham grew up as a community clustered around the medieval abbey, and had acquired the characteristics of a town by the late twelfth century. This section relies heavily on Evesham Borough Records ed. S.K. Roberts (Worcs. Hist. Soc. n.s. xiv), pp. xi-xiv. By that time the streets and their names familiar to seventeenth-century residents were in place, the topography of the town shaped and confined by the bend in the Avon.
Economic and social profile:
‘The people mostly subsist by woollen manufacture. The best broadcloth in England is made here.’ So wrote Rev. Thomas Cox in 1700. Worcester’s prosperity was based on this type of textile production, much of it intended for London and the export market. However, structural shifts in the economy, which led to the disappearance of the industry by 1750, were already causing severe dislocation and hardship. The problems besetting the trade no doubt explain the eagerness of the clothiers’ company to petition Parliament in the hope of influencing legislation in ways beneficial to the industry.
After a brief hiatus under the charter of 1684 when the borough’s parliamentary representatives were elected by the corporation, Evesham returned to its freeman franchise for the elections to the Convention of 1689. The lack of an indigenous elite capable of engrossing the representation to itself ensured that the borough fell prey to outsiders, helped no doubt by the custom whereby members of the eight companies could all be admitted to the freedom of the borough, and the power of the corporation to create freemen (including non-residents).