Warwickshire

A town existed at Coventry by the mid-eleventh century, when it belonged to the famous Godiva. Made rich by the cloth trade, in 1377 it was England’s third biggest provincial centre, with perhaps 9,000 inhabitants. Growth continued into the fifteenth century, and in 1451 it was granted the status of both city and county. Around this time, however, the market for the local broadcloth contracted, and despite the development of alternative manufactures such as caps and blue thread economic decline set in. In the severe depression of the 1520s, the population shrank to about 6,000.

Warwick was dominated physically by its Castle overlooking the River Avon and politically and proprietarily by its lord, the anti-Catholic Tory and placeman Henry Richard Greville, 3rd earl of Warwick, borough recorder since 1816 and from 1822 the county lord lieutenant. HP Commons, 1790-1820, iv.

Coventry, an important manufacturing town where out-working prevailed, was situated locally in the county of the city of Coventry, a separate jurisdiction within Warwickshire. Its economy and politics were influenced by its three main industries or trades - silk (including the weaving of ribbon and election cockades), watchmaking and cordwaining - of which silk was overwhelmingly the most important, and by its proximity to the large unrepresented town of Birmingham, 18 miles to the north-east.