Newport originated as a settlement outside the gate of Launceston Priory, and by the seventeenth century it was in many ways merely a suburb of the neighbouring borough of Launceston, holding a fair and market but lacking the normal structures of a parliamentary borough.
St Mawes was a fishing village overshadowed by Henry VIII’s castle, which commanded the eastern side of the Carrick Roads, facing its partner, Pendennis Castle, across the estuary of the River Fal.
Truro was a medieval town situated at the junction of two main roads and the Truro River, which flowed into Falmouth harbour.
Bossiney, on the north coast of Cornwall, was a tiny settlement established as a parliamentary borough by the duchy of Cornwall in the mid-sixteenth century. The borough was not incorporated until 1685, and in the interim it was controlled by the court leet, with a ‘mayor’ presiding. Maclean, Trigg Minor, iii. 185, 205-9, The franchise was never entirely settled, and the electorate was variously made up of those who owned property in the parish (the ‘burgesses’), those paying scot and lot, or the inhabitants of the parish of Tintagel in general.
The tiny town of Mitchell had been enfranchised at the behest of the lord of the manor, John Arundell† of Lanherne, in 1547, and in the seventeenth century it remained one of the smallest and most easily influenced boroughs in Cornwall. The Arundells of Lanherne, as recusants, were unable to use the benefits of lordship effectively, and the parliamentary patronage of the borough was controlled instead by their cousins, the Arundells of Trerice, whose seat was close to the town.
Bodmin (a name derived from the Cornish for ‘dwelling under the hills’) originated as an Anglo-Saxon town serving the monastery founded by St Petrock, and had become a borough by the end of the twelfth century. In the middle ages its wealth was based on its dual role as monastic centre and entrepot of the tin trade, and it retained its importance in the county administration – hosting the quarter sessions and trained band musters, as well as an important weekly market – into the early seventeenth century. Maclean, Trigg Minor, i.
Originally a Saxon manor owned by the bishops of Sherborne, Launceston (or Dunheved) developed as the most important town in Cornwall during the middle ages, and its many privileges reflected the status of its castle as the headquarters of the duchy of Cornwall and a vital strategic stronghold, guarding the crossing of the Tamar from Devon.
Callington, seven miles north of Saltash, was one of the smallest and least impressive of the Cornish boroughs. In 1639 the corporation begged for exemption from Ship Money on the grounds of poverty; in 1641 only 91 men from the parish signed the Protestation; and in the 1660s there were only around 70 households, with none of the houses boasting more than four hearths. CSP Dom. 1639, p. 62; Cornw. Protestation Returns, 214; Cornw.
The borough of Saltash, on the west bank of the River Tamar and the edge of Plymouth Sound, was a town of some commercial and strategic importance, established by the duchy of Cornwall within the manor of Trematon in the thirteenth century. Parochial Hist. Cornw. iv. 170-6. According to the antiquarian Richard Carew, writing at the turn of the seventeenth century, Saltash ‘compriseth between 80 and 100 households’ – a number that had apparently declined by the time of the Hearth Tax survey of the 1660s, which listed only 66 households. Cornw.
East Looe was the larger and more important of the two boroughs at the mouth of the River Looe on the south coast of Cornwall. According to early seventeenth century accounts, East Looe was more prosperous than neighbouring West Looe, and ‘their profit chiefly accrueth from their weekly markets, and industrious fishing, with boats of a middle size able to brook, but not cross the seas’, with the most lucrative trade being in ‘this silly small fish’, the pilchard. Carew, Survey, 128; Corporation Chronicles… of East and West Looe ed. A.L.
