Commons 1640-1660

Lying about a mile downstream from Boroughbridge on the River Ure, and 15 miles north west of York, the ‘village or town’ of Aldborough was one of Yorkshire smallest constituencies, containing only 64 householders in 1664 – which suggests a population of approximately 300. R. Blome, Britannia (1673), 259; E179/210/393, m. 30 dorse. The manor of Aldborough was part of the duchy of Lancaster until 1629, when it was purchased by Arthur Aldburghe, who owned the capital messuage of Aldborough Hall. N. Yorks. RO, ZUH, Lawson-Tancred mss (mics. 1759, 1760); T.

Halifax was one of the largest boroughs to be enfranchised under the Instrument of Government. The constituency, which comprised not simply the town but the entire parish of Halifax, covered an area of approximately 124 square miles and contained 23 townships. W. Sheils, S. Sheils, ‘Textiles and reform: Halifax and its hinterland’ in The Reformation in English Towns 1500-1640 ed. P. Collinson, J. Craig (Basingstoke, 1998), 131-2; T.W. Hanson, ‘Jeremy Bentley, first MP for Halifax’, Halifax Antiquarian Soc. xxvi.

Situated on a rocky cove some 35 miles north east of York, early Stuart Scarborough was the largest town on Yorkshire’s North Sea coast and the site of one of England’s most heavily fortified castles. J. Binns, ‘Scarborough and the civil wars 1642-1651’, NH xxii. 99. As a port it was dwarfed by Hull, and by the 1640s its smaller neighbours Whitby and Bridlington enjoyed a greater volume of maritime trade. B. Hall, ‘The trade of Newcastle and the north-east coast, 1600-40, BIHR xii.

Hull was the most prosperous and strategically important of the Yorkshire boroughs and the county’s largest urban community after York. Situated on the north bank of the Humber at the point where the River Hull entered the estuary, it ranked fourth among the kingdom’s outports, with Hull merchants enjoying a substantial share of English trade to the Baltic and the Low Countries. The town’s emergence as a major port was closely linked to the rapid expansion of the West Riding cloth industry between 1560 and 1640.

The Cinque Ports, which had their own charter and institutional structures, nevertheless had an anomalous status in the seventeenth century, as they were governed by a lord warden, based at Dover, who exercised powers akin to, but distinct from, the lord high admiral. They also enjoyed certain liberties, in terms of exemption from taxes and impositions, which they were determined to defend, not least by retaining the services of a string of powerful lawyers, including Serjeants Nathaniel Finch*, Ralph Whitfield, and Thomas Twisden*. Cal. White and Black Bks.

Morpeth lay on the Great North Road at the point where it crossed the River Wansbeck, some twelve miles north of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. It was described in 1673 as ‘a very fine town’, and its market was esteemed the best in Northumberland, ‘being sufficiently stored with corn, all provisions and living cattle, which from hence are dispersed to divers parts of the kingdom’. R. Blome, Britannia (1673), 181. As this description implies, Morpeth’s principal source of wealth was its large cattle market. J. Hodgson, Hist.

Northumberland was described in 1673 as ‘a county of a sharp and piercing air and much troubled with pinching frosts, boisterous winds and deep snows in the winter … It is a country but thinly inhabited, which is occasioned through its near neighbourhood to Scotland and its barrenness, being for the most part exceeding rough, hilly and very hard to be manured’. R. Blome, Britannia (1673), 179. The majority of the county’s inhabitants eked out a living as small-scale livestock and arable farmers.

Lying on the Scottish side of the River Tweed at the point where it entered the North Sea, Berwick had been a key border fortress in medieval times. It was reckoned a good natural harbour at high tide, but nevertheless a town of ‘no trade because it affords no commodities for transportation. Fishing is their best, but they wholly neglect it, except only for salmon, which is very plentiful’. Six North Country Diaries ed. J.C. Hodgson (Surt. Soc.

Seventeenth-Century Newcastle was the metropolis of northern England and, in terms of population and wealth, was inferior only to London, Norwich and Bristol. Although not easily defensible, the town occupied a vital strategic site, commanding the intersection of the Great North Road as it crossed the River Tyne and the main east-west route between Tynemouth and Carlisle. It was also well-placed as a commercial centre, lying at the eastern end of the Tyne gap and near the heart of the northern coal field.